Chapter 14 - The Rail Yard Ambush
Midnight.
The abandoned freight rail yard on the southern border was a graveyard of rusted boxcars, weed-choked tracks, and howling winds. Heavy clouds swallowed the moon, leaving the landscape swallowed in ink.
At the center of an open turnaround stood three armored black SUVs belonging to Hector Morales.
Sixteen cartel gunmen in tactical gear stood with rifles raised, their breaths misting in the freezing desert air. In the center, dragged by two brutes, was Diego Reyes. The old man was barely able to stand, his hands bound in heavy chains.
Behind him stood Hector Morales himself—a broad-shouldered, silver-haired warlord wearing an alligator-skin coat, holding a heavy chrome revolver.
From the northern entrance of the rail yard, headlights cut through the gloom.
A single armored Maybach rolled to a halt fifty yards away. The engine purred, then fell silent.
The driver’s door opened, and Mateo stepped out, keeping his hands visible. He opened the rear door.
Virgilio Marcelo stepped out alone.
He wore a long black wool trench coat over a bulletproof vest, his hands resting casually inside his pockets. He walked forward across the gravel tracks, completely unbothered by the sixteen rifles trained directly on his chest.
Morales barked a guttural laugh. "Marcelo! You brought no army? Just your little bodyguard? You've grown arrogant in your old age!"
Virgilio stopped twenty paces away. His cold eyes swept over the bruised, shivering form of Diego Reyes.
"I don't need an army to deal with a dog," Virgilio said calmly. "Where is the surrender paperwork, Hector?"
Morales sneered, cocking his revolver and pressing the barrel directly against Diego Reyes's temple.
"You think you set the terms?!" Morales roared. "You give me the decryption drive, you deliver the girl to my men, or I blow this old bastard’s brains all over the gravel right now!"
Diego Reyes wept, lifting his battered head. "Don't do it! Whoever you are... don't give him my daughter!"
Virgilio didn't blink. He raised his right hand and tapped his ear piece once.
"Checkmate, Hector."
Suddenly, the darkness around the rail yard exploded into blinding light.
Six industrial searchlights mounted atop the rusted boxcars snapped on simultaneously, bathing Morales and his men in harsh, glaring halogen white.
*CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK.*
From the roofs of the boxcars, from behind the rusted locomotives, thirty Marcelo snipers and assault troops appeared, their laser sights painting Morales’s men in a spiderweb of crimson dots.
Every single cartel gunman had three red laser points centered squarely on their foreheads.
Morales froze, terror draining the blood from his leathery face.
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"Drop your weapons," Virgilio’s voice boomed across the yard like rolling thunder. "Or my men turn this yard into a slaughterhouse."
***