Chapter 15 - The Price of Blood
The silence in the rail yard was so heavy that the hiss of the cold desert wind sounded like a roar.
Morales’s gunmen looked at each other, their hands trembling on their grips. They were seasoned killers, but they knew when they were outmaneuvered. One red dot was dangerous; three on every man was a guaranteed execution.
"Stand down!" Morales screamed, his voice cracking with panicked fury. "Shoot him! Shoot Marcelo!"
Not a single cartel soldier fired.
One by one, the gunmen tossed their rifles onto the gravel, raising their hands into the air.
"You cowards!" Morales shrieked, his grip on the chrome revolver tightening as he kept it pressed against Diego's skull. "I'll kill him myself! I swear to God I'll do it—"
*BANG.*
A single high-caliber sniper round cracked from the eastern water tower.
The bullet struck Morales’s right shoulder with surgical precision, shattering the collarbone and ripping the revolver from his hand in a spray of blood.
Morales howled in agony, collapsing into the dirt, clutching his ruined shoulder.
"Move! Move!" Mateo roared.
Marcelo soldiers swarmed from the boxcars, disarming the surrendered cartel guards and pinning them to the earth. Two soldiers rushed forward, cutting Diego Reyes's chains and pulling the weeping old man to safety.
From the rear lines, the door of the armored command vehicle opened.
Clara broke into a run, her boots kicking up gravel as she sprinted across the tracks.
"Papa!" she cried.
Diego turned, his hollow eyes widening in disbelief. "Clara?! My God... Clara!"
She crashed into his arms, tears streaming down her face as she wrapped her arms around her battered father. Diego fell to his knees, burying his face into his daughter’s shoulder, weeping like a child who had returned from the dead.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, my sweet girl," Diego sobbed. "I thought I lost you... I thought they took you..."
"I'm safe, Papa," she wept, holding him tight. "We're safe now."
A few yards away, Virgilio stood over Hector Morales, who was writhing in the dirt, his blood turning the gravel into dark mud.
Virgilio drew his .45 automatic, aiming it down at the cartel boss’s face.
"Marcelo... please," Morales wheezed, his teeth stained red. "Take the territory... take the money... just let me walk..."
Virgilio looked down at the man who had terrorized an innocent family for months. His finger tightened on the trigger.
"Virgilio!"
A soft, desperate voice called out behind him.
Virgilio paused. He glanced over his shoulder.
Clara had left her father’s side. She walked toward Virgilio, her eyes pleading, her hand gently reaching out to rest against his gun arm.
"Don't," she whispered softly. "Not for me. You promised your sister you wouldn't be that man anymore. Don't let his blood stain what you just gave us."
Virgilio stared at her. The fury that had driven his entire existence for seven years suddenly began to recede, extinguished by the pure, unblemished light in her dark eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, Virgilio lowered the hammer of the gun and slid it back into his holster.
He looked at Mateo.
"Call the federal marshals," Virgilio commanded. "Deliver Morales and the ledger to them at the border checkpoint. Let him spend the next forty years in a concrete box six feet underground."
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Mateo nodded, smiling grimly. "Consider it done, Don Virgilio."
***