Caitlin did not have time to weigh up all of the imponderables; there were too many of them. She detached a couple of flash-bangs from her webbing and advanced on the door leading to the cells. There was no way of telling what lay immediately on the other side. A constricted passageway or more open space? Perhaps even another office. The funcionario could’ve been waiting for her behind a sandbagged machine gun, for all she knew. There was nothing for it but to press on.

She noted from the lack of hinges that the door opened inwards, making her next move just slightly easier. Filling her lungs with air, she pulled the pins on the two stun grenades, then timed a powerful side kick to crash through the obstacle a second before the grenades were primed to detonate.

As the door smashed inwards, she lobbed them down a short dark stairway, diving to her right, still out in the reception area, while a short burst of gunfire exploded up out of the shadows. Part-way through her flight, Caitlin grunted with shock and pain as a bullet struck her body armour a glancing blow, turning her as though she’d been roundhouse-kicked. She went with the movement – spinning out of the doorway before the grenades went off, the detonations following one after the other so quickly, they rolled into a single clap of thunder and a flash of strobed lightning.

There was no time to pay heed to her injuries, or the fact that she was winded so badly, she couldn’t breathe. Caitlin threw herself back into the dimly lit stairwell area and down the short set of steps, her senses questing for the last man she had to kill. She knew he had to be within reach as soon as her boots hit level ground.

There was no light down here, and thick acrid smoke from the flash-bangs burned her eyes. She could not risk firing her weapon yet, for fear of hitting Lupérico, but she had to clear a path ahead. All of her nerve endings sang with the knowledge that even though she couldn’t see him, the deputy was staggering around, disoriented by the stun grenades, not more than a few feet away.

Caitlin twisted her torso and swept her left leg up in a powerful crescent kick that swished through the air directly in front of her, but connected with nothing. She heard the man cough and gag – so close now – and poured more energy into the momentum she had generated with the first kick, turning and spinning as she lashed out with the other foot. This time, connection was made: soft tissue, at about head height.

A male voice screamed and a single shot crashed out in the semi-darkness, ricocheting dangerously around in this closed stone room. Then Caitlin heard the unmistakable sound of a human body dropping to a hard surface. A sick, crunching thud.