No woman would ever fuck him over again.

First things first, though. He had to get away from this battleground, avoid the opposing armies and get himself back to the States.

Armed with the gun he’d taken from Guarapo’s dead body and the knife sheathed once again at his belt, he felt he was up to it. He wouldn’t let the wounds he’d picked up stop him. They required medical attention, primarily the gunshot in his shoulder and the one that had creased his ribs, but they could wait until he was safely away from here.

He used the window he’d shattered to climb outside, where he crouched next to some flowering shrubs as a tall black man raced toward the front of the house. He was followed a moment later by a muscular Asian American. Rickard blinked in confusion, but when he thought about it he wasn’t that surprised. They were the two men that had been with Hunter when Jimena’s hit team had failed to take Hunter out at the Miami diner. The Japanese dude, he recalled, had also been there when he had riddled Alisha full of bullets.

Maybe these two men would be as relentless as adversaries as their friend had proved. Or maybe when they found his eviscerated body down in the bombed chamber, they’d just give up.

He thought about following them back inside the house, killing them, but then decided, what the hell. Why tempt fate? Once Alisha and Imogen Ballard were dead, he could always track them down later.

Romeo, his one-eyed pilot, had mentioned staying on a couple of nights at the village where he’d delivered him. Couple of young senoritas he was going to hook up with. Apparently he wasn’t known as Romeo for nothing.

Gunfire still echoed through the valley, but it was sporadic now, Silva’s troops mopping up the last resistance. The shots were single cracks: more executions than they were all-out gunfights. Silva would be pleased. Calle’s home was now Silva’s, and so was his niche in the drug market.

You’re welcome to it, Rickard thought. He headed for the Jeep in which he’d arrived. The windshield was shattered and the driver dead inside, but otherwise it was still drivable. He tugged the dead man out, allowed him to crumple to the ground, then climbed inside. The keys were still in the ignition. He spun the Jeep around and away, heading off in search of Romeo.

In his mirrors he saw Metzger running toward the front of the house, a machine gun in his arms, like the indestructible lead in a Schwarzenegger movie.

He looked the part.

Perhaps the big German would kill Hunter’s friends and save him the trouble.

Chapter 38

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