The son of a bitch. He wasn’t cradling the boy out of love. He’d recognized my reticence to shoot where the child was involved and he was now using his own son as a shield. Jimena had also come to that conclusion, and she was clawing at him to get the boy away. Her actions bought me a couple of seconds to deal with the man coming out of the car.

The driver had drawn his weapon—an H & K I immediately identified from its shape—and was bringing it over the roof of the car to shoot me. He snarled something in Spanish that I didn’t catch. I was already dropping low, like an old-time gunslinger, shooting from the hip so that my bullets passed through the open car door on my side and out the open one on his. I hit him in the gut. He was sorely wounded, but not yet dead. He fired, and I’d no option but to throw myself to the ground. Now I fired under the car, blasting one of his ankles from under him. As he collapsed screaming, I again fired under the chassis and this time my bullet silenced him.

Four men dead in less than fifteen seconds, but none of them the man I’d come for.

I rolled over onto my back, bringing up my SIG.

The snapshot had changed from before.

Seeing me distracted, Abadia had released his grip on the boy, and Jimena had now taken charge of him. Abadia was taking a running step toward me, his revolver aiming at me.

So this is how I die, I thought, looking into Abadia’s contorted features.

But then I saw Abadia shudder, and blood spattered from a wound in his chest. Another bullet tore a chunk out of his right shoulder and the revolver went spinning from his hand.

Jack Schilling, his MP5A3 rattling out death, raced in my direction, laying down covering fire. Behind him, I saw Bryce revving our car toward us.

I quickly came to one knee. Abadia was on the pavement not ten feet from me, facedown, unmoving. Standard operating procedure dictated that I put a round in the back of his skull. But I was more concerned with the other bodies lying sprawled on the steps to the house.

They were unmoving too. Clutched in Jimena’s death grip was a gun.