“What—” Cargill says, the revolver now wavering.

Bala is able to raise one hand to his throat, which is torn open, and then he starts to fall. Before he hits the floor, I whip around, my left arm sweeping the MAC-11 away from me, my right hand rigid and aiming for Soul Patch’s throat. I manage to club him in the ear instead. He fires, the sound of the MAC-11 like someone ripping a giant piece of corrugated tin in half. The long burst chews up the side of a crate and one of Bala’s men, who jitters and flails for a second before he drops. He’s holding my shotgun, which falls from his hands. I dive for the shotgun, six feet away on the floor.

Gunfire erupts all around me, both single shots and the brisk rrrrpp of machine pistols, but none of it seems to be aimed at me. When I pick up my shotgun and turn, Soul Patch is smiling as he points his machine pistol at me. He pulls the trigger. Nothing. The stunned look on his face is priceless. That’s one problem with MAC-11s—they fire twelve hundred rounds a minute, so Soul Patch burned through an entire magazine in less than two seconds.

I raise my shotgun. “Puta,” I say, and I pull the trigger. The shotgun roars and Soul Patch flies back a yard or so as if he was kicked in the chest by a horse.

I crouch, shotgun at the ready, and take stock. Bala is down, as are a couple of his men and Cargill’s mechanic buddy Jerry. I don’t see Cargill. There’s shouting at the back door, then more gunfire. Someone else is entertaining what’s left of Bala’s men. I step over to Soul Patch, who’s lying in a bloody, broken heap, and retrieve my CZ.

Two men step out from behind a shipping container, one a slim dude holding an Uzi, the other an enormous man carrying a sawed-off shotgun. The one with the Uzi raises it, but the second man pushes the barrel down. “Not her, fool,” he says.

“Hey, Billy,” I say.

Billy nods. “Doctor Woman,” he says.

There’s a high-pitched whistle from the back. “Time to go,” Billy says. He spits on Bala’s corpse, then he and his Uzi-toting friend run toward the back. I follow them, because I have no desire to stay in a warehouse full of dead men.

We race through a few aisles and then out the back door onto the loading dock, where another of Bala’s men is face down on the concrete in a pool of blood. Standing next to the body, his Hawks cap perched on his head, shirt crisp and white as a linen tablecloth, holding a silver-plated .45, is Peaches.

“Took you long enough,” I say.