The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

closed in on the two guards in back. Leopold, Esty, Kiera, and Atlas moved toward the cement wall while keeping an eye out for tripwires, booby traps, and any kind of low-brow security measures these Muppets put in place.

They reached the concrete wall then turned and waited for Yergha. When he fired a couple of three-round bursts, two guys went down hard. Yergha gave them the thumbs up, indicating their clearance to move.

Atlas boosted Kiera onto the thick concrete wall while Leopold gave Esty a lift. Both women dropped down the other side without any sign of awareness from whatever guards remained.

Leopold and Atlas jumped up on the wall, struggled a bit pulling themselves over, then dropped down inside the compound. Leopold landed funny, stepping like he’d rolled his ankle.

“Walk it out, Sunshine,” Atlas said.

“Is this how you ran ops in SWAT?” Leopold grumbled.

“Exactly how,” Atlas said. “Head around back, don’t leave Esty exposed.”

Leopold took off about the time two of the four remaining guards rounded the corner. Before Atlas could respond, Kiera and Esty gutted them with knives. Atlas looked to the left and saw two more men turning the other corner of the house. They ran right into Leopold.

The second they made contact, Atlas decided to abandon the plan to cover his boss, but Yergha was already managing the situation. The first guy’s head snapped sideways with a spray of red, but Leopold made it impossible for Yergha to shoot the other. Their boss had already rushed in and drilled him in the snotbox with a stiff jab. The minute the guard’s head rocked back, Leopold had his Glock out.

“No, no, no!” Atlas growled low enough for Leopold to pause. The last thing they needed was for Leopold to discharge his weapon and spoil their tactical advantage.

Yergha fired twice, hitting the man in the shoulder and blasting out the side of his cheek. He was still alive when he hit the ground. One more shot from Yergha finished the job.

Atlas turned back to Kiera and saw she was looking back at him with her hands up as if to say, “What the hell are you doing?”

He caught up with her, ready to go in hot. They reached the front door as Esty turned the corner of the house, heading into the backyard. Atlas tried the door and found it open. This was to be expected considering the tight patrol of armed guards.

He and Kiera tiptoed inside the foyer but realized they no longer had the tactical advantage because a pack of men was hustling down a hallway toward them.

“Video surveillance,” Atlas guessed out loud.

The second he saw bodies rushing into the foyer, Atlas opened fire. The men did the same, causing Atlas and Kiera to scramble for cover. One of the guys Atlas shot went down, but a round caught Atlas high in the vest, the same one that Yergha had worn in his last gunfight. He spun sideways, twisted his ankle, and considered it instant karma for the jab he took at Leopold just minutes ago.

In that second, through a large wall of windows, Atlas saw one of the guards tackle Esty, the two of them going into the pool.

Kiera put a bullet into one of the faces of the approaching guards, but she let the other man through, leaving him for Atlas.

Atlas dropped down and fired twice, but the bullet that hit his vest had rattled him harder than he thought. Somehow, he missed both shots. The guy shooting at him wasn’t a marksman by any regard—certainly not when he was running—but by the time they both figured that out, he was already on the attack.

Atlas dodged a wild punch and sunk a knee into the man’s gut. He blocked out the man’s inside arm enabling him to wrap the man’s neck and pull him into a headlock. Atlas then dropped down hard, driving the man’s head straight into the tile floor. The tile split with a loud crack where the crown of his head hit, making his recovery slow and sloppy. Atlas spun off of him and put a bullet in his head.

He started to get up and that’s when he saw this giant of a man facing Kiera from across the wide-open space. Two more guys followed this beast in the foyer, but Atlas put two in each of them. They weren’t kill shots. The next three shots did the job, however.

Atlas performed a quick reload then turned the gun on the big man. Kiera already had him dead to rights and he knew it. Slowly, the man put his gun down and held up his hands. Then he pointed to Kiera and changed his hands to boxer’s fists that he lowered in front of his chest. Was he actually challenging her to a fistfight?

“Shoot that big bitch,” Atlas barked.

Kiera shook her head.

The man must be six-foot-eight with two-hundred-and-eighty pounds of lean muscle. Kiera was less than half that but she put her guns down and walked toward him anyway

“What the hell, Kiera?” he said. He raised his weapon to shoot the man but then he caught a stern look from Kiera.

This was what she’s been training for, he told himself.

The second the two of them got close enough for contact, Kiera moved in on him in ways he’d never seen a person move before. She was fast, her strikes precise, her body a finely-tuned weapon. She worked the outside of his legs with kicks, the insides of his knees with more kicks, and then his ribs and gut with clean, ferocious strikes. Even though she landed the shots, and even though they were on point, this brute wasn’t going down easily.

He was actually smiling.

He lashed out at her a few times, quickly for someone