Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel by David Rollins

to their chests?
    I zipped.
    The assumption that sent the DPS off to Abilene on I-20 was the one that the perps were driving their cargo to Dallas. No doubt, DPS had also covered I-10. I kept moving between the trailers. And then it hit me. Maybe there was another reason. Maybe possible witnesses were killed not just to keep them from informing authorities about the transfer of drugs to vehicles that could be identified, but that the transport vehicle or vehicles had never left the airport at all . And what triggered this sudden revelation? The fact that I had just come around the end of a trailer to find myself face to face with two young guys dressed in oversized gangsta chic, bandanas on their heads and jeans belted tight halfway down the backs of their legs. They were twenty years old, maybe less, and were the image of Mexican gangbangers. And the other dead giveaway to this epiphany of mine? Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns hung off their shoulders.
    The three of us looked at each other for what seemed like a full minute, but was probably closer to a second or two. They knew who they were. And they knew I knew who they were. They reached for their MP-5s and I went for the Sig. My fingers found its handgrip and I pulled the weapon clear as my legs got themselves pumping. I moved to the left, putting one shooter in the way of the other while allowing me to fire with my right arm extended.
    One of the men panicked and began firing his weapon in my general direction, before it was properly aimed, half a dozen rounds drilling into the dirt maybe ten feet behind and beside me. The other man, the one who was obscured, was trying to untangle his weapon, which seemed to have been caught up somehow in the deep open scallops of his tank top. I got off two shots as I ran. One of these rounds smacked the guy wrestling with his weapon in the cheek. I knew that from the way a hand went to his face, and from the way he fell to his knees and discharged his weapon straight into his buddy. I couldn’t see the specific damage but I knew it was fatal by the way the second guy fell.
    And the need for me to run ended, just like that. I went into a crouch. My heart was now competing with my breathing to give the tinnitus a run for its money. The survivor was on his knees beside his dead pal. Keeping low and my Sig aimed, I moved in and kicked their weapons clear. I pushed the man holding his face headfirst down into the dirt, planted my knee firmly in his back, and pulled one of his hands behind him and reached for my cuffs. A loud noise distracted me. Looking up, I scanned the area. It was a trailer twenty yards away. One door had banged open. The second door was following, swinging wide. Two dark shadows jumped down from the trailer. I heard them whispering hoarsely in Spanish to each other. I holstered the Sig. The guy beneath my knee – I snapped Smith & Wessons on his wrists.
    One of the shadows had a flashlight, which also meant they probably had lights on inside their trailer. That suggested there was a good chance their night vision was shot. And if that was the case, it meant I would have an advantage for a small period of time. The guy face down in the dirt started groaning, the pain making itself known. Time to move. I crawled over to the MP-5s in the dirt, took one, dropped the magazine out of the other and shoved it in a pocket. I then ran at a low crouch toward a group of three trailers parked on the far side of the area.
    “Aemellio! Crisanto! Aemellio … !”
    It was the shadows calling. The gunshots had made them nervous and they ran back and forth, sweeping the area with their flashlight, searching for their pals, both of whom were immobilized, one permanently. The deputies on the front gate would have heard the gunshots along with anyone else in the vicinity. And pretty quickly this truck stop would be crawling with law enforcement.
    The flashlight beam eventually found what they were looking for. The shadows raced up