Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel by David Rollins Page A

to their buddies, shouting and swearing in Spanish and English. Meanwhile, I came around the other side of the lot behind them and headed for the trailer they’d been occupying, the doors of which were wide open. I reached the trailer without being spotted, the shadows preoccupied. Inside, I could dimly make out chairs, bedrolls, food packaging and water containers. There were also boxes stacked to the roof. I didn’t have to wonder too hard about what might be in them.
    The Sig was suddenly ripped from the holster in the small of my back. Shit, so much for the preoccupation.
    “Hey, you gringo fuck. You gonna die for this. Shoot you with your own stupid gun.”
    The guy’s breath smelled of Cheerios, beer and cigarettes.
    “Drop it,” he said, referring to the MP-5. I set it on the ground with one hand, the other raised a little above my head. In the space between the two trailers, I saw a couple of patrol cars come power sliding from out behind the airport buildings two hundred yards down range, their rooftop LED lights firing rapid staccato flashes of red and blue into the night. The lead vehicle hit its high beams, washing the truck stop with a blaze of blue-white light. Whoever was driving knew where to come. The cavalry was on its way. All I had to do was survive another dozen seconds or so, which maybe wasn’t gonna to be so easy.
    “ ¡Chingao! ” snapped the guy who wasn’t pushing the Sig into my kidneys. “¡Dispara al cerdo!”
    I had enough Spanish to translate his suggestion that the pig – me – needed to be shot. Any subtext, I missed it.
    But then, perhaps glimpsing the reality of their predicament, his pal hissed in English: “No! We go’ need his pig ass!”
    The guy with the gun was considering a hostage situation, using my life as a bargaining chip, negotiate for their freedom. I could almost hear the gears turning. How else were they going to get away? But after the violence done here at Horizon, I didn’t like their chances – or mine – of coming out of that negotiation alive. Pretty soon there’d be a lot of angry lead flying around and not all of it would be carefully aimed. So I pushed back against the Sig, which only made the guy reciprocate with a push of his own, digging it hard into my flesh.
    “They’re gonna kill you after what you did here,” I said.
    “We’re American just like you, chocha . We have rights,” snarled the jerk, the one who smelled like he poured Budweiser over his breakfast cereal.
    “You’re gonna die here, fool,” I whispered. “And maybe sooner than you think.”
    “Kill him,” hissed the asshole who wasn’t holding my Sig.
    “Yeah, you know what? Fuck you, cerdo! ” sneered the guy who was.
    He forced the weapon into my back harder, just the way I wanted it. And then the trigger was pulled. I heard the hammer smack the stops as the shockwave of metal hitting metal snapped through the barrel, leaped the thin polo-shirt barrier and bit into my skin. But there was no blast, no bullet ripping through my kidneys.
    There was nothing at all. And I knew why.
    The guy holding the Sig was momentarily confused, which maybe gave me a couple of seconds before he pulled the trigger again. I turned and grabbed the gun with my right hand. As I spun, lifting the weapon and twisting it hard in a clockwise direction, his index finger became trapped inside the trigger guard. Bones snapped like fresh carrots as I kept the turn going. The man had to bend forward to take the pressure off his rotating hand and arm. But his pal had no such inconvenience. He raised the MP-5, brought its ugly short barrel up. So I whipped the Sig around, squeezed the shattered finger against the trigger and this time the weapon fired, as I knew it would, the round hitting the man just below the sternum. It seemed to happen in slo-mo. As he died his muscles contracted, squeezing the trigger of the MP-5 in his hand. The submachine gun discharged, and a short subsonic burst of lead