Two more follow on its heels. I smirk with satisfaction, knowing that the steel traps have done their work.
Rapid-fire Spanish wails out into the night. I don’t have to speak the language to know that the trapped bastards aren’t exactly offering their thanks to me.
I circle back around, making sure to keep a good distance between me and the remaining men.
Three of them are caught. One poor son of a bitch has already fainted. Blood pools around his nearly severed leg. He’ll be dead in minutes.
The other two have been caught at safer angles. There’s still blood, but not nearly so much.
They’re all still in shock. So in shock in fact, that no one really even notices me until my bullet buries itself in one of their skulls.
Three down. Six to go.
Of course, that gets their attention. The remaining able-bodied men open fire immediately.
I pivot to the side and unload a clip on these motherfuckers.
Dead.
Dead.
Five down. Four to go.
My eyes zero in on the last remaining youth, the only member of this misguided little gang whose leg is not stuck in one of my steel traps.
His arm is raised, his gun pointed at me, but I know already that he no longer has the confidence or the ability to shoot me.
Even if he does, I’m confident he’ll miss.
“Drop your gun,” I command.
“You’ll kill me if I do,” he says, his voice shaky.
Now that I’m looking at him, I realize his features strike me as familiar.
“You Razor’s kid?” I ask.
The boy flinches. Guillermo had mentioned he was nineteen, but he looks even younger to me. Nowhere near a man.
Not that that changes anything. He came for me. This is the price he’ll pay for that transgression.
“You killed him,” he says, but the accusation sounds weak.
“He messed with the wrong fucking don,” I reply unfeelingly. “I assume you found his body.”
“What was left of it,” the kid spat at me. “And there wasn’t much after the ravine spit him out.”
“At least you got to bury him in peace. That was a luxury I wasn’t afforded, and my father was a fuck ton more important than yours.”
“I’m going to kill you,” the boy says. His voice is shivering so pitifully that I have to resist the urge to laugh.
I glance over at his three men in my steel traps. Their unseeing eyes look up at the star-lit heavens.
“Is that so?” I ask. “Because you came at me with nine men and yet, here we are, mano e mano.”
“Fuck you.”
“Drop the gun,” I say calmly. “Now.”