He had not hit any of the three men tonight hard enough to kill them. Puller knew how much force was required to crack skulls. He had not minded applying that force to men who raped women in front of their little brothers. But these men tonight were just the revenge crew. They might actually be as bad as or worse than the ones Puller had already beaten up. But he would cut them a little slack. They would live to spread the message that to leave him alone was the smart money.

This man had held the metal bar. Puller retrieved it and kept going.

Three down and three to go. The odds were much better. In fact, they had returned to the same ones he had dealt with in the stairwell. And the three men he had disabled were the members of the revenge crew, which meant the men up ahead were the rapist crew. The same ones who had no doubt come back and beaten up Isabel and little Mateo.

Puller decided to up the level of force he was about to bring.

He moved quickly down the hall. The door to his room was slightly ajar. He shook his head at the tactics employed by the opposition. A partially open door was like waving a red flag and screaming, “We’re in here waiting for you.”

So you wouldn’t go in. You would move to the room next door and try to surprise them through the connecting portal. But of course the surprise would be all yours as they blew you away.

He envisioned them grouped around the connecting door, but he doubted their attention would be all that focused. For Puller to get that far their perimeter would have to have been defeated almost soundlessly. They would imagine this could never happen. They had chosen to be the rear guard tonight because they had hoped that Puller would never make it this far. They did not want another encounter with him. What sane person would, after the beating they had endured?

For all he knew they would be playing cards, or banging back beers to get up their courage, or smoking cigarettes, or peering out the lone window. Anything but being professional.

He hit the door to his room so hard that it broke off the hinges. There were two shapes directly in front of him. As he had thought, they were clustered around the connecting door. The metal bar took out both with one swing. White dropped onto the bed. This time he might very well be dead. Black was flung through the window, shattering the glass, and dangled there, half in and half out.

Now Latino was the only one left.

He was in the far corner of the room, looking ready to shit his pants. He had his gun out. He was at most six feet from Puller. In the dark and with his adrenaline spiking and turning fine motor skills to zero, it might as well have been six miles.

He fired once and missed by five feet.

He did not get a chance to fire a second time.

The first blow knocked the gun from his hand.

The second blow knocked him off his feet.

The third blow left no doubt that the fight was done.

As Puller rose, his breath already starting to relax, he sensed it.

Light.

Body heat.

Sweat.

Eyes on him.

From the connecting doorway.

He looked.

Two small men there. Both Latinos. Armed. Both pointing compact nines right at his head. Two guns could not miss at this distance.

The rear guard he had not accounted for.

Eight men had come tonight.

Not six.

He had screwed up in an unforgivable way.

The penalty for that was crystal clear.

He was dead.

CHAPTER

32

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME Puller had seen men fly without benefit of an aircraft.

Or so it seemed.

Their feet left the floor like they were attached to piano wire and someone had just hit a switch, lifting them skyward.

The next moment their heads collided. The sound was like a pair of cantaloupes smacking against one another. Puller could see the sensation of the violent collision spread to their eyes and mouths. The eyes winced, rolled in their heads, and then closed. The mouths opened wide, cries of pain came out of them, and then they closed, like the eyes. But unlike the eyes they closed only for a moment. Then they sagged open, even as their bodies became dead weight and they dropped to the floor. They hit it hard, guns skidding away. Blood pooled from their open mouths where teeth had cut deeply into tongues.

Standing behind the two small men was the giant, the man Puller had seen twice before. It seemed that the rear guard had done the unforgivable. They had used the giant’s room as their staging area without his permission. That was the only reason Puller could fathom for the man doing what he had done.

He straightened and stared at the giant. Puller’s M11 twitched in his hand. The giant was unarmed but still looked uncomfortably lethal and completely unafraid as he stood there, staring back at Puller.

Puller said, “Thanks.”

The giant said nothing. He glanced once at Puller’s sidearm, as though gauging whether this was a threat that needed to be dealt with now. Then he put one enormous boot on the torso of the first man and pushed. The man’s body slid into the room Puller was in. A moment later another push sent the other man sliding into the room.

The giant looked at Puller.

Puller looked at the giant.

“I’ll try to keep things more quiet,” said Puller.

Puller thought he saw a hint of a smile before the giant closed the door to his room. A few moments later Puller could hear the screech of sagging bedsprings. The giant was apparently going to sleep after this minor interruption.

Puller holstered his weapon but pulled it again in an instant, found his target, and prepared to fire.

“It’s me! It’s me!”

Cheryl Landry held her gun up in a surrender position.

Puller slowly lowered his M11 and lifted up his goggles.

“Sorry.”

She gazed around at the mess of humanity that lay sprawled around his room.

“Shit, Puller. What the hell did you do? There are three more laid out in the hall.”

“I just take them on as they come.” He holstered his gun.

“You were smart to call me. Sorry I didn’t get here in time.”

“I could’ve waited, but that was my call. Nothing you could have done.”

“Why didn’t you wait,” she said, pouncing on this admission, “until I got here?”

“My fight. No need for you to get involved except in the cleanup.”

“Do I translate that as meaning you didn’t think I could hold my own?”

“You’re a cop, Landry. If we had fought these clowns together you’d be doing paperwork the rest of your life to explain the whys and hows. And then your career would still be in the toilet. But for that I would have no problem with you backing me up. And believe me, I don’t make such a statement lightly.”

She seemed both put off and mollified by this statement. She slid her weapon into her belt holster. She was not in uniform. She had on jeans, black-soled tennis shoes, and a gray hoodie with a sliver of black T-shirt revealed underneath.

He watched as she counted off in her head.

Five here, three in the hall, he interpreted.

She looked up at him incredulously.

“You took out eight guys all by yourself?” She noted the guns, bats, and metal bar. “And they were armed?”

Puller’s gaze shifted for one millisecond to the sounds of snoring coming from the next room. The giant had dropped off fast. But something told him the man could awaken and kill any attacker within a pair of seconds. He decided it would be much too complicated to bring him into the discussion with Landry.

He said, “They were eight stupid guys. Armed has nothing to do with it, if you don’t give yourself a chance to use your weapons.”

“You said it was three guys who were attacking the girl earlier?”