The sicarios spread around the table, covering Caine from multiple angles. One stood across the table from him. The other two flanked him from several feet away. 

“Hola, amigo,” the man standing in front of him said.

Caine made eye contact and nodded. He maintained a loose grip around the neck of his beer bottle. 

“Gentlemen,” he replied, speaking Spanish. “Is there something I can help you with?” 

“Raise your hands high and stand up. Slowly. We need to search you. You’re an American, right?” 

“I am. Is that a problem?”

“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll find out soon.” 

“Are you cops?” Caine asked. 

“Do we look like cops? Stand up.” 

The two sicarios flanking Caine pushed their suit jackets back to reveal pistols on their hips, but neither man drew. The right-side man still held the radio scanner in his right hand despite that being his gun hand based on the placement of his weapon. 

Caine slumped his shoulders and made himself appear subdued and nonthreatening. He nodded. “Of course. I don’t know what the problem is, but I trust we can resolve this without any trouble. Is this about money?”

Caine stood. 

Before he was fully upright, his left hand lashed out, whipping the beer bottle against the face of the left-side sicario. The bottle struck the man right between his eyes, hard enough to break the glass. The sicario grunted as his head snapped back. His hands shot up to cover his bleeding face, moving away from his gun. That made him Caine’s lowest priority for the next few seconds.

Caine didn’t stop moving. He drew his Glock, driving the pistol up and forward in lightning-fast motion. Without aiming, Caine snapped off two shots across the table. Blood exploded from the face of the sicario standing across from him. 

Caine pivoted right as the sicario there took several steps back. The man dropped the radio scanner and drew his own weapon. He was fast—but not fast enough. Caine already had his Glock on line.

Caine’s finger reflexively milked the trigger. Two rounds struck the sicario’s forehead from ten feet away. Before the body hit the floor, Caine had already turned and pointed the Glock across his body. He double-tapped the left-side sicario as the man recovered from the bottle to the face. 

Conscious of the guard posted at the entrance to the lounge, Caine turtled down and stepped left.

A bullet cracked past Caine’s head, close enough that he felt the overpressure disturb the air. He threw himself onto the floor a fraction of a second before more bullets screamed overhead. He thrust the Glock out and fired across the lounge, hitting the sicario center mass. The man stumbled, lost a step, and went down to a knee. He fired at Caine again. Bullets struck the floor less than a meter behind Caine. He tracked the sicario with the Glock’s green dot. Caine worked the trigger and controlled the recoil, firing until the man fell over onto his back.

Rising to his feet and sighting over the Glock, Caine performed a three-sixty sweep across the lounge. 

“All call signs, Sidewinder Main,” Richter’s voice suddenly announced. “Hossein is in the wind. They hustled him aboard a Land Rover and took off with two identical vehicles. Overwatch is tracking them onto the highway now. We got him.” 

“Roger.” Looking across the lounge, Caine’s eyes settled on the stairs at the far end of the patio. “I’m going after Mendoza. Condor Two, on me.” 

“Roger, Condor One,” Tyler’s voice replied. 

Swapping out mags on his Glock, Caine sprinted across the lounge toward the patio...

___________

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Andrew Warren