Chapter 18 - The Showdown at the Roundhouse
We ascended to the surface through the grease-stained inspection pits of the abandoned Central Locomotive Roundhouse—a massive, circular brick amphitheater with a soaring iron-trussed roof and a sixty-foot rotating steel train turntable in the center of the dirt floor.
The rain had stopped, leaving the night air cold, crisp, and smelling of ozone and diesel exhaust.
Through the shattered glass windows of the roundhouse doors, the blinding white beams of six tactical spotlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the rusted locomotives and iron support pillars.
"They're setting breaching charges on the main rolling doors," Marcus whispered, crouching behind the massive steel wheel of a 1950s steam locomotive, his pistol raised. "We have maybe thirty seconds before they blow the entrance."
"We don't wait for them to blow it," Gabriel said coldly, crouching beside me behind the locomotive's iron cowcatcher. He looked down at me, handing me a heavy, rubber-encased police flashlight. "Julian. When I give the signal, you throw that flashlight as hard as you can across the turntable into the inspection pit on the far side. Draw their spotlights away from the door."
"Got it," I whispered, gripping the heavy flashlight with sweaty palms.
Outside, a loudspeaker crackled to life.
“Gabriel Morales!” the voice of Hector Rojas boomed across the rail yards, distorted and dripping with desperate, venomous rage. “I know you’re in there with the little Navarro bastard! You think your little radio broadcast saved you? The federal troops are thirty minutes away! I will burn this entire roundhouse to ash, take the ledger from your charred corpses, and be in international waters before the first military helicopter touches down! Come out now!”
Gabriel looked at me and nodded his head sharply. Now.
I clicked the flashlight on, reared back, and hurled the heavy rubber cylinder high into the air across the dark roundhouse. It soared over the central steel turntable and crashed loudly into the empty, tin-lined inspection pit forty yards away, its beam bouncing erratically across the brick walls.
Instantly, the six tactical spotlights outside swiveled away from the main entrance, concentrating their blinding beams onto the far side of the roundhouse where the noise and light had erupted.
"Now, Marcus!" Gabriel roared.
Gabriel and Marcus surged out from behind the steam locomotive like twin predators. They didn't aim for the mercenaries outside; they aimed directly at the heavy cast-iron counterweight chains supporting the massive, twenty-ton overhead rolling doors of the roundhouse.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Their heavy tactical pistols barked in unison. The high-velocity rounds shattered the rusted iron locking pins and support chains holding the massive doors suspended above the entrance.
With a deafening, earth-shattering roar of tearing metal and gravity, the twenty-ton iron rolling doors collapsed downward, crashing directly onto the hood and cab of Hector Rojas’s lead armored assault truck parked in the doorway.
The explosion of compressed steel, shattering windshield glass, and crushing metal instantly neutralized half of Rojas’s breaching team, throwing the remaining mercenaries into blind, screaming chaos in the mud outside.
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"Move! Take the flanks!" Gabriel commanded, vaulting over the cowcatcher and charging out into the smoke and rain of the rail yard, firing controlled, lethal double-taps into the disoriented cartel mercenaries attempting to scramble out of the wreckage.
I didn't stay behind the locomotive. I ran after Gabriel, my bare feet splashing through the cold puddles of the rail yard, clutching the Pelican case tightly against my ribs as the final battle for Ciudad San Marcos erupted around us.
