Chapter 19 - The Fall of the Cartel
The rail yard outside the roundhouse was a chaotic inferno of flashing strobe lights, swirling smoke, and the sharp, cracking staccato of gunfire.
Gabriel Morales moved through the wreckage of the cartel convoy like an avenging god of war. Every time his pistol barked, a southern cartel mercenary dropped into the mud. Beside him, Marcus fought with cold, military discipline, using the rusted iron wheels of the abandoned freight cars as tactical cover to systematically disarm and neutralize the surviving gunmen.
From the shadows of the surrounding boxcars, Chino and his teenage rail yard scavengers joined the fight, hurling flaming Molotov cocktails onto the roofs of the remaining cartel trucks, igniting the diesel tanks and blocking any chance of retreat.
I stayed low, running behind a line of rusted oil drums toward the center of the yard where Gabriel had just pinned a heavy, black-coated figure against the side of an armored transport.
It was Hector Rojas.
The leader of the southern cartel looked unrecognizable from the arrogant crime lord who had terrorized the waterfront for years. His expensive coat was torn and soaked with diesel fuel, his left arm hung uselessly at his side from a shoulder wound, and his face was smeared with mud and blood.
Gabriel stood three feet away from him, his tactical pistol aimed dead at the center of Rojas’s forehead.
"It’s over, Hector," Gabriel said, his voice ringing with absolute, glacial finality over the crackle of burning trucks. "Your cartel is destroyed. Your lieutenants are dead or fleeing, and the federal helicopters are already entering the airspace."
In the night sky above us, the rhythmic, thumping roar of heavy military rotor blades echoed across the harbor as three dark, searchlight-equipped federal transport helicopters banked over the limestone cliffs and descended toward the rail yards.
Rojas looked up at the approaching military lights, then turned his bloodshot, desperate eyes toward me as I stepped out from behind the oil drums holding the Pelican case.
"You..." Rojas hissed, coughing up blood as he glared at me. "You little gutter rat... you ruined everything. I offered your grandmother a million dollars for that ledger! I offered her an estate in the islands! And she chose to die in the freezing harbor for you!"
"She didn't die for me," I said, walking directly up to Gabriel’s side and looking down at the broken cartel boss without a single trace of fear or pity. "She died because she knew that as long as men like you breathed the air of this city, no child in these streets would ever be safe. She died to keep her soul clean."
Rojas let out a bitter, choking laugh, reaching slowly toward the inside of his ruined coat with his uninjured right hand. "Then let’s see if your soul stops this—"
Before Rojas could clear his concealed weapon, Gabriel Morales didn't pull the trigger of his pistol.
He stepped forward, drove the heavy steel butt of his handgun directly into Rojas’s jaw with shattering force, and knocked the cartel lord unconscious into the freezing mud of the rail yard.
May you like
"We don't kill him, Julian," Gabriel said softly, looking down at the unconscious cartel boss as the powerful searchlights of the federal military helicopters bathed the rail yard in blinding, strobing white light. "We let the federal judges chain him to a concrete floor in the capital prison for the rest of his natural life. Let him rot in a cage while we rebuild his city."
As the federal military police swarmed out of the landed helicopters with ballistic shields and assault rifles, securing the burning rail yard and placing shackles on the surviving mercenaries, Gabriel Morales reached down, took my small, mud-stained hand in his massive, calloused palm, and held it high in the blinding searchlights for the entire world to see.
