few blocks away. Kaplan was losing blood too fast for them to stick together. And Mark wasn’t willing to leave him alone with Sock. So he and Decker set off to raid a pharmacy for meds and a cell phone. According to the locals, this was the only one open for blocks in any direction.
“How’s your Spanish?” Mark asked.
Decker shrugged. “I can get by.”
“All right, you do the talking. Make sure they know we don’t want anyone to get hurt, we’ll just take what we need and be gone.”
“Got it.”
Mark took a deep breath. It was a little after 1000 hours. Despite the fact that it was late January, the sun beat down, baking the scene in a shimmery cast. A river of sweat ran down the center of his back. He was light-headed from hunger, tired and shaky in the aftermath of the crash. He’d never stolen so much as a candy bar in his life, and here he was about to knock over a drugstore. He shook his head.
Mark slid the LMT up from the ground beside him, holding it close by his side as he stood. He lined it up with his leg as he approached the door, Decker at his heels. Of the remaining team members, Decker struck him as the most capable and trustworthy. Hopefully he wouldn’t be proven wrong.
The guard glanced their way as the door opened with a tinkling of bells. Small guy, early twenties with a scraggly moustache. His gaze started to slide away, but then he frowned: something about them had registered. As he shifted back toward them, Mark slammed the butt of the gun hard against his temple. He crumpled off the stool, landing on the floor with a thump.
Decker locked the door behind them. The store was empty. Mark frowned. There had been someone behind the register when they cased it five minutes earlier. Bathroom break, maybe?
A chunk of plaster blew off the wall behind his head. Instinctively he dived, hitting the floor. Decker landed beside him.
“You okay?” Mark asked.
“Holy shit!” Decker said, checking out the hole punched through the wall above where the guard had been sitting. “What was that, a missile launcher?”
“Double barrel loaded with triple-ought buck, I’m guessing,” Mark said.
Another chunk of plaster exploded, a few feet lower than the last. Mark slid the LMT to Decker and signaled for him to move to the far side of the store, near the bandages. From there he’d have a better angle to cover him.
Mark commando-crawled toward the cheap plywood counter, praying it wouldn’t occur to the shooter to fire through it. After a few feet he entered a long aisle of cold and cough supplies. The good thing about a double-barrel was that after two shots it had to be reloaded, and reloading was a pain in the ass, especially if you were an amateur all hopped up on adrenaline. Mark scooped a bottle of cough syrup off the shelf by his head and hurled it toward the door.
Another explosion, the shot wild. The window shattered, glass peppering the floor by the door. Movement across the room—and another shot. A puff of packaging exploded a few feet above him.
Mark jumped to his feet and lunged for the counter. He slid across it and landed in a crouch. Turned and found himself facing a girl in her twenties. Shorts peeked out the bottom of her white coat. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, glasses askew on the bridge of her nose. She fumbled frantically with a shotgun shell, trying to chamber it.
He grabbed the gun by the muzzle and pulled, yanking her off balance. She splayed out on all fours, glasses falling to the floor. One more tug and the shotgun was his. He palmed a few shells, tucking them in his pocket before chambering two.
“Por favor, señor,” she said, scrambling away from him. “No me moleste.”
“Tranquila,” he said, before calling out, “All clear!”
Decker’s head popped up above the counter. “Jesus. Annie Oakley, huh?”
“Yeah.” Mark glanced at her. Both hands covered her head, as if she were attempting to ward them off. “Tell her to relax. We gotta scramble, cops’ll probably be here soon.”
“Sure.” Decker rattled off something in Spanish. Whatever he said didn’t make the girl noticeably calmer. On the other side of the counter, the guard moaned.
“I’ll handle him.” Decker vanished. Mark grabbed a plastic bag from a stack below the register. He kept one eye on the girl as he scanned the locked, refrigerated cabinets. “Antibióticos?” he finally asked.
She didn’t answer. He came closer, kneeling beside her. She avoided his eyes.
“Lady, the faster we get this stuff, the faster we leave,” he said.
“You’ll kill us anyway,” she replied in surprisingly good English. “Fucking junkies.”
“We just want to help our friend,” Mark said. “Morphine, coagulants, antibiotics and we’ll be out of your hair.”
“Your friend was shot?”
He nodded. “We were kidnapped.”
“So go to the police.”
“I don’t trust the police.”
“Got the bandages and the phone,” Decker called. “We ready?”
“Almost.” Mark turned back to the cabinet. Toward the end of the row he spotted a bottle marked Morfina. He used the butt of the shotgun to shatter the case, causing the girl to suck in her breath sharply. Mark carefully stuck his hand in, avoiding the broken glass, and drew out two bottles.
Kaplan could live without anticoagulants, but antibiotics were crucial. If they could get him through the next few hours, Tyr would be able to reach them and he had a shot at surviving. But once infection started, it was tough to beat.
“Antibiotics?” he asked again. The girl refused to look at him. He reached back into the cabinet, swept an armful of bottles out and sent them crashing to the floor. They shattered in quick succession like bottle caps.
“Ay!” she cried. “They’re over there!”
He followed her pointing finger and spotted the antibiotics in the opposite cabinet. Punched a hole in the glass again, then drew out two bottles. “Syringes?”
She motioned toward the drawers below the cabinet.
Mark tried one: locked. “You got a key, or should I shoot the lock?”
The girl fumbled in the pocket of her jacket. She drew out a key ring and tossed it to him.
He caught it, unlocked the drawer and slid it open. Grabbed a box of syringes and tossed them in the bag with the other stuff. Turning to leave, something caught his eye. He bent again, shifting the other boxes aside. The girl stiffened as he drew out a package: white powder wrapped in layers of plastic.
“Dude, we gotta bolt.” Decker reappeared on the other side of the counter. “What’s that?”
“The cops aren’t coming, are they?” Mark asked.
The girl slowly shook her head. “Los Zetas?”
