Chapter 3

In some ways, this war on the Diablos was an easy one to fight in that there were so many victims that we did not expect to have a problem gaining the information we needed. The first day was not as productive as we had hoped, but we got a break that evening. Four of the Diablos in their ridiculous outfits confronted us on a busy street. Jenny and I later realized that they wanted a big audience when they made us back down in order to enhance their image as being the ones in charge.

The spokesman challenged us with, "You can't scare us. The Diablos own this part of Crawford, and we will soon own it all. Go crawl back into your hole before we eat you alive."

I couldn't help but laugh. The spokesman had such a huge mustache that he had trouble talking without it getting into his mouth. I quickly decided to take a hard-nosed attitude and asked, "Tell me, Senor Big Bush, can you eat anything but soup with such a silly mustache?"

Okay, that cut away the bluster and made the guy mad enough to chew nails and spit out tacks right off the bat. That's what I had in mind with my sarcastic remark.

"You stupid SOB, you just blew any chance you had of walking away from here in one piece!" He pointed his pistol at my gut and pulled the trigger. There must have been 30 spectators, but they all scattered as soon as the gunshot rang out. The bullet just bounced off my skin and fell to the ground. I did feel the impact, but it was not painful, though it did cause me to grunt slightly.

The first thing I did was to break his wrist that had the gun, but I didn't pause as the gun fell from his fingers. My next blow was to his other arm to break the elbow. From then on, I pulled my punches to his torso so that I would not kill him right away, but I would smash his ribs and cause them to penetrate his internal organs, especially his lungs. However, I tried not to hit him in such a way that his heart was damaged. I wanted him to live a few minutes in significant pain before he died.

I moved so fast that his companions were stunned at the sight and sounds of my blows hitting their gang mate. I think that it was at least 10 seconds before they overcame their stupor and tried to shoot Jenny and me. At this point, our strategy changed and we went for quick killing blows before a stray bullet found an innocent person. I hit the nearest man in the neck just under his right ear and broke his neck with that one blow.

Meanwhile, Jenny went after the other two with sharp and powerful strikes to their chests. She was not aiming for the solar plexus, but higher, intending to drive the breastbone and portions of broken ribs into the heart. Those two were put out of action immediately as they were dead before they hit the ground.

By this time, the street was deserted. It happened to us again: we had nobody left alive to question. Well, all we could do now was to continue our patrol and see what happened. Frankly, we would not have been surprised to be sniped at, but we wondered if the Diablos had anybody who was that good a shot. Failing that, the only alternatives that we could see were for the Diablos to hide from us or for them to attack us with a large body of gang members. Actually, we were expecting that the last alternative would be the one they chose to use. Hopefully, we could save at least one attacker to question.

We wandered around for over an hour before anything else happened. It must have taken that long for the Diablos to get organized and pumped up enough to have a go at us. It was close to 2:00 AM and we were almost ready to give up for the night when we were met by nine of the Diablos at a large intersection. Our patience was worn thin by this point, so we were glad to see something interesting finally develop.

There was no formal challenge this time. The nine Diablos ran at us with drawn guns. At least, there were no civilians on the street because the fools were shooting at us as they ran. Anybody who had ever paid attention had to know that it was impossible to control a handgun while running. Nevertheless, the fools must have expected some good from the shooting. Maybe they were trying to herd us into a more formidable ambush, but that wasn't working.

We did move a little farther apart so that we had more operating room, but, other than that, we just waited to see what the gang would do. Hell, they had guns, so I couldn't help wondering why they didn't stay back and try to shoot us from a safe distance. No, they kept coming until they were only about 15 feet away from us before they halted their rush. At least, they were closer and standing still, so some of their bullets began to hit us.

Jenny made the logical decision at that point and made a hand-signal at me suggesting that we use our guns. I nodded, and we drew our Glocks. With our accuracy at that distance, it was a case that a man fell with every one of our shots. Nine men meant nine shots from our .45 Glocks. We switched to fresh magazines as soon as the last man fell, and it was a good thing because reinforcements had finally arrived.

This group must have been that large ambush force that I had mentally speculated about. They didn't start shooting until they got quite close, some as close as 10 feet. This time, there was no hesitation on our part. We returned fire and were just as accurate this time as before. Both of us had to swap magazines before the fight was over, and we counted 29 bodies on the ground. Apparently, we had both shot at the same person on occasion, and that was verified by two bullet holes being in some of the bodies.

This time, there were a couple of live ones among the dead, and we questioned them about whether this was all of the Diablos and where their headquarters was located. They all knew that they were going to die, but they wanted to do it with their testicles intact. The threat of crushed balls was enough to get our questions answered.

This was the entire gang except for two left back at headquarters to keep an eye on things. The headquarters was located in a large building last used as a warehouse, so we might have some trouble sneaking up on the remaining gang members. We were not worried about being shot because all that the gang had was various brands of 9 mm pistols. We were impervious to them with normal ammunition, so we expected to be able to walk in unscathed except for bullet holes in our clothes. We called 911 before we left the site of the slaughter.

It was 3:20 AM by the time we reached the Diablos' headquarters building. Damned if the main door was not unlocked so we just walked in. There were what amounted to three areas of the building separated by partitions. We decided to hit the old warehouse office first since we could see a dim light coming from there.

As we walked up, we could see through the windows that there were two men lounging in the office, and they appeared to be asleep. We had our Glocks drawn as a precaution as I opened the door to the old office. Oh, my God! I was nearly knocked down by the marijuana fumes that were strong enough to attack me as they roiled out of the door. No wonder the two "watchmen" were asleep, they were stoned out of their minds by too much of a good thing.

We walked in and fastened the men to their seats just in case they woke up enough to make trouble for us. We didn't expect anything, but caution was called for. There was no need for us to hurry, so we made a thorough search of the office. There were several filing cabinets in the room, but most of them held nothing but rotting fruit.

However, we did find three cloth sacks in the back of one drawer, and they turned out to contain money. There was also a ledger with the sacks. The ledger was written in Spanish, and there was an internet address and some numbers recorded in the same place. We didn't know at the moment what was written in the ledger, but we picked up the sacks of money and dropped the ledger into one of the sacks. We would check it out later.

During all of this activity, neither of the watchmen stirred. They had done nothing to either of us, so we could not bring ourselves to kill them. We just left them where they were with the expectation that they would eventually be found. We went home.