Free Saint Death - John Milton #3 by Mark Dawson

each of them with something metallic in their hands. Plato had seen enough firearms in his time to pick them all out: two of them had machine pistols, Uzis or Mac-10s, another had a semi-automatic Desert Eagle, and the last one, keeping watch at the door, had an AK-47. Plato had unfastened the clip now, his hand settling around the butt of the Glock, the handgun cold and final in the palm of his hot hand. He looked around, knowing that there were fractions of seconds before the shooting started, looking for Alameda or Sanchez or anyone else who might be able to back him up but Sanchez was still in the john and Alameda had his back to him, facing the bar. The other diners, those that had seen the newcomers and recognised what was about to go down, they were looking away, terrified, frozen to their chairs and praying that it wasn’t them.
    Twenty feet away to Plato’s left, a fifth man rose from his seat. He recognised him: his name was Machichi. He was a mouthy braggart, early twenties, with oily brown shoulder-length hair and a high-cheekboned Apache face. Two yellow, snaggled buck teeth protruded from beneath a scraggly moustache and an equally scrubby goatee. Machichi had a small Saturday night special in his hand, and he pointed to the table a couple away to his left. Plato knew what was playing out: Machichi was the tail-man, his job was to ID the targets so the others could do the shooting. They were sicarios : cartel killers, murderers for El Patrón. But their targets didn’t look like narcos. It was just a table of three: two young women and a man. One of the women––pretty, with long dark hair––saw Machichi and his revolver, shouted “no”, and dragged the other woman away from the table, away from the sicarios .
    Plato felt a pang of regret as he pulled the Glock and pushed his chair away. One week to go, less than a week until he could hang it up, and now this? Didn’t God just have the wickedest sense of humour? He thought of Emelia and the girls and little Jesus Jr as he stood and aimed the gun.
    “Drop your weapons!”
    The sicario with the AK fired into the restaurant, hardly even aiming, and Plato felt his guts start to go as slugs whistled past his head. A woman at the next table wasn’t so lucky: her face blew up as the hollow point mashed into her forehead, blood spraying behind her as her neck cracked backwards and she slid from her chair. Plato hid behind the table, the cold finger of the Glock’s barrel pressed up against his cheek; he hadn’t even managed to get a shot off and now he knew he never would. He couldn’t move. Emelia’s words this morning were in his head, he couldn’t get them out, and they had taken the strength from his legs. He knew he was probably being flanked, the man with the rifle opening an angle to put him out of his misery. Plato knew it would be his wife’s words that would be repeating in his head when the bullets found their marks.
    Be careful, Jesus.
    You got a different life from next Monday.
    It was crazy: he thought of the lawn, and how it would never get cut.
    Gunfire.
    The tic-tic-tic of the machine pistols.
    A jagged, ripping volley from the Kalashnikov.
    Screams.
    The man who was with the two women had been hit. He staggered against his toppled chair, leaning over, his hand pressed to his gut, then wobbled across the room until he was at Plato’s table. Blood on his shirt, pumping between his fingers. He reached for the table, his face white and full of fear, and then his hand slipped away from the edge and he was on his knees, and then on his face, his body twitching. Plato could have reached out to touch him.
    He was facing at an angle away from the kitchen but he glimpsed something move in the corner of his eye, cranked his head around in that direction and saw a cook, covered in sweat and shirtless save for a dirty apron, vaulting quickly over the sill of the wide window that opened onto the restaurant. The man moved with nimble agility,