The diminutive man still looked like he was having difficulty swallowing Peter’s story. “You are cooperating with local authorities?”
“Just lending a helping hand.”
After a moment, the man decided to answer Peter’s question. “We have clean water and snacks for the guests, enough to last us until morning. But the bathrooms are backed up.”
“Okay,” Peter didn’t know what to say, “it looks like you have the situation under control. The plumbing is unfortunate, but it can’t be helped at the moment. We’ll just stay out of your way and help keep order.”
The man nodded uncertainly while nervously eyeing Peter’s defunct rifle. “I’ll have to announce your presence to the guests, so they don’t panic.”
Peter looked at the man’s nametag. “Absolutely, Jorge. Good move. Smart. You go do that.”
The man nodded dutifully and gathered his employees. He then got on the bullhorn and began to relay what had just happened and who their new guests were.
While this was going on, Peter got his men into a huddle. “Alright, I told them we’re here for support. There’s no reason to tell them that fully armed drug cartel members led by a couple of mercenaries are coming their way. We have the night to formulate a plan and either get them out of harm’s way or lead the harm away from them. This obviously isn’t a good place to make a stand.”
“Do you think they’ll come for us and involve all of these tourists?” Carl asked.
“They can’t afford to let us live, knowing what we know,” Peter explained. “Besides, tourists mean nothing to the Navajas. They are absolutely ruthless.”
“And our weapons aren’t even functioning,” Barnes added.
“Yeah, but we don’t want the people in here knowing that, Barnes,” Peter said. “It won’t inspire confidence. As long as we keep the illusion that nothing’s wrong, they should behave and stay out of our way to let us do what we need to do.”
Carl flipped on his MR.UD. It flickered, but it turned on. “Hey, my MR.UD is working.”
Peter came over to look. “But how?”
“Only flimsier electronics are blown by EMP. Heartier equipment may be unaffected. I guess Farrow knew what he was doing when he made these things.”
Peter nodded. “Good design. But these guns aren’t worth a shit.”
“Private vendor, lowest bidder,” Carl reminded.
“Right. So how do we fight off an assault without any weapons?”
“Maybe the authorities will be here in the morning,” Carl said. “They can help us.”
Peter looked like he had seen a ghost.
“What, Pete? What’s wrong?” Carl asked, perplexed by his brother’s reaction.
“I think we may have less time than I thought,” Peter said gravely.
“What do you mean?”
“You just said it yourself. Lorenzo won’t have an opportunity tomorrow morning with the Mexican authorities around…”
Carl finished his brother’s thought. “So it’s coming tonight. But how? The storm…”
“Carl, they have two more crates of approximately sixty ID at their disposal.”
“Oh, right.”
“So you mean Lorenzo’s going to use the ID against us?” Barnes asked incredulously.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Barnes was silent, his mind running through various permutations of grisly demise.
“SWEEPERS,” Peter ordered, “Sweep the walls of this convention center. Let me know if you pick anything up on the outside. Just keep going back and forth. Oh, and pretend like you’re sweeping the crowd. Keep up the illusion.”
Carl and Mirabella strode off to make their sweeps for marauding ID. Peter addressed the other five men. “Okay. We’re in a pretty solid structure with no windows. The weakest point would be the inside doors.”
“They’re not bolted because they’re not exterior doors,” Barnes added.
“Right,” said Peter, “so we need to focus on those doors. There are three sets of doors. If they make it into the building, they’ll be banging on those.”
“What if we just wait them out?” Private Hasbro asked. “When the authorities get here they can deal with them.”
Peter considered the option. “Too complicated. And complicated means messy.”
“Messy how?” Hasbro asked.
“Well, the Mexican authorities won’t know what the ID are. After several of them are eaten, they’ll fight back, but there’d be a learning curve. More would get eaten, some turned. By the time they’d figure out that they need to take head shots, it would be chaos. Not to mention that once they’d breach this structure, they’d be paranoid and trigger happy with hundreds of innocent tourists.”
“We need to leave this convention center,” concluded Barnes.
“Right,” agreed Peter. “We can leave through the interior doors. The manager won’t stop us. We can set up some kind of a perimeter…”