Chapter 6 - Fire and Iron
"Get under the desk!" Carlos yelled, pushing me down into the darkness as a metallic cylinder clattered down the air vent and hit the concrete floor with a sharp CLANG.
Thick, acrid chemical smoke immediately began billowing out of the canister, filling the small basement office with a burning white haze that made my eyes sting wildly and my lungs seize up in violent coughing fits.
"The side exit!" Carlos choked out, grabbing a heavy fire extinguisher from the wall and pointing toward a small metal door behind his filing cabinets. "It leads to the library's underground boiler room!"
I grabbed the oil-soaked canvas rolls containing the original documents from the desk, shoving them deep inside my leather backpack, and zipped it tight against my chest.
Carlos threw his body against the filing cabinets, shoving them aside with surprising strength powered by pure panic.
I grabbed the metal handle of the side exit door, yanked it open, and pulled Carlos through just as a flaming tear-gas canister crashed through the ground-level transom window above his desk, igniting his paper files in a sudden burst of orange fire.
We stumbled into the dark, hot boiler room of the library, the roar of old diesel furnaces drowning out the sounds of the men shouting on the street above.
"Which way out?" I gasped, tearing off a strip of my wet shirt sleeve and wrapping it over my nose and mouth to block the smoke.
"The coal chute!" Carlos pointed up to an angled steel ramp set into the brick wall, leading to a street-level sidewalk grate five feet above our heads. "It opens from the inside! Go!"
I scrambled up the slick steel chute, shoved my shoulder against the iron sidewalk grate, and heaved upward.
The grate swung open into the cold rain.
I climbed out onto the pavement, reached down into the chute, and grabbed Carlos's arms, pulling the frail lawyer up onto the sidewalk just as the iron door behind us in the boiler room was kicked off its hinges by Mendoza’s enforcers.
"There they are! On the sidewalk!" a voice shouted from the darkness of the library alleyway.
"Run!" I yelled, pulling Carlos along the slick cobblestone street toward the main boulevard of Avenida Revolución.
Behind us, two men in dark clothes burst out of the alley, raising handguns fitted with long black suppressors.
THWIP. THWIP.
Two bullets shattered the glass display window of a shoe store beside my head, showering us in sharp crystalline splinters.
I shoved Carlos into a recessed concrete doorway, turned around, and grabbed a heavy steel trash can from the sidewalk, hurling it with all my strength into the path of the lead pursuer.
The heavy bin hit the man squarely in the chest, sending him sprawling across the wet cobblestones, his silenced weapon skittering away into the gutter.
The second man paused to aim directly at my chest.
Suddenly, a loud, blaring horn shattered the night air.
A massive yellow municipal city transit bus rounded the corner of Avenida Revolución, its tires screeching as the driver slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting us in the crosswalk.
"Get in!" I screamed to Carlos.
I dragged the exhausted lawyer across the lane, yanked open the folding emergency pneumatic doors of the idling bus, and shoved Carlos onto the steps ahead of me.
"Hey! You can't enter through the emergency doors!" the startled bus driver yelled, looking at us through his rearview mirror.
I pulled two five-hundred-peso notes from my wallet, slammed them onto his dashboard, and grabbed the door control lever, pulling it back. "Drive! Just drive north!"
The driver looked at the money, then caught sight of the armed man standing in the rain fifty yards behind us pointing a firearm at the windshield.
The driver didn't ask another question. He slammed his foot onto the accelerator, and the heavy bus lurched forward, its diesel engine roaring as it accelerated down Avenida Revolución, leaving Mendoza's enforcers behind in a cloud of grey exhaust.
I collapsed onto a vinyl seat near the back of the bus, holding my knees, my chest rising and falling in violent gasps.
Beside me, Carlos sat curled up, clutching his chest, his face grey with exhaustion, but his eyes were wide with pure adrenaline.
"Did... did the documents survive?" Carlos managed to ask between heavy breaths.
I reached into my backpack, feeling the dry, thick canvas roll nestled safely inside the waterproof lining.
"They're dry," I confirmed softly.
"Where... where do we go now, Alejandro?" Carlos asked, looking out the bus window at the rainy city streets blurring past. "The local police are hunting us. Reyes knows who we are. Mendoza controls the city."
I looked down at the brass key resting in my pocket, then at the thick canvas bundle that contained twenty-two years of my father’s sacrifice.
"We go to the one place Mendoza can't buy," I said, my voice hardening into pure steel.
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"Where?"
"The Federal Palace of Justice in San Lázaro," I declared. "The General Attorney of the Republic is giving a live televised press conference on judicial reform at 8:00 AM today. I’m going to walk right onto that stage in front of every television camera in Mexico and hand him the documents myself."
