Target Deck - 02 (24 page)

Arriving at the top floor of the warehouse he punched in his pass code and passed through the door and into his offices.

Inside was his staff of three additional CISEN employees. They were shuffling around the office preparing reports and analysis to be forwarded up to Mexico City. The covert CISEN office included two full time analysts and one intelligence officer in addition to Arturo. They were responsible for keeping tabs on Oaxaca and acting as the federal government's eyes and ears. The bosses were not so interested in cartel activity but wanted a heads up if the Zapatistas movement ever started acting up again.

In the meantime, they could collect information on the Zapatistas to be ready for the moment when the government had the political will to send the Army back in and crush them once and for all.

The intelligence agent sat behind his desk and wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. It was a job, or at least it had been. It didn't pay that well but the fringe benefits were outstanding. It was an open secret at CISEN that the field agents were well compensated for staying out of the way of the cartels.

Since showing up in Oaxaca, he had developed a cordial relationship with Jimenez and Ortega. A few times he even acted as a source for back channel communications between the two cartels when it looked like they might have gone to war with each other. Arturo had helped keep the peace, and the tourist dollars continued to pour into Oaxaca.

Until now.

He resisted the temptation to reach for the bottle of whiskey he kept in his desk. He'd been buzzed for days and was now taking uppers just to be able to continue to function.

Both chiefs up at CISEN and the Jimenez cartel were locking his balls in a vise. They wanted to know what the hell was going on and they wanted to know yesterday.

Swallowing, he reached for his cell phone and dialed one of his American contacts.

“Are you in your office?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Yes.”

“I found some of the information you wanted about your mercenary problem.”

“Who are they?” Arturo asked, completely exasperated.

Jimenez was going to kill him if he didn't start getting results. He listening intently as the voice began to talk about the gringo mercenary force that had arrived in Oaxaca.

“Deckard?” Arturo spat. “What is his first name?”

The voice continued.

“I see. How did they manage to pull that off?”

The sweat was beading on his forehead again.

“And in Kazakhstan? That doesn't make sense. Who are these guys really?”

The voice elaborated again. At one point Arturo looked up at the clock on the wall. He could hear the second hand ticking between heartbeats. His guts clenched in knots. Finally, he flung open his desk draw and grabbed for the whiskey. Popping the cap, he took a long swig to calm his stomach.

“NSC is tracking this?”

The voice had to be exaggerating.

“Yes,” the American answered.

“Now what?”

“Now what? You know what. Take care of it.”

“You're fucking kidding me!”

But Arturo was talking into a dead line. The voice was gone.

The CISEN agent looked down at the bottle of whiskey as the phone slipped from his fingers and bounced off the floor. He felt numb. But not numb enough. He reached for the bottle.

“Gentlemen,” he called across the office. “Bring it in, I need to talk to you.”

The three intelligence men got up from behind their computers and walked over. Arturo had them working day and night. Everyone had been pulled off their regular assignments monitoring the communist movement, narco-groups, and their own entrepreneurial activities. The mercenary situation had their undivided attention for the last several days. Each of the Mexican CISEN employees looked exhausted.

“I want to thank you for the hard work you've been putting into this matter over the last several days,” Arturo said while looking each of them in the eye one by one. He was actually starting to feel a little relieved now that the pressure was off him. They finally had a resolution and would no longer be between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

“This office is being liquidated,” he continued. “Unfortunately, the situation between local drug traffickers, our government, and these mercenaries will be not resolved, at least not in the immediate future. For reasons unknown to me our government will not be deploying soldiers to Oaxaca to bring this Private Military Company under control. I can only speculate that someone, somewhere is holding something over the heads of CISEN and maybe the federal government. At any rate, it no longer matters. Our mission in Oaxaca has concluded.”

The three veteran intelligence men looked at their boss and then at each other. This was not what they had expected.

“Close out your workstations and return home gentlemen. I will initiate the containment plan when I leave and will contact you with further instructions over the next few days.”

His subordinates looked shell shocked.

The entire state of Oaxaca had just been written off by their own government.

“Listen,” Arturo lectured. “Don't just stand there looking at me like I've got a dick growing out of my forehead. Close out whatever you were doing and walk.”

The intel agents snapped to and returned to log out of their computers and pack up whatever personal belongings they might have laying around. Arturo was feeling good, feeling in charge for the first time in a long time. Taking another shot of whiskey, he lit up a cigarette. One by one his men filed out the door with gym bags or cardboard boxes filled with their things. None of them muttered a single word under their breath as they went out the door.

Arturo stubbed out his cancer stick. He wished them luck, he really did. They would need it too. Each of them was about to become a hunted man.

Getting to his feet, he retrieved the five gallon gas can they kept sealed up in the closet. Unscrewing the lid, he began pouring it around the office, on the desks, on the floor, finally turning it upside down and spilling what was left in the center of the office. He then began opening filing cabinets and dumping their contents in the center of the room. The files would be destroyed anyway, but he needed some kindling for the fire.

When he had finished, Arturo flicked his lighter under a few sheets of paper to begin burning the pile of paperwork. He then returned to his desk and pounded down another few mouthfuls of whiskey. Once again, he was in charge of his own destiny.

The fire was beginning to really take off, burning up the paperwork and crawling up the walls, following the gasoline through the office. Arturo smiled.

Eat it or Jimenez eats you.

Reaching under his jacket, he palmed the Beretta pistol he carried in a shoulder holster, yanked it free, pressed the barrel against the side of his head, and squeezed the trigger.

The gun went bang, the office burned, and Arturo felt nothing.

24

Deckard watched the flatlands roll by, the green fields shooting past while the distant hills seemed slow to keep pace. It was the kind of wide open and rugged terrain that the men from Kazakhstan could relate to. The countryside was beautiful and had been a popular getaway for tourists from all over the world until recently. It was a shame, but with the Mexican military cracking down on the cartels in the northern parts of the country, some of the more violent groups had been pushed south.

Oaxaca had always been a pit stop between Colombia and the United States for drug runners, but now this particular drug corridor was being fought over here rather than in the drug plazas up north were it was increasingly difficult for them to operate under the constant pressure of Mexican troops and American military advisers. The turf battles like the one that Jimenez and Ortega had been fighting was referred to as
heating up the plaza
. Now that battle had shifted with Ortega taken out of the picture. It was a Jimenez cartel versus Deckard Private Military Company brawl.

While Deckard saw it in the context of military science, he knew that in the machismo culture of the cartels that Jimenez would see it as two men squaring off to see who had the bigger balls. Deckard had set the pre-conditions he needed just to get his foot in the door. The battlespace had been prepared first with reconnaissance, then by capturing a foothold with Ortega's compound that they could operate from. Next he had found a way to keep the Mexican government from interfering as a spoiler force and prevented cross border interlopers from jumping into the fray from Guatemala. Jimenez was isolated, but far from finished.

Now the real war would begin. It would be man to man and man for man once they started shooting again.

The three assault trucks reached the coordinates they had selected for a Landing Zone out in the Oaxaca countryside. Fedorchenko's platoon was recovering from their mission the previous night while the other platoon ran the drop off mission. The trucks formed up into a hasty triangle-shaped security perimeter while they waited for the rendezvous time.

Pat pulled the prisoner they had captured during the airfield seizure off one of the trucks and sat him down on the ground. The prisoner wasn't doing so hot, but they would let the CIA goons worry about that. They just needed him to survive long enough for the hand off. They had pumped him full of IV fluids to get his blood pressure back up so that Samantha could put him through a few hours of interrogation before they departed the base. Since then he had been kept on a steady dose of painkillers.

The former Guatemalan Special Forces soldier hadn't been able to tell them much more about the so-called Arab than he had told them during the tactical interrogation on the airfield. The information was compartmentalized and he only knew that their explosives expert was supposedly en route. With more time and resources, the Samruk men might have been able to stage an ambush for this Arab but those were two things they were in serious lack of when they pulled off the target.

Deckard hoped that the CIA would be able to take what information the prisoner did have, correlate it with other sources of intelligence, and splatter the bomb maker's brains but deep down he wasn't very optimistic. He had a sick feeling that he hadn't heard that last of The Arab.

While they sat and pulled security on the surrounding countryside as they waited, the Kazakhs lit up some cigarettes and shot the shit, breaking each other's balls like soldiers the world over.

Pat should have been recovering with the rest of the Samruk men who had just come off the mission. Being in a leadership position was often even more exhausting than the combat positions. The responsibility and decision making could take a lot out of even a seasoned Special Operations soldier and it showed on his face. He had pulled off the impossible in under twenty four hours by throwing that mission together with Frank and Fedorchenko. However, he had still insisted on accompanying Deckard out to the LZ. He wanted a word.

Deckard could see that on his face as well.

“I need to talk to you.”

“What is it Pat?”

“I need you to start acting like you are in charge around here.”

“I thought I was.”

“So did I until you took off for a vacation to Cancun.”

“You know the deal. I had to get work done or we would have Mexican Marines all over Oaxaca, Special Forces Brigades surrounding our compound, and GAFE blowing down the front door.”

“Bullshit. I got left out there throwing together an airborne operation at the very last moment before those guys were to cross over the border and we came back with three injured and three dead. This organization needs its actual leadership in place for this operation.”

“I couldn't send a platoon in to Cancun, it wasn't that kind of deal.”