Target Deck - 02 (39 page)

The fat one bobbed to the surface.

The Stewmaker used his fire poker to try to sink the body back into the mixture, but to no avail. He should have known better. Before dumping the body, he should have used a butcher's cleaver to slice open the stomach cavity and let the air out. No way would he be thrashing the corpse with a machete while it floated in caustic soda.

Discarding the gloves, mask, and goggles, the Stewmaker looked over at the two dozen drums stacked in the corner of his yard. It had been a busy month. He lived up in the hill country towards the border of Oaxaca and Chiapas where his activities could fly under the radar. The cartel would drop fresh corpses at his front door in the middle of the night and he'd get to work when he discovered them in the morning. Once a month, an envelope packed full of cash was slipped under his door. It was a nice arrangement.

The Stewmaker grew frustrated as he watched the fat body float across the surface of the vat. He knew better and should have taken precautions. Eventually, the lye would eat through the body and deflate it, but it was still irritating.

Just then, the front gate was kicked in and gunmen wearing black masks stormed his body disposal factory. Before the cigarette could drop from his mouth he was surrounded by ten gunmen. The Stewmaker put his hands in his pockets. That day had finally come. A rival cartel had come for him or the families of the victims hired some freelancers to do him in.

He did a double take as another masked man entered through the gate. He was smoking a pipe through a hole in his balaclava.

“Commandente Zero?”

The Strewmaker asked the question in a state of shock.

“The one and only!”

“I thought you were dead.”

The Zapatista leader drew his hand gun and pointed it at the Stewmaker.

“Throw him in the vat with his friends,” he ordered his underlings. “Let's see how he likes an caustic bath.”

The Zapatistas slung their rifles and seized the Stewmaker by the arms, two others lifting him by the legs. He kicked and resisted but it was no use.

“Wait, wait, stop!”

The Stewmaker protested as they carried him over to his bubbling body stew. He continued to curse and scream all the way up until the point where the Zapatistas dumped him in head first, the guerrilla fighters shrinking away as the lye splashed.

“Go, go, go!” Kurt Jager pushed his Zapatista comrade up the ladder. Rushing up to the top of the ladder the two men climbed out of the midget submarine. The dorsal surface of the hull was just barely above the waterline, the mast sticking out a few feet further. In the dark of night, the submarine was invisible to their target.

Kurt looked at the Zapatista rebel and nodded his head. They both leaped into the ocean. The dark waters surrounded the former GSG-9 commando. As an experienced diver, Kurt remained calm and kicked his way to the surface. A second later, the Zapatista came up next to them.

The submarine had already disappeared from view as its screw turned and propelled it towards the landing area on the beach. The two soldiers were like baseball players who had just wound up and swung as hard as they could. They hit the ball just right and drove it right down the center, heading for the bleachers. They should have been swimming for the shore much like the baseball player should have been running for first base instead of watching to see if he hit a home run.

Instead they floated in the ocean, their eyes fixated on the horizon.

With the submarine pen destroyed by Deckard and his Samruk mercenaries, Jimenez had to revert back to the old system of ferrying the cocaine from Colombia on cigarette boats. The high speed sport boats would zip in and out at a certain time of night just south of Acapulco.

A ball of orange flame lit up the night, reflecting tiny red triangles across the ripples of the sea. The shock wave rocked over the submariners as they broke out with smiles. The submarine made contact with the docking station where the cigarette boats were offloading the drugs and had detonated. The trigger mechanism was stupid simple, two metal pie pans with a piece of Styrofoam between them separated the two electric leads going to the detonator. When the sub smashed into the boats or the dock, the Styrofoam trigger mounted to the nose was crushed, connecting the leads and detonating the TNT explosives that they had packed the sub with.

Fiberglass flew through the air as at least two of the sport boats were torn apart, the gas tanks going up in secondary explosions.

The only way they would get to Jimenez was death by a thousand cuts, and now they had once again cut off his revenue stream at its source.

As the fire began to die down, the two swimmers headed towards the shore.

35

“This peach colored house here on the left with the blue door,” Kenny said pointing it out to Deckard. “That's where Jose lives. He runs a team of assassins.”

“Truck Two,” Deckard said over the radio. “This is Six.”

“Six this is two, over.”

“Peach colored house on the left. Blue door.”

“Roger.”

Truck number two broke off from the rest of the convoy and made a beeline for the house. Speeding up, the driver barreled through the front gate, blasting it open. The assaulters jumped off the truck and swarmed the house, quickly making entry.

“On the right, the two story blue building with a balcony over the front door,” Kenny sighed. “That is where Julio lives, he kidnaps people for the cartel, it is his specialty.”

“Truck Three,” Deckard radioed. “Blue two story on the right. You are looking for Julio.”

“Roger,” the radio hissed.

Truck three left the convoy and stopped in front of the target building. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the mercenaries applying a flex linear charge across the front door. Seconds later, they blew it, rattling windows all over the neighborhood.

“Make a left hand turn at this intersection,” Kenny advised.

“Hard left,” Deckard informed the rest of the convoy as his driver brought them around the corner.

“Okay, this white building over here.”

“With the green trim around the windows.”

“Yes, that is where Alejandro lives. He runs an extortion enterprise for Jimenez, taking a cut from the local businesses.”

“Truck Four, white house...on the right...green trim,” Deckard said with a few stutters in between. He was quickly transitioning from Spanish to Russian, neither of which was his native language. “You want Alejandro.”

“Roger boss.”

Truck Four stopped short and the assaulters ran to the door. Identifying where the hinges were, the mercenaries shoved a Hooligan tool in the crack between the door and the frame. Another mercenary pounded on the flat end of the Hooligan tool with sledgehammer. When it had advanced far enough into the door jamb, the mercenary on the hoolie tool pressed it forward and the door splintered open. The assault team stacked on the door and moved in to clear the first room.

“The white three story building on the corner with the orange windows,” Kenny said.

“Who lives there?”

“Ignacio's brother owns the building. He lives on the second floor and is a part of the cartel's inner circle.”

“Truck Five, white three story on the corner. Floor two is where HVT number six lives.”

“Roger,” Truck Five's Squad Leader answered as they pulled up in front of the building.

Their target deck was now getting wiped clean almost as fast as they could fill it out with names.

“Six, this is Truck Two, over.”

“Send it Truck Two.”

“We are back in the convoy, over.”

Deckard's vehicle kept at a slow roll as they coasted through the streets of nighttime Oaxaca City. As each assault element wrapped things up they would fall back into the convoy formation. They were not screwing around on the objective. They would force their way onto the target, kill any fighting age males that looked at them the wrong way and move on. Others would be flexcuffed and left behind for relatives to recover.

“Make a right hand turn here,” Kenny informed Deckard.

“Hard right, hard right,” Deckard said holding the handmic in front of his mouth.

“This pink building next to the church with the white shutters. They guy living there tortures people in the basement for Jimenez.”

“Truck Six, pink building next to the church. Look for civilians being held prisoner in the basement.”

“Roger.”

Truck Six pulled up and the mercenaries jumped the ground and began placing their charge on the door.

“Six this is Truck Three, we are rejoining the convoy.”

“Roger, Truck Three.”

“So this yellow house next to the auto parts store is where-”

It went on all night as the oracle continued to spill his guts. The priority targets were cell leaders and those high up on the cartel food chain but targets of opportunity were nearly anyone associated with the drug traffickers. Kenny grew up in town and knew the topography of the city like the back of his hand, recommending short cuts and helping them as much as he could. He realized there was no turning back for him. He identified every target he could think of, some Deckard passed on as insignificant, others he prioritized.

The Samruk patrol moved so fast through the city and churned the enemy through the meat grinder so fast that they had interrupted the enemy's decision making process. Cody monitored the situation from the OPCEN and sent updates but the enemy was unable to react quickly enough to organize an effective resistance.

The cartel gunmen initiated one haphazard ambush which was easily repelled but after that they simply began to fire their guns into the air as a warning when the assault trucks were spotted rolling into their neighborhood. Even with warning shots, the convoy continued to snake through the city, staying one step ahead of the cartel's ability to self-organize.

By three in the morning, Samruk International had expended all of their demolitions and had to meet with a deuce and a half supply truck that the skeleton crew left at their compound dispatched to meet them. They had hit over fifty targets and had added dozens of enemy KIA to the kill list including several High Value Targets.

Getting back on schedule with magazines topped off and the mercenaries constructing new door charges as they drove, more targets were identified and struck one by one.

At four thirty in the morning, Deckard stood in the street watching his assaulters mechanically breach a door with a battering ram before flooding the structure with shooters. There were a few cracks of gunfire throughout the city, but under the dull golden glow of the street lights, everything was strangely quiet. A strange, disconcerting feeling crept over him. It wasn't some kind of sixth sense warning him of danger, it was something else, something different.