Target Deck - 02 (40 page)

Finally, as the assaulters exfiltrated off the objective and loaded back onto their truck, he realized what that feeling was. Something had changed.

“You okay over there,” Pat said as he opened the passenger door on the assault truck as it stopped next to him.

“I just realized something,” Deckard said. He looked confused.

“What's that?”

“We won.”

Pat nodded.

“I know.”

“Now we need to finish this.”

“I'll consolidate the men and vehicles,” Pat said as he slammed the door shut.

The mercenaries stood in the courtyard of the Jimenez compound. It was strangely anti-climactic. They had expected a pitched battle all the way up the side of the mountain and right through Jimenez' front door. Instead they strutted right in without any opposition.

The villa was in flames. The fortress had been torched and left to history for yet another party to reclaim sometime in the future.

“The sever room is down,” Cody informed Deckard over the radio.

“I'm not surprised,” Deckard muttered, watching the building on top of it burn to the ground. They had probably used electromagnets on the hard drives and then set the place on fire. Once the antenna farm on the roof burned up then nothing was being transmitted in or out anyway.

“Not what I was expecting,” Sergeant Major Korgan said from behind Deckard.

“I know,” he replied as he turned out. “It's kind of a letdown.”

“So whatchu gonna do PL?” Pat asked walking up to him. It was a joke, in part anyway. Instructors in Ranger School were known for asking that question to confused students who had been made patrol leader.

“Good question, this place is a dry hole and speaking of dry holes, I think we've just about exhausted Kenny.”

“Sorry boss,” Aghassi said walking up to join them. “They blew out of here just as we arrived.”

He and Nikita had been out running route and target reconnaissance for them all night, pulling double duty as sniper overwatch.

“We grabbed a few people we saw milling around on the way in and found out that Jimenez took his motorcade and headed into the city. Like I said, we just missed them.”

Deckard reached into his vehicle and snatched the handmic again.

“Cody, is the cartel comms network completely down?”

“It is still useable as long as the repeaters are functioning but we don't have the ability to track it now that the sever room is cooked. I did see a spike in chatter just before it went down though. We do know that many of the phone numbers popping up at that time belong to Ignacio's crew.”

They had put off striking Ignacio's compound. When the cartels fully conquered Oaxaca, Ignacio had taken over the city's cultural museum which was actually a converted convent. With its high walls and added fortifications, Deckard didn't feel that taking down Jimenez' number two man was worth the losses they would surely incur. Now it seemed that Jimenez had split from his mountain fortress and combined his forces with Ignacio.

“Gather the men,” Deckard ordered Sergeant Major Korgan. “I know where they are.”

With a few shouts, the assaulters gathered around their commander, waiting for his orders.

“I'm not good with Braveheart speeches,” Deckard started. “But what the fuck else is new.”

The mercenaries laughed at the movie reference.

“I will keep this short. What we do means more than what we say. Jimenez and Ignacio are holed up at their base back inside Oaxaca City. Today we finish this. Load the trucks.”

The mercenaries broke ranks and ran to their vehicles, each engine turning over one right after the other. Rolling out of the courtyard, Deckard's vehicle took the lead as they headed back into the city and whatever Jimenez had waiting for them.

36

Ignacio and Jimenez stood atop the tower at the center of what had been the Oaxaca Cultural Museum. Today it was another Jimenez fortress, this one serving as an Oaxaca base of operations that his number two, Ignacio normally ran for him. Based on the previous night's events, they had decided to combine their forces and make their final stand together rather than as two separately weaker elements. They were both running short on men, but together they had scraped together a few hundred fighters. The old cloisters, towers, and high walls of the former convent would be their Alamo.

“I understand,” Ignacio said before hanging up and pocketing his cell phone.

“What is it?” Jimenez demanded.

“One of my
halcones
calling in,” Ignacio said referring to one of the many lookouts posted around the city. Most of them were just kids with a cartel-supplied phone who called in reports for pocket change. “The mercenaries are on their way.”

“Let's see this paper airplane fly,” the drug lord said to the men standing beside them.

Down below, in the cloistered courtyard, cartel gunmen scurried along like ants as they stockpiled ammunition in key locations around the aging convent. Fortifications were being built up and preparations were made. With a little luck, the mercenaries would be in pieces by the time they stumbled up to the fortress walls.

One of the men ran across the edge of the tower with what looked like a giant model airplane in his hand. Reeling back like a baseball pitcher, he winged the miniature drone into the air where it quickly managed to gain some lift and buzz up into the sky. The Casper 250 had been purchased from an Israeli company through a cut-out operation and pressed into service by the cartel, although they hadn't had much use for it until now.

With an onboard camera and thermal vision sight, the pilot would fly the drone from the control and data uplink unit and report real time intelligence information to the strike force that was readying to intercept the foreign mercenaries.

Jimenez used his smart phone to place a call to the strike team leader as he walked behind the pilot and looked at the computer screen that allowed them to see what the drone was seeing. As the phone rang, the drone quickly gained altitude in the morning sky and reached the outskirts of the city.

Sure enough, an eight vehicle convoy had reached the city limits and was heading toward their location.

“Yes, sir?” the strike commander answered.

“Are you're men in position?”

“Yes, sir.”

“They are coming in on Internacional Road. Eight gun trucks.”

“We will move to intercept them now.”

“I will hold,” the drug lord said impatiently.

Jimenez watched as the mercenary convoy rolled down the main highway that cut through the city. On the live feed from the Casper drone, the assault vehicles looked like little toy trucks rolling down the street. The cartel strike team had ten vehicles of their own moving towards the road the foreigners traveled on. While the mercenaries favored light tactical vehicles for mobility, the cartel trucks were heavily armored.

With his latest drug shipment destroyed in Acapulco, Jimenez had ordered the armed escort vehicles immediately back to Oaxaca City. Normally, the cartel gun trucks would provide security for similarly armored tractor trailer trucks as the drugs were shipped up the corridor heading north on Mexico 95 where taxes would be paid to the Zetas to transport the drugs to the US border. Now that the shipment had been blown sky high, the drug lord intended to use the escort trucks as a strike team against the mercenaries.

On the screen, Jimenez watched the cartel truck parallel Internacional Road where the mercenaries were speeding towards the old convent.

“Veer left on this upcoming street,” Jimenez said into the phone to the strike commander.

“That will put them right on Internacional when the two roads merge. They will be right on top of each other!” Ignacio blurted.

“Exactly.”

The rattle of machine gun fire was the only warning before the Samruk mercenary sitting next to Pat was torn apart by machine gun fire. His body jerked and spasmed in the seat with each impact. Across from them, the former Delta Force operator watched as a convoy of enemy gun trucks merged onto the highway.

Machine gunners opened fire at a distance of just meters apart from each other. While the Samruk turret gunners manning PKM machine guns were relatively exposed, the cartel pickup trucks had been armored by improvising metal plating around the gun mount that had been built into the top of the cab of each truck. Even the belts of Armor Piercing Incendiary ammo that the mercenaries cycled through their PKMs was sparking off the armor plating.

Pat and the other mercenaries facing outward on the back of the assault trucks fired their own individual weapons opting for rapid fire or automatic with their AK-103s. They were suddenly right on top of the enemy and tactics flew out the window as it became a competition to see who could throw down the most lead.

The closest cartel gun truck ran a stream of auto-fire across Pat's vehicle that tagged their own machine gunner. Collapsing in the turret, Pat unbuckled himself and held tightly to the roll bar that ran down the center of the assault truck as the driver swerved across the road. As they screamed into Oaxaca City, houses blasted by in a blur of movement.

The two convoys were now like enemy ships of the line in the 1700's which had both come broadside with each other to unleash a volley of cannon fire and blasted each other to smithereens.

Clawing his way up into the turret, Pat took control of the PKM. Holding down the trigger, the Russian machine gun chewed through the rest of the belt of 7.62 ammunition, spitting bullets that rattled off the pickup truck's armor. The enemy gunner in the enclosed turret was protected from Pat's counter-fire except for an opening where his own M240B machine gun barrel pointed out but at least Pat was able to keep the gunner's head down and prevent him from firing.

The bed of the pickup alongside them was also armored with metal plates sticking up on both sides to protect the gunmen in the back. Pat looked around his working space and found a metal coffee can that bad been bolted to the side of the turret. Inside were some of the party favors he had been looking for.