Target Deck - 02 (52 page)

The cameraman signaled that they were rolling. The Arab stood behind the prisoners with his arms crossed in front of him, the knife clearly visible. The Spanish speaker came forward and began reading a prepared speech from a piece of paper, declaring themselves to be Los Zetas assassins who were retaliating against the Sinaloa cartel. Another member of the kill team hung cardboard signs around the necks of each captive, declaring them to be whores, traitors, and patsies.

Once the speech had concluded, The Arab went back to his bag for the second piece of equipment he needed, a three foot length of 2x4 wooden plank. He had a lot of experience in his line of work and decapitating adults was much different that slicing the heads of children and infants. He had tried other measures like drugging the victims but it never seemed to work in a timely manner. It would take too long for them to go under, or worse, they would collapse while filming and not wake up.

Walking up behind the Ghost Killer's cousin, he wound up and slammed the 2x4 into the back of his head, knocking him face first on the floor, unconscious. The niece received the same treatment, then the teenage sister, and finally the overweight mother. Knocking them out first was suitably violent on camera and kept them from kicking too much during the cutting.

The camera man adjusted the angle to point down at the prostrate forms. The Arab drew his knife and went to the mother first. Exposing her soft neck by pulling back on her hair, he started the cutting.

He kept his work fast and efficient. After all, they had a second job today. The death squad would have to call their control to have another zone frozen to keep the military out while they went and paid a visit to the family of a Zeta assassin in different neighborhood.

45

Flinging open the sliding door, Aghassi slowed down just enough for them to toss the Mexican military officer out of the van alongside the dusty highway before speeding off again. The mercenaries couldn't bring themselves to execute the guy in cold blood. He hadn't been part of the gun running ring but since he was an intelligence officer stationed at AMIZ, he had seen the comings and goings, listened to the encrypted radio traffic, and had eventually put two and two together. In short, he was a good intelligence officer.

Aghassi looked in the rear view mirror and saw the young man standing on the shoulder of the road looking dejected as the mercenaries continued driving north. They had made it very clear to him that it would behoove all parties involved if he never mentioned his kidnapping and instead concocted a story to explain his absence to his superiors involving tequila and hookers.

According to the S2 Officer, the guns were being flown to Military Base Number Three which was adjacent to the civilian airfield in Torreon. From there, the guns were being distributed to cartels across Mexico. It wasn't just one cartel being armed, but nearly all of them. To Deckard's ears, it had shades of the Iran-Iraq was in the 1980's where the United States had armed both sides of the conflict to weaken both parties.

From Torreon, truckers would be contracted to haul the guns south to AMIZ under armed escort from Private Military Contractors, the military, or guns for hire. The north/south running corridor would be frozen during this time on orders coming by encrypted radio signals from the OBI office in Mexico City to allow the convoy free passage. Once the guns arrived in AMIZ, select military officers and intelligence agents would divide the weapons up and use the loading bay as a distribution point. One day the Zetas would pull their trucks in and load up the largess. The day after, the Sinaloa cartel would send their own trucks to pick up an equal number of weapons.

Who was flying the weapons into Military Base Number Three and where were they coming from? The S2 Officer didn't know and was only familiar with the stages of the operation that passed through the hub at AMIZ where he worked. He did know that everyone at the military base in Torreon was corrupt. The base served as the major way station for the flow of weapons to the cartels and the soldiers and civilians working there facilitated the violence that had plagued Mexico.

Aghassi watched again in the rear view mirror as Deckard downed two more Motrin pills along with a bottle of water before passing out on the floor of the van. They had a long seven hundred mile drive ahead of them, right up the spine of central Mexico.

The mercenaries rotated drivers all day, only stopping for a couple piss breaks and to pick up some food along the way. When not driving, they took advantage of the free time to catch up on some sleep and perform weapons maintenance.

Deckard opened Aghassi's notebook computer and checked his encrypted Samruk International e-mail account. He had one e-mail from Samantha to tell him that the military was already getting bored as they had not found any mercenaries, cartels, or communist rebels to fight. So far, so good. Frank shot him a quick note to inform him that they had arrived in Kazakhstan with minimal fanfare. Sergeant Major Korgan was getting the injured situated in the hospital in Astana.

Then an e-mail from an address he didn't recognize appeared in his inbox. Clicking on it, he read its contents:

-Begin PGP Encryption-

Deckard, one of my sources tells me you were not on that airplane out of Mexico. You blatantly violated our agreement. There will be repercussions for that. In the meantime, I will not be reporting this indiscretion to my superiors. I have a good idea of what you are up to and I want you to know that the Clandestine Services support you in spirit but not in any tangible manner for reasons I'm sure you can understand. We know something stinks to high hell with this man called The Arab. Understandably, you don't have a high opinion of my employers but this isn't one of our operations. Good luck.

- G

-End PGP Encryption-

Deckard snorted. Agent Grant of the CIA had just given them an underhanded endorsement. Who would have thought? Additionally, Grant had added a web link at the bottom of the e-mail. Clicking on it, Deckard was taken to a publicly available youtube.com video. As he watched three women and one man kneeling on the ground, he knew what was coming next.

Someone was reading some kind of diatribe off camera about how they were Zeta hit men striking back against the Sinaloa cartel. The executioner whacked each victim on the back of the head with a board before he began slicing their heads off. Deckard noted long horizontal scars running up the executioner's forearms as he worked the rusty blade through the older woman's throat. He closed the laptop and put it away.

The website indicated that the video had been uploaded just an hour ago. The narration given in the video indicated that the quadruple murder had taken place in Torreon.

It was nine o' clock at night when the mercenaries rolled into town.

“This is about as far as we are getting,” Pat said as he coasted the van off to the side of the road.

“Grab your kit and we'll move out on foot,” Deckard ordered.

They had been driving around the edges of Torreon for nearly an hour, running into one roadblock after the next. Some were cordons set up by Mexican Marines but most were being run by cartel members. According to the map, Militar No. 3 was in the center of the city along with the airport. Kitting up, the mercenaries locked up the van with their go-bags full of emergency supplies and proceeded deeper into the city.

Deckard carried explosive charges, Nikita a small aid bag filled with medical supplies, Pat a pair of large bolt cutters, and Kurt a Hooligan tool. Aghassi has his usual breaking and entering kit.

The Zetas and the Sinaloa cartels were engaged in an all out battle for control of the city. Automatic gunfire thudded throughout different sectors of Torreon with red and green tracer fire streaking through the night sky. The occasional grenade or RPG explosion lit up the night and the
crump-crump-crump
of mortar fire walked across one of the derelict neighborhoods.

The cartels were going bone to bone to see who was bigger and whoever had the largest body count would win the day. Whoever uploaded the most violent videos onto the internet would achieve victory in the propaganda war.

And it was all on someone else's dime.

Squeezing through a filthy alleyway filled with trash, the mercenaries circumvented a Sinaloa cartel roadblock. One at a time, they sprinted across a four lane highway and passed a hollowed out gas station with shattered windows. Just as Nikita cleared the road, he hit the dirt as headlights flashed above him and a five vehicle convoy of blacked out Suburban Sport Utility Vehicles blasted down the street.

Paralleling the road, the five men shook out into a single file, maintaining a separation between each man. Lowering their night vision goggles, they were able to see their surroundings and stay well away from any other human presence as they were in an approach into the city that was not built up, consisting of knee high brush. Under the green tint of the night vision goggles, light sources were amplified and the gunfire shooting into the sky looked like lasers from some kind of science fiction movie.

Deckard led the patrol through an empty construction site where they passed between stacks of cinder blocks and rebar before climbing a dusty hill and dropping down into what had been some kind of resort with a golf course and artificial ponds. Moving through the abandoned resort, the mercenaries stuck to the low ground where they would not be silhouetted and pushed deeper into the city.

With years of experience conducting Direct Action raids and Unconventional Warfare, in and out of the military, Deckard made a careful route selection based on his map reconnaissance. The haphazard and confusing nature of urban war zones and the danger they posed was worth avoiding as much as possible so to that end, he kept them away from the built up areas where the gunfire was coming from. This wasn't their war and their goal was to cut the conflict off at the source, not get embroiled in every bushfire gun battle.

On the other side of the resort, Deckard found a high wall and a gate that would take too long to go around. A smaller gate for foot traffic was secured with a chain and padlock. Motioning Pat forward, the former Delta operator used a pair of wide grip bolt cutters to shear through the lock. With a snap, the metal gave way and the padlock fell to the ground.

Both men quickly ducked back into the alcove as another convoy passed on the street outside. This time it was pickup trucks full of Marines. One thing was clear, this area had not been operationally frozen by OBI in Mexico City. This was a free for all and everybody was invited.

Waiting to make sure the coast was clear, the mercenaries dashed across the road, avoiding a corpse sprawled in the street as they reached the opposite side. Hopping a small fence, Deckard looked down at the small
Garmin GPS Foretrex
strapped to his wrist. The industrial park in Torreon was warehouse after warehouse with a barren strip running down the middle where a set of railroad tracks had been laid. Following the tracks, the patrol continued heading north.