Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  “Hector, jefe,” said Silvano not looking up. “El Cazon sends his regards.” Hector looked down at his old deputy. His head was wrapped in bandage, his arm looked broken. His face was so cut and bruised that it was hard to see his eyes. He smiled.

  “Silvano!” he said jumping down and slapping him on the back, “good to see you! You look ok, considering.” And with that Hector started laughing. Following Hector out of the jet came the MS 13 men, blank faced and carrying automatic weapons.

  Silvano did not return the greeting, but instead recounted his orders from El Cazon. The police informant had given them El Ingles’ location, they were sure he would be there.

  “Can we trust the information” asked Hector.

  “We can Hector,” answered Silvano, still avoiding Hector’s gaze. “The source is high level.”

  Hector said nothing. Someone had warned El Ingles that they were coming in Acapulco. And the militarios had turned up within minutes of their arrival.

  “It could be a trap,” said Hector.

  “The information is good,” said Silvano, “El Cazon has sent me and these men to assist you,” he pointed to the men behind him. They were all dressed in black combat fatigues and all carried M4 Carbine machine guns with barrel-mounted grenade launchers, the weapon of choice of most US Special Forces units.

  “He wants this to end today.” Los Negros, thought Hector. Finally El Cazon sends me my own men.

  They both turned at the sound of engines coming from the jungle and saw a narrow track hacked out of the foliage. A convoy of cars drove in, a mixture of beat-up old pick-up trucks and black Chevy Suburbans with blacked out windows.

  “Transthportation,” explained Silvano, his voice lisping slightly through his broken lip.

  “Where are la policia?” said Hector, looking closely at his deputy’s new face. He had to admire his own handiwork. Silvano was barely recognisable.

  “No policia today Hector. Lazcano and Los Zetas control this area.”

  37

  Los Zetas Training Camp, Quintana Roo

  From his chair on the dark wood porch of the large ranch house, Herbito Lazcano looked out onto what looked like an army assault course. A score of men in back combat trousers and dark green t-shirts were working their way through it. As they climbed the twenty-foot walls, crawled through tunnels of barbed wire and traversed deep pits of raw sewage, instructors dressed in black fired shots around them. Lazcano smiled to himself. In the army, this would have been called a live firing exercise. They always used to make a big deal about it when live rounds were used. In Los Zetas they always used live rounds. Why spend money on bullets that did not work? If a few men died in training exercises, then so be it. They were not worthy to be called Los Zetas in the first place. But none of these men would get caught by a stray bullet. Not these men. They were too good for that. As so they should be for the price he had agreed to pay them. Three squadrons of Kaibiles, Guatemalan Special Forces, defected en masse to work for him. Small dark Indians, but tough bastards. They had been fighting all their lives, usually deep in Central America’s thick jungles. Most of them had cut their teeth doing counter-insurgency work during Guatemala’s long civil war. It had been nasty work. Nasty work for ruthless men, they were just what he needed. Although he would not admit it to anyone, the war was getting costly. They were fighting the other cartels, the federal police and now the army. Fighting them on too many fronts. Nuevo Laredo, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, Acapulco, Michoacán. The list was endless, his enemies were everywhere. Recruiting from the Mexican special forces, his old GAFE division, was becoming more difficult. The new government paid them better now, with the help of the gringos. He hated employing street punks - Los Zetas needed soldiers. You run the most powerful cartel in Mexico, probably the world, and you need professional soldiers, not pimps and hustlers.

  So he had to get mercenaries.

  Herbito Lazcano sat back in his chair and relit his cigar. Cohiba siglo dos. He puffed on it hard to get the ember at the end stoked and burning. He half inhaled the sweet smoke and held it in his mouth before exhaling it in a huge thick cloud.

  “Commandante?”

  Lazcano looked to his right, one of his aides was standing to attention three feet from him. Like all Los Zetas, he was in GAFE military fatigues. They were an exact replica of the real military uniforms, down to the badges showing the highly sought-after GAFE wings.

  “Si?” said Lazcano, not bothering to turn his head. He was too interested in watching the Guatemalans go over the course. They were fast he noticed. Fast and tough.

  “Commandante, we have just received some intelligence.”

  “Si?” Still Lazcano did not turn his head. He took another puff of his cigar.

  “Commandante, we believe that Hector Ortega, Silvano Reis and a large number of their men are right now on their way to a villa twenty miles north of Tulum.”

  Lazcano froze for a moment and turned his head to look at his young aide.

  “Say that again?”

  “Commandante, we have intelligence that a number of Los Negros including Hector Ortega and Silvano Reis are at this moment driving to a villa twenty miles north of Tulum, on the coast.”

  Lazcano did not say anything for a while. Hector Ortega. El Doctor. On his territory. Less than one hundred miles away.

  “Why are they here?”

  “Commandante, we do not know that. But the intelligence is good, it comes from a source high up in Castillo’s staff.”

  “How many men are they?”

  “We think about twenty Commandante. Some are Los Negros and some are mercenaries. We think la Mara Salvatrucha.”

  “MS-13?” Lazcano smiled. He had heard El Cazon was short of men too. “So El Cazon sends gangbangers and GAFE rejects to my territory? And thinks what? We will sit here and do nothing?”

  “Si Commandante.”

  “Our source does not know why they are here?”

  “No Commandante. But that area is remote. Perfect for bringing in shipments.”

  “The intelligence is good? We can trust the source?”

  “Yes commandante,” said the aide, looking straight ahead, still at attention. “He has never let us down before.”

  Lazcano paused and looked out across the assault course. He did not need long to think though; he had not become who he was through being indecisive.

  “We have three brand new Black Hawks out back,” he said motioning to the back of the ranch building. “Load them up with our new Guatemalans, take everything we have, RPGS, fifty cals, everything. Go to this villa. Kill everyone you see, destroy any buildings. Take no prisoners. None. Bring me Hector Ortega’s head.. you know what he looks like?”

  “Yes Commandante. I have seen his picture.”

  “Good. Make sure he dies. If possible take off his head while he is still breathing. You understand?”

  “Yes Commandante.”

  “Good. Let’s see what our new Guatemalans can do.”

  “Yes Commandante,” the aide saluted and turned to go but Lazcano was not finished. He was still sitting down, still leaning back in his chair. Throughout the entire conversation, he had only moved his head slightly. His booted feet were still up on a stool in front of him.

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes Commandante?”

  “Be careful of those choppers hijo. A Black Hawk is not cheap.”

  The aide saluted, turned and walked off fast. Herbito Lazcano turned back to his cigar. It had gone out, he noticed with annoyance.

  Silvano had taken the lead car in the convoy. A blacked out Chevy Suburban followed by another Suburban and then four pick-ups. The lead two vehicles held his men, Los Negros. The rest held the Salvadorians, jammed into the cargo beds like fruit pickers off to the fields. As the convoy bumped along the narrow jungle track, every rut and stone in the road sent bolts of pain through his body. Three of his ribs were broken, his jaw was fractured, his nose was broken in two places. His arm was in a
sling and he thought he might have a fractured skull. Still, he had come out. He had brought his best men from Nuevo Laredo and flown down to the Yucatan. He knew they were deep in enemy territory. If Lazcano found out they were here, he would send everything he had. Silvano knew he was taking a risk, but he did not care. El Cazon had said everything ends today and he had meant it. The shit storm that Acapulco was causing had made El Cazon unhappy. Very unhappy. Fifteen people dead, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the gringo holidays. It was international news. It had been on CNN, Fox News. The president’s spokesman had made a statement. Hector had outstayed his welcome. El Cazon had got the nod from the Colombians. Everything ends today, and that includes Hector. Silvano smiled through his broken and cut lips. They would take El Ingles and then they would take Hector.

  Everything ends today.

  But his smile did not last long. They had pulled onto the highway. They were only due to stay on it for ten minutes, but it was the most risky part of the journey. The most public. The local policia were not theirs, and they could not afford to run into them before they got to the villa. Silvano looked in his side mirror and saw that the last three cars in the convoy, three old pick-ups, had pulled over to the side of the highway. He froze and took a deep breath. Hector was in one of those pick-ups.

  “Que pasa?” he said into his radio to the driver of Hector’s car.

  “Silvano?” It was Hector. His voice was unmistakable, even over the distorted radio waves.

  “Hector, what is happening? It’s not good for us to be here Hector.”

  “Silvano, you take the men to this villa, I have another idea.”

  “What Hector?”

  But there was no answer. Instead Silvano looked in his mirror helplessly as Hector forced the driver of the pick-up out at gunpoint. He got into the driver’s seat. Silvano knew that he should act, but how? The driver was loyal to him ,as were his men in the lead two cars. But the MS-13 men? The Salvadorians had not stopped Hector giving him a beating before. He could not risk a gun battle between his own men on a highway deep in enemy territory. Not when they were so close. So Silvano did nothing. He watched Hector turn the pick-up sharply into the highway, completely oblivious to the traffic. He did nothing as he watched Hector drive the pick-up across the central reservation and take it onto the other side. He did nothing as he watched Hector accelerate the vehicle in the opposite direction. He was heading north, towards Cancun. Towards the airport.

  “What do we do Silvano?” asked the driver, following Silvano’s gaze at Hector’s rapidly disappearing truck.

  “Drive on,” said Silvano. “Drive on to the villa.” We will deal with Hector later, he thought.

  The convoy hit the dirt track at speed, not adjusting its pace at all to take account of the change in surface from smooth tarmac to potholed dirt. The resulting knocks to Silvano’s car caused stabs of pain to hit him almost everywhere. His ribs were the worst, it took all his self control not to scream in pain every time the car hit a bump. Silvano took a small vial out of his pocket and tapped two tiny blue pills into his mouth. He raised his head and twisted his neck to help get them down his dry throat. They were tearing along the jungle track at some speed, kicking up huge tails of dust and sand. Silvano looked into his side mirrors. He could hardly see the following cars through the dust cloud behind.

  “Slow down,” he said to the driver, a small gnarled local man he had never seen before. “How long until we are at the villa?”

  The man chewed something as he thought.

  “Six more kilometres down this road jefe,” he said eventually, his accent so thick that Silvano had difficulty understanding him.

  “Slow down then,” he ordered the driver. As the lead car slowed, so the others followed suit, until the whole convoy was going a steady twenty miles an hour, the cars swerving slightly at irregular intervals to avoid the ruts and bumps in the wide dirt track. Silvano picked up his radio and started giving orders to the men in the pick-ups behind. Two minutes later, the three pick-ups at the back pulled out and accelerated fast, past Silvano’s SUV. Each pick-up had several MS-13 men standing on its cargo bed. On two of the pick-ups, they were fixing .50 calibre heavy machine guns to a rack that was attached to the front cabin. There was no .50 calibre on the third pick-up. Instead, the two young gangbangers on the back were picking up RPG 7s – long, shoulder-mounted rocket propelled grenade launchers, capable of propelling their grenade warheads at 294 metres a second. The pick-ups drove into an attack formation, those with the heavy machine guns leading, followed closely by the men with the RPGs. The whole convoy picked up speed. The three men in black combat fatigues, sitting on the bench seat behind Silvano, cocked and checked their weapons.

  “Time to see what these Salvadorians can do,” Silvano said to them.

  Everything ends today.

  Lieutenant Jaime de Castillo waited for the convoy to go past. He was standing in the low scrub that separated the highway from the jungle track the vehicles had gone down. It was just as they expected, five cars. Two gangster SUVs all blacked out windows and chrome rims. Totally unsuited to the terrain, but senior cartelistas would travel in nothing else. Followed by three pick-ups, loaded with what looked like inner city gang members. They might have looked comical in their baggy jeans and bandanas in the middle of the Mayan jungle, he thought, had it not been for the array of heavy weaponry they were carrying. Jaime recognised the heavy machine guns, they were army issue, Browning M2HBs. The RPGs were pieces of shit, he noticed with relief. Standard RPG 7s, with normal grenade warheads, non-armour piercing. Still, it did not matter. They would all be dead soon anyway.

  He spoke into his radio and out of the scrub came his men. Three armoured personnel carriers drove out into the road. They parked horizontally across it, leaving no doubt to anyone wanting to drive onto the track that it was now blocked. In front of the APCs were manoeuvred two howitzers, M198s only three years old. Jaime ordered them to face directly down the track leading to the villa. They had a clear uninterrupted line of fire for two hundred meters. Any vehicle coming down the track would be shredded to scrap metal before it could get within firing range. Jaime smiled and lit a cigarette. He had three APCs, two howitzers, sixty commandos and, the piece de la resistance, two batteries of Mistral surface to air missiles. More than enough.

  He spoke on the radio to the operators of the Mistrals. They were under jungle camouflage thirty meters either side of him in the scrub.

  “Wait for the choppers to fly in, then take the netting off. Shoot down anything that tries to fly out.”

  Jaime inhaled hard on his cigarette and looked around at his men. His uncle had sent his best commandos and enough hardware to start a war with. But Jaime was not complaining. The men were all in full combat outfits. Teflon flak jackets, Teflon helmets, M16s with barrel mounted grenade launchers. They looked like they were going to war. They were going to war. Just then they heard the unmistakable sound of helicopters, flying low and fast, about a kilometre to their south. Just as expected, thought Jaime. The most direct course between the Zetas camp and the villa. He took his binoculars and watched them fly past. He was momentarily worried when he saw there were three choppers and that they were Black Hawks. He had been told two birds, not three and he was surprised to see they were US military issue. Not even his men had Black Hawks. But no matter, he quickly thought. Not even the big US Black Hawks could stop the Mistrals. French made, laser guided and packing 3 kilos of high explosive, they would rip the choppers to pieces.

  “Sir, shall we get ready to move?” Jaime looked to his left and saw his sergeant, a big tough bastard, holding his gun up and chewing a toothpick. He looked around at his men. They had seen what he had seen. They were pumped and ready to go. They wanted to fight; they wanted to kill.

  “Not yet sergeant, tell the men to stand down.”

  “Stand down?” the sergeant did not attempt to hide his disgust. “Sir, we have just watched a load of cartelistas drive dow
n this road. We’ve got the firepower, let’s take them.”

  Jaime looked at his sergeant. The man had been fighting in Chiapas while he was still playing with Lego. The sergeant knew it and Jaime knew it. They also both knew there was a chain of command.

  “That is my order sergeant. Tell the men to stand down. We are to let the animals fight it out between themselves. We’ll give them half an hour. After that we move in.”

  The sergeant saluted at attention, “yes sir.”

  “And sergeant,” said Jaime. The sergeant froze mid turn. “One more thing. Tell the men that we will not be taking any prisoners today. No one comes out of that villa alive.”

  The sergeant smiled a broad genuine grin and straightened his back.

  “Yes sir.”

  The front two pick-ups burst through the flimsy wire gates at speed, smashing them either side into the palm grove that surrounded the drive. They went into single file as the entire convoy drove down the long metalled drive, fast, the vehicles tyres screeching as they took the winding corners too fast. As soon as the lead pick-ups were within range of the large white house, the Salvadorians opened fire with the .50 calibres. The noise from the heavy machine guns was intense as they raked the front of the house with bullets. A few seconds later and two RPGs were fired at the huge wooden entrance doors. The explosion was deafening as the grenades ripped the heavy oak to saw dust. The cars pulled into the large forecourt and the Salvadorians streamed out of the four lead pick-ups. The front of the house was smoking and scarred, but Silvano noticed that little actual damage had been done, apart from to the doors. The place was a fortress. The Salvadorians ran through the still smoking entrance, firing their automatic weapons wildly as they did so. They were screaming to each other in a strange guttural dialect that Silvano could not make out. It sounded almost animalistic, like something you might hear deep in the jungle. Fucking Indians, thought Silvano, not for the first time. Still, El Ingles would now finally get what was coming to him.