by Jack Slater
Especially the officers.
He grimaced to conceal a smile at the untruth as he reflected that he ought to spend more time with the PT instructors. The problem with command was the same the world over: too much paperwork. He hadn’t signed up to ride a desk, and even though he was an officer in the Marines, he found himself doing altogether too much of that.
“What is it, Ramirez?”
“Shots fired at Altiplano Prison, sir,” Lieutenant Ramirez said, regaining control over his breath.
Hector glanced automatically at the alarm strobe just above the young man’s head.
“It didn’t come through the hard line, sir. A guard called it in by phone. They are taking heavy fire from unknown attackers who have penetrated the prison’s outer walls.”
“Great,” he muttered, opening his desk drawer and pulling out his side-arm. “That’s all you got?”
“For now, sir. The Air Force has been notified, that’s all I know. The alert squadron is lifting off now.”
“The men?”
“Forming up as we speak.”
“Good job, Ramirez,” León said, already jogging as he passed the younger man, a spike of adrenaline constricting his throat and slightly altering his usual deep timbre. “Let’s go.”
César checked his watch. The timer on the screen told him that nine minutes had elapsed since he’d shot the jail’s warden and his men had begun their assault.
The prison’s thick concrete walls smothered the sound of gunfire, but the rhythmic reverberation of the heavier caliber weapons was impossible to ignore. Every couple of minutes a louder crash echoed, signaling that his men were using explosives to deal with the heavier pockets of resistance from the prison’s guards.
César had no last name, or at least not one he advertised. It had been so long since anyone had said it out loud, even he had mostly forgotten.
He frowned as he noticed several glistening patches on his adopted uniform. He’d only discharged his weapon once, which meant that the brain matter and viscera belonged to the prison’s erstwhile warden. The liquid had already seeped into the material, so he didn’t bother attempting to wipe it away.
“Okay,” he said out loud, raising his voice to address the entire control room. “We’re done here. Is the package ready?”
One of his men, crouched over a computer terminal that connected to the prison’s central control system, flashed a thumbs-up at him. “It’s all queued up.”
César glanced around the bloodied control room one last time. There was no satisfaction on his face. He felt nothing for the bodies of the dead guards that now littered the space. They had posed an obstacle to the successful conclusion of his mission, and now they did not. He felt no more compunction at eliminating their resistance then he might at excising a particularly intrusive infestation of rodents.
“Good. Stay with me.”
The technician nodded and grabbed a tablet computer that sat beside him. He shoved it into a backpack and joined his master, who let out a loud whistle to warn the rest of his men that it was time to go.
They responded immediately and followed him out, not ducking as a particularly violent crash from somewhere in the giant prison caused dust to fall like a light covering of snow from the ceiling. The last one out closed the heavy steel door gingerly.
It was for the best, César knew, since the same man had earlier attached a pound of heavy explosives to a desk on the opposite side of the doorway and packed the plastic explosive with ball bearings. Unless they were careful, whoever opened that door would meet a very sticky ending.
The team’s digital radio system beeped, and a crystal-clear voice reported, “Target is secure. Moving now.”
César glanced at his watch. The number 11 now blinked into life onto its face. He grimaced. They were behind schedule. The target wasn’t where he was supposed to be. When his men had entered the cell, they’d found it empty.
Several frantic minutes of searching had ensued before the target was discovered face-down in the caged exercise yard, dust coating his face in the front of his prison uniform, and a guard’s weapon aimed directly at his back. The guard in question, César presumed, was now dead.
Another explosion reverberated through the prison, and he frowned. He hadn’t expected the prison’s guards to put up such stiff resistance, though of course it was never entirely out of the question. Men have a habit of stiffening their spine when their backs are up against the wall.
He keyed his radio. “Report.”
The updates came in from each of the teams scattered around the prison. Alfa squad was in the courtyard just inside the prison’s main entrance, defending the infiltration team’s vehicles. César did not intend to exit the prison on four wheels, but he was too experienced an operator not to maintain a backup plan just in case.
“We’re pinned down,” Alfa’s squad leader reported, tension clipping his voice, but without panic. “They have sharpshooters in turrets five and seven. We’ve taken the rest out already. One walking casualty.”
“Help’s on its way,” César replied as he jogged through the prison’s corridors. “Bravo?”
A new voice reported, “We have the target. On the move.”
César’s small procession came to a halt at a steel door, and he momentarily pulled his attention away from the radio. “What’s the holdup?”
One of his men was fumbling with a bunch of keys. This was an older part of the prison, and unlike the high-security wing from which they were extracting their target, it wasn’t wired up with the electronically operated doors they had observed earlier from the control room. His technician didn’t bother removing the tablet computer from his backpack, but César shot a warning look at his demolitions expert.
“I’m good,” the man with the keys said, trying a third and being rewarded with a heavy mechanical click as the locking mechanism swung open, and he yanked the door after it. “Let’s –”
Whatever he was about to say was cruelly curtailed in his throat, courtesy of a flurry of gunfire. For a moment, César watched as the mercenary’s body seemed to hang in midair, jerking slightly as a second and a third round impacted the plates in his armor carrier before one final round pierced his skull and tugged his head back like it was being yanked by string.
César reacted immediately, first pressing himself against the wall, then dropping his chest to the ground. “Someone close that fucking door,” he yelled over the roar of small arms fire.
Rounds cracked overhead and chewed chunks out of the concrete walls. A ricochet glanced off one wall and bounced against the other before the brass came to a halt in front of his face. He withdrew his pistol and from his position on the floor fired blind through the doorway.
“Contact, contact,” he said into his radio handset once one of his men finally pushed the steel doorway into its frame, and the crackling wildfire of gunshots was momentarily dimmed, only to be replaced by the occasional metallic clunk as a bullet impacted the thick door. Whoever was on the other side appeared anxious to remind them they were there. “Report.”
Each of his units checked in in turn and confirmed that either they were not currently in contact, or if they were it was in another sector of the prison entirely.
César reloaded and heard his men doing the same. There was a clarity in knowing that the resistance in the next hallway was one of malice, not ignorance. It meant that whatever action he took to squash it was justified. That was important, since even in a military unit as handsomely remunerated as this one, friendly fire was frowned upon.
“Grenades,” he said in a voice loud enough to be heard but not so powerful as to carry through the doorway.
“Ready,” one of his men indicated, brandishing a pair of dark green orbs about the size of baseballs and decorated with a few lines of spidery yellow text. César grunted with approval.
He pointed at another of his men and gestured at him to move toward the side of the doorway. Another gunshot impact echoed f
rom the other side, though they were becoming more infrequent now. Perhaps the defenders on the other side were running out of ammunition.
It didn’t matter.
César held up three fingers and made sure that both men saw them. Then he checked to ensure the rest of his team was ready.
This was the way he’d fought in Mosul, and in Basra, and every place in which he had made war since. Stun grenades were for amateurs, in his view. Fighting was about survival and beating the other guy – not honor.
He glanced at his watch. Nineteen minutes. This was taking too long. He dropped a finger.
The last finger fell, and César watched as the man to the left of the doorway pulled it back, prompting the man to its right to unleash the barrel of his submachine gun on full automatic. The full thirty round magazine clicked dry in a couple of seconds, but it was plenty long enough to allow the man right in the middle to pull the fuses from both grenades and toss them into the hallway behind.
César counted in his head, pressing himself to the ground as his man hastily swung the door closed once again. The grenades had a five-second fuse.
Three.
Four.
The blood pumping in his eardrums sounded like waves crashing against a shoreline, and he heard two swells breaking in his mind as the final second stretched away.
The explosion shook the floor and was followed half a second later by a second. A hail of metal fragments rattled against the door, and a plume of dust erupted from beneath it, surfing along the floor and coating the nearest men in its folds.
César launched himself to his feet faster than any of his men. He sprinted toward the door with his weapon drawn and was the first man through. The hallway beyond it was thick with dust and smoke and the acrid stink of detonated explosives. It was almost impossible to make out detail, so he fired blindly at anything that looked like it might be a figure – human or otherwise.
When the dust began to settle, he saw three men in the hallway, each shredded by the grenade’s fragments. Unlike his own men, they were not wearing body armor. There was little need for it behind the safety of the prison wall. After all, inmates rarely came equipped with any firepower greater than a sharpened toothbrush handle.
Until today.
A fourth individual was slumped against a wall five yards farther down the corridor. The blast had shredded his blue uniform pants, which had the added effect of making it quite evident that he was bleeding profusely. He wasn’t armed, though a handgun lay a few feet to his side. César strode toward him, and the sound of movement somehow penetrated the fortress of shock that must surely have encompassed the man’s entire existence.
The mortally wounded guard looked up at César, then turned for the weapon, but succeeded only in toppling onto the floor and forcing a mournful, even pitiful yelp of pain from his lips.
César kicked the weapon away dispassionately and leveled his own at the injured man’s skull. He leaned down, pressing the muzzle of his weapon against the man’s bloodied temple. “Are there more of you?”
The man only moaned once more. Even now, the life was fading from his eyes, measured in the units of blood leaking from his shattered, useless leg. Yet somehow he seemed to derive strength from somewhere deep inside and levered himself upward with a grunt only of effort, not agony – though his whitened lips and face gave the lie to the act.
With a force of effort, the dying guard raised his face to César’s and whispered, “Screw you!”
Flecks of bloodied spittle rained from his lips and landed on his adversary’s proffered cheek.
César nodded, and though it might have appeared surprising to an onlooker, it was entirely without malice. The pistol in his hand fired once, and the wounded guard’s head was no more.
In the confines of the hallway, the weapon’s report was almost unimaginably loud, and though it was not a sound he was unaccustomed to, César winced nonetheless. He stood up and enjoyed the brief moment of silence that often follows the taking of a man’s life. A space of calm and reflection.
His men were waiting for him when he turned, and he was pleased to note that the team’s weapons were spaced out to cover every possible angle of attack. The computer technician was the only man who wasn’t armed, and even he was crouched low, head swiveling as he scanned from side to side in search of anyone approaching.
César exhaled. But the moment of peace did not last. The radio earpiece blared in his ear, and it was evident from the body language of his men that they heard the transmission also.
“Boss, it’s Alfa. They found a heavy machine gun. We could use some help.”
9
Captain León ’s ragged convoy sped down the Carreterra Federal 55. Ordinarily the journey from their base at the headquarters of the 22nd Military Zone in Toluca to Altiplano prison would have taken a hair under 40 minutes. More with traffic.
But today there would be no traffic. Pickup trucks and SUVs marked POLICIA ESTATAL had sealed off every entrance to the highway between Toluca and San Antonio Bonixi, and even more units streaked alongside and ahead of the Marine convoy, coralling any hapless commuter that strayed into their path.
The captain’s command vehicle was a souped-up Ford F-250, outfitted with a full complement of communications equipment. It was one of eight similar vehicles, along with five Scorpion armored personnel carriers. All told, he had a full company of 80 men with him. All practiced shooters.
“Do we have eyes over the prison yet?” León said without turning to face Lieutenant Ramirez. Instead, he nervously checked his carbine for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Thirty seconds,” Ramirez replied, not tearing his attention away from the rapid stream of communication emanating from his radio handset. “1st Air Group out of Santa Lucia AFB has two flights of choppers en route. The first group should be blades over any moment now.”
León nodded curtly and craned his neck to peer into the sky. He was grateful for the presence of the air support. The primary role for which his unit trained as the designated Rapid Reaction Force for Altiplano Prison was to put down an inmate riot. This – whatever this was – was a different kettle of fish entirely. Almost to a man, his Marines were combat veterans. It was hard to be anything else in the Mexican Naval Infantry, which had been at the tip of the spear of its country’s war against the cartels for almost a decade.
But even so, his boys were trained and equipped to put down small-scale unrest. Perhaps to subdue a wing that had fallen under the control of its inmates and commandeered a small number of weapons from captured guards. But put down a full-scale assault?
I need more men.
“We’re three minutes out, Captain,” the driver reported from up front as he pulled a hard left and exited the highway, following directly behind a pair of Scorpion APCs driving abreast. There was some traffic left on this road, but the second their drivers noticed the Marine vehicles in the rearview mirrors, they quickly made themselves scarce.
“Where’s my air support, Ramirez?” Hector muttered, his voice clipped. He needed to know what was going on inside that prison.
The lieutenant held up a finger to preempt his commanding officer’s question and listened intently to the flow of chatter over the radio. He answered something else entirely.
“The guards inside got to a radio,” he reported. “They have control of towers five and seven, and isolated units are spread out throughout the prison. Whoever’s behind this attack is well armed. They have about forty men, wearing National Guard uniforms.”
He fell silent and returned his attention to the radio.
And a moment later, the thump-thump-thump of helicopter rotors in the skies overhead answered Hector’s question anyway. He angled his neck once more and searched for the telltale black dots in the sky.
Twisting entirely around in his seat, he saw them at last through the SUV’s rear window. Four light helicopters, banking from the east and racing low over the road toward his convoy. They were only a
hundred feet or so from the ground.
“Look like Defenders,” a sergeant muttered from the back.
“Ramirez,” Hector ordered. “Find out if they’ve got sharpshooters on board. Then tell them to find out what the hell the bad guys are up to.”
“Yes, sir.”
The roar from the engines of the four McDonnell Douglas MD 500 Defenders grew as they got closer. The small helicopters sounded more like amped-up lawnmowers than their heavier cousins, but they were quick and endlessly maneuverable. The Americans had used a very similar bird in Vietnam, Hector knew, and they were perfect for this type of reconnaissance work.
The helicopters closed the last few yards, and for a short breath they disappeared from sight, blocked by the Ford’s roof, before soaring through the air as they emerged through the glass of the vehicle’s windshield. If anything, they now seemed even lower than they had before. In the distance behind them, and just to the left of the road, the hulking form of Altiplano Prison hove into view.
“Two minutes out, Captain,” the driver reported.
Hector nodded, his eyes drawn to the helicopters overhead. They were each equipped with a pair of gun pods, he saw—7.62mm miniguns capable of putting several thousand rounds a minute onto a target. A small exhalation whistled free from his pursed lips as he noted their presence with approval.
His men were not technically outnumbered by the prison’s attackers – at least what they knew of the numbers – but in urban combat a two-to-one ratio of attackers to defenders was extremely underweight. He would prefer to have at least four times as many men with him, and maybe even more. After all, Altiplano Prison contained several thousand hardened criminals, mostly cartel sicarios. It was possible – plausible, even – that the enemy had released some or all of these men to fight alongside them. Something not so dissimilar had occurred in Sinaloa only a year or so before.
And if that was true, then he and his men might be walking into a death trap.
“What the hell?”