by Jack Slater
The driver’s outburst summoned Hector’s attention back to the here and now. He squinted as, now several hundred yards ahead of his speeding convoy, the flight of helicopters broke left and right before spinning as neatly as a top and coming to a halt in the sky. They were now spread out in a square formation, one stacked upon the other, hovering dead over the road.
“I say again,” Ramirez said, his voice rising in pitch. “Unknown flight of helicopters from 101 Air Squadron, you are directed to close on the prison and –”
A puff of what appeared to be steam or smoke appeared at the tip of one of the gun pods attached to the helicopter at the top right of the tight formation. Barely a second later, all four of the light attack choppers were firing down on his company of Marines. The minigun rounds spat vengefully from the mouths of the hovering aircraft, chewing up the asphalt ahead of the procession of vehicles. A storm of dust and chunks of debris was blown into life in an instant, swirling with greater intensity as the gunfire rattled overhead.
And then the first of Captain León ’s vehicles was swallowed by it.
“Dios mio,” Hector León murmured, momentarily stunned into indecision by the sight of death raining down from the skies above. The cartels had never tried anything like this before. Nothing even close. He’d once faced down an eighteen-wheeler they’d up-armored into a makeshift APC, but even that deformed beast paled in comparison to these weapons of war.
“Break contact, break contact,” Lieutenant Ramirez screamed into his handset. “I say again, break contact. You are firing on Marine vehicles. Break, break, break.”
Hector understood what his subordinate as yet did not. This was no accident. Somehow the cartels had arranged this, either by stealing the choppers or convincing their crews to turn on the country that had birthed and trained them.
But whichever it was, it didn’t matter right now. There were only two options: either keep on driving in the hope of escape or roll the dice and take the battle to them. It was fight or flight, as it usually was.
He turned and grabbed Ramirez by the shoulder, digging his fingertips in and squeezing tight until the man fell silent. He stared into his captain’s eyes, his own black with terror, his chest heaving frantically.
“Order the convoy to stop,” Hector said. “The men in the trucks need to dismount and get to cover.”
“Yes sir. And the Scorpions?”
“Just give the order,” Hector snapped. His own radio unit was in the footwell between his feet, and he cursed his lack of preparation.
Ramirez nodded and spoke hurriedly into his own handset. Immediately, the convoy began to slow, and the Minigun file from overhead overshot the procession, forcing the helicopters to reposition and momentarily buying him and his men a few seconds’ respite from the deadly hail overhead.
Hector raised his voice as he reached down between his legs and grabbed his radio. “Everybody out. Get to cover. Now!”
He tugged at the door handle, then shouldered it open, jumping to the ground and crouching behind the stopped Ford truck for a second to suck in a lungful of air. His heart was racing, and his shouldered carbine thumped painfully against his side.
“Ramirez,” he yelled over the roar of screaming men and the returning rattle of gunfire from the choppers overhead. “Stick with me.”
The lieutenant did as instructed, hugging his CO as Hector sprinted to the nearest building, a shanty-like structure made of corrugated iron and concrete bricks. It would do little to stop a 7.62 round if one was fired at it in anger, but it was all that was on offer. Around him, his Marines were doing the same. Overhead, the sound of helicopter rotors was as ominous as it was relentless. The four choppers were now firing independently, lining up targets and loosing off short bursts at will.
One of the Scorpions took a pummeling, rounds sparking off its armor chassis and leaving deep welts where the paint was sheared clean off, but the helicopters seemed to be concentrating their fire on the Fords. Though the MiniCommando pickups were specially modified for military operations, incorporating roll bars, gun points and communications equipment, they were not armored, and depleted uranium rounds ripped through them as though they were protected by nothing more than candy floss.
“Ramirez,” Hector called out, not allowing himself a moment to think. “Get gunners on those Scorpions. We need to put some fire onto those choppers now.”
The lieutenant relayed the order, and as he did so Hector cursed. They had antitank rockets in the trunks of most of the trucks. In his haste to get his men to safety, he hadn’t even thought of them.
A few feet away, a Marine was pressed against the building, his rifle nestled against his chin, occasionally firing measured bursts into the sky. Hector knew that it was fruitless, and the Marine probably did too – but in combat, men prefer to feel in control of their fate, whether or not their actions truly have any chance of tipping the scales.
“Sergeant!” Hector yelled. “Take two men and get me some RPGs. Second you get a shot, take it. Understood?”
The Marine nodded curtly but didn’t acknowledge the order verbally before grabbing two other men and sprinting into hell. Hector understood that. It could easily be a death sentence. And yet the man did it anyway.
He turned his attention to the armored personnel carriers, which were stretched messily down the road over about a hundred yards. Each one had a Browning M2 heavy machine gun mounted on top, accessed through a port in the vehicle’s roof. In transit, and thus when his convoy was hit, the weapons were unmanned, but he now saw men scrambling into position, and the vehicles themselves maneuvering for better aim.
Hector understood that the weapons would be of little utility if the gunships came close in. The machine guns mounted to his armored personnel carriers were designed for an anti-personnel mission, not anti-air. Without removing them from the vehicles, it would only be possible to get so much elevation.
“Get some fire onto those choppers,” he yelled out unnecessarily to the men around him, who were already taking the lead of the earlier Marine sergeant and unloading everything they had. “We need to hold them off to give the Scorpions a chance.”
He raised his own carbine to his shoulder and fired several three-round bursts into the sky, targeting one of the Defenders as it began maneuvering into position for another gun run. He knew that unless a particularly unfortunate bird happened to get in the way, he had precious little chance of hitting anything.
Dropping his eyes, he watched his three men running through the debris to the nearest of the pickups, the one he himself had abandoned just a couple of minutes earlier. It was now a smoking husk of shattered glass and rent metal. The front tire on the side he couldn’t see must have been pierced right through, because even though they were run-flat, it was sitting at a funny, sunken angle.
The two men accompanying the sergeant crouched and provided covering fire as he jumped into the back of the pickup, though Hector judged that it might’ve proved a better course of action to simply hide. Trying to shoot one of these things with 5.62 mm ammunition was like a toddler tweaking the nose of a grizzly bear. It was only likely to get them mad.
On the road behind him, the heavier chatter of the 50 cal machine guns opened up, and for the first time the helicopters responded to something that was happening on the ground rather than the other way round. Each of them responded to the new threat immediately, breaking left or right and speeding away from the site of their ambush.
Hector pumped his fist with elation. They were doing exactly the wrong thing – at least from their point of view. They were running from the gunfire, instead of getting close and high and picking his troops off from directly above, where it would be difficult for his men to return fire.
They could still do that, of course, but it would take time and airspeed. Which gave him a chance.
The gunners were in position on all five of the APCs now, even the one that had survived a drive-by from one of the choppers overhead. They appeared to be working tog
ether, herding the closest of the choppers with bursts of gunfire.
Now that he could do nothing but watch, Hector finally took the time to hook his radio unit into his headset, cursing the error of judgment that had caused him to fail to do so earlier. He’d expected to have time to get into position once he arrived at the walls of the prison. Instead, the mistake had left him deaf and dumb during the crucible of battle. Maybe some of his men had even died as a result of it.
You couldn’t have predicted this.
“Move him west, move him west,” a voice repeated hoarsely over the net. “I’ve got a shot.”
Hector watched as four of the Scorpions concentrated their fire in the same place, to the left side of the rearmost chopper, which was a hundred yards or so away from the road. It started banking sharply to its right as a storm of lead and tracer rounds rattled through the air to its left.
And as it did so, it ran right into the aim of the fifth Scorpion, and a long burst from its M2 cut the little aircraft apart.
The chopper hung in the air for a few seconds, slowly losing its forward momentum as a thick cloud of choking black smoke billowed from its side. The speed of the main rotor began to slow, and whether it was too close to the ground to recover, or the pilot was already dead didn’t seem to matter.
It fell to the ground, first slowly, then all at once. It didn’t explode when it impacted the earth, but the smoke intensified, and flames started licking its chassis. Each of the Scorpions concentrated their fire into its crippled skeleton until Hector was certain that no one inside was left alive.
A roar of exaltation filled the air, then a woosh as a rocket trail scratched out across the sky, chasing the other three helicopters. The RPG – an old Soviet design manufactured locally – was not designed to hunt and kill a moving target, let alone one that traversed the skies rather than the ground, and so its exhaust traced a long, lonely chart line into the sky before hitting the ground somewhere far out of sight.
The rest of the choppers were out of effective machine gun range now. Technically the Browning could hit a target at a distance of over 8000 yards – but not one traveling that fast. Hector waited for them to turn, to learn a lesson from the sacrifice of their fallen comrades and close for the kill, but they did not.
Instead, they set a course for the prison, only a couple of miles distant.
Now that the gunfire had fallen silent, a brief, ethereal calm seemed to reign. One of his Marines, Hector could not even see where the sound was coming from, was weeping, but even that sound did not feel real, especially over the backing track of the ringing cry of cells in his ear dying.
Ramirez walked toward him, unbuckling his helmet and dropping it loosely to his side as the soles of his boots dragged along the dusty ground. His tongue was slow, expression shellshocked. “What the hell just happened?”
Hector kept his eyes locked on the choppers, needing to be certain that they would not return. He wasn’t sure his men could withstand another assault from the skies. But they did not turn. Instead, they buzzed around the prison like gnats, opening fire on its guard towers as they closed in.
“Casualties?” he asked.
“At least a dozen dead.”
The captain swore and punched his thigh with a closed fist. How had this happened? He turned back to the lieutenant, attempting to wrestle his mind back to the matters pressing at this very moment. “Medevac?”
“I wasn’t sure whether to request one,” Ramirez admitted, his face hangdog. “In case –”
“If they are planning on hitting us again, they won’t wait for us to call it in,” Hector said. “Do it now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned and surveyed the damage as the lieutenant carried out his orders. Five of his eight pickups were smoldering wrecks, and one more was entirely boxed in by the carcasses of its brethren. At least four of the Scorpions were roadworthy, however, and the fifth would probably be able to limp into battle, if somewhat behind the rest.
He keyed his radio headset. “Marines. Get back in the vehicles. We’ve still got a job to do. Leave the wounded and as many medics as we can spare. We move out in five.”
Around him, his battered men began to divvy up ammunition and weapons and move the wounded to positions from which they could be quickly evacuated. And not thirty seconds later, a low growl overpowered the ringing in the captain’s ears. Shortly after that, a heavy thump-whack echoed across the ground.
More choppers.
Hector spun on his heel, searching for the source of the sound, and quickly identified two large, black smudges on the horizon and moving fast. It wasn’t possible to make out their model, but it was clear they were far larger than the light assault aircraft that had so recently ripped his unit apart. “Take cover!”
10
Fernando Carreon emerged from the far end of a long, drab prison hallway with an entirely bewildered expression on his face. He was surrounded by a quartet of César’s men, hemmed in at every angle. They had been instructed to take a bullet for him if necessary, and since it was unlikely that they would do such a thing without the prospect of a considerable financial reward, one commensurate with the risk had been offered.
The gunfire in the distance was now sparse. Occasional bursts from automatic weapons were rare, though more common was the sound of a single gunshot bouncing off the featureless gray walls. It was clear what the latter heralded: the settling of scores.
César whistled at his men to pick up the pace. They did so, and he was pleased to note that they did not forget their training, even now, so close to perceived safety, slowing every time they passed a closed doorway to either side of their route for a team member to provide cover.
As the small unit came to a halt in front of César’s own personal detail, the two men at its head parted. “Jefe, it’s good to see you at long last. And looking so well.”
Carreon had lost at least fifteen pounds since becoming acquainted with food behind bars. On his somewhat gaunt face was mixed suspicion and not a little fear. “Who are you? I recognize your face.”
“A friend.”
“What’s happening?” Carreon demanded, a touch of imperiousness in his tone as he reacquainted himself with the memory of command.
César cocked his head to one side and smiled. “Why, jefe – did nobody tell you? You are escaping.”
“Impossible!” the cartel boss scoffed, his face visibly draining of color. “We’ll never get out of here alive. What have you done?”
“Maybe that would be better than being handed over to the Americans to spend the rest of your life in Supermax.” César shrugged. “But that is a matter for the philosophers. I do not expect to have to find out. Come, we have a ride to catch.”
The sicario turned without waiting for any further response and beckoned Carreon to follow. After a moment’s hesitation, he did so, turning left at the end of the hallway and following it until they reached an exterior wall of the prison wing which led into an interior courtyard.
They emerged onto it, an exercise yard painted a faded blue, with netless basketball hoops at either end. Several of César’s men were already there, and more joined every minute, some leading small columns of men dressed in similar fashion to Carreon’s own light brown prison scrubs.
Already thirty men were lined against the courtyard’s far wall, giving their names as César’s men checked them off lists contained in ruggedized tablet computers. The door swung shut after the last of César’s small group stepped out, and Carreon glanced over his shoulder in momentary alarm.
“Nothing to worry about, jefe.” César grinned.
Carreon opened his mouth to say something in response before closing it as a flurry of excitement erupted on the other side of the exercise yard. César watched with interest as two of his men dragged an inmate from the group, pulling him away from a developing tussle. They threw the man against the ground, and one placed his boot on the inmate’s chest, conspicuously brandishing his
rifle to keep him in place.
“What’s happening?” Carreon asked.
Again, César shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Perhaps a case of mistaken identity.”
The larger group of inmates started to bellow with rage, all aimed at the hapless man lying prostrate on the ground. The masked soldier holding him down turned his head toward César, who casually drew his fingers across his throat.
A gunshot rang out a second later, chased by echoes that bounced off all four walls. The courtyard momentarily fell silent, or near enough, a quiet that was only broken by the distant, heavy thump of helicopter rotors.
In the calm, the inmates’ attention turned to César’s small group of fighters. Instantly a murmur of intrigue, then outright excitement began bubbling among them. Then a cheer. A man beat the air with his fist.
Then singing.
Carreon turned to his mysterious rescuer, his face wrinkling. He looked partly in shock. “What are they saying?”
“They’re chanting your name, jefe. Why don’t you show them your appreciation? Tell them to fight. I suspect we may need their help.”
César gave his supposed boss a discreet but forceful shove forward as the noise from the helicopters grew louder overhead. And as he watched Carreon nail his colors to their mast, an unseen grin stretched across his face.
“Where the hell is my air cover?” León called out, seeing that Lieutenant Ramirez was huddled over the squad radio.
He’d just watched two pairs of Eurocopter 725s soar past overhead, giving his still-smoking convoy a wide berth. They were only transport choppers, but heavy ones nevertheless, with door guns on either side. They could fly both faster and higher than the little assault helicopters that had already mauled his men once – and would take a much heavier beating, to boot. And though Hector Alvarez León was indisputably an outstanding officer, it didn’t take a Napoleon to understand that the fact that the four choppers hadn’t made contact with him probably indicated they weren’t friendly, either. Or that until something happened to diminish the enemy’s control of the skies, his men might as well be out of the fight.