Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

  * * * *

  Marcus stood in the open side doorway of the Black Hawk, hanging onto a nylon strap with one hand and press-ing a pair of Canon 12x36 image-stabilization binoculars against his eyes with the other, scanning the Zaragoza Mer-cado for his targets. He could see the two Chevy Suburbans prowling the market, each leaving a throng of angry people in its wake.

  "Have you found them yet," Jones barked into Marcus's headset.

  "Still looking," Marcus said.

  "For fuck's sake," Jones said, "how hard can it be to find one goddamned American in a market full of Mexi-cans?"

  "Harder than you might think, especially from a thou-sand feet," Marcus said. "If you can do better, you're wel-come to come up here and take over." He knew he was go-ing to catch hell from Gavin for the crack, but he didn't care. He was sick of that CIA pogue.

  "At ease with that," Gavin cut in. "Stick to the mis-sion."

  "What is the mission?" Marcus asked. "Are we here for a pickup or a cancellation?"

  Chapter 63

  Gavin looked at Jones. They were still sitting at the World Trade Bridge, in the OFFICIAL USE ONLY lane. Waiting. ATF agents with bomb-sniffing dogs were searching the bridge. "You heard him," Gavin said. "What's the mission?"

  "I heard him," Jones said. "And I'm surprised a man with your resume tolerates such insubordination."

  "It wasn't aimed at me."

  "But he is your subordinate."

  "He's a good man," Gavin said. "He's just frustrated. A feeling I share."

  Jones didn't say anything. Just stared at Gavin, not even blinking. Like some kind of reptile. He was starting to creep Gavin out. "I need an answer," Gavin said.

  "Recovering the video at this point is not as important as removing Greene from the equation," Jones said. "Even if the video gets out, without him to push the story, we can control it."

  "Control it how?"

  "We leak that the meeting was part of an undercover operation targeting the Sinaloa cartel. That way we're con-trolling the narrative by providing context."

  Gavin nodded. "That's not bad."

  "What I love about the American public," Jones said, "and one of the things that makes my job a little easier, is they are so easy to manipulate. Your average American will believe anything he or she sees on television or on the Inter-net, no matter how absurd and no matter how much it con-tradicts what that person already believes."

  Speaking of manipulation, Gavin thought. Who uses phrases like remove from the equation? Typical CIA double-speak is what it was, purposely vague, intentionally as clear as mud. Even now, the man who was calling himself Jones and whom Gavin was sure he would never see again, espe-cially if this op went sideways, simply could not bring him-self to issue clear, concise instructions. He wanted Greene dead, but he wouldn't say it. Fuck that. Gavin was going to make him say it. "So the mission is what...exactly?"

  "Remove Greene-"

  "From the equation," Gavin interrupted. "You said that, but I want to know right here, right now, are you ordering us to kill Greene and not bother trying to recover the video?"

  "Recover it if you can. Afterward."

  "So kill him first," Gavin said, "then try to get the vid-eo?"

  Jones nodded.

  Son of a bitch did it again, Gavin thought. So he gave up trying to pin the slippery bastard down. Instead, he keyed his radio. "Air One, your primary mission is cancellation. Your secondary objective, if possible, is asset recovery." He hesitated. "Your authorization is hard hat."

  * * * *

  "Your authorization is hard hat," Marcus heard through his headphones, Gavin using their internal code to tell him that the authority to execute the mission had come directly from their employer, the CIA, not from him. The mission was no longer a snatch. It was an assassination.

  "Roger that," Marcus said. Then he switched to the pi-lot's frequency. "We're close enough. Start circling."

  The pilot banked the bird into a wide turn around the market. Marcus kept scanning the ground with his binocu-lars.

  * * * *

  The Suburban was going to roll right past them. Scott hugged Benny tight on the bench and kept the front of his sombrero angled down to hide both their faces. Behind the Suburban, a man who'd had to jump out of its way threw a tomato that splattered on the back window. The Suburban kept rolling, the front bumper passing just ten feet from the bench.

  Then the SUV stopped, its tires chirping on the brick pavement. Right in front of Scott and Benny.

  "Hey, Poncho," an American voice called out.

  Scott couldn't see the Suburban or the men in it. All he could see was the underside of his hat. But he had no doubt that the man who had called out was talking to him. Scott ignored him. Hoping the Suburban would keep moving.

  It didn't.

  "Hey, amigo," the voice called out again. "You with the big hat. I'm talking to you. We're looking for an American. You seen one around here?"

  Scott slid his hand behind his back and wrapped his fin-gers around the butt of the Glock. The SUV didn't move. Scott heard one of the doors open.

  "What are we going to do?" Benny whispered.

  Scott exploded off the bench and pulled the Glock. The sombrero tumbled off his head. The left rear door of the Suburban was directly in front of him and partially open. The man in the seat had one tan combat boot on the ground. They were riding four deep in the SUV. Scott drove his left shoulder into the door and heard a sharp crack as the man's shin snapped in two. Then the man screamed.

  All of the Suburban's windows were down, and Scott saw four men, all fit, all buzz cut, all wearing khaki 5.11s and matching military green T-shirts. The two in the back held M-4s in their laps. The man closest to Scott kept screaming. The other one in the back seat tried to swing the muzzle of his carbine around, but Scott aimed the Glock through the window. The man froze.

  The front passenger left his M-4 in his lap and reached for a holstered pistol. Scott couldn't cover them all. Then an-other Glock appeared in the right front window. It was Ben-ny's, and she ground it against the man's head. He raised his hands. Scott pressed the muzzle of the Glock against the back of the driver's head. "Leave the guns and get out of the vehicle."

  Chapter 64

  The twelve-power magnification of the image-stabilization binoculars clearly, and in great detail, showed Marcus his four-man team being forced out of their SUV at gunpoint. "Ground One, Ground One," Marcus shouted into his head-set, "what the fuck are you doing?"

  "What's happening?" Gavin said over the same channel.

  Marcus didn't know what to say so he didn't say any-thing.

  A few seconds later, Gavin shouted in his ear, "Air One, give me a SITREP now." Gavin using military shorthand for a situation report, the What the fuck is happening? kind of report.

  On the ground, Greene and the Mexican cop were lining up the members of Marcus's team, now stripped of their weapons, and forcing three of them to undress. The fourth man was writhing on the ground and clutching his leg with both hands. A crowd of civilians was gathering around the spectacle. Some of them were clapping.

  Marcus keyed his microphone. "It appears...the two tar-gets got the drop on Ground One. They've been...captured."

  "Captured!" Gavin screamed.

  But Marcus wasn't listening. He scanned the market with the binos until he found the second Suburban riding the perimeter. Keying his microphone again, he said, "Ground Two, go directly to the center of the market to assist Ground One. Both targets are there and have four operators at gun-point at that location. Take a right seventy-five meters to your front. Go, go, go." He saw the second Suburban accel-erate.

  "Air One, what do you mean they have them at gun-point?" Gavin said, his voice only slightly more under con-trol.

  Fuck it, Marcus thought. Gavin was the one who'd picked the men for this mission. If he wanted to know what was happening, Marcus would tell it to him straight. "Just what I said. Two cops with pistols got the drop on four spec-war operat
ors and captured their dumb asses. Now they're disarmed. Three of them are on their knees without their pants, and the fourth is wounded."

  Ground Two was barreling across the market on one of the two wide lanes that divided the market into quarters. But Greene and the Mexican cop were piling into the Suburban. The motherfuckers were going to steal the god-damned truck.

  * * * *

  Scott slammed the driver's door and stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The back tires squealed and the Suburban took off like a scalded cat. The vehicle had obviously come with the biggest engine Chevrolet made, and even then the response felt like it had been tweaked up another couple of notches.

  Benny was in the very back, the cargo compartment, with the M-4s and pistols they had taken from the contrac-tors. "Holy shit," she said.

  Scott was moving fast with both hands on the wheel, one steering, the other laying on the horn as he shot down the narrow lane toward the outer edge of the market. People were jumping out of his way. There was too much happening in front of him to risk a look in the rearview mirror. "What?" he said.

  "It's like an armory back here."

  * * * *

  Marcus banged once on the pilot's helmet to get his at-tention, then pointed through the windshield at the fleeing Suburban. "Follow that vehicle and do not let it out of your fucking sight."

  The pilot nodded and pushed the Black Hawk into a di-ve.

  "Marcus," Gavin said over the open channel, disregard-ing protocol for the first time Marcus could remember and using a name instead of a call sign. "If you don't give me a SITREP right now, the next time I see you I'm going to put a bullet in your head. Copy?"

  Keying the mic, Marcus said, "The targets have escaped in Ground One's vehicle. Ground Two and I are both pursu-ing."

  Nothing from the peanut gallery. Good, Marcus thought. I need to concentrate.

  The pilot leveled the Black Hawk at 300 feet. Marcus didn't need his binoculars anymore. Ground One's Suburban hit the end of the lane and banged a hard left. From there it was a straight shot to a major roadway. Ground Two was a couple hundred yards behind but not closing the gap. The DEA agent was hauling ass.

  * * * *

  "Got one behind us," Benny yelled from the back of the Suburban.

  Scott checked the rearview and saw an identical black Chevy Suburban chasing them down the street that ran along the side of the market. Ahead was a cross street and a red light. Scott knew that stopping meant dying, so he jammed the accelerator to the floor and said a quick prayer.

  And drove directly into the path of an onrushing eight-een-wheeler.

  The huge rig came barreling at them from the right side, the grill already ten feet tall and growing taller by the second as the driver locked up his wheels and the truck skidded to-ward them.

  Benny screamed. Scott closed his eyes.

  But God must have heard Scott's prayer. Or it was blind luck. Maybe just the quick reflexes of the Mexican truck driver as he fought the steering wheel to keep his rig under some semblance of control. Because the two grossly mismatched vehicles passed each other with only the lightest of touches, the tip of the big truck's front bumper barely kissing the back of the Suburban. The tractor-trailer plowed ahead without a ripple as the driver let off his brakes to keep the rig from jackknifing. But the Suburban wasn't so lucky. The force of the impact knocked Scott and Benny into a tailspin, and when Scott opened his eyes the world was flying sideways.

  The spin was too hard and too fast for counter-steering, so Scott held on to the wheel and didn't fight it. Three-quarters through the spin the Suburban's momentum slowed, so Scott helped it the rest of the way around by turning into the spin and punching the gas. The heavy SUV kept spinning and when it got all the way around, Scott straightened the steering wheel and kept the gas pedal mashed against the floorboard.

  * * * *

  "Jesus Christ, did you see that?" Buck said in Marcus's headphone. Buck was driving the second Suburban, desig-nated Ground Two, and was chasing the hijacked Suburban, Ground One, whose crew was still scrambling to get their pants back on at the Zaragoza Mercado.

  "I saw it," Marcus said.

  "Motherfucker can drive," Buck said. "I'll give him that."

  "He got lucky," Marcus replied. "Now catch his ass and take him the fuck out."

  "Air One, give me a SITREP," Gavin barked in Mar-cus's ear. Marcus ignored him.

  Chapter 65

  The second Suburban was gaining on them, now just fifty yards back. "Get him off of us," Scott said.

  Benny smashed out the back window with the butt of an M-4 carbine and cut loose with a long burst of automatic fire. The explosion of shots inside the closed confines of the SUV's cabin was deafening and left a high-pitched whine in Scott's ears.

  At the next intersection, Scott ripped a hard left onto a four-lane divided highway named Calzada Revolucion that ran south towards downtown.

  Benny fired off the rest of the thirty-round magazine and jammed in a fresh one. Scott checked the rearview mirror. The SUV had dropped back, its windshield shattered, but it was still coming after them. "Aim for the engine block," he shouted.

  Ahead of them cars were careening off the road to es-cape the carnage, while overhead Scott heard the whop, whop, whop of the Black Hawk's big rotor beating the air. Gunfire erupted behind them and a bullet dinged off the doorpost beside Scott's head and punched a hole in the windshield. Benny opened fire with the new magazine.

  Scott blasted the stolen Suburban across Calle Jesus Molina with the speedometer pegged at ninety-five. Some-how they didn't get broadsided. On the other side of the in-tersection, two cars were side by side in front of him doing fifty at the most. He passed them on the right shoulder at nearly twice their speed. Then as he edged back into the out-side lane, the side window directly behind him exploded and showered him with glass. The shock made him swerve left. He fought it by torqueing the wheel to the right, but he went too far with it. He corrected left but went too far again. Then the Suburban was lurching back and forth at nearly a hundred miles an hour, each time on the very edge of a high-speed rollover, which Scott knew neither of them would survive. In the cargo compartment, the heavy gyrational forces slammed Benny from one side to the other.

  In desperation, Scott quit fighting the physics and held the wheel centered. The lurching slowed, then stopped as the big SUV righted itself. He checked his mirror. The second Suburban was still behind them.

  They passed the turnoff for Avenida Aeropuerto on the right, then seconds later Calle Tecolotes on the left. Scott drove another mile on Calzada Revolucion, zigzagging through traffic and passing on the shoulder when he couldn't find an opening. The pursuing Suburban clung to them but because of all the wild maneuvering, Benny couldn't get a clean shot at it. The good news was that the men in the other SUV couldn't get a clean shot at them either.

  Across Avenida Eva Samano, the highway curved east toward the river and downtown. The other Suburban was still on them and somewhere overhead, even through the ringing in his ears, Scott heard the Black Hawk.

  "Hang on," he shouted. Then, keeping the accelerator almost to the floor, he stomped his left foot on the brake pe-dal and spun the steering wheel to the right, powering the Suburban through a sliding, tire-smoking ninety-degree turn at maximum speed, a technique called drifting that left a thick cloud of burned rubber behind them. When Scott re-leased the brake and pulled out of the turn, they were racing down a two-lane street headed south.

  A quick check in the rearview mirror revealed that the other Suburban was still behind them but had lost a lot of ground during the turn, although now that they were both out of traffic, the sight lines and the firing lines were clear.

  Scott backed off the accelerator and tracked the other Suburban in the mirror. "Brace yourself," he said to Benny, loud enough to hear himself over the ringing. "And be ready to open fire when I hit the brakes. Put a whole mag into the engine." He saw her nod and switch to a full magazine. Then she pushed her back
against the rear seat and spread her feet to lock herself into a solid shooting position.

  The other Suburban was gaining on them, and Scott knew he was taking a huge gamble. The timing was critical. If he got it right, he would give Benny a huge no-miss tar-get. If he got it wrong, he would give the bad guys the same thing. Everything depended on who got off the first shots.

  The other Suburban was fifty yards back and closing. The front-seat passenger kicked out part of the shattered windshield and sent the fractured sheet of glass sliding off the hood onto the pavement.

  "Now!" Scott shouted and stomped the brake pedal. The Suburban pitched forward and slid, all four of its tires clawing the road and screaming in protest. His eyes shifted up to the rearview mirror again just in time to see the pursuing SUV dip nose-down, its driver jumping on his own brake pedal. Then Benny yanked the trigger of the M-4 and sent a steam of .223-caliber full-metal jacketed bullets into the front end of the Suburban, blowing off chunks of steel and glass as the bullets raked the grill, the hood, and the remnants of the windshield.

  Blood exploded inside the pursuing Suburban.

  Scott kept his foot jammed down on the brake pedal un-til they screeched to a stop in the middle of the street. Be-hind them, the other Suburban came out of its nosedive at about twenty miles an hour, veering to the right and parad-ing past in a slow-motion pantomime until it crashed into a utility pole, shaking loose a barrel-shaped transformer and sending a shower of sparks cascading down onto the crumpled hood. A second later there was a dull whumpf and the SUV burst into flames.

  No one got out.

  Scott punched the accelerator to the floor.

  * * * *

  Standing in the open door of the Black Hawk, Marcus saw Ground Two's SUV smashed against a utility pole and burning. "Son of a bitch," he said without keying his mic.

  The other Suburban was pulling away.