Viper: A Thriller

by Ross Sidor

  The idea of abandoning them did not sit well with Warner. She started to object, but Avery cut her off.

  “You’re our only ride out of here once we get the FAST team. We need to keep this bird intact.”

  “Roger that,” Warner reluctantly agreed. “There’s a park barely half a klick directly north of here.”

  “I know where it’s at.” Avery recalled the park from the maps.

  “I’ll set her down there. It’s the only suitable LZ on the whole damn island.” Warner turned the cyclic and put the Blackhawk into a sharp turn, steering them about half a block from the target building, over the back alley, and cut their altitude by fifty feet. “Just get our people out of there, okay?”

  “Roger that.”

  Avery didn’t rate their chances well. He wasn’t being pessimistic, just realistic, but however grim it looked, he wasn’t going to turn away now and abandon Layton’s agents. He’d bring them out, or he’d die with them.

  At least in the meantime, the arrival of the helicopters seemed to have taken some of the heat off Layton’s team as the Empresa forces became fixated on the more immediate threat circling overhead.

  “Where do you want me to set you down?” Warner asked. “We don’t have a lot of options here.”

  Avery disconnected from his safety harness. He stood up and kept his head low as incoming 5.56mm continued to rain against the Blackhawk. He leaned forward into the cockpit, holding onto the airframe to support himself, peering past the pilots’ shoulders through the windscreen.

  “That rooftop over there,” he shouted to be heard over the rotor wash and the thundering rattle from the mini-guns. He pointed to a four-story building five doors down from the apartment where Layton’s team was held up. The building had rooftop access and, slightly taller than the other buildings, provided good line of fire onto the street below.

  “You got it.”

  Avery felt the Blackhawk come around in a sharp turn as Warner positioned it over the selected drop zone, and hovered. There was the steady, unrelenting braying of the mini-guns in his ears as the door gunner blasted a rooftop RPG gunner in the process of taking up aim.

  One of the Blackhawk’s flight crew already dropped two strands of thick, braided, nylon climbing rope attached to winches mounted to the low ceiling of the cabin. The bottom several feet of the ropes lay over the building’s rooftop.

  Aguilar came up beside Avery. Both men took a strand of rope and wrapped their gloved hands around it. They stepped out of the cabin, pressed their boots together with the rope between their legs, knees bent, and rode the ropes down like fireman’s poles.

  Avery had fast-roped so many times before as a Ranger, it was second nature. As the square, concrete surface came up fast toward the soles of his boots, he swept his eyes along the street below and the surrounding rooftops and windows, mentally noting the positions and concentrations of enemy fighters. He heard the cracks of gunfire, but the shooters in the narrow street below didn’t have good line of sight to the fast ropers, and the rounds struck the side of the building or went too steep and came nowhere near them. The Empresa shooters on the rooftops across the street, the more immediate threat, fell back and took cover from the Blackhawk’s mini-gun.

  Avery landed harder than he’d intended, jarring his ankle, and he felt the tight strain in his knees, but it didn’t slow him down. He snapped his M4 off his vest, bringing it up into the ready position, and sprinted several steps forward to clear space for Aguilar and Diego.

  With all of the team safely dismounted, the Blackhawk broke away.

  Diego ran the twenty feet to the front of the building, dropped prone, extended the NG7’s bipod legs, rested the barrel of the machinegun over the roof’s low parapet, and opened up. He directed a stream of 5.56mm two hundred feet through the air to the rooftop across the street and shot up two Empresa as they attempted to take up firing positions.

  Twelve feet away, Aguilar and Avery picked off more shooters across the way, including one tango attempting to retrieve an RPG from a pulverized corpse.

  “I got this!” Diego shouted to his teammates between firing bursts on the machinegun. “Get your asses down there.”

  “Let’s go!” Avery called out to Aguilar.

  Avery hopped onto his feet, feeling the pain shoot up his ankle with each step as he dashed across the roof to where the access hatch was set. He blasted the lock with a single shot, pulled the hatch open, and peered down into the small maintenance storage room inside. It was dark, empty, and smelled of chemicals.

  Avery saw a shadow move across the rooftop and felt a hand pat his shoulder, Aguilar letting him know he was here. Avery slipped through the hatch and shimmied down the ten foot tall ladder. Three feet off the floor, he jumped the rest of the way and swept his rifle around. The room was clear. He waved up at Aguilar, and the Colombian climbed down.

  They emerged from the maintenance room into an empty hallway with doors leading into residential units on either side.

  There was the sound of a lock disengaging and voices.

  Both men immediately spun in the direction of the sound, and trained their weapons on a door as it slowly opened, revealing a middle-aged man with a young girl cowering behind his legs, clinging to him and peeking out into the hallway.

  “Get inside and stay the fuck down!” Avery shouted.

  There wasn’t time to be nice in situations like this. The sooner people obeyed the better, for their own safety, and people moved faster when there was a loud, crazed man with a gun, screaming orders at them.

  The man obeyed, and the little girl cried.

  Diego’s voice filled Avery’s and Aguilar’s earbuds. “I see several tangos converging on the building. They’re coming up after us, and a truck just pulled up. Eight more tangos are dismounting. These fuckers are everywhere.”

  Avery exchanged looks with Aguilar, but neither man was fazed by the grim news. The latter hit his push-to-talk to acknowledge Diego’s transmission, while Avery hit his mag release and inserted a fresh clip into the bottom of his M4.

  They continued down the hallway.

  Turning the corner, they came to the stairwell.

  Aguilar held out a hand to stop Avery from going further, a worried expression on his face. “I don’t want to get caught in the fucking stairs.”

  Avery shared the sentiment. Stairwells were death traps during close quarters battle. They were physically exhausting, and every corner before the next landing was a blind one. Hallways were bad, too, known in the trade as fatal funnels, for their narrow, open space and lack of cover.

  They heard the Empresa coming through the front door, into the foyer, four floors below. The intruders shouted, stomped their feet, fired a couple rounds to announce their presence, slammed doors, and barked orders at some poor bastard who crossed their path. These guys didn’t care about stealth.

  Avery looked around. There was another apartment unit seven feet directly behind.

  “Agreed, but we have noncombatants up here. I don’t want some fucking kid catching a stray round. We’ll stop on the third floor landing, and hopefully catch them coming up.”

  While Avery kept his M4 angled down the stairwell, trained at the third floor landing, Aguilar stepped over to the apartment door and pounded his fist against it. In Spanish, he shouted out, “Get in the fucking bathtub and stay down!”

  A woman’s voice yelled something back, but Aguilar had already walked away and came back up beside Avery.

  “Ready?” Aguilar asked Avery.

  They could hear wooden stairs creaking under the weight of footfalls coming up.

  “Let’s do this.”

  Aiming their rifles on down angles, they descended the eight steps onto the landing, stopped there, and stacked up against the wall, pointing their barrels down the next section of stairs. They could hear the rowdy voices and footsteps of men coming up the stairs from below.

  Avery swung his rifle left, aiming down the second floor hallwa
y, ensuring it was clear. He next selected an M84 stun grenade from his vest. He snapped off the pull ring and squeezed the safety lever in his right hand, while Aguilar dropped onto one knee, three feet from Avery’s side, covering him with his Galil.

  Avery gave the M84 a curved throw, tossing it around the corner and down the stairs.

  A voice shouted in Spanish and was cut off by the thunderous, 180 decibel concussion of the grenade’s detonation.

  Even from behind the corner and through clenched eyes, Avery saw the radiant flash of bright white. He felt the walls shake around him and the floor shudder beneath his feet.

  “Go!” Avery shouted.

  He and Aguilar readied their rifles and stepped around the corner.

  A black Empresa shooter opened fire immediately with his Uzi. He sprayed blindly, his rounds going high above Avery’s and Aguilar’s heads, drilling the walls and ceiling. Avery sighted his target and tapped his trigger twice.

  Another blind, disorientated Empresa man staggered into a wall, lost his footing, and fell over onto the second floor landing. Aguilar aimed low and stitched him in his exposed upper back and shoulders. The body twitched with each hit, and splashes of blood rooster-tailed into the air as the 5.56mm bullets passed through him.

  The gunshots were amplified within the tight confines of the stairwell. Ejected shell casings arced through the air, rolled, and clattered down the stairs.

  Two more Empresa were caught on the second floor landing, on a six-foot downward slope from Avery and Aguilar. One had his M16 raised and waved it left to right while he blinked his eyes madly, trying desperately to restore his vision. The other had his rifle aimed upward as he bent over and reached down with his free hand to feel for what had just landed in front of him, unaware it was the body of the man Aguilar just shot.

  Avery and Aguilar instantly acquired their targets and fired simultaneously before either Empresa knew what hit him. The bodies became piled up at the bottom of the stairs.

  Avery and Aguilar continued down the stairs, stepping over the bloody bodies and turning the corner of the second floor landing onto the stairs going onto the ground floor. A gray smoke haze hung in the air, carrying the stench of nitroglycerin and graphite.

  Two more Empresa waited on the ground floor. Upon seeing the American and Colombian operators appear on the second floor landing, one managed to get off a burst from his M16 that went too low and bore through the stairs beneath Avery’s feet.

  Avery fired back too fast, missing his target, before he and Aguilar retreated back behind the corner of the landing, where Avery pulled his remaining M84 from his vest. He tugged the ring and let the grenade fly around the corner, down into the first floor foyer. They waited for the detonation, and charged back around the corner, following their rifles down the stairs.

  One Empresa shooter had been standing too close to the grenade when it went off, and the bottom of his pant leg was on fire. He tried desperately to put it out, presenting an easy target, and Avery shot him through the top of his head, splitting the skull like a melon and spilling blood over the floor.

  Avery stepped clear of the stairs with Aguilar behind him.

  There were two more shooters in the foyer. One was far back, near the front doors, and seemed unfazed by the stun grenade. He had his AK shouldered and hit the trigger the second he saw Avery emerge from the stairwell. Avery sidestepped right as he came into the foyer, out of the way of the 7.62mm, so close he could feel the shots streak past him through the air, and he shot the Empresa man three times in the chest and once in the head.

  Coming into the foyer right behind Avery, Aguilar took out the remaining Empresa attacker, who had dropped his rifle, his eyes unfocused and flickering madly, and was now on his knees with his hands held up in the air in a futile show of surrender.

  They swept the rest of the ground floor, and a raspy, wheezing cough caught Avery’s attention. He followed the sound to its source and crouched down to flip over a body. A wounded Colombian stared up at him, bleeding rapidly from the hole in his chest. His body felt like limp, deadweight, but he still clung to his Uzi. Avery pulled the gun out of the Colombians hand and tossed it aside.

  “Fucking gringo pigs,” the man breathed. He spit blood onto Avery’s pant leg. “Bunch of fucking pussies.”

  Avery took a couple steps back. Aiming low from three feet away, he discharged a single shot into the Colombian’s crotch. Blood exploded across the Colombian’s lap, and he screamed uncontrollably. After kicking away a nearby M16 to ensure there were no weapons within reach, Avery turned and walked away, leaving the gangbanger to painfully bleed out.

  With Aguilar, he proceeded out the side door, and headed into the alley. Additional gunfire sounded around them as the DEA team continued to hold off the Empresa and Diego laid out more fire from the rooftop above.

  Avery and Aguilar leap-frogged the length of the alley to the building where the DEA agents were held up, and Avery alerted Layton over the radio that they’d be coming in through the back in about one minute. He gave Layton a description of what he and Aguilar were wearing. Layton acknowledged, relief in his voice, and urged them to hurry.

  The alley was narrow. Brightly colored, crudely rendered graffiti decorated the walls of the buildings. All manner of trash littered the ground, pouring out of overfilled and overturned receptacles.

  Approaching the target from the alley, two Empresa men were crouched down firing into the blown-out open spaces of the building’s door and windows. Turning a corner, Aguilar saw them first, their backs to him, and he held up a hand to warn Avery and signal him to slow down.

  Avery took Aguilar’s cue, saw the shooters, shouldered his M4, and drilled one of them through the back, just below the neck, from thirty-five feet away, severing the spinal column. As the body went immediately limp and collapsed, like someone flipped his off switch, his partner started to turn around, leading with his rifle. He was too slow, unable to bring his weapon to bear before Aguilar’s finger tapped his Galil’s trigger twice, hitting him in the eye and cheek, blowing out the side of his head.

  Avery scanned their surroundings—it was clear—and contemplated his next course of action. Now that they were here, they still needed a means of escape, otherwise they’d quickly become pinned down alongside the DEA agents.

  “I’m going to secure us transportation to the LZ,” he told Aguilar. “Layton has too many wounded to move out on foot, and the Empresa will overrun us anyway if we stay around too long. Stay with Layton’s team until I get back, and tell Diego to be ready to move.”

  Aguilar set a new magazine into the bottom well of his Galil, and asked, “You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own?”

  “No, but Layton’s guys will need the extra gun more than I do.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Avery covered Aguilar as the Colombian approached the building’s back entrance. Aguilar announced his arrival, and a haggard-looking DEA agent appeared in the doorway with the muzzle of his MP7 directed safely toward the ground. He waved Aguilar in.

  Avery watched the Colombian disappear into the back of the apartment building, and then he took off down the alley in a sprint, holding his M4 in front of him with stock nestled in the crook of his arm. He swept his rifle left to right, across windows and rooftops on either side, and then he swung it around to check his six.

  The alley was clear, but Avery still found himself jumping at the slightest sound. The frequent exchanges of gunfire coming from the other side of the block didn’t concern him, but when a rat scurried out of an overturned trash receptacle, he swiveled fast around with the M4 and took first pressure on the trigger as he acquired the source of the noise in his sights. He exhaled with relief when he saw the rat running toward him. Then it stopped short, looked up at him, and, seeing him for the first time, screeched and fled in the opposite direction.

  Avery emerged from the end of the alley where there was a T-intersection with
the main street. He searched the line of houses and apartments running perpendicular with the alley, and caught movement in his upper peripheral. He passed his sights over a third floor window in time to see the shades flutter.

  A small boy peeked out. Avery kept his finger on the trigger, sights trained on the window. He assessed the boy as a non-threat and moved on. Even if the boy’s dad had the Empresa leader on speed dial right now, it wouldn’t make much difference at this point.

  Avery turned right onto the intersecting street, putting the battleground behind him, and continued running down the center of the street. He turned the corner onto the next block. Looking over the lines of parked vehicles, his eyes were drawn to an old, beat-up GMC half-ton with an open bed. The truck was from the ‘80s and didn’t much look fit to drive, but then neither did any of the other parked cars and trucks. The GMC was rusted, weathered, dented, and looked like it still sported its original paint job, but it was the largest vehicle in sight, and it was old enough to not have a built-in immobilizing alarm system or any other modern hindrances.

  Avery sprinted to the truck. He smashed out the driver side window with the butt of his M4, reached inside, unlocked the door, and opened it. He brushed the bits of glass off the seat with his gloved hands and climbed into the cab, positioning himself beneath the dashboard.

  He pulled a utility knife from his pants pocket and used it to pry open the plastic covers housing the massive bundles of colored wires under the steering column. He sifted through the wires until he found the grouping that ran into the steering column itself. The time consuming part was identifying the individual wires in the bundle for the power and starter. Once he located these, he separated them and carefully stripped them of their plastic covers with his knife. He twisted the ends of the wires together and knew he was on the right track when everything in the truck suddenly switched on, though he grimaced at the particularly loud Cuban dance music suddenly blaring from the radio. He touched the two ends of the wires together and involuntarily flinched at the resultant spark. He heard and felt the engine cough to life and sputter a couple times before easing into a low, steady rumble.