by Ross Sidor
Avery sat up behind the wheel and shut the door. He set his M4 on the passenger seat with the butt facing him, and switched off the radio.
Five minutes had elapsed since he left Aguilar. Under the circumstances, anything could have happened during that time, but he hadn’t heard anything from the Colombians or Layton, so he optimistically assumed that they were holding up okay.
Avery threw the gear shift into drive and hit the gas. The truck accelerated loudly down the street, coughing and sputtering thick black diesel exhaust into the air. He made the sharp turn into the alley without slowing, and was at once barreling down on two Empresa shooters a hundred plus feet ahead. Both men shouldered their rifles, and one man raised a hand to wave Avery down, commanding him in Spanish to stop, not yet sure if Avery was just some local asshole who hadn’t heard there was a firefight taking place or if he was one of the American agents.
Avery pressed the accelerator to the floor and felt the truck give a kick as it picked up speed.
The Empresa would have no doubts now.
Avery ducked his head down as they opened fire. The windshield shattered, raining glass around him. Then he heard the front right tire take a hit and burst, and he felt the forward weight of the truck shift and the turbulent recoil of the suspension.
The truck veered forcefully to the right. Avery eased his foot off the gas and slowly applied the brake as he steered through the blowout. To keep the vehicle from flipping over or crashing, the idea was to steer in the direction of the drag until you reacquired stability and control, but the alley was tight and didn’t offer sufficient space. If the truck kept turning, he’d hit a building or offer his broadside to the shooters, and fiberglass vehicles didn’t stand a chance against bullets.
Avery added more pressure to the brake and clutched onto the wheel tight, two handed.
The truck came to a sudden and violent halt when its front bumper collided into a wooden utility pole, cracking the wood and bending the pole inward over the now crumpled hood of the truck. Power lines sagged, dangling over the roof of the cab, and Avery was thrown forward, while his rifle flew off the seat next to him and onto the floor. His forehead smacked the edge of the dashboard, and the wheel dug into his ribcage. He took the pain and lay still and listened.
A couple more shots plinked through the left fender, and then the gunfire let up.
There was an exchange of Spanish-speaking voices. Avery heard enough to know they were talking about checking to see if he was alive. One man sounded confident that he’d hit the driver, and Avery was happy to have them believe it since that would buy him a few seconds.
The voices grew louder as the men approached the truck. Avery pictured them walking slowly and cautiously, with their weapons trained on the cab. He heard the clicking of a mag release disengaging, followed by an empty magazine clanging against the ground.
Careful to stay below the dash and out of sight, Avery repositioned his body so that he could draw his Glock from the holster on his right side. Glocks have no external safeties; just draw and fire. He took a couple deep breaths to clear his head and pump oxygen into his brain. White dots speckled his vision, but he couldn’t sit around waiting for his vision to clear. The Empresa were drawing nearer, and he needed to act before they reached the truck.
Avery took in one more breath and exploded up in his seat as quickly as his battered body allowed. He felt the effects of the blow to his head; his senses and reaction time impaired. Blood dripped into his left eye, stinging. His ears rang. He felt overcome by dizziness, and he wanted to vomit. Everything seemed to transpire in slow motion as he aimed the Glock over shards of jagged, broken glass through the shattered windshield.
The approaching Empresa men stopped in their tracks, twenty-five feet away. One of them yelled out in Spanish and readied his AK, while his partner desperately reloaded, fumbling for a magazine from the pocket of his baggy, oversized cargo shorts.
Avery’s mind assessed the former as the more immediate threat. He aimed through the windshield, aligning the white dot over the blurry shape of the target, and his index finger firmly pressed the trigger back again and again, three times. He saw the .40 caliber bullets strike against the target’s center mass, red clouds materializing briefly with each impact, and the body jerked with each hit.
Before the first target was on the ground, Avery already shifted aim onto the next one as the Empresa man slammed a fresh banana-shaped magazine into his AK’s magazine well and wracked the bolt. Avery’s first shot missed as the Empresa man dropped to a crouch and shouldered his rifle, but he caught Avery’s next pair of bullets through his abdomen. He dropped the AK and groaned as he fell over with one hand clasping his ruptured guts.
Avery shifted the truck into reverse, gently gave it some gas, and turned the wheel left, backing away from the utility pole. The pole lurched a couple more inches, but remained planted into the ground. The truck handled sluggishly, and Avery felt the drag from the blown out tire and heard the metal of the wheel grinding loudly against concrete, metal grinding and sparking.
He put the truck back into drive and hit the accelerator. He reached forward with the Glock to knock a couple remaining glass shards out of the windshield.
Fifteen feet ahead, the wounded Empresa worked his way onto his knees, one hand against his stomach, one of the most painful places to catch a bullet. He stared at the oncoming truck. Avery plowed right through him. The Empresa’s head smacked against the grill, cracked open, and he went under. Avery felt the truck bounce along as one of the rear tires tumbled effortlessly over the body. When Avery saw him again in the rearview mirror, he was an unmoving heap sprawled over the cement, his body twisted around at an unnatural angle.
Avery stopped twenty feet later, behind the target building. He grabbed his M4 off the floor and flung his door open. Standing up in the doorframe, he aimed the rifle over the cab’s rooftop and fired twice into an Empresa shooter sneaking up along the back wall of the building.
Twenty seconds later, Avery’s eyes caught movement through the building’s back door. He sighted on the center of the doorway and relaxed his finger on the trigger and averted aim when he saw who came out.
Weaver appeared first, sweeping his MP7 left to right. Aguilar and Layton followed, carrying a wounded, limp agent whose pants were soaked in blood. Behind them was a white man with his hands secured behind his back. Harris exited last, covering the team’s six. He spun around once to fire his MP7 back into the building a couple times.
Avery surmised that the Empresa had already made entry from the front. He came around to the front of the truck as Aguilar and Layton loaded the wounded agent into the cab’s rear seating.
Three Empresa men crept up alongside the building’s exterior wall in the gangway. Avery managed to get off a single shot before they spotted him. He hit one of the gunmen high in the shoulder, but it didn’t put the man out of action. Avery dropped as they acquired him and opened fire. The rounds passed over his head or struck the truck.
Aguilar shouldered his Galil, loaded the under-barrel grenade launcher, and let one fly. The blast wiped out the three Empresa, leaving one survivor on the ground with his leg cut off at the knee, bone sticking out, and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his intestines. Aguilar shot him twice in the chest, ending his suffering and everything else about him.
Then Aguilar reloaded the grenade launcher and popped off another one through the back door of the building where it exploded in the hallway, decimating another group of Empresa who had breached the building from the front when the DEA agents made their retreat.
The rest of the team loaded into the pick-up.
Harris and Weaver pushed Nolan into the cab, and piled in next to him.
“Where the fuck is Diego?” Avery asked Aguilar, after doing a head count and realizing that someone was missing.
“He should be on his way down now.”
Avery swore, got behind the wheel, and gassed it the eighty feet to Diego’s buil
ding.
Here, he stopped, opened the door, and jumped from the truck, still swearing.
“I’ll cover him. If the shit hits the fan here, leave. Do not wait for us,” Avery instructed Aguilar, who was in the bed of the truck, aiming his rifle over the cab’s rooftop.
While Avery took off in a sprint, the DEA agents dismounted and took firing positions around the truck.
It was quieter now. Avery didn’t even hear Diego’s machinegun going at it anymore from above, but he heard engines starting up and vehicles on the move nearby. He couldn’t imagine that the Empresa had too many guys left. The bodies were scattered everywhere.
At the building’s side door, Avery threw his back against the wall. He radioed to Diego that he was about to make entry. To his relief, Diego responded that he was coming down the stairwell now.
Avery turned. Bringing the M4 to bear, with the stock nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, he followed it into the building and stepped over the bodies from the earlier contact here. The man whose balls he’d blasted before was now still and quiet, a massive puddle of blood beneath him, with his hands, even in death, clasped over his the remains of his manhood.
The front door crashed open.
Two pairs of Empresa men poured in.
Avery’s mind assessed the situation, his eyes following the positioning of the Empresa as they dispersed throughout the foyer. They surrounded him, had him covered wherever he moved, but they were smart enough not to get in each other’s crossfire, and Avery accepted the grim reality that he was outgunned and would be able to take down one, maybe two at most.
As Avery trained his sights on the nearest threat, simultaneously bracing himself for the bullets about to pour into him, he heard Diego’s voice scream, “Get down!”
Avery reacted instantly and hit the deck.
The earsplitting staccato rattle of Diego’s NG7 blotted out all other sound as the Colombian solider hosed the Empresa gunmen full of 5.56mm ball ammunition while he came down the stairs into the foyer. The gangbangers were chewed up, punched full of holes, and ripped apart like raw meat. Blood spilled in the air and splashed across the carpet and walls. Bodies opened up with organs hanging out, and mangled corpses hit the floor. Smoke hung in the air and spent brass rolled across the floor.
“Just in time,” Avery said, looking up after Diego had stopped firing. His ears rang, and his heart beat harder than it ever had before. It took several seconds for his mind to catch up with what had just happened and appreciate the fact that he was still alive.
Diego still held the NG7 in front of him, its barrel smoking.
Avery jumped back onto his feet. He stepped over the bodies, setting his boot down in a sticky puddle of coagulating blood along the way, and moved to the front of the foyer to get a look through the windows. He saw the tail end of a pick-up truck driving away, four armed men in the bed.
“Looks like the street’s clear,” he told Diego. “The others are taking off.”
Or they were moving to come around to the back and cut them off, he realized.
“Come on. We have transportation out back.”
Diego followed Avery to the truck in the alley. He frowned when he saw their getaway vehicle.
Avery took the driver’s side, and Diego climbed into the bed, taking up aim with Aguilar across the top of the cab. Avery threw the truck into gear and hit the gas, mentally recalling the maps and visualizing the layout of the city’s streets, and where the Blackhawk’s landing zone was located in relation to their current position.
Halfway down the alley, the Empresa truck Avery had spotted barely a minute earlier turned off the street and appeared ahead of them, its engine wheezing as the driver floored the gas. Muzzle flashes lit up from the bed, over the rooftop.
Avery braked hard and switched to reverse to maintain the gap between both vehicles, while Aguilar lobbed off a grenade from his under-slung launcher. His aim fell short. The grenade landed several feet in front of the pursuing truck and exploded. Shrapnel ripped through the windshield and engine, killing one of the passengers, but the truck rolled forward through the smoke and flames. The driver slowed down to allow the Empresa men in the bed to jump out. They spread apart and opened fire from their rifles.
In the cab of the GMC, Avery and the two DEA agents ducked as bullets flew through the space of the windshield.
Nolan took a hit through his shoulder and cried out.
Layton swore out loud. As much as he personally wanted to pull the trigger on Nolan, if the Irishman died here, then his agents gave their lives for nothing. Layton covered Nolan with his own body as incoming bullets struck the truck.
Diego opened up on the NG7 and panned left to right, steadily cutting down the Empresa shooters and racking their truck full of holes, blowing out tires, perforating the panels, blowing out glass, and demolishing the engine block. The truck, what was left of it, came to a complete stop, but Diego continued firing until he expended the remaining fifty-seven rounds on the ammunition belt and the machine gun clicked empty.
It looked like a massacre, with bloody bodies strewn around the perforated, smoking wreck of the dismantled truck. Nothing moved. Smoke coiled into the air, steam poured from the destroyed engine block, and fuel poured from the ruptured tank.
Avery reversed the rest of the way out of the alley and started heading north toward the landing zone, hoping to find Warner’s Blackhawk sitting there and intact. If not, he’d drive the rest of the fucking way to López Airport, and kill anyone who tried to stop them.
It was a rocky and slow ride, with the right wheel scraping and grinding across the pavement, sparks flying out, and the passengers on the bed bouncing along, holding on tight. Avery sped through intersections, punching the horn and forcing other drivers to clear the way. He wasn’t about to stop for anyone, not even the paramilitary checkpoint he shot through without slowing, while Aguilar and Diego kept their weapons trained on the gangbangers, who, wisely, didn’t challenge them. Avery kept a tight grip on the steering wheel the whole way, concentrating on keeping the vehicle under control and going straight, and cursing like a maniac when presented with a right turn.
The landing zone lay almost straight ahead, but the streets presented constant detours and obstructions or, worse, came to abrupt dead ends. At almost 9:00AM, there were more people out now, but nobody paid a second glance to the fucked-up GMC half-ton negotiating its way through the city.
Along the way, Layton applied QuickClot sponges to Nolan’s shoulder to stem the bleeding. The 7.62mm had shattered his scapula. He was in intense pain, and his right arm was rendered immobile. Nolan bled heavily from torn blood vessels, but Layton didn’t think there was enough blood to fear that his subclavian artery may have been cut. Still, he needed medical help immediately.
“Keep your eyes open. You’re not going to die on us after all this, you piece of shit!” Layton shouted in Nolan’s face, trying to keep him awake.
When Avery glanced back, he saw tears streaming down the DEA agent’s face, and Layton shouted back at Avery, urging him to go faster.
They crossed the Simón Bolívar highway and found the Blackhawk sitting idle on its wheels in a grassy clearing roughly 300x250 feet. The helicopter’s mini-guns faced out with a helmeted head behind them.
Major Warner jumped down from the cabin as the truck tore across the grass and braked alongside the helicopter. Overcome with relief and emotion that Avery made it back with the DEA agents, Warner helped Layton and the Colombian soldiers load the wounded aboard the helicopter.
Harris and Diego carried Nolan. The Irishman was unresponsive now, and his heartbeat and pulse grew gradually fainter.
Aguilar noticed for the first time that his pants were ripped, and he had a bleeding gash across his calf. He examined the wound and determined he’d taken a ricochet at some point.
With the adrenaline and excitement wearing off and everything slowing down to real time, Avery became aware once more of his own aches and p
ains throughout his body, plus several new ones.
The DEA agents likewise looked like hell. They were bloody, dirty, hurt, and exhausted, pushed beyond their physical and mental limits, and they were leaving behind a lot of dead friends and teammates.
The Empresa may have pulled the triggers, but as far as Avery was concerned, those agents’ deaths were on the Viper.
With everyone strapped in, Warner slipped into the cockpit, powered up the Blackhawk, and took to the sky.
A collective cheer broke out at Gerardo Tobar López Airport when Warner radioed the ops room that she was returning to base with the surviving DEA agents and Sean Nolan. But the jubilation died quickly when she reported Nolan’s condition. The Colombians diverted the Blackhawk to the coast guard’s Buenaventura station, which had a modern military treatment facility.
Watching the streets of Buenaventura pass by below, anger and hate swelled within Avery, and the walls were back in place in his mind, keeping everything where it belonged. He was determined now more than ever, and whatever he felt after Medellin was replaced by absolute resolution. Whatever it took, he’d find the Viper and break her neck, and nothing was going to stop him.
SIXTEEN
Despite her size, seven hundred feet long above the waterline, La Orca wasn’t much to look at, and nobody who caught sight of her would waste a second glance at the Feedermax container ship’s rusted and weathered hull. She carried up to 2,500 TEU of cargo, or twenty-foot equivalent units, in reference to the standard-sized twenty foot long, eight foot wide intermodal containers used in shipping. Presently, her deck was packed nearly to capacity with stacked multi-colored containers.
DEA and the Colombian customs and port authorities originally planned to board and seize the ship while she was still moored, but then the police received the heads up from a paid informant at the docks that La Orca was underway twenty-five minutes ahead of schedule, likely alerted to the unfolding battle in Buenaventura.