Viper: A Thriller

by Ross Sidor

  “You don’t have jurisdiction,” Padilla protested, but then he saw the look on Avery’s face, and he thought again of the missiles the Viper carried. “My officers and I are coming with. Officially, it’s a Federal Police operation, with advisory and support from DEA.”

  “Fine,” Avery said. “But the Viper’s mine.”

  Slayton stepped up behind Padilla.

  “If she crosses the border, then we vector ICE and Border Patrol to intercept her. No arguments.”

  Slayton had more to say, but Avery had already left the trailer. Passing Aguilar and Diego on his way to retrieve his rifle from the Forerunner, he said, “We’re up.”

  They grabbed their gear and jogged across the tarmac to the Bell UH-1s. They climbed aboard one of the choppers, waiting for Slayton and the DEA and Federal Police agents to catch up and pile into the second chopper.

  Six minutes later, with the drone pilots vectoring them in, they were twelve thousand feet in the air over Tijuana, flying southwest on a course to intercept the target vehicles.

  Strapped into the open cabin, with his M4 secured diagonally across his vest, Avery watched the city streets and highways whip by below. As they cleared the city, the terrain became flat, dusty, and brown, less developed and less populated, the way he liked it.

  The net was closing on the Viper, but if she made it over the border, then Avery would lose his shot at her. Plus more American lives would be lost. Avery knew she wasn’t going to allow ICE or FBI to put the cuffs on her and read her rights. It was best to end this here, quickly.

  ___

  From the front passenger seat of the lead Silverado, Benito Trujillo squinted against the rays of sunlight shining through the windshield. He craned his head to get a better look around the extended visor as the truck bounced along over the cracked, crumbling desert road.

  There…as the road inclined slightly over a hill, he saw it again, a small black shape fluttering in the sky just off the horizon.

  From the rear passenger seat of the extended cab, the Viper noticed that something caught Trujillo’s attention, and asked, “What is it?”

  “I see a helicopter.”

  Trujillo turned around in his seat to face the Viper and Sidran. Carlos drove, but Trujillo had the Mexican’s full attention now too. Carlos’s eyes searched the sky, but he saw nothing beyond the sun’s glare.

  “I don’t see anything,” Carlos said.

  “It’s there. Trust me. We’re being followed.” Trujillo set his gaze on Carlos and repositioned the Uzi in his hands. “Friends of yours maybe?”

  “Not in a fucking helicopter,” Carlos said. “It’s the federales.”

  To the Viper, Trujillo said, “We should have checked his phone. Maybe he already contacted the cops.”

  Carlos began to sweat despite the air conditioning blowing against him. “I didn’t bring them here, I swear. Perhaps we should find a safe place to stay low, and try for the border later.”

  “Keep driving,” the Viper ordered, wondering if Carlos forgot what was in those cases loaded on the truck’s bed. “Helicopters aren’t a problem.”

  Carlos hit the accelerator, and the truck rapidly gained speed.

  ___

  “They’re speeding up. I think they spotted us.”

  “Move in,” Avery said in response to the DEA pilot. “We’ll intercept them on the road.”

  “Hold on,” the pilot replied as he listened to instructions from the command trailer. Then to Avery, he responded, “That’s a negative. We’ll stay back and give them some room. There are civilian vehicles within the target’s vicinity. Besides, we still have the Predators on them. They’re not getting away from us.”

  Avery swore, exasperated, and tried to maintain patience. He rode out the next eight minutes in silence.

  Then, from the UAV trailer back at the airport, where he monitored the Predator’s feed, Contreras’s voice came in over the radio: “Okay, they’re stopping about thirteen miles up the road. They’ve arrived at a ranch, less than half a mile from the border.”

  One of the Predator technicians relayed the coordinates to the DEA pilots.

  “We’ve got positive ID of the Viper. She just exited one of the trucks,” Contreras’s voice reported twenty seconds later. “She’s with five, no six other men armed with assault rifles. Be careful, guys, and good shooting.”

  ___

  “That’s not a helicopter.”

  Trujillo continued to obsessively watch the skies after hopping out of the truck. He stepped several yards out into the dusty field, behind the rickety, dilapidated barn that looked like it was about to collapse under its own weight if the wind picked up.

  Nearby, Carlos and his men unloaded the SA-24 transit crates from the Silverados. The trucks were parked near a wooden shed with a padlocked door. The shed was a recent addition to the property, and looked in much better condition than the barn. The entire farm appeared abandoned and neglected. Out in the distance, several malnourished cows grazed the land, and rotting, half-eaten carcasses of dead cattle could be found baking under the sun. Farther out, there would be signs warning against trespassing, enforced by the cartel’s men who regularly patrolled the property. The cartel had paid the old rancher extremely well for his property, and, over the past year, transformed it into an important hub for delivering drugs across the border.

  The Viper stepped up behind Trujillo and followed his gaze, at first finding nothing in the open blue sky, but then she caught a reflective shimmer.

  Trujillo was right. There was something out there, and it definitely wasn’t a helicopter.

  It took her several seconds to realize what it was. She wasn’t too familiar with drones. They’d never been a concern for her, not the way they were for the jihadists, since drones were generally incapable of seeing through the jungle’s protective, thickly layered canopies.

  The Viper turned and pushed two Zetas out of her way as she walked back to the trucks, where she retrieved one of the long transit cases. She slid the case off the bed, set it down on the ground, flipped the catches, opened the lid, peeled back the sheet of packing foam, and removed the launcher, which came pre-armed with a missile.

  Re-joining Trujillo, she set the launcher onto her shoulder. She flipped the safety switch to “arm” and heard the electronic hum of the battery powering up, bringing the missile to life. She slowly panned the thermal seeker across the sky, searching. After several seconds, she found the target. The drone was within range and emitted sufficient heat for SA-24’s infrared sensor to track. She pressed the trigger, releasing the missile.

  Despite its namesake, the Predator made for easy prey, as the militaries of Serbia, Saddam’s Iraq, and Iran have each demonstrated. The propeller-driven drone loitered in the sky, weighing a thousand pounds, and possessed no defensive capabilities.

  The missile slammed through the Predator and detonated, demolishing the UAV.

  The pilots in the command trailer immediately lost their satellite link-up with the Predator, and the drone’s flaming, destroyed remains dropped from the sky and smashed into the cactus-strewn desert floor.

  The Viper handed the expended launcher off to Trujillo, and walked back to re-join the Mexicans, who had stopped unloading the trucks to watch. The Zetas exchanged looks with one another, suddenly viewing the woman in a different light. They also thought that this location was compromised and could not be used in the future. In fact, the entire day had presented numerous setbacks for the Tijuana cartel that were hardly worth the cash the Viper was paying.

  Carlos shouted to his men, “Faster! We’re running out of time.”

  Eager to be rid of this woman, Carlos unlocked the door on the wooden shed and pulled it open. The interior was empty. The Viper watched as the Mexican stepped inside, hit a switch on the wall, and squatted down over a square-shaped hatch in the floor that was secured by another padlock. He keyed the lock, removed it, and lifted the hatch.

  Peering past Carlos’s shoulder
, the Viper saw through the open hatch, down a twelve feet deep shaft that led into a tunnel.

  “Follow this tunnel,” Carlos instructed her, eager to see this woman on her way. “It will take you across the border,”

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “It will exit into the California desert. Transportation is waiting for you, two vans.”

  “They’re here!” Trujillo shouted over the sound of rotor wash.

  ___

  Coming over the ranch, everyone aboard the DEA choppers saw the thin coil of black smoke extend into the air from the crashed Predator. Unaware of the disposition of enemy forces, only that they were armed with anti-air capability, the two Hueys split up over the ranch, each coming in from a different direction, the pilots searching for the closest spots to set down.

  On their first pass at eight hundred feet altitude, Avery, strapped into a safety harness, leaned out over the open cabin door to see half a dozen figures scattering across the ground below, behind the barn, looking like cockroaches suddenly caught in the light. He identified a distinctly female figure disappear behind the barn, out of sight. In addition to the rifle slung over her shoulder, she carried a long, tubular launcher.

  Muzzle flashes lit up from multiple points on the ground.

  Avery flinched and moved deeper into the cabin as a couple shots punched holes through the Huey. Another bullet cut through the air past his face and went through the low ceiling. Avery held on tight as the helicopter banked around in a sharp turn, the pilot steering them out of the way of the enemy fire. Avery turned to the Colombians and the flight crew, to check that they were unharmed. Aguilar gave him the thumbs up.

  Avery ordered the pilot to set them down nearby, anywhere he could, and the man was happy to do so, unaccustomed to evasive flying and taking incoming fire from military grade weapons. Avery thought it was stupid bringing the choppers in this close, when they knew the enemy carried SA-24 and had already twice demonstrated their proficiency with the weapon. But on the ground, it was a different story. There, Avery held supreme confidence in his ability to outmaneuver and eliminate the enemy.

  The Huey touched down on its skids off the west side of the barn, some three hundred feet from the cartel shooters, putting the barn between the chopper and the shooters. It was a hard landing, jolting the passengers against their restraints.

  The second helicopter remained in the air, whipping by overhead on a second pass over the ranch, calling the attention of the Zeta shooters scattered about.

  They were barely grounded before Avery, Aguilar, and Diego got up, disengaged from their safety harnesses, readied their rifles, and jumped down from the cabin, ducking their heads beneath the spinning double blades, squinting against the cloud of grit and sand swarming in the air around them.

  The trio leapfrogged their way to the broadside of the barn, dodging Los Zetas’ incoming fire along the way. One of the cartel shooters was crouched on a knee, the other lay prone, and it sounded like they had M16s. Their shots went too low, drilling through the ground and kicking up dirt and dust, or too wide, whipping past their intended targets.

  Covered by Diego, who dropped to his belly with his NG7 cradled in front of him, Avery and Aguilar dashed across the remaining forty feet to the cover of the barn and flattened their backs against the exterior west wall. They heard the thundering staccato bursts of the NG7 as Diego sprayed the machine-gun left to right, decimating the two Zetas.

  Diego then searched for more targets before getting up and running over to re-join his teammates.

  Avery opened his mouth to plan their next move, but he was interrupted by the sudden, distinctive whoosh of a speeding projectile, the sound cut short by the impact and the explosion that instantly followed.

  They looked up into the sky and saw the second Huey, engulfed in flames and spewing gray and black smoke, appear overhead seconds later. Its tail sheared off, the burning chopper spun through the air and descended into the earth a thousand feet away from Avery and the Colombian soldiers.

  Fuck.

  Avery shut his eyes, swallowed hard, and reminded himself to breathe.

  The Huey rested partially on its side, one of its skids collapsed beneath its weight, a twisted, charred heap of metal. The cabin was bathed in and filled with orange and yellow fire. Thick black smoke trailed into the sky from the burning engines and fuel tanks, which had kicked off a secondary explosion. Debris and shattered rotor blades lay several meters out from the wreckage, along with Slayton’s burning body. He’d fallen from the Huey in flight.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Aguilar finally said, setting a hand on Avery’s shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Avery knew Aguilar was right. There was no point in risking their lives crossing the open field hoping to help anyone over there. Helicopter crashes were the worst, almost always fatal—Avery had seen plenty in Afghanistan, and they were always the biggest unspoken fear of heliborne troops—and there was simply no way anyone survived this one.

  “Yeah,” Avery agreed, finally taking his eyes off the wreck. He heard the fires crackling and felt the heat from here. Fuck.

  Keeping alongside the wall of the barn, Avery advanced forward to the front of the structure. Lowering his body, leaning forward in a half-crouch, he followed his M4 around the corner. He flinched as a shot instantly drilled through the wood inches away from his face. Splinters pelted his cheek and forehead. He sidestepped right and took another step forward, while shifting his M4 to track the lone Los Zetas shooter. Avery squeezed the trigger on his target, once, twice, three times. The cartel gunman’s unprotected body jerked as it absorbed the bullets. Atomized blood misted briefly in the air before dissipating as he dropped onto his knees and then fell forward onto his face. Avery took another couple steps forward and drilled the Mexican once through the head to make sure he wouldn’t get back up.

  Without stopping, Avery continued forward. He stopped just before the barn’s open set of double doors. He heard voices coming from inside, followed by a diesel engine sputtering to life and revving, and tires squealing.

  Avery stepped back to get clear and hand signaled Diego.

  The pick-up rolled out of the barn doing 20mph and quickly gaining speed. Two men carrying AKs were crouched in the bed, searching for something to shoot at. They sighted Avery, and he hit the ground as shots flew overhead, blasting the barn wall behind him.

  Diego ripped into the truck with his machine-gun, stitching a stream of fire through the gunmen in the pick-up’s bed, and then through the rear windshield, into the cabin, and then the tires. The truck swerved, slowed, and continued rolling forward, eventually easing to a stop two hundred plus feet away, its driver slumped over. Nothing moved, and no one climbed out.

  Followed by Aguilar and Diego, Avery stepped around the corner of the open barn doors, swung his rifle around to the interior of the barn, and swept his aim left to right, up and down, right to left.

  It was clear. No one in sight. No movement.

  Then, far behind, the distinctive crackle of AK fire picked up from the direction they’d just come. Avery craned his head around the open door and then stepped out. Retreating back along the wall to the side, he saw DEA agents firing their M16s from the open cabin of the landed Huey.

  Jogging to and looking around the next corner of the barn, Avery saw four Zetas, two lying prone with their AKs in front of them. Two more covered each other as they attempted to leapfrog across the open land toward the chopper. One of the Zetas fired a rifle-mounted grenade launcher, but it landed several yards short of the Huey and exploded.

  Avery was aware of Aguilar and Diego coming up behind him, saw their shadows across the ground in front of him, and he turned around to face them.

  “Stay with these guys,” Avery told them. “I’m going after the Viper.”

  Aguilar opened his mouth to protest, but Diego and Avery were already splitting up and moving in opposite directions, so Aguilar took his Galil into the ready
position and ran after the former. Along the way, Aguilar spotted an easy target of opportunity. He sighted the back of an oblivious cartel soldier crouched a hundred feet away and fired twice.

  Hearing more gunfire sound off behind him as Aguilar and Diego joined the fight, Avery ran forward with his M4 shouldered in front of him. He crossed the front of the barn and, coming up to the east side, stopped, and kept his ears open, trying to tune out the exchanges of gunfire behind him.

  After several seconds, he heard a voice yell something in Spanish.

  Avery proceeded slowly around the corner.

  The two Silverados sat idle near the tool shed. One truck’s doors were left open, its engine running. Spent brass littered the ground, along with the empty missile launcher. There were also nearly a dozen open and empty SA-24 transit cases.

  Two men stood in the open doorway of the shed, their backs to Avery, oblivious to his presence several meters away. The one on the left had two launchers slung over his back, and he reached down to lower a third through the open hatch in the floor. Then the man on the right likewise passed off another launcher into the shaft.

  Avery acquired the left-side man in his sights and pressed the trigger.

  The M4 thundered, and Avery’s shoulder absorbed the recoil.

  The man reeled from the hit, fell forward, and, carried by the extra weight of the missiles, went headfirst through the hatch into the tunnel and broke his neck.

  The man on the right was small and fast.

  Reacting instantly to the discharge of the M4, before his partner even went down, Benito Trujillo jumped, spun around, and opened up on his Uzi.

  Avery’s vest caught a three round burst of .45 ACP. It felt like taking a swing from a baseball bat, and Avery was knocked clean off his feet. He instinctively rolled over onto his side, missing a second burst that drilled through the ground. He repositioned his rifle in front of him and returned fire without aiming, cutting Trujillo’s legs out from under him.