Tyranny in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Jim Strunk, a transplanted Englishman with a Belizian wife and four children, crept outside the hacienda walls with a Glock 9mm pistol, a silencer screwed into the muzzle. A houseboy for the comandante had said he’d overheard two of the guards talking as they surrounded the landing space hacked out of the jungle near the hacienda. As Chief of Security at Comandante Perro Loco’s headquarters, Strunk knew what was expected of him. Killing two green recruits was a far safer bet than waiting to see if Tomas, the houseboy, was right about what he’d heard when Reynaldo and Jose whispered to each other.

  Strunk was an ex-SAS sergeant from the British Army. The Special Air Service units were specialized forces used for much of the British Army’s undercover work, which would range from operating behind enemy lines to the surveillance and infiltration of terrorist groups. They were so well trained and deadly, the Americans had copied their training methods for their own special forces. The Americans’ 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta was created with SAS as a model, the SFOD-Delta intended as an overseas counterterrorist unit specialized in hostages rescue, barricade operations, and specialized reconnaissance.

  When Strunk infiltrated Perro Loco’s band of terrorists, he realized he could go much farther and get much richer if he switched sides and allegiance to the man known as Mad Dog. He also got many more chances to use his specialized training in killing, which he enjoyed almost more than the money he was paid.

  Strunk entered the rain forest canopy leading to the landing space, his senses keened. The comandante would not care if he shot a couple of men suspected of being traitors, or assassins. It would make Strunk look like he was doing his job, even if he was wrong.

  There would be no one left alive to dispute him.

  The heavy Blackhawk lowered slowly and settled onto the grass, its turbines making enough noise to deafen anyone who was close by. Palm branches swayed fiercely until the rotor mast began to slow.

  Reynaldo knelt down to steady his aim, keeping his sights on the pilot’s head. The pilot would be Eduardo. A helmeted figure in front of him was unmistakable as the comandante.

  Reynaldo’s arms trembled with fear. What he was about to do would make him a fugitive, or a hero. The gold coins he’d hidden in a deep hole behind his hut were enough to convince him that what he was doing was right, worth the risks.

  The turbines grew softer, slowing, as the blades began to stop.

  Now, he thought, glancing sideways to see if Jose was ready to fire.

  Jose held the Heckler and Koch to his shoulder, unaware that Reynaldo was watching him.

  Good, Reynaldo told himself. The Mad Dog of Central America will not escape a bullet this time.

  Jim Strunk saw a uniformed Belizian aiming for the helicopter at the edge of the jungle with a large, unfamiliar rifle in his arms. Tomas had been right to say that an assassination attempt would take place.

  “You ignorant bastards,” Strunk whispered, jacking a shell into his Glock pistol, winding his way through the forest until he was only a few yards behind the soldier.

  A look to the right showed him another soldier aiming for the helicopter, a slender youth all but hidden by vines and brush.

  I can kill both of them, Strunk thought, calculating the range.

  He aimed for the first soldier’s back and pulled the trigger. A soft, puffing sound came from the Glock when it jumped in his hand.

  Before the first soldier fell, Strunk aimed for the second assassin and fired off another quiet round.

  The Belizian closest to Strunk folded over on his hands and knees with blood pouring from his mouth. His rifle tumbled from his hands. A bullet through a lung sent a fountain of crimson away from his face . . . He began choking as he slumped to the ground on his belly.

  The second soldier did a curious dance, like a ballet move away from the tree trunk where he was hiding, embracing the stock of his carbine as if he held a beautiful woman. He made a half circle on one foot and staggered to keep his balance, his eyes bulging.

  “Drop, you bloody son of a bitch,” Strunk muttered in his crisp British accent, checking to see if any of the other men guarding the landing pad had seen what was going on. Sound from the Blackhawk’s turbines would have hidden the soft puff of his silenced bullets.

  The second soldier collapsed on his rump and sat there with his rifle against his ribs, staring off at the jungle. A bloody hole in the front of his khaki shirt was proof that Strunk’s aim was good.

  Impatient, Strunk aimed for the soldier’s forehead and put a bullet between his eyes. The back of his skull ruptured, sending bits of brain tissue and plugs of hair flying into the bark of the palm tree behind him.

  The Belizian’s head jerked backward and he fell against the tree, his eyes still open, frozen in death while he stared up at the branches above him.

  “Some are harder to kill than others,” Stunk said to himself as he picked up the rifle from the dead man’s arms and turned to go back to the hacienda. He’d lost count of the men he’d killed a long time ago. At fifty, after following a career as a British Special Forces sergeant, the body count had ceased to be important. The global war had given him so many chances to take another man’s life that it no longer mattered. Dead men told no tales.

  Reynaldo crawled across a carpet of thick grass and weeds to reach Jose. He could not breathe. It was important to tell Jose where he’d hidden the gold coins, since he had not told his wife what he was planning to do, or about the money.

  “Jose,” he croaked, reaching for his seated companion’s left arm.

  Jose would not look at him.

  “Jose!”

  Jose seemed to be studying the treetops. And there was blood on the front of his shirt.

  “Listen . . . to . . . me, Jose,” Reynaldo pleaded as a wave of dizziness swept over him. “The gold . . . is buried . . . behind my house . . . underneath the clay pot. Give it . . . to Esmeralda, and tell . . . her that . . . I love her.”

  Jose remained motionless. Only then, as Reynaldo was losing consciousness, did he realize that Jose was dead.

  Two gold coins lay buried behind his thatched hut, and his wife did not know where to find them, or why he had them at all. At first, he wanted to keep his role as an assassin a secret from her. Somehow, he must get a message to Esmeralda before he lost consciousness . . . or before he died.

  He struggled up on his elbows with a strange ringing in his ears, trying to focus on the clearing where the helicopter sat near the wall of the hacienda.

  “Dios,” he croaked, strangling on blood.

  Six soldiers stood near the flying machine. Two men got out of the cockpit. One of the soldiers was pointing toward the spot where Reynaldo lay beside Jose.

  “No!” The sound of Reynaldo’s voice was wet, unnatural.

  One of the men aboard the helicopter started toward him as he drew an automatic pistol from his belt. The soldiers were following him.

  The only thing Reynaldo could think about was the gold, a fortune, enough to feed his wife and children for many years to come. But how could he tell Esmeralda where he had hidden the coins?

  The sounds of heavy boots moved closer to him. He rested his head in the grass, gasping for breath until a deep voice spoke to him.

  “Who paid you to kill me?”

  Reynaldo knew he was dying. “A woman and a man. Americanos.”

  “Who were they? Who sent them?”

  Reynaldo’s eyes closed. He heard the cocking of a gun and then a loud crack as his skull was split in half. After that, he heard nothing at all.

  TWELVE

  Jim Strunk spoke softly, meeting alone with Comandante Perro Loco in a cellar, an underground command room beneath the hacienda, a fortified space surrounded by maps on the wall and a bank of green radar screens.

  “Their names were Reynaldo Soto and Jose Villareal,” he said. “They had their rifles aimed at you when you got out of the helicopter. I killed them. One of the houseboys overheard them plotting to shoot
you. He told me about the plot only a few minutes before you arrived.”

  “Someone got to them. We have to find out who, and why. I suspect the bastardo rebel commander El Gato Selva is behind this assassination attempt.”

  “Both men were poor Belizian farmers,” Strunk said. “I have squads of men out picking up their families so we can question them, but I do not think we’ll find out anything. I suspect they did this on their own . . . for money, of course. Someone had to pay them to take this kind of risk. They were simple men who would not concoct such a scheme on their own. Someone paid them. I’m sure of it. Someone with ties to the American government.”

  Perro Loco’s eyebrows raised. “Why do you say that, Commander Strunk?”

  Strunk held up the Heckler and Koch rifle he’d been holding in his hand. “This is a very advanced, very expensive piece of equipment. Both of the assassins had one. I do not think El Gato Selva could acquire two of these weapons unless he had help from someone in America. Hell, I’ve never even seen one before, and I’ve handled just about every type of rifle there is.”

  “They may be tied to the pair of USA soldiers my men captured crossing the Yucatan border,” Loco said, a thoughtful expression on his face. “One of them says they are from President Osterman. They want to make a deal with an alliance of some kind between us and the government of the USA.”

  “Why do we need a deal with a defeated government?” Strunk asked. “According to all radio reports, the Rebels smashed all the major military bases in the USA, and there is another report that President Claire Osterman is dead. How do we know who is telling the truth about Osterman? Is she dead, or alive? How do we find out?”

  “We shall see,” Loco replied. “When the two Americans get here, we will question them.”

  “Where is Paco?” Strunk asked.

  “He is bringing them here, to the hacienda. One of them claims to have a code, a way to scramble a message to the USA if we agree to help them.”

  “I don’t trust any of these fucking Americans,” Strunk said with heat in his voice.

  “Neither do I,” Loco muttered. “I will kill one of the soldiers, to see if the other one will tell us the truth when he sees his companion die.”

  “Good,” Strunk grunted, turning for the stairway. “Killing one of the Americans will make the other one tell us the truth about President Osterman. Maybe she is trying to play both sides of the fence, sending two men to talk to you of an alliance while simultaneously giving El Gato weapons with which to assassinate you.”

  Strunk climbed the steps and went to the ground floor of the hacienda to await Paco’s arrival.

  * * *

  Paco Valdez had both American soldiers tied to chairs in an adobe room behind the hacienda where farm tools were kept. The chairs were bolted to the floor. Each prisoner had his hands and feet strapped to the chairs. The chairs were bolted to the floor in the dark, windowless room.

  Jim Strunk and Paco Valdez stood on either side of the prisoners as Loco entered the adobe. Two more armed guards were flanking the doorway with AK-47 ‘s cradled in the crooks of their arms.

  “Tell me again,” Loco began, “about this offer you bring me from President Osterman. I am very curious, for all our reports indicate your President is dead.”

  “She survived the crash,” the dark-haired prisoner named Arnoldo Mendoza said in a hoarse voice.

  “Yeah. That’s right,” the redheaded soldier said, barely conscious after the blow to his scalp. Blood ran down his neck to his shirtfront.

  Loco pulled a gleaming bayonet from a sheath on his belt and moved closer to the red-haired soldier. “What is your name, americano?”

  “Randy. Randy Grimes.”

  “Are you ready to die for what you told me, Señor Grimes?” Loco asked. “Do you believe that strongly in what you just told me about your President?”

  “It’s the truth. President Osterman is alive. She wants to form an alliance with you.” Randy’s words were slurred, hard to understand.

  “Do you know the scrambling code for the radio?” Loco kept on.

  “No. Only Arnold knows it.”

  “Then what do we need with you?” Loco demanded.

  “I am the driver. I knew the way across Mexico so we could tell you about President Osterman’s offer. I have papers that let us pass through Mexican guard posts.”

  “Only papers? Then we don’t need you now, do we?” Loco demanded.

  Randy looked up at Loco, blinking away waves of unconsciousness. “I’ll need to drive the HumVee back,” he said. “I know who to talk to at the checkpoints . . . and where to go.”

  “But if your vehicle is not going back, then what purpose do you serve?”

  Randy glanced down at the blade in Loco’s hands, his eyes filled with terror. “I’m the only one who can get us back across Mexico. Arnold doesn’t know this country.”

  Loco placed the tip of his blade against Randy’s throat and gave it a gentle nudge. Blood trickled from the pinprick where the point of the bayonet pierced his skin.

  “You ain’t gonna kill me, are you?” Randy asked, tears streaming from his eyes to trickle down his sunburned cheeks. “I’m part of the team sent to contact you. President Osterman wants us to join forces with you.”

  Loco smiled. “If I do kill you, it will send a message to President Osterman . . . if she is still alive, that I will not tolerate bullshit.”

  “Please don’t kill me. I’ve got a wife an’ kids back in Macon.”

  “Don’t kill him,” Arnoldo said quickly in fluent Spanish. “I’ll never find my way out of here.”

  “Who said you were leaving?” Loco asked Arnoldo. “What makes you think I’d let you leave here alive? You know where my headquarters is now. You could radio coordinates and before the sun comes up, bombs would be falling on my roof.”

  “We were sent to offer you an alliance,” Arnoldo insisted, his dark face turning pale. “Why would you kill us when we came here with peaceful intentions?”

  “I only have your word that your intentions are peaceful,” Loco replied, pressing the long knife blade a little harder into Randy’s throat.

  “It’s the truth,” Randy protested as more blood came from his neck. “Why would we come here otherwise?”

  “To spy on us,” Jim Strunk said, his brow knitted into a web of lines. “You could be handing us some bullshit story about the alliance. President Osterman is dead. We got confirmation on it a few days ago.”

  “She is alive,” Arnoldo croaked. “All you have to do is contact her on the radio frequency and use the right scramble. I have the codes in my head . . . memorized, and the frequency is in my shirt pocket.”

  “How will we know it is your President who answers us?” Paco wanted to know.

  “It’s part of the code. I swear she’s still alive. Herb Knoff is her second in command. He’ll vouch for us and tell you everything you need to know to satisfy you as to who we are, and that we’re here on an official mission from the USA.”

  “Perhaps,” Loco said. “But in order to be sure, I am going to kill this soldier named Randy. Unless you are telling us the truth, Arnoldo, you will be the next to die.”

  “No!” Arnoldo cried, glancing over at his companion.

  “There is no other way to be sure,” Loco told him. “This way, you will know how serious I am about finding the truth in what you’ve told us.”

  Loco sent his knife plunging into the throat of Randy Grimes, and a stream of red came spitting forth from the jugular vein, squirting over Loco’s shirtsleeve. Grimes’s windpipe fell down on his chest, making a wet, whispering sound.

  “No! “Arnoldo cried.

  Loco laughed, the scar on his face twisted in an odd sort of way, like the wriggling motions of a snake.

  “Die, bastardo!” Loco shouted, pulling his bayonet out of Grimes’s neck.

  “Oh, no,” Arnoldo sighed, turning the other way.

  Loco stared at him. “Is it hard to watch a
friend die?” he asked. He leaned closer to Arnoldo, his eyes riveted on the young soldier’s face. “What will be much harder, compadre, is to feel your own lifeblood leaking down on your belly.”

  “Kill the son of a bitch,” Paco said, licking his dry lips when he scented blood. “Kill both of the American motherfuckers now!”

  Loco straightened up, examining the expression on Arnoldo’s face. “Not yet, Paco,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Loco grinned, wiping the blood off his bayonet on his pants legs. “Because now, this one will tell us the truth. He knows we mean business.”

  “I . . . swear . . . I’m telling the truth,” Arnoldo stammered as his companion slumped lower in the chair. “We were not lying to you in the first place.”

  Loco regarded him for a moment. “But how were we to know you were telling the truth?” he asked.

  Arnoldo Mendoza swallowed as Randy Grimes stopped breathing through his severed windpipe. “Because we came all the way down here. Why would we come at all, unless we were ordered to?”

  Jim Strunk pushed away from the wall where he’d been watching the proceedings. “Ask him about the rifles, Loco.”

  Perro Loco held out his hand and Paco Valdez handed him one of the Heckler and Koch sniper rifles. He showed it to Arnoldo. “Is this how your President offers an alliance? By giving rebels in our jungle these weapons with which they can kill me?”

  Arnoldo shook his head. “I do not know what you are talking about,” he said. “I’ve never seen a gun like that before.”

  “This could only come from America,” Loco persisted. “Are you saying that your President did not try to have me assassinated?”

  Arnoldo shook his head again. “No, comandante! I do not know anything of that. We, Randy and I, were only ordered to come here to offer you a partnership with President Osterman. Why would she want you killed? She needs you to help defeat Ben Raines.”

  “He’s probably right, comandante,” Strunk said, watching the American’s eyes closely to see if he was telling the truth. “Why would they come into our territory . . . unless somebody ordered them to?”