Tyranny in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  THIRTY-NINE

  The Boeing/Bell CV-22 Osprey slowed in the predawn hours after passing over Mexico City on the way toward the forward elements of General Dominguez’s and General Pena’s troops. The CV-22 was a medium lift, multimission, vertical/short-takeoff-and-landing (VSTOL), tilt-rotor aircraft developed by Boeing and Bell Helicopter Textron to be used for long-range Special Operations missions, especially for combat assault and assault support.

  Since it had the attributes of both a transport airplane and a helicopter, it was ideal for placing Buddy Raines and his Special Ops Brigade team deep into Mexican territory.

  As the mission-ready light over the cargo compartment door changed from red to green, Buddy leaned over and said to Harley Reno, “I’ll take my group out here, in front of the advancing forces, and then have the pilot leapfrog over them and let your team out to their rear. That way we’ll have ’em pincered between us.”

  Harley looked down the cargo compartment, which was six feet in height, five feet, eleven inches in width, and twenty-four feet, four inches in length. “Good. I’ll be glad to get out of this bird, it reminds me too much of a coffin.”

  Buddy stuck his hand out. “Good hunting, podna.”

  “You, too, pal,” Reno answered, shaking his hand. “I’ll have Corrie keep in close touch with your radio operator so we can coordinate our strikes.”

  Buddy stuck his thumb up and turned to his men. “Mount up, gentlemen,” he said as the rotors on the wing tilted and the big Osprey settled to the ground like a helicopter, hovering two feet off the caliche dirt of the Mexican desert.

  Buddy opened the door and jumped to the ground, followed by his Special Ops team. As soon as the last man stepped out, Harley leaned over and pulled the door shut.

  He signaled Coop, who banged on the wall behind the pilot to signal him they were ready for takeoff. As the Osprey rose in the air, then began to move forward as the rotors tilted again on the wings, Coop shook his head. “Damn, this thing can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a helicopter or an airplane.”

  Anna scooted over on her bench to make room for Harley to sit next to her, causing both Jersey and Coop to look at each other and smile. Anna’s infatuation with the big redhead was becoming more obvious every day.

  Soon, the Osprey again settled to the earth and Harley, Hammer, Anna, Corrie, Jersey, and Coop piled out and immediately spread out forming a defensive perimeter as the plane took off again.

  Coop noticed Harley had grabbed a four-foot-long box painted Army green and had it under his arm. “What ya got in the box, Harley?” he asked as they squatted in the field, looking outward for any signs of hostiles.

  Harley grinned. “An M-60 machine gun fixed with a leather strap.”

  Coop raised his eyebrows. “You mean like Rambo used in that old movie First Blood?”

  Harley nodded. “Yep. Never know when a little firepower might come in handy.”

  “A little firepower?” Jersey said from next to Coop. “You can stop a tank with that thing.”

  Harley just nodded. “Yep.”

  Hammer stood up after seeing they were unobserved. “Let’s go, people. Time to get under cover until dawn, when we can see to reconnoiter the area.”

  Hammer led them at a dogtrot until they found shelter under a grove of mesquite trees near a small stream that was little more than a trickle.

  “Break out your MREs. No tellin’ when we’ll get to eat again,” he said.

  Anna took out a pouch of navy beans and ham hocks with corn and twisted the pack so the self-contained chemical reaction would heat the bag. Then she sat next to Harley, with her back against the bole of a tree.

  “Harley,” she said.

  “Yes, Anna.”

  “Tell me about yourself. Are you of Swedish or Norwegian descent?”

  He chuckled quietly as he ripped open a packet that said Swiss steak and mashed potatoes. “Neither. My ancestors were all Indians.”

  Anna looked at him like he was teasing her. “With red hair and blue eyes?”

  He nodded. “There’s a tribe of Indians in northwest Mexico called the Tarahumarra. They live over near Torrleon on the edge of the desert. All the men and women have red hair and green eyes, and the men are almost all over six feet in height.”

  “How did they get those characteristics?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but it’s said that the Tarahumarra are direct descendants of the Nordic people brought over by Eric the Red and his fellow explorers.”

  “But, Harley, your eyes are blue.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “I’m glad you noticed, Anna.”

  Her face blushed a fiery red as he continued. “That’s probably because I also have some Karankawa in me.”

  “Karankawa?”

  “Yeah. The Karankawa lived along the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and are best known for being cannibals.”

  “Huh?”

  He nodded. “But that’s really not fair. They didn’t eat people for fun, only the hearts and brains of enemies they’d captured, in order to get their wisdom and strength. Hell, almost all of the Native American tribes did the same thing.”

  “But how did they mix with your Tarahumarra?”

  “Again, no one knows, but the best guess is Spanish slave traders used to cruise the coast of Texas and capture the Karankawa to make slaves of them. Naturally, they’d be taken back to Mexico, where most of the Spanish gold and silver mines were. Those that escaped, joined and later bred with the Tarahumarra.”

  “Do you ever eat your enemies, Harley?” she asked, smiling gently at him.

  He stared deep into her eyes. “No, Anna, only my closest friends.”

  She dropped her eyes to her navy beans, her face again flaming red.

  Parts of the old Pan American Highway ditches were overgrown with vines, and in places the asphalt was pockmarked by craters from RPGs made years before, when the big war raged across most of the world. Since then, there had been only sparse traffic on the long, badly damaged highway. The Mexican people, like most of those of the Third World, had suffered far more from the destruction of the old way of life than had the more developed nations. With the new struggle for survival and the destruction of much of the wealthier nations’ infrastructure, there had been precious little money for foreign aid.

  Buddy Raines led a squad of his Special Ops Brigade through the jungles of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, flanking the highway that once linked North America with the Panama Canal and Central America. His troops carried silenced Beretta pistols and the so-called Mini-Uzi 9x19mm machine guns with forty-round magazines.

  They were placing “Bouncing Betty” land mines wherever an unsuspecting group of Comandante Perro Loco’s ground forces was expected to march toward Mexico City. The Bouncing Betty came up three feet in the air before it exploded, sending shrapnel into anything and everything within a forty-foot area, one of the deadliest mines ever developed for warfare.

  Perro Loco’s troops were marching on Mexico City under the command of Generals Juan Dominguez and Jaime Pena.

  Presidente Martinez of Mexico had promised Ben Raines that no one would molest his SUSA Rebels, so long as they kept it a limited conflict. General Dominguez’s troops were said to be moving north with tanks, APCs, and several thousand of Perro Loco’s infantrymen from both Belize and Nicaragua and Honduras to try to take the Mexican capital. The untended Pan American Highway was the only route through primitive jungle states like Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacan to Mexico City from the south. There were no other roads suitable for heavy equipment.

  Buddy Raines knew the Belizian rebels had to use the virtually abandoned highway to get their tanks and heavy artillery northward to the Mexican capital. He was preparing a welcome for them and the troops that would be walking alongside them.

  Buddy led his handpicked force of a dozen trusted specialists along the dark, mosquito-infested jungle trails running beside the high
way. No motorized traffic moved past them in any direction. The gasoline refineries across southern Mexico had been knocked out during the war, and fuel was at a premium in this part of the hemisphere.

  Sergeant Chuck Flood, dressed in camouflage with his face blackened like the others, came over to Buddy, his Uzi hanging from his shoulder on a thin leather strap.

  “We’ve got ’em out, sir. Not using any patterns, like you told us. They’ll have to sniff them out one at a time to find all of them. Maybe as much as half the column will be in our trap before they realize what’s happening to them. When they try to get off the road, they’ll hit our Bouncing Bettys in most of the ditches.”

  “Recon says the lead battalion is only a few miles south of us. Captain Storm says they should be crossing the first mines in an hour, maybe less.”

  Sergeant Flood nodded.

  A woman wearing an infantryman’s cap came running up to Buddy as he was talking to Sergeant Flood.

  “They’re coming,” Corporal Crisi Casper said, out of breath as she gave her report. “Two miles. Moving slowly, but I don’t think they suspect anything.”

  “Have they got dogs out front?” Buddy asked.

  “No. No dogs.”

  Flood grinned. “Then they should hit the land mines with the APCs and tanks without any warning.” He glanced up at the sky. “I sure as hell wish we had some air support for this operation.”

  “That would give us away,” Buddy said. “Better to let them wander into the middle of our minefields without suspecting anything.”

  “They don’t suspect anything,” Crisi said. “They act like this is a parade of some kind. Some officer is riding out in front in a jeep mounted with a fifty-caliber popgun. He acts like they’re headed for Disneyland. He was smiling when I saw him.”

  Buddy looked south. “Tell Captain Storm to get everyone off the roadway. We’ve laid better than five hundred land mines on this stretch, including the old Claymores. We’ll pull back into the jungle and see how many of Perro Loco’s soldiers and tanks get blown to bits in the next couple of hours. It’s good to know they don’t have scent dogs to guide them through. The trap is set now.”

  “I’ll inform Captain Storm,” Sergeant Flood said, taking off at a jog.

  “What do you want the rest of us to do?” Corporal Casper asked.

  “Get back off the road, a hundred yards or more. Scatter out and wait.”

  “Wait for what, sir?”

  “When things start blowing up along this highway, we’ll call for an Osprey and get the hell out of here. It’ll take Perro Loco’s soldiers a couple of days to clear a way through this jungle for their heavy stuff to get around the mines we’ve laid along this road.”

  “These Central American rebels may call in their own air support, sir.”

  “Suits me just fine,” Buddy said.

  “It suits you?”

  “It sure as hell does. We’ll see how well Comandante Perro Loco’s air force does in the skies . . . We’ve got two rocket launchers.”

  A thundering explosion came from a bend in the roadway and pieces of heavy iron flew into the air, along with a thick column of smoke.

  “Bingo,” Buddy whispered to Captain Storm from their hiding place in the jungle. “Something . . . a tank or an APC, just hit a mine and their fuel tank exploded.”

  A huge ball of swirling flame rose above the canopy of the rain forest.

  “They’re right in the middle of the minefield we set for ’em,” Storm said.

  Another explosion prevented Buddy from agreeing with the captain out loud.

  “Damn,” Corporal Casper said when another ball of fire boiled into the sky.

  “That had to be another fuel tank,” Buddy said as he put his fieldglasses on the bend in the Pan American Highway. “A Betty doesn’t make that much noise.”

  “A Claymore don’t either,” Storm remarked. “We’ve got ’em right where we want ’em now.”

  “Spread out,” Buddy said, adjusting the focus knob on his binoculars. “Their foot soldiers will be coming from all directions in a minute or two.”

  “We can’t hold off so many,” Storm said.

  “I know,” Buddy replied. “I’m going to radio for the Osprey to pick us up. We’ve done all we can do with very limited resources.”

  Gunshots rang out from the south.

  “Who are they shooting at?” Crisi wondered.

  “Shadows,” Buddy told her. “When things start happening fast on a battlefield, you see ghosts.”

  A third explosion shook the ground underneath Buddy, Corporal Casper, and Captain Storm.

  Buddy grunted, still unable to see anyone moving through his field glasses. “Must have been a munitions truck. Pretty dumb of General Dominguez to put a truck full of explosives near the front of an advancing column.”

  “They don’t have a West Point in Mexico,” Storm said as the sound of the explosion faded.

  “Spread out,” Buddy said again.

  “I’ll call in the Osprey. Before long these trees are gonna be crawling with Perro Loco’s rebel soldiers.”

  “Here they come now,” Crisi said, pointing south.

  Buddy could see shadows moving through the jungle southeast of the highway.

  “We’ll take out as many as we can,” Captain Storm said, as he pulled back the loading lever on his Uzi.

  Buddy nodded. “Give the Osprey fifteen minutes. It’s coming from Tampico. Move north along the road and we’ll meet at the bridge.”

  Captain Storm slipped off into the jungle. Corporal Casper moved behind a tangle of vines, walking east.

  Two more explosions in rapid succession told Buddy that a land mine had destroyed two vehicles.

  “Welcome to southern Mexico, General Dominguez,” he said under his breath, returning the field glasses to his face as he searched the jungle.

  Private Julio Villalobos lay in the ditch beside the Pan American Highway with his M-16 resting on his chest. He was having trouble breathing.

  Julio’s friend, Gulliermo Costas, came crawling toward him with both legs blown off below his knees.

  “What . . . happened, Julio?”

  “Land mines. Someone put mines along this road. They knew we were coming.”

  “I am dying, Julio. I have no feet.”

  Julio wasn’t all that sure of his own injuries. “I cannot get any air,” he said. “Something went down in my lungs when the tank blew up.”

  “Por favor, please give this watch to my sister, Julio. It belonged to my father.”

  “I am not sure I can stand up, compadre.”

  “But you must give it to her. It is all I have. Take the twenty pesos from my pocket and give it to her also. She has four children.”

  An earsplitting blast shook the jungle beyond the ditch where Julio lay. “I cannot move, compadre. Put the watch and the money in my pocket.”

  A chunk of iron track from an old Sherman tank came tumbling into the ditch beside Julie and Gulliermo, landing with a thud a few yards away.

  “What is happening?” Julio gasped.

  “We are being attacked,” Costas groaned. “I am dying because I have no feet.”

  The chatter of machine-gun fire came from the north, farther up the road.

  “Please give the watch and the money to my sister,” Costas pleaded.

  “I am not sure I can stand up. I do not know what is wrong with me.”

  Costas crawled over to him. He looked down at Julio’s lower body. “Dios,” he gasped.

  “What is it?” Julio wondered, feeling nothing other than a strange floating sensation.

  “Madre de Dios. Where are your legs, Julio?”

  “My legs?”

  “They are not here . . . There is only blood.”

  Julio tried to wiggle his toes. “I cannot feel anything,” he said.

  Three explosions in a row echoed down the line of tanks and trucks stopped along the highway.

  “Your legs!” Costas crie
d. “Julio! You have no legs and I have no feet!”

  Julio closed his eyes, thinking of their small village in the mountains in Honduras where his wife and children waited for the money promised by Comandante Perro Loco. “I must have legs,” he said, unable to raise his head to see for himself. “No one can live without legs.”

  Costas started to vomit, gagging up the meager contents of his stomach.

  Julio began to dream of a ripe banana, along with a piece of breadfruit. He closed his eyes and dreamed of better days until the dream became lost in a fog.

  FORTY

  Crisi fired into a mass of moving bodies, her Uzi making low-pitched phfittt sounds through the new silencers as the forty-round clip emptied, jumping in her hands, spitting out its deadly loads.

  Screams of pain came from the forest.

  “Nice shooting, Corporal,” a soft voice said.

  She turned around and found Sergeant Barry Brown standing behind her with a handheld rocket launcher.

  “Thanks,” she said, ramming another full clip into the loading chamber.

  “We’ll have company in the air pretty soon,” Brown said in his typically understated way. “I can’t wait to see how many of the bastards I can knock down.”

  “You enjoy this, don’t you?” Crisi asked, as the rattle of automatic-weapons fire surrounded them. South of their position men were shouting, and the roar of engines filled the rain-forested hills.

  “Damn right I do,” Barry said.

  “I suspect you’ll get your chance to enjoy a great deal more of it,” she said, hunkered down behind a tangle of vines when the whine of stray bullets sizzled overhead.

  “I hope so,” Brown whispered, his eyes turned up at blue sky above the treetops.

  Above the din, Crisi heard the hammering of a helicopter’s rotor blades.

  “Here they come,” she said.

  “I hear it. Just one. By the sound, it’s a Kiowa or an OH-6 Defender. This is gonna be too easy. An OH-58 Kiowa is too slow to dodge a Hellfire missile, if you aim just the right way. I’m gonna knock it down.”