Blood & Tacos #1

by Matthew Funk

  He found Professor staring at the central support beam.

  "I don't hear them comin' in," Jasper yelled above the snarls of gunfire overhead. "No boots or nothing."

  Professor clicked on the flashlight affixed to his combat webbing vest. The light shone on a bulk taped to the beam, amidst the clutter ofSegura's pinball machine collection.

  Atop a column of compound explosive, a clock's third hand sped away the final thirty seconds. Professor's jaw went tight as his haircut.

  "Time bomb."

  "Well, don't that beat all," Jasper said with a smirk. "Should have figured something like that."

  "You figure how we get out of this?" Vaquero said.

  The clock spun past twenty seconds. The gunfire above faded as the hostiles withdrew. Professor sized up the bomb: Four pounds. Enough to atomize the house.

  "Better figure it fast," Professor said. "Fifteen seconds."

  Jasper angled a thumb at a colossal wooden armoire against the wall. "Then we better duck behind that, pronto."

  They ran for it, with ten seconds ticking away faster than even Professor could keep up.

  After Manuel Segura's mansion vaporized in a bright-red ball, the squad that had surrounded it spread back into the bayou.

  The plan was to disperse, check in with Commander Delta to confirm the mission's success, then lay low for a few days.

  Sergeant Bear Collins hunkered in the brown-green stew of an inlet, listening to his teammates call in on the radio. Bear was last to key his transmitter.

  "All clear here," he said. "Hell of a job, Tiger Team Delta."

  Unlike the times in the past he'd said it, Bear didn't smile. This mission felt even more sour than his first. He'd thought nothing could be worse than the slash-and-burn jobs he'd done outside ofHueCity. Knowing otherwise made him sick in his gut, and Bear hardly ever lost his appetite.

  That gut dropped as he heard a branch shift behind him.

  Bear swung around his M-16. His aim found only darkness. He kept his sights on it a second longer to be sure.

  A second too long. A bayonet pressed to his throat from behind.

  "Y'all look like you got plenty of dumb ideas in that hairy head of yours," Jasper said, pressing the blade closer. "Don't pay ‘em no heed. Just drop the gun."

  Bear weighed his options. Jasper cut them down to one by sinking the knife enough to draw blood.

  Bear's rifle splashed to the ground.

  Vaquero stepped out from behind the tree that had stolen Bear's attention. Colonel Professor followed. Banzai circled to Bear's side with a pistol to his head.

  "How the fuck did you manage it?" Bear blurted.

  "Just some local know-how," Jasper said.

  "Local know-how ain't enough to survive being blown to smithereens."

  "It is when it tells you that these old plantations have secret tunnels out to the slave quarters, so that the masters could have their nightly fun."

  "Well fuck me sideways."

  "We'll get around to that," Colonel Professor said, shark-dead stare fixed on Bear as Vaquero watched the perimeter of the grove. "Tell us who's behind this."

  "You tell me this," Bear said. "Would you give each other up if you were in my position?"

  Professor just stared.

  "That's what I thought," Bear said. "Same rules apply."

  "I figured that," Professor said. "So why's he doing this?"

  Tiger Team Bravo showed Professor the same puzzled look. Bear smiled.

  "Same reason as got us all into this mess in the first place," Bear said. "He's following orders."

  At a snap of Professor's fingers, Jasper brought a pistol butt down on Bear's skull. Bulk splashed into the bayou. Professor turned the knocked-out soldier over to keep him from drowning.

  "You want to explain all of that to us?" Jasper said.

  Professor looked to Vaquero. He got a nod.

  "I know what you're thinking, jefe," Vaquero said. "That the Ozark shipping address in the Cartel's records is making a lot of sense now."

  "Ozarks?" Jasper said. "You mean…"

  "It means," Professor said, "We have a call to pay on an old comrade. Captain Teague has some explaining to do."

  "This is a real end run, amigos." Vaquero said, giving a sour look to the map Jasper spread.

  "Not like we don't know the field." Jasper flashed a smile.

  It was true. The Ozark forest they hunkered in, a spot on the edge of the map they gathered around, even smelled as they remembered. The decade of time since they trained here had changed so much in their lives, but the rhythm of the scissoring wind, the pine and soil aroma thick as gravy, even the rustle of animals in the mist, remained.

  "Shocked to my spurs you didn't recognize the address on the Cartel list at the first glance, Professor." Vaquero glanced at Professor Colonel, crouched nearby keying a long-range radio. "Getting old?"

  "Been old since I was young." Professor lifted the transmitter to the rim of his beret. "No, I didn't suspect the address until we found out Teague's Tiger Team was involved. It's not like I'm an authority on secret Special Forces training grounds' street addresses."

  That sobered Vaquero. He tugged a jacket tassel. "Think Teague's behind this? Some kind of revenge thing against us?"

  Jasper didn't look up from his study of the map's clouds of green and tributaries of yellow, the rises and vales of the secret training ground. "Maybe he crawled out ofIndochinawith some Golden Triangle heroin connections."

  "We'll know soon enough, cowboy." Professor said to Vaquero.

  They held each other's stare, Vaquero's demanding certainty, Professor giving only confidence in reply. Vaquero dropped his head first, shook it. "A real damn end run."

  "Nobody knows these woods better than us." Jasper tapped the map's right border. "Now look here, y'all."

  "I'm looking, I'm looking," Vaquero said. "You looking, Banzai?"

  "I'm always looking. You just can't see it."

  Jasper grinned big enough for Banzai and him both, then traced their infiltration route. The wind gusted and ebbed, shuttling eddies of mist through the rearing pine. As the radio clicked in answer to Professor, he spoke.

  "Hello. Been awhile."

  Jasper walked his fingers along a narrow yellow slash—a dead-end valley—on the map. "Right here's the draw where we set up that ambush, back in the day. Wiped out them weekend warriors on our war game finals, you remember?"

  "Hard to forget," Vaquero said, smirked, rubbing his sun-ripened neck. "Though I don't remember much about the week celebrating that came after."

  Jasper whistled. "All's I got to remember from that's the tattoos, myself. Anyhows, that there draw's got a defilade up on its south ridge we can slip through, right into the heart of the training ground forest."

  "Okay, but how do we get to the draw?"

  Professor squinted at the dusk bruising the spine of the mountains, spoke evenly into the radio. "Understood. I don't owe you anything either. It never was about owing. You know that."

  Jasper skittered his fingers along the yellow of the map, then skipped them into a green patch in its center. "Well, we just march right up this private road until we can see this here elevation, about 800 yards shy of it, and cut into the woods bearin' north-northeast from there."

  Vaquero frowned. "What if Teague's people have advance snipers covering the road?"

  "They don't," Jasper said."

  "What if they do? What if they shoot us?"

  "They won't."

  Vaquero sighed. Wind and birds held their breath, and the only sound was the rumble of a monotone voice on Professor's radio.

  It paused, and Professor was quick to answer. "That's right. This is about honor. That you can trust in."

  His Tiger Team exchanged dismayed looks at his answer. Jasper was first to shrug it off and started circling his finger around the green patch, the target, on the map.

  "Once we make it through the draw," Jasper said, "they'll have pickets around th
e main site."

  "And, we can guess," Vaquero said, rocking on his snakeskin boot heels, "a house where they're holding Alexandra and your families."

  "Right." Jasper couldn't smile at that. "We just slip in through the pickets, then make contact at the back of the house."

  "Easy as that." Vaquero's tone was flat as a folded flag.

  "Easy as that." Jasper said.

  "I know we're putting our lives in your hands. Like I said, it's how it's always been. We'll see you soon." Professor keyed off the radio and turned to the stares of his men.

  "Got the uniforms?" Professor Colonel asked Jasper, sending him rummaging in his Confederate-colored rucksack.

  "How'd you get those anyway, Jasper?" Vaquero slipped off his jacket.

  "I'm a person who knows people." Jasper snapped on a grin. "Besides, since the war, this stuff's just been collecting mold down inMississippi. Easiest thing in the world to pinch a few for the price of a case of beer."

  "Let's suit up and hit it," Professor said.

  Jasper was first to put his fist out. His voice had a heavy sobriety to it for once. It didn't weigh down his smile. "Intensity Level Bravo."

  Professor nodded and held his knuckles to Jasper's. "All the way."

  The others joined, completing the circle of fists. "All the way."

  As countless times before, they broke ranks, suited up and marched into the woods as though they belonged to them.

  Captain Teague turned from watching General Parkinson burn the ledgers in the trashcan. He stared at the mellow spill of Ozark forest out the bay window of his three-story lodge. Past the reflection of his glower, one eye slashed by a long-scar fromHanoishrapnel, the sight of mist-ringed trees rolling down the mountain soothed the disgust rising in him.

  These dense and gauzy forests were a familiar sight. Teague chose this place as his hideaway after the war because of that familiarity. Their resemblance to the Central Highlands ofVietnammade living inAmericafeel less like being on an alien planet.

  "Rotten cocksuckers," General Parkinson said, inspiring a nervous glance from the three MPs clutching M-16s by the study's doorways. "Can't even clean up a simple mess."

  The sight of burning records brought a different familiar feeling to Teague. He kept it to himself. Telling Parkinson of how he'd watched Dial Soapers—rear echelon officers—burn records of the Tiger Teams at 5th Special Forces Command beforeSaigon fell would be wasted on the general.

  "I told you they'd be a hard target," Teague said, still standing sentinel at the window.

  "Your team was supposed to be harder still," Parkinson snarled at him, dumping more files stuffed with Cartel payments and cocaine distributors' names into the trashcan blaze. "Fight fire with fire, right? You were supposed to beAmerica's best."

  "We are," Teague said. His shoulders couldn't get any straighter. "But so are Tiger Team Bravo."

  Parkinson scraped ash from his hands onto his dress greens. Gave Teague his worst Fort Bragg scowl. "I'd hoped the millions of dollars your Tiger Team Delta is tasked to protect were incentive enough to prevail."

  "Millions in drug money."

  "Don't play the innocent." Parkinson wadded his swollen features into red contempt. "Whether it was heroin from the Golden Triangle inLaosor coke fromColombia, black ops cash has to come from somewhere. Nothing changes."

  "No," Teague said, turning from the window. "Nothing does."

  Teague's radio buzzed. He answered it.

  He listened, Parkinson staring fixedly at him. "That was Tomahawk," he told Parkinson. "They caught Tiger Team Bravo just outside the rear perimeter, trying to slip through disguised as Guardsmen. He's bringing them in"

  "That's more like it." Parkinson shoved the grill of medals on his chest out to match his grin. "We'll get them to tell us where the Cartel records are. Then we'll liquidate them and the hostages and move out."

  Parkinson looked around for a way to extinguish the burning files. He picked up a decanter of Glenfiddich ‘37, considered it, and then put it down. "Find me a way to put out this fire."

  The study doors parted and Tiger Team Bravo were marched in at gunpoint. Flanked by four MPs, carrying their M-16 carbines, the team looked shaken and weary in shabby Guardsmen uniforms. Teague neither smiled or frowned to see them.

  Parkinson stood astride Teague's Buddhist prayer mat, beaming.

  "Well, you dumb son of a bitch," Parkinson said to Colonel Professor, who glowered back from below his skewed beret. "Got anything to say for yourself?"

  Professor didn't reply. Parkinson's smile went fish-bone thin.

  "You can start by telling me where those Cartel records are."

  "I have only one thing to tell you," Colonel Professor said.

  The smile didn't shift, but Parkinson's eyes readied some venom. It slipped into his tone. "What's that, Colonel?"

  "It's time for some Bravo mojo."

  Parkinson only had time to wrinkle his nose. The MPs that brought in Tiger Team were already tossing the carbines to them. In a single smooth motion, as if both teams were one, Tiger Team Bravo caught up their rifles and set them on Parkinson while their MPs drew sidearms and aimed them at Parkinson's men.

  Parkinson's MPs dropped their hands from their holsters. Parkinson dropped his jaw.

  "What the fuck is this?" Parkinson said.

  "Fine work, Tiger Team Delta," Teague said to the MPs allied with Bravo.

  From behind Banzai's left shoulder, Bear tipped the MP helmet he wore at his commander. "Our pleasure, boss. Good to be back on the right side."

  "Get the greenhorns out of here," Colonel Professor ordered. At Teague's nod of agreement, the counterfeit MPs led Parkinson's men away with their white gloves raised high.

  "What are you doing, you traitorous cocksucker?" General Parkinson roared at Teague, tone sour as the cigar scent staining his liver-hued lips. "Kill them all!"

  He spun to find Teague holding Parkinson's own ivory-handled Colt on him. His gaze floated between his lost pistol and Teague's scowl as if deciding which was deadlier.

  As Banzai shut the study doors, Tiger Team Bravo clustered around Parkison. Colonel Professor nodded at Teague.

  "Captain," he said.

  "Colonel," Teague replied in his coffin-groan of a voice. "I would say it was good to see you, but given the circumstances."

  "Understood. Seems it's always that way, Captain."

  "Yes it does, sir."

  "Traitor," was all Parkinson could spit.

  "This the fucker who stole my Pa?" Jasper poked the chill of his rifle barrel into Parkinson's neck.

  "As if his kind hadn't already done enough to my grandparents," Banzai added, the burn of his glare showing even through the mirror shades.

  "Traitors!" Parkinson bellowed. "All of you. Betraying your country."

  "By surviving?" Colonel Professor held out his hand to Teague.

  "By not betraying each other?" Teague filled Professor's grip with the General's Colt.

  Parkinson's laugh had a disease in its cough. Stare stuck to Tiger Team Bravo like Agent Orange. "No, you fucking grunts. By not letting the war end when we told you to. By not doing as you were fucking told."

  Colonel Professor put the Colt's sight on Parkinson's temple. His stare in reply, cool and heavy caliber. The Ozark wilderness outside a perfection of silence packaged in mist and memory.

  "If there's one good thing we took from your war, General," Professor said, "it's each other."

  Parkinson's lips split to speak. Professor saved the silence with a bullet through the general's skull.

  The shot sped through both temples and out for the forest to keep. Parkinson's body shook the ash of the burning files as it fell. It sprawled stiff on the prayer mat, frozen to be forgotten on the floor above where Team Tiger Bravo's families waited to be joined.

  THE END

  Matthew C. Funk is an editor of Needle Magazine, editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a staff writer
for Planet Fury and Criminal Complex. Winner of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has online work indexed on his web domain and printed work in Needle, Speedloader, Off the Record, Pulp Ink and D*CKED.

  Ben Slayton: T-Man or He-Man?

  By Nick Slosser

  The year is 1982. Terrorist plots riddle the front pages of newspapers across the globe: The 15 May Organization detonates a bomb on Pan Am Flight 830. The Red Brigade kidnaps U.S. Brig. Gen. Dozier and holds him captive 42 days. Carlos the Jackal instigates numerous bombings and a rocket attack on the Superphénix nuclear power station. At such a time the world needs a hero…a hero like Ben Slayton, T-Man.

  Apparently 1982 is a time when treason comes cheap: a mere $10,000 will buy a U.S. Senator, such as Willard Parfrey (even though in 1982, U.S. Senators pulled down salaries of $69,800). For ten-grand Parfrey will deliver to known terrorists the travel itinerary of the President of the United States. The only possible reason for wanting this information is assassination, and the Senator knows it. Suffering doubts, Parfrey reminds himself that "the present Administration was unable to move effectively against inflation, social disparity, and economic strife," and comprise "a bunch of mealy-mouthed, candy-ass bureaucrats." Which is enough to rationalize selling out his country and scampering off "to Rio de Janeiro with a wallet bulging with C-notes."

  Of course, Parfrey will never get to Rio, because he's thrown in with terrorists of the most venomous breed: "Right-wingers," Slayton affirms, "completely bananas." Like Colonel Kurtz, these ex-Special Forces men have gone off the reservation to carry out their own radical campaign and adhere to no recognizable morality. These are Slayton's opponents in a game where Death holds all the cards. But the seasoned T-Man is no babe-in-the-woods. So when Bambi, a streetwalker with everything to lose, joins Slayton and gets herself brutally murdered, the icy-veined super-agent has only this to say: "Just another casualty of war, I guess."

  And make no mistake, war has been declared. Using a highly specialized explosive device, the terrorists stamp their first message on the back of Lincoln's statue, calling for "all-out revolution without partial solutions or constructive change".