“Back end of the property looks pretty clear,” Junior told us. “I’m going to swing around west and run up that road, see if I can get a look at the house. You OK? Or you want me to wait until you’re over the fence?”
“No, go ahead,” I told him, leaning against the chain links while Shotgun scrambled upward.
Once Shotgun was over the top, I kicked my sneakers into the fence and followed. I slipped over the blanket, and was just about to hop down onto the ground when I heard something moving between the nearby trees.
“Shit!” cursed Shotgun.
The next thing I knew, he had hopped up next to me. Then something hit the fence so hard at first I thought it was a missile or an rpg.
It was something even more deadly: a rottweiler from hell.
People talk about how ferocious pit bulls are. Believe me, they have nothing on a well-trained rot.
Rottweilers are intelligent and can be gentle dogs, if properly nurtured and trained. Teach them to be nasty, though, and you have one mean mf. Not even my ex-mother-in-law could stand up to one of them.
The rot below us was the meanest thing I’ve ever seen on four legs. (My first drill instructor walked on two. At least around us.) He rebounded off the fence with a snarl, and began snapping at our shoes. Shotgun and I scrambled back up to the top as the dog threw himself against the links.
This was no dog, this was a demon. After another lunge brought its teeth to within a few inches of my shoes, I decided the only way to deal with it was to shoot it. But as I reached to my holster for my pistol, Shotgun called me off.
“I’ll get him, Dick,” he said. And with that, he leapt off the fence, holding the Teflon blanket out in front of him. He caught the dog from the side, whirling the blanket over its head and scooping it over, twisting the material in the same motion. The dog flipped over on its back, whining as Shotgun pinned its back legs to the ground with his knee. The maneuver was a thing of beauty, really, an impressive ballet of man versus animal, proving why we are so much higher on the evolutionary chain.
Then the dog’s fangs ripped through the Teflon. Before Shotgun could react, the animal had obliterated the material, and expanded its jaws wide enough to swallow Shotgun’s head whole.
I put five bullets between its eyes before the damn beast dropped off dead.
Did Shotgun thank me for saving his life? Did he say he would be eternally grateful, or offer to name his firstborn after me?
Heh.
“Aw, why’d you have to go and shoot it for, Dick?” he asked, getting up. “It wouldn’t have hurt me none.”
We hauled the dog to a spot behind the trees. We pulled off our ponchos—the rain was letting up—and used them to camouflage him. I reloaded my pistol, then took my MP5 out of the ruck.
“Junior, what are you seeing?” I asked over the radio.
“Nothing, Dick.”
“A dog just came out of nowhere and attacked us.”
“Shit.”
“It’s all right. Get the Bird back overhead.”
“It’s on its way.”
Next I called Veronica. When I told her what had happened, she was extremely concerned.
But not about us.
“You shot a dog?” she asked.
“The damn thing was the size of a bear.”
“You had to shoot it, though?”
I felt like I was at an ASPCA meeting. I told her to keep watching the road.
“What kind of trees are these?” Shotgun asked, gesturing at the grove we were hiding in.
“Do I look like a botanist?” I was not in a pleasant mood.
“Shunt says they’re dates. You think they’re dates?”
“If Shunt told you what they were, why you asking me?”
“I don’t think Shunt knows all that much about trees,” said Shotgun. “He lives in New York City. I don’t think he knows what a tree is.”
“They have trees in New York, Shotgun.”
“If these are dates, then I could try one of them.”
“They’re probably poisoned.”
“You think?”
I didn’t, but it was enough to get Shotgun’s mind off of the food and focus on where it belonged—watching our six … and our seven, our one and our eight, and every number around the clock.
Sifting through the trees, we came up a gentle rise. A large cultivated field and a smaller one sat between us and a long building. In the darkness it looked more like a shadow blending into the hill behind it.
I took my night binos out and focused on the building. There was still a light drizzle blurring my vision, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a guard or another dog.
The PK was not a silent weapon, and with that many shots I would expect to get some response. Gunfire, even out in this part of Mexico, couldn’t be too common. But there was nothing.
“Might not have heard us inside the house,” said Shotgun, reading my mind as I stared at the building. The house was nearly a half mile away from the building, beyond another grove of trees and up a hill.
I moved along the tree line until I could no longer see the building. Then I started to trot through the field, hanging in the shadow at the edge. The land had been plowed up but was fallow, or at least there wasn’t anything growing in it yet.
The rain had made the topsoil wet, and a light layer of mud stuck to the sides of my shoes. There was a chemical scent to the field that mixed with the rain; it smelled a bit like a deodorant commercial that had gone horribly wrong. But at least it didn’t smell like cow manure.
Once more the clouds parted; the sky lightened as the moon was revealed. I reached the end of the field and found a ditch running between them rather than the road I had expected. This was a plus rather than a problem; it wended its way around to the right, and would give us cover all the way to the first building.
“Follow me,” I told Shotgun, starting along it. “Don’t get lost.”
Back at the ranch, Junior was running into some sort of communications problem with the Bird. The infrared video feed went offline, though he could still see somewhat with a backup low-light camera. (I’m sorry to say, this has happened a few times.) He tried resetting—basically turning it on and off—but that didn’t work.21
“The plane seems to be flying fine,” he told me. “It’s circling almost directly over your position. But I still can’t see for shit.”
“Just keep at it,” I told him.
“No shit.”
I might have told him to call Shunt and try and troubleshoot it, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. Shotgun and I were already well inside the compound, and there wasn’t much Junior could tell me that I couldn’t figure out on my own. There’s a tendency to depend too much on high-tech gadgets once you have them. I’m not saying I’m exempt—like most guys, stick something with a battery in my hand and I can keep myself occupied for hours. But I started out in the era when the idea of real-time satellite imagery was sci-fi fantasy, and we still found a way to get the job done.
The building we were heading toward looked like a two-story barn made out of prefab steel panels. A concrete apron ran around the base. I guesstimated the side walls were about sixty or seventy feet, twice as long as the front and back.
I was roughly ten yards from the building when the night flooded with light; I’d stupidly tripped a motion detector planted in the ground somewhere to my left. It was completely my fault—I’d scanned the roofline of the building and examined the wall without seeing anything, but hadn’t bothered to look anywhere else, including the field where it was planted. Maybe I would have missed it there—the detector was on a stake, positioned very low to the ground—but it was certainly a dumbshit moment.
I dropped into the dirt, expecting to come under fire. But nothing happened.
“Dick, there’s a motion detector out there,” called Shotgun, who was about ten or fifteen yards behind.
“No shit. Can you take care of it?”
“Yea
h.”
He backed around and circled behind the light. I stayed motionless until the light flicked off. A minute or two later, Shotgun reached the detector and slid a small piece of thick glass over it, blinding it. He then took the stake it was mounted on and angled it into the ground. The detector was still working, but all it would find now were earthworms.
Shotgun moved up in the field, looking for other detectors. I watched the building until he said it was clear.
I rose and started toward the building again, this time more cautiously.
I spotted a set of floodlights at the front of the building that had motion detectors attached to the bottom. But they were angled in a way that made it clear there was a wide blind spot along the front wall. All I had to do was hug the exterior of the building to avoid detection.
The far side of the building was partly exposed to the rest of the farm. I slipped back to a pair of empty oil drums sitting against the side of the building. Apparently used as burn barrels, there was nothing inside but a few pieces of charred cardboard and firewood. I worked around to the back, where I found a set of floodlights similar to the ones in the front. I slid beneath them without setting off the detectors and continued around to the side I’d started on. From there, I walked back to the front of the building, having completed a full circle.
The only opening was a large door on a rail at the front. It was padlocked in two places—Yale locks, relatively easy to pick.
“Somebody moving up near the house,” said Shotgun over the radio. “Rifles—two guys.”
The warning was a relief—I’d been starting to think the night was a complete waste of time.
“Truck,” warned Shotgun. “Two maybe—hear them?”
Just barely. I got on the radio and asked Junior if he saw anything.
“Still trying to reset.”
“Keep working on it.”
“Here they come,” said Shotgun, breaking in. “Two troop trucks, canvas off.”
“Mexican army?”
“I don’t know, Dick. I think they’re all ragheads.”22
“You sure?”
“They got AKs.” Shotgun used the slang for AK47s, the rifle of choice for terrorists and other miscreants the world over.
“Doesn’t mean anything,” I told him.
“All of them have beards. I see some of those Saudi scarves. They have khakis.”
Definitely not army. But were they cartel members? Or tangos?
There was only one way to find out, really. Ask them.
* * *
One of the popular misconceptions about SEALs is that we like to get into fights where we’re outnumbered. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Now, it is correct that we often find ourselves outnumbered—after all, who in their right mind would take on SEALs on a one-to-one basis? And of course, if you succeed in getting surrounded, any decision you make will lead naturally to an attack—you have no option for a tactical withdrawal.
My intention at the moment was not to actually fight the two dozen or so assholes who were riding toward us in the trucks. I was here on a recce or reconnaissance mission; the word “suicide” did not appear anywhere in the op description. But I didn’t intend on leaving until I was sure who they were.
“Get over to this side of the barn with me,” I told Shotgun. “Before the trucks come down the road.”
“Too late,” he said as a pair of headlights swung across the field. The truck made a turn on the road above and the lights focused ahead, illuminating the narrow dirt road down from the house. The lights on the barn flashed on, apparently worked by remote control since the trucks were too far away to set them off. Another set of lights, back up near the house, flashed on as well.
“Wow, definitely Arabs,” said Shotgun.
“You’re sure they’re not Mexican?”
“A couple got those long coat things and the Afghan hats. I’ll get a picture with the camera.”
“Make sure it doesn’t flash.”
Yeah, I know, only an idiot would leave the flash on.
You’d be surprised.
“Got it,” said Shotgun.
“I have the visual,” said Junior over the radio. “I can see the farm—there are two trucks coming down the road toward you.”
“Stand by,” I told him. “Shotgun, can you move back in the field without being detected?”
“I think so.”
“OK, let’s do it. We have what we need for now.”
“Right.”
I started trotting in a half crouch through the field toward the shallow ditch. I had just reached it when I heard heavy breathing over my shoulder.
It wasn’t Shotgun in heat. I twisted around just in time to see a rottweiler launch herself at me, teeth flashing in the moonlight.
VII
If the first dog we’d encountered was the hound from hell, this was its mistress. She was meaner, and probably had twenty pounds on her mate, all of it muscle and fangs.
I got my left arm up in front of my face, knocking against the bottom of her jaw. She snapped the air, then rolled down over me. Her momentum carried her into the rocks beyond my head. She tumbled over, then leapt to her feet for another try. I fumbled with my knife, unable to yank it from the scabbard before she dove at my side. I ducked; two of her teeth caught my shirt and pulled me around, bending me against her snout as she fell down. Fortunately, my armored vest kept her teeth from reaching my chest. She clawed at me with her legs, scratching my cheek with claws that felt like ice picks.
I managed to elbow her as we rolled over. I finally freed my knife, but just as I swung it around she rolled onto my arm. The weight of her body against my arm made it go numb. The knife fell, and I swear for a moment I thought she had bit my hand off. In a rage, I bowled forward, pushing the mutt off and sending her head over heels backward.
Blood rushed back into my hand and I grabbed the knife, then leapt at her, blade first. I put the dagger into her throat and held it as she twisted her body, snapping back and forth, trying to bite. Blood spurt everywhere, and the hot spit of her breath torched my face. Finally she fell back, exhausted and drained.
That made two of us.
“Dick! Dick!” hissed Shotgun. “Hey! Are you OK?”
“Where are you?” I growled.
“Up near the barn. I can’t get down any farther without being seen? What’s going on?”
“Stay where you are.” I scrambled up out of the ditch. The headlights from one of the trucks illuminated the road and the field all the way to the grove.
Sure that whoever was in the trucks was looking for us now, I realized our path to the fence would be cut off. The only place to hide, I thought, was up—the roof to the barn. So I leapt out of the ditch and ran to the barn, retreating to the back of the building.
“They’re getting out of the trucks,” said Shotgun.
“Where did that dog come from?”
“It leapt out of the truck. They’re calling for it. They ain’t using Spanish, Dick.”
Shotgun wasn’t the best judge—he didn’t speak Spanish. In any event, the problem now was to avoid detection. Except for the floodlights above me, I had a clear path to the hills that wedged the building in and separated the farm from the condo development to the north. I slid beneath the detectors, eyeing them. Shooting them or the floodlights out from where I stood would be easy, but my gunshots would be heard. I reached down and scooped up some rocks, tossing them at the light.
I broke glass on the third try. Two more rocks and the second flood was down.
As soon as the glass shattered, I leapt out across toward the sharp incline. As I reached it, I saw a faint orange glow out of the corner of my eye. I had broken the glass on the right bulb but not the entire light; the filament was still intact.
Fortunately, the glow couldn’t be seen on the other side of the building. I went up the embankment, clawing my way up the pitch with the help of the brush.
Moving to my
left, I looked across the way and saw the tangos milling around the trucks. A pair of men had gone down after the dog.
It was only a matter of time before they organized a search. I could escape simply by climbing the hill. Shotgun, though, was trapped, unable to move without being seen.
“Run when I tell you,” I told him over the radio. “Go back the way we came. You’ll have a clear path. But don’t stop.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m up on the embankment at the north. I’ll go out this way.”
“Kind of far.”
“Get ready.” I raised the MP5 and aimed at the man who was giving orders. A squeeze of the trigger, and he fell to the ground.
No one moved for a second or two. Caught unawares, the tangos’ brains undoubtedly needed time to process what had happened. I used that time to reduce their numbers, dropping three or four before a tracer told me I was coming to the end of my mag. I shot the last rounds, dropped the mag and reloaded. As I did, I realized someone else was firing—not the tangos, but Shotgun, who’d risen in the field and was dousing the area near the trucks with bullets.
“I told you to get the hell out of there,” I growled.
“What, and let you have all the fun?”
I swear to God, Shotgun laughed as he said that.
We’d caught the tangos completely by surprise, and with a little bit of luck we could have wiped them all out before they had a chance to organize themselves. But the two men who’d gone down to look at the dog managed to scramble into a position where they could fire at me, and I had to duck; sliding four or five feet out of the line of fire, I lost my shot at the main ground of tangos. Shotgun had to pause and reload at roughly the same time. That reprieve gave the tangos enough time to run between the trucks and the barn for cover, neutralizing our initial advantage.
Between us, Shotgun and I had killed or wounded eight or ten men. That changed the odds considerably; there was no sense retreating now.
Right?
I went a little farther up the hill, trying to recover my shooting angle, if only on the two guys who’d fired at me from the area near the ditch. But they had already taken cover. With no one to aim at, I moved across the slope to the west, intending to find a spot where I could cross over and join Shotgun.
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