Joaquin heard his man screaming, “Hurry the fuck up!” The man turned to his boss. “Enrique is trying to get here, but those fucking helicopters are killing everyone! Two trucks tried to get here already and didn’t make it!”
Joaquin was starting to come apart and just kept repeating, “Do something! Shoot them!”
One his bodyguards crawled ahead to the back door and pulled it open. The rear yard was clear, the Black Hawks having landed in the front courtyard. The man ran outside and tried to get around the back of the house to where one of the SUVs had been parked after Ali bin-Salud had left. He sprinted to the truck and started the engine, then floored it toward the rear door. Joaquin saw him pull up outside and froze. To stay inside meant almost certain death. To go outside didn’t look much better. The bodyguard dropped his window and screamed at Joaquin and the other bodyguard. “Hurry! Now! Before it’s too late!”
Joaquin couldn’t move. He just stared at his bodyguard in the SUV and froze. Thousands of rounds had hit the house and parts of it were burning. Tracer rounds occasionally flared through the house, lighting up furniture and interior walls. His bodyguard in the house with him attempted to pick his boss up from the ground.
“Come on, Jefe! We have to go now!”
As he picked up his boss, the SUV outside the door exploded into a shower of sparks and exploding light. The Viper had arrived on station to assist with air support. TK had seen the vehicle move around the house to the rear door and opened up with the Gatling gun. The SUV began to come apart. TK fired a rocket for good measure, and the SUV came off the ground for a moment before settling down in burning pieces.
The big man who had tried to pick up Joaquin was knocked off his feet, directly on top of his boss, and they both went down in a pile. Outside, the Viper continued to sweep around the rear yard, trying to acquire targets.
The two of them heard the front door blow apart. They scrambled across the floor on their hands and knees. The bodyguard opened a cabinet while still on the floor and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. He handed it to Joaquin, and then retrieved a Beretta M9 for himself. They crawled around the island in the kitchen, away from the back door and burning SUV.
“We have to get to the garage!” screamed his bodyguard. “We’ll take the Maserati! They’ll never catch us in that car!”
They both knew it was wishful thinking, but it was their best, and really only chance. They kept crawling through the house, the Black Hawks and Viper still raining fire on the house while soldiers outside continued to shoot through windows. They could hear footsteps inside the front of the house.
Jon fired his blooper as he came through the front door and a high-explosive round blew through the front of the house, taking down part of a wall. Assault weapons occasionally popped off as soldiers moved through the house finishing off anyone who still had a weapon in his hand.
“Now, Jefe!” yelled the bodyguard. He got up and ran for the breezeway that led to the garage with Joaquin behind him. As they came through the door to the carport, the bodyguard’s head partly exploded from a large-caliber round through his skull. He dropped like a rock, leaving Joaquin Salazar facing a man he recognized but couldn’t place. He stood there, in shock, staring.
“You? The pilot from the plane?”
Duane smiled, the red dot of his M4A1 SOPMOD now on Salazar’s face. “Good memory.”
Joaquin dropped his gun and raised his hands.
“Sorry, bud, not an option.” Duane squeezed the trigger and blew the drug lord’s brains out the back of his head.
Duane heard footsteps from inside and yelled into the house, “Identify yourself!”
“It’s Jon and Moose! Friendlies!”
Duane lowered his weapon. “Someone get on the horn to air support and tell them to shut it down before this whole fuckin’ house comes down on us.”
“Roger that,” said Moose. He spoke into his throat mic. “McCoy, tell air support to cease fire. Prepare for dust-off out front. Pop green smoke. Salazar is confirmed dead. Out.”
Moose walked over and pulled his phone from an inside pocket and took a quick picture of what was left of Joaquin Salazar’s face. He sent it off to CIA HQ for confirmation. He looked up at Duane. “Good shooting. Let’s roll.”
Duane shrugged. “Not really good shooting,” he thought to himself. He’d done some fine shooting in his life. This was more like a mob hit. Whatever. The drug lord was dead and heroin would be interrupted for five minutes.
They both jogged out the front of the open garage doors to where green smoke was swirling under the incoming rotors. The thump of the birds was always a happy sound at the end of the op, provided it wasn’t a medevac.
CHAPTER 62
Apo and the Hard Facts
While all hell was breaking loose at Joaquin Salazar’s compound, Apo pulled off the road in a quiet stand of trees not too far outside Arista. He scouted around on foot to make sure he was alone, and then returned to the truck and opened the rear doors.
Apo used the light on his phone to begin inspecting the weapon closer. It was large, sitting on an old wooden pallet so someone could use a forklift to move it later. He took his time, starting at one end of the weapon, and examined every part. Mostly, it looked like a large metal cylinder with very thick wires coiled around it, mounted on a huge battery box. The cylinder was bronze colored and thick, and inside, Apo could see lots of wires and electronics.
There was a control panel, but someone had been very careful about not writing any instructions on it. Not Arabic, not Cyrillic, not Chinese, not English. It was clean.
Apo stood and stared, annoyed that he couldn’t find numbers or markings of any kind. The damn thing was made somewhere, and they had to have left a clue. He started over again, this time pulling wires and taking things apart. He looked at each piece he pulled off for any type of number or letter or symbol. Somewhere on this thing there had to be a key to its source. He was on his hands and knees looking when his hand slid across the pallet and gave him a nice splinter.
“Fucker!” he cursed, pulling his hand away and pulling out the piece of wood. He shined his light on the pallet that had hurt his hand. “Sonnnnofabitch . . .”
Perso-Arabic script is a writing system based on Arabic script and used by speakers of the Persian language, typically known as Farsi. Had anyone other than an Arab-speaker like Apo seen the squiggles in the wood, they wouldn’t have looked twice. Farsi letters are script, and letters connect to each other almost exclusively to form words. In this case, after making sure that they had filed off every serial number and letter to “scrub” the weapon of its origins, it was the dumbest oversight ever that blew their cover.
The wood had been stamped with a simple seal, showing its official status, lest a pile of unguarded pallets be stolen by someone needing firewood or building materials for a modest home in Iran. “Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics” was clearly marked on the wood next to Apo’s splinter.
Apo just stared. He turned on the camera on his phone and took a clear picture of the stamp, then began looking over every inch of the pallet. He found the same seal had been stamped on six other pieces of the wood, your basic “do not touch” warning if found outside a building. Apo took pictures of the others as well.
He wrote a quick note to Director Holstrum:
Definitive proof of origin. The Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics is stamped in six places on the transportation pallet in Farsi. This weapon came from Iran. I am quite certain of this. The weapon had been carefully scrubbed to remove all markings. This was a simple oversight. They’re cold busted. IRAN.
He attached the pictures and hit “send.” He sat in the truck steaming, thinking, “Stupidest fucking treaty in the history of the US. Well this oughta blow that shit up real quick.”
Holstrum responded quickly: Stay where you are. MOP will pick you up within the hour.
Apo hopped down from the truck and took another patrol to make sure he was safe.
There wasn’t even a goat around. He hunkered down and waited.
***
Duane and Carl jogged over to Moose. Carl looked stressed. “We gotta go. Apo has the package. The boss wants us there now.”
“Okay, let’s get back in the bird,” said Moose.
“No. Just us. You guys will go back with the general. They’re going to give us a ride back to the jet, and we’re heading over to a small airfield near Arista where we’ll link up with Apo. He gets to ride home in style with us. You guys will catch a C-130 or some shitbird, as per usual. Sorry, wasn’t my call.”
“Apo okay?” asked Moose.
“Yes, sir. Superman saves the day again. We’ll get him home in one piece. See you in Virginia, or never. Never know in our line of work.” He extended a handshake. “You and your guys are tip-top. I’ll go to war with you any day.”
“Thanks,” said Moose. He looked at Duane. “You, too. You bagged the prize.”
Duane shrugged. “It was a cheap kill, but I’ll sleep just fine. Guy was a sociopathic, mass-murdering drug pusher killing kids in the States. Fuck ‘em.”
Moose nodded. “Fuck ‘em.”
The MOP jogged off to a waiting bird, where the general had ordered the crew to take them back to their jet. The rest of the team piled back in a more crowded helicopter, now that they were one bird short, and headed west to Mexico City, where they’d catch a flight home in the morning.
***
Carl and Duane made it to their jet in thirty minutes, and then went max speed to the small airstrip in Arista. Carl spent the entire ride speaking with Director Holstrum. When they landed, they checked Apo’s GPS locator on their handheld tablet and called him.
“Your taxi’s here. We see you. Less than a klick from where we are. Drive here. Take the road in front of you and just go straight, due south towards Arista. The airfield is a right turn. There’s a few lights out here, the only ones around. You shouldn’t have a hard time finding us. Not too many three-million-dollar jets out here, either.”
Apo replied, “Wilco,” and hung up. He started up the old truck and bounced along the road, hoping he’d get a chance to brief the president in person, or at least the Joint Chiefs—anyone with whom he’d spoken at least a dozen times before being told his intelligence wasn’t reliable. By the time he made his turn at the lights, he was pumped up and pissed off. He was about to make a left into the airfield when Carl and Duane stepped out in front of his truck waving. He stopped short and put it in park.
Apo jumped down from the truck and yelled to Duane. “Jesus, dude! I almost ran you over—it’s dark as shit out here.”
“Sorry. We’re good to go. Leave the truck there.”
Apo was confused. “Leave it here? Who’s coming for it?”
“You’ll see, later on. We gotta move now—let’s go.”
“What the fuck, man?”
“You know I don’t make the rules. We gotta go. Right this second.”
Apo followed Duane as they walked back toward the only jet sitting out on the small tarmac. Carl reached into his pocket and pulled out a small strobe, turned it on, and gently tossed it up on top of the truck, where it would illuminate on the HUD helmet of the Viper that Director Holstrum had called in on the president’s orders.
By the time the three of them got to the jet and taxied down the runway, the Viper was almost on station. As the nose of the MOP jet lifted off, Roz spoke to her gunner, TK.
“Positive visual on the strobe. Direct orders are overkill. We’re to return without ammunition, you copy?”
“Without ammunition?” asked TK. “You mean, everything? Like, everything?”
“Copy that. Every bullet, rocket, and missile is to hit that target. We’re to leave a large crater with no trace of what was there. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative. Seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars.”
“I say again, do you copy?”
“Roger that. Strobe identified. Target acquired. Switching to missiles.”
For the next four minutes, the Viper hovered and emptied its weapons systems into what had been a truck with a large metal weapon in the back. The explosions were large enough to be seen from the jet as they took off, and the shock waves actually bumped the jet as it climbed to cruising altitude. Apo unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped across the cabin to the opposite window.
“Are you fucking kidding me? We had proof of Iranian intentions to attack our fucking country! Why the fuck would you destroy it?” Apo watched in anger as the tracers made beautiful fireworks from the nose of the Viper to the exploding ground below. The Viper seemed quite intent on making sure nothing would be left but a large crater.
“Not our call,” said Carl. “Sit back and enjoy the flight.”
Apo stood up and held the seat, his hand squeezing it so hard the leather was close to tearing. He yelled up front, “You got any fucking booze on this bird?”
“Always. Rear cabinet. Open it and bring glasses up front, too. You ain’t the only one who’s pissed, brother. But we don’t make policy, do we?”
Epilogue
Apo was debriefed at length by Director Holstrum in private. The conversation was an ugly shouting match at times, but in the end, Apo signed the typical documents swearing him to secrecy lest he be charged with espionage or treason against his own country. He was beyond outraged, and considered telling the Company to shove it up its ass and just quit, but then what? Who was going to do what he could do? His country needed him, now more than ever.
“This isn’t over,” he sneered at the director.
“It’s over.”
“Yeah? We’ll see how over it is when you need me to go to fucking Iran and blow up a nuke facility or kill a couple of physicists. Commander in chief is fucking wrong, and you know it.”
“I only know that shit rolls downhill. The current CIC gives me an order and I follow it. And so do you. We don’t always get to see the big picture.”
“The big picture is going to be the front page of a newspaper one day with a photo of an Iranian ICBM leaving its launch site.”
The director shrugged. “Look at this way, we’ll always have job security.”
“Not funny. I’m not here for my job security, I’m here for fucking national security! And you better remember that, too! Does the team know what you did?”
“As you know, the MOP answers only to me. The team goes through Davis and Murphy. Misters Davis and Murphy are aware that the situation was handled at the highest levels, and the case is closed. The mission is over, deemed successful, and everyone gets a few weeks off. Go get drunk or laid or something. Go watch the news. Lots of good news coming out of Mexico. Apparently, the Mexican government finally had some success against the cartels. Drug lords Salazar and El Gato were both killed, and their gangs heavily damaged.”
“El Gato?” asked Apo, surprised.
“Things change. President Pena Nieto decided he didn’t trust anyone to handle a trial. El Gato was too scary and powerful. Too many judges and cops on the take, including the general’s own son-in-law. El Gato was killed while trying to escape.” He shrugged. “Fuck ‘em.”
Apo nodded. “Yeah. Fuck ’em. And fuck you, too.”
He walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Director Holstrum stared down at the intelligence briefing on his desk and wondered if he should have told Apo. Iran’s director of intelligence, Ali Ahmadi, had died suddenly of unknown causes. Either a myocardial infarction or a hollow-point round behind his right ear.
The director picked up his phone and called Moose. “Just calling to congratulate you on a job well done. You and your men bought yourselves two weeks of R&R. Call me in two weeks. Until then, you’re off duty.”
Moose was surprised. “That’s it? Don’t you need us to come in for a briefing or something? After-action report? Something?”
“Nope. I’ve got everything I need. Fine work by you and your men. Mission was a success. Everyone’s happy. Drug dealers
are dead and a little heroin is off the streets for a while.”
“I haven’t been able to contact Duane, Carl, or Apo since we got back.”
“And you won’t, until we need them again. They’re just fine. Nothing for you to worry about.”
“Nothing for me to worry about . . .”
“Nope. Like I said, when I need them, I’ll call them. Until then, you and your men can go have some fun. Duane, Carl, and Apo will go off and do whatever it is that they do. Their contact information is changed. Apo is off your team for now. Sorry. That’s just how it is. You have a good day, Senior Chief. Enjoy R&R, you’ve earned it.”
The phone went dead.
Ripper and the others were sitting around in their blue and grey utility uniforms back at the mess hall in the Langley base, where they had been awaiting a call to go up and debrief with Dex or Darren. They had eaten breakfast together and recapped the events of the trip. They’d all returned safely, and were thankful for that.
Moose turned to his men and shrugged. “That’s it. Two weeks off. R&R, gentlemen. No briefing, no paperwork, no nothing.”
“I guess that’s because we were never there,” said Jon.
Ripper nodded. “Kid’s catching on. Must be how the spooks do it. After-action report my ass. Let’s go. Pizza and beers on me tonight at that pub downtown.”
Jon started laughing. “I ever tell you my Jersey joke?”
“What’s that mean?” asked Moose.
“This Staten Island guy gets set up on a dating website. The New Jersey chick gets all dolled up for a night on the town—you know, dress and heels and hair and shit, all good to go. The dude knocks on the door and he’s standing there in ripped-up jeans and a wife-beater T-shirt, and she’s kinda shocked, ya know? And then he just says, ‘Heyyyyy, how you doin’? Wanna go out for pizza and a fuck?’ And this chick is horrified, and she screams, ‘What did you just say to me?’ And the guy looks at her and says, ‘What? You don’t like pizza?’”
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