“Jeez, general,” moaned Private Zulu as he shined his flashlight on his wristwatch. “That’s a whole 1500 hours from now.”
“Turn off that damned light!” the General screamed. “I want complete noise and illumination integrity restored in this foxhole!” he ordered as he returned to his command post.
• • •
Three hundred yards to the southwest of STRAC-BOM’s position, El Barquero made his way silently through the brush and rocky outcroppings of the desert floor. His night vision equipment had alerted him to the presence of a group of men and their vehicles camped along the ridgeline. It didn’t take long to ascertain that they weren’t cartel soldiers or law enforcement. Still, he didn’t want to have them involved in his work this evening, so he passed them to the east, giving them a wide berth. Through his goggles, he could make out movement to his south. It was three men carrying parcels on their backs. They appeared to be armed with assault rifles. Memo had been correct. The shipment was right on schedule. El Barquero quietly checked his weapons and moved toward the advancing men, looking to intercept their route.
• • •
Two hundred yards to the northwest of STRAC-BOM’s camp, Agents Hank Martin and Maria Diaz scanned the campsite and valley below.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Agent Martin asked as he peered through his night vision goggles.
“Sure do,” Agent Diaz replied. “Looks like three men advancing on our militia boys.”
“Look to your ten o’clock. I’ve got a single moving southwest as well.”
“You think it’s one of the militia?” Agent Diaz asked as she located the lone figure moving across the valley floor.
“Nope. I’ve got all seven of them located around their camp. Who the hell is that guy?”
“What do you want to do?”
“For right now, we’re going to watch. Can’t tell for sure, but the three men to the south look like they might be narco transporters. Maybe the Lone Ranger over there is their contact. But where’s his vehicle? Damn. Come on, I want to move up a little closer. Don’t want that crazy general getting an itchy trigger finger.”
“Right behind you,” Agent Diaz said as she grabbed her shotgun and followed her partner into the darkness.
• • •
El Barquero knelt in the brush in front of a small outcropping of rock. The three Mexican drug mules walked quickly through the darkness toward his position. He could tell for certain now that the men were carrying AK-47s, but they had them slung over their shoulders as they carried the loads of drugs. The rocky outcropping gave him cover from the large group of men on the ridgeline above that he had spotted earlier. He wanted to take out the couriers quietly, without the men above noticing any activity. He knew he was strong enough to carry the three packages, but he wouldn’t be able to move fast across the broken ground. If he couldn’t get away cleanly, he’d noticed several points along the way where he could stash the load if necessary, but he didn’t want to do that. This was the last score. After this, he knew the Padre would come for him. Raising his submachine gun to his shoulder, he waited for the men to advance closer to his hidden position. When they reached twenty-five yards from his location, they would pay the “Ferryman’s” toll.
• • •
Behind El Barquero, the men of STRAC-BOM continued to scan the dark valley for movement, even if some of the men’s heads were beginning to bob from fatigue.
“Hey, Fire Team Leader,” Private Foxtrot said to his foxhole mate. “You see that down there?”
“What, uh, where?” Fire Team Leader Alpha replied as he wiped the drool that had accumulated on his chin from dozing off to sleep for the last ten minutes.
“No fair, you were sleeping.”
“Was not. What’d you see?”
“Right down there,” Private Foxtrot said, pointing to an area a little past a small outcropping of rock. “Think I saw something moving this way.”
“Ok, better get the General.” The Fire Team Leader turned to yell for the General but, thinking better of it, decided to scamper back to the command post and tell him in person. “General,” he whispered in the dark as he approached the militia’s dining fly. “General, you there?”
“Password!” the General barked as he brandished one of his pearl-handled revolvers at the figure approaching in the dark.
“Uh, we don’t have one, sir.”
“Identify yourself, then.”
“Fire Team Leader Alpha, sir. I think we’ve got something moving down below.”
“Well, then, what the hell are we waiting for?” the General demanded as he followed the Fire Team Leader back to his foxhole.
“Tell him what you saw, private,” Fire Team Leader Alpha said to Private Foxtrot as he and the General crawled into the shallow foxhole.
“Something moving out there, sir. Right over there,” the private said, pointing past the outcropping, barely visible in the dark night sky.
“Lock and load, men,” the General whispered as he prepared his flare gun. “I’m going to light ’em up!”
• • •
El Barquero prepared to kill the three drug couriers, who were still unaware of his presence and closing in on his position. All of a sudden, a faint popping sound from behind froze the giant man in place. The sizzling flare arcing over his head immediately explained the noise. Pulling his night vision goggles from his face, he prepared for the flare’s detonation. Bright red light filled the desert floor as the flare exploded, revealing his position to the cartel couriers with their heavy burlap-wrapped loads of drugs. Deciding it was too late to pull back, El Barquero sprayed three bursts of gunfire at his targets, killing the two men closest to him instantly, but only wounding the third. El Barquero quickly changed the submachine gun magazine as he closed the distance between the wounded man and himself. From his back, the wounded courier struggled to bring his weapon up to take aim at the enormous dark figure rushing toward him through the eerie red glow of the flare’s light. El Barquero and the cartel mule fired at the same time. El Barquero’s burst hit the man square in the chest, while the other man’s burst fired loudly and high off its target.
“Firefight!” General X-Ray screamed, responding to the unmistakable noise of AK-47 fire as he viewed the scene unfolding below him. “Man your vehicles and follow me! A cavalry charge is our tactical advantage! I’m going on foot to pin them down!” The men of STRAC-BOM, all fully awake at this point, scrambled towards their rides as the General stumbled down the slope, his pear-shaped silhouette glowing red in the flickering light of the flare.
El Barquero turned toward the sound of ATV engines firing to life as he gathered up the three heavy bundles of narcotics. Seeing the first vehicle crest the ridge behind a portly man about halfway down the slope, he knew he would have only about a minute before they could work their way completely down the ridge and cross the valley to his position. The red flare above him was starting to sputter as it drifted lazily toward the ground. In a few seconds, it would extinguish, giving him a chance to escape in the darkness. El Barquero lifted the awkward load and turned to make his escape. Just as the light from the flare burned itself out, he heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being chambered.
“United States Border Patrol!” Agent Martin barked as he leveled his shotgun at the large man in the darkness. “I want your hands in the air where I can see them!”
El Barquero dove to his side as he sprayed a short burst from his submachine gun toward the man holding the shotgun. Agent Martin’s twelve-gauge shotgun roared in return, send a long flash of light out into the dark night. The shotgun’s powerful discharge impacted with one of the bundles of narcotics El Barquero had shielded himself with during his rolling dive. Firing another burst toward the agent, El Barquero abandoned the drug shipment and moved into the night to put distance between himself and his pursuer. Suddenly, another shotgun blast roared from Agent Martin’s weapon, quickly followed by another a few feet to his
side.
“Maria, flank him to the east around that line of rocks!” Agent Martin hissed to Agent Diaz as she chambered another round in her shotgun. “I’ll flush him toward you!”
Agent Martin rushed into the desert night in pursuit of the giant Mexican. His lungs burned as he sprinted after the fleeing man through the desert brush for several hundred yards before stopping to catch his breath and take account of the situation. Rounding a large pile of rocks, he caught a brief glimpse of the man. Raising his shotgun to fire, El Barquero quickly whipped his weapon around and fired a long burst. The burst caught Agent Martin in his leg, sending him tumbling to the ground. El Barquero turned and charged at full speed back to the north, toward the high ground. Agent Martin, clutching his bleeding leg with one hand, reached for his radio with the other.
“Diaz!” he yelled. “I’m hit. He’s coming your way.”
Suddenly, El Barquero spotted another figure rounding the rocks, holding the distinct silhouette of a shotgun. El Barquero raised his weapon to fire at the same time as Agent Diaz. As Agent Diaz fired, El Barquero felt the impact in his side. The blow knocked him from his feet.
“Don’t move!” Agent Diaz commanded the man on the ground, his submachine resting at his side. “Don’t even think about it!”
As Agent Diaz approached the fallen man, El Barquero used a free hand to swivel the pistol stuck in his belt toward the agent, hoping the darkness would conceal the movement. As the woman approached, he fired twice in quick succession, one round hitting his target, who collapsed to the hard desert floor.
Leaping to his feet, El Barquero felt warm blood dripping down his side where the shotgun blast had partially impacted. Swallowing the searing pain from the wound, he limped off into the inky night toward the north. Quickly heading a hundred yards from the downed border patrol agent, he paused to don his night vision goggles to see if he was being followed. No one was coming, but El Barquero could clearly see that the men with the ATVs had reached the bodies of the three cartel drug smugglers. The men were attaching the bundles of narcotics to their machines.
• • •
“Quickly!” General X-Ray commanded his men. “Load up this contraband. I want it transported to headquarters immediately!”
“What about base camp?” asked Fire Team Leader Charlie.
“Leave it,” said the General as he scanned the darkness with both of his pearl-handled pistols drawn and cocked. “We’ll come back for it later. Didn’t you hear that gunfire? They’re still out there, armed and dangerous. We’ve got their despicable possessions. We can ransom it back to them and use the proceeds to fund our next operation.”
“How we going to find them to ransom this stuff?” asked Private Zulu, who had attached one of the bales to his ATV next to his taped-up coyote corpse.
“I don’t know!” spat the General. “Put a note on the International Bridge in Tornillo or something. I’ll figure it out. Now, Fire Team Leaders, are we loaded?”
“Yes,” the Fire Team Leaders all responded.
“Good. Private Foxtrot, you ride with Fire Team Bravo. I’ll ride shotgun with Fire Team Leader Alpha,” the General said as he climbed on the back of one of the ATVs.
“But, sir,” Private Foxtrot complained. “How are we going to fit three people and that burlap bag on one ATV?”
“Just make it happen!” the General replied. “Now, head south, men. Sooner or later we should intersect with the interstate and then follow it back to headquarters.”
• • •
El Barquero made his way up the slope to the north. From the top of the ridge, he turned and used his night vision equipment to locate the ATV-mounted men. He was standing in their abandoned campsite. Seething with anger, he watched the three ATVs loaded with men and his shipment making their way south. Quickly he searched the men’s campsite. Finding a first aid kit, he tore it open and bound his wounded midriff tightly with a compress, gauze, and tape. He’d lost some blood, maybe broken a rib or two. He definitely had some heavy buckshot in his side. He needed to get to someplace safe to recuperate. Noticing a set of laminated sheets on a makeshift table under the dining fly, he reviewed the topographical maps and a typewritten document entitled “Operation Land Shark.” The document with the mission overview was typed on stationery with the letterhead “Southwest Texas Revolutionary Armed Confederate Border Operations Militia – Tornillo, Texas.” El Barquero memorized the STRAC-BOM headquarters address and phone number listed at the bottom of the document. His eyes raging with fire, he turned to take one last look at the ATVs leaving with his shipment of drugs before taking the zebra-striped dirt bike the militia had left behind and heading back to his vehicle in the desert.
• • •
Agent Diaz opened her eyes. Everything was dark. More importantly, everything hurt. A bullet had clipped her shoulder. The wound wasn’t life-threatening, but it was bleeding and it hurt like hell. As she tried to rise from her back, her vision spiraled and she collapsed back to the hard, dry ground. Putting her hand behind her head, she realized she was bleeding from there as well. Even though it was a glancing wound, the impact of the gunshot had knocked her over. She realized she must have split her head open on impact.
“Got to get up, just got to get up. Jesus!” she cried as she crunched herself forward before slumping back down again in pain. Agent Diaz took a dozen quick, deep breaths before trying again. “Chica! Don’t quit on me now, chica!” she hissed to herself, remembering her cruel instructor’s taunts in her border patrol training as she painfully raised herself upright. A few more deep breaths, and she made it to her feet. Using the butt of her shotgun as a crutch to lean on, she grabbed her radio.
“Hank!” she urgently cried. “Hank, can you hear me? Where are you?” She stared pleadingly at her radio, waiting for a reply. “Hank. Please. Are you there?” Getting no reply, she hobbled back toward the south to look for Hank. It took her five minutes to cover the distance before she saw her partner prone on the ground, lying in a dark pool of blood.
“Hank! Hank! Can you hear me, Hank?” she said as she rolled her partner over.
“Not good, Maria,” Agent Martin murmured as he rolled over and looked at the bleeding leg he clasped tightly with both hands. “Please tell me you got that big son of a bitch.”
Maria shouted into her radio, “Base, this is Patrol Seven! Agent down! Repeat, Agent Hank Martin down!”
• • •
“Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep them doggies rolling!” General X-Ray boisterously sang as his team of militia made their way west along the shoulder of the interstate toward the exit to Tornillo and their headquarters. Enormous eighteen-wheelers with air horns blazing barreled past the men motoring down the side of the road, sending up clouds of sand and grit that pelted the militia men like dry hail. “The hounds of hell couldn’t stop us, men! The very demons of Hades couldn’t stand before us! Tonight, we were immortals! Immortals!” the General cried as the convoy of three overloaded ATVs took the exit towards their base. Pulling up to the motor pool/parking lot of the STRAC-BOM headquarters, the General disembarked from his vehicle. “Fall in!” he cried. The weary militia raggedly gathered in formation. “Gentlemen,” the General said soberly as he paced down the line of men, his leather riding crop clasped in both hands at the small of his back. “Tonight we faced the enemy, and the enemy crumbled. Men, our mission was to stop vagrants from pilfering from our great nation. Instead, we pilfered from theirs. These bundles of…Private Tango, what are these bundles?”
“Uh, dope, I think, sir,” the private replied.
“Yes, dope,” he continued. “This is the blood money that fuels the economy of our enemy. While I’d prefer the scalps of twenty filthy transgressors, this is a dandy consolation. Well done, men. You’ve all worked hard,” he said as he paced the line of dirty and exhausted men. “You’ve all acted with bravery above and beyond the call of duty. Although, I was the only one actually wounded on the battlefield,” he said as he
rubbed the scuffmark on his helmet. “Nonetheless, you’ll all receive favorable battlefield commendations in my report to the United States National Society of Civilian Militia and Paramilitary Organizations of Liberty. Now, Private Zulu! Please store the confiscated contraband in the headquarters. Rest of the unit, dismissed until Monday night for the Cowboys and Eagles game and Operation Land Shark debrief!” The members of STRAC-BOM, minus Private Zulu, wearily slogged towards their vehicles in the parking lot to return to their families, most of who would be mildly disappointed to see them return, particularly so early on a Sunday morning. “And, Fire Team Bravo,” the General barked, “don’t forget the guacamole!”
Private Zulu, who would have normally been severely pissed off at being singled out for a chore, instead rushed with glee to stash the bundles of drugs in the back closet of the headquarters. Returning to his ATV, he gingerly removed his precious chupacabra corpse wrapped in plastic and duct tape. Checking over his shoulder to make sure all his compatriots were gone, he took his silver tape-wrapped package into the mess hall and stored it in the walk-in deep freeze behind a stack of frozen chipped beef containers. Piling on some packages of frozen corn kernels to conceal its position, he went to boot up the computer in General X-Ray’s office.
“Sweet,” Private Zulu said as he sat in front of the dirty white computer monitor positioned on the metal desk in the General’s office. “Let’s boot this mother up and get paid!” Private Zulu exclaimed as he turned on the computer and listened to the noisy fan spin up as the machine slowly woke up. After a minute, the main screen flickered open. Private Zulu scratched his head as he pondered the dialogue box flashing on the screen that prompted him to enter a password. “STRAC-BOM,” he typed in the password box and hit the “Enter” key. It didn’t work. “Mr. Pibb,” he tried, hoping the General’s favorite drink would be the answer. It wasn’t. “Dang it,” moaned the frustrated Private.
Thinking for a moment, Private Zulu opened the desk’s main drawer. Stuck to the bottom of the drawer’s pencil container was a yellow sticky note with “John Wayne” written on it. Entering it into the dialogue box, he pressed the “Enter” key and held his breath. Suddenly, the dialogue box disappeared and the home screen opened up. It was decorated with a Confederate flag screen saver. Opening the Web browser, Private Zulu pulled up Craigslist. For the next few minutes, he worked to post a listing for “One Perfectly Preserved Chupacabra For Sale - $500” under the Collectibles category. After entering his name and the STRAC-BOM headquarters’ phone number on his listing, he spent the next hour surfing adult websites.
The Chupacabra: A Borderline Crazy Tale of Coyotes, Cash & Cartels (The Chupacabra Trilogy - Book 1) Page 19