Caesar the War Dog 4

by Stephen Dando-Collins

  ‘The electronic sensor on the U-2 has found many office buildings in Monterrey with computer servers.’ Toushi went on to explain that this was to be expected in a city with a population of several million. But this building was in a residential area and it had the highest output of delta rays from servers of any building in Monterrey; more servers and much more online activity than any other building here. ‘I calculate it is roughly a ten-minute drive from the hotel of Amanda Ritchie. There is no doubt that this is the building that Amanda Ritchie was taken to. This is the building where she found Caesar.’

  Charlie came over to join them. ‘Is that the target building?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s it, Charlie,’ said Ben. ‘Conveniently with a flat roof.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘There’s a guard tower on the roof,’ he pointed out. ‘If we’re going to take them by surprise, we’ll have to HALO onto that roof and take out the tower, rather than land by heelo or rappelling down from one. Toushi, can we get an infrared look at the top of that tower?’

  ‘Sure thing, Charlie.’ Toushi tapped on his keyboard, bringing up an infrared image of the scene taken from the belly of the U-2 circling twenty-one kilometres above them. Now the features on Toushi’s screen were in green. In the guard tower, two red humanoid shapes could be seen. The infrared camera in the U-2 was picking up the heat emitted by the pair of humans and was highlighting them against the green background.

  ‘Two Árbol sentries,’ said Charlie.

  ‘There’s no movement from either of them,’ Ben observed. ‘They could be asleep.’

  ‘It’ll be handy if they’re still asleep when we drop in on them.’ Charlie’s attention was then caught by a large, bulky shape on the eastern side of the roof, away from the street. ‘What’s that?’

  Ben bent down for a closer look. ‘Something covered by a tarpaulin, maybe. Can’t make out what it is.’

  ‘Whatever it is, it shouldn’t pose a problem for us,’ said Charlie. ‘Just be sure to avoid it when we go in.’ He turned to the rest of the team. ‘Okay, gather round, you blokes. Briefing time.’

  The others formed a semicircle around Charlie, Ben and Toushi.

  ‘Is that the target, Grover?’ Duke Hazard asked, chewing gum furiously and nodding toward the image on Toushi’s laptop.

  ‘Roger to that,’ said Charlie. ‘I want all of you to take a look at it and familiarise yourself with it once the briefing’s over. Okay, so this is how the op is going to go down. Ben, Baz and myself will HALO in from a Mexican Air Force Herc and secure the roof, taking care of the guards in the watchtower.’

  ‘Why are only three of you doing the HALO, if you don’t mind me asking?’ said Angus Bruce.

  ‘There will only be room enough for three of us to land up there,’ Charlie replied. ‘We will be Alpha Team. Duke will lead Beta Team, with Tim, Brian and Willy. Beta Team will come over the front wall once we’ve signalled that the roof is secure. Angus, you will lead Gamma Team, with Chris, Casper and Jean-Claude. You guys will come over the back fence at the same time. Toushi, you will remain here to control comms, under the codename Birdcage.’

  ‘How long have we got that coverage, Charlie?’ asked Tim McHenry. He nodded toward Toushi’s screen.

  ‘We’ll be losing the U-2 before long,’ Charlie replied, ‘but Captain Lee has arranged for SOCOM to send us an EC-130 EITS down from Arizona to monitor the target from just before zero hour, sending Toushi infrared images.’

  The EC-130 was a version of the C-130 Hercules aircraft adapted to serve as an electronic ‘eye in the sky’.

  ‘Toushi will keep us abreast of what he can see from the EITS,’ Charlie continued, ‘and will maintain contact with the local police and the Mexican military via Lieutenant Peters, who will be going in with Beta Team to coordinate local police in the area.’ He nodded to the police lieutenant, who was also pulling on black Special Forces gear. ‘Lieutenant Peters is providing the ground transport for Beta and Gamma Teams.’

  ‘But my Mexican colleagues won’t be told about the operation or its targets,’ said Peters. ‘They must remain ignorant of such details.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Sergeant Hazard, slapping a magazine into his SIG Sauer pistol. ‘We don’t want anyone tipping off the cartel.’

  ‘Let’s be clear,’ said Charlie. ‘Beta and Gamma Teams need to keep the bodyguards distracted while Alpha enters the house from the roof and goes from floor to floor looking for our two targets – Caesar and Carlos Marron. It’s Alpha Team’s job to secure them. Any questions?’

  ‘Yeah, man, I got a question for you,’ said Chris Banner, a lanky West Indian whose easygoing manner belied his role as a tough Special Forces operator. ‘How many bad guys are we expecting?’

  Charlie turned to Ben for an answer.

  ‘Amanda Ritchie tells me she counted five Árbol people inside the house with the Green Parrot,’ Ben advised. ‘That’s not counting the two guards we can see on the roof and any others likely to be inside the house or patrolling the grounds. We should be prepared to be opposed by at least ten or a dozen of these blokes all up.’

  ‘Just how well trained they are with their weaponry, we don’t know,’ added Charlie. ‘We go in taking nothing or no one for granted, and expect that they will be prepared to shoot to kill.’

  ‘How are they armed?’ asked Tim McHenry, as he fastened the equipment pouches onto his belt.

  Again, Charlie turned to Ben for the answer.

  ‘Amanda saw semi-automatic pistols and MP5s,’ Ben advised.

  ‘Snap!’ said Bendigo Baz. He was toting an MP5 and had a Browning Hi Power semi-automatic pistol strapped to his right thigh. ‘Sadly, I’ll have to leave my good mate Mr Minimi behind on this little excursion.’

  ‘Yes, no room for a Minimi inside the target building,’ said Charlie. Everyone on the team knew the Belgian-made FN Minimi machinegun was Baz’s preferred weapon. It was almost as long as the diminutive Australian was tall.

  ‘Any chance that this place could be booby-trapped, Charlie?’ Jean-Claude asked.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘No way of knowing, mate.’

  ‘That’s usually where Caesar comes in,’ Ben remarked, bringing nods and sympathetic looks from his companions.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ben, we’ll get your wee doggie back for you, old chum,’ Angus assured him.

  ‘We’ll be taking plenty of flash-bangs and tear gas in with us,’ said Charlie, ‘so it will be full masks and headgear all round. Understood?’

  ‘Copy that,’ said Hazard, speaking for them all.

  ‘Now, so there’s no confusion, we will refer to target number one in all comms by his actual name – Caesar. Marron is target number two, and his codename for the op is Elvis.’ This brought smiles all around. ‘We want Elvis alive and kicking. There is no recent photo of him, but he is described as having an Elvis Presley brush-back hairstyle. It’s likely that there will be another hostage with Caesar – Sergeant Juanita Del Ray, a dog handler from the Mexican Police. Keep an eye out for her. She is also to be extracted with Caesar if we come across her. Codename for her is Aztec.’

  ‘Aztec,’ Baz said with a nod. He repeated the codenames to himself to lodge them in his mind.

  ‘Any questions?’ Charlie cast his eyes around the team.

  ‘What’s zero hour, Grover?’ Hazard asked.

  ‘Zero hour for the air insertion is 0300 hours,’ Charlie advised. ‘Let’s synchronise watches.’ They all looked at their watches. ‘On my word, it will be 0137 hours … Now!’

  All their watches now showed the exact same time.

  ‘Check comms,’ Charlie then instructed, and each man tested his personal radio. Signaller Brian Cisco and Toushi tested the HF radios they would be using to keep in touch with the teams throughout the op.

  ‘All good to go, Charlie,’ Brian advised.

  ‘Okay, let’s get this show on the road and retrieve Caesar,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Roger that!’ the others chorused.


  As members of the team moved closer to take a look at the satellite image and familiarise themselves with their target, Charlie turned to Ben and Baz. ‘Let’s get kitted up for the jump.’

  ‘Time to become Mexican jumping beans,’ said Baz, commencing to inspect the Mexican Air Force parachutes that had been laid out on a bench. He, Charlie and Ben would each choose two parachutes for the jump.

  Charlie, meanwhile, consulted with Toushi about the GPS coordinates for the Green Parrot’s compound.

  ‘U-2 go home now, Charlie,’ Toushi advised, pointing to his blank screen.

  ‘It’s given us all we need to know,’ Charlie said as he fed the compound’s location into a trio of Navy SEAL portable GPS devices. About four times the size of a large wristwatch, these waterproof devices were designed to be strapped on the arm. Charlie handed one each to Ben and Baz, retaining the third for himself.

  At the request of the UN, the Mexican Air Force was providing a C-130 for the parachute jump. With its four Allison turboprop engines roaring and propellers whirring, the Hercules rolled up to the Monterrey Airport hangar on schedule at 2.15 am and lowered its rear ramp.

  ‘Our Tijuana taxi is here,’ Baz joked.

  ‘Good luck, you blokes,’ Charlie called to the rest of the team. ‘See you on the ground.’

  Charlie led Ben and Baz out onto the tarmac and up the Herc’s ramp. All three were clad in black from head to toe. They carried MP5s in a special pouch that hung from their belts, as well as holstered pistols, magazines and grenades in body pouches, and toted breathing apparatus. Stashed in pockets and pouches, all three carried several pairs of handcuffs provided by Lieutenant Peters. Each man now had a programmed GPS device strapped to his lower right arm. Over their shoulders they carried two parachutes each – a main chute and a reserve. Unlike the majority of their special ops parachute missions, the trio would not be spending days on the ground in hostile territory following the jump, so they weren’t loaded down with bags of additional equipment and rations. This was to be a rapid in-and-out op.

  As soon as they were aboard, the ramp was raised and the big transport plane crawled out along a taxiway. Inside the cavernous interior of the Herc’s cargo cabin, the three men were helped by a Mexican Air Force loadmaster to strap on their chutes. Then all of them, including the loadmaster, fitted breathing masks.

  The C-130 could accommodate up to sixty-four airborne troops with their equipment, but it was also normal for smaller numbers of parachutists to be carried for special ops. As the trio settled into the webbed seating along the side of the fuselage, Ben’s thoughts drifted to Caesar and how he would have loved to come along. Caesar enjoyed taking Hercules flights and absolutely adored making HALO jumps with Ben. If all went to plan, thought Ben, he and Caesar would be reunited within the hour.

  From a standing start at the head of the main runway, the Hercules lumbered down the concrete and lifted gently into the night sky. Ben hoped that Caesar was being well treated by the Green Parrot and his men. If Sergeant Del Ray was with Caesar, Ben hoped that the handler was looking after his four-legged partner.

  It took about ten minutes for the Hercules to climb to 30,000 feet and take station above northern Monterrey. As the aircraft circled the sky, its rear ramp lowered to the horizontal. Charlie, Ben and Baz formed up, facing the black void, their eyes on a red light on the fuselage wall beside the ramp. Before long, a half-moon came into view, glowing golden in the distance. Below, the lights of the sleeping city were visible. The loadmaster standing to the right of the ramp raised two fingers, indicating that it was two minutes before 3 am, zero hour – two minutes before jump time. The three jumpers tensed. With one finger, the loadmaster indicated there was one minute to go. Another sixty seconds ticked by. The red light turned to green. Zero! The loadmaster pointed to the night.

  Without hesitation, all three jumpers ran along the ramp and launched themselves into space, clamping their arms by their sides once they left the Herc. As the aircraft flew on and away, raising its ramp as it went, the three soldiers went spearing toward the ground headfirst like superheroes in a Hollywood movie, accelerating up to 200 kilometres an hour in their freefall.

  A black dual-cab pick-up slowly pulled into the back street which ran behind the Green Parrot’s compound and came to a halt. Inside the cab were four men and a boy of about ten. On the backs of their hands or on their necks, the men wore the plain star tattoo that identified them as members of the Estrella cartel. Among them was the cartel’s chief, Antonio Lopez. Unlike Carlos Marron, who simply gave orders from his concrete compound and left his men to follow them through, Lopez liked to be actively involved in the more important operations of his organisation.

  A former officer in the Mexican Marines, and later the Mexican Navy’s elite FES Special Forces unit, Lopez had been trained to lead from the front. Just as he had personally checked out and planned the San Antonio hit on Rocky Marron, Lopez was coordinating his latest scheme from the front – an attempt to eliminate his chief competitor, Carlos Marron, the Green Parrot.

  Lopez turned to the boy sitting beside him. ‘You know what to do, José?’

  ‘Sí, Patrón,’ said the boy. This was the same José who had called out to Enrico Vargas, days before, in support of the Green Parrot. He had changed sides, becoming an Estrella supporter, telling the Estrella boss where to find the Green Parrot’s residence.

  From his shirt pocket, Lopez took a bunch of folded American twenty-dollar bills. He held them out to the boy. ‘One hundred American dollars – your payment for the little favour you are about to do for me. Do not let me down.’

  ‘I will not let you down, Patrón,’ replied José.

  ‘Now, after you place the backpack outside El Loro Verde’s gate, walk away as casually as you can. As if you were going to church. Sí?’

  ‘Sí, Patrón.’ José took the money and stuffed it into a pocket in his shorts.

  ‘Good boy. Soon, you will qualify to wear the star of Estrella, and be one of my trusted pistoleros.’

  José beamed with delight. ‘Sí, Patrón.’ ‘Go. Get it done.’ Lopez looked at the gangster sitting on the other side of José. ‘Give him the backpack.’

  The man stepped out of the car, and José scrambled after him. Reaching into the back of the pick-up, the gangster pulled out a bulky backpack and handed it to the boy. ‘Take your time, little one,’ he instructed. ‘Do not run.’

  As the man climbed back into the pick-up’s cab, José put the backpack over his shoulder then set off down the street.

  Toushi sat alone in the hangar at Monterrey International Airport. Two Federal Police pick-ups had come and collected Beta and Gamma Teams, along with Lieutenant Pedro Peters, to transport them to the Green Parrot’s compound for the early-morning assault.

  ‘Birdcage, this is Mexican Air Force C-130,’ reported the pilot of the Hercules that had transported Alpha Team. He spoke good English, the common language of international pilots. ‘Your birds have flown and I am returning to base. I repeat, your birds have flown. Over.’

  ‘Mexican Air Force C-130 from Birdcage, copy that,’ Toushi responded. ‘Thank you. Birdcage out.’

  ‘Happy to help the UN, amigo. Mexican Air Force C-130 out.’

  Toushi waited a moment, then said, ‘Birdcage to all team. Please to report.’

  ‘Beta Team in position,’ Sergeant Hazard reported.

  ‘Copy that,’ Toushi replied.

  ‘Gamma Team in position,’ said Angus Bruce.

  ‘Copy that,’ Toushi acknowledged.

  He checked his watch. Alpha Team – Charlie, Ben and Baz – would still be dropping like stones through the night sky toward Carlos Marron’s house. They would open their chutes not far above the compound. Toushi smiled with relief – a predominantly green image had appeared on his previously blank computer screen.

  ‘At last!’ he said out loud. ‘What take you so long?’

  The image was similar to the last one transmitted by t
he U-2 spy plane, although this one showed more of the surrounding detail. It was an infrared view of Marron’s compound and its neighbourhood. It was changing slightly in perspective with each passing second because it was being transmitted from the moving USAF EITS EC-130 as it circled high above the city.

  Transmissions from the EC-130 had commenced fifteen minutes later than requested. It would turn out that the pilot had spotted the Mexican Air Force C-130 circling the target area in preparation for the jump by Charlie, Ben and Baz, and had kept out of the way until the Mexican plane left the area. With the jumpers in the air, the Mexican C-130 headed for base. Only then did the American EC-130 move into position and commence transmission of its infrared vision of the target area.

  Toushi frowned and peered at the screen. ‘What is this?’

  The infrared image showed two human figures in the watchtower on the roof of the Green Parrot’s compound, which Toushi was expecting. But now there was a third figure walking along the back street toward El Loro Verde’s house. A small human figure – a child. Plus, Toushi could see that, south of the house, a vehicle sat parked in the street with heat glowing under its bonnet, indicating that the engine was running or had recently been running. Through the vehicle’s windows, red blobs on Toushi’s screen gave away the body heat of humans sitting inside it.

  Toushi typed an instruction to the EITS camera, and the image on the screen zoomed out to a wider view. Now he could see the red figures of Lieutenant Peters and the members of Beta Team crouching around the corner from the Green Parrot’s street, and those of Gamma Team in the street behind the compound, waiting for Charlie’s command. Toushi spotted another vehicle with a hot bonnet at the northern end of the Green Parrot’s street, also with people in the cab. Toushi flicked his ‘transmit’ button.

  ‘All team, be advised – you got company on the ground.’

  ‘Patrón, how can we be sure that the boy will identify El Loro Verde’s house?’ asked the driver, watching young José walk away.