“The final thing is we have to put a Mexican liaison on the team. A man who can coordinate with Mexican authorities so there’s no blue-on-blue action. I know you already have men who can speak Spanish, but this man is to help keep the Mexican authorities informed of the unit’s activities.”
Nick started to protest, but decided he knew how he’d handle this man. Besides, he was ready to get in theater and start hunting. There’d already been way too much talking, so he agreed with little arguing.
Chapter 14
Nick Woods and the men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter arrived safely in Mexico City. The special border passes demanded by Nick worked perfectly and the thirty-two shooters of S3, plus the CIA contact and Mexican liaison made it to the team headquarters without trading rounds with the Godesto Cartel.
Nick felt grateful that his first hurdle of sneaking across the border had been achieved. As part of their entry plans, he had made his Mexican liaison fly to Texas so they wouldn’t have to link up with him in Mexico, where they could be followed or ambushed.
The cultural expert was already with S3, having had to qualify and train with the team before Nick would accept her. Now all thirty-four had rendezvoused at a large farm, roughly an hour south of Mexico City, after drifting in from every possible ingress route over a three-day period.
Nick’s advance team of four men had finalized the lease for the farm prior to leaving America. Upon arriving, they confirmed the site was secure and began getting familiar with the area.
By the time Nick and the rest of his team arrived, the advance party had found the best defensive positions on the farm where security should be set up. Nick reviewed the security plans with the team leader once he arrived, and with a couple small adjustments, they were now fully implemented.
A small dirt road led to the farm, and a locked farm gate stopped curious people at the end of the road. Behind it, four men waited in an ambush position. Any intrepid salesman or thief too stupid to ignore the locked gate and “no trespassing” sign would most certainly never bother anyone again.
The men stationed in the ambush position had shoot-to-kill orders and anyone they shot would be buried on the property. Nick and the men of S3 wouldn’t be calling the police for anything. Hell, none of them trusted anyone down here.
Nick had even stripped the Mexican liaison upon his arrival in Texas and put his cell phone and all his clothing in storage, before having one of his men accompany him to a store to buy new clothes. Nick didn’t want to take a chance on any kind of tracking or listening devices. And once they came within two hours of Mexico City, Nick had the men traveling with the Mexican liaison blindfold him until he was inside the farmhouse. That would leave about a three-hundred-mile radius that the farm could be located in, just in case he ever slipped away to an open computer with internet access.
Better safe than sorry, Nick figured.
Nick had set the security as tight as he could. Besides the ambush team on the road, he had observation posts on each corner of the large farm, as well as two roving patrols of four men. There was a reason Nick had brought thirty-two men with him. He wanted to have constant security around him, and enough men to fight their way out of just about anything.
The thirty-two men were organized into four squads of eight. One of the squads, with the most experienced and best shooters, was the Primary Strike Team. The other three regular squads handled the security rotation since Nick and Dwayne Marcus agreed the Primary Strike Team should always be rested and ready to move at a moment’s notice.
But with everyone here and security set, that left one thing: it was time to start focusing on that bastard Hernan Flores and his Godesto Cartel.
The day after the last men arrived and preparations were completed, Nick walked from the kitchen to one of the bedrooms that he’d asked his men to set up for the first move against the Godesto.
“How close are we to being ready?” he asked.
Marcus stood just inside the door, his hands on his hips, an M4 slung across his chest. Once a drill instructor, always a drill instructor, Nick thought.
“Should be ready in five minutes,” Marcus said.
Men were sliding furniture to one side of the room. The bed, the dresser, the night stand, everything, had been shoved to one side. And against the wall, men stood on chairs and hammered nails into a plain white sheet spread across the wall.
“We’re going with a plain white backdrop,” Marcus said.
A folding table stood in front of the sheet, and two M249 SAWs lay on the table, the light machineguns resting on their bipod legs. One of the men of S3, whose name Nick couldn’t remember, adjusted a video camera that stood on an extended tripod.
“Get it right,” Nick said to the man.
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
“I don’t want anything in that frame except for the sheet. We don’t want to risk Flores or his men recognizing the wall or anything that might give away the type of building we’re in. We give these guys the smallest clue and they’ll figure out where these types of buildings were constructed, and then they’ll descend with so many informants on every county that has those types of buildings that we won’t be able to go buy milk without being discovered.”
“They won’t see anything but the sheet and table,” the man said. He looked back down and adjusted the camera one final time.
“Not even the floor,” Nick said.
“Not even the floor,” the man repeated.
Nick left the room and strode down the hall, his boots pounding the hardwood floor. It felt good to be in charge again, something he hadn’t felt since he was a foreman working construction. And before that, back when he was in the Corps and a squad leader and scout sniper team leader.
“Isabella,” Nick yelled as he walked into the kitchen.
Isabella, the cultural expert and only female in S3, looked up from a stack of papers spread across a wide dining table. Despite the skills she had shown qualifying and in training, Nick still wasn’t happy about having her on the team. Two Latino men, both Americans whose parents had emigrated from Mexico, flanked her.
Isabella had been asking them their opinion on the message she’d spent days preparing, and with their collective Mexican heritage, they had helped her polish the message so that it was as perfect as possible.
“Camera is set up,” Nick said to Isabella. “You ready?”
She grabbed the stack of papers and stood.
“Yes, sir,” Isabella said.
“You sure?” Nick said walking up to her and putting his hands on his hips.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“You better be,” Nick said.
“We’re ready,” she said.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Nick said. “This is on you. There is no ‘we’re ready’ bullshit. This statement is on you, not those two guys or anyone else. It’s either you’re ready or you’re not. And if you’re not, then you’ve got about three minutes to get ready. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Isabella said.
Nick’s eyes bore into her. He expected her to turn away, but she held his look.
Nick said, “What are you waiting on? Get the script in there. Now.”
Isabella walked down the hall and Nick watched her.
Marcus walked up beside Nick and said in a low voice, “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?”
“I need to know if she’s going to crack or not,” Nick said.
“She shoots as good as half of the men, and the woman may not have made the SEAL team, or been in the Marine Corps, but she’s been a trigger puller in one of the most dangerous countries in the world,” Marcus said. “I think she’s earned some respect.”
Nick turned from watching Isabella and looked at his second in command.
“We may be in the twenty-first century, but I don’t believe women should be in a unit like this. They can do intelligence, but you know as well as I do the issues with having women b
ehind enemy lines.”
“I do, sir, but we need her,” Marcus said. “Are you an expert on Mexican matters?”
Nick turned from Marcus and saw several men stop and watch Isabella. She was definitely a beautiful woman with an ass that, well, it turned heads.
“I’d rather have a male expert who was average,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Not one who looks like that,” he said, pointing. “And capable or not, that woman looks too good to be isolated with us. She’s going to cause serious problems.”
“The woman lost her father and her brother,” Marcus said. “She wants this as bad as you or me. And the men are professionals. They’ll be fine. And any who aren’t can deal with me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Nick considered Marcus’s words as he watched the 6’1’, 240-pound beast walk down the hall. Why the man needed an M4, Nick didn’t know.
Ten minutes later, Nick supervised the first major strike against Hernan Flores and the Godesto. With arms crossed, Nick watched his men as they executed the performance they’d been rehearsing since they left America. Except now they had the finalized words from Isabella.
Ten men stood behind the table and two M249s lay on it. Each of the ten men carried intimidating weapons. Some with M4s. Some with M240 medium machine guns. Some with scoped sniper rifles. They glared at the camera beneath boonie hats, ball caps, and watch caps, and wore a variety of civilian clothes, but mainly blue jeans and T-shirts.
Nick had ordered them to look like a rag-tag militia or gang, and they had achieved the effect. The only thing they each wore that bore any consistency were bandanas covering most of their faces, and even those varied in color (mostly reds and blues).
Marcus and Isabella had picked Latino men to be in the video, but none of them wanted to have their actual identity out on the internet for the rest of their lives, so the hats and bandanas left as little of each man’s face exposed as possible. The men knew that even if they knocked off Flores, they could still be at risk.
Cartels, like the mob, had long memories.
A man sat at the table in front of the line of ten armed men. After getting a nod from the man behind the camera, he began to read from a white paper held before him. Nick hoped the man’s accent matched what a resident of Mexico City might sound like. All of his Hispanic team members said the man’s accent was the best of any of them and lacked any trace of a life in America and the Marine Corps. (The man credited weekly phone calls home to his grandmother for his authentic sound.)
Nick hoped it was good enough. He had considered getting a local native speaker and (after blindfolding him and driving him around a few hours) bringing him to the farm to read the statement. But that seemed almost like kidnapping and hardly a way to win over the local population. Not to mention, unless the guy was a dimwit, he’d know there were a large group of mostly Americans somewhere in Mexico with really bad intentions, and that was knowledge Nick didn’t want Hernan Flores to have.
It was a risk Nick couldn’t take. His whole plan was based on turning the population against the cartels, and it was one thing for Mexicans to support fellow Mexicans. It was another thing altogether for Mexicans to support a bunch of gringos from up north.
The man seated at the table started to read.
“I speak for the men behind me, and for dozens of others who have had enough. We are citizens of Mexico -- bankers, butchers, and farmers. For decades now we have watched as our country has been torn apart by drugs and cartels.
“For most of us, the violence began elsewhere. Other states, other cities, other neighborhoods. But it moved in on us in the night. And soon, just a few criminals standing on street corners had turned into powerful gangs and distribution networks.
“Threats, intimidation, and corruption followed and before we knew it, our neighborhoods and cities were no longer ours. Our police and judicial system was under siege or had already bowed down to these super cartels.
“Since recognizing this threat, our military has tried to fight these oppressors, but they, too, have failed. Their officer corps has been infiltrated or paid off and many brave Mexican soldiers have died fighting in a cause they cannot win.
“There’s only one way to win this war, and that’s through us: the people of Mexico. We, the people of Mexico, will no longer tolerate these pigs with their wealth and their cavalier attitude toward law and order. We will no longer take their abuses and crimes. We will fight fire with fire. For every drop of blood they draw, we will draw ten more.
“We are the people of Mexico. And we are calling ourselves the Vigilantes. We are the true defenders of Mexico. And our first target is Hernan Flores. This man may say he’s clean and may claim to be merely a harmless grandfather and businessman, but we know differently. And you out there watching know differently, at least in your gut.
“This man has wrecked thousands of lives climbing to power, and now he’s killed dozens of Mexican soldiers and attacked our very own Presidential Palace. All within just the past few weeks. He has embarrassed our country and nearly brought it to its knees. But no more.”
The man dropped the paper and looked up at the camera.
“Mr. Flores, you murderer of thousands of good and decent people, we are coming for you. Your days of poisoning our country and our youth with your drugs and your guns and your wads of cash are coming to an end.”
The man nodded and the camera was turned off.
Nick couldn’t understand what the man had said -- it was in Spanish, after all -- but he’d read the message in English that Isabella had prepared and thought it was perfect. Soon, the video would be delivered to several major news stations in Mexico City. With luck, it would go viral within hours.
Nick smiled and thought, “Thanks, Allen Green. I owe you for this one.”
And indeed Nick did. Allen Green, the veteran reporter from New York, was a master of public opinion and had taught Nick much of what he knew. It had taken a while for Nick to come around to believing in the power of public opinion and social media, but he was on board with Allen’s arguments about media strategy now. After what they had been through, Allen was one of the only people that Nick trusted and respected without question.
Nick turned so the men wouldn’t see him and as he walked down the hall, he smiled. Round One just went to Team USA. Or, Team Mexico, really. Nick shifted the .45 on his hip and anticipated the upcoming fight between the Godesto and S3.
Now with their opening media strategy over, it was time to start spilling blood. And Nick? Well, he couldn’t wait for that to begin. There were a dozen-plus SEALs that Nick planned to soon avenge.
Chapter 15
Hernan Flores finished watching the Vigilantes’ homemade broadcast and threw the remote as hard as he could against his widescreen TV that was built into a cabinet inside his office. The remote cracked the screen and Flores slammed his hand on the desk.
Despite the cracked screen, the television now showed a foxy news anchor discussing the newly formed Vigilante group with a university professor who was an expert on the cartels. Flores just wanted to turn the damn thing off and cover his ears, but realizing the remote was now ten feet away, he grabbed the coffee mug off his desk and hurled it as hard as he could at the TV. The mug penetrated two inches, the TV popped, and the picture died in a shower of sparks. The widescreen now smoked and Flores stood still long enough to ensure no flames climbed from the guts of the worthless piece of scrap. Confirming there were none, he collapsed into his chair and buried his hands in his hair.
Who were these people?
He hit his intercom and said, “Maria, how many stations played that tape?”
There was a considerable pause, and then his secretary said, “We’re still trying to figure it out, sir, but we think pretty much all of them did.”
Flores jumped to his feet. He grabbed the phone from his desk and threw it as hard as he could toward the wall.
“Fuck!” he screamed.
The phone made it four feet be
fore the cord stopped its progress and jerked it back in Flores’s direction. He attempted to lift his arms in time to block it, but it caught him in the front of the shoulder and he yelped in pain.
Maria heard the curse and howl of pain. In any other circumstance this might have been funny, but in her case, she worked for an insane cartel leader. And when the fat man grew angry and then topped it off by getting hurt and embarrassed, people usually died. Maria, assuming she could be on some hidden camera, showed nothing and continued her work, pretending she hadn’t heard a thing. The pay was too good, and the fear too great, to do anything but that.
Flores rubbed his shoulder and sunk into his chair. He sat there for a moment and decided to pour himself a drink. He realized he was hungry, too, though it was only a couple hours after he had eaten breakfast. Well, a few Funyuns wouldn’t hurt.
Drink poured and chips opened, he sipped and munched at his desk. In between bites, he considered this new problem. In truth, vigilantes presented the greatest threat a cartel leader could face.
The public was vital in one’s war against the government. After all, the government dominated the cartels in terms of troops, dollars, and vehicles. Plus, the government could operate in the open with armored cars and heavy weapons. But the government also had to keep the public happy.
The cartels struggled under the requirement to stay below the radar. They couldn’t tote long weapons out in the open or assemble in groups near their targets or bases, except in some of their mountain fortress areas. And even there, it was best to not attract attention.
The cartels needed the public’s support. It was crucial. Other than public support, the only other weapons wielded by cartels were loads of cash and out-of-this-world violence. Violence that topped what the government could bring. If you could create sheer terror among individual police officers and prosecutors, then you could thrive and survive.
Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 10