Second, you’d have to be paranoid as hell to put up such an act for so many days. Nick wondered if he would be that careful if the shoe was on the other foot and he were Flores. Maybe he would. And maybe not. Flores certainly held an unbelievable number of advantages over Nick and his team, and he would have every reason in the world to underestimate this group called the Vigilantes.
Yet Nick’s gut said this building was a gold mine. The moment the first clue about it came in, it had stood out from all the rest. And Nick appreciated the sheer genius of the location. It was precisely the spot he would have chosen to store tons of cocaine. The building wasn’t a factory or warehouse or even storefront. No, it was far better than that. It was a church. A small cathedral, more accurately.
While the tip was unbelievable at first, they had received three specific and different tips from various neighbors who lived in the area.
The intel later placed on the cathedral supported Nick’s belief. The Scout Snipers -- buried deep in the corner shadows of nearby buildings -- reported odd vehicles coming and going in the middle of the night. Strange deliveries. Ferocious-looking men who wore unnecessary coats on hot nights, overseeing the loading and unloading of boxes.
Nick shifted his feet and took a deep breath in the alley, still trying to calm his nerves. The final confirmation the cathedral was legit would arrive in minutes. Nick had one of the two nearby S3 squads following a vehicle that had departed the cathedral moments ago. The Scout Snipers had called in several boxes being loaded into the car right on schedule. This vehicle was leaving at the same time as it had night-after-night in the five days the target building had been under surveillance.
“We’ll know soon whether they’re delivering drugs or Bibles,” Dwayne Marcus said with a grin, after hearing the Scout Sniper call in the vehicle driving off through his earpiece.
“They don’t deliver Bibles this time of night,” Nick said. “Ain’t enough demand.”
“There just might be,” Marcus said. “Country’s a shithole.”
Nick grinned and knew Marcus was joking. They both felt certain the place was crammed full of drugs or weapons or something else of the Godesto Cartel’s.
Nick had instructed the eight-man squad to ambush the car. It was Second Squad, who got the call. Nick had some ideas on how it should be done, but he believed in delegating and told the squad leader to get with his men and develop their own plans.
The squad leader had briefed his men, they had brainstormed, and he had reported to Nick that they wanted to have one car follow the vehicle away from the cathedral. And then, further down the road, two other vehicles would block the road at the last second, with gunmen taking positions behind the cars. The S3 operatives from behind would rush to the right so that the two units wouldn’t be firing into each other, and the two groups would create a hastily formed L-shaped ambush on the vehicle that had left the cathedral. The vehicle’s occupants would either wisely surrender or die in a hail of bullets.
The answer arrived minutes later as a staccato of automatic gunfire carried across the city. Then more followed.
Nick imagined the scene. Darkness. The blinding flash and roar of gunfire in a black night. The zipping of passing rounds and the slapping of rounds tearing into bodies. The screams of terror.
“Second Squad, report in,” Nick said into his throat mike after the echoes of gunfire had ended.
“Roger,” his squad leader said. “Target occupants killed. Collecting evidence.”
“Move fast,” Nick said, then released the mic button on his chest.
He looked up at his Primary Strike Team and said, “Get ready. Double-check your weapons and get your head in the game.”
None of them had their heads out of the game, but Nick was a big believer in the power of absolute focus. Nick double-checked that the van hadn’t been turned off and was running as he had instructed. Turning off a vehicle in a slum like this seemed really stupid, especially for such an old vehicle.
He watched his Strike Team prepare. They wore various types of web gear over their civilian clothes and the operatives confirmed follow-up magazines were accessible and grenades were attached securely.
Marcus, his second in command, played leader and checked straps and pockets of those around him. Isabella, S3’s cultural expert who was quite a shooter herself, double-checked her MP-5. She could hit a dime at thirty feet with the thing.
Lizard, a Puerto Rican who had served nine years in the Corps, looked nervous, but that was normal. The man looked timid and scared no matter what he was doing. Even when he was fighting, at which he was nearly unbeatable, he always looked like he was on the verge of losing. But Lizard was a black-belt Brazilian Jiu-jitsu grappler and Nick had seen him wrestle with several team members from the other squads, and he hadn’t lost.
And even though Lizard’s commanding officers had all remarked on his pessimistic attitude, he never lost his cool. He always thought every mission would prove a failure, he always showed real fear, he always wanted to get out of the Corps, and yet he had two Bronze Stars, and he’d always re-enlisted once his contract ended. And even stranger, he had volunteered to try out for Nick’s unit, even though he’d told several of the men that he had “a bad feeling” about it.
Nick liked the quiet Puerto Rican and had served with many men like him. Men like Lizard didn’t break. They may seem too humble, they may look shaky, but they'd move heaven and earth once the chips came down. And Nick preferred men who hated danger over men who loved it. Only crazy men would enjoy regular gun work.
And, well, Nick was crazy. And so was the rest of his Primary Strike Team.
There was Truck. Truck was the nickname of a former Army Special Forces operative who had probably seen too much action. Unlike much of the team, he wasn’t a gym rat. And he wasn’t the typical, optimistic soldier either. Frankly, he was a constantly complaining cynic, but Nick appreciated him.
Truck had been kicked out of the Special Forces after he had beaten the shit out of an officer. He had avoided brig time by lying and citing PTSD as the cause of his outburst. His citations for courage, which his defense attorney had read aloud to the jury at his trial, had probably helped.
But, Truck couldn’t avoid a discharge after hurting an officer so badly, and he’d left the base in disgrace and applied for a military contractor job the same day. Men like Truck lived to carry a rifle, so he had done several more tours as a contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Eventually, he had lost that job, too, after abandoning his truck to go running up a hillside in pursuit of insurgents who had ambushed his convoy in Afghanistan. It didn’t help his case that his leadership had found him with three bodies near him, one of whom had taken a final, execution-style shot right in the forehead. Bottom line: He had abandoned his vehicle and recklessly charged a hill. Then, he’d executed a man and practically admitted that this was what had happened.
The contractor company was forced to fire him. He couldn’t get hired on with other military contractors after that; the liability was too high. Police departments wouldn’t hire him either due to his record and PTSD systems. So without further employment opportunities available, he became a truck driver back in America.
Nick had some concerns about Truck until he interviewed him following Marcus’s recommendation. Marcus had a good feeling about the guy after having spent several days with him prior to Nick’s arrival.
Nick asked dozens of brutal questions and fell practically in love with Truck. Turned out that the officer was a prick -- Nick had his CIA contact do research on the man -- and that Truck had the perfect defense for his contractor work.
“Why’d you leave the vehicle and charge the hill?” Nick asked him.
“Ah, hell, I didn’t give a shit about the truck. And I’d lost a lot of buddies over there. Those Taliban shitheads started firing at us and training took over. To hell with ignoring them and dealing with the same thing again the next day, like we’d been doing for weeks. I
just decided I’d rather off them.”
Nick imagined the battle, looked over the photos provided by the company’s investigators, and concluded that he’d have done the same. And just like that, a “disgraced” former Special Forces operative was picked up and given a second chance with S3.
Besides Marcus, Isabella, Lizard, and Truck, the eight-man Primary Strike Team also had Bulldog, Preacher, and Red in it ranks.
Bulldog was appropriately named. A former Navy SEAL from the brutal streets of Baltimore, he was a giant black guy -- 6’4,” 250. The biggest man, by far, on S3, and there were some huge guys that Nick and Marcus had hired. Bulldog wasn’t just big, he was also a workout freak. He always lifted and his only apparent weakness was an inability to grow hair. So, he stayed bald and was such an intimidating beast that no one asked him a single question about it.
Preacher was the most religious man on Nick’s team. His parents had been missionaries and the 5’10” man had felt “called” to join the Marines. Nick didn’t know about being “called,” but Preacher had done four hard tours, two of them with MARSOC. And Nick knew from experience that men who joined and stayed because they felt called didn’t know how to quit or run.
Finally, there was Red. Red was a short little shit. He was 5’5” on a good day, red-headed, and covered in thousands of small freckles. About the ugliest man Nick had ever seen, but he was so confident that he had a way with the women. He was divorced, said “let’s do it” a lot, and absolutely loved to fight. In fact, absolutely loved to fight. Red had boxed a lot and Nick was always trying to keep him from jumping Bulldog or any other giant that should be able to rip him in half. But, Nick had seen him in action and wasn’t so sure.
Red was crazy, and Red had small man’s syndrome. He’d come from his fourth Marine infantry unit -- he transferred as much as he could to outgoing units headed off to war -- and had done seven tours in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
And that was the Primary Strike Team. Eight badasses. All killers. And they operated in two four-man teams. Nick led one of the teams, with him, Isabella, Truck, and Bulldog on it.
And Marcus’s team had Lizard, Red, and Preacher. Nick had placed Lizard with Marcus by default, since Lizard spoke Spanish and Nick already had Isabella on his team for translation duties.
And since Red was a nut-case looking to fight -- except with Nick or Marcus due to his respect for rank -- Nick placed Preacher with him. That helped balance out Red’s aggressiveness, and provided Marcus with a well-rounded fire team.
And by default, with Marcus’s team set, that left Nick with Isabella and Truck, the former Special Forces man, and Bulldog, the big Navy SEAL from Baltimore, to round it out.
Nick’s team loaded up first into the van, and then Marcus’s team followed. Nick and Marcus had argued for hours in private about which team would breach the cathedral. Nick had insisted upon leading from the front and Marcus had tried every angle in the world to convince him otherwise.
He had reminded his boss that nearly fifty men served under him and therefore Nick shouldn’t be operating as practically a point man. He had also subtly suggested that as the oldest man in the unit, Nick might not be the best person to perform the most arduous tasks.
Nick had not so subtly suggested that he’d put his most recent kill count from the past few years up against anyone else’s, and that didn’t account for the dozens and dozens of Soviet troops he had bagged in Afghanistan back in his earlier years, when he and his spotter were sold out and surrounded by more than one thousand troops.
Since neither the argument of leadership nor age had swayed Nick, Marcus finally suggested that since Nick had Isabella on his fire team, and since she had the least experience in room clearing, then Nick’s team should follow and not lead the assault.
The experience argument won out, and Nick conceded that Marcus’s team would breach the building and take the lead. Marcus also pointed out that since Nick would have to oversee the entire attack tonight by S3 and keep track of countless pieces of information, that would allow Marcus to work with his fire team more on breaches and room takedowns. And thus tonight, Marcus’s team loaded last into the van and more than likely -- if Marcus had his way -- would lead all assaults on future missions.
The van doors slammed and the vehicle’s driver -- one of the regular squad members from the squad not taking part in tonight’s op -- roared out of the alley, headlights still off. The cathedral’s entrance was only two blocks away, but the van hit nearly fifty miles per hour on the dimly lit road, before it screeched to a halt near the front steps. The van doors opened and Marcus’s four-man fire team rushed for the entrance, with Nick’s team following not far behind.
The van driver lifted his radio and said, “Primary Strike Team at the door. Snipers, be alert.”
The task of the snipers was now to keep enemy combatants in and reinforcements out.
At the door, Preacher checked the handle to confirm it was locked. He placed a demolition charge on the doorframe and backed up four feet with his team. All eight shooters of the Primary Strike Team were stacked on the wall into two sticks. Preacher clicked the detonator and the charge exploded, setting off dogs barking for a two-mile area.
Red, the number two man in the stack, threw a flashbang over Preacher’s shoulder right after the door blew off its frame, and the entire Primary Strike Team shut their eyes and turned their heads. Each wore lightweight ear plugs to help with their hearing protection and equilibrium in the heavy expected action.
The flashbang boomed and lit up the entire church and even part of the block. Marcus’s team followed the incredible concussion and blinding flash, entering the building with controlled speed.
Preacher, the lead man, turned the corner first and saw two men headed toward them, trying to react to the assault. They were partially blinded and their equilibrium shot from the flashbang, and Preacher stitched them both with his MP-5, firing two to the chest and one to the head of both men.
Red, just behind Preacher’s shoulder, caught movement from a more alert tango who had been far enough away that he hadn’t been affected by the flashbang. The man let loose with an AK in their direction before Red dropped him with four shots from his own AK-74. Of course, Red didn’t make the mistake of firing while running forward, and he had the advantage of an Aimpoint red-dot sight -- not to mention seven combat tours and some of the best Marine infantry training that a man could get. Red’s four rounds punched four holes in the man and threw him back into the wall.
Marcus’s team finished securing the sanctuary, and Nick’s team moved to the lead. They broke into pairs -- Nick with Isabella and Truck with Bulldog -- and started busting into rooms down a hallway past the sanctuary.
Each room proved empty save one. Truck and Bulldog heard movement inside a room they were about to clear, and they hit it with a flashbang and followed the explosion alert and fast.
Inside the room, two cartel men were holding their ears and reaching for weapons they’d dropped when the flashbang hit. Truck could have taken his man alive, but Truck didn’t take prisoners unless explicitly ordered, so he fired two rounds of buckshot from his twelve gauge into the man’s chest. Truck was all trigger.
Bulldog, at 6’4”, 250, loved nothing more than getting his hands on someone and using his strength that he spent hours each day improving in the gym. He dropped his weapon to the slung position across his chest and rushed the man, grabbing him and flinging him across the room into a wall.
The man’s head bounced off the concrete wall and before the man could react, Bulldog kicked him in the back of the knee with one of his massive legs. The man dropped to the ground, and Bulldog shoved his head into the wall again. This time, the collision between concrete and bone yielded an instantly knocked-out opponent and a face reformed with a broken nose and shattered facial bones. Bulldog flexcuffed his hands and feet, and Truck threw the men’s AK’s out of the room into the hall of the cathedral.
No other men were o
n the top level, but downstairs seven men surrendered without firing a shot. The men had heard enough firing up above, and were smart enough to know that their lack of training stood no chance against flashbangs and practiced assault teams. With the men in the downstairs basement were hundreds of crates full of cocaine.
The priest was nowhere to be found, but after the building was secure, one of the two sniper teams reported having shot a man wearing a hoodie who had tried to flee. It turned out to be the priest, but neither Nick nor the shooter felt an ounce of remorse. The man was at a minimum guilty by association and a hypocrite to boot.
More men from S3 arrived behind them and they shot loads of video of the cathedral, its drugs, and its armed cartel men lying dead throughout the place. Nick, Marcus, and the rest of the Primary Strike Team waited outside while the video and photos were taken.
“Can you believe with all that shooting -- even all those explosions -- that the police haven’t even responded?” Preacher asked, disgusted.
“The cartel would have agreements in place,” Isabella said, “for the police not to respond or investigate anything that happens at this cathedral. It’s a way of life down here, and the people in the neighborhood are aware of it.”
“They probably didn’t even bother calling it in,” Nick said.
“It’s just sad,” Preacher said. “These people have no hope.”
Red spit, his anger obvious. “They had their chances, and they have them every day. I’m not throwing them a damn pity party. They can pick up a gun and do something about these bastards.”
Preacher looked at the short, hot-headed infantryman and swallowed down any response. Before Preacher had joined MARSOC, he had been as agitated and angry as Red. Plus, Preacher had the benefit of religion. He doubted Red had ever stepped foot in a church.
Marcus stepped up by Nick and said, “You sure you want to burn it down?”
Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 13