That hadn’t stopped the people from living there. Hundreds lived in and around the landfill, digging and looking for valuables to sell or metal to salvage. And it was near this infamous Bordo de Xochiaca landfill that the men of S3 headed. Because just two blocks from one of the worst places on earth was a small apartment building that held fourteen units.
From the outside, it looked as old as all the hovels and shanties around it. But numerous pieces of intel data had identified the place as one of the sites that Hernan Flores had used as a safe haven through the years. And with some helo fly-bys and foot intel, Mexican authorities had determined that the place had been improved on the inside, while keeping the rough exterior in its rundown state as a form of concealment.
Flores had reportedly hated the place, but kept it as part of a fall-back position in case of a worst-case situation. But since the Butcher had shanked Flores in prison and taken over the Godesto Cartel, almost all intel pointed to the Butcher spending most of his nights in the small apartment building. It was the safest Godesto hideout and was surrounded by hundreds of foot soldiers on the cartel’s payroll.
According to the map on Nick’s lap, they were roughly two miles from the Butcher’s fourteen-unit apartment building. So far, so good, he thought. They’d seen some tough-looking men standing on a few street corners and the demeanor of those on the streets had changed, from a slight look of fear of possible arrest to increasing bravery and defiance.
No longer was any fear shown of the convoy with its flashing lights and armed men, facing out with menacing weapons. The last set of three men they had seen on a corner hadn’t even budged at the sight of twelve police trucks roaring down the road. They stood defiant and cold, facing the trucks with a look of smugness and meanness that only hardened criminals carried.
They certainly looked armed with their baggy clothes and cocky confidence. However, since no weapons were visible, they were likely armed with pistols or knives. Most of the residents in Neza-Chalco-Itza were too poor to own pistols. Down here, even drug dealers were fighting for scraps and enough to live on. Unless, that is, you were lucky enough to be in the employment of the Godesto Cartel. But usually you had to earn those stripes the hard way.
Nick could feel the hair on his neck standing up and his senses on high alert as the convoy pushed deeper into the massive slum. They were in bad-guy country, for sure, roaring down the pot-holed road at forty miles per hour. It would have probably been safer to do the speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour, but they needed surprise on their side and they’d already been spotted at least a couple miles back. Nick just hoped the Butcher was still in the apartment complex.
Intelligence provided by Isabella, and backed up by analysts in the CIA, stated that if they could just take him out, the Godesto Cartel would probably fall in on itself and fracture into pieces. Losing Hernan Flores and the Butcher -- two of its strongest leaders -- in such a short time span would prove fatal, intelligence officials believed.
The Butcher had four lieutenants under him, but there was little trust or coordination among them, except for the direct orders provided from on top. In the past, Flores had provided the experienced leadership necessary. He had doled out favors and rewards, as well as the occasional piece of harsh discipline. But mostly, he was well regarded and liked. And so he had created stability, something rarely found in most cartels. The men under him, the other cartels they were allied with, and the various government supporters who backed them up and provided reams of intel, all had flourished under the smiling, grandfatherly Flores.
The Butcher had replaced that respect and likeability with ferocious strength and unpredictability. He led based on fear, though his lead-from-the-front example was garnering him some unexpected praise.
Nick just hoped the former prison boy was at home when they arrived. Come on, big boy. Be home and let’s make this our one and only trip into Neza-Chalco-Itza, he thought.
“Take a right up here,” Nick said, looking up from the map.
Truck turned the steering wheel and the convoy pivoted deeper into the dark slum.
“I haven’t seen any welcoming committee,” Truck said.
“Yeah, I’m a little surprised by that,” Nick said. “We’re about a mile out. Maybe half a mile.”
“I spoke too soon,” Truck said. “Looky here.”
His headlights showed a group of men just a block ahead. Maybe about a dozen of them. Truck flipped his lights on bright and slowed to a stop.
The men stood facing the truck, long weapons held across their body and up on their shoulders.
“We’ve got tangos up ahead,” Nick said into his radio.
Trucks 2 and 3 pulled up on the left and right of Truck 1, but the men ahead of them didn’t flinch at so many weapons aimed at them. They stared at the flashing police lights with disdain and hatred.
“Looks like they don’t respect the po-lice ’round here,” Truck said in his country drawl.
Nick and Truck heard the Primary Strike Team behind them moving forward in the truck bed and better aligning themselves toward the threat. The truck bed had a rubber mat in it to dampen noise, but they were close enough to hear their boots moving on it.
“Hold the truck here,” Nick said, putting his hand on Truck’s forearm.
Nick opened the door, stepped onto the cracked pavement, and aimed his M4 at the group. With the headlights on bright, he could see the group pretty clearly through the red-dot scope.
He kept his eyes toward the men and felt only a minor level of comfort knowing all his men were aimed in on the group. Nick knew that it wasn’t these men in their lights that he needed to worry about. They were acting far too confident to be alone. Far too confident.
“Isabella,” he said quietly. “Jump down here.”
He heard her land, but didn’t turn his head. This was like cornering a rattler. You didn’t take your eyes off him, so Nick kept his eyes looking through the M4’s Aimpoint scope.
“What do you want me to do?” she whispered, now standing just behind him.
“Reach in the truck, grab the mic, and tell these men to disperse,” Nick said.
Isabella leaned into the truck to use the built-in speakers.
“On behalf of the government of Mexico,” she said in Spanish, “you are ordered to disperse.”
None of the men moved their weapons, but they spread out a bit.
“Warn them again,” Nick said.
Isabella did, repeating the same words.
Nick leaned into his rifle and said without turning, “Bulldog, scatter those men.”
Nick knew the big Navy SEAL from Baltimore was aimed in on the men with the M249 SAW. He hoped the Squad Automatic Weapon firing a burst over their heads would quickly show these punks that these weren’t typical Mexican police who were easily deterred by some thugs or cartel members.
The SAW ripped off a burst and the men jerked and danced and splattered under the deafening roar of the machine gun. Nick was shocked to see the bullets tear through the men, but those who weren’t hit took only a second to react. Some tried to flee, and others brought their weapons to bear.
Nick already had one lined up in his Aimpoint red-dot site, so as the man started to bring his AK up, Nick pulled the trigger. Since the men were in the headlights of three trucks, and since the Aimpoint sight did a wonderful job of picking up ambient light, the man’s face looked fairly clear in the scope.
The bullet hit about an inch from where Nick wanted at the roughly fifty-yard distance and the man fell hard to the ground. That was the thing with headshots. You put a 5.56 round through someone’s face and into their brainbucket and they dropped and never stood again.
The entire team of S3 opened up, as well, firing over the tops of the truck cabs and using the padded railings to assist their accuracy. The roughly dozen men before them were cut down and chopped up before they even returned a single round. A couple crawled and dragged themselves across the pavement until single shot
s ended any movement.
Nick wasn’t sure who shot the survivors and while he wasn’t a huge fan of shooting wounded when it could be avoided, he also knew they could roll out a grenade or get a weapon around and shoot you minutes later in the back.
“Clear,” yelled Red.
Others responded by stating “clear,” as well.
“Hey, Bulldog,” Nick said, his ears ringing.
“Yes, sir?” Bulldog answered, his head still lowered over the SAW.
“I only meant for you to scatter them by firing a burst over their head.”
That elicited some laughs, but then a burst of machine gun fire ripped down the street toward them. The bullets clanged into metal and glass and immediately the men of S3 responded at the light of a muzzle flash further down the street, well into the darkness beyond the range of the headlights.
More bullets whizzed by, this from another side of the street ahead. Again, fire was returned.
“Contact rear,” Nick heard over the radio.
And then a staccato of M4s started firing from Truck 12, the vehicle with the Scout Snipers.
“Contact left,” Nick heard someone else say on the radio.
More firing erupted from the middle of the convoy toward an alley to their left. Nick realized they were not in a good defensive position strewn out in a long column, not to mention their mission was to grab the Butcher, not duke it out with the entire Godesto Cartel.
“Let’s get the convoy moving,” he yelled into the mic. Isabella jumped back into the truck and Nick retook his seat. He rolled down the window and leaned out with his M4. He spotted a muzzle flash at his one o’clock and fired three rounds toward it on single shot.
“Let’s go, Truck,” Nick said, anger welling up in his voice. For all he knew, hundreds of fighters were running toward them right now. Staying put meant certain death.
Truck stepped on the gas and knocked Nick back against the seat. The convoy roared forward while the Primary Strike Team engaged targets in windows, around corners, and on roofs. They hung to the bars built up around the truck bed and fired as best they could from the moving truck.
Truck yanked the vehicle left and right as bullets pinged off and through the glass. It appeared the Mexican Police Department hadn’t sprung for bullet-proof glass, something Nick wish he had known a bit earlier in the mission.
“How many you figure there are?” Truck asked, his voice strained.
“Maybe fifty already,” Nick said, holding on to the door, and firing three-round bursts toward various shadows up ahead.
Unfortunately, Nick knew it was only going to get worse as more gunmen rushed to the sound of battle. It was feeling more and more like what the Army Rangers and Special Forces had endured as more than a thousand Somali fighters came at them in the infamous Blackhawk Down battle in Mogadishu.
In his dream, the Butcher pounded Rodriguez’s face against the concrete. The big, prior convict had been one of the men who had taunted and raped the Butcher, and the Butcher had eagerly awaited catching up with Rodriguez for more than five years.
After the Butcher had been released from prison, he had jumped back into the drug biz. There weren’t many other options for a felon, especially one living in Mexico, and he already had the contacts and relationships in place. In no time at all, he had plenty of cash laying around and he immediately got two prison guards on his payroll and on his side. And while the Butcher worked tirelessly to master martial arts with his new found freedom, those guards helped him keep tabs on the release dates of his tormentors.
By the time Rodriguez was paroled, the Butcher had already killed four prior inmates. He had killed them with a super-sharp katana, mostly because he didn’t trust his newly acquired martial arts skills well enough to take them on in purely hand-to-hand.
But Rodriguez got the first introduction to the new and improved cellmate and his now already stupendous martial arts skills.
The Butcher’s dream had been a replay of that re-introduction. The man had headed straight for a Burger King after his release, just as expected. It had been all he had talked about while he was in the pen. A Whopper. Large order of fries. And a large chocolate milkshake. Over and over he had repeated this mantra, until the Butcher had gotten to where he couldn’t stand it.
The Butcher had considered letting him stuff himself at Burger King and attacking him afterward, but ruled that out in favor of killing him just feet from his goal. That would be far crueler, and crueler was something the Butcher became more of every day.
And when Rodriguez had gotten out of the taxi and walked toward the doors of the Burger King, he had been smiling like a six-year-old boy on Christmas day. Then the Butcher had stepped out from behind a van where he had been hiding.
The Butcher relived those next moments in his dream, grunting and jerking with each movement.
Rodriguez jolted in surprise.
“Woah, amigo. What are the chances of seeing you here? What a surprise!”
Rodriguez was smiling like they were best friends. As if the taunting, the raping, the endless threats over a four-year period had never occurred.
“It’s not a surprise at all,” the Butcher said.
“What?” the fat, bald man asked. And then he realized the skinny, little man in front of him wasn’t smiling. And with that realization, an entirely new meaning to the man’s words crept into his mind. And the way the Butcher was standing, feet wide apart, hands out to his side but clenched in tight fists. It looked like some kind of stance he had seen in half a dozen low-budget karate movies.
Before Rodriguez could react to the growing fear in the pit of his stomach, the Butcher rushed and leapt forward, throwing a double kick. It was like one of those kicks you see in the Shaolin Kung Fu movies. The one in which they jump, lift one leg, and then retract it and kick with the other leg. Tough to block, and powerful as hell.
That day, and again that night in his dream, the Butcher jumped in the air and kicked his left leg forward first. Rodriguez partially blocked it, as expected, but the Butcher retracted the left kicking leg and thrust the right one forward into a massively powerful thrust kick that caught Rodriguez right in the lower stomach. The Butcher landed it with his heel, as he hoped, and it knocked Rodriguez four feet back. He stumbled on a curb stop and fell on his back. He had clearly felt intense pain, but couldn’t possibly have known how much internal damage he had suffered in the small intestines.
But the Butcher offered no quarter. He bound forward between Rodriguez’s legs, who lay sprawled on his back.
The Butcher lifted his right leg up past his own head and slammed it down in a straight-legged ax kick right into Rodriguez's open groin. The man instantly balled up into the fetal position and that’s when the Butcher slid around him and kicked him in the face with the toe of his shoe.
The Butcher followed that football-like kick with a heel stomp into the side of the man’s head. And with Rodriguez half out of it from the blow to the side of the head, the Butcher started kicking the man over and over in the side of his head, aiming for the vulnerable ear area. He mercilessly drove his legs down into his former cellmate. Each of the kicks, with the pavement providing a hard backstop behind the target, would be practically fatal if they landed dead-on.
But Rodriguez to his credit knew that giving up wasn’t an option. This wasn’t some schoolyard fight where you eventually gave up. Someone would either die or end up permanently injured. This was prison fighting, only outside prison walls, so he moved his head back and forth desperate to dodge his attacker’s repetitive strikes.
And thus the heel stomps aimed by the Butcher missed the ear and drove into Rodriguez’s jaw, neck, spine, and the top of his head. And since his head had nowhere to go, the result was repeated slams into the concrete. Rodriguez was half out of it by this point, but he could vaguely make out people yelling at the shocking barbarity. But the Butcher ignored them. He had waited and dreamed of this for too long. He had suffered far too much. So,
he yanked Rodriguez from his side and rolled him onto his stomach. Then the Butcher jumped on the back of the barely conscious Rodriguez, pinning the man’s arms down with his knees.
Then he grabbed Rodriguez’s head and started bashing it into the concrete, over and over, with more and more force.
The nose and teeth shattered quickly, but that wasn’t enough for the Butcher. Bystanders grabbed his arms, trying to pull the small man off, but the Butcher only slammed Rodriguez’s head harder and harder, trying to crack the man’s skull on the concrete. The sound of his skull slamming into a rapidly expanding pool of blood was one the Butcher would never forget. He was hearing that sound again now in his dream, thrashing and reliving the day that he had cracked open the bully’s head, when he realized the pounding wasn’t the sound of Rodriguez’s skull on the concrete. It was an incessant pounding on his door, which he’d locked.
He shook himself awake and wiped his arm across his sweaty forehead.
“What is it?” he yelled, pissed.
He had told them to leave him alone.
“Sir, they’re coming,” one of his guards said breathlessly through the door. “They’re coming.”
The Butcher reached for his Uzi, katana, and black duffel bag as his feet hit the floor. Then he realized he needed to grab his pants and a shirt.
“How many, and where are they?” he asked, reaching for his clothes.
The twelve-truck convoy barreled toward their target, braking hard and squealing around corners before revving up and roaring forward as fast as the eight-cylinder trucks would take them. Bullets zipped and snapped around them, with occasional pings as bullets smacked home against the trucks.
“I can’t believe how ballsy these idiots are,” Truck said, as he focused hard on the task of driving and leading the entire convoy. He yanked the truck around two burned barrels of trash that someone had hurled in the road to block them. The front bumper caught the corner of one of the half-burned, half-rusted hulks and knocked it across the street.
Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 31