by Jack Murphy
“Thanks bud.”
“You sure about that?” Deckard asked Pat.
Pat shrugged.
“Let's see what he can do.”
13
A triple strand of det-chord formed a flex linear charge that was affixed diagonally across the front door of the single story building that served as living space and a headquarters for one of the many drug gangs that inhabited Oaxaca City. It exploded in a shower of debris that woke people from their beds several blocks away. Mothers hid with their children under beds. Mexico was a war zone and they knew what would come next. This was their reality.
Deckard stepped out of his Iveco assault truck as he watched four Samruk International assault teams storm the compound, swarming through the now empty door frame. In moments, it was all over. Not a shot had been fired.
“Six this is Zhen,” the Platoon Sergeant's voice crackled over his MBITR radio. Zhenis had received a battlefield promotion to his rank like Fedorchenko. Now Zhen ran second platoon while Fed ran first.
“Go ahead.”
“Objective secured. Five fighting age males, no civilians. Initiating our search.”
“Roger that, Zhen.”
“Zhen out.”
Deckard changed channels and reported their status up to Cody back at the OPCEN. Samruk functioned very well on a system of merit based ranks in which those with greater responsibility drew higher pay. However, they didn't have any real Officers in the Private Military Company. It was a Sergeant's game and they liked it that way. Still, Deckard now found himself playing the role of Platoon Leader while Zhenis was busy leading his men.
Deckard had to be the one thinking several steps ahead. Where were they going next, how would they get there, and how would they respond to any roadblocks thrown up in their way? This was his responsibility.
Several assaulters popped up on the roof to pull security and watch for any enemy counter-attack.
Striding up to the doorway, Deckard watched the Kazakh mercenaries flexcuff and blindfold each prisoner one by one before patting them down and segregating them from each other. Cell phones, a few pistols, and other assorted pocket litter was found between the five prisoners. When one of them began to complain as he was pushed down onto his knees against the wall, one of the Kazakhs jabbed him in the ribs with his rifle barrel and barked at him in Russian.
“Six, you might want to take a look at this,” Zhen said over the assault net.
“What is it?”
“Found something in the back yard.”
Deckard walked through the house as the mercenaries continued to pull it apart searching for weapons and potential intelligence information. Out back Deckard kicked through the dust towards Zhen. The backyard was really just a strip of dirt covered in feathers and rusty chicken wire. The dried skeleton of what had once been a tree was the only notable feature.
“What did you find?”
“Look up,” he said pointing into the tree.
Deckard squinted in the darkness, the exterior lights of a nearby house was the only illumination. Raising his AK, Deckard triggered the tactical light attached to the rail system on his rifle and trained it on the bare branches.
Intermingled and concealed with the branches was a complicated antenna farm of UHF and VHF dipoles that were tacked onto the branches. Other equipment had been painted the same color as the tree and nailed into place to create a frequency division duplex. Whoever had set up the clandestine antenna station clearly knew what they were doing.
“What the hell,” Deckard muttered.
Looking up at the roof he spotted two solar cells angled in the direction that the sun would be rising from at dawn. Looking back down at his feet, Deckard started brushing dirt aside, probing with his fingers. Finally he found the coaxial cable and followed it from the antenna system back to the house where it snaked through a small hole cut through the cinder block wall.
“Bring one of the prisoners in here,” he said to Zhen. Deckard scanned the inside looking for a false wall. His men had taken to their task with enthusiasm, a couch was flipped over, a mirror broken, and shattered glass spread across the floor, but they had not turned up anything notable.
Zhen pushed one of the prisoners into the room.
He looked to be in his mid-twenties and fighting a losing battle with acne. The American drew his 1911 pistol and quickly snapped off two shots, one on either side of the cartel man.
“Where is the receiver for the repeater system outside?” he asked, leaving no room for compromise and no doubt as to the consequences of anything less than a truthful answer.
“There,” he said pointing to the corner of the room. “Behind the panel.”
Deckard took a closer look and sure enough, there was a false wall. The seam was almost impossible to detect at a glance and he had to use his Ka-Bar to wedge it in the crack and pry the plaster panel away from the wall. Inside was a rack of black radio receivers bearing the name of a well-known European telecom company.
Changing channels on his own radio he flipped over the command net to talk to their headquarters at the Ortega compound.
“Standby for video,” he said.
“Got it,” Cody replied.
Turning on his helmet camera, the image panned wherever he happened to be looking. Using a GoPro WiFi attachment was an improvised measure to beam the signal back to the satellite communications set up on their assault trucks and then back to their headquarters. Cody had called it a ghetto rig, but whatever he did to it seemed to work.
“What am I looking at?” Deckard spoke into the headset microphone.
“Looks like a TRG 6030 transceiver and some more low-grade receivers for microwave.”
“Hold on, I'll walk outside and show you the antenna farm.”
Hurrying back outside, Deckard look up into the tree and shined his tac-light again for Cody's benefit.
“Professional job,” Cody said in his clipped manner. “Decent concealment.”
“What kind of range do you think this thing has?”
“About five to ten kilometers on its own but this is a repeating station. If you look at the setup it is clear that this is just one sub-station in a much larger network. With the repeater turned on you can push out to fifty kilometers and then on to infinity depending on how many repeaters are in the network.”
“What kind of commo could a station like this push?”
“Whatever you want,” Cody answered. “No need for a land line, wireless, or the internet as far as this network stretches.”
“So it is basically a pirate net.”
“With encryption available on the civilian market they will have set up a dark net that can't be traced or tapped into by the authorities since it's completely off the grid.”
“And they can use it to coordinate drug shipments, assassinations, and other cartel business,” Deckard thought out loud.
“It looks like they also have some equipment to help hide their frequencies from the authorities.”
“No wonder why they are running circles around both the US and Mexican governments.”
“Take it apart and bring it back here. Don't break it. I will take it apart myself and tell you how it works.”
“Roger Cody, Six out.”
Deckard switched back onto the assault net and gave the order to begin dismantling the antenna array. He wasn't ready to call it their big break against the Jimenez cartel but it was another chip in their armor. If Samruk International could penetrate the enemy's communications system they could get inside the cartel's decision making process and destroy them from the inside out.
In the meantime, Deckard knew that Jimenez himself was out there somewhere in the night. Deep down he knew that the drug lord was sitting down with his top men at that very moment and plotting his counter attack against Deckard and Samruk International.
14
Aghassi sat at the end of the bar nursing a beer.
A rooster clucked and flapped its wings up
into a storm of loose feathers that drifted through the bar. Locals filtered in and out, some stopping for a drink. Others to loiter or smoke a cigarette. At the other end of the bar a couple twelve year old girls took turns slamming tequila shots. The intelligence specialist shrugged and went back to his beer as the rooster made a beeline for the door.
He had been at this game for so long that he felt more at home here than he did back in the town he grew up in. He had left Oklahoma as a kid and joined the Army. Getting picked up for various intelligence projects that wanted to capitalize on his linguistic abilities had seen him spending long periods in third world countries, often under deep cover. Whoever the kid from Oklahoma had been got lost in the fold somewhere along the way.
The door swung open just long enough for the rooster to make his escape. The flash of sunlight from outside made Aghassi squint his eyes. The guy passed out and drooling on the bar next to him was unresponsive to it all. The newcomer that walked in was different from the other locals. He wore expensive Diesel jeans and a black t-shirt featuring pictures of flying skulls. His haircut was one of the latest Mexican trends with pointy sideburns and lots of hair gel.
Taking a seat, the trendy dude had to wait to ask for a beer. The girls were ordering another round.
“You're not from here,” Aghassi said to him in Spanish. “I just got into town myself.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “I'm here on business. How about you?”
“The same. I'm a truck driver.”
The newcomer laughed.
“Got it.”
It was widely known that once the drugs came in from the south that the drug cartels loaded them into tractor trailers that had been up-armored with metal sheets to look like something out of Mad Max. They were then loaded down with the narcotics and escorted by modified pickup trucks which were also armored and had machine gun mounts in the back. Some of the convoys could stretch out into as many as a hundred vehicles.
“Dangerous work,” he commented.
The convoys would race up the drug corridors in the middle of the night hoping to avoid being ambushed by rival cartels. These days Mexico was more dangerous than Iraq or Afghanistan.
“It isn't as bad as they say,” Aghassi said trying to sound cool about it. “And it pays well.”
“That is the important thing,” the Mexican laughed as the bar man finally brought him his beer.
“What do you do?”
“I'm a manager for a corrido band,” he answered referring to the traditional type of Mexican folk music that had now been taken over by the narcocorrido or drug ballads that glorified cartel life. “My brother is the singer.”
“I'm surprised you had to come from out of town to find work.”
“My brother is a big name up in Sonora. We go wherever the highest paying clients are.”
Aghassi tried to hide his surprise at the turn of luck by sipping on his beer. Jimenez controlled all of Oaxaca with Ortega out of the picture so there was no doubt as to who the client was.
“That's interesting.”
“Hey, Deckard.”
“What is it?”
“Turn off that WiFi for your helmet cam. It's turning you into a moving hotspot and broadcasting your location to the world.”
“Thanks Cody,” he said reaching up and flicking off the WiFi and his helmet camera. The antenna array had been taken apart and loaded into their assault trucks. They were just now rolling off the objective with their five prisoners.
“This isn't Cody,” the voice crackled over the internet.
Deckard's thoughts froze for a moment as the Iveco truck rounded a corner and set out for the Ortega compound. Someone had penetrated their comms system and broke through their crypto. Granted it was just an off the shelf system which wasn't very sophisticated but his heart skipped a beat on realizing that unknown parties were tracking and listening in on the Samruk mercenaries. Now they were announcing themselves.
“Is Jimenez in the room?” he asked finally.
“Nice guess but this is your former employer.”
Even worse.
The voice gave him an address in Oaxaca City.
“We want to talk.”
“You guys still bitter about the Colombia job?”
No one replied.
“Who was that,” Cody suddenly burst over the net. “I couldn't hear them but I could hear your responses.”
Deckard began looking at the Falcon View navigator program running on the tough book computer mounted in his truck.
“Christians In Action,” he answered. “They broke into our net.”
“I WARNED YOU-”
“We'll take care of that later,” Deckard cut the computer technician off. “Hit Internacional Road and then turn right on Eduardo Vasconcelos,” he then told the driver. “We're taking a detour.”
The streets were dead. Not a soul dared to show their face after dark. Up until recently Oaxaca City had been spared the extreme violence that had plagued much of Mexico. It was only as the Mexican military truly began cracking down on the cartels to the north, under the aegis of an American foreign aid and military program, that the drug barons began getting displaced to the south. Squeezed up against one another, cartel bosses like Ortega and Jimenez arrived in Oaxaca and began warring with each other. Just a few months prior the entire province had been considered an oasis for tourists. Even the US President's daughter vacationed there.
The aging colonial buildings and churches clashed with the pastel colored homes and commercial warehouses as the Samruk convoy sped through the night. Deckard sat back in his seat, watching the vehicle icons move across the map on the computer screen as they were updated by the GPS hockey puck stuck to the side of the truck with a magnet.
His dance card was filling up fast. The fact that the CIA wanted to talk made him more nervous than if they had been trying to kill him. What did they want?
Turning onto the main throughway, Deckard told the driver to continue straight as they headed into the outskirts of the city.
Turning onto another road they went up hill and the houses began to spread out until they found a lone bungalow style home sitting by itself on the incline. The lights were on inside and two sedans were parked out front. It looked a lot like a trap.
The mercenaries silently glided off their vehicles and surrounded the house in an L-shaped formation. They were prepared to open fire if they were being baited into an ambush. Two of the assault trucks trained their PKM machine guns on the house while the others faced outward, scanning to exterior threats in the surrounding hills. Cicadas could be heard humming above the sound of idling truck engines.
Deckard walked right up to the front steps and looked through the screen door.
“Come on in,” a voice said from inside. “It's just us.”
Deckard pulled open the door and stepped into the living room.
“No bullshit, olive branch and all? I never thought I'd see the day,” the mercenary quipped.
The living conditions in the house were austere. A few pieces of furniture, an ancient television set, some empty beer cans sitting on the coffee table. Just enough to make the CIA safe house look as if it were lived in.
“You're the one with the strike team outside,” said the older guy sitting on the couch. “We're pretty passive here in Oaxaca. We might have a guy or two working out of the consulate for protection but we save the contractors for Somalia and Yemen. Until now at least.”
“We should be so lucky. Based on my observations you might want to increase your security around here.”
“No need,” said the second CIA case officer. He was a younger agent of Hispanic origins. “We are flying out tonight. We're done here.”
“But that hasn't stopped you from shadowing my moves.”
“Relax Deckard, it's our job,” he replied. “Remember?”
“I didn't feel the love.”
“I'm Grant,” the older CIA veteran said smoothing out his collared shirt with one hand
and motioning to an empty chair with the other. “My associate is Felix. Why don't you take a seat.”
Deckard's eyes flicked across the room one last time before he sat down, laying his AK-103 across his lap.
“You embarrassed us by rolling into Oaxaca like this. We had no forewarning that some merc outfit was going to just fly in and start a shooting war.”
“You'll have to offer my apologies to the Director.”
“Well, we started tracking your movements electronically and once we realized it was you we pinged Langley and requested permission to have a sit down. To our surprise they immediately approved this meeting.”
“I suppose they've got a lot questions that they would like to ask me.”
“That they do but this isn't an ultimatum. Not anymore. Listen, Deckard, I realize that we didn't know each other when you were with the Agency but all those knuckle draggers down in Ground Branch had good things to say about you even if you pissed off the mafia working on the 7th floor. We know that we got caught asleep at the wheel.”
“Again.”
“Yeah,” Grant said breaking eye contract. “Yeah.”
“You would think that the Agency owes me one.”
“Listen, things have changed. We're still trying to piece together how it all happened. The investigation is unofficial of course but we watched the entire national security apparatus stand up and get pushed to the brink without any discernible reason. We know it was an attempted coup on US soil. A couple people were forced into retirement, some others moved around, you know the deal.”
“That accountability that the CIA is oh-so-famous for,” Deckard replied, growing bored with the conversation. “What do you want from me?”
“The real question is what you want,” Felix piped in. “You brought down Ortega and are gunning for Jimenez. We want to know what your next play is, we want to know what your intent in this region is. Everyone in the Pentagon and at Langley is nervous as fuck about you stomping around in combat boots in our own back yard.”