Target Deck - 02

by Jack Murphy

  The Goose gunner up on the roof lit up the night one more time, the blast nearly deafening the assaulters below. An HEDP round slammed into the pickup truck, the detonation lifting it clear off the pavement for half a second before it slammed back down and continued forward, now consumed by flames. The pickup shot past Deckard. As he turned to look he could see someone thrashing in the passenger seat, being burned alive.

  “Get the fuck down here,” he screamed up to their overwatch element. “Nice shooting!”

  A muzzle flashed somewhere down the street. Fifteen AK-103's converged on it and that was the last they heard from him.

  Four Iveco assault vehicles turned out of the aluminum shop, the PKM gunners in the front and rear turrets firing in multiple directions. Speeding up, they rounded around the corner to finally escape the kill zone and stopped to pick up the mercenaries. The fifth vehicle had been effectively killed. The mercenaries had tossed a thermite grenade into the cab before peeling out. Down the street, Deckard could already see smoke pouring out of the open garage door.

  The three-man element that had been up on the roof of the mechanics shop loaded up. The rest of the mercenaries found their seats, everyone trying to avoid the body bag loaded in the back of one of the trucks.

  Deckard jumped onto the back of the last assault truck and sat down in one of the bullet proof ceramic seats that faced outward.

  “Shooter-One this is Six.”

  “Six this is Shooter-One.”

  “Thanks for the help, we are clear of the kill zone and heading home. So should you.”

  “Roger.”

  “Six out.”

  Tapping on the cab's rear window, the passenger slid the bullet proof glass out of the way.

  “Give me the hand mic.”

  The mercenary handed it to Deckard. He needed to get on the satellite radio to establish comms with the OPCEN.

  “This is Six, we are clear of the killzone. How long until the QRF gets out here?” he asked Cody.

  Nothing came over the airwaves but static.

  29

  Pat surged up the steps with a wooden crate over each shoulder. On the high walls, the Kazakhs from Fedorchenko's platoon were waging a pitched battle. Behind him, a 60mm mortar round slammed through the roof of what had been Ortega's garage and blasted the sheet metal sky high.

  The Samruk men had been fortifying their compound for the last several days when they were not out on missions, and the sandbags and concertina wire helped keep the enemy at bay, but couldn't stop the barrage of gunfire and indirect mortar fire that had been slamming them for the better part of an hour. It seemed that Jimenez had called in about one hundred shooters to assault the mercenary base. They had approached from a defilade, in the low ground of an arroyo where they could not be observed until they were within range of small arms fire.

  The former Delta Force operator suspected that Jimenez had the plan in place to assault Ortega's base at some point and when the mercenaries had disposed of him, the drug lord simply recycled the plan for his new enemy.

  Sucking in as much oxygen as he could, Pat reached the top of the stairs and dumped the two crates of 7.62x39 ammunition. Using a multi-tool he cracked them open and pulled out two tins of ammo from each crate. Meanwhile, he could hear Sergeant Major Korgan policing the lines. He was up top with the men coordinating their fires. Below, Sergeant Fedorchenko was also carrying up more ammunition and had stopped to put a boot in the ass of their own 60mm mortar crew.

  They only had one tube in the compound, the others had been given to Kurt Jager to use as commando mortars with the Zapatistas since they would be conducting more rural operations. That did not seem like such a good idea at the moment.

  One of the mercenaries looked over his shoulder and yelled in Russian. He was clearing his back blast area before triggering an RPG rocket that exploded somewhere near the enemy position. PKM gunners braced their weapons against the edge of the wall and walked their tracers across the front lines each time the enemy tried to advance.

  Using his multi-tool, Pat cut through the tops of the tins and began walking down the line, handing out boxes of ammunition to each soldier. Most of them had blown through five or six magazines a piece. One of the PKMs chewed through a belt and the gunner popped the feed tray cover, slapped another belt of ammo in place, and slammed it shut.

  The enemy was coming right at them, like some crazed lunatic wave of suicide commandos. It didn't strike Pat as being consistent with the hit and run tactics that the sicarios used. Where was Jimenez finding these people? The Mexicans didn't have anything like a martyr culture as could be found in the Middle East.

  Pat rushed down the lines, shoving the boxes of bullets in the cargo pockets of the men who were too busy firing to grab the re-supply.

  The Central Asian mercenaries were grim, men of hard stock who grew up in the steppes of Kazakhstan. They hardly stopped to acknowledge Pat.

  Then, as he proceeded down the line he found a kid wearing jeans and a t-shirt, firing an AK on fully automatic down at the general area where the enemy was.

  “Cody?”

  “FUCK!”

  “What the hell are you doing up here,” Pat said grabbing him by the shoulder.

  “I'M IN THE SHIT!”

  “Who the fuck is down in the OPCEN monitoring the comms gear?”

  “I put Aghassi and the sniper on Deckard's position to help, then I came up here.”

  “So who is pulling radio guard.”

  “IF I DON'T GET TO KILL A MOTHERFUCKER THEN THIS WHOLE TRIP IS A WASTE FOR ME!”

  Pat exploded. Grabbing Cody by the ear he yanked him off the line and towards the stairs.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “OW, MY EAR!”

  “Get the fuck back down there and do your job!”

  Headlights bounced across the hillside, closing in on the communication towers.

  “Shooter-One,” Aghassi radioed. “I need you down here fast. Looks like the jig is up. They are sending a goon squad after us.”

  A rope snapped as it uncoiled, just barely scraping the dirt at the bottom of the cell phone tower. Nikita came zipping down the line in his rappelling harness, slowing his decent at the last moment before he made contact with the ground.

  “Was that fast enough?” he called over to Aghassi.

  “Fast enough for Hollywood.”

  The sniper pulled the remaining rope through his figure eight attachment and joined his teammate. It looked like a lone van approaching from across the crest of the hilltop, opposite the direction they had taken from the amphitheater.

  Nikita dropped an empty magazine and replaced it with a full one from his Mayflower low profile chest rig. Extending the bipod legs, he rested the sniper rifle on the hood of their car and waited for the van to close to an acceptable range. After sweating it out on top of the tower at Jimenez' compound, biting his nails all night, it almost seemed like he wouldn't get to do his job this time out.

  Now he had blown through two magazines and killed somewhere around thirty targets, accounting for some fliers. The high angle shots he had made had been the most challenging of his sniper career thus far.

  Nikita let the van get within three hundred meters before he took his first shot. He aimed low, towards the base of the windshield as bullets had a tendency to ride upwards with the curvature of the glass. Sure enough, the rounds were deflected slightly upwards as the glass spider webbed.

  The sliding door was thrown open and one man managed to jump clear and tumble into the bushes as the van careened off the road and flopped over, rolling several times before really picking up momentum and flying off a cliff where it crashed somewhere down below.

  The lone survivor stood up and dusted himself off, probably not comprehending what had just happened, maybe disoriented from his fall.

  Nikita zapped him with one round through his neck.

  Aghassi walked around the vehicle, got in, and turned over the engine. Nikita loaded
up in the back again. Reaching for his radio he hailed the OPCEN.

  “This is Spooky-One, we are RTB,” he said, announcing that they were Returning To Base.

  There was nothing but static on the other end.

  “I say again, this is Spooky-One, we are RTB.”

  Finally, a voice crackled over the net.

  “ROGER.”

  The pre-dawn light made everything look hazy.

  Sergeant Zhenis had directed the convoy from the lead vehicle and gotten them out of Oaxaca City. They had made several more contacts and had to re-route around a half dozen hasty road blocks that Jimenez' men had raised at seemingly random places around the city, but they finally cleared the area and were well on their way back to the compound. Deckard had gotten off the radio with Pat and Cody after receiving an update. They had fought off the attack, but had been hammered by mortar fire. The enemy got so close that the Samruk International mercenaries had finally sorted the enemy out with hand grenades.

  The four vehicle convoy turned onto Federal Road 175. While they usually drove completely blacked out with both headlights and tail lights taped up and the drivers using night vision goggles, it was now light enough that they flipped up their PVS-14s. The houses and buildings had thinned out as they headed back to their base up in the mountains just north of Oaxaca.

  Deckard looked at the men sitting beside him in the outward facing seats. Their Asiatic features might have stood out in Mexico, but they fit right in wherever there was combat. They were tired, exhausted really, but would be ready to execute the next mission when the time came.

  Leaning forward, he checked up on the rest of the convoy. The roads were well paved with a center median dividing the two lanes of traffic. Each vehicle maintained an even interval to minimize damage in case of an ambush.

  Squinting in the early dawn light, Deckard saw something laying along the side of the road. His heart jumped a beat as they got closer and he saw that it was a bloated donkey carcass laying at the edge of the street.

  The animal corpse and the lead vehicle in the convoy disappeared in cloud of smoke and fire. The assault truck spun around with its rear two wheels going airborne, the Improvised Explosive Device having struck the rear end of the vehicle. One of the doors was blown open. Body parts and scraps of flesh were tossed into the air.

  The driver in the second vehicle had a moment of panic and slammed on the brakes. The third and fourth vehicles quickly established a security perimeter around the disabled truck.

  Deckard jumped down to the pavement and stumbled forward.

  Looking back, he saw that he had slipped on a dismembered foot.

  It was still wearing a charred combat boot.

  30

  The sun was creeping above the horizon, the sound of chirping birds interrupted by the sound of car doors slamming shut. Two Sport Utility Vehicles unloaded nine men, each wearing black masks over their faces, each carrying a Sub-Machine Gun ranging from Uzis to the Swedish K. One of the masked men moved up the dusty driveway and to the front gate. Slipping a knife in the cracks between the two swinging gateways was enough to pop the latch open and allow the killers access.

  The front of the white building had a large cross above the door. The men stood around, unconcerned for their safety while two other masked men came forward with sledge hammers. One of the men lit a cigarette while they waited. They had all the time in the world.

  The men with the sledge hammers began pounding on the front door, one standing on each side and taking turns like lumberjacks hacking away at a tree. Maintaining a low grip on the handle they alternated swings, one after the other. Slowly, the metal door began to bend. The frame buckled under the force of the sledges at the top and bottom while the lock in the middle of the door held in place.

  Inside the Christian mission, bedroom lights were flipping on.

  Finally, the locking mechanism on the door twisted and snapped. The door swung open and the gunmen swarmed inside. The only one left in the courtyard was the masked man who was finishing his cigarette. Inside he could hear shouting in Spanish. Two of his men were indigenous personnel contracted for the job who could speak the language. The others were members of his regular crew.

  Dropping what was left of the cigarette, the leader of the group left the cherry burning in the dirt and walked around to the back of the Christian hospital. According to the information he had received, the local holy man took in the invalids, taking them off their parent's hands and housing them in his hospital. Them and the addicts of course. Taking a seat on top of an old chicken coop, he reached into the breast pocket on his shirt and pulled free another smoke.

  The back door burst open and the Padre somersaulted out with one of the masked gunman kicking him from behind. The Padre spoke a mile a minute in rapid fire Spanish as he clawed his way to his knees, pleading with the gunmen. The masked man swung a boot into his face that sent the Catholic priest back down to the ground in a heap. The gunman didn't understand a word he had been saying anyway.

  As the sick, the recovering drug addicts, and the mentally retarded were paraded out of the hospital, the man sitting on the chicken coop flicked his lighter and puffed on his second cigarette of the morning. Deep horizontal scars climbed up his exposed forearms like the rungs of a ladder.

  One of the invalids was laughing uncontrollably, his thick eye brows arched upwards as he looked at the ground and giggled about something. Another gunman came forward and slammed the butt stock of his Uzi into the young man's stomach, doubling him over.

  Several of the patients were hugging themselves, some pleading with tears in their eyes. Some of the permanent patients, the ones with cognitive problems clearly had no idea what was happening. One of them began to clap her hands. The gunmen herded them all up against the brick wall.

  The last person pushed out of the door was a female nurse. She was still in her pajamas, white panties and a t-shirt. Two of the gunmen began to tear her shirt off. She lashed out, trying to sink her nails into her attackers and received a fist in one of her eyes for her efforts. Slammed against the wall, they tore her shirt off, exposing her breasts. The panties were pulled down around her ankles.

  “Kiff,” the leader said, waving his hand with the cigarette between his fingers.

  They had a job to do.

  The gunman who had punched the nurse grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the wall. She sunk down onto her backside, trailing blood down the side of the wall. The Padre was yanked to his feet and stood up next to her.

  As the dawn light peaked above the brick wall and cast golden rays on the side of the Christian hospital, some of the patients looked at the gunmen lined up in front of them. No one said a thing.

  The leader exhaled a cloud of smoke. Finally, the Arab ran his thumb across his neck.

  “Kill them,” he told the gunmen in Arabic.

  Eight men racked the actions on their Sub-Machine Guns and fired.

  31

  “This is what failure looks like,” Deckard said to himself.

  Pat stood behind him as they both looked up at the metal frame road overpass for foot traffic. Counting from side to side, Deckard got a total of thirteen bodies hung underneath the overpass by their hands or feet. The corpses were bloated, their eyes lifeless. Wire and ropes were used to hang the bodies, where it now tugged tightly into the dead flesh of necks, wrists, and ankles.

  Many showed obvious signs of torture. Some were disemboweled and others were missing fingers.

  This was the fate of cartel snitches. By tapping into the telecom system in Oaxaca, Jimenez had been able to analyze the cellular phone traffic throughout the entire province. It was normal for intelligence operatives to give their sources cellular phones so that they could keep their clandestine activities separate from their personal life. Cell phones that only called one number, in this case a number belonging to Samantha or Aghassi, stood out like a sore thumb. It was a completely unnatural way to make phone calls. From there, the
drug lord just had to match the suspect phone calls to the person in his organization who was making them.

  This had probably been done through a combination of Direction Finding equipment purchased by the cartel through European defense companies and good old fashion human intelligence. Since Jimenez controlled large portions of the telecom network it was easy for him to listen in on phone calls. Once a suspect phone number was dialed they could listen in and find out where the source would meet his or her handler and a surveillance man could be detailed to stake out the site. From there the snitch could be identified and targeted for death.

  Samruk had thrown the entire Oaxaca operation together on the fly, there was never any time for a high level of planning, rehearsals, or setting up of contingencies. Samantha had been doing the best she could with what contacts she had inherited from her father. Aghassi had taken over those contacts and cultivated a few of his own in just a few days. It was all done on an ad hoc basis and now they were paying the price. They had gotten sloppy and now people had died for their errors.

  Only the one source that Deckard had gotten a hold of the previous night had come out intact or his family would be laying dead in an arroyo somewhere and he'd be hanging under the overpass as well. Currently, the family was secured inside the Samruk compound.

  Also back at the compound were black bodybags waiting to be flown back to Kazakhstan. The bodies inside belonged to those who died defending the compound and those killed during the recovery operation, including the seven men killed by the IED strike. Deckard had picked up pieces of Sergeant Zhenis to fill one of the body bags.

  “Boss,” Sergeant Major Korgan called out to Deckard.

  The Sergeant Major sat in the passenger seat of one of the four assault trucks guarding the approaches to the overpass.