Target Deck - 02

by Jack Murphy

  “We've arranged for safe passage for you and your family,” Deckard told the truck driver.

  Cezar suddenly had tears in his eyes.

  “Don't thank me just yet, I need a name.”

  “What name?”

  “Do you know who the paymaster was who paid you and the other drivers?”

  “Kenny Rodriguez.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks,” Deckard nodded. “Samantha, come inside. You too Frank.”

  Once inside the OPCEN, Deckard led her around to where Cody had his computers set up.

  “I need to check your cell phone.”

  “What for?”

  “I want the numbers of each one of the policemen you had under your command before they went rogue.”

  “Um, okay. If you think it will help.”

  Going through the address book on her phone, she began reading off numbers to Cody.

  “Frank?”

  “What's up?”

  “I want you to go round up Aghassi and tell him to hand pick three guys he wants to take with him for a low-visibility snatch and grab operation. I will fill him in on the details once he gets here.”

  “You like your coffee with cream and sugar?”

  “Just be glad you still have a job here with that gimp ass leg.”

  “Funny,” he grumbled as he headed back out.

  Looking over at Cody, he had taken the phone from Samantha and entered the numbers into the computer within seconds. The man was an absolute savant with numbers.

  “Cody, find me any phone numbers that Samantha's corrupt cops called.”

  Cody blew through the analytical program he used and brought up a phone number once he correlated one between each of the policemen.

  “Here is one.”

  “That was my father's number,” Samantha commented bitterly.

  “What else do we have?”

  Pounding out some more commands on the keyboard, Cody used the mouse and brought up a second number.

  “This is the only other one that they have in common with each other.”

  “Now take that number and see who else that person has been calling.”

  “It's all over the map. Definitely Jimenez and Ignacio but also people spread all over Oaxaca City. Some of these numbers he dialed belong to the prisoners we are holding, particularly the leaders of their groups.”

  “That's got to be him,” Deckard said. “That's Kenny Rodriguez.”

  Kenny Rodriguez was leaned up against the front tire of one of the assault trucks, sitting on the ground with his hands still in restraints. Deckard got down on one knee, grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt and pulled him in. Aghassi had just linked up with the two Samruk patrols where they were pre-positioned in formation and ready to roll into action. Aghassi's teamed had snatched him off the streets just minutes ago.

  “This is how it works Kenny,” Deckard growled. “You tell us everything. We want everyone in the city who is in charge of anything. Who runs the networks of spotters and linkmen that call information up to the cartel, who runs the kidnaps rings, who runs the assassination rings, who coordinates drug shipments, who runs the shifts of men who guard cartel assets, who is in charge of keeping the cartel's telecommunication masts up and running, we want them all.”

  Kenny's eyes were wide, his pupils dilated.

  “Once we have what we want you catch a ride north and get a new name and new career selling used cars in Denver or Cleveland with the witness protection program. If you lie to me or refuse to talk, we still get what we want out of you but you lose your fingernails to a pair of needle nose pliers and then I dump you in the sketchiest part of town and make sure that whatever cartel buddies of yours are left see that you have been working with us.”

  “I will tell you whatever you want to know,” Kenny squawked, his voice suddenly going high pitched.

  “Load him in my vehicle,” Deckard ordered the three Kazakhs with Aghassi. “Flex cuff him to the vehicle and leave his face uncovered. I want the entire city to see him as we pass by, that way he knows there is no way turning back. The only way forward is my way.”

  “Roger,” the Kazakhs confirmed, dragging the cartel paymaster up by his arms and pushing him towards the lead vehicle.

  Deckard walked along the convoy, looking up at the men as they squirted lubricating oil into the PKM machine guns in the turrets and assaulters re-checked their breaching equipment. They were all business and all knew that today was game day. They had to go big or go home.

  They were pre-positioned just outside of the city. Now that everything was ready to go, he reached into his vehicle and retrieved his Iridium phone. Extending the antenna, Deckard dialed the number for his training cell working with the Zapatistas out in the hinterlands of Oaxaca and into Chiapas.

  “Hello?” Kurt said answering the phone on his end.

  “Green light any and all operations,” Deckard told him. “Hit the high priority targets and move on down the list.”

  “We already have maneuver elements standing by and in position.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  Deckard terminated the call and climbed into his truck. Kenny was crammed in the middle of the cab with his hands tethered through a metal roll bar that ran across the roof. Reaching for the radio Deckard keyed the handmic.

  “Initiate movement,” he said on the assault net. “We're heading down the main MSR through the city. Standby for targets.”

  The driver started down the road, picking up speed as the city lay sprawled out in front of them. Deckard turned in his seat and looked back at Kenny.

  “This is what is going to happen Kenny. We are going to start driving around town and you are going to be our oracle and point out the house of every mid-level and above cartel member. Got it?”

  Kenny looked away and nodded his head in a state of dejected defeat.

  34

  The Stewmaker followed a specific recipe.

  In his line of work, he found that it helped to develop a consistent schedule, almost turning it into a professional ritual. Some of his fellow cartel members worshiped Santa Muerta, the Black Madonna, Chupacabras and all manner of nonsense. He was raised a strict Catholic without all the added window dressing that the working poor had ingratiated into their religion but these days the Stewmaker didn't have much of anything to believe in other than the six hundred dollars a week that the cartel paid him.

  The money was good, but the work was somewhat time consuming, depending on how busy the cartel was. Last summer Jimenez had decided to heat up the plaza and wipe out some rivals. The Stewmaker had to dispose of so many bodies that his family had hardly seen him over the span of a couple months.

  With a sigh, he dropped down to his hands and knees and poked the wood fire under the giant metal vat that he had started an hour ago. The recipe called for two hundred liters of water, brought to a slow boil, followed by two entire sacks of sodium hydroxide. Setting the metal poker aside, he swatted at some of the flies buzzing around, giant black fuckers that went straight for his eyes and ears.

  It was the corpses that attracted the flies. Two of them lay besides the vat, their skin having gone gray, eyes sunken. Sometimes the bodies came in with obvious signs of torture and mutilation. Sometimes they came in with one clean gunshot wound through the head, sometimes they were riddled with bullets from head to toe. These two had severe cuts across their arms, signs of putting up a defense before they died from deep stab wounds in the abdomen. It looked like they had gotten into a sword fight but it wasn't the Stewmaker's place to ask questions. He worked disposal while someone else worked termination.

  Lighting a cigarette, he watched the stew slowly come to a boil. He moved to put on some protective gear before dumping the bodies into the cauldron. First there was an apron, followed by heavy plastic gloves, and finally a face mask and goggles. Safety first.

  Rubbing out his cigare
tte, the Stewmaker lifted the mask in place and hefted the first corpse over his shoulder. Handling dead weight was much more difficult than carrying someone who was still alive. Slowly, he eased the corpse into the bubbling stew. He dreaded what came next. The other corpse was the fat one. Grunting and straining, he managed to slide the second body into the vat.

  The stew would cook for eight hours before he would extinguish the fire. He would stir the contents periodically and experience told him that all that would be left by the end was fingernails, toenails, and teeth. The stew would then be poured into 55 gallon drums, hauled out by pickup truck, and the contents burned at some remote location.

  The fat one bobbed to the surface.

  The Stewmaker used his fire poker to try to sink the body back into the mixture, but to no avail. He should have known better. Before dumping the body, he should have used a butcher's cleaver to slice open the stomach cavity and let the air out. No way would he be thrashing the corpse with a machete while it floated in caustic soda.

  Discarding the gloves, mask, and goggles, the Stewmaker looked over at the two dozen drums stacked in the corner of his yard. It had been a busy month. He lived up in the hill country towards the border of Oaxaca and Chiapas where his activities could fly under the radar. The cartel would drop fresh corpses at his front door in the middle of the night and he'd get to work when he discovered them in the morning. Once a month, an envelope packed full of cash was slipped under his door. It was a nice arrangement.

  The Stewmaker grew frustrated as he watched the fat body float across the surface of the vat. He knew better and should have taken precautions. Eventually, the lye would eat through the body and deflate it, but it was still irritating.

  Just then, the front gate was kicked in and gunmen wearing black masks stormed his body disposal factory. Before the cigarette could drop from his mouth he was surrounded by ten gunmen. The Stewmaker put his hands in his pockets. That day had finally come. A rival cartel had come for him or the families of the victims hired some freelancers to do him in.

  He did a double take as another masked man entered through the gate. He was smoking a pipe through a hole in his balaclava.

  “Commandente Zero?”

  The Strewmaker asked the question in a state of shock.

  “The one and only!”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  The Zapatista leader drew his hand gun and pointed it at the Stewmaker.

  “Throw him in the vat with his friends,” he ordered his underlings. “Let's see how he likes an caustic bath.”

  The Zapatistas slung their rifles and seized the Stewmaker by the arms, two others lifting him by the legs. He kicked and resisted but it was no use.

  “Wait, wait, stop!”

  The Stewmaker protested as they carried him over to his bubbling body stew. He continued to curse and scream all the way up until the point where the Zapatistas dumped him in head first, the guerrilla fighters shrinking away as the lye splashed.

  “Go, go, go!” Kurt Jager pushed his Zapatista comrade up the ladder. Rushing up to the top of the ladder the two men climbed out of the midget submarine. The dorsal surface of the hull was just barely above the waterline, the mast sticking out a few feet further. In the dark of night, the submarine was invisible to their target.

  Kurt looked at the Zapatista rebel and nodded his head. They both leaped into the ocean. The dark waters surrounded the former GSG-9 commando. As an experienced diver, Kurt remained calm and kicked his way to the surface. A second later, the Zapatista came up next to them.

  The submarine had already disappeared from view as its screw turned and propelled it towards the landing area on the beach. The two soldiers were like baseball players who had just wound up and swung as hard as they could. They hit the ball just right and drove it right down the center, heading for the bleachers. They should have been swimming for the shore much like the baseball player should have been running for first base instead of watching to see if he hit a home run.

  Instead they floated in the ocean, their eyes fixated on the horizon.

  With the submarine pen destroyed by Deckard and his Samruk mercenaries, Jimenez had to revert back to the old system of ferrying the cocaine from Colombia on cigarette boats. The high speed sport boats would zip in and out at a certain time of night just south of Acapulco.

  A ball of orange flame lit up the night, reflecting tiny red triangles across the ripples of the sea. The shock wave rocked over the submariners as they broke out with smiles. The submarine made contact with the docking station where the cigarette boats were offloading the drugs and had detonated. The trigger mechanism was stupid simple, two metal pie pans with a piece of Styrofoam between them separated the two electric leads going to the detonator. When the sub smashed into the boats or the dock, the Styrofoam trigger mounted to the nose was crushed, connecting the leads and detonating the TNT explosives that they had packed the sub with.

  Fiberglass flew through the air as at least two of the sport boats were torn apart, the gas tanks going up in secondary explosions.

  The only way they would get to Jimenez was death by a thousand cuts, and now they had once again cut off his revenue stream at its source.

  As the fire began to die down, the two swimmers headed towards the shore.

  35

  “This peach colored house here on the left with the blue door,” Kenny said pointing it out to Deckard. “That's where Jose lives. He runs a team of assassins.”

  “Truck Two,” Deckard said over the radio. “This is Six.”

  “Six this is two, over.”

  “Peach colored house on the left. Blue door.”

  “Roger.”

  Truck number two broke off from the rest of the convoy and made a beeline for the house. Speeding up, the driver barreled through the front gate, blasting it open. The assaulters jumped off the truck and swarmed the house, quickly making entry.

  “On the right, the two story blue building with a balcony over the front door,” Kenny sighed. “That is where Julio lives, he kidnaps people for the cartel, it is his specialty.”

  “Truck Three,” Deckard radioed. “Blue two story on the right. You are looking for Julio.”

  “Roger,” the radio hissed.

  Truck three left the convoy and stopped in front of the target building. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the mercenaries applying a flex linear charge across the front door. Seconds later, they blew it, rattling windows all over the neighborhood.

  “Make a left hand turn at this intersection,” Kenny advised.

  “Hard left,” Deckard informed the rest of the convoy as his driver brought them around the corner.

  “Okay, this white building over here.”

  “With the green trim around the windows.”

  “Yes, that is where Alejandro lives. He runs an extortion enterprise for Jimenez, taking a cut from the local businesses.”

  “Truck Four, white house...on the right...green trim,” Deckard said with a few stutters in between. He was quickly transitioning from Spanish to Russian, neither of which was his native language. “You want Alejandro.”

  “Roger boss.”

  Truck Four stopped short and the assaulters ran to the door. Identifying where the hinges were, the mercenaries shoved a Hooligan tool in the crack between the door and the frame. Another mercenary pounded on the flat end of the Hooligan tool with sledgehammer. When it had advanced far enough into the door jamb, the mercenary on the hoolie tool pressed it forward and the door splintered open. The assault team stacked on the door and moved in to clear the first room.

  “The white three story building on the corner with the orange windows,” Kenny said.

  “Who lives there?”

  “Ignacio's brother owns the building. He lives on the second floor and is a part of the cartel's inner circle.”

  “Truck Five, white three story on the corner. Floor two is where HVT number six lives.”

  “Roger,” Truck Five's Squad L
eader answered as they pulled up in front of the building.

  Their target deck was now getting wiped clean almost as fast as they could fill it out with names.

  “Six, this is Truck Two, over.”

  “Send it Truck Two.”

  “We are back in the convoy, over.”

  Deckard's vehicle kept at a slow roll as they coasted through the streets of nighttime Oaxaca City. As each assault element wrapped things up they would fall back into the convoy formation. They were not screwing around on the objective. They would force their way onto the target, kill any fighting age males that looked at them the wrong way and move on. Others would be flexcuffed and left behind for relatives to recover.

  “Make a right hand turn here,” Kenny informed Deckard.

  “Hard right, hard right,” Deckard said holding the handmic in front of his mouth.

  “This pink building next to the church with the white shutters. They guy living there tortures people in the basement for Jimenez.”

  “Truck Six, pink building next to the church. Look for civilians being held prisoner in the basement.”

  “Roger.”

  Truck Six pulled up and the mercenaries jumped the ground and began placing their charge on the door.

  “Six this is Truck Three, we are rejoining the convoy.”

  “Roger, Truck Three.”

  “So this yellow house next to the auto parts store is where-”

  It went on all night as the oracle continued to spill his guts. The priority targets were cell leaders and those high up on the cartel food chain but targets of opportunity were nearly anyone associated with the drug traffickers. Kenny grew up in town and knew the topography of the city like the back of his hand, recommending short cuts and helping them as much as he could. He realized there was no turning back for him. He identified every target he could think of, some Deckard passed on as insignificant, others he prioritized.

  The Samruk patrol moved so fast through the city and churned the enemy through the meat grinder so fast that they had interrupted the enemy's decision making process. Cody monitored the situation from the OPCEN and sent updates but the enemy was unable to react quickly enough to organize an effective resistance.