by Peter Nealen
“Hillbilly,” I answered.
“It's me,” Renton said, sounding exhausted. “No joy on the possible 'El Duque.' Once we had the Venezuelan connection, we could identify him. He's Hugo Calderon, a military attaché for the Venezuelan Embassy in Managua.”
“And we're sure that Calderon isn't El Duque?” I asked.
“With reasonable certainty, yes,” he replied. “El Duque's elusive, he's only spotted once in a while. Calderon's movements are more-or-less public. We can also account for Calderon's presence in Managua at a time when El Duque was sighted in Cuidad del Este, down in the Tri Border Area between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. So it's definitely not him. Sorry.”
Well, dammit. Dead end. Back to Reyes. We finished cleaning off the cammie paint and the worst of the grit and grime of the recon patrol, got dressed, and loaded up. Next stop, San Juan del Sur.
Chapter 16
San Juan del Sur had problems.
The beach town was known as a Nicaraguan tourist trap, but it had apparently fallen on hard times. There were still a few gringos at the hotels and resorts along the beach, but the global economic slump had cut deeply into the tourism industry worldwide.
But the loss of tourism wasn't the worst of the troubles San Juan del Sur was facing.
We were holed up in a rental cottage by the Palermo resort, up on a hillside across from Reyes' hacienda. It was a tight fit; the place hadn't been built as a vacation house. It probably counted as a two-family house in Nicaragua, but would have barely fit a childless couple of American tourists. I wasn't sure if that said more about the States or Nicaragua, but that question wasn't foremost in my mind as I looked down the hill, at what I could see of the street that led into the valley below.
Our friends in blue and white were back. About six of the MS-13 gangbangers were hanging out on the street, alternately looking up toward the big house where Reyes had taken shelter and watching the people on the street. They weren't being gentle or courteous to the locals—surprise, surprise—but the locals apparently weren't their preferred prey.
An older Caucasian couple had just come out of their bungalow on the south side of the resort. There wasn't the clearest dividing line between the resort and the rest of the nearby houses, not that it would have mattered to the mara thugs. The two tourists seemed blissfully unaware of the attention they were getting. The man was showing a bit of a gut and going gray in the temples, dressed in a red polo shirt and white shorts. His wife, or girlfriend, or whoever she was, was platinum blond and dressed to match. They sauntered along the road, hand-in-hand, enjoying the day.
The six gangbangers didn't move quickly. A couple of them bumped fists, laughing. They slowly spread out across the road. Three more drifted into view, behind the couple. They didn't walk, they sauntered. Every bit of body language broadcast complete confidence. They weren't worried. They had no reason to be.
It took a few minutes before the couple became aware of the trap they'd walked into. By that time, the gangsters had closed in, and the circle was complete. There was no escape. One of them swaggered up to the man and got in his face. Obviously, from where I was, I couldn't hear what was said, but I could guess. The script for this kind of thing was pretty limited.
They didn't like what the man said in reply. The guy who'd confronted him shoved him violently, knocking him on his ass. I wanted to look away. This wasn't going to end well, and short of opening fire from the window, there wasn't shit we could do about it.
I didn't look away, though, even when they grabbed the woman and started savagely beating the man on the ground. The woman looked like she was crying and screaming, even as they dragged her out of sight. I was thankful for that small bit of distance from what was going on.
What made me pay more attention was that once the man stopped moving, one of the thugs pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and held it over the man's prostrate body, like he was comparing.
It was the second such incident we'd seen in the last four days. Larry was standing beside me. “How much you want to bet that he's looking at our little wanted poster?” he asked.
“No bet,” I said. The MS-13 thugs were definitely targeting gringos, and it looked like they were following a general rule of “fuck up the gringos, then see if maybe we got one of the ones we get paid for afterward.” The Nicaraguan police had tried to intervene at least once, and had quickly been driven off by some concentrated firepower, with several submachine guns and even a couple of AKS-74Us getting pulled out of cars. The lack of further response suggested to me that somebody was keeping the cops busy elsewhere. If Reyes was their primary target, that just made sense.
Apparently deciding that the older man wasn't one of the gringo gunslingers they could get paid for, they gave the man's body a couple more kicks and started to move away. One of them spat on him as he went past. They slowly drifted back to their hangout. I couldn't see any sign of the woman; I felt guilty as hell that I was glad of the fact.
I was trying to sort out just what was going on. We'd been seeing MS-13 popping up ever since Arizona, but they weren't generally a major cartel. They were certainly involved in securing trafficking routes and distribution of drugs in the States, but why they were interested in either the cash shipment we'd been escorting or in us was still pretty opaque. Were they contracting out, or were they making a bid for power on their own? And how did they fit in with El Duque? They apparently wanted one of his major contacts as a trophy on somebody's wall, but why?
We didn't know enough. I had to remind myself that El Duque was the target; we sure as hell weren't going to solve the violence and instability in Latin America by ourselves. What we could do was take one more facilitator out of the picture, and Reyes was presently the key to accomplishing that.
“Got some movement,” Derek said. He was watching Reyes' little hideaway.
Reyes was staying in a large hacienda on the hill across from us. It was pretty new; it wasn't on the imagery we had, and that was only about a year old. A sprawling, U-shaped mansion of white stucco and red tile, there was a lot of money in it, especially in a time when the global economy was suffering the way it was.
I grabbed another set of binoculars and looked over at the hacienda. There were three dark SUVs and a limo pulled up to the front door, and security personnel were everywhere. There were even guys in dark fatigues with long guns up on the upper balcony.
“He's running scared,” I muttered.
“I think we put the fear of God into him up north,” Derek said without taking his eye off the spotting scope. “He doesn't seem like the kind who's used to getting shot at.”
“Of course not,” Larry said. “Why do you think he was so pissed at Ernesto for making direct contact? He's kept himself insulated from the consequences of what his money facilitates for a long time.”
We watched as Reyes himself came out the front door and hurried to the limousine. He was dressed for the tropics, in a white shirt and trousers, but I noticed a little bit of extra bulk to his torso. He was wearing a vest under the shirt. He was definitely scared.
He was only visible for a few seconds as he hustled down the stairs and into the waiting limo. Shortly thereafter, the little convoy pulled out, heading down the long driveway to the road. They stayed tight and moved fast, blowing past the MS-13 gangbangers on the street, several of whom waved gang signs and made shooting motions toward the vehicles.
“Hitting them on the move is going to be tough,” I commented. “We'd need to disable the first and last vehicles, hard. Box 'em in. And that means IEDs.” We didn't have the supply of RPG-27s that we'd had in Iraq, both a consequence of short lead time and a very, very thin logistical tail. “Which means getting them into position unnoticed by either Reyes' security or our little buddies in blue and white down there.”
Larry eyed the road narrowly. “That ain't gonna be easy.”
“The gangbangers seem to give up around three in the morning,” I pointed out. “We might be
able to move then.”
“Not a lot of margin for error,” he replied. “Maybe three and a half hours before dawn. That's an awfully small window to get down there, get the bombs placed and fused, and get back, all without leaving traces.”
Reyes' convoy sped out of sight, but the MS-13 observers stayed in place. They were relaxed, confident, shooting the shit. They didn't look like they were worried about the cops at all. I wished we had some contacts we could call who could let us know what was going on to keep the policia at bay.
Fuck this shit. Fuck this fumbling around in the dark, trying to navigate one snake pit after another on our own.
Jim must have read my mind. “Thinking that maybe Cyrus was right?” he murmured. I turned to see him watching me.
“To do what? Quit on us mid-mission?” I asked. Cyrus, unhappy with the contract in Baghdad, had called it quits just as we evacuated the US Embassy.
“No,” he replied quietly. “Just to get out. There's got to come a point where we say, 'That's enough. I'm done.' It's not like we're necessarily hurting for cash after the last couple of jobs.” He scratched his beard. “I'm not saying any of us would just bolt, not now. It would have to be unanimous.”
I thought about it. It was tempting, to be honest. But then I remembered that wanted poster. I wasn't naive. I knew that if they'd updated it as we moved, that it wasn't just going to go away if we quit. We'd already cost these fuckers. They'd keep coming after us, even if we stopped going after them. I've never been a believer that you can just quit the game. A war is over when both sides agree that it's over. Running now wasn't going to do shit.
So, with a sinking feeling in my gut, I shook my head. “No, as much as I'd like to, we're committed. If MS-13 has that wanted flier, not to mention however many other bands of scumbags it's been circulated to, they can still cause us problems in the States. Better to finish the job. Besides, we agreed that we would.”
“And if it turns out that Renton and his people aren't holding up their end of the deal?” Derek asked, again without looking away from Reyes' bolt-hole.
“Then that's on them,” I replied. I looked around at the rest of the team, most of which was gathered in the room. “If any of you guys are thinking differently about this, by all means, speak up. The way I see it, we agreed to get El Duque. We've gotten a lot less support than we expected or hoped for, but we're not to the point of 'we can't do this' yet. At least, not in my estimation. Long odds, sure, but we had pretty fucking long odds in Baghdad, too.” Looking around, I didn't see any objection.
“We haven't got as much support, but we don't have somebody looking over our shoulders, second-guessing us every move, either. We've got freedom of movement that we've rarely had before. We don't have to pretend that we're here to help secure the embassy, or to keep a bunch of mostly ungrateful petroleum executives safe. All we have to do is hunt. Hell, we don't even have a timeline; we can have enough patience to follow the trail where it leads. This is what most of us have dreamed of our entire careers; the chance to simply hunt.” I think I was talking as much to convince myself as anyone else.
“You're preaching to the choir, Jeff,” Eric said after a moment's silence. “Yeah, a lot about this job sucks. Most jobs suck, one way or another. Personally, I'll take the risk. We've got a shot at being the guys who bag the biggest HVT since Bin Laden. That's something to write home about.”
Looking around, I could see the same thing written across most faces. To anyone else, it probably would have looked like little more than stoic machismo. But I knew these guys well enough to read the misgivings alongside the unwillingness to quit in the face of that kind of a challenge. We might have been out of the military for a while, some of us longer than others, but some things just don't get switched off, not easily.
“All right,” I said. “I guess it just needed to get out in the open.” Without another word, we went back to what we were doing.
The hunt went on.
Reyes was gone for a while. The gangbangers on the road didn't go anywhere. Well, some of them did, but they were replaced by others. The group stayed where it was.
As time went on, and the sun started to dip toward the ocean, we started seeing more movement. It wasn't civilians, either; they had apparently learned from the fate of the couple we'd seen get waylaid earlier. In fact, the man's body was still lying on the side of the road. I was pretty sure he was dead. I wanted to start picking off every bit of white and blue clothing I saw every time I looked at the corpse, but again, the mission took precedence.
That's the shitty part of this job. You quickly realize, being immersed in the nastiness that is the world of violence and guerrilla warfare, that as much as you might like to, you can't save everyone. You've got to make the choice between following on with the mission, or blowing the mission to intervene in something like an innocent tourist getting beaten to death.
In our position, we didn't have the luxury of pointing to higher command and saying, “Well, we didn't like it, but those fuckers called us off.” We had to make the decision, and it wasn't ever an easy one. We had to have some faith that we were being fed the right information, that we were interpreting that information—and that which we gathered ourselves—correctly, and that taking El Duque down would make some kind of a difference.
The alternative generally led to suck-starting a .45.
While I was trying to look away from the huddled body, I noticed a band of about another ten or twelve young men wearing the same generally uniform MS-13 attire swaggering up the street. They had just become visible around the bend in the road, and were waving and calling out to their homeboys. They were also armed to the teeth.
I grabbed the binoculars and took a closer look. There were several AR-15s, a lot of AK variants, and even a few G3s or HK41s, along with several Uzis and a couple of shotguns. Several were carrying more than one rifle, and when they met up with the group at the OP, they passed off the extras.
“Heads up,” I said. “The mara guys are getting ready for something, and I don't think it's going to be good.” Several more pairs of eyes zeroed in on the thugs on the street.
“Everybody get kitted up and ready to move,” I said after another moment, reaching for my own vest. We hadn't spread our shit out, but it still takes a few seconds to get set to move. What little we had laid out that wasn't absolutely necessary started getting bagged up and put in the vehicles in back. There wasn't any sign that they knew we were up there, but they were getting ready to light some people up, and shit can just go very, very bad when bullets start to fly. It doesn't pay to be complacent.
Lights appeared on the road, heading toward the bend. I couldn't be sure at first, but there had been little enough traffic on these roads that was most likely Reyes' convoy, coming back. By then, we were already packed up, ready to move, just waiting and watching, weapons in hand. It was a good thing, too.
Unlike earlier, the MS-13 guys didn't get confrontational as the four vehicles came back up the road. They kind of faded back into the shadows as the headlights moved past them. That was the last straw. “I think these fuckheads are about to take a crack at poaching our target,” I said. “Eddie, base of fire here. My team's maneuver element.”
This was going to suck. As fast as we could move, at best we'd hit the target site at the same time the MS-13 hitters did. Then we'd have them and Reyes' security to worry about.
As we piled out the back of the house, I waved the team down a little. “Let's slow our roll,” I murmured. “Let the gangbangers engage first, then we'll move in once both sides are committed.” I got nods all around, even as we moved into formation, spread out, and slipped into the trees.
We didn't have to slow down that much. We had more ground to cover than the gangbangers, but I wanted to make damned good and sure that both the gangsters and the security guards were fully engaged before we stepped in. There was the risk that Reyes might get smoked beforehand, but I really, really didn't want to wind up getti
ng targeted by both sides at once.
Ben led out, with the rest of us moving in a rough, elongated wedge behind him. The vegetation was thick enough that we had to jog along the road for a good part of the distance; breaking brush was going to put us too far behind the MS-13 thugs when they hit the hacienda.
Gunfire erupted ahead of us. They were moving fast. If I had it figured right, the vehicles should have just gotten to the front driveway. Ben glanced back at me and I pumped my fist. Let's hurry.
We got down the hill, pushing off into the woods before we got a straight shot at any gangbangers who might still be on the street. The volume of fire from the direction of the hacienda was increasing. It sounded like Reyes' people were putting up a hell of a fight, especially as we started hearing the snaps of rounds going downhill to our right.
I got Ben's attention and motioned to the left. He nodded. We'd try to move around the flank of the gunfight and see if we could snatch Reyes out the back or side. Let his security and the gangbangers kill each other.
Ben found himself faced with a problem. There wasn't a back way; apparently the only way in or out of the hacienda was the road. Or if there was a back trail, Ben couldn't find it in the burgeoning darkness and the thick brush. After only a couple of moments of casting about for an opening, he seemed to just shrug, say to himself, “Fuck it,” and plunged into the weeds.
It's hard work breaking brush, particularly uphill. We weren't worried about making noise; any thrashing around we were doing was going to be masked by the roar of gunfire in front of the hacienda. But it's slow and it's physically backbreaking. Weapons and kit get snagged on vegetation, you trip, branches whip into your face, and the hill itself is fighting you every step. We were going to be partway smoked by the time we got up to a position to fight.
By the time we made it up to the western side of the hacienda, some of the shooting had died down. Through some of the thinning vegetation, I could catch glimpses of what was going on. There were several corpses lying on the driveway leading up to the hacienda, and a few more black-clad ones on the steps. Most of the gangbangers still standing had taken cover around the fountain in the middle of the driveway, as well as some of the landscaping that reached out from the arms of the U-shaped house. They were continuing to fire on the security men in the doorway, behind the vehicles, and a few on the upper balcony.