by Peter Nealen
Ben stopped abruptly, right in front of me. We weren't alone; several figures in white and dark blue, which looked black in the dim light, were forcing their way through the brush only a few meters in front of us. Apparently, the MS-13 goons had also decided to try to flank the hacienda. We'd just thought of it first. The guys behind the planters and fountain were keeping the security occupied while these fuckers maneuvered.
I came up next to Ben, we leveled our rifles, and opened fire. Flame stabbed through the dark and the shots roared with a deeper thunder than the 5.56 and AK fire from off to the right. Blood spouted black against white t-shirts, as I started on the right, Ben started on the left, and we tracked across the little skirmish line, gunning down the lot of them before they even realized we were there. Two in the middle started to turn, but got tangled up in the vegetation and died struggling to get their Uzis pointed back at the muzzle flashes that were all they could see.
We were committed, now. Whatever maneuvering time we might have had had just gotten cut in half. Without a word, Ben and I, with the rest of the team right on us, forged the rest of the way through the brush to the side of the hacienda.
The MS-13 guys figured out that something had gone wrong, but so did Reyes' guard force. The volume of fire on the driveway increased, as they tried to take advantage and keep the MS-13 thugs from pushing forward. We had our opening, but it was going to close fast.
Fortunately, we had just reached the low, white plastered wall around the lawn, and we vaulted it almost as one. From there, it was a short sprint to the nearest big picture window. Jim and Nick covered the direction of the driveway, keeping the MS-13 fucks from interfering.
Ben and I tried to break the window first; we had a little bit of breaching gear, but we were pretty light. If we didn't have to use explosives, we wouldn't.
We didn't have to. The glass wasn't ballistic; it was just plate glass. It shattered under the impact of two buttstocks. We swept the base of the window frame and vaulted inside.
It was some kind of living room, and even in the dim light, it was, well...opulent would be putting it mildly. Leather, gold leaf, expensive hardwood; I could only guess how many fortunes worth of expensive furniture was in there, and that's not including the electronics. There was a seventy-eight inch TV on the wall, that provided almost all the light in the room. A soccer game was on, lighting the room with flickering blue, green, and red.
There wasn't anybody there. I suspected that Reyes was in a safe room somewhere, which would probably be in a basement, provided the house had one. We spread out through the room, moving toward the doorway. We were somewhat at a disadvantage; as long as we'd stared at it from the house across the valley, we still didn't really know the layout of the house. It wasn't the first time we’d had to work within such constraints, though, and wouldn’t be the last.
There was only one door out of the room, so we flowed toward it, weapons up and covering it, as well as the windows on the southeast side, toward the MS-13 gunmen.
The door was open and we moved through it almost without hesitation, finding a small hallway on the other side, with another door on each side and an open passage into the mansion’s entryway directly ahead. The lights were on in the entryway, but both of the other doors were ajar and dark.
Two-man elements broke off into the side doors, while the rest of us moved into the entryway.
Reyes’ defenders hadn’t been aware of our entry until then. But even focused out the front door and windows, they couldn’t help but notice half a dozen shooters flowing in behind them. Unfortunately for them, they noticed too late.
There were two at the front door, two more at the right hand window, and one last one at the left. The two on the door didn’t notice us at all at first. One of the ones on the right-hand window caught a glimpse of something, looked back, saw us, and tried to bring his weapon to bear. Two of us shot him at the same time. He fell sideways against the wall and the windowsill, his G36 smacking his buddy in the head as he went down. The other guy had started to turn, realizing something was wrong, but I put a round through his skull before he ever knew just what was happening. He slumped forward, the ruin of his face leaving a trail of blood on the white plaster.
A staccato roar of gunfire announced the deaths of the other three even as I tracked my muzzle toward them. They may have just been contractors drawing a paycheck, but there was no time to worry about it under the circumstances. There never is in a gunfight. If they’ve got a weapon and they’re not your guys, they’re a threat. Threats go down. You worry about it later.
The guys who had gone into the side rooms came out into the entryway. Clear. I pointed to them, then to the staircase that spiraled up from the front hall. The rest of us would finish clearing the ground floor.
Two more black-clad silhouettes appeared in the far hallway as we moved toward it. Ben was still in the lead, with me just behind him and offset to one side. We both opened fire at the same time. By coincidence, we both targeted the guy on the right. Four 7.62 rounds smashed him off his feet, the last one hitting him in the chin as he staggered backward. A good chunk of the front of his skull sheared off, splattering his companion in the face, which gave us an opening to drop him with another quartet of shots as he flinched away from the bloody spray.
We drove forward. Speed and aggression were now the only things that were going to keep us alive. The far hallway was set up as a mirror to the one we’d come out of, except all three doors were closed. Being closer, I moved up to the one on the right, paused just long enough to make sure Ben was right next to me, flung the door open, and rushed through.
The room was an equally opulent bedroom, unoccupied and dark. Ben and I swept it carefully, to make sure nobody was hiding there, then moved back out to the hallway.
“Hillbilly, Geek,” Eddie said in my earpiece. “You might want to speed this up; the gangbangers on the outside are starting to move up now that the fire from the house has slacked off. We can pick off a few, but some are going to make it to the house.”
“Roger,” I replied. Before I could say anything more, Larry’s voice came over the circuit.
“This is Monster. Jackpot, Jackpot, Jackpot.” He’d found Reyes. Time to un-ass.
“You heard him,” I sent. “Disengage and fall back to the breach point. Be advised, opposition is likely to be coming through the front door.”
There was a thunder of gunfire from above us. After a moment, Jim called, “Kemosabe here. Going to have to deal with these fuckers first.” The noise from the top floor wasn’t lessening; it sounded like somebody up there was barricaded and didn’t want to come out. Then a deafening thud rattled the entire building. Bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling. A rapid series of shots slammed upstairs, then it went relatively quiet again. “Kemosabe moving.”
The firefight outside was heating up, though. Eddie was right; we’d hollowed out Reyes’ security, which was part of what had been keeping the MS-13 bad-boys at bay. Now that their volume of fire was gone, the gangbangers were moving in, with a characteristic lack of fire discipline. As much as I might like to put some more of those motherfuckers in the ground, Reyes was the mission. It was time to go.
Since we were already in the hall, Ben and I moved to strongpoint on the entryway. Just in time, too. Three figures in blue and white burst through the front door, spraying the entryway with bullets as they came. Staying behind the corner, I lined up the nearest one and tapped two rounds through his unarmored chest. He dropped like a rock and I switched to the next one, even as Ben dropped him with another pair of shots. The last one dove for cover, barely avoiding the rounds that chipped plaster off the wall above him.
Larry and the rest came out of the doors behind us, Larry holding onto Reyes. The multi-millionaire had his hands zip-tied behind his back, and Larry had one meaty arm thrust under his bound arms and up onto his shoulder, keeping him controlled with one hand. Larry’s FAL swung on its sling on his back, and his STI was in his
other hand. Little Bob was ahead of him, Jack was covering the flank toward the front of the building, and Eric brought up the rear, at least until they were past us and rushing toward the far side of the entryway, which was when Ben and I fell in behind them.
We were back outside in moments. There was more shooting from inside as we dove into the vegetation outside the hacienda, but I suspected it was the MS-13 thugs shooting at shadows. Either that, or some of Reyes’ security had been strongpointed in a location where we hadn’t encountered them, and were coming out as the gangbangers came in. Either way, it wasn’t our problem anymore. We had our target.
Now we had to find out just how much closer he was going to put us to El Duque.
“I’ve got people on the way to pick him up,” Renton had said. “Meet them in Managua.”
I was presently more concerned with not getting compromised than with making linkup. We weren’t even in the city itself yet, and the approach was getting more and more untenable.
Right at the moment, I was sitting in one of our “borrowed” Ford Rangers, eyeballing the three Suburbans up ahead, and the half-dozen armed men standing around them. All were dressed essentially the same as Xi Shang’s escort, though these guys were kitted up a lot heavier; tan plate carriers, mags, and M4s, with pistols in drop-leg holsters.
They weren’t stopping cars, but they were eyeballing every bit of traffic that went past them, hard. Since they were at a traffic circle, there was enough of a slowdown that they could move to block any vehicle they fingered. I didn’t know that they were looking for us, but there weren’t that many other options, considering what had gone down in the last few days.
“Look,” Larry pointed out. “No Nica police. These traffic circles, particularly between Managua and the coast, are supposed to be their big moneymakers.”
I’d noticed the absence of the cops, too. That couldn’t be a good sign. Somebody was throwing some serious cash around if they had the police stepping away from one of their primary sources of extortion money. If these were the same goons working for Xi Shang and his people, then that was pretty much a given.
I was already looking at the map for an alternate route. I wasn’t going to get in a firefight with these fuckers without needing to. “Here,” I said, showing Larry the map, and tracing the detour with the tip of my knife. “This should get us over to 177, and up that way. It should also let us avoid any of the traffic circles.”
Larry obligingly twisted the wheel and took us off the highway before we slowed completely to a stop, which probably would have made the contractors up there zero in on us just as much as driving past them and making eye contact would have. I still kept an eye on our six, to make sure they hadn’t decided to come after us when we veered off before we reached them.
But the road behind us stayed clear except for the other two vehicles that were rolling with us, as we took the series of turns to move us around the choke point. “All stations, Hillbilly,” I sent over the radio, “avoid the traffic circles if at all possible; there are unknown paramilitaries watching them, resembling Xi Shang’s escort. Assume hostile, avoid contact.”
One by one, the other vehicles acknowledged. It was going to make it harder to get to the airport where Renton’s people were waiting, but we probably should have expected it. Reyes was a big fish; he had to have a lot of very powerful friends who would have found out about his getting snatched shortly after it happened.
Even following side routes and staying out of the city proper, we had three more close calls on the way to Los Brasiles Airport. I was working on a plan for dealing with the double-crossing Nicaraguan cop stationed there even as we finally pulled up, a couple of hours later. As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered; Renton had that covered. A fireteam of men wearing unmarked fatigues and body armor, carrying HK-416s, was waiting at the gate, and more were standing outside the ramshackle building I’d taken for the guard office. There was a white-painted Casa 212 sitting on the tarmac, and two more men guarding it. Most of them just watched us, though one burly, red-haired guy gave us a jaunty little salute. I thought I recognized him; he might have been one of Ventner’s guys. It would make sense. Ventner already had a history with Renton, much like we did.
Larry parked us in front of the office, as Renton himself stepped out the front door. Larry and I got out, and Larry reached into the cramped back seat, which barely was worthy of the name, and dragged Reyes out. His wrists zip-tied behind him and his mouth secured with tan rigger’s tape, he looked disheveled, lost, and scared. Larry didn’t even have to wrap him up again, but just guided him with an enormous hand on his upper arm.
“Here he is,” I said to Renton. “Sure you don’t want us to let Aztec have him for a bit?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure that Raoul is plenty capable, but there’s a lot more we want out of Reyes that you guys aren’t read in on yet. Don’t worry; we’ll pass along everything we get that’s relevant to your mission.”
He paused as my expression got hard. “Really?” I asked. “Just how much more in the dark are we going to be, Renton? I’m getting a little tired of ‘need-to-know’ fucking up my operation.”
Renton glanced at Reyes nervously. I took his point. As out of it as the industrialist looked, it probably wasn’t a good idea to have this conversation in front of him. I jerked my head in a nod, and Larry led the prisoner into the office. Renton and I stayed outside.
“Look, Jeff,” Renton said, “I understand your heartburn, I really do. I’m not trying to cut you out. But you can’t help with shutting down the shell corporations and offshore accounts that we’re going to be asking Reyes about. That’s all I’m talking about. I know you feel like I’ve been holding out on you.” I snorted. That was an understatement. “But the fact of the matter is, I’ve passed along every bit of information related to your part of the operation that I’ve got.” He ran a hand over his face. I realized the guy looked exhausted. “This entire op is not going according to plan.” He waved a hand before I could say anything. “I know, I know, nothing ever does. But I’m getting stonewalling, weasel-words, and push-back from north and south. Like I told you earlier, a lot of my contacts, governmental and otherwise, have shut up as soon as we really started going after this motherfucker.” He shook his head, as if trying to dismiss a particularly irritating thought. “It’s almost as if they were eager to talk until it looked like there might be a chance of actually taking El Duque down.”
I frowned. “You think his influence goes that deep?”
“It’s possible,” he allowed. “I mean, this guy’s supposed to be the spider in the web, with his reach extending all over the fucking globe. And it wouldn’t be the first time a government agency’s been suborned or penetrated. But there should be something that’s untouched.”
My irritation with Renton was fading in the face of his obvious frustration. It was still possible that it was all manipulation; if it was, he was better at it than Mia. “Come on,” he said. “You can at least sit in on the first part; that will be more in line with your side of the op. This place is secure enough, for now.” We headed into the office, leaving the guards watching the perimeter and my boys watching the perimeter and the guards.
No, we weren’t the most trusting bunch, those days.
Chapter 17
Reyes was about as resistant to interrogation as Ernesto had been. Less, actually. We had a name in under an hour.
Of course, putting the details on the name to actually build a target package took considerably longer. It was almost two days before we had enough to start putting a plan together.
“Serena Olivarez is a major player in the Honduras to Guatemala cocaine pipeline,” I explained, laying the photos on the Pelican case we were using as a table. “The Honduran counter-narcotics police want her head on a plate, but she’s about as clever as Capone; they’ve got nothing on her. However, thanks to Reyes, we do.”
Serena Olivarez was nothing to look at. She was maybe in he
r late thirties, judging by the photos; there wasn’t any documentation as to exactly how old she was. There was one police mugshot, but it was at least seven years old. The more recent photos looked like they’d come from a newspaper; she was apparently an “upstanding citizen” of the town of Cuyamel. She was a hard-faced, slightly overweight woman, who bore the plainness of someone who didn’t give two fucks about her appearance. Probably because she had enough money, and enough violent people on her payroll, to have no need to care.
“We don’t have a present location for her, but she is known to have a residence in Cuyamel, which is a small town near the Honduras-Guatemala border. That’s where we’ll start; apparently the Honduran counter-narcos think that it’s the center of her operation. By all accounts, she owns the police there. She’s also got friends in Tegucigalpa, so it’s entirely possible that we could end up facing Honduran security forces if we show our hand too early. The Honduran cops might want her head, but at the same time they won’t necessarily take kindly to us going after her on their turf.”
The next photos were a photomap of Cuyamel and a number of ground-level photos we’d gotten off the Internet. Google Earth can be amazingly useful for mission planning.
“It looks like Iraq crossed with Florida,” Derek remarked. He wasn’t that far off. As green and verdant as it all was, the streets were bare dirt, and just about every building was in a fenced compound. The fences were half concrete, half steel or wire fence, as opposed to the Middle Eastern solid cinderblock, but the effect was similar. It didn’t look like the people of Cuyamel necessarily trusted their neighbors that much.