by Peter Nealen
Both of them started falling back, unrolling the speaker wire that we’d used in place of the detonator wires on claymores. These things really were IEDs; we’d built the damned things from scratch. I hoped they worked.
We got back to the general area where we’d ambushed the FARC soldiers at about the same time the other three who had been setting in some more explosives aimed toward Foxtrot got back. There was already some shooting coming from that direction; Eddie was hitting the targets he could see with the long gun, but there was an awful lot of foliage that way, making target discrimination difficult at best. We got down in the prone, and I called Sid. “Have Ogre cease fire,” I called. “Let ‘em come.”
Eric dropped down next to me. He had his Galil ACE slung, and was carrying one of the FARC AKs. “Thought we might give them a little proof of life,” he said quietly. “Let ‘em know we’re still here.”
“Good thinking,” I replied. “Just don’t cork that thing off too close to me.”
I could hear the grin in his voice when he answered, “Don’t worry, I’m going over there to shoot at ‘em, then I’m dropping this fucker like it’s hot and coming back over here.”
True to his word, he got up and scuttled off to the right, where he let off a burst in the direction of the Bravo buildings before running back over and dropping to the prone with a muffled grunt a few feet away from me.
That got their attention. I’d seen flickers of movement through the trees since George had laid off the machinegun fire, but they hadn’t moved forward. Now, having taken fire from our direction, they were starting to work their way forward again, albeit cautiously.
There wasn’t a rush, or a charge. They did start shooting, kind of raggedly, and it was all going over our heads. They were slowly coming into sight, about eight or nine of them, walking upright but keeping their rifles up, albeit mostly at hip level. The FARC soldiers hadn’t gotten very far training this bunch yet.
Initiation was on Derek and Little Bob. They didn’t disappoint. Some of the lead gunmen were almost on top of the right satchel when Derek set it off.
The two improvised claymores went off with a pair of slightly separated flashes and headache-inducing thunderclaps, which seemed to slap us into the ground even from where we were lying behind low cover. Of course, what they did to the gunmen directly in front of them was a lot worse. The two who’d be practically standing on Derek’s simply disappeared. The rest went down hard, pulped by the shockwaves and the flying bits of metal that the shockwaves were pushing as fast as bullets. Dirt and shredded vegetation rained down out of the darkened sky.
Three more explosions sounded off to the left, where Jim’s element had set theirs in, followed by a series of suppressed shots as the gunmen who hadn’t been killed outright were cleaned up. I kept my eyes on the kill zone in front of me, at least until I was satisfied that there was nothing left breathing between us and the Bravo buildings. We were still going to clear them, but I wanted everyone outside dead first.
When everything went quiet, I got up on a knee, took a look around to make sure everybody was up, and then started forward. “Bravo is still the target,” I sent. “Clear as before.”
Several more heavy-caliber shots snapped by overhead. “Squirter on the road from Hotel,” Sid reported. “I can’t say they’re dead, but the vehicle is no longer moving, and I’m not observing any movement near it, either.”
“All assault elements,” I sent, “pick up the pace.” Surprise was blown; we’d have to rely on speed and violence of action now. Making sure that Derek, Little Bob, Larry, Ben, and Eric were with me, I got up and started to jog toward the Bravo buildings. I was still keeping low, not so much crouched as slightly bent, and keeping to the shadows as much as possible, but I was moving quickly.
The first building was set deep in a copse of trees. The doors were all opened, and as we flowed in it became apparent that it really wasn’t in use. It did look like it was in the middle of being converted into a shoot house; there were some silhouette targets stacked against one wall and a few tires, but no sign that anyone was occupying it. We swept it in moments and were back outside, moving toward the next few.
There was a small open field before the next one, and that was apparently where George had placed his beaten zone. There were about four bodies lying on the ground, three back near the house and another one further out into the field.
Now, the need for speed aside, we weren’t about to go charging across that field. That’s a really good way to get dead, and one that has, unfortunately, gotten a lot of soldiers into trouble over the years, because they don’t have the patience to go the fuck around. We went the fuck around, keeping to the trees. There weren’t any lights showing from the house, and nobody shot at us, but we hadn’t survived as long as we had by taking stupid shortcuts when we could avoid it.
Keeping to the trees took us right to the edge of the dirt road that led from Hotel to Bravo. We were almost to the far side of the field when Eddie called again. “Two trucks coming from Hotel toward you. Looks like they’re loaded for bear.”
“Hillbilly, Kemosabe,” Jim broke in. “Get flat; we’ll take care of the trucks.”
We could see the headlights through the trees, and almost as one we obligingly hit the dirt. Apparently there was still somebody alive in the next house, because they took a shot at us. Actually, to be accurate, they let rip a long burst of AK fire at us when they caught a glimpse of a silhouette in the headlights. We just stayed close to the ground. The gunman in the house wasn’t presenting a target, and any minute now…
A long, ripping fusillade of suppressed gunfire tore into the trucks before they could turn toward us. I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the shooting and the screaming. A few of the shots went by overhead with the characteristic whip-crack sound, reinforcing the wisdom of getting down on the ground before the shooting started; otherwise we would have been in the background as Jim and his element opened fire.
The shooting died down, or at least Jim’s did. The guy with the AK in the house apparently panicked and started blazing away. Flame strobed from the window and rounds snapped by overhead, but he didn’t get close enough to hit any of us, though several rounds clipped branches off the trees or smacked into the trunks with solid thunks.
The shooter was apparently alone. As soon as his mag went dry, the gunfire stopped. That was when we moved.
It was a very short sprint to the door, which was partially open already, making it easy to burst through. The guy with the AK was just yanking on the charging handle when we hit the front room where he’d been crouched. He tried to turn and bring the rifle to bear, just as about six shots folded him over and dropped him to the floor.
The rest of the house was empty. Another one down.
Split into two elements, we didn’t have the manpower on Bravo to split up and try to do all the remaining buildings at once. So we stayed together, sprinting to the next building. We had about seven to go. And that was just Bravo.
Apparently we’d pretty much emptied Bravo out with our little baited ambush earlier. Only two more of the structures were houses; the rest were barns and sheds, only one of which had actual farm equipment in it. The others were full of mostly weapons, ammo, and explosives, though one was packed with pallets of what could only be drugs. We left it and moved on. We were after people, not drugs or weapons. Those were replaceable. Kill enough of the people and the network would start to crumble.
“Bravo clear,” I sent, crouching in the trees at the edge of the arroyo. I was soaked in sweat. Even unopposed, clearing houses is hard, tense work, on top of the fighting we'd already done that night. And we still had the main target house to hit.
“Foxtrot clear,” Jim replied, sounding about as smoked as I felt. “Moving to blocking position north of Hotel; we’re seeing more movement in that direction.” That was probably a good idea, though I would have him collapse down toward Hotel as we got closer. We’d need the manpower when we hit
that fucker.
Both M60s suddenly started firing, quickly falling into a rhythm of alternating bursts. Since they weren’t using tracers, I couldn’t tell quite where they were shooting, but Eddie explained quickly enough. “Be advised,” he called, “there is a large force of foot-mobiles moving out from Hotel, on line and armed.” A moment later, the shooting started in earnest.
Only a few of the bullets ripping through the air got close to us. It seemed that they were hosing down every shadow they saw, though George’s and Herman’s machinegun fire was suppressing them enough that their fire was pretty ragged and wild. My element still had most of Echo, which consisted of two barns, a shed, and another house, between us and them.
I looked to either side, making eye contact with the rest of the element. None of us appeared to be too inclined to hunker down and try to wait it out. We had cover between us and the advancing bad guys; we couldn’t afford to get bogged down. So we got up and pushed through the arroyo, heading for the barns.
It was a straight shot for the big barn, but once again it was across an open stretch of field, where we’d be silhouetted against the cinderblock wall running along the northern edge of the field. Instead, we kept to the trees, working our way to a pair of quickly-cleared sheds before hitting the main barn itself. We burst through the side door into a large, open space lined with cots but otherwise empty. There wasn’t anyone in there, either. It looked like it had been prepared to house a lot of trainees, but hadn’t been used yet.
We swept through, punching back out through the front door. The massed rifle fire was still rattling and booming from the direction of Hotel, but the M60s on the hills were keeping them either pinned or sufficiently slowed that it wasn’t getting appreciably closer. We still stayed low; random gunfire can end you just as easily as aimed shots can.
It was a short run to the next house, a small farmhouse nestled in the trees to the south of the barn. It was as dark as any of the rest, and as we burst through the door, it was apparent that there was nobody there, either. I suspected they’d emptied the entire southeast side of the complex to build the force that George and Herman had pinned down right at that moment. We still couldn’t afford to leave an un-cleared structure at our backs, so we pushed through the house, room to room, then out the back door and toward the last barn.
It turned out that it wasn’t so much a barn as it was an open-fronted stock shelter or feeding area, on the far side of an orchard. It didn’t look like it had been used for a long time.
“Echo clear,” I sent. “Moving on Hotel.”
“This is Kemosabe,” Jim answered. “Moving south to Hotel. Keep your fires to the south side.”
“Roger,” I replied. “We are coming from the southwest.” They’d adjust their own fires to avoid hitting us.
My element had to get over the wall to get at Hotel, and that was going to put us right on the dirt road running south. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t really a covered, or at least concealed, route toward Hotel without crossing that fucking road. Fortunately, there was at least a gate, so we didn’t have to worry about climbing over.
We went through the gate like going through a door, making sure to cover every direction. The road was clear, though we could see the muzzle flashes from only a few dozen meters away. A burst spat fragments off the wall into my face, and I dropped flat, even as Ben let out a grunt. “You all right?” I asked him.
“I think I caught a ricochet,” he replied. “Hurts, but it’s not bad. I’m still in it.”
“Let’s work to the east and see if we can get behind these fuckers,” I hissed. It was going to put us dangerously close to the base of fire's impact zone, but it would get us out of the bad guys’ cone of fire.
I was tempted to throw some fire their way, just to get their heads down a little more, but if they were still shooting while George and Herman tore the trees to shreds around them, a few suppressed shots weren’t going to make that much difference, and were probably just going to alert them that we were there. So far they seemed to just be shooting at nothing. Best to keep it that way.
It was a short, but still all too long, bent-over dash to the far side of the road, then we were half-crawling through the line of trees that led due east. We’d made it about twenty meters when there was a shout from the direction of the shooting. Someone had seen something.
We didn’t have the best lines of sight, but we had thermal optics, which helped, though they don't work for shit through a scope. Dropping flat again, I realized I couldn’t see shit. There was too much in the way, so I got up on a knee right behind a tree and started hunting for targets.
They’d had a rough line facing northwest, but the relentless machinegun fire had broken it up. There were at least two clumps that I could see, trying to keep something between them and the storm of flying metal, while also trying to shoot back. They weren’t one hundred percent sure where the fire was coming from, so they were kind of spraying bullets all over the place. No more rounds were coming our way yet, either, so that shout might not have had anything to do with us.
Almost as one, my element opened fire. There was a possibility that Jim’s element was downrange, but they would have moved, just as we had, to avoid the spraying bullets, so I was reasonably confident that we weren’t about to inadvertently light them up as well.
The first few died without any idea of what was happening. In the darkness, with only vague silhouettes to target, we weren’t the most accurate, but we were getting enough rounds into the zone to hit what we were shooting at. In ones and twos, the bodies dropped and the firing slacked off as we struck them out of the night, blasting four or five rounds into each target. I’d nailed one who was lying on his belly, shooting with pretty good form and discipline at something he couldn’t see, then traversed and shot his buddy who was damned near in the fetal position behind a tree, sticking his AK out and spraying without even attempting to aim, before my bolt locked back and I had to strip the mag and rock in a fresh one.
It was a short, brutal few minutes of darkness, confusion, and hidden violence. Even with the thermals, it became a surreal cartoon of falling silhouettes amid bright flashes as they desperately tried to return fire. Even if they’d had NVGs, as dark as it was under the trees, they wouldn’t have seen much, and the suppressors were keeping our muzzle blasts to a minimum. In a matter of minutes, the shooting died down, except for the 60s, that kept hammering Hotel.
“Ogre, German, cease fire,” I croaked. The fire trailed off. We carefully moved out of the treeline and toward Sergio’s mansion.
“Hillbilly, Kemosabe,” Jim called. “We have Sierra Oscar.” That was Sergio. “He was in the first squirter vehicle. He’s dead.” He’d been gone before we’d gotten Bravo secured.
“Roger,” I sent. “Continuing to Hotel.”
We cleared Hotel, only to find a few serving staff, who were cowering in the deepest part of the building they could find. All of the shooters had apparently either tried to escape with Sergio, or had gone out to try to fight us.
We took just enough time afterward to find the FARC advisors’ bodies. It was harder than it sounds in the dark, but we found them, and left the wet-work ads that we’d turned into death cards in their hands. We made sure to do the same with Sergio before we pulled off, not five minutes before another convoy of six trucks loaded with armed men arrived.
They stopped at Sergio’s stricken vehicle. As the first gunmen got out and went to investigate, the last of our improvised claymores detonated, shredding men and trucks into a burning mess of dead meat and twisted metal.
Chapter 22
The next three days were hellishly busy.
Solomon Ruiz Gonzalvez was a pudgy, cherubic, innocent-looking man with a bald spot and thick glasses. He looked exactly like what he was—a banker. He was sweating a little as he came out of the Bank of the Americas branch, newly built across the street from the Casa Ley grocery store, but apparently only because of the heat. He showed
little or no sign of being aware of his surroundings as he got into his shiny Subaru sedan and turned the key.
It was a relatively small explosive charge that blew out the windows with a blast of fire and black smoke. The blast didn't travel very far beyond the car itself, but it ended Solomon Gonzalvez quite neatly. His body was in pieces; one of his hands was found six feet in front of the hood.
One of Los Hijos' primary financial advisors and money-handlers was gone.
The largest florist's shop on the Heroica Colegio Militar went up in flames that night. Some kind of accelerant was used; the place burned like a torch, and the fire severely damaged the nearby buildings. Several people noticed the intense smell of marijuana smoke downwind from the fire. Later, when the ashes cooled, a corpse, barely recognizable as such from the intense heat, would be discovered. Close examination would reveal that the victim had been dead before the fire began, shot twice in the chest and once in the head. It would take examination of dental work to reveal that the victim was one Julio Chavez. Chavez had been a fairly major semi-independent supplier of both marijuana and Sinaloan “mud” or raw heroin gum. He'd loosely joined the Sinaloa Federation, and had recently thrown his lot in with Los Hijos de la Muerte.
Luisa Alvarez left the youth hostel that she ran almost single-handedly, and got in her almost-new Jeep Cherokee. While a few people had remarked that the year-old vehicle seemed awfully expensive for someone who poured her heart and soul into helping Culiacan's displaced kids without a thought for her own personal gain, they were almost uniformly shouted down by those who knew just what a saint she was. Coming up from nothing, Luisa had devoted her life to helping those kids that society had left behind to live on the streets, victims of drug violence, broken homes, or just abject poverty.