by Peter Nealen
“Please,” he smirked. “I'm a professional. I'm on this shit. I am inside their loop, and they don't even know I'm there.” He grinned again. “Shall we get ready to greet Señor Xi?”
The airport was out as an ambush site; that was evident as soon as we got eyes on it. The ground was flat, the airport itself was fairly well secured, and there weren't any good chokepoints, at least not ones with decent cover. Concealment, yes, but they aren't the same thing.
We could, however, hang out in the parking lot and observe.
“Holy shit,” Nick said. I'd paired up with him in a thoroughly beat-up old pickup that we'd gotten for less than a tank of gas from an old local farmer who had needed the money more than he needed the truck. It was an ancient '50s Chevy, and it looked like there was more rust than paint on it. “He's sure running heavy, ain't he?”
I nodded. Xi Shang and his escort had just come out of the terminal as a cavalcade of about six Yukons pulled up to the front. Counting what we could see, and extrapolating from the number of vehicles, I guessed at a 20-man PSD. I didn't see many Caucasians, and no Mexicans. The bulk of the guys we could see were Chinese.
“Not many round-eyes,” Nick said, making the same observation. “You think we've stirred things up enough that old Xi Shang's got an active-duty PLA escort now?”
“I think it's a definite possibility,” I replied. “That'll make things more complicated.”
“Not by that much,” he said. “I mean, sure, they're a damned sight better than the hajjis we were fighting in Iraq, but I've heard some things about the quality of the PLA, too. They haven't fought a real war in a long time.”
I shook my head. “Again, we've got to assume that they sent the good ones,” I replied. “And if Xi Shang really is Second Department, then these will be Chinese special forces. Doesn't pay to underestimate the enemy, brother.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Just saying. They ain't necessarily giants, either.”
It didn't take long for the group to load up. They ushered Xi Shang into his vehicle, which I noted was not the middle vehicle, but second to last. Then the rest of them piled in and they started rolling. None of them were openly carrying weapons, but they held their hands outside their jackets like they were ready to draw concealed pistols, and I caught a glimpse of something that might have been a bullpup QBZ-95 inside one of the Yukons just before the door shut.
On the way out of the airport, they got stopped by a police checkpoint. We watched with no little interest as the cops started coming out of the woodwork, wearing vests and toting G3s, while the cop who had stopped them appeared to be getting into an argument with the man in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle.
The Chinese was waving papers in the cop's face, and I thought I could figure out what was wrong. One or more of the cops had seen the weapons, and was objecting. After all, they didn't want gringos going armed in Mexico, so why should Chinese be any different?
It looked like the PSD had paperwork to cover their ass, much like we'd had when we were still escorting the Harmon-Dominguez convoy, but the cop wasn't happy about it. He took the papers and studied them, with the expression on his face of someone taking a big bite out of a shit sandwich. Finally, tight-lipped, he handed the papers back and stepped aside, and the convoy roared out the airport entrance gate.
“Coming to you,” I told Larry over the phone. “They're going to be hard to miss; six white Yukons traveling in convoy.”
“Roger,” he replied. “Got 'em.”
Nick and I loitered for a little bit longer; just like the last time we'd trailed Xi Shang, it wouldn't be wise to let him and his goons see the same vehicle too often. We'd pick him up further on, probably once he got into the city proper. There were a lot more avenues to get ahead of a target vehicle in an urban environment than there were out here in the farmland.
The convoy had taken the side road that skirted the wetlands on the edge of the Isla de La Piedra, so Nick and I pushed north to Highway 15 and sped into Mazatlan. Larry was sending updates as they went, so we could generally track where the convoy was going. And so far it looked like it was heading to the seashore.
Larry passed the surveillance off to Bryan, who passed it off again a couple miles later to Eric. It was Eric who finally sent, “Target stopped,” with corresponding coordinates. A brief check of the overheads showed that Xi Shang had stopped at a large house overlooking the ocean. We didn't know for sure who lived there, but it had to be someone important.
Sending the coordinates to Derek, who had stayed back in the safehouse to keep working his cyber magic, we got back a tentative answer. It appeared to be the residence of Manuel Torres, no less than the Municipal President of the city of Mazatlan. Xi Shang was going right to the top, apparently.
We closed in and took up positions to observe the walled compound, but kept our distance. That was not a hit that was going to go well, especially not off-the-cuff. Even from where we were parked, down the hill by a large fountain full of bronze dolphins and a statue of a naked man and woman standing on top of what looked like a giant seashell, I could see Torres' security as well as Xi Shang's. All told, there had to be thirty to forty men with guns up there, it was the middle of the afternoon, and they were going to be on the lookout for trouble after the events of the previous night.
We also didn't know that Torres was necessarily a target. It was certainly within the realm of possibility; corruption in Mexico often went that high or higher, but we didn't know. For all we knew, he was completely unconnected with any of the shady shit, and Xi Shang was just there to lean on him, trying to leverage the legitimate government the same way he did the criminal element. The Mexicans and the Chinese security contractors didn't appear too fond of each other from what I could see; they looked like they were trying to watch each other as much as they were watching their surroundings.
They stayed put for a while; the sun was starting to dip toward the ocean by the time the Chinese convoy left. Nick and I fell in behind them as they wove north.
We kept handing off for the next four hours. Xi Shang stopped in several places, mostly well-secured residences. Some of them we could figure out owners for, others we had no clue. It was now fully dark, and Xi Shang had shown no sign of settling for the night.
“What the fuck is he doing?” I asked. My hackles were starting to go up. Some of the people we'd identified were police, some were local politicians, a few were suspected of ties with Sinaloa drug trafficking organizations. None of them had much of anything to do, so far as we knew, with the sites we'd hit the previous night. He hadn't gone to see the damage at any of them, either. Something was fishy.
“I'm getting a hunch, Jeff,” Nick said after a moment. “And it's not a good one.”
“You think he's trying to draw us in,” I suggested. “Doing a long, elaborate surveillance detection route to see where we are.”
“I think it's a possibility.”
I took a deep breath. “That would mean he at least suspected that we know he's in town.”
“Maybe Derek's a little overconfident about his cyber shit?” Nick asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe they figured out from our strike pattern that we are inside their network, so they just assumed that their data is compromised, in which case they're just trying to take advantage of that.” I scratched my beard. “Or we're just being paranoid, and he's got a long list of local pols and criminals to pressure about letting the gringos run amok on his company holdings.”
I briefly considered calling off the hunt. Xi Shang would be replaced if we killed him; we would accomplish more if we continued to dismantle the Fusang Group's assets. We'd already done plenty of damage; whether it was enough to seriously fuck their Mexican operation I wasn't sure. As satisfying as bagging Xi Shang might be, I couldn't be sure that it would have enough of an effect to be worth it, especially if he was trying to draw us into a trap.
I was still ruminating on the issue when the convoy pulled into a construc
tion site right on the northern edge of Mazatlan.
“This is bad juju, Jeff,” Nick said immediately.
“Agreed.” I skipped the phone and went to the radio. “All elements, back off. I say again, back off. RV at Point Eight Five Five.” Just as we had in Basra and Baghdad, we'd set predetermined rally points throughout the city, each given a random number. “Run SDRs en route.” If this really was a trap, I suspected that we had to break contact to get away.
The crackle of gunfire announced that my decision had come seconds too late.
“Taking fire!” Jack called. “Albatross is hit; we are pinned down. Need some help here.”
Jack and Bryan had been closest to the convoy; Nick and I had been moving up to do the handoff when they'd ducked into the construction site. Apparently they'd had the ambush well-planned by that time if they'd gotten fire on Jack's truck that quickly.
Nick floored the pedal, accelerating us down the gravel road toward the pinned vehicle. Jack had dragged Bryan out the passenger door, and was getting him behind the rear wheel. Muzzle flashes were flickering from the construction site's berms, and not getting much answer, as Jack was primarily concerned with getting Bryan to cover.
We sped toward them, coming to a halt just short of the Ford's tailgate with a spray of gravel and a cloud of dust. The bed of our truck fishtailed a little as Nick stomped on the brake, but he managed to twist the wheel to get at least part of the engine block between us and the incoming fire. I bailed out, hauling my SOCOM 16 up to send half a mag at the flashes and puffs of dust up on the berm where the Fusang security guys were shooting at us, moving forward a little to the wheel well. I'd pushed back a little, putting a few feet between me and the truck; I'd seen bullets skip off a vehicle's hood, and had no desire to catch one in the teeth.
Jack and Bryan went past behind me, both of them keeping low. I was glad to see that Bryan was at least able to move under his own power, though that was all I could tell, as most of my attention was on keeping the Chinese' heads down. Nick, instead of hunkering down, had his own OBR out the driver's side window and was adding his own fire to mine. We weren't really trying to hit anything, though a few wounded or dead would be an added bonus. We were just trying to suppress them to buy time.
“LET'S FUCKING GO!” Jack bellowed from the bed, even as he and Bryan opened fire. I scrambled back into the cab, bullets striking the body of the truck with loud bangs or snapping by entirely too closely overhead. Nick floored the pedal again, spinning the tires in the gravel and throwing up more dust. Whether he was doing it deliberately to make a makeshift smokescreen or just trying really hard to get out of there I didn't know, and afterward we'd all just say that he'd done it on purpose anyway.
Finally the tires bit, and, fishtailing some more, we sped out of the kill zone, a few more rounds smacking into the tailgate before the gunfire fell silent.
Chapter 25
“It was a mistake getting sucked into hunting that son of a bitch,” I admitted on the phone with Tom. Since Gray's suspicions, and the disquieting realization of the leaks that had gotten us on the underworld's wet-work list, had lessened our trust and reliance on The Network, we hadn't talked much to Renton, a fact that was making him anxious, to say the least. Tom had told me he was getting calls from Renton about five times a day.
“Easy mistake to make,” he said. “He is kind of an HVT.”
“If there's one lesson we should have taken away from this fucking fiasco,” I said, “it's that HVTs are red herrings. We need to go around him and keep dismantling his operation.”
“Well, that should get a bit easier,” Tom told me. “I had a face-to-face with Renton yesterday. He's talked Joe Ventner into getting involved.”
I snorted. “Talking” Joe into anything was likely to involve numbers of Eagles and Krugerrands that included a lot of zeros. “Pretty sure Joe was already providing Renton's PSD in Managua, but I assume you're talking about something a little more direct. So when's that starting?”
“In the next day or two,” he replied. “Joe's making contact with several commands in the Mexican Marines, guys who have reputations for being hard-nosed assholes when it comes to narcos and corruption. One of them has about five Chinese ship impoundments under his belt already; he doesn't give a fuck what kind of money's getting thrown around if it's illegal. Two Ventner teams are already heading to Veracruz, and another one is going to Lazaro Cardenas tomorrow.”
“What about here?” I asked. That could complicate matters; so far the Mexican authorities in Mazatlan had been particularly sluggish in reacting to the rash of sabotage and arson sweeping the city, especially since a lot of them seemed to be unsure who was causing all the havoc, so they weren't sure if it was somebody they should fuck with. But the Mexican Marines had a deserved reputation for not giving a fuck. They were about the only organ of the Mexican government that appeared to be, so far, incorruptible. They were The Untouchables of Mexico, with plenty of firepower and aggressiveness to go along with it.
“He's holding off for the time being, but I think you need to consider your operational window to be narrowing,” Tom replied. “You've struck a hell of a blow already, and I daresay your little campaign of destruction has kicked over enough rocks to get this particular nest of cockroaches stomped on. Maybe another three days, and I'd suggest bugging out. Which will be a bit easier now, by the way,” he added. “The Frontier Rose just passed Puerto Vallarta last night; she'll be on-station off the coast and within helo range by noon.”
“Good to hear,” I said, a plan already starting to form in my mind. Having that maritime platform, and the two helos she carried, had just opened up new operational possibilities, too. “Keep me posted on Ventner's guys. I don't want to still be here when the Marines lock the city down. I'm fine with killing narcos and Chinese SOF guys who work with 'em. I don't want to trade fire with those guys.”
“I will,” he said. “Like I said, you've got a couple days leeway, at least. Oh, and Renton's going to want to talk when you get back up this way. He's getting insistent.”
“I'm sure he is,” I said dryly. “I've got some things to talk to him about, too.”
“How's it looking?” I asked, as Herman and Sid came back into the safehouse. We'd moved it, and now had a sizeable garage to stage out of, which was presently serving as an explosives prep area. We were in the tiny, cinderblock shack attached to it.
“They've definitely noticed something's happening,” Herman said as he leaned his rifle against the wall and shucked his belt kit. “We counted another ten shooters showing up in the last three hours.”
“That brings it to what? Twenty-five?” I asked.
“Twenty-four,” Jim said, from the other side of the room, where we had hung up some imagery and a couple of notepads. We were having to go much more low tech in this safehouse, though Derek didn't find that to be all that troublesome; he had solar chargers and satellite Internet links for his toys. “I think we can safely say they're ready for a raid.”
“Good,” I replied. “So, all told, it looks like they've got close to a hundred shooters in the city now.”
“If we're counting right,” Jim replied, checking the notepad again. “It would seriously suck if we hit a target they've hardened up.”
“Which is why all war is deception,” I pointed out. I walked to the door to the garage and stuck my head in. “You guys about ready?” I asked.
“Another half hour and we'll be ready to roll,” Jack answered. He had a bandage wrapped around his upper arm; while Bryan had taken the worst hit in the ambush at the construction site, Jack hadn't come out unscathed himself. “The charges are ready; we've just got to get them loaded up.”
I nodded. “Get going as soon as you're ready. We'll head out to the rally point as soon as you're gone and we get this place sanitized.”
He gave me a thumbs-up and got back to work. While the bullet had missed the bone, there was enough tissue damage that he was going to be out of the
“shoot-move-communicate” part of this op. Of course, he at least still had an operational, on-the-ground part to play.
“Jeff,” Bryan called, approaching me again.
“Damn it, Bryan, I already said no,” I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “You've got two extra holes in your ass and a shattered collarbone. You're staying on the ship.”
“I could be on the cordon,” he said. “I was able to shoot from the back of the truck.”
“Yes, you were,” I replied. “And that was a matter of life-or-death necessity, with the adrenaline blocking out the pain. What if shit goes sideways? What if the cordon has to collapse, or even E&E? You're not going to be able to keep up with that hole in your buttock. The answer's still no.”
“Motherfuck,” he muttered.
“There will be other fights,” I said. “We just can't afford to have your gimpy ass along on this one. Stay on the bridge and listen to the radio, and be thankful you won't be getting the rest of your ass shot off.”
Half an hour later, Jack, Derek, and Sid drove off in three beater cars that looked utterly unremarkable in Central Mexico, aside from the way they were sitting low on their axles. It was possible that would be a giveaway, but as far as I knew, since the Iraqi insurgents started beefing up the suspensions on their car bombs around 2006, it had sort of ceased to be an indicator that most people trained to look for. Given how few IEDs had been used in Mexico so far, we were kind of banking on the opposition not even really considering the threat.
After they were gone, it took maybe five minutes to finish sanitizing the safehouse, and then the rest of us were heading out. It was just about nightfall, so we'd have some darkness to work with, though few people in Mazatlan, least of all the tourists on the beach, would have retired yet. No matter; we weren't going to the city beach.
We met up with the rest of the guys who had been on surveillance on the Banco de Piedra, which we knew from Derek's data-mining was pretty much wholly owned by the Fusang Group, on the way out of town. The rendezvous point had been predetermined, and they had all run extensive surveillance detection routes before getting there. After all, their entire purpose at the Banco had been to be observed casing the place, though not to get caught. It had been a delicate balance to strike, but apparently it had worked.