by Peter Nealen
During their active duty days, the task would have been to destroy the mortar. With the limited assets the Triarii had—not to mention the militia—taking it and the remaining rounds was only common sense.
He could hear some sporadic fire in the distance, but it was hard to tell from where or how far it was. Some faint static sounded in his earpiece. That might have been Grant, but it was hard to tell.
They were less than ten miles away, but that ridgeline to their west was playing havoc.
“Actual, One-Four.” Bishop sounded grim, though his professional tone never really slipped. “Just made contact with Mike Actual.
“He reports that a column of at least a hundred vehicles just started crossing the Rio Grande at the main ford across from the golf course. The lead vehicle is another ERC-90, followed by what appear to be several MRAPs with mounted .50 caliber machineguns and one minigun.
“He says that they’re falling back, but they’ve already taken serious losses. The bad guys are tearing them apart.”
Chapter 11
Hank kept himself composed, even as he was silently cursing a blue streak. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! Should have known it was a feint.
Knock it off. You know you couldn’t afford to ignore an end run. If we hadn’t done something, they’d have cut us off, and then it might have been worse. Get your head in the fucking game, Gunny.
“Five, this is Actual.” He took the second to make sure he was still on the Triarii internal net. “Status?”
“No longer taking indirect fire, and the foot-mobiles appear to be breaking contact,” Spencer reported. “Have you heard the reports from Lajitas and Mike Actual?”
“Affirm,” Hank replied. He thought for a moment, then gulped and made the decision he really didn’t want to have to make. “Plan Echo.”
Fortunately, Spencer didn’t question it, though both men knew that they’d get a lot of pushback from the militia, not to mention the locals, even those who’d been ambivalent to hostile until the cartels were knocking on their doors with armored vehicles. “Plan Echo, roger. See you at the RV point.”
Hank looked back toward the gun trucks. “One-Four, pull the gun trucks around onto SE Longdraw, and get ready to pick us up at the bottom of the hill, immediately to our east.” It was going to be the long way around for the trucks, but they’d cover it faster than the men on foot could get back across that canyon and up the hill to their current position. “And get on the horn to Mike Actual and order Plan Echo.”
“Roger that,” Bishop replied. “See you in a few.”
Hank turned and signaled the Triarii and militia into a wedge formation and pointed east, over the near crest of the ridge and down toward the road. Moffit was already moving, though it took the militiamen a minute to get reoriented. Several of them were now weighed down with mortar rounds, and Evans had the tube over his shoulder, one hand on his rifle’s grip.
None of the militia were on the Triarii internal net—at least, they weren’t supposed to be—so they wouldn’t be aware of the situation back in Lajitas yet. And until they got somewhere more secure, he couldn’t tell them.
Professionals would—mostly—take the news in stride and get to work figuring out their next move. But most of these guys, as dedicated and eager to learn as they were, weren’t pros. And the knowledge that their friends and homes were under overwhelming attack would hit them on an emotional level that they couldn’t afford right then.
He was sure that some would get mad when they found out. He couldn’t afford to care.
They were already over the crest and moving down the hillside by the time they got the formation sorted out. Hank scanned to their right and left, watching the militiamen as much as he was watching their surroundings. He noticed that Mendoza, a young kid who’d worked at the resort before the lights had gone out, was just walking along, paying more attention to his feet than the desert around them. Hank got his attention, pointed to his eyes, and then around at the hillside and the high ground across the road. Mendoza, shamefaced, nodded, and started paying more attention.
We might think we’re out of contact, but that only lasts until one of the bastards pops up out of a crack in the ground.
The descent was quick, probably a little too quick, but Moffit and Evans knew what was going on, and the militia followed along with the Triarii. Even so, as they hurried toward the road, dust rising from their boots behind them, the gun trucks were already slowing, having torn along the unimproved roads around the shoulder of the ridge as fast as the terrain would allow.
Hank piled into the F350’s front passenger seat, hauling the door shut as soon as his boots and his rifle were all the way in. “Let’s go. Echo rendezvous point.”
Reisinger didn’t ask questions. He didn’t need to. If they’d gone to Plan Echo, that meant that they simply didn’t have the numbers or the firepower to hold the crossing. It had been a plan that the locals had scoffed at, even some of the militia. They hadn’t seen the Soldados de Aztlan in action, or some of the nastier cartels on the Mexican side of the border. Many of them weren’t really gangs anymore; they were small armies.
And one of those small armies had picked Lajitas as their first bridgehead into the US.
The gun trucks raced away into the desert, as Hank listened to the radio, hearing the defenders he’d worked so hard to train crumble in the face of overwhelming force.
***
The overall situation meant that it was a long drive.
They were on the south side of Highway 170, which was presumably the way the bad guys were going to take to move farther into Texas. And the Echo RV point was in the hills to the north.
If they were going to cross the highway without running headlong into that ERC-90, or even the up-armors that they couldn’t scratch without more explosives, then they needed to put some more distance between themselves and the enemy. That meant taking the backroads around Study Butte about as fast as they dared without breaking an axle. Finally, they had to leave the backroads and turn down a wash, off-roading the rest of the way.
It was a rough ride. Hank got knocked around a lot, and he could tell from Bishop’s steady stream of curses that he was getting the worst of it. Hank had been a turret gunner on bad terrain before; he didn’t envy Bishop the ride at all. It was a relief when they turned onto Fulcher road, which also doubled as the Terlingua Airport’s airstrip.
That relief was short-lived.
“Oh, fuck!” Bishop’s voice was muffled, but he bent down to be heard better inside the cab. “Fucking floor it, Chad! We’ve got bad guys in sight already!”
Hank craned his neck to look past Reisinger’s seat back and down the highway. Sure enough, he could already make out what looked a lot like purpose-built armored vehicles, just over a mile away. They weren’t MATVs or MRAPs, but they were something close. And they all mounted heavy weapons. He didn’t have to see them up close to be sure of that. The cartels had more heavy guns than the Mexican authorities, lately.
Definitely more than the Triarii had.
Reisinger had barely glanced over his shoulder; his visibility from that angle wasn’t great, and that was largely what they relied on Bishop up top for. He stomped on the gas, sending the big Ford racing across the road and bouncing off onto the parking lot outside the Rio Aviation building, heading for the hills to the north.
“Reisinger, you do remember that there’s no good way down from those hills from here, right?” Hank’s voice was slightly thick with pain; his teeth had knocked together with a painful clop as they’d hit the bump getting off the highway. “It’s essentially sheer cliffs all the way around except here.”
“Fuck!” Reisinger had forgotten. He slewed the F350 to the west, kicking up a plume of dust and gravel, and accelerated, unfortunately pointed back toward their pursuers.
The other trucks were close behind as the Ford dropped painfully down into the wash that ran behind the aviation building. Bishop cursed thickly.
“Yo
u all right, Bish?” Hank craned his head to look.
“Fucking kissed the gun.” Bishop was wiping blood off his lip. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“Well, shake it off and get ready to rock and roll; we might pass a little too close to those bastards for comfort.” Hank was already rolling the window down, not that he’d have a shot from his side; he was facing the massif to their right.
Bishop slewed the gun around, his knees bending as he crouched down behind it. The splinter shield was the only protection he had up there, and it had been hastily welded together in Bob Morgan’s shop.
He wasn’t going to have a good shot anytime soon, though, not the way Reisinger was driving. The long-faced man wasn’t maneuvering to fight; he was doing his damnedest to get them out of there. Which was exactly what he was supposed to be doing; thin skins with 7.62 belt feds weren’t going to fare well against SandCats and VCR-TTs with mounted .50 cals. Or whatever Mad Max abominations the bad guys had added to the purpose-built armored vehicles.
They drove as hard as they could away from the road, along the base of the main slope. Reisinger had chosen the route well, as punishing as the drive was. It put them in the slight cover of another shoulder that rose on the west side of the wash, which sheltered them for a little bit before they plunged down into the brush-choked low ground just north of BJ’s RV Park.
Bishop opened fire, the Mk 48 rattling in its mount and brass and links showering down into the cab around his boots. Reisinger started to slow, to give him a solid shooting platform, but Hank was already halfway out the window behind his rifle. “Keep going! Don’t stop!” Even from his limited perspective, he could tell that there were far too many enemy vehicles. Bishop was just trying to keep them from following.
Heavier reports and terrific cracks overhead heralded the incoming fire. Hank caught a glimpse of a tracer flying entirely too close by for comfort. It looked like someone had set a baseball on fire and flung it at the truck.
Unfortunately, the terrain and the brush were forcing Reisinger to slow down, simply because the Humvee couldn’t move that fast. There was only so much he could do to bull through the stiff, prickly desert growth, and the softer ground in the low ground was threatening to bog them down.
And they were only about two hundred yards from the highway.
Hank couldn’t get a shot. He finally gave up and hauled himself back inside, before he lost his rifle out the window. The bouncing gave him a couple of painful knocks against the frame before he slumped into his seat again.
Bishop ceased fire. They’d slipped behind the steeper wall of the wash, where it cut through some higher, rougher ground, and he didn’t have a shot anymore. Fortunately, neither did the bad guys.
“One-Two, Actual. Can you see if they’re following?” LaForce had taken up the trail position as soon as the two elements had linked up on the way to Study Butte.
“Stand by.” That was LaForce’s version of I can’t see shit right now. But he was far too professional to say something like that over the radio. “Affirm; it appears that two or three of them have broken off and are coming after us. They’re heavies, though; one looks like one of those Mad Max up-armors we ran into in Phoenix.” He paused for a moment, while Hank tried not to hit the overhead with each bounce as the Humvee forced its way up the wash, the suspension creaking and cracking alarmingly with every impact.
“And the lead up-armor just got stuck.” LaForce’s glee was apparent. “Buried it to the doors. They’re going to need some time to get that sucker out.”
Hank sat back in his seat a little, pointing north. “Get us to Echo.”
***
The two squads that had maneuvered on the mortar positions were the last ones to arrive; they’d had the farthest to move. Hank scanned the vehicles parked in the dusty bowl on Bob Morgan’s range, and frowned. There weren’t enough.
“Five, Actual. One minute out, from the northeast.”
“Actual, Five. I have eyes on you. Come ahead.”
They threaded their way into the loose perimeter, Hank scanning the hills for the OPs that should be up there. He couldn’t see them, but when they reached Spencer’s F450, he was alone except for Lovell, Michaels, and Carrington, so Hank assumed that he’d gotten the high ground manned. It was Cole Spencer, after all. The man was Hank’s unflappable shadow. If Hank thought about it, Spencer had probably thought of it and made arrangements an hour before.
It was a little humbling, though Spencer hadn’t ever said anything about it, except to wave it off when Hank brought it up. They were both old hands; both had retired from the military. Hank had retired from the Marines, Spencer from the Rangers. If Spencer had perhaps been slightly more qualified in his background—Rangers tended to get a lot more missions than infantry Marines—Hank had been a Triarius for a couple years longer. And Spencer had pointed out once that making sure security and logistics were square was his job, while the bigger tactical and operational decisions were Hank’s.
Hank got out of the F350 stiffly. His entire body felt like one enormous bruise. He squinted around in the dying light; the sun was already below the hills to the west. “Where’s Grant?”
Spencer’s face was grim. “Grant’s gone. So are Herndon, Matthews, Martinez, and about a dozen others.”
“Damn it. What the hell happened?” He looked around for the next militiaman in line, but only Triarii were gathered at Spencer’s truck.
“Grant tried to hold the line.” Spencer spat a line of dip spit in the dust.
“That’s exactly what I told him not to do if that kind of numbers came across the river.” Hank stared in disbelief. “For fuck’s sake, that’s what the defense in depth was for.”
“Well, in his defense, it doesn’t sound like the defense in depth did much to slow ‘em down, either.” Spencer tilted his head, pointing toward a Chevy Duramax with his salt-and-pepper goatee. “Maxwell tells me that as soon as that ERC-90 started blowing up hardpoints from a distance, Grant ran down to the riverbank to try to slow it down so the rest could get out with as many of the civvies as they could.” He spat again. “He… apparently didn’t make it very far. These fuckers are pissed and they’re playing for keeps.”
Hank just nodded, feeling the weight of the loss settle on his shoulders. Grant had been a militiaman, not one of his section, but he was a leader that Hank had trained, and responsibility for losing him threatened to crush him, despite the fact that Grant had gone out on his own terms, if the story was true.
Damn it, we were supposed to be able to keep moving, keep them guessing, whittle them down before they got this far.
Quit your fucking whining. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and you should damn well know that after Kosovo, Phoenix and San Diego. We got our teeth kicked in, now we rock back, shake it off, and hit them back as hard as we can.
“Well, then. We had just better make damned good and sure that they didn’t die for nothing.” He looked around again. “Security rotation set?”
Spencer nodded. “Naturally. I’ve even got you and the rest of the maneuver squads accounted for.”
“Good. We’ll catch our breath for a few hours. Then I’m taking four and heading back down to the hills north of Lajitas.
“If they think this is over, I’m going to show them just how painfully wrong they are.”
Chapter 12
Hank was so exhausted that he’d expected to simply drop into oblivion as soon as he closed his eyes. But it wasn’t that simple.
His mind was going a hundred miles an hour before he even lay down, finding a spot reasonably clear of rocks and cactus, just outside the F350. He was thinking about the mission ahead, how he was going to take the fight to the narcos who had invaded his AO, trying to figure out just how long they had before the promised reinforcements got to them, wondering whether the promised reinforcements were even coming.
But the operational concerns weren’t the only things keeping him awake.
He kept goin
g over Grant’s death in his head. Over, and over, and over again. He hadn’t been there; he didn’t even have a reliable account of how it had happened. But his weary imagination could conjure up all sorts of graphic depictions. And it kept doing so.
There wasn’t any rational thread to the recriminations and horrors flitting around inside his head. All he could think about was the fact that Grant and the others had trusted him, had followed him and, despite the pushback they’d gotten from some of the notable civilians in Lajitas, had trained hard to live up to Triarii expectations.
And they were still dead, and Lajitas was under the gun.
He tossed and turned, haunted by imagined scenes of carnage and formless self-recrimination. The self-hatred mounted, until he finally gave up and sat up, checking his watch. He’d been lying there for a whole thirty-five minutes.
Cursing, he got up and turned to his gear. Except that it was already set and ready to go; he’d made sure of that before he’d even laid down. With a blistering curse, he shot to his feet and started to pace the perimeter.
Most everyone else who wasn’t on security was down and asleep, as he’d instructed. That was good, but it left him wandering in the dark, alone with his already runaway thoughts.
Arturo was wrapped up in the “ranger roll” that Hank had given him, snoring softly a few feet away from where Hank had been fruitlessly trying to sleep. Hank looked down at the kid for a moment, his faint frown invisible in the darkness.
Damn it, kid. Margaret’s right. You should have gone to her, not attached yourself to us. That Arturo had specifically attached himself to Hank he didn’t really want to think about right then, though given his current state of mind, the thought still snuck in to prick at his conscience even more.
Light flickered near a trio of trucks nearby. He moved over that way, to find Doc Travis bent over one of the hotel employees, whose name escaped him at the moment. She’d been shot in the abdomen, and while it didn’t look like it would be fatal, she was shaking and crying as Doc tried to change the dressing on the bullet hole.