Fortress Doctrine (Maelstrom Rising Book 5)

by Peter Nealen

  There were two doors on the opposite side of the room, one more to his immediate left, and then a stairwell led up to the second floor. Evans and Reisinger were already closing on the far doors, passing the TV as they stayed out of the center of the room.

  The second door, right across from him, was closed, but Hank still kept an eye on it as he closed on the stairwell. The stairs came before the door, so they presented the most immediate threat. He popped muzzle-first around the corner, his rifle aimed up the stairs.

  “Armando?” The voice that drifted down the stairs was slurred, either from sleep, alcohol, drugs, or all three. “What the fuck is going on down there?”

  The man was swaying toward the landing from one of the rooms above. Wearing only a wife beater and boxers, he had a pistol in his hand.

  Given the situation at hand, that was all it took to sign his death warrant.

  Hank’s finger was already tightening on the trigger as the red dot settled high on the man’s chest, about where the white of the wife beater stopped. The suppressor’s cough was still almost deafeningly loud in the confined stairwell, and the man suddenly sat down, hard. He coughed once, blood spraying out of his mouth, and then slowly lay down on his back, the pistol sliding from nerveless fingers.

  Hank and Faris were already moving past him toward the first door.

  The door was open; the dead man might have come out of it. They burst through, to find a half-naked girl sprawled on her stomach on the bed. She didn’t even twitch as they entered, quickly clearing the corners and the dead space on the far side of the bed.

  Evans had turned and was covering the hallway through the door, but he glanced back as Hank approached the bed. The girl was so still that he couldn’t be sure she was even still alive. But he couldn’t just ignore her; he’d been on too many hits when the “innocents” who should have been no threat at all had suddenly turned into one.

  House clearing is neither the time nor the place for sentimentality. It didn’t mean he’d kill her out of hand, but he had to know if she was alive, and if she might be a threat. He still had nightmares sometimes about an “innocent” popping out of a room and shooting half the stack in the back.

  He knew a couple men who had that nightmare. And for both of them, it was a memory, not just a dream.

  A quick prod with the muzzle of his still-warm suppressor elicited no reaction. Then he saw the needle and the discarded rubber tourniquet on the nightstand.

  His face turned harder in the dark, and he moved away from the bed and toward the door.

  The hallway was short, with one more door across from this one, and then a third at the far end. LaForce and Faris were coming out of the door across the hall, as Evans and Hank headed for the one at the end.

  Evans paused at the door. He raised a hand to hold the rest of them up as he tilted his head toward the doorjamb as if listening.

  Then, before Hank could make out what he might have heard, he reared back, kicked the door open, and went through.

  Hank scrambled to go in with him, his own rifle muzzle dropping level over the shorter man’s shoulder. He registered no threats immediately in front of him before he snapped to the left, clearing the corner than sweeping back across the room. He saw Ochoa rise up from the bed and scramble for the shotgun next to the nightstand, and he shot him just a split second behind Evans. Four bullets smashed into Ochoa’s upper chest, throat, and head, painting the white sheets behind him with gore.

  Finishing the sweep, Hank’s sights lingered on the young woman in her underwear, spattered with some dark fluid, sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. But she was handcuffed to the bed itself; she presented no threat. She was also trying to curl up into the fetal position and crawl under the bed, which was hindered by the handcuffs.

  “Clear.” Evans’ voice was a haunted rasp. Hank didn’t need to ask why.

  The master bedroom had clearly seen some modifications—unless the previous owner had shared Ochoa’s… tastes.

  A frame had been roughly erected around the bed, and handcuffs and other restraints had been affixed to it. Several whips and blunt instruments lay around the room.

  Another girl lay on the bed, whimpering. She’d caught some of the spatter of Ochoa’s demise, but it didn’t look like that was the only source of the blood on her.

  The girl lying on the floor, sprawled as if she’d been thrown there, was probably where most of the blood had come from.

  Hank moved over and looked down at her. He didn’t want to trigger his flashlight; better to stay blacked out. This needed to stay as covert as possible.

  She was clearly dead. Her eyes were open and unblinking, but it was the dent in the side of her head that told all the tale that needed to be told.

  He turned toward Ochoa’s corpse, rage rising in his chest. But he couldn’t exactly kill the scumbag again.

  “Get the girls unlocked. We’re bringing them with us.” He told himself that it was what the Vengadores would do, and the whole point of shooting the shit out of the captured Soldados vehicles had been to make this look like the Vengadores were making a move on the Soldados. And the Vengadores wouldn’t leave “product” behind.

  The truth, though, was a little different. He wasn’t sure what to do with the girls, but he had an idea who might be able to get them some help.

  Unfortunately, both girls were clearly drugged out of their minds, despite their pain. They started mewling and struggling as Evans and Bishop started to try to undo their cuffs.

  “What the hell are we going to do with two stoned hookers?” Faris was at the door, covering back down the hallway toward the stairs.

  “What the fuck do you think, Teagan? We’re not leaving ‘em here.” Hank’s voice was a low snarl.

  “They’ll slow us down. Fuck, that one’s not even conscious.” Faris wasn’t catching the warning.

  In one way, he had a point. They were on foot until they could get to the “borrowed” bus that was their extract vehicle, three blocks away. And at least the girl still lying on the bed wasn’t in any shape to walk that far. Neither was the one down the hall, for that matter.

  “Then we’ll carry them. Or do you want the run the risk that this one’s conscious enough to tell Ochoa’s buddies who really killed him?” Evans wasn’t having any of Faris’ objections, either. He was pulling the girl at the foot of the bed away. She was whimpering and crying, protesting softly in Spanish, but he tried to soothe her. “Relax, señorita, it’s all right, we’re not going to hurt you.”

  From the noises she continued to make, Hank didn’t think she could hear him. Fortunately, she was too drugged up to resist as he hoisted her into a fireman’s carry. “Gonna get cold before we can get ‘em to shelter, boss.”

  “I know.” Hank was picking the other one up off the bed. “Nothing for it, though. We need to get off the X thirty seconds ago.” He got her over his shoulder, his rifle still gripped in his hands so that he could engage, at least at close range, and turned toward the door. He keyed his radio. “One-One, Actual. Friendlies coming down.”

  ***

  Dawn wasn’t far off when Hank stepped down off the bus and turned down the alley toward Elizondo’s house. He was back in mufti, his rifle and gear secured in the bus, but he’d still look a little out of place. It was early, and he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t gotten any blood on him on the way out.

  The narrow street was deserted in the early morning chill. His footsteps crunched on the gravel, and he heard a dog yapping somewhere in the distance.

  His eyes kept moving from corner to window to roof, checking every dead space, looking for movement, or any shape that might be out of place. He still wasn’t sure Elizondo wasn’t under surveillance, if only for the purpose of taking out the narcos’ frustrations. He’d defied them, after all, if only passively. He might have thought that he was trying to be diplomatic, but Hank knew the mindset well enough. Some of these thugs might simply decide that Elizondo hadn’t groveled enough
.

  But he reached Elizondo’s door without seeing anyone. He made one more scan of the street before he knocked.

  Elizondo answered the door a couple minutes later, cracking it open a couple of inches and squinting out, clearly having just gotten up. Hank saw confusion turn to recognition, then to fear. “What is it? What do you want?”

  “We need your help.” Hank kept his voice low and calm.

  The fear, if anything, intensified. “What have you done?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Hank bit back his own irritation. He was tired and strung out, coming off the adrenaline of a close-quarters firefight and hasty exfil, and his temper was still flaring over Faris’s complaints. “Actually, if you want to get technical, we’re not the ones who need help.” He heaved a deep breath. “We ended up rescuing some girls. We were too late for one of them. The other three are drugged up, strung out, and have definitely been abused. We don’t have any place to take them.”

  He could see Elizondo’s face shutting down. But then another voice sounded from behind him.

  “Nikola? What is happening?” The door was pulled open wider, and Elizondo stood back, dressed in a white t-shirt and boxers. Hank saw a stout, matronly woman in a bathrobe and sandals, her graying hair forming something of a halo around her head. She had one hand on her hip as she looked Hank over, frowning. “Who is this?”

  “Señora.” Hank hadn’t seen the woman the last time they’d been there. From her obvious presence, she must have been out; this didn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d hide in the back while they’d talked to Elizondo. “I’m a friend of Nikola’s.” He turned his icy eyes on Elizondo. “I came to ask him a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?” Suspicion laced the woman’s voice.

  “We took in some girls. They’ve been beaten and drugged. They need somewhere to sober up, some clothes, and shelter. The Aztlanistas might be looking for them.” He hesitated, then looked the woman in the eyes. “They’ve seen some terrible things, if they remember them after the drugs.”

  Elizondo was muttering and shaking his head. “No bueno. No bueno.” But the woman’s face had changed. She pushed past Elizondo and stuck her head out the door, peering at the street.

  “Where are they?” She looked like she was ready to go drag them inside herself.

  “They’re on a bus around the corner.” Hank stepped back. “I can go get them. But we needed to be careful.”

  “Bring them in,” she insisted. “Quickly.” She looked up at the sky. “It will be morning soon.” She was clearly worried about them being seen, almost as much as Hank was.

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his radio. He saw the woman take it in, her eyes changing as she realized it was a radio and not a phone, and what that meant about the nature of their presence in Camargo. She studied him closely, but he kept his face impassive, his eyes hooded.

  “One-One, Actual. Bring the bus to the end of the street.” He didn’t think that it was going to fit down that narrow lane. “Our friend is going to help.” He nodded to the woman and looked up at Elizondo.

  The older man’s shoulders had slumped a little, but he nodded as he came out and put his arm around the woman. He looked Hank in the eye.

  “We will help them. Thank you for not just leaving them there. Perhaps there is some hope, after all.”

  Hank couldn’t meet his eyes for a moment. Because he knew that despite their every effort to divert the enemy’s hostilities to internecine fighting, any relief they brought Camargo would only be temporary.

  One war at a time.

  Chapter 27

  With the girls safe in Elizondo’s house and under his wife’s care—along with some of the op funds that Torres had brought to help out—they pulled back out of the city, falling back to the abandoned farm. Rangel was already there, and despite himself, he was clearly excited.

  “You wanted information?” The kid was clearly trying to play it cool, but he wasn’t doing a great job. He was bursting with the need to blurt out what he’d found.

  “What have you got?” Hank really was tired, and he wasn’t the only one. He looked around and caught LaForce’s eye, inclining his head toward Faris—once again, his newfound “born again hard” attitude seemed to suffer the more tired he got—and several of the others who weren’t looking quite as alert as he wanted them to be.

  “I was going home after I overloaded the power like you asked.” He was awfully proud of himself for that, too, and he had a right to be. It hadn’t exactly been a small task. He’d needed to shut off the power to several city blocks, without electrocuting himself or even making it look like it had been deliberate. Hank had spent quite a while going over what he was supposed to do, and from every indication, he’d done it flawlessly. It couldn’t have been easy to find the right power cable and drop something on it from a second-story roof hard enough to knock the power out, but he’d managed it.

  “While I was going through Lagunita, I spotted a motorcade. A big one; there must have been twenty vehicles.” The kid was trying really hard to sound like an “operator,” and Hank almost smiled. Better an operator than a cholo. “There were three really fancy gun trucks in front, then three Escalades—really nice ones. Brand new, tinted windows, murdered-out rims. Then came a bunch of SUVs and vans, then three more gun trucks. They were heading south, and moving fast.”

  Hank’s eyes narrowed as he considered the information. That big a convoy was outside the norm that they’d observed so far. So who had joined the party? The Chinese? Or one of the narco factions?

  Or someone else?

  “What did the gun trucks look like?” He folded his arms as he leaned against the wall. It might look somewhat nonchalant, but in truth, he was trying to keep from collapsing out of sheer exhaustion. “Did they look military, or did they look like they’d been built in somebody’s garage?”

  “They weren’t the usual shit trucks the Soldados drive around.” Rangel was obviously eager to impress Hank with his observational skills. Hank had to suppress the pang as he compared Rangel to Arturo. “They were those fancy electric trucks, the Cybertrucks, with machineguns mounted on top.”

  “Could you see who was riding in them?” This was getting more interesting by the minute.

  “They were Soldados.” Hatred flared in the young man’s eyes as he said it, and Hank had to wonder. Had he really seen SdA flags or insignia, or was he just seeing his enemy wherever he looked? “I’m sure of it.”

  “Why?” Hank’s flat, cold voice seemed to jar the kid, who looked at him with a bit of a start. “What did you see that makes you so sure? Did you see flags? Insignia? Known Soldados de Aztlan leaders or fighters?” He shoved off the wall and loomed over Rangel. “Because I’m not just going to take your word for it. I need something more than ‘I think they were Soldados.’”

  The truth was, given what they’d seen in Lajitas, he was pretty sure the kid was right. But he needed to make sure.

  Rangel took half a step back. He hadn’t been expecting this. Most kids like him didn’t. They weren’t thinking in terms of intelligence. He’d gotten so wrapped up in being a shot-caller for the badass shooters who’d really been ready to take the fight to the bad guys that he hadn’t thought about what those shooters might actually be looking for. He’d assumed—as many sources like him often did—that he could just call in what he saw, and the shooters would descend on the bad guys and destroy them. He hadn’t expected these questions.

  “I…” He hesitated again, then turned downcast, his eyes on the floor. “I don’t know.”

  Hank didn’t relent. He was too tired, and he needed the kid to understand how serious this was. “I don’t suppose you saw where this convoy was going?”

  An even more dejected shake of the head was all the answer he needed. “They were going south on Highway 45.”

  “You see, that doesn’t give me much to work with.” Hank looked up as more vehicles pulled in, but Huntsman waved t
he all-clear; Torres had arrived. He turned his attention back to his young informant. “I can’t just go after everybody who looks like they might be a bad guy. I have to know who the targets are. And I make that decision. Not you.”

  He’d seen the bloodletting that had resulted from local informants calling in targets that the American intel weenies hadn’t sufficiently vetted. It had become a truism that when you get involved in an irregular conflict, somebody’s going to turn it to their own advantage and send the outside shooters after someone who isn’t actually involved, but is just the target of a grudge.

  Rangel stood there, his hands by his sides, not looking Hank in the eye, as Spencer and West stood across the room and watched them. In fact, a good chunk of the section was watching, as was Torres, who had just appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb, watching and listening without venturing any comment.

  When the kid didn’t look like he had much of anything else to say, Hank grimaced. “Well, Cybertrucks ain’t all that common here, from what I’ve seen. It shouldn’t be too hard to find them.” Rangel looked up at him, his eyes widening a little despite his attempt to look hard and too cool to be grasping at the hope that he hadn’t completely screwed up in Hank’s eyes.

  Damn it, I don’t need another kid looking up to me as his hero. He’ll just end up as dead as Arturo. He shoved the thought aside.

  “You think you can find them again, and bring back some more detail this time?” Hank looked down at the kid as he tilted his head slightly to one side.

  Rangel nodded vigorously. “I’ll find them.”

  “Do it. Have you got a phone?” Another nod. “Then get me some pictures. I want pictures of the trucks, weapons, any personnel you can see. And be careful about it, you understand? Do not let them see you taking pictures.”