Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (14 page)

Hardly an
army or task force, and they were about to tangle with the billion-dollar
Godesto Cartel, which probably had a thousand trigger pullers, a couple hundred
police-department moles, and maybe as many as five thousand people on their
payroll as snitches. It was why Nick had insisted on telling the Mexican
government practically nothing.

The
Mexican government had only one form of intel on S3, their Mexican liaison, and
Nick kept that poor man so in the dark that he didn’t know a damn thing.
Besides blindfolding him for hours prior to his arriving at their farm, Nick
also kept a 24/7 firewatch on the man. If you had the watch and needed to take
a piss, you had to get another member of S3 to watch him.

Nick’s
orders were clear; the man was not to be left alone for even a minute, and he
was not to go near a phone, computer, or other electronic device at any time.
The man couldn’t even hang on to his own phone, and was only allowed to report
in to his superiors when a senior member of S3 stood near him. They had been
instructed to rip the phone from his hand if he crossed any lines.

Marcus
still laughed at that. He felt sorry for the guy, but Nick explained how the
SEALs had been destroyed and said that he was doing this for the man’s own
protection.

“Believe
me, my man,” Nick had said, patting the man on the cheek, “if something happens
to us from an intelligence leak, it’s not the men you’ll need to worry about.
And I’m sure you didn’t expect to be treated this way, but it’s for both our
own good. I’ll have the men buy you some books or something so you don’t get
too bored.”

And Nick
hadn’t said another word to him since they arrived. He kept him quarantined in
a room with a TV, some books, and an S3 member on duty. Nick was straight
stone-cold, Marcus thought, and coming from a strict drill instructor, that was
really saying something.

To serve
under a man like Nick, one of the most capable warriors Marcus had ever met,
there was just nothing like it.

And even
ignoring his own reputation, Marcus knew that Nick Woods was harder than nails
and didn’t have a non-military bone in his body. Marcus hadn’t seen a man wired
so tight in all his life. Well, other than himself, he thought, but Marcus’s
time as a drill instructor had magnified that. Yet still, Marcus wasn’t above a
good laugh or a joke here or there.

Not so
with Nick. He was all business and apparently his entire life revolved around
killing. Or keeping from getting killed. Marcus hadn’t heard the man mention a
wife or girlfriend or even a dog. He seemed to have no roots. No desires. Just
a love of heavy caliber rifles and a constant, almost paranoid continuous focus
on security, even when they were stateside wrapping up preparations.

But
Marcus couldn’t exactly ask him about his love life or anything else, really.
Nick kept his distance from all the men -- including Marcus, to whom he was
closest -- and Nick kept his thoughts and feelings camouflaged behind a face
that showed nothing. The man was a sniper. Nothing more, nothing less.

And
honestly, Nick was too distant to be in leadership, in Marcus’s view. At least
in a traditional unit. But with an elite unit, where few words needed to be
said, it worked.

And even
for a giant former linebacker like Marcus, who had yet to find someone he
couldn’t handle, Nick Woods caused a deep sense of unease. He screamed grit and
determination with everything he said and did, and he looked like a man you
didn’t want to get on the wrong side of. Not in a loud way like some kind of
puffed-up meathead, but in a quiet calculating way. His eyes seemed to cut
through you. Eyes that said they had seen deep shit and were willing to pay the
necessary price again if pushed far enough.

Of
course, all the men of S3 knew Nick’s story. They hadn’t at first, but the CIA
contact told the men that their leader was the very same Nick Woods who had
exploded across the world’s headlines a few years earlier. None of the
publications had ever nabbed a photo of him, but the story of Allen Green and
the mysterious Marine Scout Sniper had grown to legendary levels. (Not that it
needed to grow to reach those levels.)

But once
the men of S3 knew who was coming to lead them, they immediately committed to
following him. And Marcus had, too, if he was honest.

Marcus
finished walking the perimeter, marked by three strands of barbed wire like on
most farms. After checking in with some of the troops, he headed back for the
house.

In the
house, Isabella sat at a computer desk and rubbed her temples. She’d been
surfing news site after news site, and dozens of forums that talked about
drugs, gang battles, and rumors about crime.

She stood
and stretched, lifting her arms. She wanted to take a break and at least leave
the room and get something to drink, but she worried Nick would catch her.

Yesterday,
Nick had caught her on just such a break. She had stopped to talk to a few of
the guys after grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and Nick had
managed to walk by at that very moment. She still seethed at the exchange that
had followed.

“Did you
find every piece of intel there was to find on the internet?” Nick asked.

“No,
sir,” she said. “I just took a break to grab something to drink and stopped to
say a few words on my way back.”

“I see,”
Nick said, looking at the three men who had been talking to her. Each looked
down and Isabella turned red with embarrassment.

“You men
have anything else you need to say to Isabella?” Nick asked.

“No,
sir,” one of them said.

The other
two shook their heads and Nick dismissed them all with a wave of his hand.

They
hurried down the hall and Nick turned to Isabella.

“You are
aware that we’re counting on you to help with intel
and
plan our PR
campaign, right?” Nick said.

Isabella
didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, or the scolding she had just endured.

“You are
aware of the double-standard you’re imposing, right?” she asked, nodding her
head back toward the men walking off.

She knew
she shouldn’t have back-talked Nick, but the attorney in her just wouldn’t let
his remarks go. But, other than the crap she had to put up with from Nick,
Isabella liked her new team. She was on the Primary Strike Team, composed of
Nick, Dwayne Marcus, and five more shooters named Truck, Lizard, Bulldog,
Preacher, and Red. While there were some men who went by their last names on
the eight-man regular squads, most of the seriously experienced men on the
Primary Strike Team only went by nicknames. (Same as with any Special Forces
unit.)

Almost
none of them would share their real names or even much about their past. Only
Nick and Dwayne Marcus knew that information, and only then because they had
seen their files as part of the selection process. These men were the best, and
their military records proved it.

Nick said
he only wanted Isabella on the Primary Strike Team because she spoke Spanish,
which put two people on the Primary Strike Team (counting Lizard) with that
ability. Nick had also said he didn’t want her on some other squad where the
men would be distracted by her tits. His words, not her’s.

But
Isabella knew that one of the main reasons she was on the Primary Strike Team
was because she could shoot and hold her own. And she also knew Nick wanted her
close so he could draw on her expertise of the Mexican culture, even if he was
in the middle of a firefight.

Sure, he
treated her like shit, but she had been “brought into the fold” so to speak far
more than she would have expected after first meeting Nick.

When the
Primary Strike Team deployed into the field, Nick left the CIA contact back at
the base. Nick explained that it was to protect the contact from possible jail
time in case Nick needed to break the law. But Isabella relished this truth: the
contact was left at the base because Nick only wanted operators on his Primary
Strike Team, and he trusted her to watch his back in the field, though he had
never admitted it out loud.

No, her
leader claimed she was only on the team because he didn’t want her on some
other team where the men would be competing for her attention.

But
Isabella knew that despite himself Nick was impressed with her shooting and the
way she was handling the pressure from him and Marcus. She also knew that her
records had informed him that she had killed her fair share of men, as well.

Not near
as many as Nick -- or even most of the other men -- but they were all some of
the most experienced warriors that America had. Isabella, on the other hand,
had been in different circumstances while on the police force and as a
prosecutor. But she had shown courage -- just as much as most of the men Nick
and Marcus had selected.

She
looked out the window and saw Marcus walking toward the house, and again
thought of how vastly different he and Nick were.

Marcus
marched places. Perfect military bearing. Ramrod straight posture. S3 utility
uniforms pressed and immaculate, when he wore them in the house or back in the
states. The man was a drill instructor to the end.

Nick
couldn’t have been more different. He was a hard man. Cold. Of few words. His
eyes often looked straight through you, and he so rarely spoke that you were
always curious as to what he was thinking.

Marcus worked
hard to balance Nick out. Marcus was a motivator, always quick with an
encouraging word or a positive thought. He could be hard on the men, like Nick,
but he had just as many words to cheer them on and lift their morale.

The way
Isabella saw it, Nick didn't really fit the role of commander of the unit. He
was more of the hard-nosed sergeant, but with Marcus filling the gap by playing
the officer role, it still worked. At least so far.

Of
course, that could change in an instant if Nick pushed her too far. She smiled
as she imagined kicking him upside his head. He probably so underestimated her
that he’d never see it coming.

“Doubt
he’d act like such a bad ass if I knocked his ass out,” she thought.

But then
again could she pull off such a surprise against his discerning eyes? The man
noticed everything. And he feared nothing.

And while
he didn’t say much unless he was giving her hell, she couldn’t deny that his
strength did something to her. He was here, in a foreign land, doing what
Mexico’s bravest and smartest men had failed to do: Take down Hernan Flores.

But more
than that, his tall, lean frame called her in a way she hadn’t thought about in
years. Of course, most of the men she had been around in law enforcement
weren’t at the level of Nick. They were practically cowards, who donned masks
on most raids. Many had given up on any serious fitness routine and had gained
too much weight. They had grown soft, both in body and in concern with staying
alive.

Nick
didn’t fear death. He courted it -- practically dared it to come his way. He
had already taken too many risks, and they were barely getting started.

He was a
real man in a world where few men still roamed. And he was good-looking, and
strong, and, well, available. Isabella blushed a bit at the thought, but she
had a track record with men.

Good or
bad, she usually caught her man. The evil ones ended up dead or behind bars.
Others ended up wooing her like lovesick teenagers once she broke them. Nick
might prove her biggest challenge yet, but, well, that was a nice thought to
consider, too.

And with
that thought, she opened up another news website to look for clues about the
Godesto Cartel.

Chapter
17

Nick
Woods and the Primary Strike Team waited alongside the back of a mid-sized
passenger van. His men looked like a bunch of anti-government rebels, dressed
in jeans and boots and hoodies and bandanas. And like any good group of
anti-government rebels, they were armed to the teeth. The best part of playing
“vigilantes” was that their weapons needed to vary and not be uniform, so the
team members got to pick their weapon of choice. Tonight, they were packing
everything from 9 mm MP-5s to 5.56 mm M4s to 12 gauge shotguns.

The van
they stood by looked like it had once been owned by a small business of some
kind. The team had bought the used van locally for a steal (in cash, of course)
and had painted over its commercial markings and given it a cheap coat of white
paint. And with the dings and scrapes, the van fit in nicely in the rundown
part of town they were currently in.

Mexico
City, like every other metropolitan area in the world, had its share of
shithole neighborhoods and the Primary Strike Team sat waiting in probably one
of Mexico City’s worst slums.

Every one
of Nick’s senses screamed danger. The hair on the back of his neck stood high,
his ears strained to hear, and his eyes squinted to see.

Nick’s
Primary Strike Team waited by the mid-sized van, which had backed into an alley
between two abandoned buildings. On the one hand, Nick didn’t like being
trapped with no way out but forward. But the alley provided great concealment
barely one block from their target, and it would take a lot of Godesto Cartel
shooters to take down the eight of them. Plus, Nick had two more squads of
eight men from S3, as well as two sniper teams who were recently arrived
reinforcements, who could get to their location within five minutes, so he was
jittery -- or feelin’ alive, as he liked to call it.

It was
the ghetto that put him on edge. He preferred trees and bushes to operate in,
not the alleys, street corners, and dumpsters of an inner city. And it didn’t
help that he didn’t know the area and couldn’t speak the language.

That’s
what you have translators for, Nick thought to himself. You knew what you were
getting into before you signed on to come into Mexico and take down one of the
most powerful cartel leaders ever.

And
indeed he did, but in addition to the immediate danger, Nick couldn’t shake the
fact that he was a few hundred miles away from the American border and deep
within Hernan Flores’s home territory. He and his team were outnumbered and
outgunned, and probably operating with far less intel. It was a formula for
disaster.

And when
you considered that Flores owned most of the cops, it was a lonely feeling in
that alley. No cavalry would be riding in to save the day, and no air power was
on call. Worse, even if the police showed up, it wasn’t like they would just
get arrested. More than likely Flores would find a way to get to them -- he had
that many police officers and judges on his payroll -- and they would be
killed, beheaded, and dumped on the side of the road somewhere. After all,
beheaded bodies on the side of the road were a near daily occurrence in Mexico
these days.

Nick and
his team members understood that giving up to local authorities likely meant
that some dirty cop would shoot them down in “self-defense” or maybe some
prisoner would shank them in their sleep. Pulling off a favor for Flores could
set a man and his family up for life.

But Nick
remembered he had some incredible shooters, and he’d been in a few wars
himself. He was counting on his experience, his incredible instinct for danger,
and his ingrained sniper skills. Even in this situation, Nick knew he could
conceal his entire unit quickly, just as he had mastered the ability to hide
himself, even in an open field.

As long
as Flores couldn’t find Nick’s nearly fifty shooters, he couldn’t hit them. And
Nick didn’t plan on being found. Part of Nick’s solution to staying out of
Flores’s sights was to operate completely free of intel from the government.

The
upside to operating in such a way was that no police officers or intel weenies
who had been bought and paid for by Flores could sell Nick and his team out.

The
downside was that they got very little intel about Flores, some of which would
have been legitimate. Without question, Mexican President Roberto Rivera really
did want to take Flores down. And Rivera had hundreds of men under him who
shared the same goal. Rivera and his loyal supporters had bled a lot trying to
take Flores down, that was for sure. But though Nick really wanted the
legitimate intel, he couldn’t risk it. Unfortunately, it only took one police
officer or intel specialist feeding S3 false info to doom Nick’s unit, and Nick
hoped to avoid the fate the SEAL Team had suffered.

Consequently,
Nick’s unit operated with limited intel, and what they got was of questionable
value. Isabella, and one of the tech-savvy team members, set up a website for the
Vigilantes after their video was released. The site contained a dedicated email
address where folks could email in clues. Nick understood a phone line would
have netted them far more information, but he didn’t trust a phone line to be
secure enough.

It didn’t
take a rocket scientist to realize that if you listed a phone number on the
site -- even for a temporary, throw-away phone -- and someone called it, Flores
could find out from the phone company what cell phone tower it pinged off from.
Nick didn’t want Flores to be able to narrow down the unit’s location at the
farm to such a small area, so he stuck to email through the website.

But even
with the more restrictive, email-only option, the emails came. By the hundreds.
And that insanely high amount of emails reminded Nick that they were truly
taking on a full-blown cartel -- basically a huge army of more than a thousand
armed men. The incoming tips spanned from across most of the country and many
seemed completely legit, involving dozens of warehouses, apartment complexes,
and shipping ports.

Nick
assumed many of them were fake tips submitted by Flores’s people as part of
some trap for the Vigilantes. Consequently, he and Marcus decided they would
set up more than just typical surveillance on spots they planned to raid. They
wanted elaborate and extensive eyes on the possible sites for days and days.

As a
result of this need, Nick requested his CIA contact ask for six Scout Sniper Teams
to be transferred from active duty in the Marine Corps to S3. And two of those
Scout Sniper Teams had been watching the target they planned to hit tonight for
five days, 24/7. They had been rotating in and out and watching the building
from two different angles, gaining tons of intel. And based on that intel,
Nick’s Primary Strike Team was about to spring into real action for the first
time since arriving in Mexico.

Nick and
the members of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter were about to strike the first real
blow against Flores and the Godesto Cartel.

Nick
couldn’t wait to show the fat bully that a new sheriff was in town, but there
remained some serious danger before the gloating could begin. Despite the five
days of eyes on, in theory, a huge team of men could be hiding in the building
waiting to ambush the Vigilantes, having moved into it prior to the tips coming
in. That’s what Nick would have done.

Flores
could have had food stored up and thus not needed any supplies. And these men
of Flores’s could have been disciplined enough to not leave and thus be spotted
by Nick’s Scout Snipers.

But, Nick
doubted it.

First, it
would take a lot of discipline, and cartel guys usually lacked discipline. They
liked money and pussy and alcohol, and loads of all three, and you couldn’t get
that by waiting in a building for who knew how long waiting to spring an
ambush.

Second,
you’d have to be paranoid as hell to put up such an act for so many days. Nick
wondered if he would be that careful if the shoe was on the other foot and he
were Flores. Maybe he would. And maybe not. Flores certainly held an
unbelievable number of advantages over Nick and his team, and he would have
every reason in the world to underestimate this group called the Vigilantes.

Yet
Nick’s gut said this building was a gold mine. The moment the first clue about
it came in, it had stood out from all the rest. And Nick appreciated the sheer
genius of the location. It was precisely the spot he would have chosen to store
tons of cocaine. The building wasn’t a factory or warehouse or even storefront.
No, it was far better than that. It was a church. A small cathedral, more
accurately.

While the
tip was unbelievable at first, they had received three specific and different
tips from various neighbors who lived in the area.

The intel
later placed on the cathedral supported Nick’s belief. The Scout Snipers --
buried deep in the corner shadows of nearby buildings -- reported odd vehicles
coming and going in the middle of the night. Strange deliveries. Ferocious-looking
men who wore unnecessary coats on hot nights, overseeing the loading and
unloading of boxes.

Nick
shifted his feet and took a deep breath in the alley, still trying to calm his
nerves. The final confirmation the cathedral was legit would arrive in minutes.
Nick had one of the two nearby S3 squads following a vehicle that had departed
the cathedral moments ago. The Scout Snipers had called in several boxes being
loaded into the car right on schedule. This vehicle was leaving at the same time
as it had night-after-night in the five days the target building had been under
surveillance.

“We’ll
know soon whether they’re delivering drugs or Bibles,” Dwayne Marcus said with
a grin, after hearing the Scout Sniper call in the vehicle driving off through
his earpiece.

“They
don’t deliver Bibles this time of night,” Nick said. “Ain’t enough demand.”

“There
just might be,” Marcus said. “Country’s a shithole.”

Nick
grinned and knew Marcus was joking. They both felt certain the place was
crammed full of drugs or weapons or something else of the Godesto Cartel’s.

Nick had
instructed the eight-man squad to ambush the car. It was Second Squad, who got
the call. Nick had some ideas on how it should be done, but he believed in
delegating and told the squad leader to get with his men and develop their own
plans.

The squad
leader had briefed his men, they had brainstormed, and he had reported to Nick
that they wanted to have one car follow the vehicle away from the cathedral.
And then, further down the road, two other vehicles would block the road at the
last second, with gunmen taking positions behind the cars. The S3 operatives
from behind would rush to the right so that the two units wouldn’t be firing
into each other, and the two groups would create a hastily formed L-shaped
ambush on the vehicle that had left the cathedral. The vehicle’s occupants
would either wisely surrender or die in a hail of bullets.

The
answer arrived minutes later as a staccato of automatic gunfire carried across
the city. Then more followed.

Nick
imagined the scene. Darkness. The blinding flash and roar of gunfire in a black
night. The zipping of passing rounds and the slapping of rounds tearing into
bodies. The screams of terror.

“Second
Squad, report in,” Nick said into his throat mike after the echoes of gunfire
had ended.

“Roger,”
his squad leader said. “Target occupants killed. Collecting evidence.”

“Move
fast,” Nick said, then released the mic button on his chest.

He looked
up at his Primary Strike Team and said, “Get ready. Double-check your weapons
and get your head in the game.”

None of
them had their heads out of the game, but Nick was a big believer in the power
of absolute focus. Nick double-checked that the van hadn’t been turned off and
was running as he had instructed. Turning off a vehicle in a slum like this
seemed really stupid, especially for such an old vehicle.

He
watched his Strike Team prepare. They wore various types of web gear over their
civilian clothes and the operatives confirmed follow-up magazines were accessible
and grenades were attached securely.

Marcus,
his second in command, played leader and checked straps and pockets of those
around him. Isabella, S3’s cultural expert who was quite a shooter herself,
double-checked her MP-5. She could hit a dime at thirty feet with the thing.

Lizard, a
Puerto Rican who had served nine years in the Corps, looked nervous, but that
was normal. The man looked timid and scared no matter what he was doing. Even
when he was fighting, at which he was nearly unbeatable, he always looked like
he was on the verge of losing. But Lizard was a black-belt Brazilian Jiu-jitsu
grappler and Nick had seen him wrestle with several team members from the other
squads, and he hadn’t lost.

And even
though Lizard’s commanding officers had all remarked on his pessimistic
attitude, he never lost his cool. He always thought every mission would prove a
failure, he always showed real fear, he always wanted to get out of the Corps,
and yet he had two Bronze Stars, and he’d
always
re-enlisted once his
contract ended. And even stranger, he had volunteered to try out for Nick’s
unit, even though he’d told several of the men that he had “a bad feeling”
about it.