Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (27 page)

Its only
weaknesses were the two windows, but even they were four inches thick and could
handle anything up to a fifty caliber round -- or at least a couple of them. If
they got hit with a steady stream, they’d be screwed, especially when the
bullets started ricocheting inside the steel vault they were now stuck in.

In truth,
Gordon knew there shouldn’t have been any windows, but billionaires get what
billionaires want, and Soto refused to spend his nights in a room where he
couldn’t look out over Mexico City.

Gordon
tossed his submachine gun on the bed and balled his hands into fists.

“Shit!”
he said.

“How bad
is it?” Soto asked.

“They’ve
breached the building,” Gordon said. “Killed our two men at the door and will
be having it out with the rest of my men soon.”

“How many
men do you have left?” Soto asked. “Five, right?”

“Correct,”
Gordon said. “They should be able to hold them off. These men are the best. I
just hate that we lost Sherwood and Craddock at the front door. And I hate that
I’m stuck in this room as a last line of defense and not out there with my men,
where I belong.”

Soto
walked back to the window and saw a derelict school bus screech to a halt
below. Gang members carrying AKs and pistols rushed off the bus and into the
street. There were dozens of men running about and taking up positions on
corners and behind newspaper stands.

“Gordon,
your men will never hold off this many,” Soto said, a deep dread in his voice.

Gordon
walked over and looked down at the street below. Seeing the look of horror
spread over the stoic man’s face, Soto grabbed for his phone.

The
moment Rivera picked up, Soto blurted out, “Roberto, they’re coming for me.”

Hearing
the shakiness of his own voice made Soto realize how scared he actually was.

Sounds of
machine gunfire and explosions roared in the background.

“What?”
Rivera asked, hearing the sounds of battle, as well. “Hang in there, Juan. Let
me call for help. I’ll call you right back.”

Hands
shaking, Soto slid his phone in his pocket and moved back to the window. His
attackers had parked their cars horizontally in the road, completely closing it
off. And the gangsters and thugs had lit tires on fire in the road. Smoke rose
from the tires ominously and Soto saw weapons pointed outboard from half-hidden
men kneeling in shadows and behind pieces of cover, waiting for anyone insane
enough to approach.

What was
this? A siege? A warzone?

Soto
wasn’t sure, but he was quite certain he was on the losing side right now. By
quite a bit. And vault or not, he didn’t feel safe. But he prayed it would
suffice until a quick response from the Mexican police or Army broke through.

Back
downstairs, before the situation exploded and flooded with armed cartel in view
of Juan Soto’s bullet-proof window, things had been quiet and calm, same as any
other morning. Then Soto’s two security men at the entrance to the building
noticed the SWAT team out front walking toward them.

Soto’s
building, privately owned, was about half glass, like most of the other
skyscrapers downtown. The difference was that Soto’s building didn’t just have
massive glass windows that could survive a bad storm. No, his windows had all
been replaced and were now blast and bullet-proof.

Additionally,
since Soto had purchased the building, he had turned it into a fortress. No
tenants. They were moved out. And no visitors, except by appointment.

Visitors
had to come through a single entry point, and even then, they had to be buzzed
in. Most weren’t. Under any circumstances. Soto’s security was too important,
and threats too many for any kind of other security posture.

So when
Soto’s two security men saw the SWAT team, they stood and walked out from
behind a desk for a better look. The SWAT team looked unalarmed and casually
walked up to the door. The lead man pointed at the door and one of Soto’s
suited security men buzzed them in.

“How can
we help you?” the smallest guard said, raising his hand to stop them as they
walked through the door. “No one called us with an alert so I’m afraid I’ll
have to stop you here.”

The
uniforms and calm demeanor had clearly worked. Neither of Soto’s men had even
drawn their weapons. Then suddenly the point man for the faux SWAT team quickly
raised his MP-5 -- it had just been hanging from its sling and directed toward
the ground in as non-threatening manner as possible. He brought the smaller
guard’s face into his sights and fired four rounds on fully automatic. It
happened smooth and fast, the rounds shattering the relative silence of the
morning.

The
larger guard was reaching for his weapon when the second man in the stack fired
a round through his knee. The bullet shattered the man’s knee and he shrieked
in pain as he tumbled to the ground. He slid backward on his hands and good
leg, dragging his lifeless limb behind him, desperate to gain some distance
from the threat. Somehow ignoring the pain, the guard moved his hand to his
jacket reaching for his gun a second time.

The
Butcher, shoving men out of his way, charged forward. He kicked upward,
catching the man in the bottom of his jaw with the toe of his assault boot.
Teeth crunched and the man’s head lifted and then banged into the tile floor.
Blood poured from his mouth.

The
Butcher grabbed the guard’s lapels, lifted him off the floor, and removed the
.45 from its holster inside his jacket. He handed it to a cartel member near
him, who shoved it in a pouch on his web belt. The Butcher then released his
grip, allowing the man’s head to again smack the ground.

He looked
half out of it. Definitely suffering from a concussion, in addition to the
wrecked knee and remodeled dental work. The Butcher figured he was a prior
Special Forces soldier. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be protecting a billionaire who could
afford the best. Also, no civilian would still be conscious and trying to
resist.

Time to
end that illusion, the Butcher thought.

“You’re
going to tell us what we need to know,” the Butcher said, “or you’re going to
be wishing you had. Either way, I don’t care.”

Two of
his men grabbed the guard by his arms and yanked him back to his feet. He
stumbled on his good leg, leaning on them for support. One of the Butcher’s
other men circled behind the guard, checking him for more weapons and found a
revolver strapped to his ankle. He ripped it off the man’s leg and threw it
away from them. It skidded across the floor.

The
Butcher looked out the front entrance and saw SUVs and cars sliding to a halt
in front of the building. He smiled at how easy this would now be. He planned
to send a reward to the police captain who had allowed the Godesto Cartel to
borrow the SWAT uniforms. Juan Soto’s guards had never stood a chance, and now
that his men had made their breach into the building, Soto didn’t, either.

The
Butcher watched his men deploy in the streets in front of the building. The
rest of his men would be here soon, riding in SUVs, sports cars, and even a bus
-- basically, whatever form of transportation they could get their hands on.
The Butcher hadn’t sweated that detail, and it ultimately wouldn’t matter.
They’d be abandoning many of them and they could steal or buy more vehicles
later.

What
mattered wasn’t how they got here, but
that
they got here. They’d have
to fight their way out of the city, and they needed sheer numbers of fighters
for that. Of course, sheer numbers weren’t a problem for the largest cartel in
North or South America.

Not only
did the Butcher have nearly two hundred of his own men streaming in from
various directions, he had also ordered the various gangs affiliated with the
Godesto Cartel to do a single task: kill at least one or two cops in their
sector. Ten thousand dollars if they killed one; twenty-five thousand if they
killed two, which provided a nice incentive for aiming high, since $25k for a street
gang was a lot of money.

The
Butcher needed chaos, and a lot of it, across the entire city. And if these
gangs wanted to keep profiting off the high-quality coke that only the Godesto
Cartel could provide, then they would start shooting at cops in their area
beginning at 7:40 this morning -- and not a minute earlier; the orders were
clear.

His men
out in front of the building looked confident as they rushed from vehicles and
looked for targets. He knew they fed off of having their leader actually taking
part in the operation. Not some fat ass, wannabe politician safely waiting in
some tower cramming down Funyuns anymore. No, now they had someone who would
share in their victories and defeats. Who’d put his own life on the line on
every mission from here on out.

And he
knew they were especially excited that a bank heist would be going down once
the police had committed to responding to the assault on Juan Soto’s building.
The men appreciated the boldness, and the promised bonuses they’d be getting
from the bank robbery.

The
Butcher turned from watching the street and refocused on his SWAT team. They
had put the wounded guard back on the floor and pinned him down. One of them
was screaming questions into his face while another one was stabbing a Kabar knife
through the man’s hand and into the tile floor. He’d need a new knife after
this, but it looked like an effective technique to the Butcher, who knew a
thing or two about sadistic torture.

“Hurry
up,” he said to his men, looking down at his watch. They had a short window of
no more than twenty-five minutes to finish this. And he wanted Soto’s head on
his wall, not some overpaid guard who fancied himself a former war hero.

The
Butcher looked at the screaming man and wondered if the big salary he earned protecting
Soto was worth it now. But then the knife slammed through the hand again and
the Butcher got his answer through the man’s ragged screams. No matter how much
you made, sometimes no amount of money was enough.

The
Butcher pulled out a tactical radio to check in on his teams outside the
building that he couldn’t see. The government forces would be coming soon.

Juan Soto
watched the scene below in the street in sheer horror. He felt hopeless, but
couldn’t force himself to stop watching. Gordon was pacing, calling into his
sleeve mic for updates from the five men below, but they were safe so far. Five
men downstairs. Three upstairs. That’s all that stood between Soto and the army
below.

Twenty
minutes ago, it had seemed overkill. Now, it seemed ridiculously shortsighted.

Juan’s
cellphone rang. He looked down and saw it was President Roberto Rivera’s
number.

“Juan,
hang in there,” Rivera said. “You’re going to be fine. We have an armored SWAT
truck on the way. It has thirty men in the back who are armed to the teeth.”

Rivera
sounded a little too shaken for Soto’s liking, as if something else was wrong.

“What is
it?” Soto asked.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me,
damn it,” Soto shouted. “It’s my life on the line here!”

Rivera
sighed into the phone.

“The
Godesto Cartel is doing more than just attacking your building,” Rivera
admitted. “Apparently, there have been dozens of cops murdered across the city
in what must be a coordinated attack of some kind. We’ve got all law
enforcement pairing up into groups of four and they’re breaking out shotguns
and assault rifles until we figure out what’s happening.”

“Meaning?”
Soto asked, frustrated.

“It’s
affecting our response time,” Rivera said, his voice quieter.

Juan Soto
felt a deep, sickening feeling that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Actually,
since he filed bankruptcy as a young businessman, twenty-plus years ago. Yet
panicking and screaming at Rivera would not help the situation, only make it
worse.

“Do the
best you can,” Soto said. “We’ll find a way to hold. But, you better send more
than just a SWAT truck and some officers. There are tons of armed men in the
street below, and thirty won’t be enough. We’re going to need the army.”

Chapter
32

Nick
Woods was lost in a feeling of deja vu, remembering another time he had
departed a war zone with his work unfinished. That time had been in the ’80s
and that place had been Afghanistan. At least this time he wasn’t leaving a man
behind, hastily buried in a shallow grave.

He
shuddered as he recalled being pursued by more than a thousand Soviet troops,
and remembered the blood-drenched body of his spotter and close friend as the
man finally succumbed to his many wounds. 

Hell, who
was he kidding? It wasn't just his spotter. It had been one of his closest
friends. And besides leaving a Marine behind -- something you just never did,
and something he’d never forgive himself for -- Nick had also learned that his
command had sold him out, multiple times. There was no way the Soviets should
have guessed his various extraction points as they had.

But that
was many years ago, and just a few years ago, it had all come up again and
without question, he’d put a lot of bodies in the ground, including one of the
men responsible for selling him and his friend out. Now, he was packing up
again, yet another mission unfinished. He hadn’t lost any men this time, but an
entire Navy SEAL platoon had been wiped out. And these dead Americans, fellow
brothers in arms, lay unavenged. Sure, the head of the Godesto Cartel was gone,
but Nick had been aiming for more than simply Hernan Flores’s head on a
platter.

Nick
wanted to destroy the entire cartel. Tear it apart limb-by-limb and return home,
knowing his men had made a difference. Make Mexico (and thus America) safer.

The sound
of approaching footsteps shook him from his thoughts and his old sniper senses
clicked in, his awareness coming back to hyperfocus. The steps stopped at his
office door and a fist rapped respectfully on the door. His hopes of a soft
knock with Isabella behind it died right there.

“Come
in,” Nick said.

His CIA
contact stepped in the room, holding up a phone.

“It’s Mr.
Smith,” the man said.

Nick
looked up at his CIA contact. He was in no hurry to hear Mr. Smith jerking his
chain about this or that, or yelling about how they should leave the country in
this manner or that manner.

“We’ve
been through a lot,” Nick said, holding the eyes of his CIA contact and
ignoring the outstretched phone.

“Sir?”

“You and
me, we’ve been through a lot. From you volunteering to make contact with me
there at that gas station by the interstate, to me abducting your ass and
taking you hostage, to all the planning and nasty surprises you dropped on me
before we ever left the country. Remember all those? Remember the early
departure date and the fact that we’d be a corporation instead of a government
unit?”

“Sir,
that wasn’t on me. I told you--”

“I know,”
Nick said, holding his hand up and cutting him off. “I was just reminiscing
before you knocked and I wanted to say to your face that I haven’t given you
enough credit. Hell, I don’t even know your name. But, I wanted to say thanks
for all you’ve done. I hate our mission down here is ending, but it’s still
better than if it had never happened. And I owe you for that. So, thanks. For
everything. Especially volunteering to approach a half-nuts, old sniper like
me. I’m glad I didn’t shoot your dumb ass.”

The CIA
contact stared at Nick flabbergasted.

“Seriously,”
Nick said, “had you not done that, I’d have still been driving the roads and I
would have never had the chance to command again, so no bullshit, thank you. I
owe you.”

“Thank
you, sir. The honor’s been all mine. But I think you better take this call or
I’m not going to have a job when we get back.”

“Don’t
sweat him,” Nick said. He reluctantly reached for the phone. “Now get the hell
out of here.”

Nick
waited for the door to close and then lifted the phone.

“To what
do I owe this shit-tickling pleasure?” Nick asked.

“I
wouldn’t be such a smartass if I were you,” Mr. Smith said. “You’re going to
put me on your Christmas list when I give you this news.”

“Don’t
count on it,” Nick said. “You forget, I really don’t like you, plus I don’t
even know your real name. Or do I?”

The man
paused, and Nick grinned knowing that the man was probably having a momentary
panic attack. Nick did, after all, have quite the record for tracking people
down.

“Cut the
crap,” Mr. Smith snapped, clearly eager to re-establish his authority over the
situation. “What I’m trying to tell you is you may get to hunt a little
longer.”

“What do
you mean?”

“Juan
Soto, Mexico’s most influential billionaire --”

“I know,”
Nick said. “I’ve done my homework. He’s President Rivera’s most important
ally.”

“Of
course,” Mr. Smith said, irritated at being interrupted. “But what you don’t
know is that his building is currently under assault.”

“Say
what?” Nick asked.

“You
heard me. A number of armed men have infiltrated his building, with dozens more
surrounding the area.”

“So, we
going to go play SWAT now or what?” Nick asked.

“No,” Mr.
Smith said, “but something serious is going on. Besides the assault on Soto’s
building, nearly seventy cops have been killed this morning and a bank has been
robbed. And we’ve been informed by the NSA that they have intercepted messages
that show some advisers in Rivera’s government are suggesting martial law be
implemented.”

“Holy
shit,” Nick said. He cut to the chase. “What do you want us to do?”

“Nothing,
for now,” Mr. Smith said. “But don’t pack up yet. We’re thinking President
Rivera will soon be asking for your help. Tell your team to change gears and
forget returning home. They need to mentally prepare for war again. And this one
might be longer and uglier than we expected.”

A shot
rang out and the Butcher flinched in surprise. He ignored the radio he was
talking into and turned. Smoke rose from the pistol of one of the men standing
behind him, and blood from the guard’s head was sprayed across the area.

“He told
us what we needed,” the man said, shrugging in confusion at the look of anger
on the Butcher’s face. A shell casing rolled to a stop on the marble floor, and
the blood-soaked wall behind the dead guard had an almost lava-like appearance,
as the drops of blood streamed down.

“I’ll get
back with you,” the Butcher said into his radio. “Where are they?” he asked the
man with the smoking pistol.

“Top
floor,” the man said. “There are five more of them, just like we had been told.
They’re covering the elevators and fire escape, as we expected. Plus, one
locked in the room with Juan Soto.”

The
Butcher nodded to his man. They don’t stand a chance, he thought. He lifted his
radio and said, “Bring up the assault teams. Quickly.”

A couple
minutes later, more than twenty men sprinted through the doors. They were a
rough-looking bunch with piercings, tattoos, and bad haircuts, and they seemed
eager for the task before them. Each had killed and most had been stabbed or
shot in their years of service to the violent drug life. They knew danger and
they had been moving toward it since they were young men and had tasted the
reward in cash and women that such a life could provide. Today simply equaled
higher pay than normal.

“Let’s
go,” the Butcher said to the men. “He looked back to his faux SWAT team members
and said, “Stay here. You know the plan.”

The SWAT
team was to be used in a counter-attack if police managed to fight their way
through the defenders outside. The Butcher calculated that police would hold
their fire instinctively for just a moment if they saw other men in blue
running toward them, if the men looked as if they were retreating. And that
would be all the hesitation his men would need. Not that his men would have to
kill all of the police, but it would shock the responding forces and cause
additional confusion.

With the
SWAT members moving toward the front door to stack in case they were needed
outside, the Butcher and his assault team marched toward their starting point.
There was confidence in their numbers and the accuracy of their plan so far.

“You two
cover the exits,” the Butcher said.

Two men
stepped away from the group, to cover the only possible routes out of the
building. One of them covered the two elevators and the other covered the fire
escape on the other side of the building.

The
building lacked the dozen-plus exits a building of eight stories would
typically have. Several years ago, Mexico City authorities had granted Juan
Soto permission to seal off two of the fire exits and completely weld them shut
after he had bought the building and reduced its occupancy by more than eighty
percent.

Soto
wanted a fortress, not a revenue-generating apartment complex. He had wanted
fewer entrances and exits to guard as a matter of maximizing his security, but
that decision would now cost him his life, if the Butcher had his way.

The
Butcher checked his two men one last time to make sure they had the elevators
and fire escape covered. They lay in the prone and would certainly get the drop
on anyone who tried to escape.

“Sir?
Your gear?” one of the men said, holding up a black duffel bag.

The
Butcher had almost forgotten.

“Yes,” he
said, grabbing the bag.

He took
off the uncomfortable helmet and assault vest and threw them to the ground. He
then pulled his katana and Uzi out of the bag.

He turned
back to his assault team.

“Stay
sharp and be alert,” he said.

The
Butcher was too close to a final victory to lose now. And he knew if they
bagged Juan Soto, President Roberto Rivera would soon fall. Either through
resignation, public demand, or countless investigations at how such a horrific
string of events went down.

Help for
Soto was on the way, and the responding vehicles were closing in fast. Barely
two miles separated them from Soto’s building and the convoy charged to his
rescue, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

They were
just a mile away and the convoy contained four police cruisers -- two officers
per vehicle, following the horrific cop assassinations just minutes earlier --
and a massive armored SWAT truck, which was loaded with thirty heavily-armed
men crammed in the back.

The lead
cruiser had the shift captain in it, and he and the SWAT team commander were
conversing over the radio, going over details of how they’d deploy their
officers once they arrived. Intel on what was happening at Soto’s building was
sketchy, but apparently there were quite a few bad guys there, and even
stranger, the President of Mexico himself had ordered their hasty deployment to
help protect his friend, despite the lack of details on what was actually
happening.

This
violated department policy of getting officers on the scene first, but the
police chief lacked the balls to stand up to President Rivera himself.

The
convoy roared past vehicles pulled to the side of the interstate. Drivers
franticly yanked their cars to the shoulder or braked hard in sheer panic --
anything to avoid the screaming police cars.

But the
streets were getting narrower as they worked their way through arteries that led
into downtown Mexico City. The buildings pushed in tighter to the streets
through here, the city growing denser and taller as people and businesses tried
to cram as much residential and commercial property as humanly possible on
astronomically-priced land. That and the parallel parked cars along the side of
the road made moving through the city even more precarious.

The shift
captain in the lead vehicle was mid-sentence talking with the SWAT team
commander about the opposition waiting outside the building when a parked car
next to his cruiser exploded, blowing it across the street. The ferocious
two-hundred pound detonation caused the car to somersault five times before it
hit the building across the street ten feet in the air. What remained skidded
and shrieked down the side of the building, crumpling to the pavement and
crushing two bicycles parked near a doorway.

The shift
captain and his driver didn’t just die; they were vaporized. The explosion was
so big that the three police cruisers behind the captain’s had their windows
blown out, as their cars were thrown back and tossed like dice skipping across
a table.

The
police officers who were lucky enough to have survive the gargantuan blast
suffered ruptured eardrums from the shockwaves. Two of them were additionally
blinded by flying glass. Those who managed to keep their eardrums intact and
their eyes shielded sustained severe concussions that would most likely affect
them for the rest of their lives.

The men
in the armored SWAT vehicle fared better -- they rode in an armored vehicle
with bullet-proof glass enclosing the front cab, and they were farther away
from the explosion when it roared across the street. The only injuries to the
SWAT members occurred when the truck decelerated so hard that the men in the
back were thrown into one another.