Shadow of Death (25 page)

CHAPTER 61

Contact

“Mustafa, do you know the name of the boat that’s coming to get us?”

“They didn’t tell you?” he asked, surprised. “It’s called
El Pescador Feliz.
A fishing boat.”

“Excellent. When we get closer I’ll call our commanders at home and tell them to contact the ship for pick-up.”

Mustafa smiled. He was almost finished with his mission. A correct thought.

***

“I have visual on the target,” said TK to Roz in his headset. He was wearing a head-up display helmet that was attached to the triple Gatling gun’s aiming system. He didn’t need to use a joystick; he merely had to move his head and look at the target, then press the trigger.

“Reducing speed. You’re cleared to fire. Just remember we have friendlies behind lead vehicle in that truck.”

“Roger that.”

TK lined up the SUV in his right eye with the HUD system in his helmet. When he pressed the trigger and held it down, four hundred rounds hit the SUV in less than a few seconds, each incendiary round instantly taking the vehicle apart, sending metal and body parts in every direction.

***

As the vehicle in front of him exploded into pieces, Mustafa slammed on the brakes and screamed.

Apo grabbed the dashboard and held on as Mustafa fought to control the truck. They veered off the road and came to a stop in the soft earth. The Viper picked up speed and kept flying, heading due north at full speed.

“
What was that?
” screamed Mustafa.

Apo opened his door and got out. “Quickly! Come around back!”

Mustafa didn’t question him; he opened his door and ran to the rear of the truck. As he came around the corner, Apo throat-punched him and dropped him like a rock. Before Mustafa hit the ground on his knees, Apo had his head and, in a split second, broke the man’s neck. It was all over in an instant. Apo ran to the driver’s side, hopped back in, and started driving toward the coast. He pulled his phone, which rang in Langley.

“It’s me!” he barked into the phone, swerving around the burning wreckage.

“I have you loud and clear. Was watching by satellite. Looks like a good kill. You okay?”

“Roger that. Good shooting, whoever that was. I’m heading south. We have any assets near Arista?”

“Negative. Not at this time. Stay out of sight until the team finishes their operation, and we’ll send you a taxi. Did you see the package?”

“Yes. Our friends were correct. It’s an EMP. Definitely not ours.”

“Okay, understood. Do you think it’s on a timer or armed at this point?”

“Negative. I only saw it briefly, but there wasn’t anything that looked like it was activated. I think it’s manually detonated and needed to be closer to the US to deploy. The ship is a fishing vessel,
El Pescador Feliz.”

“Confirmed,
El Pescador Feliz.
We have a Coast Guard cutter in your AO. Will advise. Stay alert, stay alive. We’ll send help ASAP. Out!”

Apo hung up and kept driving as fast as he dared on the dark dirt road. “
Fuckin’ A,
” he said to no one in particular. Bad guys dead, and he had the package
and
all of his limbs. It was a good day so far.

***

A few kilometers to the north, the squadron of Black Hawks raced over the surface of the Mexican farmland, headed straight for the lights of the Sinaloa drug lord’s estate. The door gunners double-checked their M60 machine guns and leaned out against their harnesses.

As the helicopters reached the estate, a few of Salazar’s guards began shouting and alerting the others. Salazar, no stranger to the Mexican Marines, had RPGs in his house and was screaming at his men to do something about the incoming helicopters. When the door gunners on all five gunships opened up, the guards below began coming apart in pieces along with the roof of the house. The Black Hawks slowed down and poured fire on the house and cars and anyone that moved in the compound. The birds dropped a few inches over the ground and hovered, and the troops began unloading.

Between the team, the Mexican Special Forces, and the MOP, they had a platoon-sized element of well-trained warriors. Duane and Carl were still wearing private pilot’s uniforms, but had been given Kevlar to wear over their white shirts. The Mexicans had also supplied them with Kevlar helmets. Still, with their blue slacks and dress shoes, they looked pretty ridiculous next to the other assault troops.

For the first sixty seconds of the assault, it was simply a fusillade of machine gun fire from the M60s. When the soldiers hit the ground, the birds took off and began circling slowly, looking for targets on the ground far enough away from the troops that there wouldn’t be any friendly fire incidents. For the most part, the gunners took apart the house until the assaulting troops got closer to the front door.

Inside, Joaquin Salazar and his bodyguards were panicking. Typically, the
federales
would arrive in large numbers and shoot and threaten, but he’d never heard of an all-out attack. His house was being destroyed by gunfire and now he could see movement outside with incoming fire through the windows. If not for the walls being made of stone and stucco, they’d probably all be dead already.

“Do something!” he was screaming at his men. One of them was on his phone screaming for help from other Sinaloa soldiers, scattered all over the region. Another one appeared with an RPG and stumbled through the house as rounds came through the roof. The clay shingles were literally exploding into dust, and the bullets were coming through and bouncing all over the marble floors and granite countertops, ricocheting everywhere.

The man with the RPG snaked his way through the house to the front window, which had been blown open. From where he was, he could see several of the helicopters. He shouldered the weapon and took aim out the window.

“Got him!” said Ripper, seeing the tip of the RPG extend out the window. He began firing at the target, his night-vision scope making the man appear super bright against the remaining faint lights of the house. Ripper fired several controlled bursts as the man tried to fire. The Sinaloa managed to get the shot off before Ripper killed him, but it went wild, firing off into the field outside the compound and hitting nothing but dirt.

The other soldiers, seeing the RPG round come out of the house, hit the deck and began to slow their assault. Their enemy had heavier weapons than expected, and they moved more cautiously. Jon moved up along a line of shrubbery and got close to the front of the house.

“Fire in the hole!” he yelled, and began firing his M203 at the front door and any window he could see. The grenades began exploding inside the house, taking out almost all of the Sinaloa guards inside. Only Joaquin and his two bodyguards were alive, because they had stayed closer to the rear of the house. Unlike El Gato, Salazar didn’t have a fancy escape tunnel. At his elevation, a tunnel would flood during the wet season. All he had was a back door that led to a rear yard and not much chance of escape.

The guards grabbed their boss by the arms and pulled him along as they raced through the house, holding their free hands above their heads to shield themselves from falling debris and incoming M60 rounds. When they reached the back door, one of the bodyguards grabbed his phone that was ringing.

Joaquin heard his man screaming, “Hurry the fuck up!” The man turned to his boss. “Enrique is trying to get here, but those fucking helicopters are killing everyone! Two trucks tried to get here already and didn’t make it!”

Joaquin was starting to come apart and just kept repeating, “
Do something! Shoot them!
”

One his bodyguards crawled ahead to the back door and pulled it open. The rear yard was clear, the Black Hawks having landed in the front courtyard. The man ran outside and tried to get around the back of the house to where one of the SUVs had been parked after Ali bin-Salud had left. He sprinted to the truck and started the engine, then floored it toward the rear door. Joaquin saw him pull up outside and froze. To stay inside meant almost certain death. To go outside didn’t look much better. The bodyguard dropped his window and screamed at Joaquin and the other bodyguard. “Hurry! Now! Before it’s too late!”

Joaquin couldn’t move. He just stared at his bodyguard in the SUV and froze. Thousands of rounds had hit the house and parts of it were burning. Tracer rounds occasionally flared through the house, lighting up furniture and interior walls. His bodyguard in the house with him attempted to pick his boss up from the ground.

“Come on, Jefe! We have to go
now
!”

As he picked up his boss, the SUV outside the door exploded into a shower of sparks and exploding light. The Viper had arrived on station to assist with air support. TK had seen the vehicle move around the house to the rear door and opened up with the Gatling gun. The SUV began to come apart. TK fired a rocket for good measure, and the SUV came off the ground for a moment before settling down in burning pieces.

The big man who had tried to pick up Joaquin was knocked off his feet, directly on top of his boss, and they both went down in a pile. Outside, the Viper continued to sweep around the rear yard, trying to acquire targets.

The two of them heard the front door blow apart. They scrambled across the floor on their hands and knees. The bodyguard opened a cabinet while still on the floor and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. He handed it to Joaquin, and then retrieved a Beretta M9 for himself. They crawled around the island in the kitchen, away from the back door and burning SUV.

“We have to get to the garage!” screamed his bodyguard. “We’ll take the Maserati! They’ll never catch us in that car!”

They both knew it was wishful thinking, but it was their best, and really
only
chance. They kept crawling through the house, the Black Hawks and Viper still raining fire on the house while soldiers outside continued to shoot through windows. They could hear footsteps inside the front of the house.

Jon fired his blooper as he came through the front door and a high-explosive round blew through the front of the house, taking down part of a wall. Assault weapons occasionally popped off as soldiers moved through the house finishing off anyone who still had a weapon in his hand.

“Now, Jefe!” yelled the bodyguard. He got up and ran for the breezeway that led to the garage with Joaquin behind him. As they came through the door to the carport, the bodyguard’s head partly exploded from a large-caliber round through his skull. He dropped like a rock, leaving Joaquin Salazar facing a man he recognized but couldn’t place. He stood there, in shock, staring.

“You? The pilot from the plane?”

Duane smiled, the red dot of his M4A1 SOPMOD now on Salazar’s face. “Good memory.”

Joaquin dropped his gun and raised his hands.

“Sorry, bud, not an option.” Duane squeezed the trigger and blew the drug lord’s brains out the back of his head.

Duane heard footsteps from inside and yelled into the house, “Identify yourself!”

“
It’s Jon and Moose! Friendlies!
”

Duane lowered his weapon. “Someone get on the horn to air support and tell them to shut it down before this whole fuckin’ house comes down on us.”

“Roger that,” said Moose. He spoke into his throat mic. “McCoy, tell air support to cease fire. Prepare for dust-off out front. Pop green smoke. Salazar is confirmed dead. Out.”

Moose walked over and pulled his phone from an inside pocket and took a quick picture of what was left of Joaquin Salazar’s face. He sent it off to CIA HQ for confirmation. He looked up at Duane. “Good shooting. Let’s roll.”

Duane shrugged. “Not really good shooting,” he thought to himself. He’d done some fine shooting in his life. This was more like a mob hit. Whatever. The drug lord was dead and heroin would be interrupted for five minutes.

They both jogged out the front of the open garage doors to where green smoke was swirling under the incoming rotors. The thump of the birds was always a happy sound at the end of the op, provided it wasn’t a medevac.

CHAPTER 62

Apo and the Hard Facts

While all hell was breaking loose at Joaquin Salazar’s compound, Apo pulled off the road in a quiet stand of trees not too far outside Arista. He scouted around on foot to make sure he was alone, and then returned to the truck and opened the rear doors.

Apo used the light on his phone to begin inspecting the weapon closer. It was large, sitting on an old wooden pallet so someone could use a forklift to move it later. He took his time, starting at one end of the weapon, and examined every part. Mostly, it looked like a large metal cylinder with very thick wires coiled around it, mounted on a huge battery box. The cylinder was bronze colored and thick, and inside, Apo could see lots of wires and electronics.

There was a control panel, but someone had been very careful about not writing any instructions on it. Not Arabic, not Cyrillic, not Chinese, not English. It was
clean
.

Apo stood and stared, annoyed that he couldn’t find numbers or markings of any kind. The damn thing was made
somewhere
, and they
had
to have left a clue. He started over again, this time pulling wires and taking things apart. He looked at each piece he pulled off for any type of number or letter or symbol.
Somewhere
on this thing there had to be a key to its source. He was on his hands and knees looking when his hand slid across the pallet and gave him a nice splinter.

“Fucker!” he cursed, pulling his hand away and pulling out the piece of wood. He shined his light on the pallet that had hurt his hand. “
Sonnnnofabitch
. . .”

Perso-Arabic script is a writing system based on Arabic script and used by speakers of the Persian language, typically known as Farsi. Had anyone other than an Arab-speaker like Apo seen the squiggles in the wood, they wouldn’t have looked twice. Farsi letters are script, and letters connect to each other almost exclusively to form words. In this case, after making sure that they had filed off every serial number and letter to “scrub” the weapon of its origins, it was the dumbest oversight ever that blew their cover.

The wood had been stamped with a simple seal, showing its official status, lest a pile of unguarded pallets be stolen by someone needing firewood or building materials for a modest home in Iran. “Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics” was clearly marked on the wood next to Apo’s splinter.

Apo just stared. He turned on the camera on his phone and took a clear picture of the stamp, then began looking over every inch of the pallet. He found the same seal had been stamped on six other pieces of the wood, your basic “do not touch” warning if found outside a building. Apo took pictures of the others as well.

He wrote a quick note to Director Holstrum:

Definitive proof of origin. The Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics is stamped in six places on the transportation pallet in Farsi. This weapon came from Iran. I am quite certain of this. The weapon had been carefully scrubbed to remove all markings. This was a simple oversight. They’re cold busted. IRAN.

He attached the pictures and hit “send.” He sat in the truck steaming, thinking, “Stupidest fucking treaty in the history of the US. Well this oughta blow that shit up real quick.”

Holstrum responded quickly:
Stay where you are. MOP will pick you up within the hour.

Apo hopped down from the truck and took another patrol to make sure he was safe. There wasn’t even a goat around. He hunkered down and waited.

***

Duane and Carl jogged over to Moose. Carl looked stressed. “We gotta go. Apo has the package. The boss wants us there now.”

“Okay, let’s get back in the bird,” said Moose.

“No. Just us. You guys will go back with the general. They’re going to give us a ride back to the jet, and we’re heading over to a small airfield near Arista where we’ll link up with Apo. He gets to ride home in style with us. You guys will catch a C-130 or some shitbird, as per usual. Sorry, wasn’t my call.”

“Apo okay?” asked Moose.

“Yes, sir. Superman saves the day again. We’ll get him home in one piece. See you in Virginia, or never. Never know in our line of work.” He extended a handshake. “You and your guys are tip-top. I’ll go to war with you any day.”

“Thanks,” said Moose. He looked at Duane. “You, too. You bagged the prize.”

Duane shrugged. “It was a cheap kill, but I’ll sleep just fine. Guy was a sociopathic, mass-murdering drug pusher killing kids in the States. Fuck ‘em.”

Moose nodded. “Fuck ‘em.”

The MOP jogged off to a waiting bird, where the general had ordered the crew to take them back to their jet. The rest of the team piled back in a more crowded helicopter, now that they were one bird short, and headed west to Mexico City, where they’d catch a flight home in the morning.

***

Carl and Duane made it to their jet in thirty minutes, and then went max speed to the small airstrip in Arista. Carl spent the entire ride speaking with Director Holstrum. When they landed, they checked Apo’s GPS locator on their handheld tablet and called him.

“Your taxi’s here. We see you. Less than a klick from where we are. Drive here. Take the road in front of you and just go straight, due south towards Arista. The airfield is a right turn. There’s a few lights out here, the only ones around. You shouldn’t have a hard time finding us. Not too many three-million-dollar jets out here, either.”

Apo replied, “Wilco,” and hung up. He started up the old truck and bounced along the road, hoping he’d get a chance to brief the president in person, or at least the Joint Chiefs—anyone with whom he’d spoken at least a dozen times before being told his intelligence wasn’t reliable. By the time he made his turn at the lights, he was pumped up and pissed off. He was about to make a left into the airfield when Carl and Duane stepped out in front of his truck waving. He stopped short and put it in park.

Apo jumped down from the truck and yelled to Duane. “Jesus, dude! I almost ran you over—it’s dark as shit out here.”

“Sorry. We’re good to go. Leave the truck there.”

Apo was confused. “Leave it here? Who’s coming for it?”

“You’ll see, later on. We gotta move now—let’s go.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“You know I don’t make the rules. We gotta go. Right this second.”

Apo followed Duane as they walked back toward the only jet sitting out on the small tarmac. Carl reached into his pocket and pulled out a small strobe, turned it on, and gently tossed it up on top of the truck, where it would illuminate on the HUD helmet of the Viper that Director Holstrum had called in on the president’s orders.

By the time the three of them got to the jet and taxied down the runway, the Viper was almost on station. As the nose of the MOP jet lifted off, Roz spoke to her gunner, TK.

“Positive visual on the strobe. Direct orders are
overkill
. We’re to return without ammunition, you copy?”

“Without ammunition?” asked TK. “You mean, everything? Like,
everything
?”

“Copy that. Every bullet, rocket, and missile is to hit that target. We’re to leave a large crater with no trace of what was there. Do you copy?”

“Affirmative. Seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

“I say again, do you copy?”

“Roger that. Strobe identified. Target acquired. Switching to missiles.”

For the next four minutes, the Viper hovered and emptied its weapons systems into what had been a truck with a large metal weapon in the back. The explosions were large enough to be seen from the jet as they took off, and the shock waves actually bumped the jet as it climbed to cruising altitude. Apo unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped across the cabin to the opposite window.

“Are you fucking
kidding
me? We had
proof
of Iranian intentions to attack our fucking country! Why the fuck would you
destroy
it?” Apo watched in anger as the tracers made beautiful fireworks from the nose of the Viper to the exploding ground below. The Viper seemed quite intent on making sure nothing would be left but a large crater.

“Not our call,” said Carl. “Sit back and enjoy the flight.”

Apo stood up and held the seat, his hand squeezing it so hard the leather was close to tearing. He yelled up front, “You got any fucking booze on this bird?”

“
Always
. Rear cabinet. Open it and bring glasses up front, too. You ain’t the only one who’s pissed, brother. But we don’t make policy, do we?”