Shadow of Death (8 page)

CHAPTER 22

Sierra Madre de Chiapas Mountains

The truck groaned as it chugged along up the steep incline. The weight of the EMP was straining the old tractor-trailer. Hamid and his men were cramped in the cab without air-conditioning and had been driving for two hours, heading south to the Pacific Ocean. A small town called Puerto Arista would be their final destination, where the truck would be loaded aboard a ship heading north to the American coast. It was only about 175 miles in a straight line, but like most parts of rural Mexico, there were no straight lines. The country roads meandered up and down the Sierra Madres, sometimes turning to gravel or dirt. More than once, they had to wait for cows to move out of their way.

Two black SUVs accompanied the truck, one in front, the other tailing. Felix rode shotgun in the front vehicle with Marco driving, while the second SUV drove behind the truck with four of their men, all heavily armed. They had left the state of Tabasco and passed the city of Chiapas with its five and a half million people. They were now in a poor rural part of Mexico, where tens of thousands of indigenous people lived. These were the descendants of the Mayans, Zoques, and Chiapa. The roads were extremely poor here, and the trucks were down to ten kilometers per hour as they bumped along the gravel path.

As the convoy rolled into a small village south of the city, half a dozen men with guns walked out in front of their trucks. They were a scary-looking bunch, covered from head to toe in gang tattoos. One of the men held up his hand, and the SUV came to a stop. Felix opened his door and stepped out with his hands up about chest high to show he was unarmed. They recognized each other from the last visit.

“El Gato sends his respects to El Mazatlecos. I brought you the other half of the tax.”

The man approached Felix and stared at him, stone cold—just as happy to slaughter them all without a second thought. The man’s facial tattoos included small stars across his cheeks for each confirmed kill. He had a small galaxy on his face. He held out his hand.

Felix pulled a large, thick envelope from his waistband and handed it to the man. He looked inside briefly and yelled over to one of the others, who hopped up on the running board of the SVU. At first, Felix was afraid something bad was about to happen, but the man simply tied a large yellow cloth to their side mirror. It was covered in gang symbols of the Mazatlecos. Similar yellow flags were tied to the other two vehicles as well.

“You’ll be fine to Arriaga. Then you can deal with the Sinaloa pigs.” It was no secret that the Mazatlecos and the Sinaloas were in a turf war. El Gato had managed to stay out of it, and was happy to avoid conflict with both of them, for now. In another year, he’d be even stronger, and then he’d finish the Mazatlecos thugs once and for all.

The Mazatlecos enforcers disappeared into the side streets, and the small convoy continued rumbling south toward the Pacific, bumping along the rutted gravel road.

CHAPTER 23

USS
Forrest Sherman

The guided missile destroyer slowed to a stop. Many of the 380 sailors were topside at the rails to watch the morning’s excitement. The USS
Greeneville
gently broke the surface less than two hundred meters off the starboard, like a giant black whale. It was astounding to witness a massive 362-foot Los Angeles–class submarine just appear on the surface of the ocean. One minute, empty ocean—and the next, one of the deadliest instruments of war known to man just sitting there with another smaller submarine on its deck.

The team watched from the stern of the ship, where a small ferrying craft was in the water with four sailors ready to move out.

Jon smacked Pete. “You call Uber?”

“That’s it, Frogmen! Get it in gear!” barked Moose. The seven of them climbed down a ladder to the waiting vessel, which bobbed up and down next to the hull of the destroyer. Each man carried a sixty-pound pack, plus weapons. They were armed with HK416 assault rifles with suppressors and laser red-dot sights, except for Hodges, who carried his M40A5 sniper rifle. The team had ditched the ceramic chest plates in their Kevlar vests to save the weight, and wore OD green digi-camo uniforms to blend better into the dark green Mexican forest.

They helped each other into the boat, which then took off like a cannon shot across the water toward the sub. The skipper of the submarine held the deck just above water, with the bow raised and the stern slightly submerged, forming an underwater boat ramp. When the small boat reached the rear of the sub, the captain killed the engine, and then he and his assistant pulled up the outboard motor. The raft then slid straight up to the aft deck of the submarine until it came to rest on the steel hull.

The SEALs hopped off the raft onto the black hull of the sub, directly behind their Advanced SEAL Delivery System—the smaller submarine piggybacked on the
Greeneville
. They said a thank-you to the sailors, who pushed off the sub and roared back toward their ship. The SEAL team then moved quickly toward the conning tower of the submarine, where the hatch popped open and another sailor appeared.

Moose snapped a salute. “Request permission to come aboard!”

The XO smiled. “Well if I said no, I guess you’re fucked. Welcome aboard.”

Moose smiled, not expecting such a casual response, but the man had a point. They were sixteen hundred miles from Virginia, and even SEALs couldn’t swim that far. Probably.

The team members climbed up the ladder and down into the hatch. The XO introduced them to the skipper of the boat, who was cordial, before taking them aft to their small rooms where they’d bunk up for some sleep before starting their mission. Each of them took the Ambien in their kits and caught some serious sack time. They’d have long days ahead.

***

Ten hours later, the team was up and fed, and ready to move out. They were ten miles out to sea in the Gulf of Mexico, and at midnight, it was pitch-black topside. The submarine had surfaced again, and the sailors aboard the
Greeneville
were extremely busy preparing the Advanced SEAL Delivery System for launch. A crew of two would be onboard the small submarine that would bring the SEALs in close to shore.

The special operations officer led them to the sixty-five-foot midget sub that sat on top of the
Greeneville
. The team climbed in while other sailors removed the locking assembly. If the inside of the
Greeneville
was cramped, the inside of the ASDS was slightly more spacious than a coffin. The men sat in a small compartment on two benches that faced each other, with their gear at their feet between them. The
Greeneville
submerged and the two operators of the ASDS went to work clearing the larger submarine. In the smaller sub, the movements of the ocean were much more noticeable, and the men sat back and smiled, enjoying the ride.

Frogmen, moving silently underwater. Pure joy.

Twenty minutes later, the sub slowed and surfaced, its top hatch barely breaking the surface of the black ocean on a moonless night. Ripper and Moose were the first up and out. They walked in ankle-deep water to a rear compartment, which they unlocked and pulled open. The two of them pulled out the deflated F470 Combat Rubber Raiding Craft and laid it out on the deck. Ripper pressed the launch button, and the craft began rapidly self-inflating. As soon as the black rubber raft was rigid, Moose shot a thumbs-up to McCoy, who was helping the others silently pull out their gear and weapons. They put the gear on the rubber deck in the center of the raft and then took their places straddling the gunwales.

Once in position, Pete McCoy took his place at the engine and turned on the electric outboard motor. Ray Jensen sat on his right and turned on his GPS guidance system, strapped to his left arm. With the other five straddling the gunwales, the seven of them took off silently at twenty knots.

The CRRC skipped silently along the swells until it arrived at the mouth of the river that led into the lagoon. It was now almost 0400 and they were hustling to stay on schedule, but when they reached the lagoon, they had to slow down.

As the boat slowed, Moose looked over at Pete, who explained in hand signals that the depth was approximately one meter. With occasional flotsam and mangrove stumps in the water, they had to be cautious about getting stuck. During the day, the lagoon was a busy place, with lots of oystermen out in boats. Now, still several hours before dawn, there was no sign of any human activity whatsoever on the water.

They reached the far side of the lagoon and the water turned to grassy swamp. Immense mangrove trees bordered the lagoon, and their giant root systems made navigation extremely difficult. When the raft bottomed out and they had gone as far as they could go, the team slid off the gunwales into the knee-deep muddy water. They pulled the raft along as they slogged through the swamp into the mangroves. When the trees became too thick to allow the raft further, Moose turned to Pete and signaled a slice under his chin from ear to ear. The men pulled their KA-BAR knives as Pete hit the scuttle button on the raft, which began emptying out the bladders. The men speeded the process by puncturing their raft with multiple stabs, and the black rubber boat deflated. When it was fully deflated, the team pushed it under the water and wedged it under a mangrove. Their very expensive electric engine was jammed in behind the rubber, where it would rust for the next few hundred years.

They had just purchased their one-way ticket.

CHAPTER 24

El Gato’s Estate
Friday Night

Six miles west of where the team was setting up a security perimeter in a dark, mosquito-infested swamp, Apo, now “Alex,” was sleeping in a king-sized featherbed in the mansion of one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins. El Gato had offered his guest whichever women he wanted for the evening, but Apo explained that he was tired and drunk, and would prefer to just sleep. The ugly host didn’t understand such an answer, and took two of the women to his own room, as he stumbled along the hallway, drunk on tequila and champagne.

As soon as Apo was alone, he locked his door and stripped down to his underwear, then climbed into the large featherbed. He assumed, for safety’s sake, that he was under surveillance, and was very careful about using his specially encrypted phone to send a secure text to the team.

Under the covers, he simply typed:

Inside villa. Will try and remain for Sunday AM.

After he hit “send,” he placed the phone under his pillow and slept, feeling slightly guilty about just how wonderful the featherbed felt. He was asleep in minutes.

***

Moose’s wrist vibrated and he tapped the small screen of his watch. Apo’s message scrolled across the tiny screen.

“He’s in,” he whispered to the team. His men had found a dry location deep in the woods, a kilometer west of the swampland at the lagoon’s border. It was an area of cypress trees, and the men piled up pine needles to make a dry, comfortable floor beneath their ponchos.

Ray took first watch, and the rest of the men crashed for the night. The sun was up two hours later, but the men continued to sleep, taking shifts every two hours. Saturday would be a long, boring day of trying to remain invisible as they waited for night to come again. They ate cold MREs and tried their best to sleep.

A rustling in the canopy above him roused Jon. He opened his eyes and looked up into the trees. He spoke very slowly and quietly. “
What the actual fuck is that?
”

“Flying German shepherd?” joked Pete.

“Damn. I’ve
never
seen bats that big. Not even in the Amazon or Africa. That’s insane,” whispered Jon. “Maybe they’ll eat some of these damn mosquitos.”

“Not those. Vampire bats, baby. Spectral bats are meat eaters,” whispered Eric.

“And why the fuck would you even know that?” asked Jon.

Eric shrugged. “When I get bored I Google shit. Ugliest things on the planet.”

“I think this dude El Gato may have them beat,” said Jon.

They remained on their backs, staring up at the bats. Eric broke the silence with his random whisper. “You up?”

“Yeah,” said Jon, his eyes closed.

“Before we left, I’m talking to Apo about how he’d been watching me shoot. Sneaky little fucker. And out of nowhere, he asks me, ‘You got a laptop?’ Just totally random, you know?”

“So?”

“So he asks me if I got a video camera on mine so I can Skype and shit. And I said no, and he says, ‘Good,’ just like that.”

There was silence for a moment.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked Jon, his eyes now open.

“I don’t know. I think these spies do some shit with our computers that people don’t think about.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said Jon.

“Okay, ladies, keep it down to a roar,” whispered Ripper. “Get some sleep. We have a long hump when it gets dark again, followed by World War III. You’ll need your beauty sleep when the shit hits the fan.” He slid his boonie hat down over his eyes and attempted to go back to sleep, trying very hard to erase the image of the giant bat’s face.

The
plop
noise of bat excrement landing near Ripper’s foot made him raise his boonie hat and shake his head. Moose opened his eyes and grinned at his friend.

“We do get to visit some interesting parts of the world, don’t we?”

Ripper scowled and spoke so quietly Moose could barely hear him. “Man, I just keep wondering what the fuck we’re doing nowadays. Couple of years ago, you and me were kicking Taliban ass and fighting a war. Now we’re fucking rent-a-cops walking through Mexico to arrest a drug pusher. It ain’t what we signed up for, man. This is bullshit, bro.”

Moose leaned up on his elbows and scanned around to make sure no one could hear them. “Vinny,” he began—
that
got Ripper’s attention. Moose only called Ripper “Vinny” a few times a year. “Not only is this
not
a bullshit assignment, it might be the most important thing we ever do.”

“Arresting a drug lord is more important than capturing Saddam, killing bin Laden, or wasting Afghans who want to turn the clocks back a thousand years? How you figure?”

“Remember Rear Admiral Puckett?”

“Sure. He was a righteous officer.”

“Know why he retired?”

Ripper scowled. “Nope.”

“He retired because his sixteen-year-old son ODed on heroin and his wife lost her fucking mind. Navy lost a great officer and that whole family is fucked. And it happens every day, bro.
Every
day
, in
every
city. Rich kids, poor kids, every color kid, smart kids, dumb kids. All doing heroin and dropping dead. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have to invade the US, they can just keep supplying cheap smack to little kids who are too stupid to say no. Last time I was home I heard no less than five stories about local kids all either in rehab or dead from that shit. These ain’t hard-core hoodlums who’ve been doing drugs for years; these are regular old schoolkids trying heroin the way you’d try a beer in high school. And they end up dead.

“The shit we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and Africa and all over the fucking world, I’m not saying it wasn’t important—but this? This is every bit as important as anything we’ve ever done. Next time you feel like you’re wasting your time because we ain’t standing toe to toe with the hajis or some Russian tank division, just think about Admiral Puckett watching his son lowered into the ground because some Taliban fuck in Afghanistan managed to get his shit into the US. Every mission we’ve ever been on has been personal in one way or another. But this one? This one’s way closer to home than you think it is. We ain’t going to stop drugs coming into the US, but maybe, just maybe, we help Mexico get its shit together and save a couple of little kids.”

Moose lowered his hat and closed his eyes. Ripper sat with his hands folded across his chest for a full minute before finally quietly saying, “Okay. Thanks.”