Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Read online

  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 unifo
rms 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 ar
med 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.