Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 4

  Below the gunner, the Mexican commander continued to scream, “Back up! It’s an ambush” into his radio. The entire convoy had stopped, but hadn’t begun reversing yet. He then switched frequencies to call the SEAL Team commander and alert him to the ambush and likely delay in arrival since they would need to re-route. “Blackbird Six. Blackbird Six,” he said, waiting for a response. They were the last words he ever spoke.

  One of the Godesto leaders saw the convoy had halted and would advance no further into the killzone. As the convoy’s lead machine gunner fired at the men who had pushed the cars into the street, the ambush leader screamed into his radio for his men to stay down. None of the men in their hidden positions believed the Claymores would wound any of them with their backblast, but it was better safe than sorry. And there were a lot of Claymores out there.

  The leader ducked his head below the window, checked to confirm his ear plugs were in, and squeezed the clacker, from which all the Claymores were daisy-chained.

  On the third squeeze, a monstrous explosion erupted in the street. Windows up and down the road imploded and shattered from the concussion alone, while down in the tight street thousands of ball bearings flew out and decimated everything in their path. The mines had been aimed well, and the Mexican troops, riding in unarmored Humvees (American hand-me-downs from years before), took heavy casualties from the Claymores. Nearly the entire front half of the convoy was killed or wounded.

  The dead looked as if they had been been blown to pieces by heavy buckshot fired from a shotgun. Their skin had been more than just chopped up by the ball bearings; it had been ripped and torn and shredded. Mangled flesh hung from their bones like strips of rotted cloth.

  The living at the front of the column sat wounded and stunned, their eardrums shattered and skin shredded. And though they knew (intuitively and through their training) that they must move in order to survive, their brains refused to move, racked instead with shock and indecision: the classic initial effects of bad concussions.

  Even the men in the rear of the convoy were rocked by the shockwave and had to open and close their mouths to relieve the pressure in their heads and shake the cobwebs out. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t get enough time.

  Godesto men emerged from behind windows along one side of the ambush line and at the very end, rushing up behind the stalled vehicles that blocked the path forward. It was a textbook “L-shaped ambush” and the men were as well-trained and compensated as any army that had ever taken the field.

  These veterans who had fought for years on street corners and dark alleys opened up with AK-74s along the smoky, black-scarred street. Bullets snapped and whipped into the convoy. Unaffected Humvees further back in the column tried to get unjammed. Their gunners returned fire, but were quickly felled from hidden gunman. Medium machine guns, resting on bipods, had been carried out into the street behind the two junk cars. The machine gunners began firing across the killing zone, while above them, designated marksmen and snipers assisted others who fired AK-74s to help suppress the enemy, taking out those men in the turrets who were still alive.

  Two more Godesto men launched RPGs at vehicles still moving. Explosions flipped and smashed Humvees as if they were toys. As the return fire from the Mexican Quick Reaction Force died down, Hernan Flores’s men rallied and rose up behind the cars. They formed a line and moved down the street, weapons at the ready. To their left, their comrades in the windows continued to provide covering fire, suppressing those who were still alive.

  Methodically, the men on line moved through the killzone. They executed survivors and fired rounds into those who lay still, just to be sure.

  Three Godesto pickup trucks rolled into the now silent area. Through the burning vehicles and bleeding bodies, the new arrivals salvaged weapons, flak jackets, and radios.

  Three of the Godesto had been wounded by the Mexican Quick Reaction Force, and they were rushed to waiting doctors, who were paid handsomely for working from their homes and not reporting the wounded. With the casualties removed and the dead picked clean, the Godesto men spread gasoline on the vehicles that weren’t already burning and lit them up.

  Back at the warehouse, the SEALs moved toward the last part of the building -- a lone office, likely where the manager worked. They had no idea about the ambush on their Quick Reaction Force, since its commander had died before he could get his warning out by radio.

  Resistance had been stiffer than expected in the warehouse, but the end was in sight. They’d be back at base drinking beers and cleaning their weapons in no time.

  Six SEALs moved along the bay of the warehouse, covering stacks of boxes and crates as they advanced the final feet toward the remaining office. Other SEAL Team members covered entrances and exits throughout the building, ensuring more of the enemy didn’t enter the warehouse. In one office, two wounded SEALs waited for medevac.

  A cartel thug edged his AK out the door of the manager’s office and blasted a long burst toward the approaching SEALs. The SEALs had been moving toward the office in a smooth, toe-to-heel fashion favored by special operators. Like silent ninjas. But these ninjas had MP-5s and M4s trained on their destination, and as the rounds flew toward them from the gunman, they did not panic like raw recruits. Instead they returned fire -- accurately, of course -- to suppress the man, and kept moving forward.

  Their rounds forced the man back inside the room and before he could regain his nerve to engage the men again, the SEALs stacked on the door and threw a flashbang into the room.

  The explosion blinded and rocked the thug, as well as his partner, allowing the SEALs to easily enter the room. They covered their sectors, recognized the disoriented workers, and noticed their weapons. This took a fraction more than half a second, and the SEALs’ weapons tore into the men. The time for surrendering had long passed, and knowing that two of their brothers were down and bleeding didn’t exactly put the SEALs in the mood for mercy.

  The men jerked and shook as the rounds ripped through them and then fell hard, twitching and bleeding grotesquely. The SEALs checked the ceiling and cleared the final dead space behind a desk.

  “All clear,” one of them said into his mic.

  The SEAL Team Leader radioed back to base.

  “Base, this is Blackbird Six. Objective secure.”

  Now, where the hell were those Mexican ground forces, the SEAL Team Leader wondered. He’d been trying to reach them after getting a call from their commander, but had lost all contact.

  Well, sometimes radios went down, and urban environments always proved challenging for radio communication. Buildings often blocked the signals on the encrypted radios.

  A single man watched the factory from a block away. The helicopters had zoomed off, but he could hear them circling just a short distance away. He dialed his prepaid cellphone and said, “Stage Two commencing.”

  With that, he pocketed the phone, turned his back to the target, and put on a pair of hearing protection earmuffs. He cringed as he pressed the button.

  Inside the warehouse, explosions rocked the building. SEALs were thrown against walls and blown into the air. The survivors stumbled to their feet and immediately began assessing the damage. As they tried to determine what had happened, they started patching up the wounded and rallying their strength. At first glance, it looked like they might just make it out, but then the cracked pillars and roof began to crumble.

  Upon seeing the flash in the night sky, the Blackhawk pilots knew something terrible had happened. They rushed back to the scene and pulled up in horror as the building collapsed in on itself.

  “No!” screamed one of the pilots, who knew three of the men in the building. Then he heard the beeping warning in his ears and knew a bad night for the SEALs on the ground had just turned worse for him.

  He yanked the Blackhawk left, but a missile screeching toward him adjusted with his move and exploded into the tail of the helicopter, throwing it into a tailspin. It landed hard and the tail flames ignited
the spewing gas -- all two hundred gallons of it. All of the occupants died in the wreckage, trapped in the inferno.

  The SEAL Team snipers who had witnessed the scene managed to choke down their horror. But only barely. No way did any of the SEALs survive the building falling in on them, and even if they did, rescue personnel would need to arrive immediately. And given that they were deep in Hernan Flores’s territory, that wouldn’t be happening.

  The snipers knew they were in deep shit and it would take all of their collective wits to get out of this one alive, so despite feeling enraged and helpless, they knew there was nothing they could do.

  So, they slipped off into the night, livid that they couldn’t spill more blood and horrified at leaving so many of their comrades behind. But four men against possibly hundreds just wasn’t good odds, even when you were four badass SEALs.

  At the Mexican Presidential Palace, Stage Three of Hernan Flores’s operation commenced. The men, who were spread about in positions all around the Palace, received the same text. A single word sent to each recipient: “Go.”

  At the five-story apartment complex overlooking the Presidential Palace, the four men on the fifth floor began their role in the attack. The men had unpacked the duffel bags they carried and pulled out three RPGs, as well as prepositioned additional rounds.

  The room was dark with no lights on anywhere, and the men used their familiarity with the weapons to load and arm them. Three waited with shouldered RPGs, listening for welcome sounds in the distance. A fourth covered the door in the prone, an AK aimed at it should anyone try to breach the door.

  Seven blocks away from the RPG team, more Godesto men sprang into action upon getting the text that read “Go.” Men leaped out of trucks and vans, brandishing AK’s and M-16’s in a small public park area that was lit by a few scattered streetlights. A quick perimeter was established in the forested area of the park while men yanked tarps off the trucks, carried equipment toward an open area typically used by picnickers, and set up a pair of 81 mm mortars. Police had been paid off to avoid the area, but the men on the perimeter would not hesitate to drop anyone stupid enough to show up.

  The mortars were leveled and aimed while other men cracked open ammo crates and prepared for an all-out barrage against the Presidential Palace. A woman walking home from a long night bartending saw the men setting up with their weapons, screamed, and fled. The few people who were up at the late hour either ignored the shriek or shut their windows in fear.

  No one would call the authorities. Ratting out cartel gunmen in the middle of the night was a fast way to die in Mexico.

  The distance was so short that missing would be difficult, but a spotter watched the Presidential Palace ready to call in adjustments for the mortars. And while it might seem improbable to most that Hernan Flores’s men could get their hands on mortars and ammo, this was simply not the case.

  The mortars were borrowed from a Mexican Army captain who was being paid $30,000 for their use. The captain had also stockpiled the ammunition for the attack by underfiring the allotted rounds for numerous training exercises the past three months. And since the troops under the captain had no idea how many live rounds they were allotted for each session, no one was the wiser.

  Bottom line: The rounds wouldn’t be missed and if the police intercepted Flores’s men after the attack and managed to get their hands on the mortars, the serial numbers would show them reported as stolen. The captain would still be in the clear as he’d been told to report them as stolen if he didn’t have them back in his possession within two hours to the minute after they had been picked up. And the captain was so nervous that he waited in his vehicle a mile from the front gate, desperate to get the mortars back into the armory as quickly as possible. Thirty thousand dollars was nice, but the stress it was causing him was about to kill him. He really hoped they were only being used against another cartel’s outpost, as he’d been told, but the thought they could be used otherwise only brought more sweat to his forehead and more pain to his stomach. He was covered in sweat and on the verge of puking, but his family had been threatened and the money was, well, good for a night’s work...

  Back at the mortar firing site, a man who was obviously in charge called out a final grid point and the first rounds were dropped into the mortar tubes. The rounds fired -- thump, thump -- from the two 81 mm mortars. They arced high into the sky, over the buildings in front of them and thousands of feet into the air.

  And after what seemed like a minute but was more like thirty seconds, they slammed into the compound of the Presidential Palace. Both landed long -- one shot struck near a Humvee on the perimeter, another outside the compound and into the side of a popular coffee shop, where it blasted out glass and flipped tables and chairs.

  The spotter saw the impacts and said into a phone, on which the mortar commander waited, “Drop fifty. Fire for effect.”

  Inside the Presidential Palace, guards rushed into the sleeping quarters of President Roberto Rivera and practically dragged him out of the bed before he was even awake.

  “We must get your family down into the basement for safety,” one screamed.

  Rivera, half-awake, grabbed his wife by the arm and the two rushed out of the room. They had started down the hall when Rivera stopped and ripped his forearm from the guard’s hand.

  “What about my kids?”

  “We’re getting them,” the guard said. “Let’s go! We don’t have much time.”

  The mortar team commander heard the adjustment from the spotter, closed the phone, and dropped it in the pocket of his jeans. He instructed his men to drop fifty on their mortars, and he spoke these words without haste or worry. After all, the police had been bribed, and the perimeter was dotted with gunmen who could deal with any cops who had unhealthy ideas about honor and duty. He felt certain no authorities would enter their area until well after they had fired their massive volley and departed.

  Besides, his men fed off of his confidence and it was important they get this right. Hernan Flores and his Godesto Cartel had spent a fortune on this operation. Paying former Army soldiers to fire into the country’s Presidential compound was not cheap, but threats on family members helped secure their loyalty.

  The men shifted the angle of the mortars to move the impact back fifty yards. With a slight final adjustment and double-check of the sights, the ammo men began dropping the mortar rounds in as fast as possible. They nudged the tubes to the left or right with each shot -- they didn’t want each round landing in the same impact zone, and they wanted to cover the entire area.

  It was an immediate suppression drill -- a simple one they all knew -- and each tube had ten rounds. The men fired all the rounds in twenty-five seconds.

  The delay needed to call in the adjustment and more accurately aim the mortars gave the Palace security detail time to get the Rivera family in the Presidential Palace’s basement, which doubled as a bunker. Guards slammed shut a safe-like steel door, and looked up with obvious relief to now be under a reinforced roof.

  Rivera’s assistant head of security -- the actual head of security was at home asleep -- double-checked his headcount for the people in the room. After confirming that the President and his entire family were safe, he motioned to two men.

  “Draw your weapons and cover the door” he said.

  It was a bold request and the two men hesitated. Behind them, a bit of anger crossed President’s Rivera’s face, but the assistant head of security ignored it, as well as the questioning looks from his men. This wasn’t the time to worry about feelings -- either his or theirs.

  “Do it,” he said.

  He turned away from the guards and the President and saw the look of alarm on the face of the First Lady, who held her kids tightly. He shrugged off the looks. He’d take his ass-chewing tomorrow if they made it through the night. And with that thought, he lifted his radio.

  “The President is secure,” he announced. “Get the react force on the line and alert the reserve
force and have them scramble to our position.”

  Four platoons of men, all soldiers wearing flak jackets and helmets, and carrying long rifles, rushed from two large rooms in the inner sanctum of the Presidential Palace. They spilled out onto the grounds and reinforced the perimeter and the guard stations. Their numbers swelled the sixty already in place by an extra hundred men.

  The reserve force waited on a base twenty minutes from the Presidential Palace. A full battalion of additional soldiers -- a thousand men -- comprised the reserve force and upon getting the call, they began forming up and grabbing their gear, piling into tarp-covered heavy trucks and roaring toward the area.

  Back in the bunker, the assistant head of security then used his radio to request a status report from each position on the perimeter. He still didn’t know yet what had happened -- whether it was a car bomb, a rocket attack, or a grenade.

  Death approached slowly, as only a mortar barrage can. In a world of super-sonic weapons, the high-flying and slow-falling mortars were hardly the sexiest of weapons. But it was their high arc and nearly vertical descent that allowed them to clear walls and buildings between them and the target; these things that blocked direct fire weapons like machine guns and missiles proved no obstacle for their indirect fire. And it was this nearly vertical arc that caused such destruction.

  Buildings have strong walls. Tanks, thick armor. Yet neither has reinforced ceilings or roofs. Hit them from the top and they crater and implode like an icing-covered cake. And on this night, the buildings and vehicles in the Presidential Palace proved no different.

  Flores’s men only had basic ammunition -- High Explosive M374s, which had been given to the Mexican Army by the United States -- but it didn’t matter. The nine-pound shells exploded with such force that none of the structures stood a chance.