Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) Page 8

  All of the candidates were now looking at him, and conversations across the barracks courtyard stopped. A few pointed. The vehicle, and the grand entrance, had grabbed their attention. Probably also the fact that they had been there for two days doing all kinds of testing while his late arrival clearly implied he wasn’t in the same boat as them.

  This man wasn’t another candidate. He was their leader, they quickly guessed.

  Nick walked six feet away from the Yukon and stood straight, head held high, chest pushed out, eyes measuring and challenging every one of the people in the square.

  He threw his duffle bag to the ground looking disgusted, and then with a scoff and a look of derision, yelled out, “Listen up, and listen good. Name’s Nick Woods. I’m the man in charge here and some of you are going to be lucky enough to go on a nice little hunting trip with me. Rest of you will be changing diapers and cleaning gutters, or whatever the hell you do when you’re back home.”

  Nick’s voice echoed across the square, but many of those listening pulled in and closed ranks to hear him better. Nick could tell he was making an impression and embraced the moment. There was an intoxicating high that came from being in command again. From having men watch your every move, looking for weakness. Or inspiration. It all depended on the leader and Nick hadn’t felt this thrill for far too long.

  “Now,” Nick continued, “I can’t say where we’re going until the final team members are selected, and it’s obviously classified until then, but I can tell you they speak Spanish, it’s to our south, and it involves drug cartels.”

  Nick paused.

  “Of course, that could be just about any country to our south.”

  Several people laughed and Nick saw one guy nudge another man with an elbow and a smile. Nick made a note of his face and tried to memorize it.

  “I’m telling you now.” He paused for effect. “The folks we’re going to tangle with? They’re meaner than hell. They’re poor and don’t have a lot to live for. And they’re really well equipped. We’ll be out-numbered, we’ll be on their turf, and they’ll know our every move -- damn near every person down there will be sharing our location and activity to the cartel. Some out of fear. Some for money.”

  Nick paused to stare down a few of the people around him, then continued, “I’m here to tell you. There are going to be a bunch of us who don’t come home, so leave now if you have much to live for. Me? I don’t have a damn thing to live for, so I’ll be leading from the front. You can bet your ass on that.

  “But I ain't got time for babysitting, and if I catch anyone in the corner crying and feeling sorry for themselves in the middle of a nasty firefight, I’ll shoot you myself. I’m not kidding on that point, and I’m not kidding about how dangerous it’s going to be.

  “My number one priority will be accomplishing this mission. I will achieve this or I’ll die trying. My number two priority is bringing home as many men as possible, so if you’re hunkered down in the middle of a firefight, then you’re not helping us achieve either priority number one or priority number two. And for that, they used to shoot men. Call it cowardice. Dereliction of duty. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. You hunker down like a coward while we’re in the middle of the shit, I will shoot your ass.

  “We’ve gotten soft the past hundred years or so, but I’m old school, and it’s pulled me out of some places I wasn’t supposed to make it out of. And where we’re going, there won’t be any outside observers. I’ll write up that your ass died from enemy fire and no one will ever know the difference.”

  Nick looked the crowd over with the icy eyes of a man who’d killed dozens of men. The men he saw were a bunch of hard-asses. He could tell. And yet still many of them broke away from his gaze. Nick knew he was tougher than rawhide leather and he didn’t intend to back down from a single man in the square, and he for damn sure didn’t intend to have to use rank to keep the men in line.

  Having made his point with his steely, cold look, he finished by booming, “When I walk away from here in a few seconds, if you’re having any second thoughts, just head on home. Nobody will hold it against you. Hell, it’s the smart move. There’s going to be a lot of us die, and you guys have been around long enough to know that there isn’t hardly anyone in America who’s going to give a shit when we do. Whoever decides to stay, I’ll be interviewing some of you in a bit.”

  Nick took a look at the men who had pushed furthest forward.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he asked.

  No one said anything.

  “I said,” Nick continued, raising his voice louder, “who’s in charge here?”

  Some of those crowded about looked down, while five or six looked toward a big, black man standing near Nick. Nick, who stood a very lean 5’11,” guessed this man to be 6’2.” And besides the height, he carried loads of thick muscle. A definite body builder, but not the biggest man in the plaza, Nick had already seen.

  “Are you Marcus?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said.

  It hadn’t been that hard to guess Marcus correctly. The man named Marcus had stood out in Nick’s mind as he reviewed the leadership files. None of his files had the actual names of the operators -- just their nicknames.

  Nick figured Marcus would be the natural leader of the entire group, having reached the rank of gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps, while also having done a three-year stint as a drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina: that bastion of discipline and hell which consistently forged some of America’s greatest warriors.

  Marcus had been a football standout at the University of Florida -- a ferocious middle linebacker and team captain, who most analysts pegged as a guaranteed first-round pick in the NFL should he leave at the end of his junior year. And he’d have certainly been a first-round pick if he waited until after his senior year and remained injury-free.

  Instead, the massive event that would come to be known as September 11 intervened, and Marcus dropped out of college and walked straight into the Marine Corps recruiting station. His dad had been a Marine, so it was the natural thing to do.

  Marcus had done several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq as a rifleman, then squad leader, and then platoon sergeant before heading to the drill field to become a drill instructor.

  Marcus had the size, charisma, and intelligence to be an officer, but his records indicated he turned down offer after offer from his superiors to go to Officer Candidate School. His file quoted him as saying he’d rather be behind a rifle on the line than in the rear behind a map.

  Nick pointed toward the men who had looked at Marcus when Nick had asked who was in charge.

  “Those men say you’re in charge,” Nick said.

  “They didn’t put anyone in charge when we arrived,” Marcus said. “I led some exercises, a couple of runs, and settled some disputes. I’m happy to lead, but I’m betting you’re not looking for leaders, but trigger pullers instead. So,” Marcus said, stepping forward and coming across as intimidating as anything Nick had seen in awhile, “mark me down as nothing but a rifleman and pick me to go. You won’t regret it.”

  Nick instantly liked Marcus. While Marcus held the rank of gunny in the Marine Corps, his file stated that the man had grown tired of the politics of the upper-echelon ranks, which had led him to apply to the CIA. Now, even at the age of thirty-three, Marcus had the build and tough look of a hard-nosed sergeant, not some older gunny beaten down by hard deployments.

  Marcus hadn’t allowed the higher rank and increased benefits to soften him, like so many others had.

  “You made the team,” Nick said. “Now step over here and talk to me.”

  Nick walked with Marcus a good thirty feet from the men. Nick stopped and angled around so that he could see the crowd, but Marcus’s back was to them -- the angle would help prevent the men from hearing what Marcus would say.

  “I need your help,” Nick said. “We don’t have much time. In fact, we need to have some men land in Mexico in just a f
ew days -- our timetable got pushed forward that much -- so I’m not going to be able to interview and test the men the way I’d want. Hell, we’re barely going to have time to even train together.”

  “I understand,” Marcus said, “but I’m still in. How can I help?”

  “I need to know who you’d pick if you were in my shoes,” Nick said. “You’ve been with the men for two days or more, and while I’ve studied their files, you’ve been around them more so I’d like to lean heavily on your recommendations.”

  “They’re all a solid group, but I’ve noticed some standouts,” Marcus said.

  And with that, Marcus began discussing some of the superstars he’d seen.

  Chapter 12

  Hernan Flores paced behind his desk. Things were going well and he knew he shouldn’t be pacing, but it was hard not to be a bit antsy when you had a meeting set up with the Butcher.

  Flores had been working with the Butcher for nearly five years now, and the crazy bastard made him uneasy. Flores had brought him on board once he was already a force worth fearing. Legend had it that the Butcher -- no one knew his name, or at least spoke of it -- started like most Mexican youth: broke, discouraged, and underfed.

  A small boy, he was bullied from the beginning and soon fell into the wrong crowd. He got arrested and sent to prison for theft and grand larceny of a vehicle, and it was in prison that the Butcher learned there were far worse things than being bullied by gang members.

  Such a small man, and lacking any cartel connections or protections behind bars, he was beaten and regularly sexually assaulted. Even as he took to weights and tried to defend himself, he discovered he was too small to add enough muscle to win any fights with force, and none of the boxing or punches he tried to teach himself proved effective.

  Discharged six years later, and knowing that with his career path he would eventually end up in prison again, he dove headlong into martial arts; something that wouldn’t discriminate against his small size. Fueled by the painful memories, he threw himself into karate. He studied it. Practiced it. Mastered it.

  When he wasn’t stealing or selling drugs, he was obsessively pursuing the skills of the fighting arts, and not just karate -- he branched off into dozens of styles. And while he developed skill, he never achieved the peace and enlightenment so many usually gained from it. He had been bullied, beaten, and raped too many times for that.

  With his new martial arts skills, the Butcher went on to track down many of his attackers -- from both his days as a youth and his days as an inmate, once the men were released. In every case, he had used his martial arts skills and his affinity for a blade -- sometimes a full-sized sword, other times a short tanto blade -- to beat or slash a man to death.

  Not that he was opposed to gun work; he knew they were necessary, and he certainly was practiced with them, as well, but he simply preferred blades and the fear they put into someone. Also, he loved how long it took for a man hacked and sliced sixty or eighty times to die, while they progressed from resistance to sheer terror to submission and begging for mercy. Not that mercy was ever given. He was the Butcher, after all, and his heart and desire for mercy had been crushed under the weight of several three-hundred-pound men.

  No one messed with the Butcher. He was unstable, easily provoked, and completely sick in the head. He enjoyed hurting people and lived to practice new fighting techniques on people. Kicks to the knee, watching the effects of a hyper-extended leg. Swordhand strikes to the neck, hearing an opponent gasp desperately for air. Hand strikes to the eyes, feeling the soft tissue tear under the steel-like pressure of his hardened fingers.

  Hernan Flores hated even thinking about the Butcher. He continued his pacing and took a swig of Jack Daniel’s. He knew he should kill the Butcher, and soon, but the man was so valuable that it was hard to do. Under Flores’s tutelage, he had gone from a psycho who lived on minor drug sales and stolen valuables to a hired hitman, good with gun and blade.

  Flores had asked for four of his best bodyguards to be at this meeting instead of the typical two, but it wouldn’t matter. The Butcher would be armed, and Flores sure as hell wasn’t going to try to disarm him again. He had tried that once inadvertently and the results had been disastrous.

  It happened the first time Flores and the Butcher were to meet. As was standard procedure, Flores’s guard at the front door had tried to take the man’s weapons from him -- no one entered the building to see the cartel leader without being checked and disarmed.

  The bodyguard -- a huge man -- carried a pistol and had an AK stacked in a closet, but he hadn’t seen any threat worth taking seriously with the small man before them. He hadn’t been warned who was arriving, which turned out to be a big oversight by Flores.

  The guard noticed the duffle bag the little man carried, and while the man looked unarmed with his tight black T-shirt and loose-fitting, black karate pants, complete with thin-soled martial arts shoes, the guard knew a weapon could be concealed in the bag (if not even a small weapon on the small man). And so the guard had walked around the desk to check out the mysterious man after confirming the man had an appointment with Flores.

  The small man -- built like a gymnast and not a bodybuilder -- had stepped back and said, “I’m not going upstairs or even another foot inside this building without this bag and the weapons it contains. This is Flores’s headquarters and I have no idea why he has summoned me, so I’m not going without this duffle bag, but I’m just one man, and I’m coming at Flores’s request, so I hardly think I’m a threat.”

  “It’s standard policy,” the guard said, bored, but with attitude creeping into his voice. He moved forward toward the little man.

  The Butcher took another step back to keep his distance and said, “I’m sure it is, but I’m not comfortable with it and I decline to be disarmed. And again, I am here at Flores’s request.”

  “Listen here you little shit,” the guard said, stepping forward again. “If you think your karate and your fancy karate shoes can help here, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “Last warning,” the Butcher said, his back now against a wall.

  The guard had fought plenty of guys this man’s size. Sure, most knew martial arts, but the guard knew a fair amount as well. And he knew as long as he avoided several joint locks and arm breaks, while also protecting his groin, throat, and his eyes, he’d be fine. He’d manhandle this little shit and not only get rid of some pent-up stress, but also break up a job that had increasingly become too boring for him. The guard missed his days of being out on the street and messing people up for Flores.

  The guard reached for him with both arms, cautious to avoid any arm-break attempts. But the wannabe karate kid simply dropped the duffle bag, seemingly surprised. The guard gripped the man by the shoulders and was in the process of slinging him across the room into the other wall when he heard the sound of metal scraping against plastic.

  The guard recognized the distinctive sound of a blade being unsheathed from a scabbard. And then the guard felt the sharp pain of a slice between his legs. He looked down to see a full-sized katana blade rip up in a sweeping arc from between his legs, just as the pain of having his entire manhood slit open hit him with a sickening shock.

  He screamed in pain and grabbed himself, witnessing more blood than he’d ever seen explode out of his gashed-open suit pants. And bent over, trying to stop the bleeding -- and going into complete shock as he imagined the damage to his manhood -- he never saw the Butcher step to the side, swing the blood-covered katana in a full circular arc, and come down on the back of his neck with an immense amount of speed and power. The blade severed the guard’s head right off at the base of the neck, and the Butcher watched it fall and roll.

  The guard’s body fell hard onto the ground and the Butcher ran both sides of his bloody sword along the back of the guard’s suit to get the long blade mostly clean. Then, he sheathed it and replaced it in the bag, yanking out an Uzi and looking behind him to see if more guards were enteri
ng the lobby, rushing in as backup.

  Seeing it was clear, he placed the Uzi back in the duffle bag and exited the building, hailing a cab as if nothing had occurred. Flores smiled as he recalled the taped footage of the slaughter. He had watched the entire event go down dozens of times, pausing the silent video as the Butcher reached into a hidden sleeve of the duffel bag, where the sword scabbard was apparently stored in some kind of special pouch in the bag.

  In the video, the guard had barely flinched before the surprise upward swing struck the man’s groin. And then Flores recalled the splendid side-step and downward arc of the blade into the back of the guard’s neck.

  It had been sheer artistry and Flores had been captivated by it for weeks. Even better, the Butcher had made Flores wait a full three months before agreeing to meet again. He’d ignored the calls of Flores’s aides. He’d ignored the personal calls Flores made himself. He’d even turned down a number of gifts that Flores’s men had delivered to his home, including a gold, 24-karat AK-74.

  Flores had been top dog for so long that he had been intrigued by this man who ignored his power. Flores’s aides begged Flores to have the man killed -- either blown to bits in a drive-by massacre or taken alive and slowly tortured.

  But Flores wanted this man on his team. Anyone could kill with a gun, but this man had panache. He had guts. He lacked fear.

  Flores reached for his glass of Jack Daniel’s. He took a large swallow -- far more than he meant -- and slammed his glass down. My, what a difference five years had made.

  The Butcher had gone from his golden boy, a superb hitman who acted as some kind of ninja-like assassin, to a right-hand man who now consistently undermined Flores behind his back. Flores had heard that the Butcher thought Mexico’s most powerful cartel leader was weak. That the Butcher thought Flores was too concerned with his public image and the women and the money and food. Food, damn it!