Battleship Boys

by Paul Lally

  “What do you see?”

  “Probably nothing. Humor me.”

  Drone one’s display screen glows brighter. The wall detail increases. Centuries ago, the Maya carved every foot using primitive tools. But they didn’t carve the mop handle stuck into a bucket, with the handle pointing deeper into the tunnel.

  “Bingo,” CW whispers. “If that’s not a sign from her, I’ll eat my hat. Bring the other two drones back to base and let’s go downrange and be heroes.”

  Hand signals silently bring the team to life with a minimum of rustle, clink and Velcro snarl. While rodeos are pretty much the same throughout the world, it’s the horses you ride in the ring that make all the difference. The “horses” in this case are Delta Force guys fully prepared and more than eager not only to kick ass but to kill.

  “They took the bait!” the SIU agent’s voice is lighthearted, almost giddy. “Entered the Catedral backdoor fifteen minutes ago.”

  “How many?” Iván says.

  “Not sure. Usually, a dozen or so on raids like this.”

  “You’re certain Vargas doesn’t know they’re coming?”

  “Of course not. How could he?”

  “Because he’s smart and he’s a survivor, that’s why.”

  “Never happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is not your average raid. SOCOM’s running it from the top down. The White House is monitoring a live feed. It’s a very, VERY big deal for everybody. They’ll get the job done and we’ll be heroes.”

  Iván tries to mask his sigh of relief but doesn’t succeed.

  The SIU agent hears it and chuckles. “When we get to America, I think maybe I’ll buy two Ferraris.”

  Iván envisions something else. When all this is over and he’s the top dog again, he pictures the SIU man dead in a dumpster, minus his head.

  Miguel Vargas feels like a happy cog in a perfectly operating machine. And rightfully so. He stands at the end of one of the secondary tunnel’s manufacturing lines, alongside a laminating machine that busy shrink-wrapping the fentanyl/heroin capsules onto perforated plastic sheets.

  Not that boilerplate, cheap stuff Parke-Davis uses to trap Dayquil and Nyquil cold medicine capsules, he thinks. You’re guaranteed to lose a fingernail or two trying to pry the damn things out of their hiding place. And even when you do manage to get them and take them, they don’t accomplish much.

  But his damn well do.

  He grabs a six-capsule sheet, presses down on one of the pills. It pops out the other side like a ripe apple and falls into the palm of his hand. The pill’s still warm from the packaging process. Vargas rolls it back and forth between forefinger and thumb. Such a small thing. But it has changed his world from nothing to everything.

  He checks his watch.

  11.50.

  Damn.

  They said they’d contact him by 11:30 at the latest. Something about “transit delays” in getting Ernesto to the airport and flying him from his “undisclosed location” somewhere in Texas down to Cancún. The video they sent showing his brother boarding the silver-and-blue Gulfstream with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned on the fuselage was reassuring. But he won’t be content until he embraces Ernesto once again.

  Almost noon. Time for another hostage to meet his maker. After all, it’s a poor businessman who doesn’t hold up his end of a deal.

  “So be it,” Vargas says.

  Time to track down Osito, who, if he knows his faithful executioner—and he does—he’s already on his way to eat lunch. Time to whet his appetite with blood first.

  As he walks down the tunnel, he twists open the fentanyl/heroin capsule. The miniscule amount of drug falls out and he grinds it into the hard clay floor. No need to tempt his “cooks” to sample their wares, especially because they—

  The BANG and FLASH grenade is a complete shock.

  CW and his team are firm believers in establishing overwhelming superiority from the very first instant. If you don’t achieve it, it’s a guaranteed long slog with mixed results.

  He’s known that from his first deployment to Afghanistan, when everybody and his brother and sister was chasing Osama bin Laden and not a single soul listened to him when he cashed in all his favors and got a hard contact on the 9.11 mastermind hiding beneath the intel radar in Pakistan.

  Instead, the aforementioned dickheads dithered around, rattling their sabers and shooting off their mouths long enough and loud enough that Bin Laden’s goons couldn’t help but hear it through the al Qaeda grapevine.

  Needless to say, they split town without a trace and continued sowing death and destruction. But seventeen years later and a little bit wiser, Major Williston’s BFFs of Seal Team 6 popped a flash/bang in Bin Laden’s bedroom, shot the bastard like a rabid dog, and the rest is history.

  Vargas’s vision returns before his hearing does. Even so, everything is in backlit silhouette from magnesium flares burning to beat the band, while four Delta Force team members split off, running in the direction of the hostages. Because the flares lit off behind them, their night vision goggles still work to perfection, as do their weapons when four of Vargas’s security guys make the fatal mistake of returning fire instead of dropping their weapons and raising their hands.

  Would they have lived had they chosen that more prudent option? Hard to say when violent action like this takes place between human beings. In most situations, when ordinary people get caught up in this kind of chaotic situation, their “fight-or-flight” reflex almost instantaneously defaults to “flight.” Unfortunately, if you’re trained to defend yourself like Vargas’s security guys are, that instinct is the exact opposite.

  Down they drop in a hail of 7.55 hollow-point rounds that, according to the manufacturer, “maximize initial penetration mass” and guarantee “gross mass organ damage.”

  Vargas is saved from suffering that final indignity.

  The lead member of Team 2, Gunny Nuell, spots him crouched down behind stack of plastic cartons, fumbling with a pistol and dives after him like a rattlesnake going for lunch.

  Upon impact of every ounce of Nuell’s 220-pound, rock-hard, muscled body, Vargas’s handgun goes one way, his right arm another, soon joined by his left, and hogtied with zip-tie cuffs.

  “That’ll hold you until branding time, asshole.”

  Nuell grew up on a ranch in northern Arizona and is not only capable of roping calves on his family’s small spread but has done so ever since he could swing a rope. Along the way, he won himself three 4H rodeo awards for stopping four-legged critters in their tracks with the same ease he now practices upon Vargas’s wrists.

  The captive twists away and tries to stand. But Nuell swings his boot across his ankles and down he goes. The Marine crouches down and hisses in his ear. “How do you say, ‘Fuck you” in Maya?”

  Vargas is like a cat in a sack; no matter how hard he tries, the sack is bigger than he is. In less than thirty seconds, his world has turned upside down and inside out.

  While he lies there helpless, Delta Force team members sweep the low-ceiling area that yesterday housed neatly stacked file cabinets and two desks where a team of secretaries duly recorded the daily pharmacological progress of the revolutionary drug combination whose imminent financial success in the United States was elevating Miguel Vargas from a Maya lowlife drone to a lofty princedom leading straight to Garcia’s throne, not to mention doing so while romancing his beautiful daughter Adriana.

  Today, file cabinets are overturned, lights are out, the assembly line workers have fled into the interconnecting tunnels like well-trained rats. Not a chance of ever finding them—unless you’re Maya.

  CW and his strike team dart back and forth, their helmet-mounted lights lance the darkness as they search—and then find the remaining American and Mexican hostages, still bound and waiting for death.

  Osito, the machete executioner, collapses from a thunderous volley of bullets from three different assault rifles. Two of Var
gas’s “personal security” guys make it halfway up a side tunnel before falling from six well-placed rounds that THUMP into their backs.

  “Found him, sir!” a Delta force guy calls out.

  Major Williston swings his LED flashlight over and centers it on the bone-weary face of DEA Agent Christopher Jensen, who blinks at the brightness.

  “Time to get you and your guys out of here,” CW says.

  As Jensen stumbles forward to join the others, CW adds, “Do me a favor, will you? Call your mom the minute we land. She’s worried sick.”

  The DEA agent’s cracked lips barely manage a smile but his eyes beam with gratitude. “Thanks for doing this.”

  “It’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

  He hoists the VP’s son by his belt to give him some starting momentum toward the distant lights of the tunnel leading to the basement of the former Banco Nacional de Mexico on Kukulcan Boulevard.

  Up until now, Major Williston has been leading the group because that’s what leaders do. On his first day as a lowly plebe at the Naval Academy, hair shaved off, footsore and muscle-weary from hazing, one of his instructors spoke of leadership in the simplest of terms. “Gentlemen, you cannot—repeat, CANNOT—push a string.”

  In like manner, CW has led his unique team of fighters from boarding the Ospreys at McChord the night before last, until this moment when he uses hand signals to “move out” to meet up with Booger-man and hustle the hostages to safety.

  But then he stays put.

  As the hostages pass him by, some staggering slightly after long confinement being tied up, he mentally counts who should be there, comparing those originally captured during the botched Brownsville raid, and then subtracting the unfortunates who Osito murdered on Vargas’s order.

  As the last man passes him by, Williston takes up the rear guard. Timber wolfpacks do the same thing when moving from point A to point B. The oldest, most infirm lead the way, while the strongest, most vigorous take up the rear to ensure no stragglers are left behind.

  Despite the YellowJacket nano-drones doing advance recon, the labyrinthine network of tunnels leads them into unexpected twists and turns. Twice they enter blind alleys—some used for ancient Maya food storage, others for burial purposes.

  CW’s connection with Booger-man and his advance team via a low-frequency homing signal keeps fading and returning, then fading again. But the team keeps going because the clock is ticking.

  Sergeant Nuell and Vargas are directly ahead of Major Williston. The armlock the Marine gunnery sergeant has on the druggie is firm and unyielding as he hustles the killer along.

  “Status report,” CW says.

  Nuell speaks between breaths as he hurries on. “This son-of-a-bitch....is gonna’ spend the rest of his sorry life...staring at a wall....fifteen fucking inches from his evil... fucking... face.”

  CW picks up the pace and draws alongside. He jabs Vargas with his weapon. “Habla inglese, asshole?”

  Vargas nods, or at least it looks like it as his head bobs up and down.

  “Good, because I can’t habla español for shit, let alone understand a word of your fucked-up, weird-sounding Mayan.”

  Vargas does his best to glare, but it’s not easy when you’re trussed like a turkey and sandwiched between two men who’d sooner gut you from neck to crotch than look at you.

  “Want to know the best part?” CW says. “About your good brother, Ernesto?”

  Vargas looks eager, angry, curious.

  “We never put him on that plane. That was some joker they made up to look like him, wearing his clothes, hair coloring, the works. They’ve still got his sorry ass and they’ll never turn him loose. Not now, not ever.”

  “Bastardi”

  “Exactly. And one other thing: for a dickhead as smart as you are... to have all this going on with an underground drug factory and all,...you stuck your head up your ass playing the hostage game. When the United States of America says it doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, it means exactly that. But what it does do...”

  He jabs his rifle barrel against Vargas’s chest, who staggers sideways from the blow. but Nuell keeps him from falling.

  “...is make assholes like you lose the game every...single...time.”

  The smell of diesel exhaust in the tunnel is the first sign they’re nearing the entrance to the former bank. Less than fifty feet above them, Cancún’s afternoon traffic rumbles. A lot of traffic. February’s the height of the tourist season, not to mention spring break right around the corner, about to crash and boom along the Gulf of Mexico shores with thousands of college kids in search of sun, sex, and endless surprise.

  They’re close enough to the surface now for CW’s HF radio to work.

  “Bird Dog to base, do you read?”

  Silence...... hiss.... then to his relief, a sharp click. “Base here, you close, señor?”

  “Almost home. Start ‘er up.”

  A pause.

  “Base, do you read?”

  “Got some activity, sir. Two pickups. arriving outside the bank. Armed guys in the back, piling out.”

  “Your guys?”

  The cartel boss wannabee barely hides his defiant smile. “Of course.”

  “Prick.”

  Vargas lifts his zip-tied hands. “You have me but not for long.”

  “Dream on, asshole—how’d they find out?”

  He smiles but doesn’t say a word.

  CW turns to Nuell, “Wait here while I recon. Odds are, we can do a hustle-screen. If so, you stick to the center like we rehearsed, okay?”

  “Oorah, sir.”

  CW’s smile turns into a maniacal grin. “If people only knew how crazy we really are...”

  Nuell’s grin matches his. “They’d shit their pants, sir.”

  “Instead, they give us medals.”

  They arrive at the bank basement via a weather-beaten doorway set into a brick wall that leads up from the basement and out into the litter-filled alley. A minibus waits at the end of the alley to race the team and hostages to the outskirts of town.

  Problem is, Vargas’s security goons are guarding the alley exit, too. They’ll have to neutralize them before the hostages can be moved to the bus.

  Easy to do, weapon-wise.

  Their assault rifles’ specially made low-velocity rounds are ridiculously small in size, but their mushroom capacity is the equivalent of a .50 caliber bullet that can knock you off your feet and send you straight to the Pearly Gates—providing you’re not a murderer like Vargas and his cutthroats. In that case, straight to hell, do not pass GO.

  CW envisions the Special Ops Osprey inbound over Mexican airspace, throttles firewalled.

  By his watch, ETA, 22 minutes and counting.

  Can they make it?

  His headset crackles. “Advance to CW, showing contact in fifty.”

  “Take your time, Booger-man. Leave some dessert for us,” Williston says.

  “Too hungry, sir.”

  CW waves at his team to get their attention. Not a word is spoken. Instead, a complex series of hand signals tells the men not only exactly what he’s got in mind, but also who’s to come with him and whose to stay behind and protect the hostages.

  The thump and clump of boots echo as CW and six Delta Force members hustle up the basement steps, down the hallway and over to the open door leading out to the alley, where Booger-man and his guys have started exchanging gunfire.

  The distant sound of sirens intermingles with the POP-POP-POP.

  Police to the rescue?

  Not a chance.

  An ambulance, most likely, on its way to the hospital. No Cancún cop in his right mind would dare come near what’s rapidly developing into what looks like another ho-hum cartel vs. cartel shoot-out. They’ll steer clear for sure.

  But CW doesn’t as he crouches down and leads his men out into the alley.

  A jumble of barrels and dumpsters spilling over with trash jam both sides of the alley. Plenty of cover, b
ut cheap, rolled steel can’t stop rifle rounds from punching through like rocks through paper.

  CW’s experienced ears are finely tuned to the sound of the bad guys’ weapons. No question it’s small-caliber stuff, which is a relief. These punks are used to scaring shit out of folks by swaggering down the street or cruising around in jacked-up Toyota pickups, wearing Ray-bans and looking tough, not duking it out face-to-face with a real, live Delta Force.

  That said, a gun’s a gun and a bullet’s a bullet, and even though the Delta team’s sporting Kevlar where needed, the hostages are vulnerable.

  That’s why the team plows forward like a Roman Centurion phalanx. But instead of horsehide shields locked together and lances pointing outward like they did back then, rapid-fire SCAR close-combat rifles spray the escape vector with 7.62 rounds to keep punk heads down while they hustle toward a Mercedes Sprinter City 75 minibus parked at the opposite end of the alley.

  The silver-grey, stretched version of the commercial van has enough room to easily fit the team and hostages inside.

  But they need to get there first.

  “Your mom came from Ohio, you know,” Tommy says.

  “Of course, I know.”

  “Landlocked, flat, boring, midwestern Ohio, where nothing ever happens except turning into a swing state every four years and sending either a Republican or Democrat to the White House. Otherwise, it’s Groundhog Day every day.”

  “Until Prince Charming Thomas Riley Esquire showed up.”

  “In a third-hand, Volkswagen Beetle, because that’s all I could afford.”

  “Dark blue, right?”

  “Remember that photo with your mom standing beside it?”

  “I do.”

  Tommy traces an “infinity” symbol in the sand with a stick he picked up during their walk along the high ridge overlooking Puerta Azul and the Gulf of Mexico beyond.

  Fifty yards behind them, parked on the shoulder of the narrow, one-lane road that runs along the ridge, their taxi-driver, Carmalita, listens to Mexican music on her mp3 player. Even at this distance, the brass trumpets and marimbas blasting through the car speakers add punch to the boom and hiss of the waves as they sweep the nearly deserted beach.