by Peter Nealen
Nobody tried to play hero, nobody offered any resistance. He found he was slightly disappointed. Oh, well, maybe the Mexican authorities would come out to play. He recognized at least one Pemex board member, a high-ranking Mexican Policia Federal officer, and what had to be several staffers from the Congreso de la Uniòn.
Inmate came in the doors from the van. “Birds are inbound,” he reported. “Five mikes.”
“Good to go,” Flint replied. “Everybody on your feet!” he yelled. “Get moving out onto the green! Let’s go! Nice and orderly! I’d hate to have to just shoot all of you and leave. Actually, you know what? That might be fun. So, go ahead, take your pick!”
Once again, nobody decided to test him. Of course, the smoking vehicles and bullet-shredded bodies out in the parking lot were a good incentive to play along. The team herded the crowd out onto the golf course, pushing and prodding with rifle muzzles where needed, or even just where a stumble or half-panicked flinch was going to be amusing.
Flint didn’t bat an eye as Scrap shoved a woman in a too-tight skirt and three-inch heels. She fell against the man in front of her, who didn’t dare try to help her, and stumbled onto the ground. Even with his balaclava in place, Flint could see Scrap’s leer. “Come on, senorita,” he said. “No time for that now. You can lie down for me later.” He reached down and grabbed her cruelly by the upper arm, wrenching her to her feet. He shoved her, and she stumbled again. “Let’s go.”
The helos were already getting closer. They weren’t overtly military; that would have been a bad idea. They were brightly-painted blue-and-green Eurocopter EC225s. They weren’t armed, either; they wouldn’t have raised any red flags on takeoff, in fact not until they’d suddenly diverted from their respective flight plans when Inmate had called them in.
The three transport helos came in close together, their rotors beating at the humid air and whipping the smoke from the bomb and the damaged vehicles into fantastical whorls, landing where there were clear and reasonably level spots on the golf course. Flint and his boys had already surveyed the landing zones previously, during the initial recon and prep for this hit.
No sooner had the first helo touched down, flattening the nearby vegetation with its rotor wash, than Flint was splitting the hostages and his team of shooters into three groups, pointing Villain with one group and Psycho with another toward the helos off to either side. He let Scrap herd the remaining hostages toward the center bird, following and turning back to check for incoming security forces.
He wasn’t expecting much. Matamoros had been relatively quiet for the last few months—though with places like Acapulco and Cabo San Lucas becoming war zones, it was clear that there was no place in Mexico that could be counted as safe—so most of the Federales were probably otherwise occupied, even the ones on the take to the cartels. And they were far enough out from the city itself that it would take any response force a few minutes to get there.
Scrap and Gibbet were shoving and kicking the hostages onto the bird. They weren’t getting any resistance, but it paid to let the cargo know who was in charge. Flint glanced over at the other two helos, got thumbs-up from both Villain and Psycho, and climbed up the ramp himself. “Let’s go!” he yelled forward, though the pilot couldn’t possibly hear him over the scream of the EC225’s engines. Reaper was up front, though, and leaned into the cockpit to pass the word. A moment later, the helo was rocking into the sky and turning east, toward the coast.
***
Flint was one of the first to step off the ramp onto the helideck of the Tourmaline-Delta platform. The two skeletal derricks of Rigs One and Two rose into the brilliant blue sky over the Gulf of Mexico, but Flint didn’t spare them a glance.
“Get the hostages below!” he bellowed to Dingo, who had come jogging up from the ladder with several more of the group. “Then get the defenses ready! I think that we’re going to have company soon!”
“We are!” Dingo yelled back, his voice straining to be heard over the roar of the helicopters. “There are four helos about thirty minutes behind you! Looks like Mi-17s!”
Flint nodded. Mexican Marines. Had to be. Well, he was about to show them that these weren’t cartel bully-boys they were going up against. He slung his MDR across his back and started for the edge of the helideck, facing back toward land. There were several munitions cases set along the side, and he hastily cracked one open.
The lean tube of a Mistral Surface to Air Missile launcher was nestled inside, and Flint drew it out and prepped it. Behind him, the hostages were being hastily—and none-too-gently—chivvied down the stairs into the depths of the oil platform. The helos were already pulling away; their task was done, and they’d be carefully sanitized once they got to their final destinations. There wouldn’t be any loose ends for this job.
As the third helicopter growled away into the distance, Flint sat on the side of the helideck, his boots dangling above the forest of girders leading down to the blue waters of the Gulf, scanning the sky for the telltale specks of the incoming Mexican helicopters. Dingo came and joined him, pulling another Mistral out of another case.
“We’ve had a snag,” Dingo said.
“I don’t want to hear about ‘snags,’” Flint warned him.
“Not our fault,” Dingo replied. “The sub’s not here yet.”
“Any word as to why not?” Flint asked. He was still watching the horizon. Their way out being delayed was bad enough news, but it would be worse if they didn’t deal with these Marines first.
“Nothing,” Dingo answered. “But then, everybody was supposed to be comm-silent once this show kicked off, anyway.”
Flint spat over the edge of the helideck. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to go to Plan B, then,” he said. “Another few hours shouldn’t be too bad. If we can hurt this assault force bad enough, they should leave us alone for a while, until we can get off.” He grinned behind his balaclava. “Besides, with a few of the split-tails in that bunch, some of us could even have some fun before we run out of time.”
“Is that really a good idea?” Dingo asked.
Flint glanced at him. He hadn’t picked Dingo, and knew next to nothing about him. But that wasn’t the sort of question he expected from the wolves and meat-eaters that he went looking for. His bunch were warriors, in his mind, the kind who could take what they wanted from those who were too weak and pathetic to stop them. “Right” and “wrong” were concepts for weak people.
“Don’t worry,” he said, even as he caught a faint glint of sunlight on metal in the distance and hefted the Mistral. “Everything’ll be fine.”
***
The group of four Mi-17 Hips accounted for almost a sixth of the Mexican Navy’s full inventory, and almost all that were available on the east coast. It was quite a response, given the amount of violence wracking the country, and in fact, the attack at the golf course had been relatively small compared to some of the massacres being perpetrated by various narco armies in other parts of Mexico. But there had been enough connected people among the hostages that something had to be done, and so the Marines had been mobilized as quickly as possible.
They were bearing down on the Tourmaline-Delta platform, flying fast and low. The pilots were skilled, and the Marines in the backs of the helicopters were all veterans, having been blooded in the non-stop narco war. The Mexican Marines were still considered one of the last remaining untouchables, the last incorruptible paladins in the forces fighting the narcos. Which meant they got called on to kill a lot of narcos.
And the combat-hardened men in the backs of the helicopters, their P90s between their knees, weren’t always terribly concerned about what it took to accomplish that mission. “Collateral damage” wasn’t high up on their list of priorities.
The Mexican Narco War had gone far past that point, a long time before.
Even so, they were used to pretty much uncontested command of the skies. The Càrtel Jalisco Nuevo Generaciòn had managed to shoot down an Army helicopter b
ack in 2015, but for the most part, the Naval helicopters had been untouched. So, when missile warnings started to go off in the cockpits and the pilots started evasive maneuvers, nobody aboard was ready for it.
Flint, Dingo, and the others, scattered along the western side of the platform and all armed with Mistrals, had waited long enough that the Russian-built helicopters didn’t have a prayer. It took the shoulder-fired SAMs barely a few seconds to streak over the water to their targets, homing in on the blazing heat of the helicopters’ engines.
The lead helo took a direct hit and exploded. Debris spun away from the black-and-orange fireball in the sky, and rained down into the Gulf. The second managed to avoid a direct hit, but the missile detonated barely three feet from its engine housing, and it was soon in a flat spin toward the water, trailing thick, ugly, black smoke.
The third helicopter banked hard to get away from its missile, and flew right into the second one that had been aimed at it. There was a brief puff of the exploding missile, and the helicopter rolled over and plunged into the ocean.
The fourth had managed to avoid being hit, and was diving and banking at the same time, but couldn’t avoid the section of destroyed rotor blade that fell into its own rotor hub. The hub exploded in a shower of grease, smoke, and flying parts, and the helicopter crashed.
Only a few moments after the first missile had been fired, all that was left of the Mexican Marine task force was a bit of blackened debris floating on an oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
***
Contralmirante Diego Huerta stared at the radio. It had been jammed with little more than screaming and desperate calls for help for about thirty seconds, and then had gone dead.
The radar operator looked up at the Contralmirante. “We have lost all their transponders, Señor,” he reported.
Huerta clenched his fists. He was a beefy man, of middling height and going bald. He’d actually done some time as a Naval Infantry skullcracker in his youth; that was how long this war had been going on. He might have risen as fast and as far as he had thanks to family connections, but he was still a Naval Infantryman at heart regardless.
And those were his men who had gone down on those four helos. He had no doubt that that was what had happened. He didn’t know who these pinche cabrònes were, but they were well-prepared; far better-prepared than the narcos usually were. And it was adding up with everything else he’d seen of this incident so far to make him very, very nervous. These maricònes were far more dangerous than he was used to. And given some of the monsters his Naval Infantry had faced, that was saying something.
Huerta slowly straightened. An officer must be dignified. He couldn’t swear like an enlisted man, or rage at the loss of his men. He had to maintain his decorum.
And he had to consider the consequences of his actions, from a political point of view as well as a tactical and strategic one. And the political consequences were embodied in the form of the young woman standing in the command post, dressed in a white pantsuit.
Olivia Salinas had shown up amazingly quickly after the incident; she said she was a Special Liaison from the office of El Presidente, and she had the credentials to prove it. And her presence therefore carried the full weight of that office, looking over his shoulder.
He turned to her. “Señora,” he said calmly, “I know that our government will not appreciate this suggestion, but I have to make it. My Naval Infantry are spread thin, dealing with the narcos. I just lost two platoons in a few seconds. I don’t have the resources to replace them easily. We need to ask the gringos for help.”
“Absolutely out of the question, Contralmirante,” Salinas replied coldly. Her hair was pulled back severely, and her sharp cheekbones jutted below calculating black eyes. “The Mexican people need no help from the Norteamericanos.”
Which was obviously crap, and both of them knew it. Huerta could deal with narcos; he had been for some time. But whatever had just happened was something bigger than a narco turf battle. And his available assets had just been cut down to almost nothing.
Still, relations between Mexico City and Washington were strained, to say the least. He knew there were still a few American SOF units in Mexico, but they were strictly there in a training capacity for the Mexican armed forces.
“This is a hostage situation,” he pointed out reasonably. “Time is of the essence. The American Delta Force or SEALs can be here to assist more quickly than I can put together another strike force.”
Salinas glared daggers at him. “Was I unclear, Contralmirante?” she asked. “The answer is no. This is a Mexican problem, and will be solved by Mexican forces.” She turned away from him, looking out to sea, toward the distant oil platform and the wreckage floating above the bodies.
Helplessly, Huerta glanced in the same direction, then turned away. He had work to do.
***
It was late when Huerta finally left the command post. He was trudging through the dark toward the trailer that had been set up as his personal quarters when his cell phone rang abruptly.
He pulled it out and frowned. He didn’t recognize the number, but given his position, that wasn’t unknown. He answered it. “Hola?”
“Hello, Admiral,” a strange voice said in English. “I think we need to talk.”
“Who is this?” Huerta demanded. “How did you get this number?”
“My name is Van Zandt,” the other man replied, “and I have my ways. Now, time is pressing. You have a bad situation on your hands, and I think I might have a solution…”
Chapter 2
“No,” John Brannigan said. “Not only no, but hell no.”
“John,” Hector Chavez started to remonstrate with him, “we’re not talking about some half-assed Pemex contract, here.”
The two men were facing each other across a table in the Rocking K, the best—and essentially only—diner in tiny Junction City. It wasn’t the sort of place most people would immediately think of when it came to planning covert operations, but it was the closest meeting place to Brannigan’s mountain hideaway, and so Chavez had pegged it as their contact spot, more often than not.
John Brannigan was a towering, six-foot-four former Marine Colonel, his hair gone shaggy and gray on his head and his face. He shaved his cheeks and his chin, but his handlebar mustache was bushier than ever. He might have had a few more crow’s feet around his gray eyes, especially after his recent turn to mercenary commander. Activities like a hair-raising mission on the island of Khadarkh in the Persian Gulf, followed by a jump into northern Burma to take down a North Korean liaison operation in the Golden Triangle, were not calculated to keep a man young.
Brannigan was dressed in his usual flannel shirt and jeans, his “going to town” clothes. Chavez had dressed down since his first visit; he was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. The third man at the table, however, stood out a bit more.
Mark Van Zandt, his hair still cut in a close military regulation cut, clean shaven and straight-backed, was dressed in his usual khakis and a polo shirt, and leaning back in his chair, wisely keeping out of the conversation.
Van Zandt had been one of Brannigan’s last commanding officers. He’d also been the one to bear the news that Brannigan would be forced to retire from the Marine Corps. There was little love lost between the two of them, even though they had entered each other’s orbits once again when Van Zandt had been looking for a deniable team to send in on the Burma operation.
“You want me to take my boys into Mexico,” Brannigan said, leaning back in his chair and folding his brawny arms across his chest. “Mexico defines ‘non-permissive environment.’ Gringos are not welcome, particularly gringo contractors. I’ve done my homework, Hector. If you think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I’m going to go into that killing field unarmed, relying on Mexicans of dubious loyalty for protection, you’ve got another think coming.”
“This isn’t that kind of contract, John,” Van Zandt snorted. “Which should be
abundantly obvious, since we’re coming to you. The guys who blew up Khadarkh and jumped into northern Burma aren’t exactly the go-to for a petroleum security operation, now are they?” Acid sarcasm dripped from his voice. Brannigan turned his glare on the retired general.
“Not the point,” Brannigan retorted. “We get spotted down there, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“Which is different from your last two jobs how?” Van Zandt pointed out. “Come on, John, now you’re just being difficult.”
“Why us?” Brannigan asked, after taking a deep breath. He really didn’t want to go into Mexico. He knew too much about the horror-show that was the Mexican narco-war. Khadarkh had been a simple in-and-out, on a tiny island, no less. Burma had been different, but for all the atrocities happening in Burma—some of which his crew of mercenaries, the self-styled “Brannigan’s Blackhearts,” had witnessed first-hand—Mexico was an entirely different scale. It had beaten out the Syrian Civil War for body count.
“The same reason I came to you for the Burma job,” Van Zandt said coolly. “You’re deniable. Which, I might add, is a huge selling point for Contralmirante Huerta right now, as well.”
“Who’s Huerta?” Brannigan asked.
“He’s the commander of the Mexican Marines who tried to retake the oil platform where our mysterious terrorists took their hostages,” Chavez said. “He lost most of a company in a few minutes, has been getting stonewalled by Mexico City, and wants payback.”
“So he’ll cover for us?”
“He’s assured me that he will,” Van Zandt said. “He’s under strict orders that no US military forces, including DEVGRU or Delta—who are about the only ones who could handle this otherwise; we don’t exactly have a MEU in the vicinity—are to be called upon. The platform is technically in Mexican waters, and therefore it is a Mexican affair. They don’t want help. Well, the PRI doesn’t want help. Huerta does.”
