by JC Ryan
The reality was, irrespective of being tired, poor, part of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the only issue was how did they get into the country? Legally or illegally? The reasons they did so had nothing to do with it. This institutionalized incompetence in stemming the flood of illegal border crossings played right into the hands of the terrorists. For years there had been rumors and speculation that terrorists were exploiting the situation, and if they didn’t do so already they soon would.
The interception of the message exchange between the cartel and the terrorist group was the first evidence that it was not just a rumor, and it sent cold shivers down the spines of sensible security officials. As if that was not enough of a headache, the bloody war of succession among the drug cartel members caught innocent tourists in the crossfire.
As long as the cartel members were wiping each other out and keeping their killings south of the border, the politicians’ way of dealing with it was to just ignore it. Their tried and tested model — I don’t want to see anything, I don’t want to hear anything, and I don’t want to say anything. But now the beast has sprouted two more ugly heads, and both threatened the lives of US citizens. They could no longer only cover their ears, eyes, and mouths, they had to cover other parts of their bodies as well. But as was the norm when it came to issues of the southern border, and other matters of national security, the politicians proved themselves inept. The only agreement they could reach, and that with much difficulty, was diplomacy.
The ambassador to Mexico postured and made vague threats to Mexico’s president concerning what the US would do if he didn’t curb the violence and assure that US tourists were safe when visiting his country. If the ambassador mentioned anything about the aiding and abetting of terrorists, it must have been in ambiguous terms or not at all. None of it was mentioned in the press statement.
Credible intelligence arrived that the cartel had taken over a small border town, one of several that had reinvented itself as a medical tourism hub. Americans were at risk, as were the town’s native residents.
It was time to act, but it couldn’t be done officially, so CRC’s mission was, take the cartel out. All of them.
The team would be responsible for observing and determining which of the Mexican citizens were involved with the cartel, and which were innocent victims. It would require them to infiltrate the town and gather intelligence before they planned the take-down. Rex was the only member fluent enough in Spanish to pass for one while interacting with the residents. His natural coloring, combined with the deep tan he’d acquired in the Arizona desert, would also help him pass among the strong Amerindian genetics of the village’s population.
Inside a week, the team had found an abandoned hovel where three of them remained out of sight, observing the ebb and flow of the town’s natural rhythms using wiretapping and other means of surveillance. Rex and one other insinuated themselves into the populace, Rex as someone with special skills, who’d just moved to town looking for work, and the other as an American seeking dental care. The latter struck up conversations with other tourists and quietly warned them to keep their heads low, or better yet, get out of town.
It took only two days for Rex to be referred to a cartel member for an interview. He claimed to be looking to join as a foot soldier, one of the dozens of low-ranking members who enforced cartel rule among the town’s population. Naturally suspicious, the man he contacted shoved him around and searched him for weapons. Rex took it without reprisal, knowing he needed to appear humble to be introduced to the next tier of leadership.
On the third day after the team arrived in town, Rex snuck into the hovel with supplies for the hidden team members and the intelligence he’d gathered. The situation was that two men were emerging as the leading candidates to be the late jefe’s successor. Between them, they had murdered everyone else who vied for the job, and they each had the support of about half of the remaining members.
In two days, there was to be a meeting, where, instead of these two murdering each other, they would hold an election. One would get the job, and the other would swear allegiance and become the second in command. At least those were the agreed upon terms of the ceasefire between the two factions, but these cartels didn’t believe in democracy the same way their neighbors to the north did. In reality, they’d only agreed to a good-old-fashioned Mexican standoff.
None of them would have a preconceived exit strategy. They were going to walk in there fully armed, fully loaded with drugs to calm their nerves, and hope their side had the most people standing after the inevitable shootout at the O.K. Corral. These standoffs had only one possible tiebreaker, external intervention. And the CRC team was very happy to be the external intervention and help them resolve the impasse without favoring one group above the other — they intended to treat all of them equally.
The only operational problem would be to evacuate the hotel of innocents before blowing it to kingdom come. Early warning to the Mexicans risked giving away the operation. Thankfully, no Americans ever stayed in the roach-ridden hotel. They stuck to the newer facilities in the part of town where dentists and oncologists treated medical tourists. Two of the hidden team were tasked with assessing the hotel for construction vulnerabilities and placing explosives. Rex and the third hidden team member were to put their heads together and come up with a plan to get the innocents out of the way at the last possible moment.
The mission would have gone perfectly if not for the unexpected link between one of the Americans and one of the two candidates for cartel leadership. One day before the big meeting and CRC’s plan to crash it, the team member posing as an American with a dental problem warned several tourists he’d taken into his confidence that they should stay in their hotels. They agreed to warn others, and the team hoped the grapevine would take care of any who were inclined to visit the poor side of town.
Unbeknownst to them, one American was in a position to warn the cartel members, but he intended to do so in a way that would give ‘his’ candidate the upper hand. Therefore, he hadn’t done it yet. As for the hotel guests, Rex had learned the cartel had taken over the entire hotel, and that the staff was hostage to their demands. It solved a big problem – how to warn innocent guests. What it meant was there were no innocents, except the staff. He had no doubt he could get them out before the explosion would destroy the hotel.
On the day it went down, everyone, including the three team members who’d stayed hidden, were in place to pick off anyone who escaped the explosion. What they didn’t know when Rex went to get the staff out was that their trap had been exposed by the traitor American, until the hotel manager told him so. Rex hurried them out, and then reported to the mission leader.
“We’re busted! They know.” For Rex, besides terrorists, the only thing worse than foreign drug cartels was the lowlifes who preyed on their fellow Americans by selling them poison. He’d learned who the traitor American was, and begged to be the one to take him out. The team leader demurred. The insult had been to the team member who’d interacted with him, and that team member would have the privilege of killing him, up close and personal. Rex was told to stand down, while one of the members who’d set the explosives was sent to check whether they were still in place, and then to spring the trap early.
No one faulted the team member who’d inadvertently blown the mission by confiding in a traitor. It happened. Rex watched him break cover and run toward the hotel, followed more cautiously by the explosives expert. Five minutes later, his heart stopped when every pigeon in town took flight.
“Stop!” He yelled at the team leader who had broken cover and sprinted toward where his two team members had disappeared. Rex was after him in a split second, intending to tackle the leader before he reached the hotel. He was less than halfway there, but Rex’s warning and the earsplitting crrraaaack when the hotel went up in a cloud of dust happened at the same time.
The blast threw Rex to the ground. He was up immediately, peering through the
dust cloud, rubble, and body parts that were now raining onto the street. He spotted his team leader down about three yards in front of him, and crouch-ran to him. The man was injured, but alive. Rex hoisted him into a fireman’s carry and ran with him back to where the last team member was picking off anything that moved in the dust. “I’m going in for the others. Don’t shoot us.”
“Forget it, they’re toast,” his teammate said, clenching his teeth and firing another round. A surprising number of cartel members were making their way out of the ruins of the hotel, forewarned, no doubt, that the trap would be sprung on the Americans who’d set it. They must have been getting ready to run when it happened. The CRC sniper was making sure none of them made it past his sights.
“We don’t leave our people behind,” Rex snapped. He turned and ran back across the street, giving his teammate no choice but to cover him. When he got to the hole in the ground that used to be the hotel, he searched frantically for his other two teammates. He found one tangled with another American, who had a knife stuck in his neck. Both were lying in unnatural positions. Rex picked up his teammate’s body and ran with it back to the sniper’s position. “He’s gone,” Rex said.
He only heard “I told…” before he was out of earshot, running back again to retrieve his other teammate. That one had been at ground zero, he figured. All he could hope was that the body was intact. Running around collecting dismembered body parts could be hazardous, as the sniper was still picking off survivors. He found the dead man in an intact alcove, with his hand on the remote control. Rex grabbed his phone from a tactical pocket in his camo pants and snapped a picture of the scene. From what he could see, it was possible his teammate had sacrificed himself to foil the cartel’s plan, maybe thinking he’d be protected in the alcove. But there was no time for proper forensics. With two men dead and one down for the count, he and the sniper were outnumbered.
He made a third trip back to the sniper’s position, to discover him and the team leader gone, along with the dead team member. He looked around in confusion. Had he mistaken the location?
“Psst,” he heard. A few yards away, the sniper beckoned him to another concealed spot. He looked around to be sure no one was watching before running to the new position. The team leader had come around and was sitting behind the sniper, nursing a sprained ankle. The sniper said, “Local police showed up. I had to stop firing.”
Rex nodded. He deferred to their leader for a plan.
“We got most of them,” the leader said. “Now we’ve got to get out of here, unobserved.”
“But the American tourists know we were here,” Rex objected.
“They don’t know who we are. But they, and everyone else, will, if we don’t get out before we’re discovered. I can handle myself, but I’m injured. It’s up to you two. And we don’t leave our dead behind.”
“Of course not,” Rex answered, surprised the leader even thought it had to be said. “Look, let’s get you and the bodies back to the hidey hole. Leave it to me.” To the sniper, he said, “How’s your Spanish?”
“Nonexistent,” the sniper answered.
“No problem,” Rex said, mostly because there was no sense in bemoaning the facts. “I’ll get us out. You guys lie low while I set it up.”
He knew he didn’t have long before the remains of their fallen teammates would give away their location. He had to get them out today. And he had an idea.
One of the things he’d learned while spying on the cartel was that they had an old helicopter. It was a model he hadn’t flown before, but how hard could it be? He enlisted the help of the hotel manager, grateful for his life, to transport the team, both live and dead, to where the chopper was kept. He and the sniper crept up on the guards posted by the chopper and slashed their throats, then loaded the rest of the team onto the aircraft.
“Are you sure you know how to fly this thing?” the sniper asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
At least he could hope there wouldn’t be anyone firing at them as he lifted the chopper to a shaky hundred feet in altitude. Once at that height, he made a beeline for the border. It was only when a warning shot across his flight path gave him an unexpected adrenaline spike that he remembered to radio a code to the Border Patrol that should let them pass. But just in case, he lifted the chopper to five hundred feet, and began juking it sideways until he got the go-ahead to come across.
The helicopter must have been running on fumes when he landed at CRC headquarters. The cartel and the threat they posed were gone, CRC had an additional chopper which didn’t cost them a penny, but the cost of the lives of two top-notch CRC agents was immeasurable.
After the deceased members of the team had been cremated, their ashes scattered across the Arizona desert from the captured helicopter, the sniper pulled Rex aside. “Just before the explosion, you yelled something and started to run toward that hotel. How’d you know?”
“Seen it before. The birds,” he explained.
“But you hadn’t seen combat,” the sniper objected. “Should I ask?”
“I don’t recommend it,” Rex answered.
Now he had two enemies. Terrorists and drug cartels. He intended to wipe both off the face of the earth.
Chapter Sixteen
Mumbai, India, December 1, 2008
LIKE DELTA FORCE, CRC teams were most often deployed on short-term missions in response to specific threats. For two years, Rex had participated in missions world-wide, gaining experience and the trust of his teammates. Occasionally, they made use of the services of US private military contractors for transport, housing, briefings on the current political and military climates of the countries where they’d be operating, and acquisition of supplies they couldn’t get through customs if they were on commercial flights. On those occasions, they kept their status secret by posing as members of military SpecialOps groups like Delta Force, fellow contractors, or whatever legend would keep CRC veiled in secrecy.
When he wasn’t deployed, like the others he was taking more language classes, studying threat trends and the history of the regions modern-day terrorists called home. Along with the constant physical training, of course. During this time, he added Hindi and Urdu to his language repertoire.
A newly-emerging field of study was added to their curriculum after hackers stole designs for the Pentagon’s newest fighter jet from a military contractor in 2007. They relied on the NSA for their intelligence on cyberwarfare, but they had to understand the intelligence they got, and though the NSA countered it via electronic means, the best way to eliminate hacks was to eliminate the hackers. In collaboration with computer experts and the latest techniques, Rex’s team became proficient at tracking down and capturing or killing the unfriendly hackers.
It didn’t occur to Rex to be lonely. Even though he had the camaraderie and companionship of teammates, he was at heart a loner, a legacy of that defining moment of March 11, 2004, the tragedy that took his family. Besides, the work was hazardous enough that the occasional loss of a man or two wasn’t uncommon. Rex learned to keep his emotions under strict control. They all did it. To do otherwise was to burn out in the flares of survivor guilt. They couldn’t afford emotions in the heat of a mission, anyway.
Uninformed observers might have characterized the CRC agents, Rex included, as psychopaths. But such an observation would have been flawed. The agents did their jobs with ruthless efficiency, borrowing their tactics from those of enemies who knew no rules but violence. Rex, like all of them, exhibited no remorse for killing those enemies, and he gained a reputation among his teammates as the go-to guy when a surgical-strike assassination was called for. But he was no psychopath. His actions were directed at evil people, to protect innocent people, and not to gratify a sick mind.
Between his cat-like ability to flow into concealment and his expertise in Krav Maga, now honed to a sword’s edge, as fine as if tempered from Damascus steel, he was the undisputed king of wet-work, not only within his team,
but unit-wide. Where most special ops teams considered something to have gone wrong if hand-to-hand combat was required, Rex preferred it. It was silent, for one thing. He could take out a terrorist in the midst of his sleeping family, without waking them and putting them at risk.
Rex’s modus operandi was beginning to cause a stir among the nasties. Whispers and speculations about this ghostly assassin soon turned into rumors, and rumors have a tendency to grow tails. Although none of them had an idea who he was, what he looked like, where he came from, and who he worked for, he went by many names. El Gato, the cat, in Spanish, Alshaytan, the Devil, in Arabic, the Ghost, and many others. Whatever name they used for him, one thing was sure – just the mention of him scared them witless. Exactly what Rex had in mind.
***
Until now, it had not yet fallen to him to be the team lead on a mission, but that was about to change. Four days previously, a coordinated terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, had created havoc and death in India’s commercial capital. News media reported that a previously-unknown group claimed responsibility, but it seemed India’s intelligence agencies disagreed as to the legitimacy of the claim or the existence of the group itself.
“Politics in India, politics in America. What’s new?” Rex asked when he heard that.
US relations with India had blossomed since the “W” Bush’s administration, so it came as no surprise to Rex or his team when they were called into the Old Man’s office two days after the attack and told they had a new mission. This one might take longer than most. They first had to hunt down the bastards who’d systematically searched among hotel guests, after killing and maiming dozens in grenade and indiscriminate automatic weapons fire, for those holding British or American passports. Those, they took hostage.
It was only the latest in a series of attacks that had plagued India in the previous years. India’s political climate was confusing to outsiders. But which democratic country in the world could claim theirs was not? In India, threats, attacks, and counterattacks came from three fronts; radical Islamist groups, radical Hindu organizations, and both of those groups targeting Christians. India was also vulnerable geographically by an undefined border in the northeast since China’s incursion in to Tibet and a hostile nation in the northwest, Pakistan.
