by Jeff Kirkham
“Let’s go. We need to be set up before they enter the bit of road beneath that hill,” he said firmly, and was astounded when the knot of men actually hustled away, apparently to follow his plan.
A school bus covered in steel plate rumbled into the parking lot, listing precariously on its overloaded leaf springs.
Oh Lord, please don’t let this circus act end in tragedy, Noah prayed as he jumped in his Land Cruiser and raced toward the hill.
Noah had been on-the-run for ten hours straight, and he felt so tired he could barely force his eyes to focus, which would’ve been fine if not for the fact that he would be in combat for the first time in about ten minutes.
He’d taken a position at the top of the hill overlooking Highway 19. It wasn’t the best location for his Winchester 30-30, with an effective range of only a couple hundred yards, but it was more important to see the enemy’s order of battle for himself. The green snake of trucks and jeeps extended at least a mile up the northbound side of Highway 19. Noah was no military genius, but he seriously doubted his raggedy-ass band of Tucson fighters could beat the column in a fair fight. The narcos had more numbers, more guns and certainly better command and control. The only thing the Arizonans had going for them was this bit of high ground.
Noah agitated as the men and vehicles scurried around below the hill like cockroaches when the lights flick on. There was no way this force would maintain the element of surprise, and that was their only advantage. Getting them to stay put in a coordinated ambush had proven impossible without strong leadership, reliable communications and military discipline. They had none of those things. Men rushed back and forth across the freeway below Noah, doing God-knows-what and blowing their element of surprise.
Noah swore under his breath at the inanity of man.
Dammit to hell. Please stop moving. You’re going to get us all killed.
The last four hours had been an emotional rollercoaster. Not only had Noah run a one-man surveillance operation from in-front of the enemy, but he had become a Southwestern Paul Revere—rallying whatever opposition he could ahead of an invading army. Luckily, there was only a single travel corridor up the center of Arizona. Otherwise, it would’ve been impossible to stay ahead of the cartel forces. He couldn’t say for sure if he’d been operating on good guesswork or divine inspiration. Either way, he’d correctly guessed that the Mexican cartel intended on pillaging American cities—and that they’d start with Tucson.
As predicted, the leading edge of the convoy rolled up alongside the alfalfa fields following the Santa Cruz River. In this season, the Santa Cruz was nothing more than a dry wash. The convoy had been running with a scout element a half-mile out front, but since they’d just started rolling again from the Pima Mine offramp, the scout element hadn’t been able to gain much distance from the column. Apparently, the cartel commander had told everyone to move out at the same time, and the scouts were hurrying to re-establish a lead on the main group. Maybe, like against the Philistines that the pastor had mentioned, God was with them too.
His ambushers were never going to get a shot at anything more than the leading element of the convoy, which was over a mile long. The ambush zone was only a few hundred yards deep—but the more soldiers they could bottle up in the ambush, the more pain they could cause the cartel. Inflicting pain, then running like hell, was the most the Arizonans could hope to accomplish.
If the cartel army committed itself to a protracted fight, Tucson would fall and the patriots would die. If the string of trucks that had split off a half-hour before was indeed flanking them, they would all be trapped and exterminated. But, if the patriots could deliver a bloody nose, they might turn the cartel aside from Tucson. They might even turn them back to Mexico, at least for the moment.
What do they want from us? Noah wondered for the first time. Conquering territory meant holding territory, and history had proven that to be a devilishly-difficult proposition. Did the cartel boss actually think that he could take and hold territory in America? Why would he want that?
Plunder.
The idea came to Noah like a revelation—so crisp and clear that he didn’t doubt it for a second. He suddenly knew: the most-common reason throughout history for invasion was to steal: food, luxuries, women, weapons, fuel…
Fuel.
The thought hung in Noah’s mind like a stick bobbing downstream then pinning itself against the rocks.
The Tucson oil refinery had been destroyed. Why attack Tucson?
Maybe they’re just passing through. Maybe they aren’t attacking.
Noah’s thoughts were swept away in a surge of adrenaline. The scout element was entering the ambush zone. Amazingly, nobody scurried across the road and the army rolled forward as though nothing was amiss. Noah’s ambushers had settled down and maybe—just maybe—the convoy of soldiers hadn’t seen them dicking around like a bunch of rednecks at a gun show.
“Come on. Hold. Hold…” Noah coaxed the Arizonans to hold their fire and, miraculously, they did. The first three, army-green Jeeps rolled deeper into the ambush zone as the front-end of the convoy entered as well.
“Hold on, boys. Hang on just another minute…” Noah would rather the scout element pass all the way out of the trap before it sprung, but that would be asking a lot of the men. He looked around, suddenly terrified of a possible flank. Things seemed to be going perfectly—too perfectly, in fact.
Chapter 21
Tavo Castillo
US Highway 19, near Drexel Heights, Tucson, Arizona
“Estas seguro?” Tavo barked into the satellite phone. “Are you certain?”
While they’d been on the road, heading toward Tucson, his satellite phone chirped, a scheduled call that’d slipped his mind with rat-face Ortiz, the assassin.
“We found a post-it note in her apartment with the name ‘Salazar’ and a phone number in Guatemala City.”
Tavo had ordered the sicario to search his daughter’s apartment in Mexico City. They’d also hacked her phone the week before. He could picture his daughter talking to someone on the phone in her apartment at the capital and jotting down the contact information of the man who had set him up for capture in Guatemala—Agusto Salazar, his half-brother and quite possibly, an agent of his criminal father.
It was strangely difficult to write something in a cell phone if it was being used for a call at the same time. That’d been her mistake. She’d gone analog with her treachery by writing on a post-it note.
“Did she call the number?” Tavo asked, remembering the phone hack.
“Yes. Twice. Once, three months ago and again just two days before the target date.” He’d used the words “the target date.” That meant that the assassin realized that he knew too much. The rat face must’ve reached the conclusion that he was swimming in shark infested waters. He’d probably figured out who Tavo was, and that the subjects of his investigation were family. The assassin must’ve sensed the danger of knowing too much information about the kind of man who paid him in diamonds. “The day of the Kaibil assault in Antigua” had become “the target date.”
He’s right, Tavo mused. He had planned to have them both killed: the sicario and the handler.
What a difference a week makes, Tavo thought as his Humvee rumbled down the freeway. Now, with federal police fighting for their lives in the streets like everyone else, Tavo wouldn’t bother having the sicario and his handler eliminated. The assassins were far enough away that they might as well be in Borneo, for all the exposure they represented to Tavo.
He watched the fields and desert south of Tucson roll past his window as he thought about his daughter. A steady stream of refugees dragged themselves south, heading toward groundwater like desperate animals. He had been lost in thought for a moment, the satellite phone up against his ear.
Something buzzed in the back of his mind, and he felt like he should get off the phone and come back to the here-and-now. “I’ll talk to you again at the appointed time.”
“Of course, Mister Juarez,” the contract killer emphasized his false name. It was a futile attempt at denying that Ortiz knew his daughter’s name and would know Tavo’s name as well. Once Tavo’s DNA had been used in the investigation, any chance of maintaining anonymity had vanished. The assassin knew his half-brother’s name, his father’s name and now his daughter’s. That knowledge would’ve been a death sentence a week before. Now Tavo didn’t give a shit. He had bigger fish to fry. He needed to get off the phone. He needed to set his daughter’s obvious treachery aside.
“Goodbye.” He hung up the sat phone and stared at the column of black smoke that’d become a massive pillar as they’d entered the outskirts of Tucson. A metallic glint up on a hill instantly abolished his reverie and Tavo’s nerves stood straight up.
“Stop!” he shouted to his driver. He reached for the radio, but before he could key the mic, violence enveloped Beto’s lead unit. Wedged between a muddy river and a blackened, cut back cliff, the front half of his motorized column fell into a bristling trap.
Tavo jumped out of the rolling Humvee and brought his gun to bear, much too far away to be any good.
“Move, move, move!” he shouted into his radio. “Push through!” The shouting was unnecessary. Beto had trained him in response to ambush in the first place. If it was possible to assault through, Beto would do it. Tavo stopped shouting, calmed himself and did what he did best. He worked the problem.
He looked at the laminated frequency card taped to the pocket in his plate carrier vest and called Alejandro, now probably fifteen miles away, heading east toward New Mexico.
“Coyote Actual to Kit Fox, over.”
“Go for Kit Fox,” the radio squawked.
“Return immediately. Contact with enemy at the south edge of Tucson.”
“Good copy, Actual. Returning to Tucson, maximum speed. Estimate two-five mics. Over.”
“Copy, Kit Fox. Standby in five mics for more. Coyote Actual out.”
It wasn’t lost on Tavo that Alejandro had been right when he’d urged sticking together. He’d be rushing back to save Tavo from a mistake—one that Alejandro had predicted. Tavo knew he should appreciate his man’s insightfulness, but the acid churning in his stomach yearned to kill him instead.
All he knew from his position at the rear of the column was that the front third of his force—everything below the shadow of the hill, had come under massive fire, probably from positions on the cliff and maybe from the riverbank as well. He waited for radio contact from Beto. The bass thunder of his belt-fed machine guns joined the fight, hopefully carving out hot flesh from the opposition.
Finally his command radio crackled to life. “Coyote, this is Roadrunner. Standby for contact report.”
“Go for Actual,” Tavo responded, dropping his rifle into its sling and clamping his Peltors tight around his ears.
“Estimated six-zero riflemen on the hill to the east…Standby.” The radio went silent and a new sound, a deep thumping, added to the chorus of battle. Explosions carried on the wind.
“Roadrunner for Actual. Armored elements—police APCs and what appears to be a steel-armored school bus have come alongside our position on the southbound leg of the freeway. We’re taking heavy fire from both sides of the highway. Advise withdrawing to your position. We’re down thirty men and two technicals.”
“This is Actual. Good copy. Withdraw to my position.” Tavo grabbed his binoculars from the front seat of the Humvee and used the doorframe to steady himself.
“Dios mio,” he whispered as he scanned the hillside above his retreating men. Not only had his men failed to destroy the elevated ambush positions, but he watched in horror as trucks on the ridge unloaded blue, fifty-five gallon drums. He could only imagine what those drums contained. Maybe gasoline. Maybe oil. Perhaps poison gas. At least the American military waited for permission before committing atrocities. Apparently, American citizens were capable of anything.
The front third of his column had been nearly enveloped—the high ridge to the east, a blocking force to the north and ambush elements popping up along the dry wash to the west of the freeway. The belt-feds in the center and rear of his column opened up on the ambushers dotting the hill crest and Tavo watched as machine gun fire raked one of the trucks unloading the blue barrels. From a distance of over eight hundred meters, he couldn’t tell if the men on the ridge were convulsing from the 7.62 rounds or if something more ominous had escaped from the drums, striking men down like a viper in the grass.
He tried to picture the chain of events that might lead to such a vicious attack inside of such a tight timeframe. They’d only been in U.S. territory for four hours. Perhaps police at the convention, or even the people of Nogales, had raced north to Tucson, marshaling what weapons they could from the National Guard armories and airbase. Maybe the police had rallied residents, going street-by-street, calling up American gun owners to protect the city.
Tavo’s imagination flowered, and in it bloodthirsty American “preppers” mustered their perverse creativity to slaughter Mexican invaders—weapons, explosives, booby traps, even chemical weapons.
WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP, WHOOMP!
Something big exploded on both sides of the freeway, showering the front third of his column with burning gasoline and something that appeared to be flaming gel. A mushroom cloud rolled skyward, pregnant with flame. Another bomb launched gouts of flame a hundred yards onto the highway, cutting off the front third of his column from retreat.
“Get out of there, Beto!” Tavo screamed into his radio. The flaming tarmac blocked his view of the battlefield, and he could only listen as the firefight kicked into high gear.
“Focus on the ambushers to the west side of the freeway!” Tavo spoke into his command radio. “Shift left. Shift fire left.”
He climbed on top of his Humvee to see over the flames. Like hungry flesh beetles, the American partisans swarmed the west side of the freeway. They leapfrogged alongside Beto’s retreating men, using a drainage culvert and the fleeing refugees to cover their attack.
“Actual to Saúl. Flank to the west and cut off that ambush element. Roadrunner needs breathing room.”
“Copy. Already on it,” Saúl replied.
A bullet whizzed past Tavo, but he ignored it. He watched as Saúl led a group of assaulters in a sprint to the west, charging over the sand and dropping over the far side of the southbound highway. A parallel dry riverbed swallowed the team below the raised bed of the roadway. They disappeared for two minutes, then three.
Suddenly, rifle fire crackled from a berm five hundred meters north. Saúl opened up his flank against the ragtag Americans in the wash. As the ambushers became the ambushed and as the flames on the asphalt burned themselves out, the front wounded half of the column fled back toward Tavo and the safety of numbers.
At first it was only clusters of running men. Then a Jeep. Then two technicals. Tavo saw someone who appeared to be Beto, giving orders as he ran. Tavo looked again through his binoculars and blew out a breath he’d unconsciously been holding.
Beto had survived. Saúl and Alejandro would’ve become a problem if their brother-in-arms had been killed this soon after crossing over into the U.S. They might’ve second-guessed Tavo’s judgment and that meant friction. Tavo couldn’t afford friction at the moment.
Tavo watched Beto through his binoculars, now clear of the worst of the fighting. Beto reached for his radio. There was a split-second delay as the radio waves covered the distance between them.
“Roadrunner to Actual.”
“Go ahead, Roadrunner.”
“We’re out of the hot zone. We lost maybe a quarter of my company and half our vehicles.”
“Good copy. Sending corpsmen. Actual out.” Tavo switched to his command frequency.
“Saúl.”
“Go for Saúl.”
“Bring me American survivors. I need two. Kill all the rest.”
“Copy.”
With the battle for
Tucson past its apogee, Tavo sat on the hood of his Humvee. The smoldering asphalt commingled with the oil fires at the Tucson refinery, creating a layer of black haze that flattened over the valley. The sun sulked orange, dropping toward the hills, oblivious to the petty squabbles of man.
Tavo’s column had retreated before discovering what else the preppers of Tucson had dreamed up. God only knew what entrapment awaited them in the urban canyon lands of the city. The front third of his column had been mauled, and they hadn’t even intended on capturing Tucson. They were just passing through.
Tavo reflected on the savagery of the fight against the Arizonan irregulars. The American army wouldn’t be his only concern. Not by a long shot. He hadn’t seen a single military vehicle other than the two police armored personnel carriers. All the fight had come from hundreds of irregular forces, and they’d been enough to seriously damage his column.
Population centers and organized knots of police could be even more unpredictable than organized infantry, at least here in the desert. Cities, and even large towns, were to be avoided at all costs, he decided. Not a single aircraft had joined the fight, and still his losses were sobering. Texas wouldn’t be the only region infected with angry Americans. He’d have to start thinking of the entire southwest as hostile territory.
“All stations. Withdraw to West Campus Road,” he ordered into his radio. He scanned his map for a way around Tucson. “Go around the city on side roads and take Alternate Route C to Objective Rally Point Charlie. Shift to Route C, copy all stations.”
“Good copy, Actual. Shifting to Route C. Rally at West Campus Road, acknowledged.”
Tavo searched his vest and dug out the sat phone that’d sunken to the bottom of his binocular pouch. He called Alejandro and filled him in about the ambush and got him turned back on his original mission to the refinery in New Mexico. There was nothing Alejandro could do now that Tavo's column would skirt Tucson. There was nothing in Alejandro’s reply that even remotely implied “I told you so.”
