Lex Talionis

by Peter Nealen

  “Get on the floor!” I bellowed. Fortunately, the Stony Creek guys were on the ball, and had hauled Lucia and Gary down to the floor as soon as the first round punched through the drywall. A moment later, a long burst of machine gun fire ripped through the walls, shattering the window and sending clouds of splinters and drywall dust through the air. The lamp that Lucia had been sitting next to went dark as a bullet smashed the lightbulb.

  My earpiece was still in my ear, having been overlooked by an otherwise uncomfortably thorough search, but we were way outside the range where it could link to the radio. I knew that part of the team was out in the woods behind the house, having crept there to defend against the attack that we fully expected to come from that direction, but I couldn’t hear any of the chatter or get any updates. We had to wing it.

  “Get to the front!” I yelled. “I’ve got guys in back to hold ‘em off, but they won’t be able to do much against that belt-fed! MOVE!” I looked at the detail lead. “We need rifles!”

  The guy in the suit pointed toward a room off the entryway. “Ready room’s in there!”

  Larry and I started low-crawling that direction, even as the Sparrows’ security got them moving toward the front. Any questions seemed to have been abandoned, especially as only a suicidal assassin would put himself in the middle of his own machine gun’s kill zone. There were those who were crazy or fanatical enough to do that, but few, if any, of them were operating in this little shadow civil war.

  The ready room was neat and professional, or would have been if there hadn’t been bullets smashing through the walls. There were three equipment cases, helpfully labeled with team numbers, set against the wall, along with collapsible gear trees, some comms, and a duty roster on a white board leaning against the wall.

  I got to the first gear case a few feet ahead of Larry. Low crawling sucks for big guys, too. Flipping the lid open, I saw two spare M4s, broken down, in the bottom.

  Reaching in, I grabbed an upper and a lower, made sure the bolt carrier group was still in the upper, slapped ‘em together, and shoved the weapon at Larry, before going diving for the other one. Fortunately, any AR-pattern rifle is pretty quick to go together, and there were stacks of loaded magazines in the next case over, so in a matter of a few moments, we were locked and loaded, spare mags jammed into pockets and belts, and heading back out the door.

  Neither the Congresswoman nor her husband were crawling very fast, so we met them at the front door. Larry, having been closer to the door, led out, risking coming up to a knee and bellowing, “Friendlies coming out!” Neither of us wanted to get accidentally smoked by the guys on the porch.

  They were, commendably, still on their posts, watching the wide swathe of open ground in front of the house, and the woods beyond. I’d known too many gunfighters turned security contractors who would have run toward the sound of the fight, and left that flank wide open.

  The detail lead was yelling into his radio, and soon I heard the roar of engines. The two Subs in the driveway were ready to move, the doors open and two more armed men crouched by the passenger sides, rifles pointed toward the back, where the firefight was only getting more heated. I couldn’t tell for sure, especially since I had to concentrate on getting Sparrow out of there, but it seemed like the fire coming our direction was only getting more intense. I hoped we hadn’t lost anyone, but our guys were definitely getting pushed back. We were out of time.

  Fortunately, the Stony Creek guys didn’t fuck around. With the bulk of the house between us and the fire, they all but bodily picked Sparrow and her husband up and hurled them into the back of the closest Suburban. The detail lead pointed toward the other one. “Come on!” he yelled at us. “You can’t stay here!”

  Under fire, I wasn’t going to argue. We stuffed ourselves in the back seat, and in moments we were flying down the road, heading back the way we’d come. The gunfire faded into the distance behind us.

  The detail lead had gotten into the Sub with us. “Are they likely to come after us?” he asked.

  “They might try,” I said. “Between you and me, Cuellar’s a shitbag, so he’s probably going to throw a shit-fit when the target house is empty, and fall back to try to figure out what to try next. He probably hasn’t thought much else through. But I’ve been wrong before.” I was hoping that the boys back in the woods would have put enough of a hurting on the hitters to keep them from pursuing. While eliminating Cuellar and his team would have been an added bonus, Sparrow was our primary objective.

  We got to the roadblock, to find the Subs ready to move, and the gun teams having collapsed in to the vehicles. Eddie and our other four shooters had joined them, and I could only imagine how tense that had been, before the Stony Creek guys had accepted that we weren’t their enemy.

  “Let us out here,” I told the Stony Creek lead.

  “We can’t stop,” he protested. “We’re still less than a mile from the house.”

  “We need our gear, and how the hell are you going to know where to go without us along?” I pointed out.

  “Go,” he said. Larry and I shoved the heavy doors open and piled out.

  It was a matter of moments to retrieve our weapons and vests, along with my radio. I could finally hear the radio chatter.

  “Hillbilly, Albatross,” Bryan was calling. He sounded winded, and he’d probably been calling for a while.

  “Albatross, Hillbilly,” I replied, “Just got my radio back. We’re almost clear; break contact and head for the rendezvous.”

  “We already had to fall back,” he told me. “Our boy brought a lot of firepower. I hope Sparrow has good homeowner’s insurance.” He paused for a moment. “Be advised; Cuellar brought his boys in on four-wheelers, and they’re moving out again. They might be trying to cut you off.”

  “Roger,” I replied. “We’re moving. Get to the RV.” By then we were piling back into the Sub, and the rest were following suit. “We’ve got pursuit coming,” I announced. “Get us the hell out of here.”

  “Where are we going?” the detail lead asked.

  “Head west, stay off the highway,” I told him. “We’ve got an LZ set up just off the 40, about three miles away.”

  “Roger.” The driver didn’t say a word, but gunned the engine and sent us lurching down the road. The up-armored Subs might have been the best that Stony Creek could get, but anyone who’s ever ridden in those damned things can attest that they are complete and total pigs. The armor gets slapped on an otherwise stock vehicle, and the engine, suspension, and transmission don’t do so well with an extra ten thousand pounds of steel and composite added on.

  The drivers did as I’d advised, and kept us off the highway. Soon we were bouncing down a dirt road, with pines entirely too close on either side, making for the LZ.

  All too soon, the radio crackled. “We’ve got four wheelers behind us. About six of ‘em.”

  The detail lead twisted around in his seat to look back at Larry and me. “Those our friends?” he asked.

  “Sounds like it,” I replied. “My guys said they made the approach on four wheelers, and that they were moving off the X on the same. Cuellar must really want this paycheck.”

  “Any ideas?” he asked. “Somehow I doubt that your bird is going to want to land with the threat that close.”

  “We kill them, then call the bird in,” I said matter-of-factly. “Only way to be sure.”

  He looked a little taken aback by that, but then lifted his eyebrows a little and nodded. It had to take some getting used to, shifting into that combat mindset Stateside. But from what I knew about Stony Creek, he had to have some on-the-ground experience, so he was probably just having to slip back into old habits.

  We’d never gotten out of those old habits.

  He started to issue instructions to the rest of the vehicles, in a rapid, clipped tone. Larry and I listened in, internalizing our own part of the plan as we went.

  We burst into the open area that had already been designated for t
he landing zone, and the vehicles suddenly fanned out, presenting their armored flanks to our pursuers. Ours swayed alarmingly as the driver threw the wheel over; the armor raised the vehicle’s center of gravity considerably, and we almost came off one set of wheels before he brought it to a stop.

  Even before the vehicle had stopped rocking on its shocks, I was heaving the door open—there was no slamming a door that weighs a hundred twenty pounds—and diving out, the borrowed M4 still on the seat, leading with my SOCOM 16.

  We couldn’t have timed it better if we’d tried. Almost as one, a dozen shooters leveled rifles at the pack of four-wheelers coming out of the trees from around the backs of vehicles or over the hoods, and opened fire.

  The heavy booms of our 7.62 rifles were about matched by the lighter cracks of the Stony Creek M4s, just because of the sheer number of them. An unholy roar of gunfire reached out and mowed the attackers down.

  It happened almost too fast to register. One moment, there were six four-wheelers, with about eight shooters on them, coming at us. The next, they were a mangled pile of wrecked ATVs and dead bodies. They’d driven right into the teeth of that wall of high-velocity metal and been torn to pieces. Two of the four-wheelers flipped over as their drivers were hit and went over backwards, twisting the throttles in their death spasms. One was still running, upside down, the wheels spinning.

  The echoes were still rolling across the woods as I got on the radio again. “Dirt, Hillbilly.”

  “This is Dirt,” Phil called. Phil was one of our primary helo pilots. He’d usually been based of the company ship, the Frontier Rose, but had moved his operation inland for this little fun and games. “I’m standing by.”

  “LZ is cold,” I told him. “Bring ‘er in while it stays that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if we attracted some unfriendly attention with this little fireworks show.”

  “Roger, en route,” he said. “Five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” I confirmed.

  It took most of that time to make sure the LZ was clear and the Sparrows were ready to go. By the time we had the Congresswoman and her shaking husband out of the vehicles and ready to make the dash to the helo, Phil was already bringing the Bell 407 in, flaring hard to drop it with delicate precision right on the air panel that Eddie had put out.

  “You and two others go with them,” I told the detail lead. “The rest will have to stay on the ground.”

  “You’re not going?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “You’re her detail,” I told him. “Our job was to get them to safety, and Phil knows where to go. Now hurry up. I’m sure there are still some people around here drawn to the sound of gunfire, and not just because they’re stupid and curious.”

  He stuck out his hand, and I shook it. Then he was herding the Congresswoman and her husband toward the helo, picking the rest of the detail to accompany them as he went.

  A few moments later, the precious cargo aboard, Phil was pulling for the sky, climbing as hard as the Bell 407 would climb. Nobody’d shot any helos down yet, but comparing what was happening in the States to what had happened in Mexico, it was only a matter of time.

  We were going to need to hitch a ride with the Stony Creek boys to where we’d stashed our own vehicles, but first I dug the Renton phone out of my vest. “They’re on the way,” I told him as soon as he answered.

  “Good,” he replied. “I’ve got another job for you, short fuse. I know you guys have been hitting it hard, but this is a pretty narrow window. Fortunately, you haven’t got all that far to go.”

  I sighed. No rest for the wicked.

  Chapter 27

  Reconnaissance and surveillance in the desert is not fun. Not only because of the heat, the dust, and the generally inimical wildlife. But particularly on the stretch of desert around Presumidio Canyon, right on the US-Mexico border, there’s just not much high ground, at least not within engagement ranges of the target site.

  And from what we were seeing, the Soldados de Unidos Chicanos already had what overwatch positions there were sewed up.

  We’d gotten the rundown on the drive south from Flagstaff. I’d grumbled about Renton’s definition of “not that far to go;” it was a good three hundred miles, most of the last ninety on back roads through the desert and mountains. But it had given us time to plan that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

  The tip had been pure luck. A large portion of the violence in the Southwest had already been narco-led, but as we’d discovered in Mexico on the hunt for the imaginary “El Duque,” that meant a myriad of small cells working together or against each other as the situation dictated. It made tracking trends difficult. But both our own intel cell, which was getting re-situated after we’d taken the Task Force down, and the Cicero Group were trying to track what they could.

  The Group had cracked into an online forum used mostly by young activists who were collaborating, often without any real understanding of the consequences, with “revolutionaries,” i.e., narcos and terrorists. One of these activists in particular, a very passionate young woman named Veronica Fernandez, who apparently had been indirectly connected with just about every major Aztlanista movement that had an online presence for the last three years, though she was not an official member of any of them, had mentioned something exciting she was getting to do, down by the border. Some digging turned up that she thought that she and her friends were going to be providing transportation for some important allies in “the struggle.”

  That was enough to get some intel weenies digging. Pretty soon, one of her friends got spotted on a CCTV camera, meeting with a known Soldados de Unidos Chicanos commander.

  The SUC was one of the more organized Aztlanista militias in Arizona, and had been a royal headache for what was left of Arizona law enforcement ever since the POCRF had kicked things off after Pueblo. Little was known about them; they weren’t as flashy as some of the other narco and Aztlanista factions. There was no website with their goals and demands, no videos of their attacks or ultimatums delivered by masked men with digitally altered voices. They hit military and law enforcement targets, as well as major infrastructure. So far, while their attacks had been spectacular in their professionalism and effect, they had been relatively limited in scope.

  The Cicero Group suspected that that was about to change.

  It should have taken some doing to figure out where the meet was happening, but Fernandez and her friends, while they might be useful mules to the SUC, really, really sucked at OPSEC. Renton had a fucking six-digit grid coordinate for the meet, just because of those retards gushing on social media about the great things they were going to get to do for the cause.

  So, there we were, creeping across the desert floor, using every bit of sagebrush and every fold in the ground as concealment as we scoped out the section of Presumidio Canyon where Fernandez and her fellow “revolutionaries” were supposed to be picking up their new allies.

  With the SUC involved, we’d decided to approach cautiously, and we weren’t regretting it. Nick was on point, moving slowly and silently from cover to cover through the pre-dawn gray, when he suddenly froze and held up a hand.

  The rest of us were spread out in a loose wedge, similarly moving from concealment to concealment across the desert. I’d walked many a patrol in the desert that had relied on darkness and the booger-eater jihadis not having night vision, where we’d just made our way from point to point. We didn’t dare take that chance with the SUC. So, we were moving carefully, stalking up to the objective as if they could see and hear in the dark. When Nick put his hand up, we all stopped where we were. I waited a second, then carefully moved up next to him.

  He pointed, moving slowly. The eye is drawn to movement, with or without NVGs. For a moment, I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but then the sentry shifted his position again.

  There were two of them, wearing what looked like boonie hats and holding AKs, which had become the SUC’s weapons of choice. They were in position on the canyon
rim, overlooking the meet site. They’d be well-concealed from below by the juniper bush they were kneeling behind.

  We were close; we’d gotten within two hundred yards without either seeing them or being detected. I was sure that if they’d seen us, we’d have come under fire in short order.

  Unfortunately, penetrating that close meant that verbal communication was right out. I could even hear murmurs between the two sentries. Nothing that would be intelligible even if I spoke Spanish, but enough to be able to hear them. If I tried to use the radio, they’d hear it and the jig would be up.

  So, instead, I went old-school, and turned to make eye contact with first Eric on my left, and then Bryan, off to the right. Careful, slow hand signals indicated that we should fan out and keep eyes peeled for more of them.

  It took time, time that we didn’t necessarily have. The sun was coming up fast, and the meet time was approaching. But we’d damned near been burned getting in too much of a hurry in Pueblo, and I wasn’t going to repeat that particular mistake. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if we blundered into the middle of things and left hostile shooters at our backs.

  Slowly, we spread out along the canyon rim, keeping at least a hundred fifty meters back, and maintaining contact so that signals could be passed up and down the team. It was a strange sort of sign language that we’d developed over the years, combining conventional hand and arm signals with more detailed signs to pass more information. It was still a bitch to see some of them in the half-light of pre-dawn.

  The picture got clearer. The SUC had exterior security and overwatch on the meeting site; the overwatch elements were rather more numerous and heavily armed than the external security, which amounted to four shooters with AKs, while there was a mix of AKs, PTR-91s, and two MG-3 machine guns overwatching the meet. Whoever the “new allies” were, the SUC was more worried about them than they were about anyone coming to crash the party.