Cartel

by Chuck Hustmyre

"What do you want me to do?" the pilot said.

  "Put me on top of them," Marcus shouted into his head-set as he strode across the troop compartment to a weapons rack mounted on the rear bulkhead. He pulled down an M-249, a .223-caliber light machine gun that held 200 rounds of linked ammunition in a box magazine and had a firing rate of 800 rounds per minute.

  As the pilot swung the helicopter around to line up the angle of fire on the fleeing SUV, Marcus sat down on the steel deck, wedging himself in the open doorway and cra-dling the chainsaw-like M-249 in his arms.

  Chapter 66

  "It's still coming," Benny shouted from the back of the Sub-urban. She was talking about the helicopter.

  Scott was pushing the Suburban at eighty miles an hour down a two-lane street lined with parked cars and low-slung buildings. They were getting close to the congestion of downtown. He couldn't go any faster and stay alive.

  "On the right," Benny said.

  Scott glanced through the passenger window and saw the Black Hawk. It was 500 yards out and coming hard, less than a hundred feet above the rooftops and angling to inter-cept them. "You have to take it down," he said.

  "How?"

  "Aim for the transmission. Right below the main rotor. I'll put him behind us." Scott jammed on the brakes and spun the wheel hard left, toward an even narrower side street. The Suburban pitched to the right but didn't roll, somehow man-aging to keep all four tires on the ground through the entire turn. The maneuver tossed Benny across the cargo compart-ment, but she popped right back up and sighted in on the helicopter, now swooping toward them from dead astern.

  Benny opened fire, the blasts reverberating through the cabin and sounding to Scott as if they were going off inside his head.

  The Black Hawk screamed over the top of them, then snapped its nose up to bleed off speed. The pilot spun left and put the port side directly in front of the Suburban. A light twinkled in the open doorway. Bullets raked across the Suburban's hood and steam erupted from the holes. Scott jerked the wheel, sideswiping a parked pickup truck and rip-ping off his driver's side mirror. As soon as he got the SUV back under control he looked over his shoulder and screamed, "Are you hit?"

  Benny looked back at him, eyes wide with terror. She said something in Spanish, then switched to English. "I'm okay."

  "Where is he?"

  She glanced out the side windows. "I don't see-"

  Concrete erupted in front of the Suburban. Chunks of pavement hit the windshield and cracked it in a dozen plac-es. "Hang on," Scott said and yanked the wheel to the right, aiming for the next cross street. They sideswiped another car parked near the corner, bounced off it, lost the other side mirror, and kept going.

  The street was barely wide enough for the big American SUV. The right side was lined with parked cars, all pointed in the other direction. It was a one-way street, and they were headed the wrong way. A car was driving straight at them, a hundred feet and closing. The Suburban was doing fifty, too fast to stop before they buried themselves in the front seat of the approaching car.

  Scott jumped the left-hand curb and bounded onto the sidewalk. The gut-wrenching fear of hitting a pedestrian made him want to squeeze his eyes shut and pretend he was on a rollercoaster, safe because someone else was at the con-trols. The sidewalk wasn't wide enough, and the left side of the Suburban ripped down a long line of concrete walls. The grinding and tearing sounds set his teeth on edge. Then the oncoming car drove past them and Scott cut back onto the street.

  "He's behind us!" Benny yelled.

  Scott didn't look. He didn't have time. The Chevrolet's engine was howling like a tortured beast. Scott kept his foot all the way down on the gas pedal, but he could feel the mo-tor losing power as steam continued to billow from the bullet holes in the hood.

  They hit a bump at the next cross street so hard that the Suburban came off the ground and jumped most of the inter-section. When the wheels hit the pavement again, Scott kept both hands clamped on the steering wheel and his elbows locked. Parked cars lined both sides of the street now, and at the speed Scott was pushing the dying Suburban, even a glancing blow would spin them into a terrible crash.

  Benny let loose a long burst of automatic fire.

  Scott was almost numb to the noise now, but he felt the hot brass shells bouncing off the back of his neck.

  "I'm hitting it but nothing's happening," Benny shouted.

  "It's armored," Scott said. "You have to hit it in the windshield or the base of the rotor."

  Two tall buildings loomed to Scott's immediate right. Tall by Nuevo Laredo standards. One five or six stories, the other seven, maybe eight. He skidded almost to a stop and turned toward the alley that ran between them. A metal gate blocked the alley's entrance. Scott crashed through it, then raced down the narrow passageway with the outside door handles scraping the walls on both sides.

  Another metal gate stood at the far end of the alley. Scott crashed through that one too and then felt the ground fall out from under them. The Suburban nosed over and plunged down a long flight of concrete steps.

  * * * *

  Marcus watched incredulously as the Suburban slammed down the steps at a forty-five degree angle and smashed nose first into the sidewalk at the bottom, yet the vehicle's momentum kept it moving, banging down the curb and onto a four-lane boulevard. Somehow, the DEA agent managed to turn it, and then, despite literally falling apart as it did so, the Suburban kept going, accelerating its way down the boulevard.

  Checking the box magazine slung under the M-249, Marcus estimated he had at least a hundred rounds left. Plenty enough to finish the job. "Stay with them," he told the pilot.

  The heavy damage had slowed the Suburban, which was barely doing forty now but still advancing through traffic because the other cars were getting out of its away. The pilot positioned the Black Hawk a hundred feet above the fleeing SUV and just to its right. "Hold us steady," Marcus said as he aimed the M-249 out the open left doorway.

  Just before Marcus squeezed the trigger, bullets started ricocheting off the bulkheads and ceiling of the troop com-partment, forcing Marcus to roll behind the protection of the locked-open steel door.

  "Goddamnit," he shouted as the helicopter banked hard to escape the fusillade. Then he saw a bloody gouge across the top of his right hand. Either a bullet fragment or a piece of metal sheared from the helicopter had gotten him. Lucky it wasn't worse, he thought as he watched the blood drip from his hand and instantly swirl away in the vortex of wind whipping through the open compartment. Those sons of bitches almost killed me.

  He keyed his microphone. "Bring us back around."

  Chapter 67

  "He's coming back," Benny said.

  Scott flung the Suburban around a traffic circle and ex-ited at the nine o'clock position. The engine shrieked and thumped. The white steam spewing from the bullet holes in the hood had turned to black smoke. Something was on fire. "You said there was an armory back there," Scott shouted. "What else have you got?"

  "Plenty," she said.

  Scott glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Benny dump a black hard-sided plastic case into the back seat and pop open the latches. He looked ahead to check the street. It ended several blocks up.

  "What's this?" Benny said.

  Glancing into the mirror again, Scott saw Benny holding a green tube, two feet long and four inches in diameter, with white lettering on the side. Scott knew exactly what it was: an M-72 LAW, Light Anti-Tank Weapon, a one-shot, dis-posable rocket. "It's an anti-tank rocket," he said.

  "Will it work on a helicopter?"

  "Let's find out," Scott said. He'd seen soldiers and Ma-rines shoot M-72s in Afghanistan. A soldier had even let him fire one at a thirty-year-old pile of rusted steel that used to be a Soviet tank, killed during a mostly forgotten war in the land where empires go to die. LAW rockets weren't really worth a damn against tanks, the soldier had said, but they were hell on houses and buildings. The troops called them bunker busters. The Taliban didn't hav
e tanks anyway.

  The street they were on ended at an open plaza the size of a city block. When Scott stepped on the brake pedal it went straight to the floorboard. A narrow street bordered the plaza, but the Suburban was going too fast to make the turn. Scott hit the curb head-on and blew out both front tires, then plowed over a decorative metal stanchion, one of a ring of identical stanchions lining the sidewalk that encircled the plaza.

  Pedestrians screamed and scattered.

  In the center of the plaza stood an ornate fountain that might offer them some cover from the Black Hawk. Scott aimed the Suburban toward the fountain. "Get ready to bail out," he shouted back at Benny over the sounds of the dying Suburban. "And bring that rocket."

  The blown right tire peeled off, and the bare rim dug in-to the concrete. Scott kept his foot mashed down on the gas pedal, trying to close the fifty-yard gap between the SUV and the fountain. Angry orange sparks shot past the passen-ger window. Then the shredded left tire tore loose with a loud thwack and bounded past Scott's door. With both rims gouging into the concrete, the Suburban ground to a final shuddering stop ten yards from the fountain.

  Scott reached into the back seat and grabbed one of the M-4s. "Let's go." Then he pushed open the driver's door and jumped out. Benny climbed out of the shattered back win-dow carrying an M-4 and the LAW rocket. Dozens of people had fled to the edge of the square and were now standing there looking back at Scott and Benny, half of them aiming cell phone cameras.

  Scott heard the Black Hawk before he saw it, the fast whop, whop, whop of the big turboshaft-powered main rotor beating the air into submission as the 15,000-pound armored beast closed in on them, the terrifying sound of it bouncing off the buildings surrounding the plaza and seeming to come from everywhere at once. He scanned the low sky until he found it, a quarter-mile out and circling the plaza.

  "We have to move," he said.

  They ran to the fountain and crouched behind the wide base, shuffling sideways to keep the fountain between them and the circling helicopter. Muzzle flashes winked at them from the open doorway of the Black Hawk and bullets slammed into the fountain, blowing off chunks of concrete and stone and ricocheting across the plaza. Scott and Benny dove onto their bellies and crawled, unable to see the heli-copter anymore but tracking it by sound.

  The people who had been watching them from the edge of the plaza ran for their lives. Then someone screamed. Not in terror but in pain. One of the bullets had struck flesh.

  Scott rose to one knee and pressed the stock of the M-4 into his shoulder, scanning the surrounding rooftops until he spotted the Black Hawk. He stood and aimed the carbine, making sure to lean into the weapon to counteract the muz-zle rise, then squeezed the trigger and held it, unleashing the thirty-round magazine's entire load of .223-caliber hardball ammunition at the circling helicopter in a deafening four-second rip that sounded like a buzz saw tearing through wood.

  The Black Hawk dipped, then banked away and disap-peared behind a building. Benny jumped to her feet. She pulled her fingers out of her ears. "You did it," she shouted. "You shot it down."

  Scott wasn't so sure.

  * * * *

  Marcus slammed the M-249's feed cover down on a new 200-round belt of linked ammunition and yanked the charging handle back to prepare the big gun to fire. Then he keyed his microphone and said, "Take us back around."

  The pilot, who had flown hundreds of combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, simply said, "Roger that," and put the Black Hawk into a sweeping turn that would bring them back over the plaza.

  Sixty seconds ago, they had been forced to peel off when bullets started pinging all over the aircraft, but after a quick systems check, the pilot said his instruments weren't showing any emergencies. Now they were headed back to finish the fight.

  "Put me right on top of that fountain," Marcus said.

  "What about cops?" the pilot asked.

  Marcus looked ahead and saw the plaza coming up fast. "Fuck the cops."

  * * * *

  After a couple of minutes with no sound of a crash and no smoke, Scott knew he hadn't shot down the Black Hawk. Then he heard it again, getting closer. "They're coming back," he said.

  They were still crouched behind the fountain. Benny looked up at him. "What are we going to do?"

  Scott tossed his empty M-4 aside and picked up the LAW rocket launcher.

  Benny loaded a fresh mag into her M-4. "You ever use one of those things before?"

  "Once."

  "And it's only got one shot, right?"

  Scott nodded.

  "Then I guess you better make it count."

  He popped the two end caps off the LAW and pulled out the metal safety pin. "Aim for the guy on the machine gun while I try to remember how this thing works." He gripped each end of the two-foot long tube and pulled them in opposite directions, expanding the launcher to just over three feet in length. The spring-loaded sights at the front and middle of the tube popped up and a flange of metal that acted as a shoulder brace dropped down from the underside.

  Then the helicopter swept in over the rooftops, nose down and moving fast. When it reached the plaza the pilot pulled the nose up and pivoted to expose the open doorway. The Black Hawk slid toward them sideways like a crab, then stopped and hovered just a hundred yards away. The ma-chine gun in the doorway opened fire and bullets started chewing up the fountain and the pavement.

  Benny returned fire with short bursts.

  Scott stood with the tube braced on his shoulder and the fingers of his right hand resting on the rubberized trigger bar on top. His one shot had to be a bullseye. He remembered the soldier in Afghanistan telling him that the LAW didn't have a proximity fuse. Nothing but a direct hit would set off the explosive charge. Worse, the rocket left a contrail of smoke pointing right back at the shooter. "Stick and move," the soldier had said. "Fire the rocket, drop the tube, and run."

  Scott lined up the front and rear sights with the helicop-ter, setting the red crosshairs of the reticle on the center of the fuselage, just behind the troop compartment. Then he squeezed the trigger bar.

  Chapter 68

  Marcus had his ass planted on the steel deck of the troop compartment, his feet braced wide apart, firing the M-249 in aggressive ten-round bursts, blowing up chunks of concrete and stone. He was catching some return fire from the Mexi-can cop, but he ignored it. Big sky, little bullet, he'd always heard, and so far what he had heard had been right.

  Of the thousands of rounds that had been fired at him in the far-flung shit spots of the world, not one of them had ever hit him. He glanced at the blood still seeping from his hand. But that had been a fragment, so it didn't count. He was still a virgin and wanted to keep it that way.

  Then the DEA agent stood up and Marcus saw a bright flash and an eruption of flame and smoke as a small, dark object with a halo of fire around it streaked toward him, trailing a streamer of dirty brown smoke.

  He knew exactly what it was. "Oh, shit."

  * * * *

  There was a loud whoosh as the M-72 LAW rocket's motor ignited, and Scott felt the heat from the exhaust jet on his back. The rocket tore across the hundred yards of open air between the fountain and the helicopter in less than two seconds, pulling a tail of fire and smoke. It hit the Black Hawk almost exactly where Scott had aimed it, to the rear and just above the open troop door.

  It was nearly impossible to distinguish between the det-onation of the rocket and the explosion of the helicopter. The two were an almost simultaneous blinding double flash, followed immediately by a sonic boom. The flaming wreck of the Black Hawk lurched sideways in the air, burning pieces falling off, the rotor shattering and spinning away. Then the entire fiery hulk fell out of the sky and crashed onto the street that bordered the plaza.

  Benny stared at the wreckage and crossed herself. "Jesús Cristo."

  Scott dropped the empty tube. "I'm pretty sure I got it that time."

  The burning debris ignited a nearby building. Everyone
was running. There were sirens approaching.

  "We need to go," Scott said.

  Benny tossed her empty M-4 into the fountain and they walked away.

  On the street circling the plaza, Scott found an early 1990s Oldsmobile trapped in a long line of empty cars. All around the plaza people had abandoned their cars and run to escape the gunfire. The driver's door was open, the keys were in the ignition, the motor was running. And the driver was gone.

  Scott climbed behind the wheel. Benny got in beside him. Working the steering wheel and the gearshift back and forth, Scott squeezed the Oldsmobile out from the line of deserted cars, bounced it over the curb, and drove away across the empty plaza.

  * * * *

  Standing on the roof of the Suburban and looking through a pair of ten-power binoculars, Gavin stared across the river at the drab, shit-brown skyline of Nuevo Laredo and at a column of greasy black smoke rising from some-where near downtown, where, a few minutes ago, there had been an explosion. He could hear sirens wailing all over the city.

  "Well?" Jones demanded. He was standing outside the passenger door smoking a cigarette. The torn wrapper of a Milky Way bar lay at his feet. The two of them were still stuck on the U.S. side of the World Trade Bridge, waiting for the ATF search team to finish clearing the bridge after the bomb threat. But since the explosion, all the ATF agents and CBP officers on the bridge had stopped working and were staring at the rising column of smoke on the other side of the river.

  Gavin kept his eyes pressed to the binoculars. "That had to be the Black Hawk."

  "How the fuck could that have happened?" Jones said. "Aren't those things armored?"

  Gavin lowered the binoculars and looked down at Jones. "Doesn't mean you can't shoot them down. They didn't call the movie Black Hawk Down for nothing."

  Jones stood rigid for several seconds. Then he started kicking the shit out of the side of the Suburban and shouting "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" It was the first real outburst of emotion Gavin had seen from the CIA man.