And the third chopper was well clear.
But the problem with in-air combat is that shooters who miss their first shot usually nail their second. Why? Because the RPG lights up the night sky with a lingering trail, so the shooter now knows exactly how to adjust his next trajectory.
Another problem was that an additional shooter might already be locked and loaded and waiting for us up ahead. Like the way you position two border collies to herd sheep into each other. There was a strong chance this potential second shooter would be up ahead in the ravine, prepared to take an easy shot at a slow-and-low bird.
Damn.
We were zipping down out of the sky, racing for airborne cover.
I took a kneeling stance, to aim out the door.
“Jack ’em up, Colonel,” Kagawa rasped.
I readied my tiny little M16. A peashooter at a distance like this. The helicopter banked the opposite direction from my view, so, with our severe tilt upward, I had to pretty much aim down across our landing gear. I was scoped and ready to unleash a burst before I even knew where I was targeting.
“Gotta change speed,” said the pilot.
I took a wild guess that Shooter number one would be higher than potential Shooter number two, so I aimed at a dark patch on the hillside.
Yup.
There he was, the clever chump. About to blast us to hell at pointblank. I let loose on three of the worst shots I’d ever shot. Hoping that my instincts about the same gravity that hurt his RPG would now help my return of fire.
Tap, tap, tap. Nailed him.
I’m lucky sometimes. Rarely. But sometimes.
“Nice shot, Coll,” said the pilot.
But things were just getting started. Corporal Kagawa’s upper leg was crooked and oozing blood. The second bird was alongside us. I could see the medic looking over at me and my wounded friend from his perch in his bird’s doorway. The good news was that we had a chance to stabilize him on our own. The bad news was that there were more RPG shooters up ahead and a small plane on the horizon.
If we were going to dust the next target, we were going to have to do it on the run.
“Condor Two to Condor Five, advise descent to one-five meters,” said my pilot. He was calling out the new altitude to fly at. Fifteen meters. Fifteen teeny little meters. We were descending below the tree line so that visual detection was as hard as possible for our enemies.
Up ahead were the lights on the children’s hospital, which were shining across from the soccer field for the elementary school. Sandwiched in between, in the dark buildings, was the meth lab. I was mounted with my trusty M16. Kyra was now on the .50 cal. Rita was coming over to me to try and stop the blood gushing out of Kagawa’s leg.
“Small plane, fifteen miles north by northeast,” said my pilot. “Approaching fast.”
Kyra was now on point surveying the upcoming groundwork, laying out her assessment of our tactical options for me: “We can either scrap target two and race these guys to three, or we get as low as possible to hit the labs. Your call, Colonel.”
It was indeed my tough decision. We were facing a small Beechcraft Bonanza plane on the horizon, which didn’t have missiles but certainly had the ability to blitz our choppers from above by dropping random items onto our blades.
Would that work?
Very possibly, yes. Helicopters don’t like to have their dainty little private parts touched. Not by you, not by me, not by their boyfriends, no one. They will literally rip themselves apart in self-hate if the rear rotor gets out of sync with the main rotor. The torque is maniacal. The birds go down. Hard. Ugly.
So, yes, that plane rapidly approaching us on the horizon—that little bugger was the potential kiss of death.
But it wasn’t here yet.
I got on the radio to tell the platoon my decision, to tell them exactly what they were praying to hear.
“Time for lunch.”
Chapter 22
The trick with a quick bombing run is to be as comprehensive as possible during the one pass you make. Instead of doing multiple passes, you want to do one, just one. And it needs to count.
Ironically, to speed things up, you need to slow things down.
We were originally planning for fifty-mile-per-hour attack patterns. Straight routes. Repeated three times.
Now, instead, we were going to fly zigzag. One pass. “Slow,” I said to the pilot. “Slowwwww. Slower than a bureaucrat.” I wanted this win badly. I couldn’t risk a clumsy attack.
Over the next crest, we’d find the small orchard we’d use as a landmark. Then beyond that would be the outskirts of La Resaca.
“I’m really s-sorry,” mumbled Corporal Kagawa. He was writhing in pain but also trying to prevent his lower half from squirming too much. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
“You’re good, bro,” I said, readjusting his compress. “Just imagine how much ass you’re gonna get thanks to this.”
“I’m…picturing that one chick in the 304th,” he replied. “Asking her to marry me an’ shit.” And then, after some more writhing and moaning, “Sorry I messed up.”
There’s nothing worse than feeling like you let your teammates down. I knew his pain all too well. And it got me losing focus a bit. It’s the bone-crushing guilt trip that I’d already been cultivating inside my soul, watering it, fertilizing it, nurturing it into a huge treelike thing. A guilt forest, actually. The knowledge that I’d led my crew on mission after mission and we had yet to stop Diego. That I got my buddies into danger. That I lost my entire family. That Corporal Kagawa now had a splintered upper thigh and was bleeding pretty bad.
“Does he need immediate aid?” I asked Rita.
He wouldn’t let her reply. “Don’t you dare turn us back, Colonel.”
“He can hold out,” said Rita, “but he’s leaky.”
She was right—the gauze she kept refreshing for the wound was getting soaked disturbingly quickly.
“Don’t,” said Kagawa. “Don’t, Colonel. Please?”
I know that face. I know that plea. It would positively destroy this youngster if I turned us around because of his injury.
I grabbed his hand. An assurance. From here on out, this was for him. This was for faith in the team. Got your back, little brother. “Okay,” I said to him. “But I order you to cease bleeding.”
He laughed at my cheesy line. It was the first time his face stopped wincing.
“Banking hard right,” said the pilot. We were about to emerge into plain view of the target. And we were about to be in range of their turret. Yes, they had a turret.
“Technical. Far corner,” said Kyra, spotting enemy armament. When a bandito mounts a big-ass gun to the back of his dinky-ass Toyota, that’s called a technical. One might think this is slumming it and that it’s trivial, but banditos live and die by this crap. Little pickup trucks with nasty-ass weapons on back. They’re mobile and they shoot hard.
“Platoon,” I said into the radio. “Friendly reminder: We don’t touch the school, we don’t touch the hospital. Target is the dark row of buildings in the middle.”
Our two birds diverged into the woods. Just above the treetops. The obvious move was to torch the fields from the far side, but our goal was to do the exact opposite of what was expected.
“Cleared hot,” I told my pilots, meaning anyone at any time could open fire.
Condor Five banked over the outer edge of the crop. My bird, Condor Two, was coming up on the rear of the hut.
“Castle in range,” said the pilot “Eyes on at 150 meters and closing.”
“Tech! Small road!” shouted Kyra, immediately firing at a technical speeding along our right side. The dude in the back was on a mounted PK machine gun. Pointed at us.
He didn’t stink at aiming. He managed to spray a good amount of bullets right at our belly, and, since we didn’t know how close he was, his salvo caught us off guard.
But Kyra is no slouch in bed. With a second barrage, she massacred the front of the To
yota and, yes, flipped it on its side, throwing the guy in back deep into the bush.
Now our co-pilot was going to work on the meth lab. “Target acquired. Firing away.”
Both pilots then clicked that little red switch just under the right thumb, the one that first needs a clearance toggled from the main console, the one that was cleared half a minute ago, the one that sends about eight hundred pounds of fireworks forward from the bottom of the chopper, and, holy shit, pulverizes a goddamn meth lab.
Every crevice of that compound went up in flames at once. A white volcano. Bright as hell. Loud as God.
It’s like I got to kick Diego in his favorite nut.
Chapter 23
The meth lab at location two was a roaring inferno. We had served breakfast and lunch. We had finished the easy part.
Word would have already gotten to the ranch hands at location three, dinner, by the time we were en route, a thirty-five-minute journey. Enemy trucks were already on the way to intercept us along with that small plane creeping up on our rear.
Corporal Kagawa was bleeding like crazy, which meant his body defied my official orders to coagulate, but he found enough strength to clamp down on his wound on his own. Rita didn’t want to let him be the one to do it, but I told her she had to.
Why?
Because the kid needed to feel like he had something to do. Even if he was doing a worse job than she would. His body needed the feeling of responsibility so that his immune system could fight harder inside him. The potential stress of him knowing he was depriving Rita of her combat assignment would’ve probably eaten him alive.
“Two klicks and closing,” said our pilot. “Firing on your mark.”
“Copy that, Condor Two. On your flank. Evasive will be down and left.”
“Down and left, affirmative. Will mirror.”
The two pilots were agreeing on what path of rapid evasive maneuver they would each take in the event they were both surprised and had to scurry. Two helicopters accidentally touching in any way is about as desirable as getting dental work done in the middle of a rodeo. A helicopter is the most delicate contraption ever invented, and it operates amid a hurricane of force—let’s just say it’s super damn jealous of other helicopters.
“Firing away.” Once again the pilots unleashed the Hellfire missiles, and the world in front of me exploded. We had crushed the entire crop into a massive cloud of heat and fury. We had won.
That was my thought for about a fraction of a second. Then came a rather strange problem.
“Horses,” said Kyra.
“What?” I said.
“Horses, ten o’clock,” Rita was pointing to the center of what was a large, quickly shrinking doughnut of fire.
I looked down and saw it. We were set to bank hard back toward the hillside and get the hell home, we were officially done—but there were three horses in the middle of the burning field.
Protocol says you can’t risk soldiers to save animals. But my crew was rabidly fond of horses.
“Can’t leave ’em, Coll,” said Kagawa.
“No way,” agreed a couple of other troops, including Rita.
There was a path through the circle of confusion that would allow the mare and her foals to head directly out of the fire. But the three animals were absolutely terrified and unable to recognize salvation. To be honest, if I were down there at ground level, I doubt I’d see it either. Those poor things would have to gallop across a football-field’s worth of flaming cocaine before they could be safe.
Why in God’s name someone tied three horses in the middle of a coke field I’ll never know, but the reason really didn’t matter. The hope was that they weren’t tethered.
“Contact hillside!” said the pilot. And of course we were now getting peppered by AK-47s, a group of banditos shooting from the edge of the forest hill.
Our bird, Condor Two, was about to rip them to shreds, but Condor Five was hovering too close to our line of attack. One of the horses was trotting tragically toward the heart of the fire and the troops aboard Five were trying to deter it. Just as bullets were coming at us from more AK-47s. This shit was insane. We had never been this scattered.
I blamed myself for pushing dinner without proper recon.
Rookie mistake.
The Condor Five pilot leveled his bird out, giving us a trajectory, and my second gunner and second assistant team leader unleashed about seven hundred rounds of ammo toward the far side of the field.
We had herded the horses a bit. The first two made it across the path. The third one was on fire, literally on fire, thanks to the cloth blanket on his saddle, and was about to leap over the gap, too. We were so inexplicably excited about this. All of us. Going nuts. Like watching a running back break loose on a game-winning touchdown.
“Go, homeboy!” shouted Kyra. “Go!”
He was about to cross. He was about two strides from completion. And the banditos shot him.
Shot him dead.
An intentional barrage hit his head and torso as the animal buckled and tumbled into an ugly heap, sliding across the dirt. We freaked out. All of us. He still had some zest in him. He knew where his safety zone was now. And he was trying to drag the back half of his magnificent body toward the promised land.
But his limbs couldn’t do it. His front hooves were clawing the dirt. He was pulling hard. There was no quit in that little muchacho. But the physics were against him. Christ. If there ever there was a way to piss on your enemy’s morale in the midst of battle, this was it. There was zero tactical reason to shoot the animal. Zero.
“Permission to vacate,” the pilot said to me.
Not sure what would be waiting for me back home in Texas: what kind of self-inflicted mood would be lurking in my subconscious. Would I be happy? Relieved? Proud? Stuck on a horse? We had consumed all three meals but as I looked across to the faces in the other two helicopters, looking past the sullen faces in our own cabin, I could tell that this entire platoon was fixated on the animal.
“Mission over,” I replied. “Take us anywhere but here.”
And we headed out.
It’s hard to savor a vague victory. Did we win? Did they win? If they would shoot down their own horse just to spite us, how much damage did we really do to them? How much closer was I to Diego’s capture?
To answer my original question, yes there was something waiting for me back in Archer, Texas, that’s for sure. I found out as soon as I settled inside my house.
I was about to be kidnapped.
Chapter 24
The taste of victory was short lived. Whatever ground we just gained only sought to remind me that we hadn’t gotten him yet.
When I come home after a mission, I like to take a hot shower. Sounds trivial but there’s something about the steam and the acoustics. You can sing anything in there and you feel like a rock diva. Plus you get cleaner. Plus your muscles relax. Plus it’s a way of procrastinating whatever long-ass litany of crap you have on your to-do list, like item thirty-seven: Kill stupid Diego Correra. Still.
I had been under the shower nozzle for about half my usual epic stay, shampooing and just beginning a full-body soap down, when I heard the first squeak.
I turned off the water and stood there. Listening. Did I seriously just hear something in my house? A noise?
Unlike the cute visit to the garage by the DEA, this whatever-it-was noise wasn’t quiet. It sounded as if someone’s shoulder bumped into a wall, the wooden beam behind the plaster contorting under instant pressure.
I stood there, naked, not breathing, my hand still on the shower knob.
I instantly realized it was better for me to keep moving around—silent inaction would alert anyone in the house, any intruders, that I knew something was up. I wanted them to think I knew nothing.
I stepped out of the shower. I had two towels ready to go, folded neatly on the sink counter. Way over there. By the time I had taken two steps toward the towels, I heard a door shut.
&
nbsp; My heart started racing. Shit. This wasn’t my imagination. This was an actual intrusion.
I needed a weapon in my hand. Across the hall I had a Walther PPK stashed. Yes, that’s the James Bond gun. Yes, it’s small. And amazing. If I could just turn off the bathroom lights and dart across the hall and arm myself, I could make a mad dash for the guest bedroom and get out through the window, assuming they had both doors guarded.
But before I could even start to consider how long this would all take, the bathroom knob started turning. On its own. Slowly.
It took about three seconds max, but it felt like super slow motion every step of the way. The knob turned, and I lunged forward, went low to duck under any line of fire, to intercept the opponent rather than retreat deeper into the bathroom where I would be weaponless and easy to shoot. I’d love to claim that I grabbed some perfume and a BIC lighter and made a blowtorch or that I ripped the shower curtain rod from the stall and wielded a Martha Stewart spear, but I’m not that clever. Besides, I don’t wear perfume. And is that crap really flammable? My bathroom, as I noted in that millisecond of combat prep, was sadly lacking in sharp objects. I had a bar of fragrant soap. That was it. From a crouched position, still midstride, I let the door open just enough so I could access my enemy’s weapon. Utilizing Krav Maga techniques, I could snatch it.
The first thing I saw through that door was, yes, a gun. But that’s when the lights went out.
And so I was in the dark, weaponless, grabbing at a Glock from the grip of what I came to discover was a 240-pound ogre, while I stood with wet feet on a slippery floor.
Naked.
I punched at his ribs. The ogre. I wanted to grab a handful of torso skin and just twist the hell out of it, twist and pull downward, but he had on a big poofy jacket. We grappled for a long, silent, respectable four seconds. But he was on a mission. And his mission was completed rather quickly. Before I could strike even one blow, my neck was jabbed with a needle by another assailant. His partner. And, within seconds, precious seconds, my ability to struggle expired. And my hands and legs were cuffed. And a hood came over my head. And the darkness got even darker.
Kill or Be Killed Page 20
