Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2)

by Stan R. Mitchell

“It’s affecting our response time,” Rivera said, his voice quieter.

  Juan Soto felt a deep, sickening feeling that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Actually, since he filed bankruptcy as a young businessman, twenty-plus years ago. Yet panicking and screaming at Rivera would not help the situation, only make it worse.

  “Do the best you can,” Soto said. “We’ll find a way to hold. But, you better send more than just a SWAT truck and some officers. There are tons of armed men in the street below, and thirty won’t be enough. We’re going to need the army.”

  Chapter 32

  Nick Woods was lost in a feeling of deja vu, remembering another time he had departed a war zone with his work unfinished. That time had been in the ’80s and that place had been Afghanistan. At least this time he wasn’t leaving a man behind, hastily buried in a shallow grave.

  He shuddered as he recalled being pursued by more than a thousand Soviet troops, and remembered the blood-drenched body of his spotter and close friend as the man finally succumbed to his many wounds.

  Hell, who was he kidding? It wasn't just his spotter. It had been one of his closest friends. And besides leaving a Marine behind -- something you just never did, and something he’d never forgive himself for -- Nick had also learned that his command had sold him out, multiple times. There was no way the Soviets should have guessed his various extraction points as they had.

  But that was many years ago, and just a few years ago, it had all come up again and without question, he’d put a lot of bodies in the ground, including one of the men responsible for selling him and his friend out. Now, he was packing up again, yet another mission unfinished. He hadn’t lost any men this time, but an entire Navy SEAL platoon had been wiped out. And these dead Americans, fellow brothers in arms, lay unavenged. Sure, the head of the Godesto Cartel was gone, but Nick had been aiming for more than simply Hernan Flores’s head on a platter.

  Nick wanted to destroy the entire cartel. Tear it apart limb-by-limb and return home, knowing his men had made a difference. Make Mexico (and thus America) safer.

  The sound of approaching footsteps shook him from his thoughts and his old sniper senses clicked in, his awareness coming back to hyperfocus. The steps stopped at his office door and a fist rapped respectfully on the door. His hopes of a soft knock with Isabella behind it died right there.

  “Come in,” Nick said.

  His CIA contact stepped in the room, holding up a phone.

  “It’s Mr. Smith,” the man said.

  Nick looked up at his CIA contact. He was in no hurry to hear Mr. Smith jerking his chain about this or that, or yelling about how they should leave the country in this manner or that manner.

  “We’ve been through a lot,” Nick said, holding the eyes of his CIA contact and ignoring the outstretched phone.

  “Sir?”

  “You and me, we’ve been through a lot. From you volunteering to make contact with me there at that gas station by the interstate, to me abducting your ass and taking you hostage, to all the planning and nasty surprises you dropped on me before we ever left the country. Remember all those? Remember the early departure date and the fact that we’d be a corporation instead of a government unit?”

  “Sir, that wasn’t on me. I told you--”

  “I know,” Nick said, holding his hand up and cutting him off. “I was just reminiscing before you knocked and I wanted to say to your face that I haven’t given you enough credit. Hell, I don’t even know your name. But, I wanted to say thanks for all you’ve done. I hate our mission down here is ending, but it’s still better than if it had never happened. And I owe you for that. So, thanks. For everything. Especially volunteering to approach a half-nuts, old sniper like me. I’m glad I didn’t shoot your dumb ass.”

  The CIA contact stared at Nick flabbergasted.

  “Seriously,” Nick said, “had you not done that, I’d have still been driving the roads and I would have never had the chance to command again, so no bullshit, thank you. I owe you.”

  “Thank you, sir. The honor’s been all mine. But I think you better take this call or I’m not going to have a job when we get back.”

  “Don’t sweat him,” Nick said. He reluctantly reached for the phone. “Now get the hell out of here.”

  Nick waited for the door to close and then lifted the phone.

  “To what do I owe this shit-tickling pleasure?” Nick asked.

  “I wouldn’t be such a smartass if I were you,” Mr. Smith said. “You’re going to put me on your Christmas list when I give you this news.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Nick said. “You forget, I really don’t like you, plus I don’t even know your real name. Or do I?”

  The man paused, and Nick grinned knowing that the man was probably having a momentary panic attack. Nick did, after all, have quite the record for tracking people down.

  “Cut the crap,” Mr. Smith snapped, clearly eager to re-establish his authority over the situation. “What I’m trying to tell you is you may get to hunt a little longer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Juan Soto, Mexico’s most influential billionaire --”

  “I know,” Nick said. “I’ve done my homework. He’s President Rivera’s most important ally.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Smith said, irritated at being interrupted. “But what you don’t know is that his building is currently under assault.”

  “Say what?” Nick asked.

  “You heard me. A number of armed men have infiltrated his building, with dozens more surrounding the area.”

  “So, we going to go play SWAT now or what?” Nick asked.

  “No,” Mr. Smith said, “but something serious is going on. Besides the assault on Soto’s building, nearly seventy cops have been killed this morning and a bank has been robbed. And we’ve been informed by the NSA that they have intercepted messages that show some advisers in Rivera’s government are suggesting martial law be implemented.”

  “Holy shit,” Nick said. He cut to the chase. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Nothing, for now,” Mr. Smith said. “But don’t pack up yet. We’re thinking President Rivera will soon be asking for your help. Tell your team to change gears and forget returning home. They need to mentally prepare for war again. And this one might be longer and uglier than we expected.”

  A shot rang out and the Butcher flinched in surprise. He ignored the radio he was talking into and turned. Smoke rose from the pistol of one of the men standing behind him, and blood from the guard’s head was sprayed across the area.

  “He told us what we needed,” the man said, shrugging in confusion at the look of anger on the Butcher’s face. A shell casing rolled to a stop on the marble floor, and the blood-soaked wall behind the dead guard had an almost lava-like appearance, as the drops of blood streamed down.

  “I’ll get back with you,” the Butcher said into his radio. “Where are they?” he asked the man with the smoking pistol.

  “Top floor,” the man said. “There are five more of them, just like we had been told. They’re covering the elevators and fire escape, as we expected. Plus, one locked in the room with Juan Soto.”

  The Butcher nodded to his man. They don’t stand a chance, he thought. He lifted his radio and said, “Bring up the assault teams. Quickly.”

  A couple minutes later, more than twenty men sprinted through the doors. They were a rough-looking bunch with piercings, tattoos, and bad haircuts, and they seemed eager for the task before them. Each had killed and most had been stabbed or shot in their years of service to the violent drug life. They knew danger and they had been moving toward it since they were young men and had tasted the reward in cash and women that such a life could provide. Today simply equaled higher pay than normal.

  “Let’s go,” the Butcher said to the men. “He looked back to his faux SWAT team members and said, “Stay here. You know the plan.”

  The SWAT team was to be used in a counter-attack if police managed to fight their
way through the defenders outside. The Butcher calculated that police would hold their fire instinctively for just a moment if they saw other men in blue running toward them, if the men looked as if they were retreating. And that would be all the hesitation his men would need. Not that his men would have to kill all of the police, but it would shock the responding forces and cause additional confusion.

  With the SWAT members moving toward the front door to stack in case they were needed outside, the Butcher and his assault team marched toward their starting point. There was confidence in their numbers and the accuracy of their plan so far.

  “You two cover the exits,” the Butcher said.

  Two men stepped away from the group, to cover the only possible routes out of the building. One of them covered the two elevators and the other covered the fire escape on the other side of the building.

  The building lacked the dozen-plus exits a building of eight stories would typically have. Several years ago, Mexico City authorities had granted Juan Soto permission to seal off two of the fire exits and completely weld them shut after he had bought the building and reduced its occupancy by more than eighty percent.

  Soto wanted a fortress, not a revenue-generating apartment complex. He had wanted fewer entrances and exits to guard as a matter of maximizing his security, but that decision would now cost him his life, if the Butcher had his way.

  The Butcher checked his two men one last time to make sure they had the elevators and fire escape covered. They lay in the prone and would certainly get the drop on anyone who tried to escape.

  “Sir? Your gear?” one of the men said, holding up a black duffel bag.

  The Butcher had almost forgotten.

  “Yes,” he said, grabbing the bag.

  He took off the uncomfortable helmet and assault vest and threw them to the ground. He then pulled his katana and Uzi out of the bag.

  He turned back to his assault team.

  “Stay sharp and be alert,” he said.

  The Butcher was too close to a final victory to lose now. And he knew if they bagged Juan Soto, President Roberto Rivera would soon fall. Either through resignation, public demand, or countless investigations at how such a horrific string of events went down.

  Help for Soto was on the way, and the responding vehicles were closing in fast. Barely two miles separated them from Soto’s building and the convoy charged to his rescue, sirens blaring and lights flashing.

  They were just a mile away and the convoy contained four police cruisers -- two officers per vehicle, following the horrific cop assassinations just minutes earlier -- and a massive armored SWAT truck, which was loaded with thirty heavily-armed men crammed in the back.

  The lead cruiser had the shift captain in it, and he and the SWAT team commander were conversing over the radio, going over details of how they’d deploy their officers once they arrived. Intel on what was happening at Soto’s building was sketchy, but apparently there were quite a few bad guys there, and even stranger, the President of Mexico himself had ordered their hasty deployment to help protect his friend, despite the lack of details on what was actually happening.

  This violated department policy of getting officers on the scene first, but the police chief lacked the balls to stand up to President Rivera himself.

  The convoy roared past vehicles pulled to the side of the interstate. Drivers franticly yanked their cars to the shoulder or braked hard in sheer panic -- anything to avoid the screaming police cars.

  But the streets were getting narrower as they worked their way through arteries that led into downtown Mexico City. The buildings pushed in tighter to the streets through here, the city growing denser and taller as people and businesses tried to cram as much residential and commercial property as humanly possible on astronomically-priced land. That and the parallel parked cars along the side of the road made moving through the city even more precarious.

  The shift captain in the lead vehicle was mid-sentence talking with the SWAT team commander about the opposition waiting outside the building when a parked car next to his cruiser exploded, blowing it across the street. The ferocious two-hundred pound detonation caused the car to somersault five times before it hit the building across the street ten feet in the air. What remained skidded and shrieked down the side of the building, crumpling to the pavement and crushing two bicycles parked near a doorway.

  The shift captain and his driver didn’t just die; they were vaporized. The explosion was so big that the three police cruisers behind the captain’s had their windows blown out, as their cars were thrown back and tossed like dice skipping across a table.

  The police officers who were lucky enough to have survive the gargantuan blast suffered ruptured eardrums from the shockwaves. Two of them were additionally blinded by flying glass. Those who managed to keep their eardrums intact and their eyes shielded sustained severe concussions that would most likely affect them for the rest of their lives.

  The men in the armored SWAT vehicle fared better -- they rode in an armored vehicle with bullet-proof glass enclosing the front cab, and they were farther away from the explosion when it roared across the street. The only injuries to the SWAT members occurred when the truck decelerated so hard that the men in the back were thrown into one another.

  Men bled from cuts and wounds caused by the impact from weapons and helmets colliding into exposed faces and hands. The vehicle had fully stopped, bouncing up and down from the severity of the brake pressure applied. The men had just begun to untangle themselves, when the unthinkable happened.

  An open-bed Toyota truck tore out of an alley two blocks back. The truck had lain hidden, waiting for the explosion.

  And as the SWAT members tried to regain their feet and deploy on the street, the truck sprinted forward the two blocks, hitting fifty mph before slamming its brakes and stopping thirty yards behind the armored vehicle.

  Three men popped up from the back of the truck and hoisted RPG’s on their shoulders. They had a non-moving, defenseless target sitting in front of them and the SWAT members hadn’t even opened their armored doors yet.

  The first RPG ripped through the back of the SWAT truck, hitting right in the seam created by the two heavy doors. Two more RPG warheads followed, exploding among the mass of men.

  After the blasts and explosions from the first three rounds, the three men in the pickup reloaded for a second volley. They fired again into the smoking, ripped-apart piece of metal that had moments before been a fully-functioning, armored SWAT truck. The screaming tangle of men, who were lucky enough to survive the first strikes, had begged for their lives through the smoke and fire. But they were all silenced by the second volley of three RPGs.

  Back in Juan Soto’s building, the Butcher snapped his web gear on and adjusted the straps so that they fit snugly. He had thrown off the SWAT gear, tossing the helmet and assault vest against the wall. Now, he wore his familiar web harness, his Uzi cross-slung across his chest, where it fell as always to the outside of his right leg. His Japanese katana was sheathed on his left side, handle facing forward, comforting with its weight.

  The Butcher gripped its handle and slid it out a few inches, making sure it wasn’t hung up or stuck. He really hoped he’d get to use it. Against Soto himself.

  The Butcher picked up his duffel bag, which was full of more goodies, with his left hand and grabbed the pistol grip of his Uzi with his right.

  “Let’s do this,” he said to his men.

  The men moved to the stairwell at the far end of the building and entered it cautiously. They didn’t expect anyone to be waiting for them, but better safe than sorry. Seeing no one, they covered the open space above with their weapons and began their climb up the eight flights of stairs.

  The men carried AKs, shotguns, and submachine guns; an assortment that varied based on each man’s preference. The Butcher didn’t care what they opted for. They had all killed and each of the weapons had advantages and disadvantages. The variety would probably prove an asset
in the close-in fighting to come, depending on what they faced up top.

  None of Juan Soto’s men waited for them at the top of the stairwell, and they reached the target floor without any problems. They paused to catch their breath and prepared themselves for the action that was about to commence.

  They believed the top door would be locked. It was, after all, purely a fire escape for exit during emergencies from above. But they had brought explosives to deal with it, so the Butcher had no concern when he tested the door by slighting pushing on it. He was surprised to see it wasn’t locked. That struck him as odd.

  “Careful,” he whispered, and then started pushing the door open.

  He figured going first was a good way to take a bunch of bullets in the chest, but he didn’t have a lot to live for, and he cared more about his reputation than his life on most days. Besides, his desire to kill these guards so that he could get to Juan Soto burned hotter than his sense of survival. If it happened, then so be it.

  He placed his duffel bag by the wall and took a two-hand hold on the Uzi, leaning low over it. With that, he nudged the door open and edged around it, leading with his short weapon, which had been mostly designed for close-in work like this.

  An empty hallway was all that awaited him.

  He could see a couple of waist-high plants and a lush carpet that probably cost twenty thousand dollars, but no bodyguards. His men rushed into the hallway behind him, weapons rattling as slings jingled and gear clinked.

  Two elevators and at least one other fire exit could be seen, but otherwise the hallway was empty. The Butcher reached behind him and picked up his duffel bag.

  The Godesto assault group pushed down the hall cautiously, taking stock of their final obstacle. It was two doors, but to call them doors was almost a misnomer. They were massive, twelve-foot tall slabs that looked about six inches thick. Heavy, ornate wood, meant to be both spectacular and secure.

  The Butcher noticed two small, black domes on both sides of the door. Cameras. Probably high definition and maneuverable, given that a billionaire had installed them. He cursed, stepped back, and blasted both of them. So much for surprising the five guards inside.