“Keep moving,” the General yelled as Fire Team Leader Charlie and Private Zulu closed with the rest of the men. “Egress to the bus, pronto! Don’t let them split our ranks.” Around them, the stoic beasts circled with their white fangs flashing. The men of STRAC-BOM circled up. Back to back, they closed their ranks and shouted angrily at the fearsome animals. Private Zulu held up a pack of matches.
“These vampire hounds don’t like fire,” he said as he threw it at the advancing animals before realizing he hadn’t lit the pack first.
“Private Foxtrot,” the General called out. “Ordnance!”
“What ordnance?” Private Foxtrot replied.
“The dynamite. Light up a stick.”
“Them dang army federales took it all, sir.”
“Damn. Stay close to me, men.” The General marched backward. “To the bus. It’s our Alamo!” His men followed without breaking rank. Slowly, ever slowly, they inched toward safety. Several times the coyote pack attempted to separate them, always looking for the weakest link in their pack, more specifically, Private Zulu. Their hackles were up as they knifed in. Always, the men held rank, kicking and screaming at the four-legged intruders. Eventually, the bus came into sight. “Fire Team Leader Charlie,” the General shouted. “Can you make a break for the bus and get her started up?”
“Roger that.” The Fire Team Leader took off running toward the bus. One of the coyotes drifted after him. Running as fast as he could, the Fire Team Leader dove at the bus door, but the monster was upon him. It sunk its fangs into his calf and shook its head violently.
“Let him go, you son of a bitch!” Private Zulu screamed as he jumped on the back of the coyote pulling at his Team Leader. “Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” he cried as he pounded on the neck of the creature. For just a second, the animal let go. “Shoo, you mangy jackass!” It turned and growled at him. He kicked at it. “Screw you, too,” he yelled as he pulled his Team Leader on board. Fire Team Leader Charlie took the keys from the glove compartment and fired up the bus. Seconds later, the rest of the men, followed by the General, clambered on board. Outside, the starving coyotes surrounded the bus and growled. One of them attacked the front tire.
“Head out!”
“Where?” Fire Team Leader Charlie asked.
“Anywhere!” The Team Leader floored it, scattering the coyotes. The rest of the men on the bus frantically searched for their weapons. Racing across the desert, the animals howled in the background as they chased after the long vehicle. At full speed, Fire Team Leader Charlie took the rise above the spot where the honey pot had held Ziggy and Private Zulu. Even with its weight, the heavy bus caught air as it flew off the top of the ridge. The vehicle bounced twice upon landing while the Team Leader stood on the pedal, leaving the frustrated pack in the distance. He set out for the farmhouse while the militia fired their outdated weapons harmlessly out the windows at shadows.
Above, from the ridge, sets of glowing eyes watched as the bus bounced away.
• • •
Avery typed away at his computer…
To: Senior Management
Hotel 9 International
Dear Sir:
I’m writing to express my sincere disappointment with a recent stay at one of your business suite properties. Unfortunately, I’m currently working on a secret, clandestine intelligence operation with a foreign government, so I’ll have to keep this brief and to the point. Certainly I won’t be the first to suggest a major overhaul of your complimentary breakfast buffet. The eggs were dry, the cereal selection was abysmal, the frosting on the donuts was almost nonexistent, and the bacon was anything but thick-cut. Free shouldn’t mean free of quality. Secret operatives like myself require a hardy breakfast to have the energy to track down the most dangerous international criminals on the planet. It’s hard work, all the sleuthing, computer hacking, and what not. Without me operating at full mental capacity, the safety of the free world is at stake. The penalties for interfering with a special agent and his work are severe. To avoid a thorough investigation by the appropriate federal authorities, I demand a complete overhaul of your menu. Smoked salmon and a chocolate fountain for dunking donuts are mandatory. They’re completely non-negotiable. In the meantime, please forward two dozen vouchers for a free night stay via my attorney, Gregory Kennesaw Mountain. His address can be found in the Austin, Texas, directory. You have one week to reply to my demands. I’m now signing off to continue securing the free world from evil. Thank me later.
Sincerely,
Avery Bartholomew Pendleton
P.S. – During my stay, I observed a large, unruly group of vagrants in combat gear stealing from the buffet. Keep an eye out for them.
“Anything new to report?” Cesar asked as he entered the room.
“Stop interfering with my work! I’m trying to work here!” Avery put down the candy bar he was eating and slammed his laptop shut.
• • •
“Like, want some chips, army dudes?” Ziggy asked as the men of STRAC-BOM raced into the Padre’s entertainment room.
“Where have you been?” the General asked.
“I don’t, like, really know, man,” Ziggy said as he puffed away. “You tell him.” The skinny hippy looked at Nancy, who was resting at his feet on the couch. The iguana ignored him. “Want a smoke?”
“Hell, no!” the General said as he ripped the joint from Ziggy’s grasp and crushed it out on the floor. “Snap out of it — we’re under attack. Men, board up the doors and windows with anything you can find.”
“Attack?” asked the suddenly severely paranoid and positively stoned Ziggy. “Like, by who, man?”
“By them damn chupacabras,” Private Zulu said as he tried to move a heavy armoire in front of a window that had been shot out during the firefight. Ziggy looked at the haunting werewolf on the television screen and gulped.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tough Day at the Office
The city noise leaked through the windows the same way the smog did. Cesar paced back and forth in the informal command post. He hadn’t heard from Barquero in hours. It made him nervous. The Padre was in Monterrey. He was close. If he slipped away again, it was over. He would disappear, but his drug dealing and killing wouldn’t. The phone rang. Cesar picked it up.
“Good.” Cesar hung up the phone. “I’ve got him. What are you doing? Sleeping?” He smacked Avery across the head.
“No.” Avery rubbed his ear. “I’m simply reciting pi backward from its one-thousandth digit. It helps me to relax and concentrate. If someone isn’t hitting me!” he yelled. “Thanks for not helping.” Avery looked back at his keyboard. “I’m almost there.”
“Never mind that — my contact has found him.”
“Where?”
“At a warehouse. Here.” Cesar pointed to a spot on a map pinned to the wall.
“I doubt that. I’ve…”
“Shut up, we’re moving out. Sergeant, alert the team!”
“Really, you should listen to me…”
“Sergeant, I mean now!” Avery shrugged, and packed up his equipment and followed Cesar to the ground transportation.
• • •
In a sedan along a crowded highway, a man with a dark suit, wide-brimmed hat, and Roman priest’s collar talked on a cell phone. From inside his suit coat pocket, he took out a small silver case and removed a thin cigar. He lit it.
“Yes, I understand,” he said as he exhaled a ring of smoke and hung up the phone.
• • •
“Move, move, move…” Cesar exhorted his men. “We leave now!” Avery dragged himself into the dark SUV with another half dozen heavily armed troops dressed in black.
“Anyone have anything to eat?” Avery asked. A Mexican Army Special Forces operator next to him pulled out his pistol, stared at Avery, and chambered a round. “Why do you carry a forty-five?” Avery asked.
“Because they don’t make a forty-six,” the man with a ragged scar on his face responded with a c
old grin as he pulled a black ski mask over his head.
“Going skiing?”
“We cover our faces. We can’t let them know who we are,” the special operator replied. He spit on his hands and rubbed them together.
“That’s really delightful,” Avery said in disgust as he looked out the window as the city passed by. It was a hard city, but anyone could tell it once was a seat of power. The old combined with the new to create a strange mix of architecture. Twenty minutes later, they reached their destination. Cesar led his armed men as they fanned out around the warehouse. They took up concealed positions in buildings around their target. From the rooftops, snipers scanned the area. Meanwhile, Avery continued to work on his laptop.
“Colonel, I think we may be in the wrong place.”
“My contact was very specific. This is the location,” Cesar replied.
“Colonel Beltrán, come in, over,” a voice came from Cesar’s radio. He picked it up.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got a visual on a car approaching the warehouse.”
“I see it,” Cesar said. “All units hold until I give the go. Be sure to watch for a large Mexican national dressed in civilian clothes. He’s with us, over.” The car pulled up in front of the warehouse. A man dressed in black got out. “Is he wearing a priest’s collar?” Cesar asked into his radio.
“Affirmative,” came back a reply.
“Good, that’s our target. Stay on him, over.” The man in black took a key from his suit pocket and entered the warehouse as his ride pulled away. “Let the car go,” Cesar said. “Stay with the target. All units prepare to go in. I want him alive if possible. Take up breaching positions. Go now!” Cesar and his men moved quickly from their concealed locations around the building. Two of his men stood beside the main door. “Breach it now!” Cesar commanded. One of the men pointed a shotgun at the hinges of the door. Two quick blasts roared out. The door fell away as the second man threw a concussion grenade into the building. A deafening roar was followed by a procession of Cesar’s men into the warehouse.
“Stay down! Stay down!” the first soldier through the door yelled at a figure prone on the concrete floor. Using zip ties, the soldiers restrained the stunned man. Cesar used a flashlight to illuminate the man’s face. The man just laughed. It wasn’t the Padre. In the back of the warehouse, Barquero quietly made his exit.
• • •
“Who was the man?” the Padre’s driver asked as the armored limousine cruised out of Monterrey.
“Just someone who owed me a debt,” the Padre replied as he lit a cigar. “It was his misfortune that he happened to look like me. Vaguely.”
“It must have been quite a large debt.”
“Yes, but the alternative was for him to die. He’ll spend some time in jail, but I’ll pay his family something, and, most importantly for him, he gets to stay alive.”
“Plata o plomo?”
“Yes,” the Padre chuckled. “Silver or lead. It’s always an easy choice. Take me to the meeting.”
• • •
Avery hunched over his laptop. A half-empty can of Mountain Dew rested within easy reach. He took a swig and continued to work.
“Colonel.”
“Yes.” Cesar seethed with anger over losing his mark for the second time.
“Was the Padre involved in any major construction projects that you are aware of?”
“He has many different businesses under his control. He mainly uses them for laundering drug proceeds. It’s possible that one of them is involved in construction. Why?”
“Well,” Avery said, “there are a number of files here regarding the construction of a facility outside Monterrey. He’s been arranging major deliveries of equipment and supplies.”
“What kind of equipment?”
“Heavy equipment, including excavation and drilling machines and lots of chemicals, too. Looks like all the transactions were in cash.”
“There’s no way it’s legitimate.”
“There’s also the purchase of an abandoned building nine months ago.”
“Do you have the exact location?”
“Of course I do,” Avery said in disgust. “Do you think I’m stupid?” Avery scratched the stained armpits of his dirty yellow tracksuit.
• • •
Barquero was furious with himself. He should have known it couldn’t be that easy. He should have killed the attorney. Sitting in the cab of a pickup truck he’d stolen earlier, he cleaned and reloaded his pistol. Backed-up traffic slowly crawled past his spot on the side of the highway. The cell phone in his pocket hummed.
“I know he wasn’t there. Yes…where is it? Are you positive? Okay. I’ll handle it.” He hung up the phone and started up the truck. Horns blared as he forced his way onto the road.
• • •
Ziggy finished the bag of chips, got up, and switched out the DVD, while General X-Ray and his men stood sentry at locations around the farmhouse, watching for signs of the coyote pack. Fire Team Alpha was holed up in the kitchen.
“Team Leader?” Private Foxtrot asked. “What do you think that thing was I found in the desert?”
“What thing?” Fire Team Leader Alpha yawned.
“With the metal detector. The needle dang near flew off the dial.”
“Who knows, probably some old junk.”
“You think it might be gold?” Private Foxtrot asked hopefully. “Remember the General’s story about them Mexicans that buried it to get away from the Texans?”
“After the last couple of days, I’m not buying any more of the General’s stories. He’s crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Don’t you think we ought to tell him, though? It might be worth checking out. I’m just saying.”
“Foxtrot, there’s a pack of half-starved coyotes out there, and you look like a fried pork chop with red-eye gravy to them. How’d you expect to go dig up some dang infernal desert junk with one of them chewing on your liver?”
“We got our guns back now. We can fight ’em off.”
“You couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with that single-shot twenty-two of yours, and you know it.”
“I’ll do the digging. You can keep ’em off me with your scattergun. They sure do like to come in close. You can’t miss.”
“Not me, partner. You know what has four legs and an arm? A happy coyote.”
“Can’t we at least tell the General? I bet he can come up with a plan.”
“Fine, tell the General. Anything to get you to shut up.”
“Thanks, Fire Team Leader. You know, you’re my best pal.”
“Lucky me.” Fire Team Leader Alpha picked up an apple from a bowl and took a bite.
• • •
It was getting dark, and Barquero was surveying the abandoned building forty miles outside of Monterrey. He checked his weapon and the two curved hand scythes in his waistband. Cesar and his men hadn’t arrived yet. That was good. He had a score to settle. Personally. He liked to work alone.
The building showed signs of decay and neglect, but there were armed men posted at locations around the perimeter. Barquero moved stealthily among the excavators and dump trucks surrounding the building. As dilapidated as the outside of the building appeared, there was clearly a great deal of work being done in and around the property. At one end of the building, an eighteen-wheeler was backed up to a loading dock. Men were using a forklift to unload pallets of materials into the facility. In front of him, two men with assault rifles waited by a door. He sneaked past them under the cover of heavy machinery, opting for a broken window on the side of the facility. Meticulously, he picked the remaining broken shards of glass from the window, one by one. To his right, he heard footsteps. Leaning up against the shadows, he reached for one of the curved blades at his back. As the man rounded the corner, Barquero attacked. It was over in seconds. The man’s quivering body spilt its blood on the dry sand at the corner of the build
ing. Barquero returned to the window and pulled himself in. Room to room, he searched. Coming to a long hallway, he heard to men laughing. They were standing by a staircase.
“And the what?” one of the men asked, laughing.
“I swear to God, the next thing she did was…” the man said as he slumped against the wall.
“What?” his confused partner asked as a bullet from Barquero’s silenced pistol pierced his lung. “What the…” he said as he collapsed on top of his compatriot. Barquero ran down the hall and, in quick succession, shot both men in the head. He checked behind him and then went down the steps.
• • •
“I want every available helicopter in the air now!” Cesar shouted into his radio. Sirens blared and lights flashed as the long procession of military vehicles raced down the highway.
“Most commando teams sneak in without sirens,” Avery said. “Trust me, I should know.”
“Get me General Morales on the line,” Cesar said.
“Seriously, with the lights and everything, we look like a freaking neon snake out here.” Avery opened another Mountain Dew. “MI-6 would never do it this way.”
“Shut up,” Cesar said to Avery. “When we get there, you stay put.”
“Whatever,” Avery replied as he returned to playing the latest release of Zombie Slaughter on his laptop. “But can we stop for tacos on the way? No onions for me.”
“Not another word from you!” Cesar went back to his radio.
“What? No tacos here? This country bites ass,” Avery muttered.
• • •
General X-Ray and the rest of the STRAC-BOM listened intently as Private Foxtrot recounted the story of the metal detector and the positive reading he’d come across. When the private had finished, the General leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his bald dome.
Trail of the Chupacabra: An Avery Bartholomew Pendleton Misadventure (The Chupacabra Trilogy - Book 2) Page 26
