by Jack Murphy
The cartel gunmen initiated one haphazard ambush which was easily repelled but after that they simply began to fire their guns into the air as a warning when the assault trucks were spotted rolling into their neighborhood. Even with warning shots, the convoy continued to snake through the city, staying one step ahead of the cartel's ability to self-organize.
By three in the morning, Samruk International had expended all of their demolitions and had to meet with a deuce and a half supply truck that the skeleton crew left at their compound dispatched to meet them. They had hit over fifty targets and had added dozens of enemy KIA to the kill list including several High Value Targets.
Getting back on schedule with magazines topped off and the mercenaries constructing new door charges as they drove, more targets were identified and struck one by one.
At four thirty in the morning, Deckard stood in the street watching his assaulters mechanically breach a door with a battering ram before flooding the structure with shooters. There were a few cracks of gunfire throughout the city, but under the dull golden glow of the street lights, everything was strangely quiet. A strange, disconcerting feeling crept over him. It wasn't some kind of sixth sense warning him of danger, it was something else, something different.
Finally, as the assaulters exfiltrated off the objective and loaded back onto their truck, he realized what that feeling was. Something had changed.
“You okay over there,” Pat said as he opened the passenger door on the assault truck as it stopped next to him.
“I just realized something,” Deckard said. He looked confused.
“What's that?”
“We won.”
Pat nodded.
“I know.”
“Now we need to finish this.”
“I'll consolidate the men and vehicles,” Pat said as he slammed the door shut.
The mercenaries stood in the courtyard of the Jimenez compound. It was strangely anti-climactic. They had expected a pitched battle all the way up the side of the mountain and right through Jimenez' front door. Instead they strutted right in without any opposition.
The villa was in flames. The fortress had been torched and left to history for yet another party to reclaim sometime in the future.
“The sever room is down,” Cody informed Deckard over the radio.
“I'm not surprised,” Deckard muttered, watching the building on top of it burn to the ground. They had probably used electromagnets on the hard drives and then set the place on fire. Once the antenna farm on the roof burned up then nothing was being transmitted in or out anyway.
“Not what I was expecting,” Sergeant Major Korgan said from behind Deckard.
“I know,” he replied as he turned out. “It's kind of a letdown.”
“So whatchu gonna do PL?” Pat asked walking up to him. It was a joke, in part anyway. Instructors in Ranger School were known for asking that question to confused students who had been made patrol leader.
“Good question, this place is a dry hole and speaking of dry holes, I think we've just about exhausted Kenny.”
“Sorry boss,” Aghassi said walking up to join them. “They blew out of here just as we arrived.”
He and Nikita had been out running route and target reconnaissance for them all night, pulling double duty as sniper overwatch.
“We grabbed a few people we saw milling around on the way in and found out that Jimenez took his motorcade and headed into the city. Like I said, we just missed them.”
Deckard reached into his vehicle and snatched the handmic again.
“Cody, is the cartel comms network completely down?”
“It is still useable as long as the repeaters are functioning but we don't have the ability to track it now that the sever room is cooked. I did see a spike in chatter just before it went down though. We do know that many of the phone numbers popping up at that time belong to Ignacio's crew.”
They had put off striking Ignacio's compound. When the cartels fully conquered Oaxaca, Ignacio had taken over the city's cultural museum which was actually a converted convent. With its high walls and added fortifications, Deckard didn't feel that taking down Jimenez' number two man was worth the losses they would surely incur. Now it seemed that Jimenez had split from his mountain fortress and combined his forces with Ignacio.
“Gather the men,” Deckard ordered Sergeant Major Korgan. “I know where they are.”
With a few shouts, the assaulters gathered around their commander, waiting for his orders.
“I'm not good with Braveheart speeches,” Deckard started. “But what the fuck else is new.”
The mercenaries laughed at the movie reference.
“I will keep this short. What we do means more than what we say. Jimenez and Ignacio are holed up at their base back inside Oaxaca City. Today we finish this. Load the trucks.”
The mercenaries broke ranks and ran to their vehicles, each engine turning over one right after the other. Rolling out of the courtyard, Deckard's vehicle took the lead as they headed back into the city and whatever Jimenez had waiting for them.
36
Ignacio and Jimenez stood atop the tower at the center of what had been the Oaxaca Cultural Museum. Today it was another Jimenez fortress, this one serving as an Oaxaca base of operations that his number two, Ignacio normally ran for him. Based on the previous night's events, they had decided to combine their forces and make their final stand together rather than as two separately weaker elements. They were both running short on men, but together they had scraped together a few hundred fighters. The old cloisters, towers, and high walls of the former convent would be their Alamo.
“I understand,” Ignacio said before hanging up and pocketing his cell phone.
“What is it?” Jimenez demanded.
“One of my halcones calling in,” Ignacio said referring to one of the many lookouts posted around the city. Most of them were just kids with a cartel-supplied phone who called in reports for pocket change. “The mercenaries are on their way.”
“Let's see this paper airplane fly,” the drug lord said to the men standing beside them.
Down below, in the cloistered courtyard, cartel gunmen scurried along like ants as they stockpiled ammunition in key locations around the aging convent. Fortifications were being built up and preparations were made. With a little luck, the mercenaries would be in pieces by the time they stumbled up to the fortress walls.
One of the men ran across the edge of the tower with what looked like a giant model airplane in his hand. Reeling back like a baseball pitcher, he winged the miniature drone into the air where it quickly managed to gain some lift and buzz up into the sky. The Casper 250 had been purchased from an Israeli company through a cut-out operation and pressed into service by the cartel, although they hadn't had much use for it until now.
With an onboard camera and thermal vision sight, the pilot would fly the drone from the control and data uplink unit and report real time intelligence information to the strike force that was readying to intercept the foreign mercenaries.
Jimenez used his smart phone to place a call to the strike team leader as he walked behind the pilot and looked at the computer screen that allowed them to see what the drone was seeing. As the phone rang, the drone quickly gained altitude in the morning sky and reached the outskirts of the city.
Sure enough, an eight vehicle convoy had reached the city limits and was heading toward their location.
“Yes, sir?” the strike commander answered.
“Are you're men in position?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They are coming in on Internacional Road. Eight gun trucks.”
“We will move to intercept them now.”
“I will hold,” the drug lord said impatiently.
Jimenez watched as the mercenary convoy rolled down the main highway that cut through the city. On the live feed from the Casper drone, the assault vehicles looked like little toy trucks rolling down the street. The cartel strike team
had ten vehicles of their own moving towards the road the foreigners traveled on. While the mercenaries favored light tactical vehicles for mobility, the cartel trucks were heavily armored.
With his latest drug shipment destroyed in Acapulco, Jimenez had ordered the armed escort vehicles immediately back to Oaxaca City. Normally, the cartel gun trucks would provide security for similarly armored tractor trailer trucks as the drugs were shipped up the corridor heading north on Mexico 95 where taxes would be paid to the Zetas to transport the drugs to the US border. Now that the shipment had been blown sky high, the drug lord intended to use the escort trucks as a strike team against the mercenaries.
On the screen, Jimenez watched the cartel truck parallel Internacional Road where the mercenaries were speeding towards the old convent.
“Veer left on this upcoming street,” Jimenez said into the phone to the strike commander.
“That will put them right on Internacional when the two roads merge. They will be right on top of each other!” Ignacio blurted.
“Exactly.”
The rattle of machine gun fire was the only warning before the Samruk mercenary sitting next to Pat was torn apart by machine gun fire. His body jerked and spasmed in the seat with each impact. Across from them, the former Delta Force operator watched as a convoy of enemy gun trucks merged onto the highway.
Machine gunners opened fire at a distance of just meters apart from each other. While the Samruk turret gunners manning PKM machine guns were relatively exposed, the cartel pickup trucks had been armored by improvising metal plating around the gun mount that had been built into the top of the cab of each truck. Even the belts of Armor Piercing Incendiary ammo that the mercenaries cycled through their PKMs was sparking off the armor plating.
Pat and the other mercenaries facing outward on the back of the assault trucks fired their own individual weapons opting for rapid fire or automatic with their AK-103s. They were suddenly right on top of the enemy and tactics flew out the window as it became a competition to see who could throw down the most lead.
The closest cartel gun truck ran a stream of auto-fire across Pat's vehicle that tagged their own machine gunner. Collapsing in the turret, Pat unbuckled himself and held tightly to the roll bar that ran down the center of the assault truck as the driver swerved across the road. As they screamed into Oaxaca City, houses blasted by in a blur of movement.
The two convoys were now like enemy ships of the line in the 1700's which had both come broadside with each other to unleash a volley of cannon fire and blasted each other to smithereens.
Clawing his way up into the turret, Pat took control of the PKM. Holding down the trigger, the Russian machine gun chewed through the rest of the belt of 7.62 ammunition, spitting bullets that rattled off the pickup truck's armor. The enemy gunner in the enclosed turret was protected from Pat's counter-fire except for an opening where his own M240B machine gun barrel pointed out but at least Pat was able to keep the gunner's head down and prevent him from firing.
The bed of the pickup alongside them was also armored with metal plates sticking up on both sides to protect the gunmen in the back. Pat looked around his working space and found a metal coffee can that bad been bolted to the side of the turret. Inside were some of the party favors he had been looking for.
Palming a fragmentation grenade, he yanked the pin and threw the grenade just forward of the pickup. With both vehicles moving at high speed, he had to compensate. The bomb landed in the bed of the pickup and detonated, tossing bodies into the air like rag dolls. The vehicle itself didn't explode like in a movie, but it did careen off the road with the driver slumped over the wheel and that was good enough for Pat.
Reaching for a fresh belt of ammunition, he struggled to get the machine gun loaded as the driver down below drove evasively. Slamming the feed tray cover closed, he pulled the charging handle and began firing as a second cartel gun truck moved up alongside them.
Deckard's head bounced off the side of the cab causing him to see stars. Kenny, who was still flexcuffed in the vehicle, screamed as the truck began listing off the road to one side. The windshield was splattered with blood. Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Deckard saw the driver hanging limply in his seat belt. The driver's side window was shattered. Somehow the armored cab of the vehicle had been penetrated. Momentarily disoriented, Deckard didn't know if they had hit another IED or what was going on but he had to conduct a dead driver drill if they were going to survive.
Reaching over, he elbowed the driver out of the way and grabbed the wheel with one hand. With his foot he kicked down and swept the driver's legs out of the way. Using the weight of his body and the kit that he wore, he leaned against the Kazakh to press him out of the way and give him some more room to work.
Driving while looking through a blood splattered windshield with one foot on the gas and one hand on the wheel wasn't easy. Then the turret gunner began shooting.
Through the spider webbed driver's side window, Deckard turned and saw an up-armored cartel pickup truck pull up next to them. The gunner in the armored turret rotated towards them and cut loose with a fusillade of gunfire that stitched across the hood of Deckard's Iveco assault truck.
Easing off the gas pedal, Deckard let the cartel vehicle overtake them slightly. His own turret gunner fired his PKM, the bullets bouncing off the armor welded around the enemy machine gunner.
Placing his hand on the twelve o'clock position on the wheel, Deckard knew it would be the only way to remember which position kept the vehicle driving forward. With his ears ringing, his eyes stinging, and visibility limited by blood splatter on the glass and the shattered windows, he felt claustrophobic and confused. He was trapped inside a metal kill box and the shit had most definitely hit the fan.
With the enemy pickup's rear quarter panel sliding parallel with the left corner of Deckard's assault truck, Deckard suddenly rotated his hand all the way to the left, bringing his hand on the wheel from the twelve to the six o' clock position.
At high speed, the vehicles made contact. As Deckard executed a PIT maneuver, the rear wheels on the cartel gun truck lost traction and began to spin out while the vehicle itself turned sideways as Deckard sped up, t-boning the vehicle for a second. A second was long enough for the PKM gunner in the turret to lower the barrel of his machine gun and let off a devastating burst into the bed of the pickup where the cartel gunmen were hunkered down.
Flesh separated from bone as red ribbons were flung into the air. The cartel pickup then spun past the assault truck's bumper and rolled over into an irrigation ditch on the side of the road.
Deckard brought his hand on the wheel back to the twelve o' clock position, straightening out the front tires to get them going down the straightaway again.
Sergeant Major Korgan rode on the back of his truck with the men. When the two convoys collided, those sitting on either side of him were shot instantly. One was dead, the other was applying self-aid with a tourniquet. The Sergeant Major ignored the blood pumping down his own arm and sighted in with his AK-103.
The barrel wavered back and forth as the vehicle moved. The M240B gunner in the cartel gun truck went cyclic but he was also unable to draw a bead on his target, the tracer and ball ammo combination flying high over their heads.
Cracking off several shots, one struck the windshield of the cartel truck as his own vehicle began to pull ahead. He had discovered the gun truck's weak point. They had welded metal plating all around the vehicle as armor but apparently they did not have access to bullet proof glass. Running a controlled burst across the windshield, Korgan watched as the gun truck jumped the median and flew into the opposite lane of traffic.
The cartel gun truck went head on with a city bus that was heading down the opposite lane. The truck disappeared in a cloud of dust as the bus slowed to a halt. Several bodies had been flung out of the bed of the truck and lay in the street. It had happened so fast, that Korgan didn't have time to process the event, or to think about his injured arm.
Instinctively, he held onto the truck with one hand with the AK in the other, the vehicle jerking to the side as the median to their flank exploded in a shower of concrete. The next gun truck was coming up behind them, a cartel shooter in the back firing an under barrel M203 grenade launcher attached to his M-4 carbine.
The PKM gunner rotated his turret to cover their six and opened up at the same time as the enemy M240B gunner. Several rounds from the M240B cracked dangerously close but the mercenary behind the PKM got a splash of sparks off the M240B as he returned fire. The cartel machine gunner dropped down into the pickup, shot dead.
The injured mercenary sitting next to Korgan had gotten his tourniquet in place and stopped the bleeding. Shouldering his AK, the Samruk mercenary was back in the fight and launching rounds at the enemy gunmen with the grenade launcher. The PKM gunner in the turret tagged the enemy grenadier with a burst, causing the him to jerk the trigger as he fell out of the back of the pickup. With a pop, the 40mm grenade launched from the M203 and detonated in the street just behind the assault truck.
Walking his automatic fire down the front of the cartel pickup, the machine gunner then blasted through the windshield, causing the shards inside the cab to be sprayed with crimson. The pickup slowed to a crawl and the cartel vehicle behind it was unable to swerve out of the way fast enough. When they collided, the rear end of the second truck bucked up into the air, tossing more passengers out into the street.
Several bodies pinwheeled through the air with arms and legs splayed apart before gravity took hold and deposited them back to terra firma.
Jimenez watched the monitor as two of the mercenary assault trucks converged their fire on a strike force pickup truck. The driver evidently panicked because he yanked the wheel and took the truck off road. Overcompensating, the driver blasted through a chain link fence and went over a retaining wall where the truck landed on its side.
