The Devil You Don't Know (American Praetorians Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  When I was sure we were in the right place, I radioed Bryan. “Right here.” The convoy stopped, dust billowing in the headlights until we switched them off. The box truck drivers were slow turning their lights off; they didn't know what was going on.

  I waited until all the trucks were dark before opening the door and getting out. I had my 870 in my hands. I wasn't expecting trouble; our suspected tails had faded into the Nogales night behind us. We were alone. But I was never really one to take chances. Well, not too many chances, anyway.

  Harold had his window down. “McCall?” he called. “What's going on?” Given the fact that Renton and The Network had connected us with this job on the assumption that Harmon-Dominguez was dirty and dealing with Mexican drug cartels, naturally we hadn't given real names. Harold knew me as Jeff McCall.

  “A little housekeeping,” I told him. “Don't worry about it. We'll be on the way soon enough.” I keyed my radio again. “Key-Lock, Hillbilly. We are at the RV. What's your ETA?”

  “This is Key-Lock,” Nick replied. “We're still about two klicks out. Terrain is slowing us down a little.”

  “Roger. We'll be here.” I stepped forward to join Ben and Little Bob, who had gotten out of the Yukon. “Another ten, fifteen minutes,” I told them.

  “What is going on?” Harold asked again, insistently. He still hadn't gotten out.

  “Nothing you need to worry about, Harold,” I told him. “Now be quiet.”

  Apparently, he decided against asking further questions when the three men standing in front of his truck waiting for something were all carrying shotguns, because he didn't press the issue.

  For a while, the only sound was the faint whisper of the wind in the trees and bushes, the occasional roar of a car or truck going by on the nearby highway, and the low hum of the engines. Then, I could just make out the buzzing whine of an ATV. Then, as the noise got louder, I started to be able to make out two. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little green thumb-light. Nick and Jack had all the NVGs, so we'd have to go ahead and use visible light.

  The buzz stopped, replaced by a low putter from up on the hill above us. They were up there, on the firebreak, waiting. I flashed the little green LED three times, aiming it uphill. After a moment, I got two back. It was them.

  It took longer than you might expect for them to get down to us. If they'd just had ATVs, they could have been at the trucks in a couple of minutes. But towing the little trailers made negotiating the steep slope, even on the firebreak, rather treacherous. Finally, though, they got down to the bottom of the hill and we moved forward to collect the gear bags.

  There wasn't any talking. We'd all done this before. Nobody needed to be reminded to keep things low-profile. The rifles and basic loadouts got carefully stashed and covered in the cabs, and the rest got strategically buried under more innocuous luggage in the backs of the vehicles. I could almost feel Harold's nervous fidgeting as he watched us unload, even though I couldn't see him. He started to get out of the truck as I walked back to my Expedition, but I didn't look at him. “We should get moving,” I said, for his benefit. “This isn't where we want to spend the night.”

  The discussion when we finally stopped was going to be interesting.

  Chapter 3

  The sun was just starting to turn the eastern horizon gray when Jim and I went through rousting everybody out. My guys were pretty well ready for it, though none of us were getting up with the alacrity we might have even a few years ago. Joints protested, backs stiffened. Men get old fast in this business.

  Harold and his people, on the other hand, weren't so sanguine about rising before the sun was up.

  I shook Harold's shoulder. He was pretty well buried under the blankets. He mumbled and tried to roll over. I tossed his covers and flicked on the bedside lamp. He flinched and squinted, trying to shield his eyes with his hand. He was wearing a wife-beater and his skivvies. “What the hell?” he mumbled. “What time is it?”

  “It's time to go,” I replied. “Get dressed.”

  He looked around the spare, if clean, hotel room. “Is it still dark?”

  I sighed. “Yes, it's still dark. The sun will be up in about a half hour. You were the one bitching about being behind schedule when we pulled in here last night.”

  He groaned and flopped over on his back. There weren't any covers to pull over his head; I'd tossed them on the floor, but he gave the distinct impression of wanting to do just that. This was getting ridiculous. I wasn't his mother, and he wasn't a kid who didn't want to get up to go to school.

  “We're rolling in an hour,” I told him. “If you don't want to be left here, I suggest you get your ass up and get ready to move.” My guys were already ready to move. But if I gave him any less than an hour, I'd probably end up wringing his neck just to stop the whining. And I didn't even have to share a vehicle with him.

  I walked out into the pre-dawn dimness. A few lights were lit around the parking lot, and between the arched windows of the brick hotel. It wasn't a bad place. It had a country, rancho sort of look to it, it was clean, and the staff was friendly enough. I don't think they'd noticed the guard rotations we'd been running on the vehicles all night.

  Ben was sitting in the passenger seat of the Yukon, his FAL across his knees, covered by a jacket. He rolled the window down as I walked over. “We leaving soon?” he asked.

  “Hopefully,” I replied, leaning against the fender and scanning the parking lot and the surrounding buildings. The hotel might have had a hacienda look on the inside, but past the trees in the parking lot, it was in the middle of a mall. There were plenty of cars and pickups in the lot, and there were a few people moving around one of them, a white Cadillac that looked like it had had some serious custom work done on it. “The clients are being a bunch of whiny bitches because it's early.”

  “Hurrying up would probably be a good idea,” he said, with a nod toward the Cadillac. “I'm pretty sure those fuckers have been eyeballing us for the last hour.”

  Trying not to be too obvious, I gave the two young men hanging out by the expensive car another once-over. It was still to dark to see if they had tattoos, but they were wearing the t-shirts and baggy pants that suggest “gangbanger.” And they were, in fact, watching us. They weren't being subtle about it, either.

  “Somebody wants this cargo pretty bad,” I commented.

  “I'm starting to think that there's more than just the cargo at stake here,” Ben said. “If it was just a robbery, they'd have backed off after the bloody nose we gave 'em outside of Green Valley. Gangbangers looking for a score would look for easier pickings. Whoever these guys are, they're not giving up.”

  “Or maybe they're out for revenge,” I offered. “MS-13 hasn't built the reputation it has by backing down when some of its boys get smoked. They might just be out to send a message about killing their homeboys.”

  He glanced at me skeptically. “When El Duque's involved? You really believe that?”

  “El Duque's not necessarily involved with this cargo. One of his connections is. Just because we're using it to get to him doesn't mean they know that.”

  He grunted and shook his head. “This shit's as bad as Iraq.”

  “At least,” I replied. “I did a little reading when it looked like we were going to be heading down this way.” I'd spent most of my entire professional life focused on the Middle East and North Africa. Latin America hadn't merited much notice. But the more I researched, the more it looked like Mexico was in at least as bad shape as Iraq was. “It's just as tribal here, and the government's either corrupt or suspected of being corrupt. A lot of the people trust the gangs more than they trust the cops or the federales.”

  “That's a fucking sad state of affairs,” he said, “when the gangs are rolling severed heads into dance clubs but people trust them more than the cops.”

  With a shrug, I pointed out, “A lot of these narcos are spreading money around like it's water. They're rich as fuck, so they can be as
generous as they want to be. Maybe some of them think that being charitable will wipe away some of the guilt for all the torture and murder. Some of them see it as a revolutionary thing.”

  “What, like they're Robin Hood or some shit?”

  I nodded. “Exactly. The parallel has been made before.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  I went back to watching the gangbangers smoking by the Cadillac, making sure not to make eye contact. I'd been around the type before; they might very well decide that they didn't like the gringo looking at them, and decide to pick a fight right there. I wasn't afraid of the outcome; I just didn't want the slaughter going down in a fucking hotel parking lot. There was too much chance of bystanders getting scragged when those clowns started spraying bullets all over the place. It was how a lot of people had wound up dead in Mexico already.

  Doors started to open behind me, and I could hear Harold and his drivers muttering as they got into the box trucks. A glance at my watch surprised me a little; they hadn't taken nearly as long as I'd expected.

  “Can we get some coffee?” Harold asked when he walked over to us. He still looked bleary and not at all happy about being awake. The eastern sky was turning pale blue, but it was still dark in the west.

  Ben reached back and handed up a thermos. “It's a couple hours old, but it's still hot,” he said.

  Harold grimaced, but took the coffee, and headed back to his truck. “Motherfucker,” Ben said quietly. “I didn't mean take the whole fucking thing for yourself, asshole.”

  “We'll grab some more before we roll,” I assured him, starting back to my Expedition.

  “That's my good thermos,” he snarled. “I'd better fucking get that shit back.”

  “I'll make sure you do,” I said. Ben could get a little pissy about his kit.

  It took almost another half an hour before Harold and his people were finally ready to move. I was able to get Ben's thermos back and refill it before the first box truck even fired up. Even as I moved around the vehicles with Jim, making sure Harold's people were ready and alert, and that we were all ready to throw down, I kept an eye on the gangbangers watching us. As soon as it was abundantly obvious that we were getting ready to leave, they got in their car. The windows were tinted, and it was still mostly dark, though dawn was well on the way, so I couldn't see inside, but after a couple more minutes they pulled out of the parking space and slowly rolled out of the parking lot, heading down the road in the direction we were planning to go. I traded glances with Jim. That was ominous.

  Of course, we had kind of been expecting it. It was going to be an interesting day, and the sun wasn't even up yet.

  There was no sign of the Caddy when we finally pulled out of the parking lot and onto Cinco de Mayo street. If they had any idea what they were doing, they'd passed surveillance off to another vehicle. Granted, I hadn't been terribly impressed with their fieldcraft so far, but within less than a mile, I saw another car, this one a low-slung Buick, swing out onto the road behind us. There wasn't a lot of traffic at that hour, so it kind of stuck out. It was, however, a much less conspicuous vehicle than the Cadillac had been. It remained with us as we got back on Highway 2, but it stayed a good two hundred yards behind us.

  “Motherfucker,” I muttered. “We cannot shake this fucking surveillance, can we?”

  “Goes with the territory,” Larry pointed out. “This ain't like the good old days in Iraq, where we could roll around in sterile vehicles when and where we chose. We're tied to these big fucking targets with 'Harmon-Dominguez' emblazoned on the sides for everybody to see.”

  “But where did they pick us up in the first place?” I asked. “As much as I hate to say it, Ben's got a point. This is awfully focused and professional for a robbery.”

  “You think that somebody on the inside at Harmon-Dominguez talked?” he asked, splitting his attention between the road and the rear-view mirror, keeping tabs on our tail.

  “I think it's entirely likely,” I replied. “A lot of money can get stuffed into two box trucks. That's got to be a hell of a temptation.”

  We both fell silent as we continued to drive around Magdalena. The town looked just like almost every Southwestern town I'd ever been through; there was a lot of whitewashed plaster and red tile roofs, along with more industrial cinder-block and corrugated metal. The skyline—what we could see of it in the early morning twilight, through the trees, and over the hilly terrain—was dominated by a tall, Spanish church with twin steeples.

  It didn't take long to go around the town; Magdalena's not that big. We had to stop at the toll station and pay to continue just short of the south end of town. As we pulled up to the green-painted overhang, I noticed the dark Buick turn off onto one of the dirt roads that came right up to the highway and disappear behind a rise.

  The toll booth wasn't automated. The bored señora in the green-painted booth took our cash without a word, handed us our receipts, and let us through. Once we were past the taquieros and the fast-food joint just on the other side of the toll booth, I started scanning for the Buick again. It didn't reappear. We kept going down the highway, catching glimpses of the town on the other side of the reddish dirt cuts blasted through the low hills to make way for the road.

  They hit us just before we got clear of Magdalena.

  Nick suddenly stomped on the brakes, hard enough that he locked up the Yukon's wheels. Rubber squealed and smoke poured out from under the vehicle's tires as he tried to bring the vehicle to a stop in less than a car-length. Harold's box truck almost rear-ended the Yukon, slewing to one side and threatening to tip over just like its predecessor had just the day before.

  I didn't know what was in the road that Nick didn't want to drive over, but I didn't waste time wondering about it. We hadn't rehearsed our reaction to contact drills as thoroughly as we might have otherwise before starting this job, but we'd gone over them by force of habit. If the way forward was blocked, we had to either back up or assault the ambush.

  Backing up was out of the question. We had just passed one of the dirt roads that came right up to the highway. Mexico didn't have the entry/exit structure that the US interstate system did, at least not on Highway 2. As soon as we passed the intersection, the Cadillac from the hotel parking lot, the Buick that had followed us, and a Suburban roared up onto the road behind us, blocking all lanes. We had just entered another cut; there was nowhere to go.

  That left fighting. That we could handle.

  It took me bare heartbeats to analyze the situation, then I was shoving my door open, rifle in my hand, and bailing out. I'd already had my low-profile chest rig on under a cover-shirt. I slung my go bag over my shoulder as I rotated out of the door, then I was rushing to the side of the road and dropping to the ground, rifle already in my shoulder and my eye seeking the scope.

  Through the corner of my eye, I could see Larry's boots pounding the pavement in the other direction. We were canalized as fuck, but we'd just have to deal with it. Ahead of me, Jim, Derek, Ben, and Little Bob were similarly piling out of their Expedition, turning, and opening fire. The driver and assistant in the box truck behind my vehicle just looked scared and confused as gunfire roared through the early morning behind them, echoing off the walls of the cut.

  Shooters dressed in white t-shirts, baggy jeans, and black or blue ball caps and headbands were piling out of the three vehicles behind us. I caught a glimpse of an AK before I shot the owner twice. His white wife-beater blossomed with red and he staggered backward into his buddy, who was mowed down by shots from Jim and Little Bob before he could recover.

  I was up and moving, charging forward. I wanted to clear these fuckers out before they could spring whatever other surprises they had in store; I was pretty sure that the rear blocking force wasn't the only group. Also, I had to move up to clear Jim and Little Bob out of my field of fire. It was pretty narrow from the middle of the convoy.

  By the time I had sprinted the fifteen yards to get to the Expedition, the shooting had
already stopped, though some sporadic gunfire was starting to boom from behind me, toward the front of the convoy. There were eight bloodied corpses lying on the pavement, and several bullet holes in the cars and the Suburban.

  “Out to the flanks,” I said. “Before the rest of the ambush wakes up.”

  That was easier said than done. The walls of the cut were sheer, and they were dirt, not rock. Climbing them, especially with weapons and kit, was a non-starter. We had to jog down the road, past the stricken blocking force, to get to shallower parts we could clamber over.

  More shots boomed behind me. Glancing back, I could see that several more shooters were up on top of the cut, even with my Expedition. But they weren't all that happy about having to face a pair of 7.62 battle rifles; they were shrinking back from the top, trying to get a shot, but flinching back every time one of those rifles spat fire and kicked up a fistful of dirt and rocks in their faces. A couple of bursts rattled unaimed over the lip of the cut, but were quickly answered with more concentrated fire. I turned, pausing just long enough to lay my own rifle on the nearest shooter I could see, and squeezed off a shot. I hadn't had a lot to shoot at, as he was trying to keep from becoming a target for the guys down by the trucks, but it was enough. He jerked and dropped out of sight.

  Then we had a way up, and were scrambling over the crumbling sides of the cut to get onto the higher ground. The loose dirt was slipping away under my boots, threatening to dump me on my face, but I got up into the scrub and bunchgrass, keeping my muzzle high to make sure I didn't bury it in the dirt. That would have been a bad time to have a barrel blocked.

  Once we were up onto the higher ground, it was all over. I was closest to the road, while Jim and Little Bob fanned out down the slope toward Magdalena itself. We were almost shoulder-to-shoulder as we each dropped to a knee and opened fire. They hadn't been watching their flanks. I don't think they had even realized that their entire blocking force was gone yet. They had cover to their front, but from where we were, they were completely exposed. Bullets chopped through unprotected heads and ribcages, each of them getting at least two from each of us. Most dropped where they were. One tried to crawl away, but it turned into an agonized roll into the ditch next to the road on top of the rise. He was wearing white jogging pants, now stained bright red with his own blood.