by Peter Nealen
Before I could reply, two of the paramilitaries decided to pop out from between the two brick buildings next to the line of Suburbans. They took the corner right, too, with one turning toward me and the other toward the rear vehicle, weapons up. To this day, I don't know quite how I responded as fast as I did. I let go of the PTT, slapped my hand on my SOCOM 16's foregrip, and dropped to a knee, my finger tightening on the trigger before I even had the weapon lined up. I cracked off three shots; the first one went high, and the next two smacked into his skull mask balaclava. His head jerked backwards and he fell on his ass, his rifle clattering against the brick wall next to him. I shifted targets and put a bullet in the side of his buddy's head, even as he was swinging around to face me. Blood splashed against the brick wall, and he slumped down onto his face.
I let out a ragged breath. That had been too close. “Hillbilly, Anarchy, did you copy?” Jack asked anxiously into my earpiece.
I let him wait for a few moments, until I was reasonably certain that no more shooters were going to pop out at me. Little Bob jogged up from around the back of the rear Suburban and took up security on that gap between the buildings. Only then did I reach for my PTT. “Roger, Anarchy, I copy. Maintain contact. We'll arrange linkup later.”
More gunfire rattled from behind the second brick house, answered by the roar of the rear element's return fire. There were still hostiles out there, and I was sure that more were going to be coming, whether from the same group who had just tried to jump us or one of the other warring factions in Zacatecas. We had to move, and quickly.
I checked forward, where Ben was holding security on that corner. Obviously, the rear element had the six o'clock, as they were still engaging hostiles. I just had to see if we could possibly drive out, or if we had to break out on foot.
The Suburbans were in decent shape; they'd been sheltered from most of the fire. Our vehicles were in worse shape than the two we'd wrecked in the initial ambush, up in Arizona. They were riddled with holes.
So were the box trucks. I ran to the rear one, and yanked open the driver's side door. The driver, a fat guy whose only name—that I'd heard, anyway—was Bugs, was jammed into the fetal position under the steering column, shaking like a leaf. There was a strong smell of piss and shit in the cab.
Not all of it was from him, though. He was splashed with blood and bits of bone and hair. Canfield looked like he'd been shot about twenty times. His remains were slumped against the trembling driver.
Under other circumstances, I might have been a little more gentle. This guy had just been through some serious trauma, being shot at and having his right-seater splashed all over him. But we didn't have the luxury of the time or the cover for me to be gentle. I reached up, grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him down to the ground. “Listen to me,” I told him, looking him straight in the eye. “If you want to live, you have to do exactly what we tell you, when we tell you. We have to get out of here, right now, and we can't have you slowing us down, so what you just saw is going to have to get shoved into a dark little corner of your brain and you have to suck it up and function. Do you understand?”
He still looked terrified and sick with shock, but he nodded. I kept my hand on his shoulder, keeping his head down as I steered him toward the rear vehicle. A quick mental inventory had reminded me that there really wasn't any other good way out of this fucked-up meeting site. Another thing I'd be taking up with Ernesto when we met again.
I had just gotten him to a semi-covered spot next to the rear Expedition, which was also shot to shit, when Ben and Eric jogged over with Larry, Little Bob, Harold, and his driver in tow. Harold had, fortunately, survived the fusillade of gunfire, probably because he'd rolled under the box truck after I'd shoved him there. He was rumpled, covered in dust and scratches, and looked almost as terrified as Bugs. His driver, on the other hand, while not entirely cool and collected, looked like he was at least staying reasonably calm.
“We might be able to cram into the Suburbans,” Jim said at my elbow. “Getting out is going to be a bitch, though, and we can't shoot out of 'em. They're armored, and the windows don't roll down. But if we go out on foot, we'll have to ditch a lot of the gear and we won't be able to go far.”
I took a couple of seconds to think it over. I didn't have much more time than that; the decision had to be made, and we had to get gone. “Load up the Suburbans, get the civvies inside, and get ready to move. We've got to get the fuck off the X.”
“What about the cargo?” Jim asked, as Derek let rip with another long burst from the M60.
I crabbed over to the rear Expedition, rummaged around in the back, and came out with two red grenades. “I'm going to burn it,” I said. Harold looked at me, but didn't say anything. He didn't have any objections anymore.
Of course, two thermite grenades weren't going to burn the cash sufficiently by themselves. That's why I dropped each into the fuel tanks and ran as soon as I'd let go. Those little fuckers have short fuses. In short order, both box trucks were fully engulfed and it felt like we were clambering into the Suburbans in the middle of an inferno. I was sure the vehicles' paint was going to be plenty scorched, which wasn't going to help us keep any kind of a low profile, but given the fact that we were probably about to pick up some more bullet scars on the way out, that was a relatively minor thing.
Jim's vehicle was first, roaring into reverse and slamming the busted-up remains of the Expedition out of the way as it surged up onto the road. No gunfire greeted it, yet. Larry then threw our vehicle, which had the two of us and the three surviving Harmon-Dominguez guys in it, into gear and followed.
Jim wasn't waiting around. As soon as he got enough room, he was moving, rolling over a few of the dead bodies in the road in the process. The Suburban was heavy enough that it barely registered a bump as it rolled over a black-balaclava-clad skull. Larry followed him, backing up just far enough to turn onto the road and then mashing the accelerator to catch up. The big diesel engine roared, and we surged forward, adding to the bloody mush on the asphalt.
Instead of going back the way we'd come, we were pushing up the hill, following the same road that the attack had come down. There was another major roadway just up ahead; I was pretty sure Jim was banking on keeping to wider streets, but I wasn't going to micromanage from the middle vehicle. He had point, so we'd follow him, unless the situation demanded one of us take over.
We were almost to the intersection when an RPG blasted at us from the roof of a house, barely missed Jim's Suburban, and slammed into the side of the road, sending a cloud of dust, gravel, and pulverized asphalt skyward as it detonated. Fragments rained down onto our Suburban, and I really wished for one of those Dillon Aero minigun mounts that Ventner's boys had been using on their Suburbans in Baghdad. As it was, we had two options; we could either push through, or we would have to stop, get out, and fight.
More of the masked gunmen in camouflaged fatigues with M4s were shooting at us from the upper floors and an up-armored pickup truck that was parked on the overpass in front of us. Bullet impacts starred the armored windshield, and hit the body with loud bangs.
Jim didn't hesitate. He floored the accelerator and drove straight through the kill zone, speeding up and narrowly avoiding a collision with a motorcycle as his vehicle bounced straight over the median and down the next street. Larry was right on his rear bumper, keeping close and keeping us moving fast. A few more desultory shots slammed into the roof, but the armor held.
“Oh, thank God,” Harold said from the back seat. “There's a helicopter up there.”
I craned my neck to look at the sky. Helos overhead were not good news to me. Whoever these dogfuckers were—and my money was on Los Zetas—they were well-equipped and well-coordinated. I'd heard of a few cartel paramilitaries having access to helicopter support, either of their own or “subcontracted” from the Mexican Army. If they had close air support up, we were going to have a bitch of a time getting clear.
We weren't taking a
ny more fire, though. The next several blocks passed in a blur, as all three drivers exercised every bit of driving skill they had. We were moving at close to forty-five miles per hour, through narrow, unfamiliar, cobblestone streets. It felt a lot faster than that. But that fucking helicopter was right over us the entire time.
“Anarchy, Hillbilly,” I called over the radio. “Status?”
Jack took a couple moments to reply. “Still in contact,” he said. “About to secure transportation; the target's getting into a vehicle.”
“Keep me posted,” I told him, narrowly avoiding hitting my head on the ceiling as we hit a dip in the cobblestone street. “Location checks as often as you can give them.” I was hoping to link up with him and Nick soon, but unless we could shake that helicopter, that was going to be dicey. At least we should know where they were. I was momentarily relieved that they were getting into a vehicle; two gringos on foot with weapons were going to stand out a lot in Zacatecas.
Maybe we needed to see if there was work in Ukraine or Lithuania. We might be able to blend in better there.
I was wracking my brain for a way to get out from under those eyes in the sky when we came around a corner and skidded to a halt with a screech barely fifty feet from a six-wheeled APC, its turreted M2 Browning pointed straight at Jim's windshield. Black Federal Police vehicles came screaming out of a couple of side streets to halfway block us in. A loudspeaker blasted at us, in accented but intelligible English, “Get out of the vehicles with your hands in the open.”
Motherfuck. We get away from the bad guys only to get rolled up by the policia. The mission was fucked. We'd be lucky to see daylight in a year, if that. Still, even if I was willing to start shooting at the policia or the Army, and the guy in the APC's turret looked like he might have been wearing Army cammies, that .50 would turn Jim's truck and anyone in it to hamburger, especially at that distance.
“Stand down,” I sent over the radio. “Leave weapons in the trucks and do as he says. Anarchy, maintain contact, but go radio silent until hailed by a Praetorian station.” I wasn't all that confident that it was going to be me. Another team might have to come down here to finish this, while we rotted waiting for a Mexican judge to decide how many years past our natural lifetimes we were going to spend locked up with the sicarios.
I was slightly surprised at how calm I was as I carefully opened the door and stepped out onto the cobblestones, my hands held up in view of the APC's gunner. Police in blue uniforms and black plate carriers moved up to the vehicles as I put my hands on the hood. One of the policia seized my wrist, and I had to stifle the urge to fight. It was just going to get me beaten down or shot. In this violent shithole, my money was on shot. He pulled my hands around my back, not gently, but not trying to do the tough-guy arm-wrench, either, and latched handcuffs around my wrists. On either side of me, the Harmon-Dominguez people and the rest of my team were getting the same treatment.
With a firm hand under my arm, the cop pulled me away from the Suburban and steered me toward a five-ton truck that had pulled up behind the federales' SUVs. “Vámonos,” he said. His tone was flat, businesslike. I let him lead me to the truck; a couple more cops at the tailgate had to hoist me up into the bed. In short order, all of us were in the back of the truck, the canvas flap was dropped, and, with a surge that just about knocked us to the rear of the bed, the truck started rolling.
I was a little thrown. We had been handled far more gently than I would have expected. The federales, or any Mexican police for that matter, didn't have the best reputation for treating prisoners like anything more than scumbags. This arrest had shown an amazing level of restraint, far more than I would have expected Stateside from cops rolling up a bunch of gunmen who had just run from a full-bore firefight in the middle of a city, much less in Mexico. Something weird was going on.
That impression was only reinforced when we stopped. I was pretty sure this wasn't the Zacatecas Police Ministry. We had pulled into a small, walled compound with barbed wire coiled along the top of the wall, and a couple of armored police trucks in view. The APC was parked right outside the gate; it didn't look like it would quite fit inside.
Through the gate, as we were helped down out of the truck, I could see police getting out of the three armored Suburbans, putting our weapons and gear into duffel bags, and carrying them inside, just before we were hustled into the station.
It looked like a typical police station. The white plaster of the walls and ceiling looked just as dingy on the inside as it had on the outside. Frankly, it reminded me of the police station we'd seized from the IRGC in Basra. There was a sleepy-looking female police officer behind the reception desk, who just watched as we were escorted into the back and put into an otherwise completely empty cell block. Before being put into our cells, they removed the handcuffs without a word, then locked us in and left.
“What the fuck?” Jim asked.
“I don't know,” I answered. “Something's very off here.”
“No shit.”
“Lambs to the slaughter, maybe?” Ben suggested. “Treat us nice so we don't fight until the ax comes down?”
We didn't have long to discuss what was going on. I don't think we'd been alone for five minutes before another policeman came into the cell block. He rattled off a question in Spanish. I didn't get it at first, but then Harold pointed at me. Apparently he was asking who was in charge. He walked to my cell, opened it, and said, “Vámonos.” I shrugged, and stepped out of the cell. He didn't handcuff me. This was getting weirder and weirder.
He led me out of the cell block and down a narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway. Maybe it was the lighting, combined with the circumstances, but it felt creepy as hell, like walking through a slaughterhouse. The grimy, once-white plaster on the walls didn't help the cheap horror-movie vibe.
The cop opened a gray-painted steel door and waved me through. The door opened on a bare, windowless room with two chairs, a metal table, and a single, fluorescent light on the ceiling. That was it. I stepped through the door and the cop shut it behind me.
I felt trapped. I had had to suppress the urge to violence the entire way down that hall; when I feel trapped, I start looking for ways to get out and kill whoever put me in the trap. I was turning into a cornered wolf.
The doorknob rattled, and began to turn. I stepped behind the door and prepared to strike. If the person entering the room was armed, it was going to be dicey, but if I was going to die in a shitty little Mexican jail, I was going to get mine on the way down.
The man who stepped through wasn't wearing a police uniform. He was dressed in a suit, albeit a cheap one. Instead of the pistol I had been expecting, he had a bottle and two glasses in his hands. That stopped me from hitting him. He looked around the room, and stepped back as he saw me, just by the door, poised to attack. He didn't say anything at first, but just stayed out of my reach, letting the door close and stepping over to the table. He put the glasses down, opened the bottle of Mezcal, and poured two drinks before sitting down.
“I apologize for the handcuffs,” he said, in almost accent-less English. “I thought it wise to take the precaution while we were on the streets. There are eyes everywhere in Zacatecas, and many of them report to very evil men.” He motioned to the chair across from him. “Please, have a drink with me.”
I eyed him narrowly, but moved cautiously to the table and eased myself into the chair. He watched me, his expression calm, giving nothing away. When I sat down, he raised his glass, said, “Salud,” and tossed the drink down.
It was a carefully calculated gesture, meant to put me at ease. He'd taken the first drink so that I didn't think he was trying to drug or poison me. He was trying to build trust. My question was, why? I picked up the glass, studied it for a moment, then raised it, replied, “Salud,” and took a sip. I'd never had Mezcal, but I've never gotten along with Tequila, and they tasted somewhat similar. And under the circumstances, even if it had been the smoothest bourbon I'd ever tasted, I stil
l wouldn't be slamming back shots of it.
“I'm sure you have a lot of questions right now,” he said. “To start with, you may call me Jorge. I am the Inspector of this little precinct. I arrested you and your compadres solely to get you off the street where I could speak with you. I've had you under surveillance since you entered Zacatecas State.” I think my face must have betrayed a little of my reaction to that, though I shouldn't have been surprised. Those box trucks had been like a millstone around our necks. He held up his hands placatingly. “To be more accurate, I have had your convoy under surveillance. I also have certain friends in El Norte who tell me things.”
He leaned forward. “They tell me about a group of gringo contractors, who have been working in the Middle East. They get things done, these gringos, so they say. And they always go after bad people. So when I heard that some of these same gringos, these Praetorians, are escorting a questionable shipment into my country, I have to ask why. Have they gone bad? Or do they have another purpose?” He leaned back and poured himself another drink. “I had men watching the meet from the train station. They saw your two men break off to follow Ernesto Valladares when he fled. They also saw the way you fought the maras and the Zetas.” That confirmed one suspicion, anyway.
“I know of Valladares. He is a very bad man, but I have never been able to touch him,” he continued, after tossing back the drink. “He has powerful friends. But what we saw tells me that you also know this.” He stared at me.
“We do,” was all I said.
“Why are your men following him?” he asked.
“Because we're hunting him.” I decided that, given the way this man was talking, that was a safe revelation. His answering smile confirmed it.
“I knew there was another reason you were here,” he said, pouring a third drink. I still hadn't finished mine. “So I now feel safe in saying this.
“I need your help.”
Chapter 8
