Feral Nation Series (Book 7): Feral Nation [Sabotage]

by Williams, Scott B.

  Now that it was decided that they wanted that airplane though, Eric and Luke both knew they had to hold their fire until their targets were well clear of it, so there would be no chance of damage from a stray bullet. That was easy enough, since after checking that their weapons were locked and loaded, the two men headed towards the perimeter with little fear or hesitation, walking as if they were out for a casual stroll as they conversed at a normal volume in Spanish. After seeing what they’d seen from the air and finding that no one from the compound came out to greet them, the men seemed confident there was no one here to challenge them. It was a dumb mistake, of course, but Eric had seen others make the same one, always with fatal results. He was the first to fire, taking out the well-dressed one who’d been in the passenger seat with a single 5.56mm round to the center of mass. Luke’s shot followed his so closely that the pilot had no idea what had happened before he fell too. The men were nearly a hundred feet from the airplane when Eric and Luke shot them, and though it appeared they were most likely alone, Eric didn’t take anything for granted. And because of that, it was not a total shock to him that when the echoes of the two rifle reports faded away, he heard a woman’s terrified scream from the direction of the plane. Eric looked over at Luke and the tracker nodded back at him. One of them had to go and complete the job of securing that airplane, and Eric indicated that he would do it, as he signaled Luke to wait behind and cover him.

  Five

  ERIC CIRCLED WIDE TO approach the aircraft from the tail end, knowing that would keep him in the blind spot of whoever was inside the cabin. If the woman or anyone else that might be in there decided to exit and start shooting, Luke would have a clear line of fire. Why there was a woman on board, Eric had no idea, but the pilot and the other man had probably insisted that she stay behind while they went to have their look around. But Luke had said the plane could seat four, so that didn’t mean she was alone or that she wasn’t as well-armed as those two were. From the way she’d screamed though, she was clearly afraid, and probably wasn’t a threat. Eric didn’t want to kill her if it wasn’t necessary, and he certainly didn’t want to shoot up the plane doing it, so he had to risk getting closer to check it out.

  Although her first screams were wild and unchecked, the woman had grown quiet now, probably coming to her senses and realizing that whoever shot her companions was still out there and that she was only drawing attention to herself by making all that noise. Eric was closing in on the rear of the plane now, and glancing back at Luke, saw his friend give him the all clear signal. No one else had tried to exit, so Eric advanced until he was crouching under the tail stabilizers. From there, he could hear nothing but silence from within.

  “You inside the airplane! I’m not going to hurt you, but I need you to step outside with your hands up, where I can see them!”

  The woman’s reaction to hearing his voice was to cry out in fear. She was naturally still terrified and now really startled and confused that someone had approached and spoken to her from so close outside. He gave her a minute to catch her breath and then he tried again.

  “Please! Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. Unless you plan on shooting at me, I have no intention of harming you.”

  Her frightened response naturally came back at him in Spanish. Eric was far from fluent in the language, but he understood enough to know that the woman was probably begging him to leave her alone and go away. Eric was convinced she was alone now, and he eased forward, his rifle suspended on its sling and his Glock in hand, ready for a close-range encounter as he advanced. He attempted to reassure her with the only thing he could think of, repeating it over and over: “No problema, amiga, no problema.” When he was close enough to see through the open door into the fuselage, Eric saw that she was sitting with her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, looking back at him in wide-eyed fear. He also saw with a glance that there was only one rear seat in the interior and no place for another person to hide in there. Eric lowered the muzzle of the Glock and put it away, trying to find the right words to say to the woman but coming up with nothing that she understood. She still refused to come outside when he motioned for her to do so, and Eric turned back to Luke to signal for him to come and help out.

  When Luke reached the plane, Eric learned another thing about his Apache friend, and that was that he spoke Spanish very well. When he saw Eric’s surprise at this, Luke made out like it was perfectly normal and no big deal, saying that many of the people of his tribe did, because after all, they’d been dealing with Spanish-speaking trespassers on their lands since the days of Coronado. Luke’s fluency with the language finally helped convince the terrified woman in the plane that he and Eric weren’t going to kill her. They learned that her name was Carmen, and that she had been brought here from Mexico against her will. The other passenger in the plane, the well-dressed one Eric had shot dead, had killed her fiancé and kidnapped her in Saltillo. Carmen’s father was one of the founders of the Nuevo Día Cartel, or Los Nuevos, as they called themselves. It was a sophisticated new organization that was the evolution of the former Gulf and Los Zetas cartels and therefore rivals and sworn enemies of the Sinaloa Cartel men who’d built this remote operations center. The dead man from the plane had been expelled from Los Nuevos and had fallen in with the Sinaloa. Of course, he still held a grudge against her father and the man Carmen planned to marry, so when he saw the opportunity, he had murdered her beloved Miguel and stolen her away. He’d brought her here with him today because he’d been assigned to run the operation out here and wanted her company. And here, in this remote part of New Mexico her father, Don Carlos, would never find her.

  “Antonio thought I would change my mind and fall in love with him after we were here for a while, but I promise you, it would never have happened! I would have killed him myself if I could have, and I am glad that you shot him dead! It is exactly what he deserved after what he did to my poor Miguelito!”

  With Luke translating, Eric asked her where the plane had taken off from and if she knew whether or not others would arrive here anytime soon.

  “I don’t know the name of that place. It is not in any town. It is a big headquarters for the Sinaloa Cartel in the mountains to the southwest of here. There are maps inside the plane because I saw them looking at them, but I doubt that place is marked, because just like this place, it is a secret and it is far from any main roads or cities. It is how the cartels operate.”

  Carmen thought that Eric and Luke must be some kind of American law enforcement officers or soldiers since they had attacked and killed the men posted at the compound, as well as Antonio and the pilot of the airplane. It was obvious she was still afraid she was going to be arrested or maybe even killed as well, even after telling her story. Eric turned to Luke again: “Tell her we are not interested in that place, and that we have no intention of harming or detaining her.”

  After Luke explained this to her and the two of them walked a short distance away from the plane to discuss the situation, Eric knew Carmen didn’t believe them. The young woman was terrified and that was understandable. She was also a new problem for Eric and Luke. They didn’t know for certain that she didn’t understand English, so they made sure she couldn’t hear them as they talked about what to do with her.

  “Well, we’ve got the plane, but this wasn’t part of the plan,” Eric said.

  “I wasn’t expecting this either. I think she’s telling the truth, though,” Luke said. “She wasn’t with that guy because she wanted to be, otherwise she’d be more upset about seeing him and the pilot die. The only thing that upset her was the surprise of it, and the fear that she was next.”

  “Yeah, she was scared to death, and I can’t blame her. So, she’s not involved with what these guys were doing here, and now she’s stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of dead men that were her father’s enemies. We can’t just leave her here.”

  “She’s not our responsibility, Eric, but I understand wh
at you’re saying. I don’t see how we can help her though, even if she’s innocent and here against her will, it’s a hell of a long way to where she’s from in Mexico, and through country that is controlled by the cartel these guys worked for. I suppose we could help her prepare one of the trucks from the compound and make sure she’s got what she needs for the trip, but what are the odds she’d make it through, a young, pretty woman like that alone out here in times like these?”

  “Her odds would suck,” Eric said, “even if she can work up the courage to try something that bold. Seeing how shaken up she is, I have my doubts that she can. Hell, she looks like she’s even younger than Megan.”

  Eric couldn’t help but make the comparison. After all that he’d done and all that he’d been through since coming back to this country to find Megan, he couldn’t help but think how this young Mexican woman was little different, and how she had a father who had no idea where she was or how to find her. Yeah, the dude might be a cartel kingpin and not so good of a guy, but that wasn’t Carmen’s fault.

  “We need to try and get more intel out of her,” Eric said. “And we need to study those maps. You said you know that particular plane. Can you work out a close estimate of how much range it has with the fuel that’s on board? We won’t know what our options are until we do.”

  “You’re not thinking of taking her back down to Mexico, are you? That would be crazy. I said I would fly the plane to help you get closer to your family but making a detour south of the border doesn’t make sense. And even if the fuel tanks were full, it wouldn’t be enough, flying hundreds of miles out of the way. That Cessna has a maximum range of just under 900 miles. Flying east, if we’re lucky with the prevailing winds and have a tailwind most of the way, we might stretch it to a thousand.”

  “That’s kind of what I figured, and that’s why I’ve got another idea. I’ve got a lot of questions for Carmen first though, and I’m going to need you to translate. Her answers will determine if what I’ve got in mind will work or not. But first, I want to look at those maps myself and refresh my memory.”

  They returned to where Carmen was sitting on the ground on the opposite side of the plane, her arms wrapped around her knees again and her head down in despair as she awaited her fate. Eric saw the fear in her eyes as she looked up at his approach, the mistrust no doubt returning after they had gone away to talk in private, but he just smiled at her and nodded to Luke to reassure her. While the two of them conversed again in Spanish, Eric checked the cockpit of the plane and found the maps Carmen had mentioned. There was one aeronautical chart that covered the northern part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua in detail, and there were road maps of the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, as well as one of New Mexico. And on the bottom of the stack, Eric found the one larger-scale map that would tell him what he needed to know—a national highway map showing the entire country of Mexico. He took all of them out and sat down in the shade of the wing to spread the maps out on the ground, asking Luke and Carmen to come have a look with him.

  “Nuevo Día Cartel controls all of the territory from Nuevo Leon east, and south to Mexico City,” Carmen said, when Luke asked her what Eric wanted to know.

  “Even along the coast?” Eric pointed to the Gulf Coast side of Mexico. “In this area just south of the U.S. border?”

  “Yes, all of the coast too, from the mouth of the Rio Grande to Veracruz. None of the other cartels can get near it. My father’s organization has been in control of that territory since I was a little girl, only under a different name then. But out here, in the west, it is different. They have always been fighting over territory here, and that is why my father never wanted me to leave Monterrey in the first place. He said it was too dangerous outside the city right now, even in Saltillo, which is not so far away.”

  “What would happen if this airplane tried to land in one of the cities or towns controlled by your father’s organization? Would they shoot it down on sight, or wait to see who it was that arrived?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think they would wait. They have always used small planes to move around in the country, and they would want to know who was inside it and why they came there. But if they determined they were enemies of Los Nuevos, then they would kill them and keep the airplane.”

  “And the Mexican Army? What about them?” Luke asked her.

  “In the northeast, they work to protect the Nuevo Día Cartel. I don’t think they would shoot down a plane coming to land at one of the cartel headquarters, because they too, would not know that someone on board was not an important boss or associate.”

  Luke turned to Eric and switched to English. “I still don’t get why you’re asking all this.”

  “Look at this!” Eric pointed. “It’s pretty much as straight a shot as I remembered but look at this map: See where we are here, not at all far north of the border in this lower corner of New Mexico? If you draw a straight line from just south of here to the Gulf coast below Brownsville, you can see that a flight path following that line would stay entirely over Mexican airspace, where sophisticated surveillance has mostly always been non-existent, and probably more so now. We don’t know for sure about the status of NORAD in all parts of the U.S. right now. Sure, we can assume there are gaps, but there’s no way of knowing. I think flying over Mexico will arouse less suspicion than attempting to fly directly over Texas. If we can make it to one of those isolated Mexican towns along the Gulf, then we’ll still be more than halfway to where I’m trying to go.”

  “Yeah, but what then? We’ll be out of fuel too, and where will we get more?”

  “That’s where she comes in,” Eric nodded at Carmen. “She will give us an ace in the hole in negotiating with the Nuevo Día Cartel. Her father will no doubt be grateful for her safe return and will want to help us. At least, that’s what I’m thinking, but you need to talk to her about it and make sure.”

  “It sounds like a long shot to me, man; lots of risk involved.”

  “Look Luke, if you don’t want to do it, I understand, and I don’t blame you. You’re welcome to take the plane and go, because it won’t do me any good without you. You could be back home on Jicarilla land sometime tomorrow.”

  “You know I’m not going to do that. I said I would help you as soon as we saw that this plane was going to land here. I’ll check the fuel and do the calculations. You may be right about the airspace thing, but no matter which way we go, we’re going to have to refuel somewhere, or else find another kind of ride.”

  Eric went back to the maps while Luke did his math in the cockpit. When he came back, he said he thought it would work, but that they needed more than a vague plan.

  “Then ask her where we need to land to have the best chance of getting help from her father. Make sure she understands it’s the only way in hell she’s going to get home safely from way out here, and that if she helps us, we’ll help her. Tell her she’s got my word.”

  Luke did and Eric could see the hope returning to Carmen’s eyes. She went from terror that she was going to die here to daring to believe that she might actually see her family again. Eric knew it wouldn’t bring back the man she loved who’d been murdered by the thug that brought her here, but at least she would get to go home. He gave her another reassuring smile when she stared at him in wonder upon hearing Luke’s words. The three of them were flying to Mexico together! But only after they finished the job that Luke and Eric had returned here to do.

  “We’ll take her along,” Eric said, when Luke asked him what he planned to do with Carmen while they went to take Nantan, Red and Wolf to their place of rest. “It’s not safe to leave her here.”

  “I don’t like the idea of leaving that airplane here either,” Luke said, “especially just sitting out in the open like that. It’s unlikely anyone will come along who can fly it, but someone may shoot it up or otherwise screw with it.”

  “Then let’s move it inside the compound,” Eric said. “We can move some of the
trucks around and put it under the shed, then block it in by parking around it and taking all the keys with us. It’s not perfect, but better than doing nothing.”

  “Fine, but since this came up, I think we need to work fast. Nantan, Red and Wolf would understand and would do the same. We will secure the plane and then drive them out to the hills tonight. There will be enough moonlight to see what we need to do. I would like to leave here in the morning, in order to have as many daylight hours as possible for the flight. There’s no way of knowing whether or not we’ll have to divert or change our route and landing anywhere but a well-lit runway in the dark isn’t something I want to attempt.”

  Eric could tell that Carmen was appalled at the idea of riding in the Polaris with three dead bodies in the back. But Eric and Luke had found blankets inside one of the buildings to wrap their fallen in, and Luke had explained to her what they were doing and why it was safer for her to go with them than to stay there alone. Carmen didn’t argue with that, as she in no way wanted to be left there by herself either, with even more corpses strewn around both inside and outside of the buildings. It was getting dark by the time they had the airplane secured and were ready to leave, but Eric agreed with Luke that it was best to get this over with that night and leave as early as possible. There was simply no way of knowing when someone else would show up at the compound, and Eric was in no mood for another encounter with more of these goons from the cartel or the collaborating contractors like those C.R.I. hired guns.