Hostile Borders (25 page)

There were several washes along the streambed that cut deeply into the banks. Pulling his truck up into one of the larger washes, Manors stopped and parked. The other truck had enough room to pull up alongside of Manors and stop. The wash was one of the best places they would have to hide the trucks and unload the gear. For just a second, Manors stopped with his hand on the door latch. Now was the last chance he had to turn back. But others were now depending on him. The decision had been made, and Manors opened his door and stepped out.

The Prowlers were quickly unloaded and checked over. If they were stopped, there wouldn't be a chance in hell of their explaining that they were just joyriding around the desert. No Border Patrol agent or sheriff's deputy would believe a line like that, not with all of the hardware they had on the Prowlers. The men strapped on their gear and weapons. Once they were all ready, Manors started out to lead the way.

The border itself in the area was a twin row of tall cyclone fence topped with razor wire. It was hard to climb and hard to cut through. Sensors in the wire would know if the wire was cut. And there were ground sensors scattered all around the desert as well. Manors knew the locations of the ground sensors, and he could bypass the fence alarms long enough for the two Prowlers to get through. Watching the coyotes over the years had taught him quite a few of their tricks. This was the first time he was actually putting them to active use.

The ground by the border itself was mostly flat and open to observation for a long way. There were well-maintained roads on both sides of the border so that law enforcement from either country could respond quickly. In the distance a few miles away, Manors knew there was a watchtower that they were in plain sight of. It wasn't supposed to be manned at that time, but things change.

They had to get through the fence quickly to cut down on the random chance that someone would see them. There could always be an odd aircraft flying overhead just sightseeing, or some real off-roaders running near the border. Mr. Murphy always picked his own time and place to slip up and screw with a plan. The trick was to cut back on leaving chances open for him to work.

Pulling up to the fence, Manors got out of his Prowler and pulled a small box from his pack. From the front of the vehicle, he took a pair of thirty-inch-long bolt cutters and a roll of wire. The second Prowler pulled up and Warrick climbed out. He went over to Manors's vehicle and got into the driver's seat. When Manors opened the fence he would have to go to the second wall and cut that one open as well. Warrick would follow Mackenzie through into Mexico to save time.

To speed up the penetration of the fence line, Column also got out of Mackenzie's Prowler and picked up another set of bolt cutters. Going up to the fence, he watched as Manors fiddled with the little box and hooked it up to the wires. Once the lights were on to
his satisfaction, Manors looked up at Column and nodded. The bolt cutters would make quick work of even the tough, hardened wire of the fence. As Column started cutting from the bottom of the fence up, Manors took his cutters and started from the top down. Soon, they had a wide flap of the fencing free and tied it back on either side with the wire Manors had.

The second fence was also quickly penetrated. The Mexican side of the border had very few sensors along its length. But there was still the random Mexican border patrol to worry about. Not all of the sweat that was pouring down the men's faces came from the heat of the desert. When the two flaps were both up, Warrick and Mackenzie barreled through with the Prowlers. Before releasing the flaps, Manors recovered his little box. They might need it again to cross back through the fence line. For now, they had just conducted an armed invasion of a sovereign country. That thought went through Manors's mind as he tied the flaps of the fence together quickly with his coil of wire.

Crossing over the Mexican desert, the two Prowlers made very good time. There were few roads in the area and that made for much less traffic than on the U.S. side. They could drive along at speed and make up some time. Even so, both Mackenzie and Manors were careful in their choice of travel routes. If the vehicles were to break down, they would all be in a world of hurt, both the men on the Prowlers, and their partners far down in the tunnels under the earth.

The only Mexican town of any size around them was Naco, some ten miles to the east of their present loca
tion. The bright screens of the Garmin Rino GPS locators and radios showed their locations in reference to the roads and towns around them. That gave little detail of their immediate surroundings showing on the screens. Looming up ahead of them was a line of peaks and ridges. From there, they would be looking down on the Crystal mine and the hacienda.

It was a long thirty-minute drive for the two Prowlers to cover the distance from where they cut through the border to the side of the hill where they could see the hacienda. They had slowed down to barely a crawl as they approached the top of the ridge. Stopping near some brush, Manors got out and slipped up to the top of the ridge, crawling the last few feet on his belly. He didn't need binoculars to see the mine and the hacienda less than half a mile away. Looking to the west, he could see the small saddle, a depression in the ridge, where Reaper suggested they could set up the fire base. They had hit the target almost dead on.

Slipping back to the vehicles, Manors quickly told the others what he had seen. Getting back in his Prowler, he pulled out ahead, again moving slowly so he didn't raise a plume of dust. The saddle was an obvious landmark, and there was a large stand of brush and cactus filling the center of it and spilling down to either side.

Slowing the Prowlers near the brush, the two vehicles carefully approached the top of the ridge. In the center of the saddle was a ravine cut by the intermittent heavy rains that hit the area. That ravine would be where they would set up the Mark 19 and park the
Prowlers. The dusty yellow-tan paint on the two vehicles was intended to blend them in with the desert sand. It was doing its designed job very well.

They were still inside of their schedule as the Prowlers came to a stop. The ravine opened up to a wide wedge at this point. There was a clear field of fire leading out to the west and east. The hacienda was about half a klick, 500 meters, off to their left. To the right, about 700 meters away according to Warrick's trained snipers eyes, was the opening of the mine.

With the Prowlers parked under the concealment of some tall brush, Warrick moved forward along the ground to find his preferred sniper's position. The rest of the team began unpacking and setting up the Mark 19 grenade launcher. The big gun was actually a machine gun that fired high-velocity 40mm grenades out to a range of 2,200 meters. It was a crew-served weapon, far too big for one man to move on his own. Unfolded, the tripod was almost as big as Mackenzie was tall.

Carrying the tripod forward, Column was moving in close to a fully bent-over position as he went past the cover of the brush. There was an open spot where he could set up the tripod and man the gun. The only real limiting factor was that it was about twenty feet from the Prowlers. That meant the heavy gun and ammunition boxes had to be brought forward. But at least the position was downslope of the vehicles. That meant that when the M240B machine gun was swung out and down the ravine, it would be firing well over his head when it opened up.

While Column was unfolding the tripod legs and stomping them firmly into the ground, Mackenzie brought up the M64 gun cradle. As they completed setting up the mount, Warrick kept a careful watch out over the countryside. He had set up his Chandler M40A3 rifle by laying it across his three-day assault pack. The ten-power Unertl sight on the M40A3 closely matched that on the Barrett .50-caliber gun, so Warrick could switch between them easily. Through the glass of the telescopic sight, he watched for movement at the hacienda as his teammates set up the grenade launcher. He would continue to watch while they worked.

The Mark 19 gun and its tripod mount made for a very heavy gun to be hand-carried and set up. Once Column had the gun locked onto the tripod, Manors brought up the first box of ammunition.

The steel ammunition box crunched into the gravel and twigs as Manors set it down. Flipping up the latches on both ends of the lid, Column opened the box as Manors went back for another. Once he had the end of the first belt locked into place in the feed tray of the Mark 19, Column quietly said: “Gun's up!”

That phrase told Warrick that he could now go back to the Prowler and bring up his Barrett. For a moment, Warrick hesitated over leaving his M40A3 lying in position. But he had to bring up the other weapon. As he was starting to rise, Manors crawled up beside the sniper. Dragging the black case of the Barrett behind him, Manors left it by Warrick, patted the man on the shoulder, and crawled back to the Prowlers.

Warrick looked at the black case for a moment and nodded his head. His opinion of Manors was already high enough because of the man's job, it had just climbed a few notches.

Warrick opened the case. The big gun lay nestled in cutouts cast in place for it in the case liner. Pulling out the big rifle, Warrick extended the bipod legs and set the rifle down. Reaching back into the case, he drew out the long upper receiver with the fluted barrel retracted into it and the Unertl scope secured to the rail across the top of it. He had just finished assembling the big gun when Manors called out softly:

“We have vehicles coming out of the hacienda, and they look like they're heading toward the mine.”

There was a dirt road running between the hacienda and the mine, and another that crossed it heading off to the south. Manors had watched the front gate of the hacienda open and a white Chevrolet Suburban SUV drive out with a second one right behind it. The two vehicles passed the road heading south and continued on toward the mine just over a kilometer away.

Warrick set the assembled but still unloaded Barrett down and immediately turned to his M40A3. He had the Suburban in his crosshairs in seconds.

“Targets up,” Warrick said loudly enough that he could be heard back at the Prowlers.

Mackenzie had keyed the boom mike on his headset and was trying to contact Reaper and Hausmann at the mine.

“Death, this is Famine. You have incoming. I repeat, you have incoming.”

Mackenzie repeated his warning call several times and heard nothing but static over the headset.

“Targets approaching the halfway point,” Warrick said.

Mackenzie had a hard decision to make. If he let the vehicles through to the mine, whoever was in them could discover Reaper and Hausmann. But neither of the vehicles had posed an immediate threat to the men on the hill. They could be people on a picnic, or a bunch of armed drug smugglers. There was nothing else around anywhere that might appeal to a civilian, and the rest of that road only led to the mine.

“Take out the lead vehicle,” Mackenzie said.

Leading the Suburban in the reticle of his sight, Warrick squeezed off a round. The M40A3 bucked as the sound of a shot rang out. Having aimed at the driver of the lead vehicle, Warrick had confidence that his shot would at least startle the man behind the dark tinted glass, if not kill him outright.

As he rode out the recoil and quickly brought his sight back onto the target, Warrick was astonished to see that nothing, absolutely nothing, appeared to have happened to the Suburban. Working the bolt of his M40A3, Warrick aimed and pulled the trigger a second time. The handloaded 190-grain Sierra hollow-point, boat-tailed match bullet zipped from the muzzle of the M40A3 at over 2,600 feet per second. Crossing the nearly 400 meters between the muzzle of the rifle and the target in just over half a second, the jacketed projectile smashed into the tinted glass of the driver's win
dow, and spent its energy vainly against the thick, armored window behind it.

Seeing that Warrick was not having any effect on the large SUV, Mackenzie stepped over to the M240B mounted on the Prowler. Swinging the big gun around, he cocked the bolt back and fired off a long hammering burst at the lead SUV. As the 7.62mm projectiles smashed along the side of the Suburban, a number of them hit the long side window in the back, smashing the tinted glass and ripping it away. Everyone on the hillside could see the bright white stars that showed where the bullets had hit armor.

Pushing the M40A3 away from him, Warrick rolled over to where the Barrett sat on its bipod. Snatching up the back of the big gun, Warrick grabbed a magazine from the storage case that had a wide piece of tape around it. Inserting the magazine and locking it into place, he yanked back on the bolt handle, releasing the massive bolt to be driven forward by its springs, strip the top round from the magazine, and chamber it in the barrel of the weapon.

Swinging the big rifle around, Warrick could see that the lead Suburban was heading down into a low spot in the road, it would soon be out of his line of fire. Taking quick aim, he placed the crosshairs on the back of the SUV. He squeezed the trigger and the huge gun thundered in response.

The tape that Warrick had placed around the base of his magazines showed by touch and sight which ones were loaded with the Mark 211 ammunition. The pro
jectile to the round was over two and a half inches long and carried a tungsten carbide penetrator. They were armor piercing and carried a small explosive and incendiary charge to boot. They were the nastiest thing you could put out of a rifle.

The tungsten carbide penetrator made quick work of smashing through the armor on the back of the Suburban. The three follow-on rounds that Warrick rapid-fired from the semiautomatic Barrett also punched through the back of the Suburban just as it dropped out of his sight. He watched the last round smash the back window to splinters as it hit.

The following vehicle was still an available target. The driver had put his vehicle into reverse and was backing up as quickly as he could. It wouldn't be enough to stop the prior Marine scout-sniper from taking him out. Swiveling the Barrett on its bipod, Warrick saw the window of the other Suburban fill his sight. He squeezed off the trigger and the thunder of the big .50 sounded out once more.

Sealed off from the world in his bubble of concentration, and with his ears protected by the electronics and mufflers in his Liberator headset, Warrick didn't hear the rounds snapping by overhead. But the rest of his teammates did. The blast of the Barrett kicked up more dust and debris than any of the other weapons the men had. That rising cloud of dust was enough of a target for whoever was in the hacienda to open fire at it with automatic weapons.

As the bullets snapped by, Mackenzie ducked down and made another decision.

“Open fire on the hacienda,” he said. The occupants of the building had decided that shooting was okay. They would soon learn their mistake.

At the Mark 19, Column heard the command over the earphones of his headset. He cranked the cradle of the Mark 19 over on its tripod and pulled the trigger. The big gun thumped and rocked back as it fired. One high-explosive grenade headed downrange while another chambered up and fired. The slow knocking sound of the Mark 19 did not reflect the power of the weapon. The explosions of the grenades far downrange were a more realistic show of what it could do. Roof tiles of the hacienda shattered from the violent explosions. Thousands of steel fragments were joined by hundreds of red shards of broken clay tearing through the air as the M385 projectiles smashed into the buildings.

 

Far down in the mine, Reaper and Hausmann had finally reached the elevator shaft in the Crystal mine. This shaft had the shaky wooden ladder that led up to the floor of the elevator cage hundreds of feet above. It was not going to be an easy climb, and this time Reaper had a lot more equipment with him to add to his weight. Hausmann was even heavier—packing the flamethrower as well as a load equal to Reaper's. Using the elevator was still out of the question. Looking at Hausmann, Reaper smiled.

“No other way to go,” he said, “start climbing.”

“You needed a lawyer for this?” Hausmann said as he looked up.

“Only to say I wasn't crazy,” Reaper said as he started to climb.

“Do let me know if you can find one who'll say that,” Hausmann said.

The tension was barely broken by the banter between the men. The climb was nerve-wracking and Hausmann was more than glad that the plan called for them to seal the tunnel and bring down the mine. At least that would mean he wouldn't have to climb back down that damned ladder.

As Hausmann stepped up to another board, the old lumber his other foot was on finally snapped under the weight. His fall jerked to a stop as his hands clenched down on the boards they were holding. For a moment, Hausmann was hanging out over the drop, only being held up by his two hands and the dry, old boards they were gripping. As Reaper stopped his climb and started back down, Hausmann called out.

“No, I'm okay,” he said softly in a hoarse voice, “keep going.”

He had his feet back under him, both of them on separate rungs of the ladder. Just then, a long drink from his hydration pack sounded very good to Hausmann, but there was no way that he would let even one hand release the ladder in order to pull over the drinking tube to where he could reach it with his mouth. With a deep breath, he continued upward.

Climbing onto the elevator platform, Reaper reached down to his partner. He grabbed hold of the shoulder strap to the M8 flamethrower with one hand while the other held a strong grip of the lifting strap at
the top of Hausmann's pack. With some of the weight off of him, Hausmann let go of the ladder with one hand long enough for Reaper to lift the flamethrower from his back and pull it up and onto the platform. Clambering up, Hausmann joined his partner on the flat boards of the elevator platform.

“Oh, that was way too much fun,” he said as he pulled the drinking tube of his hydration pack into his mouth. Reaper just smiled as he watched Hausmann drinking.

“Welcome to Mexico,” he said. “Don't drink the water.”

That bad joke brought a weak grin to Hausmann's face. The two men stood up and moved off the elevator platform. As they walked down the tunnel, Reaper heard a noise coming in from the entrance to the mine. The rolling echo of thunder sounded faintly. Only it wasn't thunder, it was the sound of Warrick's .50-caliber sniper rifle.

As the two men ran forward, the shadows at the front of the mine resolved themselves into running bodies. One man came around the corner of the tunnel and looked straight at Reaper and Hausmann standing there. With a strangled cry in Spanish, he tried to raise the Galil SAR he had hanging at his side. Long before the mercenary could bring the weapon to bear, Reaper and Hausmann both opened fire.

The short blast of fire from Hausmann's MP5A3 was almost drowned out by the much louder roar from Reaper's M4A1. Both streams of projectiles slammed into the mercenary, driving him back against the tunnel
wall where he hit, and slowly crumpled in a heap on the floor.

Stopping at the sound of the gunfire, Masque watched as one of his men was killed not fifteen feet from where he was standing. The other three men with him were heavily armed, but they were no match for the firepower that had come in and smashed the back of their armored Suburban. The threat ahead looked like one they could deal with, and they had the tools and skills to do that.

As Reaper and Hausmann crouched down at the sides of the tunnel, they began inching back to find cover. They were badly exposed. There was nothing more than the support timbers to take cover behind. Then there was a metallic tinking sound that made Reaper's blood run cold. He recognized the sound of a safety lever being released even before the green-painted ovoid came bouncing along the floor of the mine.

“Grenade!” he shouted as he grabbed Hausmann by the shoulder. Turning, the powerful SEAL almost threw the man toward the one side tunnel behind them. Then he too ran toward it.

Both men dove into the tunnel, hitting the floor with their weapons cradled in their arms, protecting them from the impact. They didn't have long to wait to see if the mine still had strong supports.

The roar of the exploding grenade echoed through the tunnel. For Reaper and Hausmann, it was like being inside a huge drum with a giant madman pounding on it. The sharp-edged steel fragments from the
grenade spattered harmlessly across the rocks behind them. Pebbles and dust fell from where they had been shaken down from overhead. But besides the shattering of a dozen or so lightbulbs casting the mine into near darkness, little other damage had been done. That was not going to hold true for the eventual grenade that came into the small side room.

“Goddamn, that one was close,” Hausmann said. “These guys are nuts using grenades in here.”

Their bodies' reaction to the stress of combat had helped save both men. The headsets of the Liberator communications systems had saved both Reaper and Hausmann's hearing. But they were still shaking from the aftereffects of the shock wave as they got up from the floor. Enough of the lights had survived the explosion to illuminate the mine as the heavier dust and smoke settled.

“The next one could be a whole lot worse,” Reaper said as he checked his weapon over for obvious damage, “nuts doesn't come close to describing these lunatics throwing grenades.” When Hausmann looked at him questioningly, Reaper nodded at the boxes and crates that were stacked up nearby.

Reading the Cyrillic alphabet was not among Hausmann's skills, but he could recognize it. There were a few words on the wooden boxes from Czechoslovakia that he could read—
SEMTEX
. That was the name of the plastic explosive used by the old Iron Curtain states of the Soviet Union. The stuff was popular with terrorists all over the world.

Even if he hadn't been able to read part of the labels
on the Semtex cases, the crates marked:
CHARGE DEMOLITION BLOCK M
5
A
1 2½-
LB COMP C
-4 were very readable. And Reaper had said there were even more cases of explosives in the tunnel. A grenade going off near the boxes would literally bring the house down, or at least cave in the mine. Either way, Reaper and Hausmann would be ground into the dust after they were blown apart.

Slipping up to the corner where the side tunnel met the mine, Reaper tried to get a look at just who and what they were facing. Suddenly ducking his head around the corner of the tunnel, Reaper was forced back by the swarm of bullets chipping the rock face all around him. He stuck the muzzle of his M4A1 around the corner and fired off a long burst, emptying his magazine. Reaper had no real hope that the rounds would hit anything, but they should help slow down the advance of the others.

He sat back down with a thump as the pack on his back hit the wall behind him. Striking the magazine release of his M4A1, Reaper dumped his empty magazine. Pulling a full magazine from a pouch, he slapped it into place in the magazine well. Hitting the bolt release on the left side of the weapon, Reaper completed reloading the M4A1 as the bolt slid home with a metallic crack.

Crouching low, Reaper once more ducked around the corner, barely exposing his face as he pointed his weapon. The muzzle of the M4A1 flashed fire as he sprayed rounds down the tunnel. There was a high-pitched scream as one man near the mouth of the mine
threw up his hands and fell back. The Galil SAR in his hands fired in a single long burst as the dying man's finger convulsed on the trigger. Masque and the others with him had to duck back or face the danger of being hit from the wild spray of bullets. Reaper had just bought himself a moment's time as Masque and his men tried to regroup.