Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (12 page)

Chapter
14

Nick
Woods and the men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter arrived safely in Mexico
City. The special border passes demanded by Nick worked perfectly and the
thirty-two shooters of S3, plus the CIA contact and Mexican liaison made it to
the team headquarters without trading rounds with the Godesto Cartel.

Nick felt
grateful that his first hurdle of sneaking across the border had been achieved.
As part of their entry plans, he had made his Mexican liaison fly to Texas so
they wouldn’t have to link up with him in Mexico, where they could be followed
or ambushed.

The
cultural expert was already with S3, having had to qualify and train with the
team before Nick would accept her. Now all thirty-four had rendezvoused at a
large farm, roughly an hour south of Mexico City, after drifting in from every
possible ingress route over a three-day period.

Nick’s
advance team of four men had finalized the lease for the farm prior to leaving
America. Upon arriving, they confirmed the site was secure and began getting
familiar with the area.

By the
time Nick and the rest of his team arrived, the advance party had found the
best defensive positions on the farm where security should be set up. Nick
reviewed the security plans with the team leader once he arrived, and with a
couple small adjustments, they were now fully implemented.

A small
dirt road led to the farm, and a locked farm gate stopped curious people at the
end of the road. Behind it, four men waited in an ambush position. Any intrepid
salesman or thief too stupid to ignore the locked gate and “no trespassing”
sign would most certainly never bother anyone again.

The men
stationed in the ambush position had shoot-to-kill orders and anyone they shot
would be buried on the property. Nick and the men of S3 wouldn’t be calling the
police for anything. Hell, none of them trusted anyone down here.

Nick had
even stripped the Mexican liaison upon his arrival in Texas and put his cell
phone and all his clothing in storage, before having one of his men accompany
him to a store to buy new clothes. Nick didn’t want to take a chance on any
kind of tracking or listening devices. And once they came within two hours of
Mexico City, Nick had the men traveling with the Mexican liaison blindfold him
until he was inside the farmhouse. That would leave about a three-hundred-mile
radius that the farm could be located in, just in case he ever slipped away to
an open computer with internet access.

Better
safe than sorry, Nick figured.

Nick had
set the security as tight as he could. Besides the ambush team on the road, he
had observation posts on each corner of the large farm, as well as two roving
patrols of four men. There was a reason Nick had brought thirty-two men with
him. He wanted to have constant security around him, and enough men to fight
their way out of just about anything.

The
thirty-two men were organized into four squads of eight. One of the squads,
with the most experienced and best shooters, was the Primary Strike Team. The
other three regular squads handled the security rotation since Nick and Dwayne
Marcus agreed the Primary Strike Team should always be rested and ready to move
at a moment’s notice.

But with
everyone here and security set, that left one thing: it was time to start
focusing on that bastard Hernan Flores and his Godesto Cartel.

The day
after the last men arrived and preparations were completed, Nick walked from
the kitchen to one of the bedrooms that he’d asked his men to set up for the
first move against the Godesto.

“How
close are we to being ready?” he asked.

Marcus
stood just inside the door, his hands on his hips, an M4 slung across his
chest. Once a drill instructor, always a drill instructor, Nick thought.

“Should
be ready in five minutes,” Marcus said.

Men were
sliding furniture to one side of the room. The bed, the dresser, the night
stand, everything, had been shoved to one side. And against the wall, men stood
on chairs and hammered nails into a plain white sheet spread across the wall.

“We’re
going with a plain white backdrop,” Marcus said.

A folding
table stood in front of the sheet, and two M249 SAWs lay on the table, the
light machineguns resting on their bipod legs. One of the men of S3, whose name
Nick couldn’t remember, adjusted a video camera that stood on an extended
tripod.

“Get it
right,” Nick said to the man.

“Yes,
sir,” the man said.

“I don’t
want anything in that frame except for the sheet. We don’t want to risk Flores
or his men recognizing the wall or anything that might give away the type of
building we’re in. We give these guys the smallest clue and they’ll figure out
where these types of buildings were constructed, and then they’ll descend with
so many informants on every county that has those types of buildings that we
won’t be able to go buy milk without being discovered.”

“They
won’t see anything but the sheet and table,” the man said. He looked back down
and adjusted the camera one final time.

“Not even
the floor,” Nick said.

“Not even
the floor,” the man repeated.

Nick left
the room and strode down the hall, his boots pounding the hardwood floor. It
felt good to be in charge again, something he hadn’t felt since he was a
foreman working construction. And before that, back when he was in the Corps
and a squad leader and scout sniper team leader.

“Isabella,”
Nick yelled as he walked into the kitchen.

Isabella,
the cultural expert and only female in S3, looked up from a stack of papers
spread across a wide dining table. Despite the skills she had shown qualifying
and in training, Nick still wasn’t happy about having her on the team. Two
Latino men, both Americans whose parents had emigrated from Mexico, flanked
her.

Isabella
had been asking them their opinion on the message she’d spent days preparing,
and with their collective Mexican heritage, they had helped her polish the
message so that it was as perfect as possible.

“Camera
is set up,” Nick said to Isabella. “You ready?”

She
grabbed the stack of papers and stood.

“Yes,
sir,” Isabella said.

“You
sure?” Nick said walking up to her and putting his hands on his hips.

“Absolutely,”
she said.

“You
better be,” Nick said.

“We’re
ready,” she said.

“Let’s get
one thing straight,” Nick said. “This is on you. There is no ‘we’re ready’
bullshit. This statement is on you, not those two guys or anyone else. It’s
either you’re ready or you’re not. And if you’re not, then you’ve got about
three minutes to get ready. Are we clear?”

“Yes,
sir,” Isabella said.

Nick’s eyes
bore into her. He expected her to turn away, but she held his look.

Nick
said, “What are you waiting on? Get the script in there. Now.”

Isabella
walked down the hall and Nick watched her.

Marcus walked
up beside Nick and said in a low voice, “Don’t you think you’re being a little
hard on her?”

“I need
to know if she’s going to crack or not,” Nick said.

“She
shoots as good as half of the men, and the woman may not have made the SEAL
team, or been in the Marine Corps, but she’s been a trigger puller in one of
the most dangerous countries in the world,” Marcus said. “I think she’s earned
some respect.”

Nick
turned from watching Isabella and looked at his second in command.

“We may
be in the
twenty-first century
, but I
don’t believe women should be in a unit like this. They can do intelligence,
but you know as well as I do the issues with having women behind enemy lines.”

“I do,
sir, but we need her,” Marcus said. “Are you an expert on Mexican matters?”

Nick
turned from Marcus and saw several men stop and watch Isabella. She was
definitely a beautiful woman with an ass that, well, it turned heads.

“I’d
rather have a male expert who was average,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Not
one who looks like that,” he said, pointing. “And capable or not, that woman
looks too good to be isolated with us. She’s going to cause serious problems.”

“The
woman lost her father and her brother,” Marcus said. “She wants this as bad as
you or me. And the men are professionals. They’ll be fine. And any who aren’t
can deal with me. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

Nick
considered Marcus’s words as he watched the 6’1’, 240-pound beast walk down the
hall. Why the man needed an M4, Nick didn’t know.

Ten
minutes later, Nick supervised the first major strike against Hernan Flores and
the Godesto. With arms crossed, Nick watched his men as they executed the
performance they’d been rehearsing since they left America. Except now they had
the finalized words from Isabella.

Ten men
stood behind the table and two M249s lay on it. Each of the ten men carried
intimidating weapons. Some with M4s. Some with M240 medium machine guns. Some
with scoped sniper rifles. They glared at the camera beneath boonie hats, ball
caps, and watch caps, and wore a variety of civilian clothes, but mainly blue
jeans and T-shirts.

Nick had
ordered them to look like a rag-tag militia or gang, and they had achieved the
effect. The only thing they each wore that bore any consistency were bandanas
covering most of their faces, and even those varied in color (mostly reds and
blues).

Marcus
and Isabella had picked Latino men to be in the video, but none of them wanted
to have their actual identity out on the internet for the rest of their lives,
so the hats and bandanas left as little of each man’s face exposed as possible.
The men knew that even if they knocked off Flores, they could still be at risk.

Cartels,
like the mob, had long memories.

A man sat
at the table in front of the line of ten armed men. After getting a nod from
the man behind the camera, he began to read from a white paper held before him.
Nick hoped the man’s accent matched what a resident of Mexico City might sound
like. All of his Hispanic team members said the man’s accent was the best of
any of them and lacked any trace of a life in America and the Marine Corps.
(The man credited weekly phone calls home to his grandmother for his authentic
sound.)

Nick
hoped it was good enough. He had considered getting a local native speaker and
(after blindfolding him and driving him around a few hours) bringing him to the
farm to read the statement. But that seemed almost like kidnapping and hardly a
way to win over the local population. Not to mention, unless the guy was a
dimwit, he’d know there were a large group of mostly Americans somewhere in
Mexico with really bad intentions, and that was knowledge Nick didn’t want
Hernan Flores to have.

It was a
risk Nick couldn’t take. His whole plan was based on turning the population
against the cartels, and it was one thing for Mexicans to support fellow
Mexicans. It was another thing altogether for Mexicans to support a bunch of
gringos from up north.

The man
seated at the table started to read.

“I speak
for the men behind me, and for dozens of others who have had enough. We are
citizens of Mexico -- bankers, butchers, and farmers. For decades now we have
watched as our country has been torn apart by drugs and cartels.

“For most
of us, the violence began elsewhere. Other
states
,
other cities, other neighborhoods. But it moved in on us in the night. And
soon, just a few criminals standing on street corners had turned into powerful
gangs and distribution networks.

“Threats,
intimidation, and corruption followed and before we knew it, our neighborhoods
and cities were no longer ours. Our police and judicial system was under siege
or had already bowed down to these super cartels.

“Since
recognizing this threat, our military has tried to fight these oppressors, but
they, too, have failed. Their officer corps has been infiltrated or paid off
and many brave Mexican soldiers have died fighting in a cause they cannot win.

“There’s
only one way to win this war, and that’s through us: the people of Mexico. We,
the people of Mexico, will no longer tolerate these pigs with their wealth and
their cavalier attitude toward law and order. We will no longer take their
abuses and crimes. We will fight fire with fire. For every drop of blood they
draw, we will draw ten more.

“We are
the people of Mexico. And we are calling ourselves the Vigilantes. We are the
true defenders of Mexico. And our first target is Hernan Flores. This man may
say he’s clean and may claim to be merely a harmless grandfather and
businessman, but we know differently. And you out there watching know
differently, at least in your gut.

“This man
has wrecked thousands of lives climbing to power, and now he’s killed dozens of
Mexican soldiers and attacked our very own Presidential Palace. All within just
the past few weeks. He has embarrassed our country and nearly brought it to its
knees. But no more.”