Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (15 page)

Nick
liked the quiet Puerto Rican and had served with many men like him. Men like
Lizard didn’t break. They may seem too humble, they may look shaky, but they'd
move heaven and earth once the chips came down. And Nick preferred men who
hated danger over men who loved it. Only crazy men would enjoy regular gun
work.

And,
well, Nick was crazy. And so was the rest of his Primary Strike Team.

There was
Truck. Truck was the nickname of a former Army Special Forces operative who had
probably seen too much action. Unlike much of the team, he wasn’t a gym rat.
And he wasn’t the typical, optimistic soldier either. Frankly, he was a
constantly complaining cynic, but Nick appreciated him.

Truck had
been kicked out of the Special Forces after he had beaten the shit out of an
officer. He had avoided brig time by lying and citing PTSD as the cause of his
outburst. His citations for courage, which his defense attorney had read aloud
to the jury at his trial, had probably helped.

But,
Truck couldn’t avoid a discharge after hurting an officer so badly, and he’d
left the base in disgrace and applied for a military contractor job the same
day. Men like Truck lived to carry a rifle, so he had done several more tours
as a contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Eventually,
he had lost that job, too, after abandoning his truck to go running up a
hillside in pursuit of insurgents who had ambushed his convoy in Afghanistan.
It didn’t help his case that his leadership had found him with three bodies
near him, one of whom had taken a final, execution-style shot right in the
forehead. Bottom line: He had abandoned his vehicle and recklessly charged a
hill. Then, he’d executed a man and practically admitted that this was what had
happened.

The
contractor company was forced to fire him. He couldn’t get hired on with other
military contractors after that; the liability was too high. Police departments
wouldn’t hire him either due to his record and PTSD systems. So without further
employment opportunities available, he became a truck driver back in America.

Nick had
some concerns about Truck until he interviewed him following Marcus’s
recommendation. Marcus had a good feeling about the guy after having spent
several days with him prior to Nick’s arrival.

Nick
asked dozens of brutal questions and fell practically in love with Truck.
Turned out that the officer was a prick -- Nick had his CIA contact do research
on the man -- and that Truck had the perfect defense for his contractor work.

“Why’d
you leave the vehicle and charge the hill?” Nick asked him.

“Ah,
hell, I didn’t give a shit about the truck. And I’d lost a lot of buddies over
there. Those Taliban shitheads started firing at us and training took over. To
hell with ignoring them and dealing with the same thing again the next day,
like we’d been doing for weeks. I just decided I’d rather off them.”

Nick
imagined the battle, looked over the photos provided by the company’s
investigators, and concluded that he’d have done the same. And just like that,
a “disgraced” former Special Forces operative was picked up and given a second
chance with S3.

Besides
Marcus, Isabella, Lizard, and Truck, the eight-man Primary Strike Team also had
Bulldog, Preacher, and Red in it ranks.

Bulldog
was appropriately named. A former Navy SEAL from the brutal streets of
Baltimore, he was a giant black guy -- 6’4,” 250. The biggest man, by far, on
S3, and there were some huge guys that Nick and Marcus had hired. Bulldog
wasn’t just big, he was also a workout freak. He always lifted and his only
apparent weakness was an inability to grow hair. So, he stayed bald and was
such an intimidating beast that no one asked him a single question about it.

Preacher
was the most religious man on Nick’s team. His parents had been missionaries
and the 5’10” man had felt “called” to join the Marines. Nick didn’t know about
being “called,” but Preacher had done four hard tours, two of them with MARSOC.
And Nick knew from experience that men who joined and stayed because they felt
called didn’t know how to quit or run.

Finally,
there was Red. Red was a short little shit. He was 5’5” on a good day,
red-headed, and covered in thousands of small freckles. About the ugliest man
Nick had ever seen, but he was so confident that he had a way with the women.
He was divorced, said “let’s do it” a lot, and absolutely loved to fight. In
fact, absolutely loved to fight. Red had boxed a lot and Nick was always trying
to keep him from jumping Bulldog or any other giant that should be able to rip
him in half. But, Nick had seen him in action and wasn’t so sure.

Red was
crazy, and Red had small man’s syndrome. He’d come from his fourth Marine
infantry unit -- he transferred as much as he could to outgoing units headed
off to war -- and had done seven tours in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

And that
was the Primary Strike Team. Eight badasses. All killers. And they operated in
two four-man teams. Nick led one of the teams, with him, Isabella, Truck, and
Bulldog on it.

And
Marcus’s team had Lizard, Red, and Preacher. Nick had placed Lizard with Marcus
by default, since Lizard spoke Spanish and Nick already had Isabella on his
team for translation duties.

And since
Red was a nut-case looking to fight -- except with Nick or Marcus due to his respect
for rank -- Nick placed Preacher with him. That helped balance out Red’s
aggressiveness, and provided Marcus with a well-rounded fire team.

And by
default, with Marcus’s team set, that left Nick with Isabella and Truck, the
former Special Forces man, and Bulldog, the big Navy SEAL from Baltimore, to
round it out.

Nick’s
team loaded up first into the van, and then Marcus’s team followed. Nick and
Marcus had argued for hours in private about which team would breach the
cathedral. Nick had insisted upon leading from the front and Marcus had tried
every angle in the world to convince him otherwise.

He had
reminded his boss that nearly fifty men served under him and therefore Nick
shouldn’t be operating as practically a point man. He had also subtly suggested
that as the oldest man in the unit, Nick might not be the best person to
perform the most arduous tasks.

Nick had
not so subtly suggested that he’d put his most recent kill count from the past
few years up against anyone else’s, and that didn’t account for the dozens and
dozens of Soviet troops he had bagged in Afghanistan back in his earlier years,
when he and his spotter were sold out and surrounded by more than one thousand
troops.

Since
neither the argument of leadership nor age had swayed Nick, Marcus finally
suggested that since Nick had Isabella on his fire team, and since she had the
least experience in room clearing, then Nick’s team should follow and not lead
the assault.

The
experience argument won out, and Nick conceded that Marcus’s team would breach
the building and take the lead. Marcus also pointed out that since Nick would
have to oversee the entire attack tonight by S3 and keep track of countless
pieces of information, that would allow Marcus to work with his fire team more
on breaches and room takedowns. And thus tonight, Marcus’s team loaded last
into the van and more than likely -- if Marcus had his way -- would lead all
assaults on future missions.

The van
doors slammed and the vehicle’s driver -- one of the regular squad members from
the squad not taking part in tonight’s op -- roared out of the alley,
headlights still off. The cathedral’s entrance was only two blocks away, but
the van hit nearly fifty miles per hour on the dimly lit road, before it
screeched to a halt near the front steps. The van doors opened and Marcus’s
four-man fire team rushed for the entrance, with Nick’s team following not far
behind.

The van
driver lifted his radio and said, “Primary Strike Team at the door. Snipers, be
alert.”

The task
of the snipers was now to keep enemy combatants in and reinforcements out.

At the
door, Preacher checked the handle to confirm it was locked. He placed a
demolition charge on the doorframe and backed up four feet with his team. All
eight shooters of the Primary Strike Team were stacked on the wall into two
sticks. Preacher clicked the detonator and the charge exploded, setting off
dogs barking for a two-mile area.

Red, the
number two man in the stack, threw a flashbang over Preacher’s shoulder right
after the door blew off its frame, and the entire Primary Strike Team shut their
eyes and turned their heads. Each wore lightweight ear plugs to help with their
hearing protection and equilibrium in the heavy expected action.

The
flashbang boomed and lit up the entire church and even part of the block.
Marcus’s team followed the incredible concussion and blinding flash, entering
the building with controlled speed.

Preacher,
the lead man, turned the corner first and saw two men headed toward them,
trying to react to the assault. They were partially blinded and their
equilibrium shot from the flashbang, and Preacher stitched them both with his
MP-5, firing two to the chest and one to the head of both men.

Red, just
behind Preacher’s shoulder, caught movement from a more alert tango who had
been far enough away that he hadn’t been affected by the flashbang. The man let
loose with an AK in their direction before Red dropped him with four shots from
his own AK-74. Of course, Red didn’t make the mistake of firing while running
forward, and he had the advantage of an Aimpoint red-dot sight -- not to
mention seven combat tours and some of the best Marine infantry training that a
man could get. Red’s four rounds punched four holes in the man and threw him
back into the wall.

Marcus’s
team finished securing the sanctuary, and Nick’s team moved to the lead. They
broke into pairs -- Nick with Isabella and Truck with Bulldog -- and started
busting into rooms down a hallway past the sanctuary.

Each room
proved empty save one. Truck and Bulldog heard movement inside a room they were
about to clear, and they hit it with a flashbang and followed the explosion
alert and fast.

Inside
the room, two cartel men were holding their ears and reaching for weapons
they’d dropped when the flashbang hit. Truck could have taken his man alive,
but Truck didn’t take prisoners unless explicitly ordered, so he fired two
rounds of buckshot from his twelve gauge into the man’s chest. Truck was all
trigger.

Bulldog,
at 6’4”, 250, loved nothing more than getting his hands on someone and using
his strength that he spent hours each day improving in the gym. He dropped his
weapon to the slung position across his chest and rushed the man, grabbing him
and flinging him across the room into a wall.

The man’s
head bounced off the concrete wall and before the man could react, Bulldog
kicked him in the back of the knee with one of his massive legs. The man
dropped to the ground, and Bulldog shoved his head into the wall again. This
time, the collision between concrete and bone yielded an instantly knocked-out
opponent and a face reformed with a broken nose and shattered facial bones.
Bulldog flexcuffed his hands and feet, and Truck threw the men’s AK’s out of
the room into the hall of the cathedral.

No other
men were on the top level, but downstairs seven men surrendered without firing
a shot. The men had heard enough firing up above, and were smart enough to know
that their lack of training stood no chance against flashbangs and practiced
assault teams. With the men in the downstairs basement were hundreds of crates
full of cocaine.

The
priest was nowhere to be found, but after the building was secure, one of the
two sniper teams reported having shot a man wearing a hoodie who had tried to
flee. It turned out to be the priest, but neither Nick nor the shooter felt an
ounce of remorse. The man was at a minimum guilty by association and a
hypocrite to boot.

More men
from S3 arrived behind them and they shot loads of video of the cathedral, its
drugs, and its armed cartel men lying dead throughout the place. Nick, Marcus,
and the rest of the Primary Strike Team waited outside while the video and
photos were taken.

“Can you
believe with all that shooting -- even all those explosions -- that the police
haven’t even responded?” Preacher asked, disgusted.

“The
cartel would have agreements in place,” Isabella said, “for the police not to
respond or investigate anything that happens at this cathedral. It’s a way of
life down here, and the people in the neighborhood are aware of it.”

“They
probably didn’t even bother calling it in,” Nick said.

“It’s
just sad,” Preacher said. “These people have no hope.”

Red spit,
his anger obvious. “They had their chances, and they have them every day. I’m
not throwing them a damn pity party. They can pick up a gun and do something
about these bastards.”

Preacher
looked at the short, hot-headed infantryman and swallowed down any response.
Before Preacher had joined MARSOC, he had been as agitated and angry as Red.
Plus, Preacher had the benefit of religion. He doubted Red had ever stepped
foot in a church.

Marcus
stepped up by Nick and said, “You sure you want to burn it down?”