Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (21 page)

“I’ve
actually lost a wife in a similar situation, so yes, I can.”

Rivera
stopped, like he had been punched in the nose.

“I’m
sorry,” he said, surprised. Rivera didn’t like walking into a trap like this
and he reminded himself to chew his aide out later for not providing him with
better intel. A mistake like this killed the momentum of a debate, and this was
a discussion he needed to win.

While
Rivera paused to recover from his misstep, Nick thought of Anne, bloody, in a
nightgown in their backyard. He remembered the dew on the grass, the FBI agents
standing over her, and him running his fingers through the dirt, swearing he
would avenge her.

“As I was
saying,” Rivera said, trying to get back on course, “many of these officers will
have their families threatened, in addition to being offered untold amounts of
money. The temptation to inform the cartels is very great.”

Nick
couldn’t help but sympathize.

“I
understand, Mr. President. And I need to remind myself that your country has
been at war with the cartels for more than ten years.”

“It’s
been longer than that, though the casualties were lower and the news coverage
much less. Truth be told, we tried to keep it out of the news as much as we
could. Didn’t want to hurt tourism, which is crucial for our economy.”

Nick
nodded again and wished the man would make his point.

“Respectfully,
Mr. President, you didn’t ask me to come in to give me a history lesson. I’m
not much on sales pitches. Just ask your question.”

“Indeed,”
Rivera said. He took another puff on his cigar, exhaled a cloud of smoke, and
continued. “But I am in the presence of one of America’s greatest warriors? Am
I not correct?”

Nick said
nothing. He knew most of America’s greatest warriors were in graves -- marked
and unmarked -- across the globe, but you couldn’t waste your time trying to
educate everyone.

“A moment
like this,” Rivera said, “in the presence of a man of your reputation, needs to
be savored. Just like a great cigar,” he said, raising the cigar and smiling.

Nick
half-smiled. The man was certainly charming. No wonder he’d been elected
President.

“Nick,”
Rivera said. “May I call you ‘Nick’?”

Nick made
the smallest of nods.

Rivera
stopped smiling and turned serious. He smashed his cigar into a silver ashtray and
leaned forward.

“Nick, I
need to ask you to stop the Vigilante act. Take down the website, stop making
videos, and end the whole charade.”

Nick said
nothing.

“I know I
initially approved the creation of the Vigilante unit, but things have changed.
After the assault on the police station in Coyutla, we can do this no more. I
must ask that you stop operating in such a way.”

Nick
stopped him.

“You
don’t seriously think we did that?”

“Of
course not. But that attack hurt your effort. And I’ve since come to realize
two things. First, acting as a Vigilante unit encourages other residents to act
out as vigilantes, and at some point, this will lead to lawlessness and
innocent people being wrongly killed without a trial. Second, I’ve come to
realize that it’s important for the prestige of Mexico to have government
forces finally take down Flores and his cartel.”

Nick
sighed and Rivera stopped.

“Wish you
had come to this realization before my team packed up and came down here,” Nick
said.

“I
understand you’re upset, but I’m prepared to offer a compromise.”

“Not much
to compromise on, is there?”

Rivera
ignored the snide comment and said, “I’m not asking you to take your team out
of the country. I confess, as much as it hurts my pride, that we need your
help. I’m simply asking you to operate under the guise of being Mexican forces.
Wear our uniforms. Keep a low profile. No one will ever know the difference.”

“I
suppose,” Nick said, “that I should tell you I need some time to consider your
offer.”

“I
understand if that’s necessary,” Rivera said, holding his hands up in a
conciliatory gesture and smiling as if he had won.

“It’s
not,” Nick said.

“I’m
sorry?” the President asked. “It’s not what?”

“It’s not
necessary.”

“I’m
afraid I don’t understand,” Rivera said.

“I reject
your offer. Or your request. Or demand. Or whatever you want to call it. The
original deal was we stay off the radar, we keep our homebase and operations
off the government’s radar, and that we operate as the Vigilantes. That was the
deal, which you approved before we ever came or even assembled our task force,
and we reject any renegotiation of it.”

“But,
Nick, surely you understand. Things have changed.”

“Nothing
has changed,” Nick said, his voice loud. “Just your resolve and independence,
apparently.”

Rivera
slammed his hand on the desk, then winced, immediately regretting it. He
recovered quickly and stood. “I’m sorry you feel as you do. Please, take a
couple of days to reconsider. Your contact can call his liaison within my
government with your decision.”

With
that, Rivera turned away from Nick and looked out the window.

Nick
harrumphed.
Looks like diplomacy really isn’t
my strong suit
, he
thought.

Chapter
24

Nick
Woods left the Presidential Palace feeling defeated. The last thing he wanted
to do was pack up the men of Shield, Safeguard, and Shelter and leave Mexico,
but President Rivera was giving him no choice.

The
selfish side of Nick wanted to keep going; maybe even come under Rivera’s
command. Nick enjoyed being in command and carrying a gun again -- not just
carrying a gun concealed, stateside, but carrying a gun in a war zone. A place
you didn’t know. A place where danger resided around every corner and in every
shadow.

Nick
loved war. He loved the stress. The tension. The feeling of being alive. He
lived for it, and now he was going to have to leave it again. Possibly for
good, given his age. Once you turned forty-seven, your chances to serve started
dramatically decreasing.

While
Nick’s mind raced, his two Primary Strike vehicles executed a number of
complicated maneuvers as they exited the capital city. The Primary Strike Team
ditched their vehicles twice -- once in a packed mall parking lot, and another
time in a dark downtown garage. They also made two different reverse courses.
They traveled north for an hour before changing vehicles one final time and
then driving south.

Nick had
worried about the cost of buying so many vehicles, but Marcus had smiled and
said, “Don’t worry, they’re not affecting our budget. At
all
.”

Nick
immediately assumed they were stolen, but he asked no questions and didn’t want
to know any more.

As they
drove south, Nick tried not to dwell on the fact that all this was going away.
These superb warriors. This incredible opportunity to make a difference. To
defend the weak. To do what the men of S3 were all born to do.

He tried
to shake these thoughts and realized at this point, about the only thing he
wanted was a cold Mountain Dew, a Snickers, and a moment alone with Isabella.
He wondered what part of his frustration with leaving Mexico resulted from
knowing he’d have to leave her, and forget whatever chances they had to explore
whatever existed between them.

He wasn’t
sure how much of a role this played, but it certainly played more of a role
than he wanted to admit, remembering the kiss and her hand on his body. He
tried to pay attention to their route home as well as any possible threats, but
it proved nearly impossible. His mind was simply racing too much, trying to
find an angle to keep S3 engaged and prevent this all from being over.

Nick’s
various units returned to the farm over the next four hours. The squads and six
sniper teams came from different directions and spread out their arrival times.
Back at the base, Nick and Marcus had left just four men to keep the place
secure, so once everyone returned, the first order of business was combing the
site for intruders and listening devices. Once that was done, Nick called a
meeting of all his leaders.

The three
squad leaders arrived, along with Marcus and the leader of the six Scout Sniper
teams. Nick briefed them on his meeting with President Rivera. (Nick had
already met with Marcus and discussed their options privately.)

With the
full leadership team in place, Nick relayed Rivera’s two demands: drop the
Vigilante act and come in under the authority of the Mexican government.

“No way,”
said the second squad leader. “I’m not trying to undermine you, Nick, but
there’s no damn way I want to be a part of going under Mexican governmental
authority. And I’m confident I speak for my men. They don’t trust hardly anyone
down here, and one of them is Mexican himself, so that is saying a lot.”

“Same
with my men,” said the first squad leader.

“Jimmy?”
Nick asked, nodding to the third squad leader.

“The
same.”

Nick
glanced at Marcus.

“Good,”
he said. “Then we’re all on the same page. Marcus and I have decided we’re not
game for this change in plans. We feel it would be a death wish to come in
under Rivera’s control.”

“Damn
right,” his second squad leader said. “We know what happened to the SEALs, and
as they proved, it doesn’t matter how good you are. If the enemy gets intel on
you, you’re as good as dead.”

“Where
does that leave us?” the leader of the Scout Snipers asked.

“Probably
unemployed,” Marcus said.

“We
assumed everyone would favor safety over salary,” Nick said.

“Agreed,”
said Jimmy. “It’s one thing to risk your life on a mission for your country.
Quite another to take a stupid chance because of the idiocy of a politician.
Especially one that’s not even American.”

Nick saw
several heads nodding.

“Then
we’re in agreement. Go brief your men with the news and let’s meet up again in
an hour to decide how we’re going to pull out. And just a heads-up, we plan to
do so without alerting either Rivera, Flores, or Smith.”

The
entire group reconvened an hour later and spent more than three hours planning
their exfil. It wasn’t going to be simple.

Even
after racking their brains, the best they could come up with was something
extremely risky and arguably very dangerous. But it wasn’t a cakewalk these
days getting across the border. After years of griping from the American
people, Washington had listened. All the easy ways across were a thing of the
past.

Now, a
formidable obstacle awaited them. Walls. Cameras. Agents. All worked in concert
to stop most of those illegals attempting the famous crossing of the Rio Grande
into America. Tunnels were your best hope, but Nick’s team could hardly call up
the Godesto Cartel and ask them to allow a crossing.

Marcus
had joked, “Maybe if we promise to leave Flores alone, he’d grant us passage.”

“Fat
chance,” Nick said.

The
problem mainly lay in all the weapons. Each member of Nick’s team had legit
passports, but trying to cross the border with enough weapons for a small army
would certainly create some attention. And they couldn’t just use their company
credentials from the fake corporation Nick had helped create since that would
instantly alert Smith as well.

“So we’re
left with leaving our weaponry and gear?” the second squad leader asked.

“Not an
option,” Nick said. “If these weapons were ever used by the cartels, it would
make Operation Fast and Furious, the walking guns case, look like nothing.”

“I’m not
game,” Marcus said, “for a bunch of Congressional hearings and dealing with all
those assholes in Washington.”

The Scout
Sniper leader cleared his throat and asked, “Blow them up? Keep only our
pistols?”

“We’re
not putting this all on Nick,” Marcus said.

Nick knew
that tactically it made sense to destroy the weapons, but he feared the
repercussions. Smith and his folks would be pissed enough to learn they had
refused Rivera’s request and left the country without alerting anyone. But to
blow up several million dollars’ worth of weapons, too? That would be too much.

“Look,”
Marcus said. “This is going to be complicated, getting our extraction planned
out. Why don’t you ask Rivera for a couple more days to consider how we could
work well with his government? Meanwhile, we figure out how we’re going to do
this, and by the time Rivera is ready for your answer, we’ll already be gone.”

Nick
liked that idea and nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.” And with that, he left
the room to make the call.

Chapter
25

Hernan
Flores and the Butcher were in the middle of a yet another ugly meeting.
Shockingly, they were in the same room, something that didn’t happen much these
days.

Partly,
it was due to risk. Flores now had a ten million dollar reward on his head and
there were plenty of impoverished Mexicans who’d like to have that kind of
money dropped on them.

But the
bigger reason for not meeting more often was crystal clear in the dingy
warehouse office in which they met. Flores had increased his entourage to eight
guards in the room with him instead of four, and he had more than thirty
heavily armed men in the warehouse outside the room. The Butcher had upped his
armament as well. He had his ever-present duffel bag on the floor next to him
and a grenade, unbeknownst to Flores, in his right-hand coat pocket.

Neither
man trusted the other, and the Butcher didn’t plan on hesitating. If Flores
tried anything, he’d pull the pin on the grenade in his pocket and rush him,
tackling and holding him close as the grenade blew them both to shark meat.

“What are
you smiling at?” Flores asked.

“Just
thinking about something.”

“If you
don’t mind, I’d prefer you pay attention,” Flores said, standing up from behind
his desk -- a desk that had to be the cheapest one he had ever sat behind. “We
need to plan our reaction to President Rivera’s move to try to incarcerate me.”

“We need
to kill him,” the Butcher said. “Ambush his convoy. Attack the Presidential
Palace. Whatever.”

“In case
you’ve forgotten,” Flores said, “attacking the Presidential Palace is precisely
what got us in this situation.”

“No,
failing to kill him is what got us in this situation. We need to take out both
him and Juan Soto. It’s really a simple equation. They’re the backbone of those
who oppose us.”

“We’ve
discussed this before,” Flores said. “We don’t want to completely remove the
Mexican government. We just want to get the man we want in power as President.”

“While
we’ve discussed this,” the Butcher said, “we clearly are not in agreement about
the strategy, nor have we ever been. The way I see it, we take the government
out, and you don’t have a ten million dollar reward on your head. You’ll be
able to come out of hiding again. And ride around in Mexico City and attend
your dinners and balls and galas. Life returns to normal.”

“Nonsense,”
Flores said. “The Mexican people are too proud to accept such a reality. They’d
rather have a weak, corrupt government than a government that’s been overthrown
by drug runners. Even those who support the cartels want to at least have the
appearance of having a country with its own independent government.”

“Believe
what you want,” the Butcher said. “I stand by what I said.”

Flores
sighed. He knew his number two man was talking behind his back and undermining
him in increasingly regular intervals. Flores had hoped to win him over behind
the deception of meeting about tactics, but the Butcher wasn’t going to budge.

The
Butcher wanted the government overthrown. Flores wanted the government left in
place, but with his man in charge.

This much
was clear: neither were budging. And with that clarity, Flores decided he would
take out the Butcher once and for all.

Unfortunately
for him, the Butcher was having the exact same thoughts.

Exactly
six hours later, before Hernan Flores could move to yet another hidden
location, cops and SWAT members descended on the warehouse where the meeting
with the Butcher had gone down. President Roberto Rivera dispatched more than
three hundred officers to conduct the raid once a tip on Flores’s location came
in to the government hotline. The fear of Flores and the Godesto proved
remarkable, as this had been the only tip since the press conferences.

Armored
trucks and vans loaded with follow-up troops swarmed the building from four
different directions. Once they broke cover and advanced the final few hundred
yards, five helicopters toting snipers in their doors roared in from two
directions and surrounded the building from above.

No one
would be escaping.

Flores’s
guards fought at first, but the well-trained, fully-decked out assault troops
cut them down with little fanfare. The snipers from above picked off others.
And within thirty seconds, the shock of such a force of three hundred men
hitting the building convinced those inside to surrender.

Flores
watched his men as they looked about and decided to give up. He didn’t blame
them. His men didn’t have armor and helmets and weapons with Aimpoint sights.
And certainly very few of his men had fired thousands of rounds in practice.
Additionally, they hadn’t rehearsed and trained as a team, so those who tried
to defend the warehouse died quickly.

And there
was nothing like seeing the man in front of you take a bullet through the face
to take the fight out of you. Flores’s men folded like a bunch of
kindergartners forced to miss lunch, and he knew he was screwed. He’d have to
surrender since this warehouse lacked a tunnel system or any other viable
escape option.

But as he
walked toward the officers with his hands held high, he surrendered knowing
there was no judge and no jail who could hold him. He’d re-emerge soon, and
he’d be stronger than ever. Of that he had no doubt.

Less than
half an hour later, President Roberto Rivera confirmed his men had the great Hernan
Flores in hand and called an emergency press conference once again. He gave the
details of the raid and then provided a short speech he’d been working on in
his head for literally years.

On the
way back to his office, he paused behind a bullet-proof window and looked over
the skyline of Mexico City. This. This was the pinnacle of his presidency.
Mexico’s greatest days now lay before it. Only weaker cartels remained, and
Rivera decided he’d offer more rewards to take down their leaders, as well.

Rivera
smiled. This had all gone down on his watch. The history books would sing his
praises for literally centuries to come.

He could
imagine the entry about his presidency:

President
Roberto Rivera entered office in the middle of Mexico’s darkest days.

Yeah,
this wasn’t bad. Not bad at all, he thought. Maybe all the emotional stress and
fear would prove worth it. Maybe his nearly failed presidency was worth it
after all. And with that, he turned and walked back to his office to celebrate
with Juan Soto.