Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (35 page)

The
Butcher had replaced that respect and likeability with ferocious strength and
unpredictability. He led based on fear, though his lead-from-the-front example
was garnering him some unexpected praise.

Nick just
hoped the former prison boy was at home when they arrived. Come on, big boy. Be
home and let’s make this our one and only trip into Neza-Chalco-Itza, he
thought.

“Take a
right up here,” Nick said, looking up from the map.

Truck
turned the steering wheel and the convoy pivoted deeper into the dark slum.

“I
haven’t seen any welcoming committee,” Truck said.

“Yeah,
I’m a little surprised by that,” Nick said. “We’re about a mile out. Maybe half
a mile.”

“I spoke
too soon,” Truck said. “Looky here.”

His
headlights showed a group of men just a block ahead. Maybe about a dozen of
them. Truck flipped his lights on bright and slowed to a stop.

The men
stood facing the truck, long weapons held across their body and up on their
shoulders.

“We’ve
got tangos up ahead,” Nick said into his radio.

Trucks 2
and 3 pulled up on the left and right of Truck 1, but the men ahead of them
didn’t flinch at so many weapons aimed at them. They stared at the flashing
police lights with disdain and hatred.

“Looks
like they don’t respect the po-lice ’round here,” Truck said in his country
drawl.

Nick and
Truck heard the Primary Strike Team behind them moving forward in the truck bed
and better aligning themselves toward the threat. The truck bed had a rubber
mat in it to dampen noise, but they were close enough to hear their boots
moving on it.

“Hold the
truck here,” Nick said, putting his hand on Truck’s forearm.

Nick
opened the door, stepped onto the cracked pavement, and aimed his M4 at the
group. With the headlights on bright, he could see the group pretty clearly
through the red-dot scope.

He kept
his eyes toward the men and felt only a minor level of comfort knowing all his
men were aimed in on the group. Nick knew that it wasn’t these men in their
lights that he needed to worry about. They were acting far too confident to be
alone. Far too confident.

“Isabella,”
he said quietly. “Jump down here.”

He heard
her land, but didn’t turn his head. This was like cornering a rattler. You
didn’t take your eyes off him, so Nick kept his eyes looking through the M4’s
Aimpoint scope.

“What do
you want me to do?” she whispered, now standing just behind him.

“Reach in
the truck, grab the mic, and tell these men to disperse,” Nick said.

Isabella
leaned into the truck to use the built-in speakers.

“On
behalf of the government of Mexico,” she said in Spanish, “you are ordered to
disperse.”

None of
the men moved their weapons, but they spread out a bit.

“Warn
them again,” Nick said.

Isabella
did, repeating the same words.

Nick
leaned into his rifle and said without turning, “Bulldog, scatter those men.”

Nick knew
the big Navy SEAL from Baltimore was aimed in on the men with the M249 SAW. He
hoped the Squad Automatic Weapon firing a burst over their heads would quickly
show these punks that these weren’t typical Mexican police who were easily
deterred by some thugs or cartel members.

The SAW
ripped off a burst and the men jerked and danced and splattered under the
deafening roar of the machine gun. Nick was shocked to see the bullets tear
through the men, but those who weren’t hit took only a second to react. Some
tried to flee, and others brought their weapons to bear.

Nick
already had one lined up in his Aimpoint red-dot site, so as the man started to
bring his AK up, Nick pulled the trigger. Since the men were in the headlights
of three trucks, and since the Aimpoint sight did a wonderful job of picking up
ambient light, the man’s face looked fairly clear in the scope.

The
bullet hit about an inch from where Nick wanted at the roughly fifty-yard
distance and the man fell hard to the ground. That was the thing with
headshots. You put a 5.56 round through someone’s face and into their
brainbucket and they dropped and never stood again.

The
entire team of S3 opened up, as well, firing over the tops of the truck cabs
and using the padded railings to assist their accuracy. The roughly dozen men
before them were cut down and chopped up before they even returned a single
round. A couple crawled and dragged themselves across the pavement until single
shots ended any movement.

Nick
wasn’t sure who shot the survivors and while he wasn’t a huge fan of shooting
wounded when it could be avoided, he also knew they could roll out a grenade or
get a weapon around and shoot you minutes later in the back.

“Clear,”
yelled Red.

Others
responded by stating “clear,” as well.

“Hey,
Bulldog,” Nick said, his ears ringing.

“Yes,
sir?” Bulldog answered, his head still lowered over the SAW.

“I only
meant for you to scatter them by firing a burst over their head.”

That
elicited some laughs, but then a burst of machine gun fire ripped down the
street toward them. The bullets clanged into metal and glass and immediately
the men of S3 responded at the light of a muzzle flash further down the street,
well into the darkness beyond the range of the headlights.

More
bullets whizzed by, this from another side of the street ahead. Again, fire was
returned.

“Contact
rear,” Nick heard over the radio.

And then
a staccato of M4s started firing from Truck 12, the vehicle with the Scout
Snipers.

“Contact
left,” Nick heard someone else say on the radio.

More
firing erupted from the middle of the convoy toward an alley to their left.
Nick realized they were not in a good defensive position strewn out in a long
column, not to mention their mission was to grab the Butcher, not duke it out
with the entire Godesto Cartel.

“Let’s
get the convoy moving,” he yelled into the mic. Isabella jumped back into the
truck and Nick retook his seat. He rolled down the window and leaned out with
his M4. He spotted a muzzle flash at his one o’clock and fired three rounds
toward it on single shot.

“Let’s
go, Truck,” Nick said, anger welling up in his voice. For all he knew, hundreds
of fighters were running toward them right now. Staying put meant certain
death.

Truck
stepped on the gas and knocked Nick back against the seat. The convoy roared
forward while the Primary Strike Team engaged targets in windows, around
corners, and on roofs. They hung to the bars built up around the truck bed and
fired as best they could from the moving truck.

Truck
yanked the vehicle left and right as bullets pinged off and through the glass.
It appeared the Mexican Police Department hadn’t sprung for bullet-proof glass,
something Nick wish he had known a bit earlier in the mission.

“How many
you figure there are?” Truck asked, his voice strained.

“Maybe
fifty already,” Nick said, holding on to the door, and firing three-round
bursts toward various shadows up ahead.

Unfortunately,
Nick knew it was only going to get worse as more gunmen rushed to the sound of
battle. It was feeling more and more like what the Army Rangers and Special
Forces had endured as more than a thousand Somali fighters came at them in the
infamous Blackhawk Down battle in Mogadishu.

In his
dream, the Butcher pounded Rodriguez’s face against the concrete. The big,
prior convict had been one of the men who had taunted and raped the Butcher,
and the Butcher had eagerly awaited catching up with Rodriguez for more than
five years.

After the
Butcher had been released from prison, he had jumped back into the drug biz.
There weren’t many other options for a felon, especially one living in Mexico,
and he already had the contacts and relationships in place. In no time at all,
he had plenty of cash laying around and he immediately got two prison guards on
his payroll and on his side. And while the Butcher worked tirelessly to master
martial arts with his new found freedom, those guards helped him keep tabs on
the release dates of his tormentors.

By the
time Rodriguez was paroled, the Butcher had already killed four prior inmates.
He had killed them with a super-sharp katana, mostly because he didn’t trust
his newly acquired martial arts skills well enough to take them on in purely
hand-to-hand.

But
Rodriguez got the first introduction to the new and improved cellmate and his
now already stupendous martial arts skills.

The
Butcher’s dream had been a replay of that re-introduction. The man had headed
straight for a Burger King after his release, just as expected. It had been all
he had talked about while he was in the pen. A Whopper. Large order of fries.
And a large chocolate milkshake. Over and over he had repeated this mantra,
until the Butcher had gotten to where he couldn’t stand it.

The
Butcher had considered letting him stuff himself at Burger King and attacking
him afterward, but ruled that out in favor of killing him just feet from his goal.
That would be far crueler, and crueler was something the Butcher became more of
every day.

And when
Rodriguez had gotten out of the taxi and walked toward the doors of the Burger
King, he had been smiling like a six-year-old boy on Christmas day. Then the
Butcher had stepped out from behind a van where he had been hiding.

The
Butcher relived those next moments in his dream, grunting and jerking with each
movement.

Rodriguez
jolted in surprise.

“Woah,
amigo. What are the chances of seeing you here? What a surprise!”

Rodriguez
was smiling like they were best friends. As if the taunting, the raping, the
endless threats over a four-year period had never occurred.

“It’s not
a surprise at all,” the Butcher said.

“What?”
the fat, bald man asked. And then he realized the skinny, little man in front
of him wasn’t smiling. And with that realization, an entirely new meaning to
the man’s words crept into his mind. And the way the Butcher was standing, feet
wide apart, hands out to his side but clenched in tight fists. It looked like
some kind of stance he had seen in half a dozen low-budget karate movies.

Before
Rodriguez could react to the growing fear in the pit of his stomach, the
Butcher rushed and leapt forward, throwing a double kick. It was like one of those
kicks you see in the Shaolin Kung Fu movies. The one in which they jump, lift
one leg, and then retract it and kick with the other leg. Tough to block, and
powerful as hell.

That day,
and again that night in his dream, the Butcher jumped in the air and kicked his
left leg forward first. Rodriguez partially blocked it, as expected, but the
Butcher retracted the left kicking leg and thrust the right one forward into a
massively powerful thrust kick that caught Rodriguez right in the lower
stomach. The Butcher landed it with his heel, as he hoped, and it knocked
Rodriguez four feet back. He stumbled on a curb stop and fell on his back. He
had clearly felt intense pain, but couldn’t possibly have known how much
internal damage he had suffered in the small intestines.

But the
Butcher offered no quarter. He bound forward between Rodriguez’s legs, who lay
sprawled on his back.

The
Butcher lifted his right leg up past his own head and slammed it down in a
straight-legged ax kick right into Rodriguez's open groin. The man instantly
balled up into the fetal position and that’s when the Butcher slid around him
and kicked him in the face with the toe of his shoe.

The
Butcher followed that football-like kick with a heel stomp into the side of the
man’s head. And with Rodriguez half out of it from the blow to the side of the
head, the Butcher started kicking the man over and over in the side of his
head, aiming for the vulnerable ear area. He mercilessly drove his legs down
into his former cellmate. Each of the kicks, with the pavement providing a hard
backstop behind the target, would be practically fatal if they landed dead-on.

But
Rodriguez to his credit knew that giving up wasn’t an option. This wasn’t some
schoolyard fight where you eventually gave up. Someone would either die or end
up permanently injured. This was prison fighting, only outside prison walls, so
he moved his head back and forth desperate to dodge his attacker’s repetitive
strikes.

And thus
the heel stomps aimed by the Butcher missed the ear and drove into Rodriguez’s
jaw, neck, spine, and the top of his head. And since his head had nowhere to
go, the result was repeated slams into the concrete. Rodriguez was half out of
it by this point, but he could vaguely make out people yelling at the shocking barbarity.
But the Butcher ignored them. He had waited and dreamed of this for too long.
He had suffered far too much. So, he yanked Rodriguez from his side and rolled
him onto his stomach. Then the Butcher jumped on the back of the barely
conscious Rodriguez, pinning the man’s arms down with his knees.