Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (36 page)

Then he
grabbed Rodriguez’s head and started bashing it into the concrete, over and
over, with more and more force.

The nose
and teeth shattered quickly, but that wasn’t enough for the Butcher. Bystanders
grabbed his arms, trying to pull the small man off, but the Butcher only
slammed Rodriguez’s head harder and harder, trying to crack the man’s skull on
the concrete. The sound of his skull slamming into a rapidly expanding pool of blood
was one the Butcher would never forget. He was hearing that sound again now in
his dream, thrashing and reliving the day that he had cracked open the bully’s
head, when he realized the pounding wasn’t the sound of Rodriguez’s skull on
the concrete. It was an incessant pounding on his door, which he’d locked.

He shook
himself awake and wiped his arm across his sweaty forehead.

“What is
it?” he yelled, pissed.

He had
told them to leave him alone.

“Sir,
they’re coming,” one of his guards said breathlessly through the door. “They’re
coming.”

The
Butcher reached for his Uzi, katana, and black duffel bag as his feet hit the
floor. Then he realized he needed to grab his pants and a shirt.

“How
many, and where are they?” he asked, reaching for his clothes.

The
twelve-truck convoy barreled toward their target, braking hard and squealing
around corners before revving up and roaring forward as fast as the
eight-cylinder trucks would take them. Bullets zipped and snapped around them,
with occasional pings as bullets smacked home against the trucks.

“I can’t
believe how ballsy these idiots are,” Truck said, as he focused hard on the
task of driving and leading the entire convoy. He yanked the truck around two
burned barrels of trash that someone had hurled in the road to block them. The
front bumper caught the corner of one of the half-burned, half-rusted hulks and
knocked it across the street.

“Well, I
guess,” Nick said, flinching as two bullets smacked into the truck, “that we
now know why the police won’t come up in here anymore.”

In the
bed of the truck behind them, the members of the Primary Strike Team lit up
shadows that moved and fools who silhouetted themselves. Their M4s, and
Bulldog’s light machine gun over the cab of Truck 1, blasted away, jarring the
night and cutting into buildings and bodies.

“Stop the
convoy,” someone said on the radio.

Truck hit
the brakes and Nick said into the radio, “We’re not stopping. What’s the
situation? Give me a sitrep. Immediately.”

“Truck 7
stopped,” someone said. “I think they had a tire shot out.”

Bullets
flew by the cab and Nick flinched, despite his best efforts not to. Someone
from the Primary Strike Team fired over the cab and Nick heard Red say, “Nice
shot.”

A garbled
transmission came back. Nick hit the mic button and said, “Second Squad and
Third Squad, ditch the truck with the flat. Put its occupants in another truck
and make sure you grab any ammo or valuables from the back of it. We have to
keep the convoy moving.”

The
moment Nick let go of the transmit button, a nervous voice came over the air.
“Man down in Truck 8. I say again, man down in Truck 8.”

The
incoming fire was picking up as fighters from throughout the slum of
Neza-Chalco-Itza closed in on the men of S3. Nick looked back down the road
behind him. The convoy was strung out more than three hundred yards, with ten-
or fifteen-yard gaps between trucks. Nick wrestled with whether they should
push ahead and leave the supplies in the truck. Every second they sat, he knew
other fighters would be zeroing in on their location and rushing toward them.
Not to mention it was giving the Butcher more time to get away, which was the
true reason for this insane thrust into this hornet’s nest.

“Man
down,” another voice said on the radio.

“Damn
it,” Nick yelled, slamming the dash with his fist.

“Dismount,”
Nick said into the radio. “Take cover no more than fifteen feet from your
primary vehicle. Engage targets and be ready to move.”

Nick felt
the truck shaking as the Primary Strike Team members jumped from his truck and
more rounds zipped by. He kicked his own door open and stepped out, aiming his
M4 toward an alley up ahead where he had seen movement.

This was
not
how he had drawn up the mission.

The
Butcher and nearly two hundred of his men rushed toward the sound of automatic
weapons. It sounded like a war zone up ahead. Automatic weapons roaring. Rifles
booming. And pistols and Uzi’s popping like small firecrackers.

His men
had put away their sidearms and toted long weapons as they rushed forward. They
carried everything from AK’s to H&K G3’s to full-length shotguns.

They
looked like a band of guards you’d expect to see around some terrorist leader
in the mountains of Afghanistan. An oval-shaped mass of men, alert, angry, and
aggressive.

One of
the Butcher’s men came running toward them from the firing up ahead. The
Butcher, and the nearly two hundred men around him, slowed and spread out,
weapons outboard and aimed toward possible threats.

“What is
it?” the Butcher asked the breathless scout.

“Maybe
ten trucks or so. Who knows. Maybe fifty or a hundred troops total?”

“Why
didn’t you get a better count?” the Butcher asked.

“They are
shooting anyone who shows their face. Not just those with weapons,” the man
said.

The
Butcher had often wondered why the Mexican Army followed such strict rules of
engagement. The cartels and gangs regularly used unarmed women and children to
act as spotters. Looked like the army had finally learned its lesson.

“Are they
army troops? Or Mexican Marines?” he asked.

“No, sir.
They appear to be Mexican SWAT.”

This made
no sense to the Butcher. First, he had a great inside source with the Mexican
police force and there was no way they’d have launched a raid without this man
warning the Godesto Cartel. Second, it was nothing short of pure lunacy to
launch a raid into the middle of Neza-Chalco-Itza with so few men. Only a
hundred? Against a thousand? Who knew the area and had pre-planned defense
locations?

The
Butcher looked at one of his lieutenants who stood nearby.

“And you
talked with the other lookouts in the other sectors? No other units are coming
from either the north or west or south?”

“Yes,
sir. I just called them all again before we woke you up. All sectors are
quiet.”

“Call
each of them again,” the Butcher said, dismissing the man with a wave.

The
Godesto Cartel kept advance guards posted for miles around, not to mention all
the typical dealers and informants who called in suspicious behaviors for cash
payouts.

It just
didn’t add up to the Butcher, though.

Ten
trucks or so? Fifty or a hundred troops? And Mexican SWAT at that?

Why would
so few troops so bravely raid Neza-Chalco-Itza? There were so many cartel
members and addicts and gang members in the slum that they had literally
stopped an army battalion of more than a thousand soldiers several years ago.

There
were probably eighteen hundred gunmen the Butcher could call up with enough
warning, though this group had managed to make the raid without advance notice
from their informant network. But the Butcher worried that there had to be
something else going on.

No way
would so few SWAT members enter alone. Perhaps there were dozens of helicopters
on their way in with more troops. Or maybe an army battalion stationed just
outside the slum. Maybe two or three of them, actually. That’s what the Butcher
would do if he were in charge of Mexican forces: Send in at least three
battalions of army troops.

President
Roberto Rivera was certainly in desperate straits. Would he have called up an
all-out assault of Neza-Chalco-Itza? That made more sense than just sending in
fifty or a hundred cops in unarmored trucks. Losing so many cops -- or perhaps
the entire SWAT unit-- would only inflame the President’s critics and
opponents.

And then
the Butcher had another thought. What if Rivera wanted all these cops killed?

It might
very well create sympathy for the federal government and the embattled
President. The media might cite it as another example of out-of-control
ruthlessness by the drug cartels. More unnecessary deaths of the brave and
honorable police who were merely trying to do their jobs, they would say.

This idea
sealed the Butcher’s decision. Either more troops were on their way, or it was
a huge public relations move by President Rivera. Either way, staying and
fighting was a bad idea.

“Pull
everyone back,” he said to his lieutenant.

“Why? We
can take these guys. Let’s kill them all.”

His
lieutenant, one of his loyal aides who had been recently promoted up -- and not
one of Hernan Flores’s that had remained -- still thought the way the Butcher
used to think. You hit the enemy every time you had the advantage.

But,
things were more complex once you were in charge of an entire cartel
organization, and not just the striking arm of it. And with the firefight
roaring in the distance, the Butcher didn’t have time to explain that more
troops could be on the way or the political implications.

They were
too close to toppling President Rivera to mess it up now by either a costly
battle against thousands of hardened army troops or a terrible media disaster
that could be spun out for days of public sympathy.

“No,” the
Butcher said. “Pull everyone back. Keep some scouts on the convoy and see where
they go, but tell our men to pull back and leave them alone.”

“Yes,
sir,” the man said, lifting his radio to pass along the new orders.

The
stalled convoy attracted additional fighters and emboldened their enemy. Nick
realized this and cursed his inability to right the situation. He was their
commander. How had he lost control so quickly? His blood pressure continued to
rise as the element of surprise drifted away...

Suddenly,
an M60 blasted to their front -- a fighter dispersing dozens of rounds down the
street from the direction the convoy intended to go. The 7.62 bullets tore down
the street, and Nick and the rest of the Primary Strike Team dove for cover.
The Vietnam-era medium machine shredded their truck. Several of the members
tried to rise up and engage its brave (or suicidal) user, but the bullets were
flying everywhere with complete unpredictability. And they came in waves, not
like just some three- or four-second burp from an AK.

The
gunner was probably firing it from the hip. Nick remembered being pinned down
in Afghanistan and tried to will himself to lift his head and find the shooter.
At least here he had a helmet, unlike in Afghanistan where he had just worn a
boonie cover.

He pushed
his M4 up above the car he lay behind on the side of the road. He thankfully
had an engine block between him and the gunner, but already several rounds had
walloped into the clunker he hid behind.

Nick
lowered the barrel of his M4 above the hood to an angle that he guessed would
be in the general proximity of the gunman. He then fired off a full mag in the
direction of the shooter. Other Primary Strike Team members were doing the same
thing, except for crazy-ass Red, who had his weapon up in his shoulder and was
firing at the gunman using his sights. He was totally exposed like the insane
madman that he was. No wonder the big guys left him alone. The 5’5” Red was
batshit nuts, but Nick was glad he was on his side.

As the
Primary Strike Team regained fire superiority on the front end of the convoy,
Nick reloaded and popped up behind his carbine. He wanted to find the shooter
in his scope and put the punk down for good. And with the streetlights shining
on the area to their front, he felt confident he’d nail the gunman.

Then he
saw him, as the M60 opened up again with a fresh belt toward Red and some of
the other team members. Nick could just make out the silhouette of the man
behind the yellow flame of the bullets coming out the front of it. Nick placed
the red dot on the target roughly eighty yards away and fired four 5.56 rounds
into the man.

It was
spitting distance for the M4, and was as easy as dropping a piece of crumpled
paper in a trash can right next to you if you were a sniper of Nick’s caliber.
Not that there were many snipers of his caliber, but the bullets -- even in the
low light and hasty firing position -- whacked into the man in less than a
three-inch group. Under the one minute of angle expected of snipers, but it was
night, he wore assault gear, and his breathing was out of control.

The
shooter crumpled and Nick put two more rounds into the body, just to be sure he
didn’t get up anytime soon. Another cartel member darted out to the gun, just
as Nick expected, and he mercilessly put three bullets into him without having
to adjust his aim much. Nick kept the M60 and the two bodies in his scope a few
more seconds, but allowed his ears to hear the battle around him. Trying to get
a feeling for how the rest of the members of S3 were doing.