The Edge of Trust: Team Edge (6 page)

Nick grinned.  “Time for a little 4077.”

In twice the speed of light, his entire team, minus Hutch, plopped in a circle, wearing full combat gear and expectant faces.  Dillon suppressed a grin. 

Doug asked, “Season, episode, or character?”

Episode got the majority and Nick started.  “In the episode where Hawkeye places an order for ribs, what does he forget to order?”

Chase blurted, “Uh, ribs?”

Lito snorted and shoved Chase.  “Too easy.  He forgot the coleslaw.” 

Nick rang an air bell.  “Ding, ding.  Coleslaw is correct.  Your turn.” 

Shane said, “I swear, Lito, if you ask what M*A*S*H stands for one more time, I’m going to shoot your right nut off.”

Lito covered his crotch.  “Whatever would I tell the ladies?”

“That you’re a moron?” 

Lito leaned back on an elbow with a sigh.  “Fine.  If you get this one, you can shoot both my nuts off.”  That not only got everyone’s attention but they all looked a little too happily expectant.  “Man, you guys are heartless.  Okay.  My question is, what was Klinger’s real name?”

Shane scoped up.  “Jamie Farr.  Man, stand up, your balls are headed for Brazil.”

“Bzz, wrong.  Anyone else?”

They all looked at each other, perplexed.

Lito grinned.  “Jamie Farr was born Jameel Farrah.  Feel free to take a knee and kiss my royal balls.”

“My ass.”

“Bullshit.”

“Where’d you come up with that crap?”

Dillon turned from where he stood and cleared his throat.  “Pucker up, guys.  Lito’s right.  He also played a sheik in the old Cannonball movies.”

Hutch returned from his sneak-and-peek and hunkered down next to Dillon.  M*A*S*H was over that fast.  Everyone shut up and waited.  Dillon knew their silence was out of respect and interest, but looking at Hutch, he couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t just a little fear tossed into the mix.  As the team’s point man, and ex-Green Beret, Hutch was one of the deadliest guys in the group.  Dillon had seen him take out six fully armed targets in less than a minute using nothing but his two hands and a nifty little Microtech knife he liked to call
Chewy
. 

“We’ve got two guards out front holding heavies.  There’s no road and only one way outta here.  Three jet boats, one’s a hydro, down in the river, about fifty meters behind the building.”

Dillon nodded.  “Okay, good.  Two men outside, that puts ten inside.  Wolf, Shane, you take out the guards.  No noise.  I don’t want the targets inside to get a heads-up until it’s too late.”  And then maybe, just maybe, he’d get some new intel on Sanchez.  Rafe and his brothers might very well be in Colombia, but no one it seemed, knew exactly where. 

The two men nodded an affirmative and Dillon stood.  “Chase, you’ve got the first thirty-minute watch.  Hutch and Doug, handle the boats.  The rest of you take a load off.  Sleep if you can.”
 
He looked at his men, all heavy with sweat and fatigue.
 
“Hakuna Matata.”

After nightfall, Team One was going to take out one of the largest and most secluded cocaine labs in Colombia.  They had a fair idea what they were up against, they’d all been trained for it, but somehow training exercises seldom lived up to real-life scenarios. 

<><><>

Three hours later, at exactly 2100 hours, it started to drizzle.  Between the light rain and the steam coming off the ground in a greenish vapor, visibility was reduced to damn near zero.   Dillon sighed, adjusted his night vision goggles and listened for approaching footsteps, voices, or any other human sound.  Not that his team couldn’t handle a drug runner or two roaming around, but if some rebel platoon came wandering through, not only would this op be jeopardized, things could wind up getting noisy. 

But he heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual cacophony of sounds of a jungle after dark.  Insects, monkeys, birds, some rustling of the underbrush.  And the constant drip, drip, dripping coming through the canopy.

So far, so good.

His team stood in a half circle in front of him and he made eye contact with each man until he got a thumbs up from all seven men. 

He nodded. 

Time to let the hammer drop. 

Hutch took the lead with Dillon two meters behind him.  Third in line was Wolf, then Doug, Doc, Shane, Chase and Lito.  They moved with such well-orchestrated precision that Dillon knew each man’s position and actions even under the cover of absolute darkness.

Faces painted green and black, the eight camouflage-clad men blended flawlessly with their surroundings as they worked their way silently through the jungle.  They pressed steadily forward, their objective now at twelve o’clock, straight ahead, less than one hundred meters away.

By the time they were within eighty meters of the large, one-story stone building, Dillon’s adrenaline stepped into high gear.  His mind hit the zone.  Like some kind of jungle Zen, everything but his team and the lab dropped away. 

Less than two minutes left.

He clicked the safety off his M4 and set it to full auto.  The team moved ahead slowly.  When they were sixty meters from their target, Hutch signaled for Wolf and Shane to take position.

Dillon removed his night vision goggles, then checked both the guards and the building through his rifle scope, hoping like hell things didn’t get dicey.  His snipers fired, one silent round each.  The instant the two guards fell, he spoke into his throat mike.  “Targets down.  That’s a go.”

Hutch reached the guards first.  After confirming that yep, they were dead, he motioned an all clear. 

The rest of the team blitzed the last few meters through the steaming, acrid darkness and flattened themselves against the side of the building.  Dillon whispered into his mike one last time before they’d go in.  “Chase, you got flash?”        

One click for yes came over his headset and he motioned for Chase to check the door.  Not locked.  No real surprise there.  Hell, why lock a door when you had a room full of amped-up men with fully loaded Uzis?

He took a deep breath and signaled for the team to move. 

Now, finally, maybe, he’d get a fix on Sanchez. 

Chase opened the door, tossed in a flashbang grenade, and immediately took cover against the outer wall. 

The jarring, intermittent blast thundered through the room and into the night.  The team rushed the door--a phalanx of men, hardware, and fury.

Six startled rebels looked up from what they were doing, mouths open, eyes wide.  Hands reached for weapons.  Team One went full auto.  The Colombians never stood a chance.  They went down, all six eliminated in less than three seconds. 

Dillon glanced around.  Something wasn’t right.  According to their intel, there should have been, at the very least, a total of twelve men.  So far they’d only seen eight. 

He signaled for his men to break off into groups of two and check the other rooms.  They were all back in the central room in less than one minute.  All of them except Chase and Wolf. 

Wolf’s voice came over Dillon’s headset a little freaked.  “We’ve got trouble, boss.”

His muscles tensed.  “Location?”

“Third room southeast of the entrance.”

“Roger.”  Damn.  This op was supposed to be cut and dried.  Take out the lab goons.  Capture and secure whoever was in charge.  Get intel on Sanchez.  Then blow the place.

Before Dillon could signal his team, shots sounded down a hallway.  Chase and Wolf came hauling ass backward, spraying bullets. 

Dillon shouted over the gunfire.  “Sit-Rep!”

Chase fired another burst.  “Trap door.  About thirty guys down there, maybe more.  I recognized Sanchez.  Heard Vega’s name mentioned.  They’re having a friggin’ Lord of the Cartels meeting down there.  Room’s packed.  They’ve got an alternate exit east side.”

Wolf yelled, “Op’s over.  Let’s go!” 

Sanchez is here
.  Right now, just yards away,
El Tigre
is in his den.

Dillon ran a dozen scenarios through his mind in seconds.  Nothing played out.  Thirty-plus men, all armed to the teeth, against his eight--

His team wouldn’t stand a chance.  If they’d been able to take the targets by surprise, maybe.  If they’d had better intel, been more prepared, had different weapons--

Too late, and too close quartered, to toss in a grenade. 

Footsteps pounded.  Up, and no doubt out, that friggin’ east exit. 

Shit.  They needed to move.  He pumped his arm and yelled, “Everybody back!  Take the boats!”

He waited until his last man was out the door before starting out himself.  He would’ve made it too, except that he tripped, like an Olympic champion, over a dead body.

Voices raised, teeth bared, five tangos rounded the corner firing their weapons at anything that moved. 

Off balance, Dillon fired a double burst into the fray.  Before he could get off another round, a bullet ripped into his thigh, and his first thought was, damn, the movies got it right.  First, there was that wide-eyed shock, then the ow-holy-fuck-I’ve-just-been-shot split second before the white hot pain hit and he went down.  What the movies didn’t show was the person who’d just been shot screaming like a schoolgirl when they landed with a hard thud on the injured leg.  Good thing Dillon wasn’t much of a screamer.  Whoever said it took a while to feel the searing offense of a bullet had probably never been shot.  Unless by a
while
they meant all of about two seconds. 

Vision blurred around the edges, Dillon gave the shooter fifty points for a body shot but then subtracted twenty since he wasn’t dead yet.  Just as his senses were swimming back into focus, shots erupted behind him and the five men went down. 

Uzi tucked securely against his side, Marco Sanchez appeared out of nowhere on Dillon’s left. 

Hatred swelled, became huge, monstrous, merciless.  For a split second each stared at the other. 
Dreena
, Dillon thought.  This is for the child I loved, you murdering fuck.  And just as Marco’s fingers tightened, Dillon squeezed the trigger.  He squeezed harder, crushing the trigger, ruthless, never yielding, crushing and squeezing until the automatic weapon was finally spent and Marco’s blood stained the walls, the floor, his body ripped into ragged pieces. 

Dazed, Dillon felt himself being yanked and lifted, then dimly heard Shane’s voice asking, “Can you walk?  Are you with me, Commander, can you walk?”

Dillon straightened, put some weight on his leg, and thought,
oh shit
.  His leg didn’t want to cooperate and he pitched forward, nearly landing on his face. 

Chase snorted.  “Whoopsie daisy, sir.”  Then he said to Shane, “Fuck it.  Grab him and let’s go!”

They barely made it to the boat before more automatic weapon fire erupted around them.  Leaves scattered.  Birds burst into flight.

Doc had the boat revved and ready.  Chase jumped for it.  Dillon half dove, half fell, face first into the boat with Shane right behind him. 

Bullets slapped into the water, hundreds of tiny explosions of spray.  Chase yelled, “Go, go, go!” and Doc hit the throttle.  The motor roared to life and the boat bolted forward, whipped by the spray of gunfire racing up the wake.

Dillon hunched against the side, head low, listening to the
ping
of bullets ricocheting off the transom. Eventually the sound faded and all he heard was the screaming motor driving them at breakneck speed up the river.

Once they pulled up beside the other boat with the remaining four men inside, Dillon signaled to Shane to call in their coordinates.  “And get a chopper down here before we get our butts blown up.”

Doc took a look at Dillon’s leg and started to work on the bullet wound.  “No arterial bleed and from what I can tell, no bone damage.  Bleeding has slowed.  I’m starting an IV.” 

Good news, but still, a hole in your leg was a hole in your leg.  Nothing there to really party over. 

“Whoopsie Daisy?”  Shane shook his head at Chase.  “You keep watching chick flicks and I’m gonna think you got a v-a-g-i-n-a.”

“I have a thing for Julia Roberts.  So?”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t the one who said it first.  Hugh Grant did.”

“And how would you know if you haven’t seen the movie too?”

“Guys?”  Dillon looked over at Chase and Shane.  “They gonna follow us in that third boat?”

Chase answered, “Nope.  Doug blew the engine to kingdom come.”

The expression on Shane’s face was odd.  He looked like he didn’t know whether to puke or smile, and Dillon asked, “What?  What aren’t you guys telling me?”

Shane answered, “You...uh…do know you shot the shit out of Marco Sanchez?”

Sanchez
.  The mention of the name triggered fury, the rage inside him snarled once again before Dillon forcibly pushed it back.  His hands fisted and he sneered, “Yeah.
 
Big brother Rafe isn’t going to be too happy about that.”

Shane and Chase shared a look that said
huge understatement... 

Hatred blazed back to life with soul-searing swiftness.  Rafe was going to take this personally, hold Dillon solely responsible.  Well, bummer for the drug lord.  Dillon had nothing left for Sanchez to take.  Or kill. 

Remembered words haunted him like a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

“You fuck me and your life will be over.  I will massacre everyone you love.”

“I love no one.”

So many lies.

Shane settled himself out of Doc’s way and eyed Dillon.  “I heard Chase mention Vega.  What’s up with that?”

Dillon backed away from the memory of that night in the bar and turned to Shane.  “Manny Vega is Rafael’s right hand man.  Elusive as hell.  Nobody’s been able to pin him down long enough to get any decent intel.  No photos.  He’s been ingratiating himself with the SBC for quite a while now.  Looks like he finally made it.”  He’d also been behind the deal that killed Sara, and Dillon wanted to nail Sanchez and Vega more than he wanted his next breath. 

Disappointment at missing Sanchez was a bitter pill, but at least some small amount of vengeance had been achieved today.  Not that killing Marco would bring Sara back, but somehow it helped make things feel a little more just in an unjust world.