Tier One Wild (40 page)

Doyle climbed out of his vehicle, holding his AK-47 in his arms, and he went looking for Henrico. The air was hot and dusty, and Doyle had to use the lights coming from the outbuildings to guide him.

He found Henrico in front of the control building near the garage. In the light coming from the building’s windows, Doyle could see exhaustion in the Mexican’s eyes and face. The wound above his eye was just a fat black knob now. Nothing serious. But the effort of the last thirty-six hours, along with the stress of their predicament, was clearly taking its toll.

It was often like this with infidels, Doyle thought. Their bodies were not sufficiently refueled by their faith in their mission. Doyle knew he and his cell would continue on, no matter the hardships.

Miguel spoke wearily. “I just heard from one of our
halcons
back at the highway.”

“What is a
halcon
?”

“They are falcons. It’s what we call watchers. Informants on the street who tell us what is going on. We have them all over the place around Nuevo Laredo. They say the last of your vehicles will pull in the driveway in a few minutes.”

“Excellent.” David looked around in the dark; he could barely make out the metal towers that ran for over a hundred meters in either direction. “This is some sort of electrical substation?”

“
Sí
. CFE is the national electrical company here in Mexico. We control them in Nuevo Laredo. We will be safe here as long as we stay inside the buildings. Follow me.”

Henrico led Doyle into the control building. There was an open reception area, and two floors of hallways, offices, a control room, a kitchen, and a machine shop. The Mexican explained that the other outbuildings around were storage facilities for the equipment here at the station.

“What about tomorrow morning, when everyone gets to work?” Doyle asked.

“Sunday. It is a skeleton crew. We put our people here all the time. The employees who are here will not say a word.” He paused. “They all know the penalty for that.”

“What is your security situation here?”

Henrico said, “We have a force of twenty-five men with us, all armed with rifles and RPGs. There is some added security from the guards here protecting the substation, but not much.”

Doyle looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty p.m. “And the plan for tomorrow?”

Henrico shrugged. “I talked to my bosses. They are going to try to have one of our men at the border crossing, and one of our paid members of U.S. Customs on the other side. Neither man was scheduled to work, so it is difficult to say if it will happen tomorrow. Since you changed the operation this morning, we are doing our best to catch up.”

Doyle shrugged. “I made us all safer. Yourself included. I’m certain my organization’s leadership and your organization’s leadership can work out a fair trade for your services.”

Henrico just said, “We will find a way for you across the border.”

The American walked back to the garage, where now all four of his trucks and the fifty-nine missiles they carried were parked. Miguel and the others all stood near the vehicles.

Doyle addressed the group. “We may not be here very long, but I want four of you to take an Igla from its crate and carry it, along with your rifles, to the four corners of this property. We will stay in contact by radio. Keep your eyes open for any threats from above.” Doyle looked off to the north. There, a small plane was taking off from Nuevo Laredo’s one-runway airport. Laredo, Texas, had an airport as well, but it was at least fifteen miles away.

To the south a small police helicopter flew across the night sky.

David said, “Make sure you only target something that is attacking us. Not any plane or chopper that is just flying by.”

The men understood and agreed.

Next Doyle said, “Everyone leave your keys in the trucks. Drivers stay behind the wheel. Miguel and I will be in the control building with the Mexicans, waiting to hear when we will cross the border.”

*   *   *

At 0300 hours, Kolt Raynor sat in the cabin of a closed-door UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that raced over moonlit South Texas scrubland a thousand feet below. Seated with him were eight of his men, including Slapshot, Roscoe the Malonois and his handler, and half of the gear they brought with them from Bragg. The other Black Hawk flew just behind them with its load of operators. They were still twenty minutes out of McAllen, and they still didn’t have a clue what, if anything, they’d be doing when they got there.

The Little Birds were back at Randolph AFB, still being assembled and prepped for flight. One of the helos was having engine problems, and this would delay them at least an hour.

Just then, the pilot slowed the Black Hawk and began banking to the west. Kolt looked around for some explanation, but in the cabin of the helo, eight sets of goggled eyes and one furry face just looked back at him.

The pilot came over Kolt’s headset seconds later, his Texas drawl pronounced. “Is this the ground force commander?”

“Call me Racer.”

“Chief Bartow in the cockpit. Just got a change of orders. I’ve been told to take you to a location south of Laredo, with further instructions to come. We’re thirty-five minutes out.”

“Roger that, thanks,” Kolt said, as he scribbled the words
FRAGO—Laredo
on a white wipe board and passed it around to his men. The men nodded, and they all hoped the fragmented order to change the landing zone meant some critical intel had been received that would get them the hit over the border.

THIRTY-FOUR

The two National Guard Black Hawks landed on a soccer field at an abandoned middle school well off the beaten path, a couple miles north of Rio Bravo, Texas. Here, the helos shut down their engines to save fuel. Racer and his men climbed out of the two birds, bringing with them guns and gear bags. They set up a hasty command post near the wobbly bleachers, and Raynor laid the sat phone down delicately. He prayed it would ring soon with Webber sending them a sit rep along with execute authority. They pulled up FalconView on a couple of laptops to familiarize themselves with the area, even though they had no way to pinpoint any targets.

Shit,
Kolt thought. He was amped up about getting the SAMs and Doyle in one fell swoop. He needed to check his emotions on this. He told himself that the hit still could end up going to a team of SEAL studs in New Mexico, and he was getting way ahead of himself.

Colonel Jeremy Webber called within minutes. He was still in Eritrea at the Assab airport working some details out with the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, although he’d sent all the operators in the alert squadron back home on the double with a pair of MH-60Js in a C-17.

There was no greeting. “Are you on the ground?” Webber asked. Kolt could hear from his boss’s voice that the SEALs in New Mexico would
not
be getting the action this morning.

“Yes, sir. We are waiting for the Little Birds to get here. They had a problem cranking the flight lead’s MH and then have some weather on the way down to contend with. Do you know anything about the change of plans that brought us to Rio Bravo?”

“Yes, I pushed you there. ISR sighted a group of vehicles converging just south of Nuevo Laredo, directly to your west. One of the vehicles, a green medium-duty truck, matches a vehicle reported leaving a Zetas stronghold in Coahuila early this afternoon along with several more vehicles. They passed through Monterrey earlier in the evening, and now they are at an electrical substation complex ringed with two-dozen-plus armed security.”

Webber gave Raynor the coordinates, and Kolt found the Coyote Subestatión on his FalconView map. He was only six miles away. Kolt said, “They are right on the border, boss. Is anyone besides me assuming that Doyle and his MANPADs have a plan to make it into Texas?”

“I agree with you. So does the White House. We need to stop him on the Mexico side.”

“Why doesn’t the Air Force just flatten the place?” Kolt asked.

There was a pause on the line. “Shit, Racer. Guess you won’t be working for the State Department when you get too old to kick doors. The United States is not going to fly bombers over the border to bomb Mexico, especially not at a facility that controls the electrical power for over half a million citizens.”

“I know, boss. Stupid question. If we
don’t
get them before they get into the States, is the Border Patrol or some SWAT team ready to stop them inside the border?”

Webber just said, “They are being warned as we speak, but…”

Kolt got the inference. “Best we stop them before it comes to that.”

“That would be best.” Now the colonel cleared his throat. “The White House has cleared you for action inside Mexico. You have execute authority to destroy the suspected cache of SA-24s and eliminate any resistance you encounter to this objective. The White House is trying to work it out with Mexican authorities so that you don’t have to worry about federal forces as well as the Zetas targeting you.”

“I recommend against that, sir,” Kolt countered. “That would be like telling the Pakistanis that the SEALs are coming for bin Laden. This is already about as hasty as it gets. Let’s not turn this into a flash mob and a high-speed chase across the desert.”

“Sorry, Raynor. The White House has to be able to say they notified the Mexican government before we took action, and you guys wasting a bunch of Federales would be problematic.”

To Kolt this was all politics, and politics got in the way of his job.

The old Kolt would have bitched about this for a few seconds more. But the new Kolt just said, “Understood.”

“Stand by, Racer.”

As Kolt waited for Webber to get back on the line, he caught himself pacing back and forth in a ten-foot space near the south end soccer goal. He stopped, knowing that he must be looking awfully amped to his men watching from the bleachers.

“Raynor?”

“Go ahead, sir, still here.”

“You will have real-time UAV feed on your laptop within moments. There is fresh movement of vehicles at the substation right now.”

“Understood.”

“Not yet, you don’t. The SECDEF is concerned the missiles might be moving again within minutes. It has been decided that they are too close to the border and too close to the city of Nuevo Laredo, where our ISR will probably lose them, to risk waiting for them to leave their current location. They’re nervous at the highest levels, Raynor. Nobody wants to lose a jumbo jet on U.S. soil.”

“What are you saying, sir?” Kolt asked, confused.

“You have to go.” He paused, then said, “
Now
.”

Raynor’s eyebrows rose. “Little Birds are thirty-five minutes out, boss. We swimming the Rio Grande?”

“Negative. The two helos on scene will insert you to the target.”

Raynor’s voice rose as he said, “The National Guard air crews, sir? Are you fucking kidding?”

“The J3 is on their net now briefing them up. Make it happen. This is in extremis. The Little Birds can catch up later. No time to wait on them. And no time to infiltrate the area on foot and find a perfect opportunity.”

Kolt Raynor did not back down. “Sir, with all due respect. This is a total soup sandwich.”

“I understand, Major. It’s less than ideal. But the enemy gets a vote, and they just voted to hit the road, so you need to stop them.”

“Sir, where is the intel dump? How many bad guys? How many Mexican guards? What does the guard uniform look like? This is probably the most important mission we’ve had in the last ten years and we are assaulting with a troop minus, flying in on big, slow helos flown by the fucking Texas Air National Guard?”

“Racer, I can confirm you are outnumbered three to one. Kill the foreigners and spare the local guards, unless they engage you. Your country is counting on you guys to get this done.”

“Please, sir, don’t patronize me. You know we’re going in, but for the record, this is suicide.”

“Make your own luck, Kolt!” Webber said. “And for the record, I’d give anything to be hitting that target with you and your Tier One Wild boys tonight.”

Kolt thought,
Well, come on down,
but he did not say it.

“Racer out.”

*   *   *

The pilots of Racer’s National Guard Black Hawks had been getting their orders while Kolt was bickering with Colonel Webber, but as soon as they were done they climbed out of their helos and walked over to the scrum of men in goggles and black Nomex. Raynor walked the men away from the Delta assaulters and back over to their helos. Here, the three men shook hands.

Kolt looked the pilots over. In the long shadows from the lights of the helos and under cover of the full helmets on the men’s heads, it was hard to see much of either pilot, but he could tell one was much older than the other. The younger man’s name tape identified him as Wilkins, and the older was Bartow. Bartow was the pilot of Racer’s aircraft.

Kolt said, “I imagine you guys heard what’s up?”

Both men nodded. The younger man spoke quickly. “Guess this ain’t just another repositioning flight to Waco.”

Kolt shook his head. “Not hardly.”

Bartow had a slow Texas drawl. He asked, “You guys Navy SEALs?”

“Yes,” Kolt lied. He then asked, “Guys. No offense, but do either of you have any experience with hot insertions?”

Wilkins shook his head, but said, “Did a tour in Afghanistan. Took some fire, but I’m not going to claim I’ve ever done anything like this.”

Kolt looked at Bartow. The older chief warrant officer said, “Did four tours in Iraq. Based mostly at Camp Victory. I’m no shit hot Night Stalker, but I put boys like you down in Sadr City at high noon more than once. Didn’t much care for it, but I got them all in and out. Chief Wilkins will follow me, we’ll get you down in one piece, and then we will stand off until recalled. It would be damn handy if you guys could do us the favor of shooting any son of a bitch you see shouldering one of those damn SAMs.”

Kolt knew he had the right man on the stick. “We’ll do our best. Sorry I questioned you, Chief.”

“No biggie. You just go back to worrying about everything else, and let us drive the buses.”