Viper: A Thriller (26 page)

At the building’s
side door, Avery threw his back against the wall. He radioed to Diego that he was
about to make entry. To his relief, Diego responded that he was coming down the
stairwell now.

Avery turned. Bringing
the M4 to bear, with the stock nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, he followed
it into the building and stepped over the bodies from the earlier contact here.
The man whose balls he’d blasted before was now still and quiet, a massive
puddle of blood beneath him, with his hands, even in death, clasped over his
the remains of his manhood.

The front door
crashed open.

Two pairs of Empresa
men poured in.

Avery’s mind
assessed the situation, his eyes following the positioning of the Empresa as
they dispersed throughout the foyer. They surrounded him, had him covered
wherever he moved, but they were smart enough not to get in each other’s
crossfire, and Avery accepted the grim reality that he was outgunned and would
be able to take down one, maybe two at most.

As Avery trained
his sights on the nearest threat, simultaneously bracing himself for the bullets
about to pour into him, he heard Diego’s voice scream, “Get down!”

Avery reacted
instantly and hit the deck.

The earsplitting
staccato rattle of Diego’s NG7 blotted out all other sound as the Colombian solider
hosed the Empresa gunmen full of 5.56mm ball ammunition while he came down the
stairs into the foyer. The gangbangers were chewed up, punched full of holes, and
ripped apart like raw meat. Blood spilled in the air and splashed across the
carpet and walls. Bodies opened up with organs hanging out, and mangled corpses
hit the floor. Smoke hung in the air and spent brass rolled across the floor.

“Just in time,”
Avery said, looking up after Diego had stopped firing. His ears rang, and his
heart beat harder than it ever had before. It took several seconds for his mind
to catch up with what had just happened and appreciate the fact that he was
still alive.

Diego still held
the NG7 in front of him, its barrel smoking.

Avery jumped
back onto his feet. He stepped over the bodies, setting his boot down in a
sticky puddle of coagulating blood along the way, and moved to the front of the
foyer to get a look through the windows. He saw the tail end of a pick-up truck
driving away, four armed men in the bed.

“Looks like the
street’s clear,” he told Diego. “The others are taking off.”

Or they were
moving to come around to the back and cut them off, he realized.

“Come on. We
have transportation out back.”

Diego followed
Avery to the truck in the alley. He frowned when he saw their getaway vehicle.

Avery took the
driver’s side, and Diego climbed into the bed, taking up aim with Aguilar
across the top of the cab. Avery threw the truck into gear and hit the gas,
mentally recalling the maps and visualizing the layout of the city’s streets,
and where the Blackhawk’s landing zone was located in relation to their current
position.

Halfway down the
alley, the Empresa truck Avery had spotted barely a minute earlier turned off
the street and appeared ahead of them, its engine wheezing as the driver
floored the gas. Muzzle flashes lit up from the bed, over the rooftop.

Avery braked
hard and switched to reverse to maintain the gap between both vehicles, while
Aguilar lobbed off a grenade from his under-slung launcher. His aim fell short.
The grenade landed several feet in front of the pursuing truck and exploded.
Shrapnel ripped through the windshield and engine, killing one of the
passengers, but the truck rolled forward through the smoke and flames. The
driver slowed down to allow the Empresa men in the bed to jump out. They spread
apart and opened fire from their rifles.

In the cab of
the GMC, Avery and the two DEA agents ducked as bullets flew through the space
of the windshield.

Nolan took a hit
through his shoulder and cried out.

Layton swore out
loud. As much as he personally wanted to pull the trigger on Nolan, if the
Irishman died here, then his agents gave their lives for nothing. Layton
covered Nolan with his own body as incoming bullets struck the truck. 

Diego opened up
on the NG7 and panned left to right, steadily cutting down the Empresa shooters
and racking their truck full of holes, blowing out tires, perforating the
panels, blowing out glass, and demolishing the engine block. The truck, what
was left of it, came to a complete stop, but Diego continued firing until he
expended the remaining fifty-seven rounds on the ammunition belt and the
machine gun clicked empty.

It looked like a
massacre, with bloody bodies strewn around the perforated, smoking wreck of the
dismantled truck. Nothing moved. Smoke coiled into the air, steam poured from the
destroyed engine block, and fuel poured from the ruptured tank.

Avery reversed
the rest of the way out of the alley and started heading north toward the
landing zone, hoping to find Warner’s Blackhawk sitting there and intact. If
not, he’d drive the rest of the fucking way to López Airport, and kill anyone
who tried to stop them.

It was a rocky
and slow ride, with the right wheel scraping and grinding across the pavement,
sparks flying out, and the passengers on the bed bouncing along, holding on
tight. Avery sped through intersections, punching the horn and forcing other
drivers to clear the way.  He wasn’t about to stop for anyone, not even the
paramilitary checkpoint he shot through without slowing, while Aguilar and
Diego kept their weapons trained on the gangbangers, who, wisely, didn’t
challenge them. Avery kept a tight grip on the steering wheel the whole way,
concentrating on keeping the vehicle under control and going straight, and
cursing like a maniac when presented with a right turn.  

The landing zone
lay almost straight ahead, but the streets presented constant detours and
obstructions or, worse, came to abrupt dead ends. At almost 9:00AM, there were
more people out now, but nobody paid a second glance to the fucked-up GMC half-ton
negotiating its way through the city.

Along the way,
Layton applied QuickClot sponges to Nolan’s shoulder to stem the bleeding. The
7.62mm had shattered his scapula. He was in intense pain, and his right arm was
rendered immobile. Nolan bled heavily from torn blood vessels, but Layton
didn’t think there was enough blood to fear that his subclavian artery may have
been cut. Still, he needed medical help immediately.

“Keep your eyes
open. You’re not going to die on us after all this, you piece of shit!” Layton
shouted in Nolan’s face, trying to keep him awake.

When Avery
glanced back, he saw tears streaming down the DEA agent’s face, and Layton
shouted back at Avery, urging him to go faster.

They crossed the
Simón Bolívar highway and found the Blackhawk sitting idle on its wheels in a
grassy clearing roughly 300x250 feet. The helicopter’s mini-guns faced out with
a helmeted head behind them.

Major Warner
jumped down from the cabin as the truck tore across the grass and braked
alongside the helicopter. Overcome with relief and emotion that Avery made it
back with the DEA agents, Warner helped Layton and the Colombian soldiers load
the wounded aboard the helicopter.

Harris and Diego
carried Nolan. The Irishman was unresponsive now, and his heartbeat and pulse
grew gradually fainter.

Aguilar noticed
for the first time that his pants were ripped, and he had a bleeding gash
across his calf. He examined the wound and determined he’d taken a ricochet at
some point.

With the
adrenaline and excitement wearing off and everything slowing down to real time,
Avery became aware once more of his own aches and pains throughout his body,
plus several new ones.  

The DEA agents
likewise looked like hell. They were bloody, dirty, hurt, and exhausted, pushed
beyond their physical and mental limits, and they were leaving behind a lot of
dead friends and teammates.

The Empresa may
have pulled the triggers, but as far as Avery was concerned, those agents’
deaths were on the Viper.

With everyone strapped
in, Warner slipped into the cockpit, powered up the Blackhawk, and took to the
sky.

A collective
cheer broke out at
Gerardo
Tobar López Airport when Warner radioed the ops room that she was returning to
base with the surviving DEA agents and Sean Nolan. But the jubilation died
quickly when she reported Nolan’s condition. The Colombians diverted the Blackhawk
to the coast guard’s Buenaventura station, which had a modern military
treatment facility.  

 Watching the
streets of Buenaventura pass by below, anger and hate swelled within Avery, and
the walls were back in place in his mind, keeping everything where it belonged.
He was determined now more than ever, and whatever he felt after Medellin was
replaced by absolute resolution. Whatever it took, he’d find the Viper and
break her neck, and nothing was going to stop him.

Despite her size, seven hundred feet
long above the waterline,
La Orca
wasn’t much to look at, and nobody who
caught sight of her would waste a second glance at the Feedermax container ship’s
rusted and weathered hull. She carried up to 2,500 TEU of cargo, or twenty-foot
equivalent units, in reference to the standard-sized twenty foot long, eight
foot wide intermodal containers used in shipping. Presently, her deck was
packed nearly to capacity with stacked multi-colored containers.

DEA and the
Colombian customs and port authorities originally planned to board and seize
the ship while she was still moored, but then the police received the heads up
from a paid informant at the docks that
La Orca
was underway twenty-five
minutes ahead of schedule, likely alerted to the unfolding battle in
Buenaventura.

 The Coast Guard
Command, a small but well-trained branch of the National Armada of Colombia,
the official name for the Colombian navy, was notified and launched from their
nearby Buenaventura station.

The container
ship barely cleared the bay before two Bell UH-1H Hueys caught up with her. One
helicopter hovered low over
La Orca’s
aft, while the pilot of the second
was forced to make another pass before finding a suitable drop zone at the
stern of the ship’s crowded deck. The pilots matched the ship’s ten knot speed.

Each helicopter
carried a squad of ten men, each wearing dark blue t-shirts, utility pants, Kevlar
helmets, and ballistic vests. They were armed with M16 rifles, door-breaching
shotguns, and smoke grenades.

Two ropes
dropped from either side of each Huey’s open cabin, and the coast guard troops
expertly zip-lined onto the ship’s deck. The helicopters immediately broke off
and kept their machine guns trained on the ship.

A marine AH-60L
Arpia gunship hovered two hundred feet overhead, carrying sharpshooters
providing sniper cover. There was good reason to believe that the Viper was
onboard, armed with SA-24, making this raid something more than routine visit, board,
search, and seizure (VBSS), so the Colombians took no chances.

The first squad swiftly
and expertly swept the ship, fanning across the deck and proceeding to the crew
cabins and compartments below. The second squad simultaneously scaled the
superstructure, seized the bridge and ordered the captain to turn the ship
around and return to port.

The helicopters
stayed on the ship as the captain steered her back to the harbor, and the newly
arrived Colombian coast guard cutters escorted her in. DEA agents and Colombian
police and customs officers awaited the ship’s return.

Meanwhile, the
coast guard troops rounded up the crewmembers and directed them above deck and
commanded them onto their knees with their hands behind their heads. They also
did a head count, to make sure everyone was accounted for.

None of the crew
was armed, and none verbally or physically challenged the boarders. Most of the
crew was innocent merchantmen trying to make a living, either genuinely or
willfully ignorant of any contraband aboard the ship, and they reacted to the
boarding with surprise, terror, and confusion.

The subsequent
search of
La Orca
yielded no missiles and no sign of the Viper, but over
a ton of cocaine was discovered in specially designed, hidden smuggler’s compartments.

After the crew’s
names were run through the Bunker’s databases for matches, two were identified
as known La Empresa members and arrested.

When questioned,
none of the crew reported ever seeing Arianna Moreno, but one of the Empresa
men acknowledged having been in contact with Sean Nolan. He also revealed to his
interrogators one other interesting piece of information that explained La
Empresa’s sophisticated ambush of the DEA and National Police forces in
Buenaventura that day.

In statements
made to the media later that day by American and Colombian officials, the DEA
operation in Buenaventura and the seizure of
La Orca
were publicized as
counter-narcotics interdictions, and no mention was made of the Viper, Sean
Nolan, missiles, or terrorism.

___

Immediately upon arrival at the Coast
Guard Command’s Buenaventura station, an unconscious Sean Nolan was placed on a
gurney and transferred to the military treatment facility’s infirmary, where he
was treated alongside the DEA agents who risked life and limb to bring him out.

US Navy hospital
corpsmen performed emergency surgery to reconnect or close Nolan’s damaged
blood vessels, and remove the bullet fragments. Nolan spent the remainder of
the day in an isolated room in the intensive care unit, under armed guard by
Colombian marines. He was pumped full of morphine, connected to IVs, and given
a blood transfusion. By night, his condition was stabilized, but he would still
require additional surgeries to repair the scapula, and, with his spheroidal
joint shattered, he’d probably never regain full use of his arm.

Nolan spent a
day heavily sedated and disorientated, and Daniel had so far acquiesced to the
doctors’ insistence that Nolan wasn’t yet well enough to be questioned. Daniel
had no concern for Nolan’s well being, but he was pragmatic enough to
understand that there was no point in interrogating him when he was doped out
of his mind and mostly incoherent during his brief periods of consciousness.

But Nolan was
awake now and had grown increasingly responsive over the morning hours,
starting to ask questions and make demands of medical staff. He was still
fatigued and confused, his judgment clouded, defenses lowered, and Daniel had
ordered that they cut off the administration of morphine late the previous
night. He wanted Nolan in painful discomfort, both to soften him up and, if
necessary, to use as a bargaining chip

“I want to talk
to him,” Avery said, growing impatient. He’d barely slept, and had spent much
of the previous day recovering from the post combat high and adrenaline
hangover, while faces of the dead continued to revisit him. He was determined
to move forward now, deciding that maybe putting Moreno down would help the
ghosts rest a little easier.

“Perhaps it
would be best if my people handle this,” Daniel said, assessing Avery’s
appearance. He had the look of a man who had been through a lot and was on the
verge of losing control.

And Avery sensed
Daniel’s reluctance and the reason for it.

“Look, I only
want to talk to him. Give me a few minutes alone with him. Then your guys can
do their stuff.”

Avery didn’t
plan on getting physical or rough with Nolan, who knew a thing or two about
interrogations—PIRA had been brutally efficient at rooting out informants
within their ranks. Nolan had also done time in Long Kesh, the Northern Ireland
prison where paramilitaries were detained. Neither MI5 nor the Royal Ulster
Constabulary had been able to break him, and they’d had the better part of
three years to try.

Besides, having
witnessed firsthand what it took to get Cesar Rivero to talk, Avery didn’t doubt
that Nolan shared Rivero’s loyalty to the Viper. Breaking that loyalty was the
key to getting Nolan to betray the Viper.

Daniel relented,
and an hour later Avery was alone with Nolan in his room. There were no cameras
watching, no hidden mikes recording, and no one-way glass for outside
observers. Daniel had even instructed Nolan’s marine guards to take a break.

Nolan wore a
white hospital gown that was practically falling off him, and his hands were
tied to the bed frame on either side of him, giving him no space to lift or
move his arms. His wounded shoulder was likewise immobilized by a harness. Within
reach, he had only a remote with a button to call for a nurse. He appeared pale,
weak, and sickly from the blood loss and dehydration. Intravenous tubes were
stuffed into his veins, while other equipment to which he was hooked up
constantly chirped and beeped.

Nolan’s glazy eyes
stayed on Avery as the unfamiliar American entered the room and stopped at the
foot of his bed.

Seeing Nolan up
close now, Avery’s hands clenched into fists, and he wanted to completely let loose
on the Irishman, but he reminded himself that there was a job to do.

“Is this where
you offer to turn my morphine back on if I answer your questions?”

Nolan was aware that
his mind became increasingly lucid, and the pain abruptly and rapidly more
acute, over the past couple hours, and his earlier request for more morphine
was ignored. The pain was now borderline intolerable. He fought to keep his
voice steady and not show weakness in front of his interrogator. 

“No,” Avery
said. “It’s simple. You’re going to answer my questions because you’re the type
to hold a grudge. You’re not going to protect someone who sold you out. You’d
rather fuck them over right back.”

Nolan’s brow
furrowed. His mind was still in a haze, and he couldn’t quite make sense of
what the American said. He responded simply, “Fuck off. I’m not telling you
shit.”

“Why are you
protecting her, Sean?”

“What the hell are
you talking about?”

“You know
goddamn well who I’m talking about. Look, it’s simple. If you’re not going to
talk to me, then I have no use for you, and you’re just a piece of shit who got
nine American and Colombian cops killed for no good reason, and that’s going to
make it real hard for me to restrain myself. Maybe when I’m tired of beating
the shit out of you, I’ll let the Black Eagles have a go at you. They don’t
take kindly to foreigners coming here and siding up with their enemies.” Avery
paused. “Moreno. Why are you protecting her?”

“I doubt you’d
understand.”

“I think you’re
the one that doesn’t understand. What the fuck do you think happened back there
in Buenaventura? Look at yourself. Those aren’t our bullets that fucked you up.”

Avery saw some
clarity resonate in Nolan’s eyes now.

“Those Empresa
fucks weren’t there to ambush DEA agents, you stupid fuck, and it wasn’t a
coincidence they had a small army on hand. They came for
you,
and they
nearly succeeded.”

“What the fuck
are you on about?” Nolan asked.

“Think about it.
You really think we’d send a SWAT team to execute your arrest warrant? We had
intelligence that the Empresa was sending a hit team to take you out. Phone
intercepts matching Moreno’s voice. She wanted to silence you before we got to
you. All of this was just corroborated by those Empresa captured aboard
La
Orca
yesterday morning. We went in to save your fucking life.”

“You’re full of
shit.”

But the quiver
in Nolan’s voice betrayed his lack of confidence.

“Now,” Avery
continued, “the question I keep asking myself is why would she want to kill you?
I think it’s because you did your part, you delivered the missiles, and then
she had no further use for you. She already knows we’re on her trail, and she
knew we’d catch up with you sooner or later. That makes you one serious
security risk. You can deny it all you want, but you’re only lying to
yourself.”  

Avery paused,
and the silence to fester for half a minute.

“Nothing to say?
Those agents died this morning to save your fucking life. They could have just
left you there or turned you over to La Empresa at any time and walked away. You
might want to think about that.”

“It’s not true.”

“Are you that
fucking pathetic, Sean? You know damned well how the Viper operates. She kills
her help after they’ve served their purpose and become a liability. Her
brother’s the only person she’s really loyal to, and he’s rotting in the
ground. What, you thought you were different? Well, that’s what everybody likes
to think, isn’t it. You don’t mean shit to her.”

Avery saw the glimmer
of doubt in the man’s eyes, replacing the earlier defiance, and knew he was
almost there.

“Even if that
were true, I still don’t see why the fuck I should help you. I’m facing the
inside of a Colombian jail the rest of my life either way. Even if the cunt did
set me up, I’ll still gladly see her kill more of you fuckers.”

“Who said
anything about a jail? You’re in ANIC’s custody. No one knows they have you.
When they’re through with you, you’re simply going to disappear, but not until
the Black Eagles have a go at you. But maybe you can convince the Colombians to
extradite you to the British. Then maybe your buddies in Sinn Fein can cash in
some political points and commute your sentence.”

Avery allowed
Nolan a minute to reflect on this before continuing.

“Yeah, your
options are shitty, but you can choose how much shit you get. If you don’t talk
to me right here and now, I’m walking out, and ANIC will take over.”

Without another
word, Avery stood up, turned, and started for the door.

Nolan’s voice
weakly called out after him.

“What do you
want from me?”

___

When Avery walked out of the holding
cell thirty minutes later, Culler and Daniel were waiting silently in the
corridor.