Hard Man to Kill (Dark Horse Guardian Series Book 4) (7 page)

Ben smiled back, “Hopefully, we will only be here a few days.  So, tell me, what’s going on?”

Paco recounted the latest skirmish, “Twenty-nine farm workers were decapitated and their heads were strewn across a field a few nights ago, but when I asked questions of the residents, they gave me blank looks and shrugged as if it didn’t happen.  Two well-known peasant leaders were killed in separate incidents as if by ghosts.  It took place in broad daylight, but no witnesses. The people of the community are reluctant to admit it even happened.”

Paco continued, “Six Mexicans were shot in the house next door a week ago.  A mystery man took away the bodies and the homeowner scrubbed the blood before police arrived. The police decided nothing happened.  You need to watch your back here, man, and take plenty of extra ammo in your backpack.  It’s bad – I mean really bad.”

Ben had expected as much.  El Chulupa was a sun-blistered one-street town on Guatemala’s boundary with Honduras, once in the middle of nowhere, now in the middle of Latin America’s drug war. Mexico’s drug-fuelled battle left 58,000 dead in the past four years, and continued leaving a trail of bodies in Guatemala and across much of Central America. 

Mexico’s crackdown pushed some narcos south. In particular, the Zetas, a brutal band of thugs who sought to eliminate rivals and anyone who stood in the way of their business dealings, especially those who attempted to investigate their brutal murders. The Zetas were particularly brutal in that their membership roster involved a heavy presence of former Mexican soldiers.  The pay was better – they had started by being paid by the narcos, and then they decided that they would make
much
better money if they
were
the narcos.

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were already world renown for murder due to poverty, gangs and government corruption.  Alarm bells rang in Ben’s mind.  General Peter Frost, head of U.S. SOCOM, had briefed them on Central America’s gravest threat, and how the cartels were being welcomed to cross the border into the United States along with terrorists released from Gitmo. 

Come one, come all.
  As if the United States needed any more problems than it already had.  There were times he wondered just how corrupt his
own
government was, especially allowing the breach of the U.S. border so willingly.  Ben was painfully aware the commander-in-chief’s first responsibility was to protect and defend the United States, but he was seeing first-hand the results of ignoring that all-important duty.

On the fly-in, Ben observed dozens of long, cut-outs in the jungle canopy: airstrips for cocaine-filled planes. The aircraft, worth a small fraction of the cargo’s street value, were often abandoned and there was an entire cemetery of them, a sort of aviation boneyard.  Street children picked over the parts and sold them to anyone who would buy them. On the ground you could travel for days without seeing another soul, but when the forest gave way to pasture and bony cattle it meant a town was coming up. El Chulupa was a five-hour bumpy drive from Soto Cano. It reeked of fear. 

Paco warned him, “There are eyes and ears everywhere.  Be careful who you talk with.  The phones are tapped, so people speak in codes.  Terror is palpable when people know they can be killed and there are no consequences.”

El Chulupa was quiet, for now.  After the beheadings, the government declared a temporary state of emergency in the region, enabling the corrupt army to impose a curfew, chase suspects and feign support of the ineffectual police force. Dozens of vehicles and hundreds of weapons, including assault rifles and grenades, had been impounded. About two dozen Zeta suspects had been rounded up, the usual suspects. The strutting narcos, usually brandishing weapons across their chests, were temporarily in hiding, or locked up being well fed.  Through Paco, Ben learned that large-scale human rights violations, war crimes and genocide went unpunished.  In Guatemala impunity was the rule, justice an exception.

Welcome to Latin America.

The problem was, the cartels employed most of the residents of the country in one way or another, so no one could really be trusted.  A fortune by local standards, the cartels paid a finder’s fee as a recruitment tool.  But like the mafia, once you got into the gangs, you never got out.  The army patrolled with teenagers dressed in khaki and on foot, but the narco-terrorists knew it was a powerless force.  Many of the Zetas were former members of Mexican and Guatemalan special-forces, which didn’t make Ben feel any better about the mission.

Ben and Elvis slept with one eye open the first night.  Once, Ben closed his eyes and pictured Lara lounging on the sofa at home watching television.  Although thousands of miles apart, they were almost in the same time zone.  Her shirt served as his pillow on the bare mattress in the corner of the room.  The sounds in the night were those of babies crying, occasional gun shots, and a few street scuffles outside in the alley.

Elvis slept in the opposite corner of the room with a loaded weapon at the ready.  Ben’s stomach was empty and he sucked down bottles of water as if he couldn’t get enough.  Thankfully, the temperature dropped to the 70’s at night.  But the humidity was non-stop.

The next day they ate at the local cantina and mixed with the residents, telling them they were just passing through.  Ben handed out a pack of cigarettes to a few of the locals.  Well disguised as Latin Americans, both men seemed to pass the sniff test.  Little did those in the cantina know, the coming night would bring another bout of unrest to their dreadful little settlement.  Ben and Elvis strolled through town past their target’s dwelling absorbing every detail from behind sunglasses as they sauntered by.  A ramshackle two-story building painted bright yellow, it housed one of the top Islamic State masterminds.

A woman having the appearance of a housekeeper exited the building.  Stout, dark, and wearing an apron, she was all business as she stepped into the street and headed toward the market place around the corner.  Once she was out of earshot, Ben and Elvis stopped in front of the building to argue.  While they pretended to be fighting with one another, Ben saw a figure hovering in the doorway of the bright yellow building.  Elvis shoved his hand into Ben’s chest pushing him back a few steps, shouting in Spanish.  As they did so, out of the corner of Ben’s eye, he observed a figure emerging in broad daylight. It was their target, Mohammed Al Safi. 

In the crowded street filled with vendors and hooligans, they ceased arguing but feigned conversation with one another.  Ben moved cautiously behind the man as he rapidly strode along the dirt road.  Occasionally, Ben squatted to pick up trash in the street.  He whispered the target’s code name into his com, “Snake eyes, send a Jeep.”  He gave the coordinates.  Elvis followed but broke away from Ben.  Mohammed Al Safi moved through the throng of people swiftly, but Ben kept his eyes on him.

It was almost too good to be true.  Mohammed Al Safi was walking right in front of them in broad daylight, alone and seemingly unaware they were stalking him.  They kept their distance and watched him turn into an alley far ahead.  Ben motioned to Elvis without looking at him, and he moved along parallel to the alley.  Ben was now behind the target and reaching for his knife.  He was so close he could smell the hookah smoke that permeated the man’s clothing and skin. 

Ben whispered in the com, “Take him alive.”  

Al Safi turned as he heard Ben speak, but Elvis surprised him by stepping in front of him.  He brought him to his knees with one swift kick.  Ben grabbed handcuffs from his backpack and stuffed a sweaty rag into Al Safi’s mouth.  As he bound his feet, Moshe’s men were not far behind with the Jeep. 

Tossing Al Safi inside the Jeep as it pulled into the alley, Ben grabbed a hypodermic and injected his thigh as he struggled.  Ben and Elvis hopped into the Jeep as it sped away to a steel corrugated building on the edge of town, a ramshackle place in the middle of nowhere.  The door opened and the Jeep slipped inside.  Ben took the limp body of Al Safi and dragged him to the interrogation room, a dug basement beneath the building where the loudest screams could not be heard. 

The musty odor assaulted his nostrils as they made the quick descent down the wooden ladder to the dirt below.  It was claustrophobic but utilitarian.  There was one light dangling from the ceiling and a steel chair beneath it.  In this tomb, two rudimentary air vents were installed in the wall, one brought air in and the other sucked it out with a tiny fan.  The diesel generator was the only sound in the distance behind the building.  Ben quickly strapped the target into the chair and removed the cloth from his mouth.  Breathing heavily, Ben drank a bottle of water as Al Safi opened his eyes.  Yes, it was good to see panic in the eyes of a man who had wrought terror on many an innocent person.  Now, it was his turn.

Rendition was authorized, but no records were to be kept.  Ben understood what he had to do, and it could be a long involved process or a quick and dirty one.  Before he decided on a strategy to garner information, he had to gauge how much this guy had to give.  More than anything, he needed the location of the two terrorists who had fallen off their radar.  He began with a series of questions and tried not to appear hostile, at first.  He always preferred these things to go the easy way.  But, if he didn’t get the information he suspected the target had, he was prepared to do anything, including shooting him point blank.  The fact that Al Safi lost control of his bladder during the first five minutes of questioning gave Ben a hint that this would be easy work. 

At first the bastard prayed to Allah for ten minutes after pissing himself.  Then the crying began. 

After an hour, Ben had his fingers around his throat and was hissing in his ear in Arabic, “Tell me now, where are the others?”  No answer.  Ben stuffed the rag back in his mouth and took out the knife.  He ran the blade along the man’s neck and looked into his eyes.  “You want to see Allah?  I'll send you there now, you son-of-a-bitch!” 

Instead of sticking the knife in his neck, Ben punched him in the gut as hard as he could.  Al Safi choked on the rag and had trouble breathing.  After gasping and choking for a few minutes, he nodded.  Ben removed the rag.  “Tell me!” he yelled for the last time in Arabic.

Descriptions and coordinates tumbled out of Al Safi’s mouth in a jumble.  Elvis wrote on his hand as Al Safi spoke.  A green house with a balcony, names of streets, and an apartment above a bakery.  But it could have been gibberish uttered to stay alive. 

Ben breathed into the com, “Get someone down here with water, now!  Hold him until we check out the info he gave us.”  Two of Moshe’s men scrambled down into the tomb-like room and Ben gave them orders.  “Keep him alive.  We'll be back within two hours, hopefully.” 

Elvis wanted to run, but Ben grabbed his arm. “We can’t attract attention. “The two strolled along the street using the coordinates written on Elvis’ hand.  The green house with the balcony was in view, just as described, about a mile north.  Two men in robes were lounging on the balcony. 

Ben looked at Elvis. “You’re better at climbing than I am.  I’ll distract them for a moment and you can pull one of them inside.  But, first we have to make sure no one else is inside the house.  And, we have to make sure they’re not armed to the teeth.” 

Ben spoke into the com, “Get a mosquito drone here pronto.”  He gave the coordinates and calmly walked by the house. He pretended to be lost and confused, peering at the addresses. Within ten minutes a young boy on a bicycle stopped next to them on the sidewalk.  “Mosquito inside.  Check your phone.”  The boy wheeled away. 

Pretending to make a phone call, Ben viewed the interior of the house with the mosquito drone.  No one was there at the moment.  In the sweltering afternoon, the humidity had become unbearable.  He glanced at Elvis, “Yup – it’s time.”  Ben walked back toward the green house and glanced at the two men on the balcony.  Speaking Spanish, he asked them for directions.  While the conversation ensued, Elvis had made it up to the balcony.

The first guard was so intent on Ben, he didn't see Elvis come up from the side of the balcony. Elvis simply grabbed the guard by the back of the head and slammed it straight down into the balcony's rail.  He vaulted over the guard, driving into the second one.  He wrapped his arm around the other's neck in a chokehold and dragged him inside.  Ben pushed through the sun-cracked wooden door in the back, and ran to the balcony.  Stooping, he dragged the other man inside, hoping no one was observing. 

Luckily, it was siesta and all local traffic, both pedestrian and otherwise, had come to a complete stop.  Ben and Elvis quickly bound the two men.  Ben spoke into his com, “Need two Jeeps at 29 Palm, pronto.”  Within minutes one Jeep backed up to the side door of the house and the two bound men were tossed in.  Ben had injected both of them and they were dead weight for the moment. 

“Good job,” he said to the driver.  “Now get the hell out of here.  We will meet you back at the tomb.”  The driver of the second Jeep opened the door and Ben and Elvis scrambled in as it moved away at a rapid rate of speed.

After reviewing photographs back at the interrogation chamber, Ben realized he now had a trifecta.  Al Safir, Abdullah Mizoul and Mohammed Farouk.  He couldn’t believe the run of luck.  Three prisoners in the interrogation room was crowded, but manageable.  Elvis kept them bound in uncomfortable positions.  Both men spat at him when he got close enough to speak.  They called him a pig and an infidel in Arabic.  However, he remained calm.  He’d been through this before and knew it wouldn’t last long.