Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (5 page)

Three of
the Godesto had been wounded by the Mexican Quick Reaction Force, and they were
rushed to waiting doctors, who were paid handsomely for working from their
homes and not reporting the wounded. With the casualties removed and the dead
picked clean, the Godesto men spread gasoline on the vehicles that weren’t
already burning and lit them up.

Back at
the warehouse, the SEALs moved toward the last part of the building -- a lone
office, likely where the manager worked. They had no idea about the ambush on
their Quick Reaction Force, since its commander had died before he could get
his warning out by radio.

Resistance
had been stiffer than expected in the warehouse, but the end was in sight.
They’d be back at base drinking beers and cleaning their weapons in no time.

Six SEALs
moved along the bay of the warehouse, covering stacks of boxes and crates as
they advanced the final feet toward the remaining office. Other SEAL Team
members covered entrances and exits throughout the building, ensuring more of
the enemy didn’t enter the warehouse. In one office, two wounded SEALs waited
for medevac.

A cartel
thug edged his AK out the door of the manager’s office and blasted a long burst
toward the approaching SEALs. The SEALs had been moving toward the office in a
smooth, toe-to-heel fashion favored by special operators. Like silent ninjas.
But these ninjas had MP-5s and M4s trained on their destination, and as the
rounds flew toward them from the gunman, they did not panic like raw recruits.
Instead they returned fire -- accurately, of course -- to suppress the man, and
kept moving forward.

Their
rounds forced the man back inside the room and before he could regain his nerve
to engage the men again, the SEALs stacked on the door and threw a flashbang
into the room.

The
explosion blinded and rocked the thug, as well as his partner, allowing the
SEALs to easily enter the room. They covered their sectors, recognized the
disoriented workers, and noticed their weapons. This took a fraction more than
half a second, and the SEALs’ weapons tore into the men. The time for
surrendering had long passed, and knowing that two of their brothers were down
and bleeding didn’t exactly put the SEALs in the mood for mercy.

The men
jerked and shook as the rounds ripped through them and then fell hard,
twitching and bleeding grotesquely. The SEALs checked the ceiling and cleared
the final dead space behind a desk.

“All
clear,” one of them said into his mic.

The SEAL
Team Leader radioed back to base.

“Base,
this is Blackbird Six. Objective secure.”

Now,
where the hell were those Mexican ground forces, the SEAL Team Leader wondered.
He’d been trying to reach them after getting a call from their commander, but
had lost all contact.

Well,
sometimes radios went down, and urban environments always proved challenging
for radio communication. Buildings often blocked the
signals
on the encrypted radios.

A single
man watched the factory from a block away. The helicopters had zoomed off, but
he could hear them circling just a short distance away. He dialed his prepaid
cellphone and said, “Stage Two commencing.”

With
that, he pocketed the phone, turned his back to the target, and put on a pair
of hearing protection earmuffs. He cringed as he pressed the button.

Inside
the warehouse, explosions rocked the building. SEALs were thrown against walls
and blown into the air. The survivors stumbled to their feet and immediately
began assessing the damage. As they tried to determine what had happened, they
started patching up the wounded and rallying their strength. At first glance,
it looked like they might just make it out, but then the cracked pillars and
roof began to crumble.

Upon
seeing the flash in the night sky, the Blackhawk pilots knew something terrible
had happened. They rushed back to the scene and pulled up in horror as the
building collapsed in on itself.

“No!”
screamed one of the pilots, who knew three of the men in the building. Then he
heard the beeping warning in his ears and knew a bad night for the SEALs on the
ground had just turned worse for him.

He yanked
the Blackhawk left, but a missile screeching toward him adjusted with his move
and exploded into the tail of the helicopter, throwing it into a tailspin. It
landed hard and the tail flames ignited the spewing gas -- all two hundred
gallons of it. All of the occupants died in the wreckage, trapped in the
inferno.

The SEAL
Team snipers who had witnessed the scene managed to choke down their horror.
But only barely. No way did any of the SEALs survive the building falling in on
them, and even if they did, rescue personnel would need to arrive immediately.
And given that they were deep in Hernan Flores’s territory, that wouldn’t be
happening.

The
snipers knew they were in deep shit and it would take all of their collective
wits to get out of this one alive, so despite feeling enraged and helpless,
they knew there was nothing they could do.

So, they
slipped off into the night, livid that they couldn’t spill more blood and
horrified at leaving so many of their comrades behind. But four men against
possibly hundreds just wasn’t good odds, even when you were four badass SEALs.

At the
Mexican Presidential Palace, Stage Three of Hernan Flores’s operation
commenced. The men, who were spread about in positions all around the Palace,
received the same text. A single word sent to each recipient: “Go.”

At the
five-story apartment complex overlooking the Presidential Palace, the four men
on the fifth floor began their role in the attack. The men had unpacked the
duffel bags they carried and pulled out three RPGs, as well as prepositioned
additional rounds.

The room
was dark with no lights on anywhere, and the men used their familiarity with
the weapons to load and arm them. Three waited with shouldered RPGs, listening
for welcome sounds in the distance. A fourth covered the door in the prone, an
AK aimed at it should anyone try to breach the door.

Seven
blocks away from the RPG team, more Godesto men sprang into action upon getting
the text that read “Go.” Men leaped out of trucks and vans, brandishing AK’s
and M-16’s in a small public park area that was lit by a few scattered streetlights.
A quick perimeter was established in the forested area of the park while men
yanked tarps off the trucks, carried equipment toward an open area typically
used by picnickers, and set up a pair of 81 mm mortars. Police had been paid
off to avoid the area, but the men on the perimeter would not hesitate to drop
anyone stupid enough to show up.

The
mortars were leveled and aimed while other men cracked open ammo crates and
prepared for an all-out barrage against the Presidential Palace. A woman walking
home from a long night bartending saw the men setting up with their weapons,
screamed, and fled. The few people who were up at the late hour either ignored
the shriek or shut their windows in fear.

No one
would call the authorities. Ratting out cartel gunmen in the middle of the
night was a fast way to die in Mexico.

The
distance was so short that missing would be difficult, but a spotter watched
the Presidential Palace ready to call in adjustments for the mortars. And while
it might seem improbable to most that Hernan Flores’s men could get their hands
on mortars and ammo, this was simply not the case.

The
mortars were borrowed from a Mexican Army captain who was being paid $30,000
for their use. The captain had also stockpiled the ammunition for the attack by
underfiring the allotted rounds for numerous training exercises the past three
months. And since the troops under the captain had no idea how many live rounds
they were allotted for each session, no one was the wiser.

Bottom
line: The rounds wouldn’t be missed and if the police intercepted Flores’s men
after the attack and managed to get their hands on the mortars, the serial
numbers would show them reported as stolen. The captain would still be in the
clear as he’d been told to report them as stolen if he didn’t have them back in
his possession within two hours to the minute after they had been picked up. And
the captain was so nervous that he waited in his vehicle a mile from the front
gate, desperate to get the mortars back into the armory as quickly as possible.
Thirty thousand dollars was nice, but the stress it was causing him was about
to kill him. He really hoped they were only being used against another cartel’s
outpost, as he’d been told, but the thought they could be used otherwise only
brought more sweat to his forehead and more pain to his stomach. He was covered
in sweat and on the verge of puking, but his family had been threatened and the
money was, well, good for a night’s work...

Back at
the mortar firing site, a man who was obviously in charge called out a final
grid point and the first rounds were dropped into the mortar tubes. The rounds
fired -- thump, thump -- from the two 81 mm mortars. They arced high into the
sky, over the buildings in front of them and thousands of feet into the air.

And after
what seemed like a minute but was more like thirty seconds, they slammed into
the compound of the Presidential Palace. Both landed long -- one shot struck
near a Humvee on the perimeter, another outside the compound and into the side
of a popular coffee shop, where it blasted out glass and flipped tables and
chairs.

The
spotter saw the impacts and said into a phone, on which the mortar commander
waited, “Drop fifty. Fire for effect.”

Inside
the Presidential Palace, guards rushed into the sleeping quarters of President
Roberto Rivera and practically dragged him out of the bed before he was even
awake.

“We must
get your family down into the basement for safety,” one screamed.

Rivera,
half-awake, grabbed his wife by the arm and the two rushed out of the room.
They had started down the hall when Rivera stopped and ripped his forearm from
the guard’s hand.

“What
about my kids?”

“We’re
getting them,” the guard said. “Let’s go! We don’t have much time.”

The
mortar team commander heard the adjustment from the spotter, closed the phone,
and dropped it in the pocket of his jeans. He instructed his men to drop fifty
on their mortars, and he spoke these words without haste or worry. After all,
the police had been bribed, and the perimeter was dotted with gunmen who could
deal with any cops who had unhealthy ideas about honor and duty. He felt
certain no authorities would enter their area until well after they had fired
their massive volley and departed.

Besides,
his men fed off of his confidence and it was important they get this right.
Hernan Flores and his Godesto Cartel had spent a fortune on this operation.
Paying former Army soldiers to fire into the country’s Presidential compound
was not cheap, but threats on family members helped secure their loyalty.

The men
shifted the angle of the mortars to move the impact back fifty yards. With a
slight final adjustment and double-check of the sights, the ammo men began
dropping the mortar rounds in as fast as possible. They nudged the tubes to the
left or right with each shot -- they didn’t want each round landing in the same
impact zone, and they wanted to cover the entire area.

It was an
immediate suppression drill -- a simple one they all knew -- and each tube had
ten rounds. The men fired all the rounds in twenty-five seconds.

The delay
needed to call in the adjustment and more accurately aim the mortars gave the
Palace security detail time to get the Rivera family in the Presidential
Palace’s basement, which doubled as a bunker. Guards slammed shut a safe-like
steel door, and looked up with obvious relief to now be under a reinforced
roof.

Rivera’s
assistant head of security -- the actual head of security was at home asleep --
double-checked his headcount for the people in the room. After confirming that
the President and his entire family were safe, he motioned to two men.

“Draw
your weapons and cover the door” he said.

It was a
bold request and the two men hesitated. Behind them, a bit of anger crossed
President’s Rivera’s face, but the assistant head of security ignored it, as
well as the questioning looks from his men. This wasn’t the time to worry about
feelings -- either his or theirs.

“Do it,”
he said.

He turned
away from the guards and the President and saw the look of alarm on the face of
the First Lady, who held her kids tightly. He shrugged off the looks. He’d take
his ass-chewing tomorrow if they made it through the night. And with that
thought, he lifted his radio.

“The
President is secure,” he announced. “Get the react force on the line and alert
the reserve force and have them scramble to our position.”

Four
platoons of men, all soldiers wearing flak jackets and helmets, and carrying
long rifles, rushed from two large rooms in the inner sanctum of the
Presidential Palace. They spilled out onto the grounds and reinforced the
perimeter and the guard stations. Their numbers swelled the sixty already in
place by an extra hundred men.