Target Deck - 02 (22 page)

“Very well,” the Platoon Sergeant replied. “I will stay here and prep the demolition. Take the assault line forward of the LOA and secure prisoners if possible.”

Fedorchenko went into his assault pack, pawing through the C4 explosives he had brought along for the task, his mind already thinking about the best way to destroy what was left of the training camp when gunfire broke out behind him.

“That can't be good,” Deckard said looking at the Predator UAV feed projected in their Operations Center.

The circling UAV captured the scene below in gray and black thermal vision. They had watched the assault on the camp nearly stall for a moment before Fedorchenko pulled the men together and got them moving again.

On the opposite side of the flat range, they could see ten heat signatures running along a path through the bush and up to the range itself. From there the cartel gunmen would be behind the actual assault element. Who knew how many friendlies they would be able to take out before the platoon could re-orient itself, displace the Mk48 machine guns to a new firing position, and assault through the new enemy force.

Deckard had no doubt that they could and would do it, but taken by surprise like that, he might have a single squad coming home rather than a platoon.

The cartel men must have been stationed down below the hills as look outs along one of the major roads so they could warn the base camp of any Guatemalan military presence. They had not expected a combat jump on their compound and now the gunmen were rushing back to reinforce a camp that they didn't realize was already wiped out. If they did, they probably would have beat feet all the way back to Mexico and called it a day.

Suddenly, the reinforcements stopped in their tracks. Through the thermal camera on the UAV, Deckard could see specs of black flying off the human forms. It was a black hot camera, which meant everything in black was something hot. It picked up on the infrared light given off by human body heat. What this meant in practical terms was that Deckard was watching small bits of flesh being stripped off one gunmen's body as they were ambushed.

“Looks like Kurt has it under control,” Frank said, spitting another wad of dip into his cup.

The Zapatista's didn't lack anything in courage, but Kurt knew from previous experience that their marksmanship left much to be desired. This was why he watched in shock as one of the cartel gunmen spun around in a macabre dance of death as Gomez launched a fully automatic stream of gunfire from his AK-47 into their adversary.

Kurt Jager zeroed in, taking single precise shots that dropped the cartel men one by one. Bullets sliced through the foliage above his head as one gunman attempted to return fire.

Thinking quickly, Kurt had his four man element occupy an ambush site once he had found an elbow in the trail leading to the airfield. He and Gomez lay in the prone looking down the long axis of the trail while Pascal and his Mexican counterpart occupied the short end. The result was a deadly L-shaped ambush. The two Zapatistas were instructed to fire on full auto in order to keep the enemy's heads down more than to effectively engage. This would be done by the two former Special Operations soldiers who would shoot with their rifles on semi-automatic.

The tree that the German had taken cover behind provided more concealment than cover as it was so thin, but it was all that was available and even that was being shredded. It was a frantic several seconds of both parties yanking on triggers and searching for targets. The Mexicans were shooting at muzzle flashes in the night, if they even had the chance to fire at all. The joint mercenary and Zapatista force fired on one gunman after the next until nobody was left standing.

Kurt breathed a sigh of relief.

They had gotten lucky.

Very lucky.

“Contact rear,” Fedorchenko said keying up his radio.

“That's a friendly Blocking Position,” Pat announced over the net. “Wait one.”

The Kazakh listened to the onslaught behind him, wondering what was going on until their commander got back on the assault net.

“You're clear Zulu-One. The threat has been eliminated. Continue with the mission and give me a one minute warning before you initiate any demo.”

“Roger Alpha-One.”

Documents, laptop computers, cellular phones, and anything else that could yield any kind of intelligence value had been rounded up by the Samruk mercenaries and put into several kitbags to be transported back to Oaxaca.

As would the prisoner they had captured.

The assault squads had finished their sweep out behind the objective where perhaps another dozen bodies had been found. They had been attempting to escape the camp when the bullets of the Mk48 gunners chased them through the trees, creating a wall of lead that they ran right into. One of those that had survived was expectant, he would not live much longer with bullet wounds through both legs and his stomach. He was dully relieved of his misery with a single mercy shot.

Another had very serious extremity wounds through his lower leg, and a second that had nearly amputated his forearm. Using tourniquets, the Kazakhs got the bleeding under control and the platoon medic administered some pain killers. He was their trophy and they weren't going to let him die on them now.

Several blood trails had been discovered leading away from the kill zone, a few lucky ones who had escaped the camp but the amount of blood they had left behind cast serious doubt on how much longer they had to live. They would probably try to hide in the bush until dawn, quietly bleeding out until they succumbed to their wounds. At any rate, the mercenaries didn't have the time to follow up with a tracker team and were not interested. Whomever made it out of the camp would not be returning to Mexico to give them a hard time, that much was certain.

“Alpha-One this is Zulu-One.”

“Go ahead Zulu.”

“One minute.”

The mercenaries carried their dead, kit bags full of confiscated material and their prisoner off the objective with Corporal Maxim leading them back to the airfield. Corporal Abykeyev would remain in place with his weapons squad until Fedorchenko left as the last man off the objective.

Twisting the pin on his fuse igniter, he initiated the time fuse before putting his nose down and smelling it. In the dark it was sometimes hard to see if it was actually burning or not.

“Burning,” he announced into the radio.

All weapons and equipment found on the objective had been shoved into one of the cadre huts where they had strung out of ring main of detonation chord with five bricks of C4 plastic explosives tied into it.

Turning, Fedorchenko ran to catch up with his platoon.

Corporal Abykeyev watched with a smile as the gunner's faces were revealed for a second by the explosion that tore apart a second cadre hut.

They had burned through almost their entire supply of machine gun ammunition and each gun team had jumped with five hundred rounds distributed between them. With about one hundred rounds left per gun that meant that they had riddled the kill zone with 1,200 rounds of 7.62 ammunition.

With their task completed, he pulled one gun at a time off the Support By Fire line in case of the unlikely event that any more bad guys decided to show up. Once he pulled everyone back they got back into a squad wedge formation and went to meet up with the rest of their platoon at their rendezvous point back on the airfield.

Pat was kneeling, listening to his hand mic, when the platoon came humping back to meet up at their rendezvous which was conveniently co-located with his Control Point.

Their dead were laid down next to the CP, their weapons and equipment secured for transport back to Mexico. The former Delta operator looked down at the three men, one of whom was headless. They did not have any body bags and the frank reality of war simply would not disappear. The bodies were mangled, twisted forms of what had been living men just moments ago. There was no hidden message or soul shaking epiphany to be found in the corpses of the dead as found in Hollywood films. There was only an unshakable finality to be found that, as unsettling as it was, could not be undone.