Target Deck - 02 (35 page)

The Central Asian mercenaries were grim, men of hard stock who grew up in the steppes of Kazakhstan. They hardly stopped to acknowledge Pat.

Then, as he proceeded down the line he found a kid wearing jeans and a t-shirt, firing an AK on fully automatic down at the general area where the enemy was.

“Cody?”

“FUCK!”

“What the hell are you doing up here,” Pat said grabbing him by the shoulder.

“I'M IN THE SHIT!”

“Who the fuck is down in the OPCEN monitoring the comms gear?”

“I put Aghassi and the sniper on Deckard's position to help, then I came up here.”

“So who is pulling radio guard.”

“IF I DON'T GET TO KILL A MOTHERFUCKER THEN THIS WHOLE TRIP IS A WASTE FOR ME!”

Pat exploded. Grabbing Cody by the ear he yanked him off the line and towards the stairs.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“OW, MY EAR!”

“Get the fuck back down there and do your job!”

Headlights bounced across the hillside, closing in on the communication towers.

“Shooter-One,” Aghassi radioed. “I need you down here fast. Looks like the jig is up. They are sending a goon squad after us.”

A rope snapped as it uncoiled, just barely scraping the dirt at the bottom of the cell phone tower. Nikita came zipping down the line in his rappelling harness, slowing his decent at the last moment before he made contact with the ground.

“Was that fast enough?” he called over to Aghassi.

“Fast enough for Hollywood.”

The sniper pulled the remaining rope through his figure eight attachment and joined his teammate. It looked like a lone van approaching from across the crest of the hilltop, opposite the direction they had taken from the amphitheater.

Nikita dropped an empty magazine and replaced it with a full one from his Mayflower low profile chest rig. Extending the bipod legs, he rested the sniper rifle on the hood of their car and waited for the van to close to an acceptable range. After sweating it out on top of the tower at Jimenez' compound, biting his nails all night, it almost seemed like he wouldn't get to do his job this time out.

Now he had blown through two magazines and killed somewhere around thirty targets, accounting for some fliers. The high angle shots he had made had been the most challenging of his sniper career thus far.

Nikita let the van get within three hundred meters before he took his first shot. He aimed low, towards the base of the windshield as bullets had a tendency to ride upwards with the curvature of the glass. Sure enough, the rounds were deflected slightly upwards as the glass spider webbed.

The sliding door was thrown open and one man managed to jump clear and tumble into the bushes as the van careened off the road and flopped over, rolling several times before really picking up momentum and flying off a cliff where it crashed somewhere down below.

The lone survivor stood up and dusted himself off, probably not comprehending what had just happened, maybe disoriented from his fall.

Nikita zapped him with one round through his neck.

Aghassi walked around the vehicle, got in, and turned over the engine. Nikita loaded up in the back again. Reaching for his radio he hailed the OPCEN.

“This is Spooky-One, we are RTB,” he said, announcing that they were Returning To Base.

There was nothing but static on the other end.

“I say again, this is Spooky-One, we are RTB.”

Finally, a voice crackled over the net.

“ROGER.”

The pre-dawn light made everything look hazy.

Sergeant Zhenis had directed the convoy from the lead vehicle and gotten them out of Oaxaca City. They had made several more contacts and had to re-route around a half dozen hasty road blocks that Jimenez' men had raised at seemingly random places around the city, but they finally cleared the area and were well on their way back to the compound. Deckard had gotten off the radio with Pat and Cody after receiving an update. They had fought off the attack, but had been hammered by mortar fire. The enemy got so close that the Samruk International mercenaries had finally sorted the enemy out with hand grenades.

The four vehicle convoy turned onto Federal Road 175. While they usually drove completely blacked out with both headlights and tail lights taped up and the drivers using night vision goggles, it was now light enough that they flipped up their PVS-14s. The houses and buildings had thinned out as they headed back to their base up in the mountains just north of Oaxaca.

Deckard looked at the men sitting beside him in the outward facing seats. Their Asiatic features might have stood out in Mexico, but they fit right in wherever there was combat. They were tired, exhausted really, but would be ready to execute the next mission when the time came.

Leaning forward, he checked up on the rest of the convoy. The roads were well paved with a center median dividing the two lanes of traffic. Each vehicle maintained an even interval to minimize damage in case of an ambush.

Squinting in the early dawn light, Deckard saw something laying along the side of the road. His heart jumped a beat as they got closer and he saw that it was a bloated donkey carcass laying at the edge of the street.

The animal corpse and the lead vehicle in the convoy disappeared in cloud of smoke and fire. The assault truck spun around with its rear two wheels going airborne, the Improvised Explosive Device having struck the rear end of the vehicle. One of the doors was blown open. Body parts and scraps of flesh were tossed into the air.

The driver in the second vehicle had a moment of panic and slammed on the brakes. The third and fourth vehicles quickly established a security perimeter around the disabled truck.

Deckard jumped down to the pavement and stumbled forward.

Looking back, he saw that he had slipped on a dismembered foot.

It was still wearing a charred combat boot.

30

The sun was creeping above the horizon, the sound of chirping birds interrupted by the sound of car doors slamming shut. Two Sport Utility Vehicles unloaded nine men, each wearing black masks over their faces, each carrying a Sub-Machine Gun ranging from Uzis to the Swedish K. One of the masked men moved up the dusty driveway and to the front gate. Slipping a knife in the cracks between the two swinging gateways was enough to pop the latch open and allow the killers access.

The front of the white building had a large cross above the door. The men stood around, unconcerned for their safety while two other masked men came forward with sledge hammers. One of the men lit a cigarette while they waited. They had all the time in the world.

The men with the sledge hammers began pounding on the front door, one standing on each side and taking turns like lumberjacks hacking away at a tree. Maintaining a low grip on the handle they alternated swings, one after the other. Slowly, the metal door began to bend. The frame buckled under the force of the sledges at the top and bottom while the lock in the middle of the door held in place.

Inside the Christian mission, bedroom lights were flipping on.

Finally, the locking mechanism on the door twisted and snapped. The door swung open and the gunmen swarmed inside. The only one left in the courtyard was the masked man who was finishing his cigarette. Inside he could hear shouting in Spanish. Two of his men were indigenous personnel contracted for the job who could speak the language. The others were members of his regular crew.

Dropping what was left of the cigarette, the leader of the group left the cherry burning in the dirt and walked around to the back of the Christian hospital. According to the information he had received, the local holy man took in the invalids, taking them off their parent's hands and housing them in his hospital. Them and the addicts of course. Taking a seat on top of an old chicken coop, he reached into the breast pocket on his shirt and pulled free another smoke.

The back door burst open and the Padre somersaulted out with one of the masked gunman kicking him from behind. The Padre spoke a mile a minute in rapid fire Spanish as he clawed his way to his knees, pleading with the gunmen. The masked man swung a boot into his face that sent the Catholic priest back down to the ground in a heap. The gunman didn't understand a word he had been saying anyway.

As the sick, the recovering drug addicts, and the mentally retarded were paraded out of the hospital, the man sitting on the chicken coop flicked his lighter and puffed on his second cigarette of the morning. Deep horizontal scars climbed up his exposed forearms like the rungs of a ladder.

One of the invalids was laughing uncontrollably, his thick eye brows arched upwards as he looked at the ground and giggled about something. Another gunman came forward and slammed the butt stock of his Uzi into the young man's stomach, doubling him over.

Several of the patients were hugging themselves, some pleading with tears in their eyes. Some of the permanent patients, the ones with cognitive problems clearly had no idea what was happening. One of them began to clap her hands. The gunmen herded them all up against the brick wall.

The last person pushed out of the door was a female nurse. She was still in her pajamas, white panties and a t-shirt. Two of the gunmen began to tear her shirt off. She lashed out, trying to sink her nails into her attackers and received a fist in one of her eyes for her efforts. Slammed against the wall, they tore her shirt off, exposing her breasts. The panties were pulled down around her ankles.

“
Kiff
,” the leader said, waving his hand with the cigarette between his fingers.

They had a job to do.

The gunman who had punched the nurse grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the wall. She sunk down onto her backside, trailing blood down the side of the wall. The Padre was yanked to his feet and stood up next to her.

As the dawn light peaked above the brick wall and cast golden rays on the side of the Christian hospital, some of the patients looked at the gunmen lined up in front of them. No one said a thing.