Target Deck - 02 (9 page)

“It was a cop, one of the good ones. He would have gone to you if he thought your movement could mount an effective resistance against the cartels. The Zapatistas have been weak since you were chased back into the jungle by the Mexican military. You of all people know this. Your troops carry rusted, shot out weapons. When was the last time they did any hard military training?”

“As you can see, we don't exactly have the budget of your Defense Department, or your mercenaries in this case. We are a people's movement.”

“What if you could be more?”

Cammadante Zero took another puff from his pipe.

“I'm listening.”

“I can provide trainers, commandos who have seen war the world over. These men are experts in unconventional warfare. We can issue your men the modern weapons we capture from the cartels.”

“But?”

“But this communism nonsense still bothers me. Marxism died a long time ago and isn't coming back. I don't hold any illusions about what Southern Mexico will look like after we leave but I need your assurance that you will lead your people into something that resembles a democratic process. Replacing an oligarchy with an autocracy is unacceptable to me.”

“I thought you were a gunslinger,” the rebel leader said with a nod. “I had no idea that you were an idea man. I'm happy to hear that we think along the same lines.”

“Don't play me on this.”

Commandate Zero looked up at Deckard.

“Why don't you sit down for a moment.”

“I've got work to do.”

“It will take your men at least another half hour to finish hiding that submarine that you captured.”

“You've got eyes and ears,” Deckard inferred.

“Yes,” Zero said. “We have them everywhere.”

12

Deckard grounded his kit in their newly acquired gear room. After setting his rifle down, he ripped the Velcro cummerbund from his plate carrier and lifted it over his head. He was drenched in sweat and covered in black soot. While first platoon was out taking care of business, second platoon had been preparing the Ortega compound as their headquarters, getting everything ready for ongoing operations. One of the garages had been emptied, cleared out to make way for a load out room.

It was only by sheer chance that he was able to effect a marriage of convenience with the Zapatista rebels. He had proven his
bonifidis
to the rebels by taking down Ortega and striking out at Jimenez. The populist movement hated the cartels and the violence they brought to Mexico just as much as anyone else who wasn't entranced by the romanticism that surrounded the drug lords.

Drugs brought with them drug culture. Just as the addict made their entire family sick with their addiction, drugs could make an entire culture sick, their very identity seared into the drug mythology. In a country like Mexico where the government was hopelessly corrupt, the criminals were often seen as heroes. They were the underdogs.

In the third world there were few alternatives to the human-destroying authoritarian governments. Some gravitated to the cartels as a way to advance in life, at least until they no longer had a life to speak off, snuffed out by rivals or comrades for growing too powerful. Others allied themselves with the leftist rebel groups. If he had to pick between the two, Commandete Zero and his rebels were clearly the better choice. Say what you would about the Zapatistas, they were a homegrown rebellion seeking some kind of reformation. There wasn't really an equivalency between the rebels and the butchers in the cartels.

Keeping his war belt on, Deckard slung the AK-103 over a shoulder and headed out. He needed a cup of coffee. What he really needed was a few hours sleep but there was a war to fight and Samruk was working on a very limited time line.

Stepping out into the hall, Deckard's footsteps echoed down the empty halls. When he came to Ortega's arms room, he stopped at the door to look inside. Nikita stood with his back to the door. He was running a cleaning rod down the barrel of a massive .50 caliber Barrett Anti-Material rifle. It was one of the many weapons that they had liberated from Ortega.

Sadly, the large bore rifle was nothing more than a show piece to the cartel. It was just an expression of machismo, they hadn't even bothered to attach a scope to it. Nikita would give the rifle a cleaning, get the rifle zeroed, and put it to use. Use the enemy's weapons against them, it was the perfect battlefield recovery.

Nikita slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder at Deckard. His eyes were cold, his face expressionless.

Deckard moved along. Now wasn't the time.

Several months ago they had stood together on the deck of the Crown of the Pacific. It had been a super-cruise liner that had sunk to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. By that point they were both barely on their feet, wounded by the fight of and for their lives. Samruk International had been put through the meat grinder, reduced from a full battalion to only a few platoons.

For reasons that confounded those who remained, they had survived the ordeal. Samruk had pulled off the impossible but it wasn't pretty. Their bodies had slowly healed, but Deckard knew that Nikita's mind had never really left that ship as it slipped beneath the waves towards the ocean floor.

Crossing the courtyard, Deckard looked over the security positions on his way. Pairs of Samruk mercenaries stood guard at intervals along the compound walls. They were still in the process of building up fighting positions with sandbags, bricks, and mortar. RPG launchers and PKM machine guns had been assigned to each position. So far, so good.

Entering Ortega's mansion, Deckard weaved through more of the mercenaries as they moved about. They would be switching out, some of them bedding down for the some sleep, others relieving the guard force so they could get some sleep before heading out on new missions once the intel was developed. Right now their battle rhythm was a little haphazard, but they'd get it figured out. Probably just in time for them to wrap things up and head out, or so Deckard suspected based on previous experience. Inside the OPCEN, he found Cody hard at work behind his computer. Projected on the wall was an organizational chart that attempted to break down the structure of the Jimenez cartel.

Deckard poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup and took a seat. Scanning the link chart that Cody had made, Deckard knew he was sharper than he had given him credit for. Rather than a typical pyramid type hierarchy, Cody had accurately described the cartel as being largely horizontal.

The big problem with link charts was that Special Operations forces had a tendency to think that terrorist organizations had a strict chain of command and that they were all carefully organized into individual terror squads. This was the result of American military officers looking at terror networks through their own cultural lens. They thought that terrorist groups were organized along the same lines as the US Army.

In fact, terrorist groups functioned around loose associations. Only the most disciplined cells would be rigid or military like in their structure. They were dangerous, but quickly targeted and eliminated by strike teams. It was the disorganized chaos that proved to be a real threat. In Iraq for instance, terrorists from around the world flooded into the country to take part in the Jihad. They circled around linkmen, financiers or ringleaders. Many times they were divided up into task oriented cells. One cell would build an IED, another would set it in place, and yet another would detonate it.

There was no General in charge, not even a Captain, but maybe a lieutenant in some cases. Mexican drug cartels dispensed with the backward aspects of Arab culture, harnessing the power of the free market for their organizational structure. They franchised.

Individuals and small gangs would work on a contract basis, job to job, for the cartels. Often, they were in turn being sub-contracted from another larger player who was the actual link man to the cartel itself. It wasn't uncommon to have various franchised cells running operations who had absolutely no idea who they were working for. They ran drugs, conducted contract killings, and were so compartmentalized that they had no idea who or why they were killing.

As backwards as the Islamic terrorists might have been, they had an ideology. The nebulous cartel structure had none. Even the name
cartel
was more of an invention of the media than anything. No such organization actually existed.

The Mexican Drug War was the first 21st Century conflict. It was a post-political war waged by non-state actors who had no motivation aside from full-auto capitalism.

Deckard sipped his coffee as his team began to filter into the OPCEN and take seats. Samantha walked in and sat down with her arms crossed in front of her. Frank hobbled along on his crutches until he found an empty chair, his new war wounds competing with the old ones as he washed down some pain killers with coffee. Sergeant Major Korgan commanded the attention of the Kazakh Sergeants as he sat down next to Deckard, his presence filling the room. He was from the old school and in Kazakhstan the old school was the Soviet Union. Pat stood with Fedorchenko, waiting.

Finishing off his coffee, Deckard turned and tossed the cup in the trash. He found himself looking twice, his eyes just picking up something in the corner of the room. It was Nikita. He stood in the only shadow in the room, his back to the wall. The sniper's eyes were locked onto the organizational chart projected on the wall. He was memorizing the names.

“Let's get started,” Deckard said as he got to his feet. “This is going to be a situational report to make sure everyone is on track, so we have several orders of business. First off, the attack on Jimenez' submarine base was a success although we encountered a few complications. The compound itself was very professional. Well hidden terrain wise, camouflaged with some top of the line vinyl, the base was constructed in an organized manner, and the submarine was very sophisticated especially considering that it is essentially a homemade deal. Their only mistake was in being overconfident in how well they were hidden. They only had one guard posted-”

“Thankfully, you didn't let that stop you from burning the place to the ground,” Pat blurted out with a laugh. After Action Reviews took on a different flavor in the unit Pat was from. Delta Force played by their own rules. Deckard was glad he'd talked him into an early retirement and signed him to Samruk.

“Shit happens,” Deckard said with a smile. “The good news is that we captured the submarine for use in future operations and have it cached somewhere safe. Also, we made contact with the local Zapatista rebels. They want the cartels out of their home as much as we do so I've come to an agreement with their leadership. We will be sending a cell of trainers and advisers to work with them. If our advisers feel confident in the intentions and motivations of the Zapatistas they will begin conducting operations with them.”

Samantha frowned.

“You cut a deal with the Zapatistas? Through who?”

“Commandate Zero.”

“Holy shit,” she snorted. “You're something else.”

“You disagree with my decision?”

“No, they have popular support and oppose corruption. As a perpetual outsider it seems that you are able to establish rapport with people who the American government and the cartels would never touch.”

“We'll see how it works. These guys could be an asset to us and help act as a stabilizing force once Samruk pulls out of the region.”

“We also took a prisoner,” Fedorchenko reminded him about the man he had knocked out on the submarine.

“Have you gotten anything out of him yet?”

“He told us that the guy you shot in the face on the submarine was Captain Nemo himself. This clown that you brought back was his right hand man. He's Colombian of course and doesn't know the local players.”

“That intel guy I told you about should be here soon,” Frank interrupted.

“Who?”

“You don't remember me telling you about my boy Aghassi?”

“No, I'm afraid not Frank.”

“He'll be here shortly,” Frank said knowingly. “Aghassi could find a whore in a Wahhabi Mosque. Once he starts working the intel piece we will be able to build a real target deck.”