Tom Clancy's Act of Valor (25 page)

The two trucks stopped ten yards from each other and began to disgorge SEALs and GAFE. In the lead truck, Sonny and the Team One sniper rose through a hole they had cut in the canvas shroud and began to look for targets. Per their plan, De la Ribandeo, Sonny with his SAW and a heavy ammo load, and the two Team One SEALs were to hold the entrance to the main building and, if possible, get the sniper and a GAFE rifleman or two up to a perch, where they could command as many building entrances as possible. Their job as the blocking element was containment and isolation. They would shoot any hostiles who came out of the building and shoot any hostiles who approached the building. For now, all was quiet. They had taken out the inner circle of security and the gate guards. But those gunmen on the outer rings of security would soon be collapsing back in on the milk factory, so there would be no shortage of bad guys inbound to their position.

The Team One communicator was to stay with De la Ribandeo and serve as a relay between the GAFE commander and his men outside and the assault team inside. He was also on both his sat and cell phones, letting anyone and everyone know they were in contact, in Mexicali, and within sight of the border. Sonny found a good shooting position, where he could command both the gate and the main entrance to the building.

De la Ribandeo stepped to where Engel and Nolan were preparing to enter the building. “I think Sergeant Lopez and his men can stand with your men here,” he said in a conversational tone. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll join you inside.”

Engel started to protest but knew he hadn’t the time nor, he rightly guessed, the authority to overrule him. Aside from that, the twinkle was no longer there; the slim Castellón was all business. Engel nodded, and the assault team moved to the building.

Sergeant Lopez and three of his men ran to the sandbagged guard shack by the gate and dragged the dead sentries aside. When the first of the cartel gunmen cautiously approached, they casually waved to them. When they got close enough to see that all was not right, Lopez and his men opened fire. From then on it was a gun battle, and the bodies began to collect in the street outside the abandoned milk factory.

Engel, assuming the front door might not be the best entry point, led his team to the loading dock, and a single steel door next to a series of loading-bay doors rolled down. They paused for a moment while Weimy quickly taped a breaching charge to the door. It had a command initiator. After a “Fire in the hole!” the d {ole After aoor was hurled inward by the force of the explosion, and the squad filed in through the smoke. A.J., once more, was the first man in and almost tripped over the body of the cartel gunman who had been guarding the door.

Several floors below in the subbasement, Shabal and Sanchez looked at each other when they heard the explosion. They and one of the Filipino recruits were bent over a map of Southern California. On a nearby table, a dozen explosive vests were neatly laid out. The building was concrete, as were the floors, and this was their first warning that they were under attack. Shabal instantly knew it had to be the Americans.

“No,” he seethed. “First Cedros and now here! This cannot be happening!” Christo, he reasoned; it had to be Christo.
If I live through this,
he vowed,
I will find him and his precious family, and I will kill them all.

“How many men do you have down here? How many?” Shabal demanded harshly.

Sanchez hesitated, his eyes wide with fear. “I don’t know, not many,” he admitted. “They are all up on the street.” He was both puzzled and frightened—puzzled that a Mexicali or the federal police force was in the building without his knowing about it. He had paid them all off, and there were dozens of his gunmen for blocks around the abandoned factory. And he was scared not so much from the authorities; they could be reasoned with or bought off. But this Chechen madman was different. He could neither be reasoned with nor bribed.

“We must hurry,” Shabal said as he scooped up an armload of vests, about half of them. “Get whatever men you can find and hold them off.”

“What if we can’t hold them off?”

“You will hold them, or as surely as Allah is Great, I will kill you.” Sanchez knew he meant it. He went off to round up whatever men he could find in the basement. There were but a handful. Sanchez gave them their instructions and hurried after Shabal and the safety of the basement tunnel complex. Just ahead of him, Shabal was rallying his Filipino recruits. There was now shouting and gunfire coming from the main basement stairwell.

On the street level, the battle raged, but it was a controlled rage. Initially, there was much bravado in the young cartel bucks who charged at the milk factory. Most were veteran gunmen in that they had ambushed rival gangs and preyed on the families of policemen and
federales
. But they had never been exposed to the disciplined, interlocking fields of fire presented by the SEAL and GAFE defenders. Sonny and the Team One SEALs melded well. They had never before worked together, but they immediately fell into their roles. Sonny with the Mk46 light machine gun suppressed enemy fire and broke the early en masse charges. The SEAL radio man guarded Sonny’s exposed flank and took up the slack when Sonny changed ammo drums on his gun. The Team One sniper and his SR25 7.62 semiautomatic sniper rifle found a ladder to the top of the building and took up a position there. Both Sonny and the other SEAL called out targets, and he took them out. Soon the GAFE riflemen were calling out targets. The spotters were needed, as the SEAL sniper had to move after each shot or risk counter-sniper fire. He popped over the shallow roof abutment, took his {entnd shot, and ducked back behind cover.

Before taking up their defensive positions at the gate and behind the building, the GAFE soldiers had gathered the weapons and ammunition from the security contingent at the gate. For now, they had plenty of ammo. But the Tangos kept coming. And there was a Darwinian component to the battle. As the defenders killed the younger and more inexperienced fighters, smarter and more seasoned ones took their place.

In the basement of the old factory, Engel, Nolan, and the others began the deadly business of clearing the dark recesses of an unknown building. Had they been able to find the power source and extinguish the lights, they could have moved much more quickly and safely. In the shadows, dimly lit hallways, and bright splotches of bare bulbs, they were constantly going from NODs to naked eyes—IR targeting lasers to visible red-dot lasers.

Without direction or commands, the SEALs and the GAFE fell into a rhythm. The SEALs—Weimy, Ray, and A.J.—cleared one room, while the three GAFE soldiers cleared the next. Engel, Nolan, and De la Ribandeo served as security and led the file down the hall to the next room. As the basement level had multiple hallways and corridors, they had to be prepared for threats ahead of them as well as behind. Nolan, with his NOD, picked up one such Tango following them and shot him dead. In one of the rooms, they found a dozen or more cartel hostages. Most were bloody and showed signs of torture. There was a low, collective moan as the GAFE clearing team kicked in the door. After a quick consultation, De la Ribandeo elected to leave two of his men with the hostages, and the others moved quickly on. On occasion, they could hear footsteps receding down the hall.

At one point they came to the room with the maps and leftover vests. Engel quickly looks at the maps and map notations while Nolan counts vests.

“Boss, we don’t have all the vests.”

“And the others are headed for L.A. and other points north,” Engel replies. “We gotta find these guys.”

They hear scrambling down one of the passageways leading away from the room, toward the rear of the factory subbasement. They head down the passageway. Soon the concrete floor gives way to dirt. They’re moving quickly now, accepting the risk that comes when forced to do so. From a window, one of the cartel gunmen sprays a short burst into their corridor, before De la Ribandeo turns his Uzi on him and kills him.

Engel, now on point, is rounding a corner bathed in shadows, with the firing now behind him. Suddenly he is shoved against a wall by a small man, one of the Filipino recruits. The man is surprisingly strong. He has only a pistol, but he manages to parry the barrel of Engel’s M4 and bring the pistol up. Engel blocks the handgun, but the man begins to fire. The rounds splash against the concrete near his head, and are getting closer. For his part, Engel releases the pistol grip of his M4, slides a sheath knife from his lapel, and inserts it between his attacker’s ribs and into his heart. As the Filipino slides to the floor, Engel takes the pistol from the dying man’s hand, tosses it aside, and resumes heading down the hall.

“Everyone, okay?” Engel calls back.

“Took a ricochet in the calf,” A.J. says, “but drive on. I can keep up.”

They move on with A.J. now in trail, but he’s watching their back.

“Hey, Boss, you there?”

“Copy, Sonny, but I’m kind of busy. What you got?”

“We’re getting low on ammo here, and there’s no shortage of Tangos. I have one GAFE down hard and another wounded.” Engel pauses and looks back at Nolan.

“Let’s send A.J. back with some of our ammo. One way or another, we won’t need that many more rounds.”

Engel nods. “Hold on Sonny. A.J.’s coming back with some bullets.”

“Roger that, Boss.”

Nothing more needed to be said. A.J. works his way up the file, collecting magazines. Then he turns and hurries back up the passageway, half limping and half jogging. With the prospect of more ammunition on the way, Sonny and the two Team One SEALs easily repel the next assault. There is no more extra ammo for the sniper on the roof, but every round he has left, he makes count. Like all snipers, he’s in a zone—one shot, one kill. Soon, the new milk factory defenders on the ground have a new supply of ammo, and A.J.’s gun is in the fight.

Back underground, one of Shabal’s diminishing number of recruits decides that she has had enough. She pulls a pistol from her waistband, turns, and runs back at her pursuers. The team is in yet another room, trying to decide which of the two passageways is the right one. Engel hears her running toward him long before he sees her, and takes a knee. Chief Nolan is checking out the other tunnel, but De la Ribandeo is at Engel’s side. Seeing the backlit silhouettes, she begins firing wildly as she runs. The two men at the mouth of the passageway, seeing the muzzle flashes, return fire, killing her instantly.

“Well,” Nolan remarks, stepping back from the other passageway, “at least we know which way they went so we can . . . Aw, shit, no!”

On the dirt floor is
Commandante
Juan de Rio de la Ribandeo, lying on his back with a bullet entry in his high, aristocratic forehead. His dark, sightless eyes stare at the ceiling as a pool of dark blood begins to collect around the back of his head like a crimson halo.

Engel sits back on one heel, his M4 pointed up and his head lowered. “Dammit!” he says quietly. Then he rises and sets off at a run, down the passageway where the woman had come from. He is followed by Nolan, Weimy, Ray, and the last remaining GAFE. As the GAFE soldier passes the woman’s body, he puts two rounds into her head.

*  *  *

The woman had brought the pursuer {t tsp;*s hot on their heels, but she had also given Shabal an idea. At the next room opening—a small cavern lit by a single small-wattage bulb—he halts with Sanchez and now only three of his recruits, a woman and two men. He selects the woman. She is anxious, her forehead glistening with sweat.

“Sister,” he says in Tagalog, “are you ready to be with your martyred husband in paradise?”

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. He quickly slips one of the vests on her and removes the safety shunt from the initiator. Then he pulls the final safety clip.

“You know what to do.
Allahu Akbar
.”

“Allahu Akbar,”
she mumbles back, but she does not move.

“Now!” Shabal commands. She turns and begins to walk back up the passageway.

The five pursuers pause at a cross tunnel to listen, unsure if Shabal and the others have continued on or have taken one of the side paths. It’s dark in the passageway, and the four SEALs have on their NODs. The woman is walking slowly with only the aid of a small flashlight. Engel sees her first, and in the glow of the small light, he sees what she is wearing.

“Bomb!” he yells, and the SEALs all dive into the side tunnels. The SEALs make it, and the GAFE almost does. His legs don’t clear the edge of the tunnel. His lower torso is shredded by the force of the blast and several of the ceramic balls. The SEALs all have on Peltors, so they still have their hearing. The GAFE soldier can’t hear or feel anything. Nolan gets to him first and drags him by the collar into the cross tunnel, not that it will do much good now.

“No es bueno, eh, Jefe?”

“Su es un Mano, amigo. Es tambien,”
replied Engel, but the soldier merely smiles and grips Nolan’s hand.

“Anybody else hurt?”

“I took a ricochet under my arm, Boss,” Weimy says. “It went through, but I don’t know how bad it is. I don’t think it’s a sucker.” What Weimy was saying was that he didn’t think it had penetrated his chest cavity, meaning that he may not be a pneumothorax candidate. But there was no way to be sure. Engel makes a quick decision.

“Weimy, radio check,” he says on his radio, and Weimy responds, which means his radio and Weimy’s are both still working. Then audibly, “I want you to stay here with our GAFE brother. Call me if that wound starts sucking or you collapse a lung.” SEALs can talk like that to each other; they’ve all either seen it before or experienced it.