Authors: Jack Murphy
“Risky.”
“I hope that isn't a complaint,” Deckard said with a smirk.
“Not at all,” she said forming fists with her hands, trying to control the shakes.
“As you can imagine, we didn't have a lot of time. We weren't scheduled to hit this place for a couple more weeks, after we had gathered more intel and did some mission planning.”
“You came for me? Why?”
“Give me a minute and then we'll head down to the police station.”
Deckard walked between mercenaries scurrying across the compound in desert fatigues as they carried out their assigned tasks. He searched the back of several of the assault vehicles before finding what he was looking for and dragged out a green duffel bag.
Samantha turned around, unsure exactly why, as the American began to strip out of his wetsuit. While he dressed, a black Mercedes with tinted windows pulled into the court yard.
“Hey, Deck!” someone yelled from the car window.
“Yeah?”
“We found Ortega's vehicle. It's got level seven armor, in case you want to go outside the wire with a little less visibility.”
“Sounds good,” she heard him say. “Prep two of the trucks to run a few minutes behind us in case anything happens. They can circle in a lager route just outside the city.”
“You got it.”
When she turned around, the commando had exchanged his wetsuit for a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. Sitting on the tailgate of the truck, he pulled on a dry pair of boots before shrugging into body armor adorned with various pouches for ammunition and grenades. Throwing the duffel bag back on the truck, he slung his Kalashnikov rifle over one shoulder.
Ortega's armored luxury vehicle purred as the driver sat on the hood, checking the load in his pistol before sliding it back into its holster.
“How far out are the logistics vehicles?” Deckard asked.
“Any minute now,” the driver said.
“Take the wheel, let's get out of here.”
The driver motioned for her to follow. Samantha slid into the backseat next to him as the driver snapped on his safety belt. Slamming the doors shut, the car weaved through the wreckage of what was left of the fortress' heavy metal gate. Accelerating down the dirt road on a decline, she could see a pair of headlights trailing them in the distance.
“I suppose you want some kind of explanation,” the American said breaking the silence.
“That would be nice.”
“With the situation here in Oaxaca deteriorating, your father reached out to us. He hired us to come in and conduct an area assessment, figure out the topography of the local cartels, collect intelligence, with the possibility of going overt. As you know, he didn't have much faith in your government when it came to cleaning up the mess down here. I came in with an advance party of five men and we worked out of a safe house in town-”
“What was he paying you with?”
“Unreported confiscations of drug money.”
“The confiscations that got him killed.”
“It was Ortega's money so it makes sense.”
“So what happened after he was killed?”
“To tell you the truth we were preparing to withdrawal. Our arrangement with your father wasn't all that legal to begin with. Then you came onto the scene.”
Samantha stared out of the window. A couple ancient deuce and a half cargo trucks came up the hill, forcing the driver to scoot over the edge of the road.
“Those are our supply trucks, we brought everything with us.”
“With you from where?”
“That isn't important right now. Once we decided to come after you, I had my two platoons fly in. The logistics vehicles left the airport staggered back from the assault element by about thirty minutes. The flight was logged as commercial air traffic. Once they got on the ground the police and airport officials were bribed or coerced, or both.”
“Strong armed.”
“So now I have a question for you, why did you come back to Mexico?”
Samantha resumed staring out at the passing hills.
“When I found out that my father was killed I came to take up his post as police chief. I knew no one else would take the job. He was the third chief to be kidnapped and killed in as many years.”
“Gutsy move.”
“But not enough apparently.”
“Bullshit.”
The woman clenched her teeth.
“Just a few hours after I was deputized, Ortega's crew picked me up, grabbed me right off the street.”
“It's in the past. With Ortega out of the way, we can go after the big dogs.”
Approaching the city, they drove under an overpass. A decapitated corpse had been strung up and hung off the side of the bridge. The message, scrawled in blood, was written on the sign nailed into the body's abdomen.
This is what happens to police, dog fuckers.
“How far out are we Pat?”
“Ten minutes from the city.”
“Where can we take you that you will be safe?”
“Nowhere is safe.”
Turning, Deckard looked into large brown eyes. He had seen that look enough times to be scared of it. Ortega's .357 was stuffed down the front of her pants.
She was out for blood.
3
Deckard threw the door open as Pat brought the car to a halt outside the Oaxaca police station. Holding his Kalashnikov at the ready, he proceeded up the steps, striding over a body riddled with bullets as Samantha followed close behind.
A second corpse lay in the entrance, graciously holding the door ajar for them to pass through.
“Better call and cancel that guy's dinner plans.”
The female police chief snorted.
“Cartel scum.”
Behind them, the engine squealed as Pat peeled off to position himself behind the building, just in case everything went sideways on them.
“
Alto
!” someone shouted at them from down the hall.
Samantha spoke in rapid fire Spanish that was too fast for Deckard to follow.
Stepping from behind an over turned desk, with a snub nosed .38 revolver in one hand, a portly man in a police uniform crossed himself. Obviously, he hadn't expected to see his new boss again, not unless she was hanging under an overpass somewhere.
In the corner, a muted television showed a broadcast of a masked man brandishing a machete from behind a podium as he gave his speech. Deckard did not need to hear the audio to know the revolutionary was fixing to lop some
federale's
head off. Over the last few months Mexico had begun its final decent towards chaos, the federal government not controlling anything outside of Mexico City. Everyone with a gun was moving to fill the vacuum and the disarmed civilian population was forced to resort to the machete, the traditional weapon of peasant uprisings in the Latin world.
Continuing their conversation in their native language, the two police officers led Deckard into the offices. Peering into one of the adjacent jail cells, Deckard spotted the bales of narco-dollars wrapped in cellophane, safely locked behind bars.
“They didn't come for the money,” he said curiously, referring to the cartels who would want their money back.
“No,
senor
, the police officer on duty said. Just a few opportunists thinking they might find some easy money. Word must have leaked out on the streets.”
“They had me,” Samantha said. “They thought the money would be theirs to reclaim whenever it suited them.”
“How many police officers do you have on call?”
Samantha looked at her subordinate, who in turned shrugged his shoulders.
“One, including me. The others left, ran away. They will be swallowed up by the Jimenez cartel,” Samantha said referencing the largest and most powerful drug cartel in southern Mexico. “That or they will go to work with them.”
“Along with whatever is left of Ortega's organization,” Deckard added.
“We have to move on them fast.”
“I agree, but first we need to move the money to our new headquarters. We can keep you safe there as well, along with-” Deckard looked at the sole beat cop in Oaxaca city.
“Officer Lopez,” the policemen responded with a half assed salute.
“Right, let's get moving.”
Lopez switched back to Spanish, asking his police chief something. Deckard only caught on to one word,
Inteligencia .
“I'm not CIA.”
“That's right, you're some kind of gun for hire, huh? Then what do we call you mystery man?” Samantha asked.
“Black will do for now.”
“Well, Mr. Black, I don't know-” her words were cut short as an old rotary phone sitting on one of the desks began to ring.
“
Como?
” Lopez said, holding the phone to his ear.
“
Si,
” he paused before cupping his hand over receiver. “It's for the
gringo
.”
“I guess that must be me,” Deckard said taking the phone. “Yeah?”
Heavy breathing sounded over the phone before someone spoke, “We want the money.”
“Who is this?”
“A friend of Mr. Jimenez.”
“You want the money? Come get it.”
“Leave this place now. You don't belong here.”
“We'll see who's standing when the smoke clears.”
“Take a walk and don't come back. That is the deal.”
“Make your play.”
Another pause.
“I already have.”
The police station was suddenly plunged into darkness as someone cut off the electricity.
4
Deckard pulled Lopez out from behind the desk as a barrage of auto fire chopped through the thin Formica board. Tucking the stock of his Kalashnikov into his shoulder he punched the first cartel gunmen through the door with a double tap. The second shooter got off a burst with a MAC-10 submachine gun that exploded the television screen behind him before Deckard gunned him down.
“We need to extract!” he shouted into his radio as more
sicarios
pushed their way into the police station.
Samantha's .357 nearly took the head clean off the shoulders of one of the shooters. The gunfire was deafening indoors.
Pat's transmission came through garbled and unreadable.
Moving into rooms adjacent to the hallway, the gunmen took cover as the two police officers offered suppressive fire. One of the
sicarios
lobbed a fragmentation grenade down the hall, a gift from post-Cold War stockpiles left over from one of Central America's dirty little guerrilla conflicts that had been delivered to the cartels.
Deckard didn't hesitate. Reaching down, he palmed the grenade and overhanded it back down the hall before turning and driving both officers to the ground under his weight. Overpressure washed over them, filling the dark narrow confines of the police station with smoke.