Mexican Heat (Nick Woods Book 2) (4 page)

Chapter 5

Hernan
Flores used decades of hard-earned intelligence-gathering skills to lay his
grand trap for the SEALs and government forces. He sought the advice of his top
lieutenants for the best location to stage an ambush, while using his single
source to give up still more valuable intel.

The SEALs
and government forces continued to make serious headway against the Godesto
Cartel, but Flores accepted the necessary losses. He needed his enemies to
implicitly trust the tips coming to them, and the best way to make that happen
was for the tips to be accurate and noteworthy. And noteworthy they were, as
the millions in losses stacked higher and higher.

Hernan
Flores never flinched. He’d battled many competing cartels for years. In his
younger days, as a nobody seller, he’d fought men for the control of a single
street corner. But the delay was also necessary because Flores had special
supplies to buy and he needed time for his lieutenant to gather all he could on
his opponent.

Within
two months, his rare weaponry had arrived and his lieutenant had perfectly
uncovered the SEAL tactics through after-action reports from witnesses.
Everything was in place, and Flores saw this as much more than a happy
opportunity to embarrass the Americans and take out their Special Forces. No,
this was a chance to shake the very confidence of the Mexican people. After
tonight, the people would know their government could not stand up against his
Godesto Cartel.

It was
just after 3 a.m. and the SEAL Commandos were getting used to the night-raid
schedule. Their four Blackhawk helicopters raced toward their target, their
engines screaming as the pilots pushed the machines to their limit.

At the
target, a group of guards stood ready and alert tonight without having been
warned of any impending dangers by their leadership. Rather, word had gotten
out that the Americans struck at roughly 3 a.m. and the guards had adjusted on
their own, coming to full attention at all of Flores’s facilities in the early
morning hours.

The men
guarded rows of stacked drugs intended to be moved across the border into
Arizona the following day, as well as something else -- the contents of which
they weren’t aware. A special delivery had been brought in the day prior, and
laborers had hauled in crate after crate and positioned them throughout the
warehouse. The guards thought the placement random and strange, but were
ordered not to move the items.

“Each of
the locked crates must not be confused with their identical counterpart,” said
one laborer to the head of the facility. “And they are marked by where they’re
placed, not by any outside numbers or codes, so make sure they are not moved
under any circumstance. That is a direct order from Hernan Flores himself.”

“Will
do,” said the warehouse manager. Flores’s precautions, though often strange,
were legendary, so one learned to not ask questions or wonder why. And marking
the crates would, after all, allow clues to anyone who confiscated them, so the
warehouse manager figured it made sense in that context. So neither he nor any
of his men gave the crates a second glance.

Outside
the warehouse, two teams of Hernan Flores’s men waited, in addition to the
guards inside. These outside teams held shoulder-launched anti-air missiles,
alert and ready. Flores knew how complicated the missiles were and after
attempting to train some of his own men to use them, had abandoned that idea
and brought in Russian mercenaries who were already trained by the Soviet Army.

Meanwhile,
near the Mexican Presidential Palace, more of Flores’s men were making
preparations. In a five-story apartment complex that overlooked the Palace,
four men knocked on the door of a fifth-floor residence. When the door was
answered, the male occupant -- a man in his thirties -- was shoved into the
room and promptly executed with a 9mm pistol. Then the four men walked back
into the hallway to gather and carry in four heavy duffle bags. Outside the
apartment complex -- seven blocks away in a small but busy park -- trucks stalled
with their tailgates covered with tarps, and vans idled nearby. All waiting the
command from their leader and anticipating their role in the coordinated
assault set to take place at any minute.

All
awaited the command from their leader.

Back at
the target warehouse, Flores had positioned additional forces besides the two
teams with the shoulder-launched, anti-air missiles. Lookouts dressed as
civilians were posted miles away from the warehouse, watching likely routes
into the target.

These
lookouts, ranging from teenagers to older business owners, watched the major
roads that lead into the night’s target. Once the lookouts discovered the entry
route in for the Mexican ground forces, Hernan Flores would position more than
two dozen of his men to ambush them. These men carried assault weapons, RPGs,
medium machine guns, and Claymore directional mines, which were difficult and
dangerous to get. But for tonight’s move, Flores was sparing no expense.

The
Godesto needed to land a decisive blow against President Roberto Rivera. With
luck, they’d rid the country of both the American intervention and Rivera’s
too-honest government, which had been making far more progress than either
Rivera or his major supporter Juan Soto knew.

After
tonight, Rivera would either be powerless, or forced to resign. And Juan Soto?
He’d race out of the country. And if he didn’t, then Flores would make him wish
he had.

The
Blackhawks were getting close. The crew chiefs signaled the SEALs on board to
make ready and the men slid across the metal floor of the choppers to the
doors.

The SEAL
Leader signaled the sniper surveillance teams watching the building. The
snipers fired, dropping the guards on the roof. The helicopters closed within
hearing range and raced the final distance, flaring up and coming to an
instant, bone-jarring stop. Crew chiefs shoved ropes out and the SEALs
descended as black shadows in the pitch-black night. 

They
fast-roped down, rushed by the dead guards, and secured the roof. Ten seconds
later, the breacher had secured the charges on the steel door and they blew it
inward, running behind the explosion into the bowels of the building. A
gunfight erupted with the guards below, who were ready for an attack. Two SEALs
took nasty hits, but the SEAL Team Platoon overpowered the men with rehearsed
drills, precision shots, and speedy movements.

Just five
minutes behind them, a convoy of Mexican Army Humvees ripped through the city
to back up the SEALs. Their radios reported wounded men and a force ready to
defend this warehouse to the last man. The Mexican commander worried more
cartel reinforcements might be on their way -- the target warehouse was in a
very dangerous neighborhood -- and he urged his drivers to speed up.

A call in
from a bored drug pusher nicknamed “Too High” tipped Hernan Flores of the route
the Mexican forces were using. Flores alerted his men -- who happened to be
nearby as it was the most obvious and anticipated route. Godesto men ran out
onto the sidewalks trailing wires behind them. They aimed the crescent-shaped
Claymore mines up and down the road where they could. The Humvees would enter
an L-shaped ambush that would be full of thousands of flying ball bearings.
Charges set, the men ran back to their positions.

The
Mexican convoy rounded the corner and its commander -- a good man and an even
stronger leader -- yelled at his driver to go faster.

“Men are
dying,” he yelled, hearing gunfire over his radio from the SEALs who were
calling in updates. “Let’s go. Floor it.”

The
Mexican commander of the Quick Reaction Force wasn’t supposed to be in the lead
vehicle, but he led from the front regardless of the situation. As he reached
for his handset to relay their position to the SEALs, who were taking serious
fire, he saw four men pushing a car out into the road ahead of them. And across
from those men, more guys shoved another car toward it. Oh shit, he thought.

“Stop!”
he screamed to his driver, who had seen the threat, as well, and was already on
the brakes.

The road
was tight through this stretch, both sides enclosed by small shops and diners,
and now that the two junk cars had been shoved into each other -- nose to nose
-- the road was completely blocked. The Mexican Commander instantly recognized
the tight streets and the obstacle to their front for what it was. An ambush.

“Back
up!” he yelled into the handset to his other vehicles, which had been following
too close. Above him, his turret gunner began firing his M240 medium machine
gun at the men who had shoved the vehicle into the street from the right.

It wasn’t
any conscious decision or training that took over; the gunner was simply
right-handed and had seen them first. His machine gun spewed out 7.62 mm rounds
and caught one man in the lower leg, shattering the bones that supported his
weight and dropping him as his leg broke outward at nearly ninety degrees.
Another round from the gunner’s weapon caught the man’s buddy through the gut.
The bullet sounded like a hand clapping down on wet ham when it found its
target.

Below the
gunner, the Mexican commander continued to scream, “Back up! It’s an ambush”
into his radio. The entire convoy had stopped, but hadn’t begun reversing yet.
He then switched frequencies to call the SEAL Team commander and alert him to
the ambush and likely delay in arrival since they would need to re-route.
“Blackbird Six. Blackbird Six,” he said, waiting for a response. They were the
last words he ever spoke.

One of
the Godesto leaders saw the convoy had halted and would advance no further into
the killzone. As the convoy’s lead machine gunner fired at the men who had pushed
the cars into the street, the ambush leader screamed into his radio for his men
to stay down. None of the men in their hidden positions believed the Claymores
would wound any of them with their backblast, but it was better safe than
sorry. And there
were
a lot of Claymores out there.

The
leader ducked his head below the window, checked to confirm his ear plugs were
in, and squeezed the clacker, from which all the Claymores were daisy-chained.

On the
third squeeze, a monstrous explosion erupted in the street. Windows up and down
the road imploded and shattered from the concussion alone, while down in the
tight street thousands of ball bearings flew out and decimated everything in
their path. The mines had been aimed well, and the Mexican troops, riding in
unarmored Humvees (American hand-me-downs from years before), took heavy
casualties from the Claymores. Nearly the entire front half of the convoy was
killed or wounded.

The dead
looked as if they had been been blown to pieces by heavy buckshot fired from a
shotgun. Their skin had been more than just chopped up by the ball bearings; it
had been ripped and torn and shredded. Mangled flesh hung from their bones like
strips of rotted cloth.

The
living at the front of the column sat wounded and stunned, their eardrums
shattered and skin shredded. And though they knew (intuitively and through
their training) that they must move in order to survive, their brains refused
to move, racked instead with shock and indecision: the classic initial effects
of bad concussions.

Even the
men in the rear of the convoy were rocked by the shockwave and had to open and
close their mouths to relieve the pressure in their heads and shake the cobwebs
out. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t get enough time.

Godesto
men emerged from behind windows along one side of the ambush line and at the
very end, rushing up behind the stalled vehicles that blocked the path forward.
It was a textbook “L-shaped ambush” and the men were as well-trained and
compensated as any army that had ever taken the field.

These
veterans who had fought for years on street corners and dark alleys opened up
with AK-74s along the smoky, black-scarred street. Bullets snapped and whipped
into the convoy. Unaffected Humvees further back in the column tried to get
unjammed. Their gunners returned fire, but were quickly felled from hidden
gunman. Medium machine guns, resting on bipods, had been carried out into the
street behind the two junk cars. The machine gunners began firing across the
killing zone, while above them, designated marksmen and snipers assisted others
who fired AK-74s to help suppress the enemy, taking out those men in the
turrets who were still alive.

Two more
Godesto men launched RPGs at vehicles still moving. Explosions flipped and
smashed Humvees as if they were toys. As the return fire from the Mexican Quick
Reaction Force died down, Hernan Flores’s men rallied and rose up behind the
cars. They formed a line and moved down the street, weapons at the ready. To
their left, their comrades in the windows continued to provide covering fire,
suppressing those who were still alive.

Methodically,
the men on line moved through the killzone. They executed survivors and fired
rounds into those who lay still, just to be sure.

Three
Godesto pickup trucks rolled into the now silent area. Through the burning
vehicles and bleeding bodies, the new arrivals salvaged weapons, flak jackets,
and radios.