Nathan was glad it was dark out here. He couldn’t imagine what his expression looked like right now. Anger came on suddenly, like a dropped plate shattering on the floor.
Carlos Alisio, the bitter and depraved spawn of a heartless monster, had murdered his father, shot his niece, and tried to kill Vince’s entire family.
Like father, like son. What a piece of shit. Your ass better not be in the ranch house when we bust in or you’ll be joining your father in the underworld . . .
He felt Harv nudge his hip, which broke the dark thought pattern before it fully took hold. He touched Harv back—a silent thank-you.
Switzer continued. “We looked into the background of El Lobo and found a connection to the Alisio family that goes back over ten years.” Switzer looked at Hank Grangeland. “You didn’t hear any of this.”
“No, sir. None of it.”
“You three have a right to know who you’re up against. That’s why I was authorized to tell you. DNI Benson wants El Lobo and Alisio alive for interrogations. We don’t know if Alisio’s at the ranch house, but the presence of limousines seems to indicate it’s likely.”
“Limos?” Nathan asked.
“You’ll see what I’m talking about inside the command post. It’s also possible that more than one crime family’s involved in the WMD smuggling operation. Obviously Benson wants any cartel brass you find in there alive.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Harv said.
Vince spoke up, saying something Nathan didn’t trust himself to say. “Look, this is shocking news, but it doesn’t change anything. We’re going to execute this op as planned. We’ll bring you live prisoners—assuming it’s physically possible.”
“Apparently Scott Benson knows you three well. That’s what he said you’d say . . . Well, now that we’ve got that behind us, let’s go inside and review some last-minute intel.” Chief Switzer gestured, and they walked toward the CP.
“I think my entire team should see the intel,” Vince said. “Can we all fit inside?”
Switzer said it would be a tight squeeze but yes. “Deputy Chief Lopez and I don’t need to see it again. We’ll wait out here.”
Vince turned to the fire team members who stood a dozen yards away and motioned them over.
Grangeland spoke into his lapel mic. “Go dark; we’re coming in.”
Fifteen seconds later, the mobile unit’s door swung outward, exposing a completely black interior. When Nathan stepped up the entry stairs, all he saw were lots of micro-LED lights: red, white, green, and yellow, some blinking, most not. He felt the presence of another person in the room before he saw the figure’s black silhouette against the multicolored LEDs.
“Okay,” Grangeland said. “We’re all inside.”
Nathan heard the door clunk as it closed.
“Everybody hold still for a second,” a deep voice announced. “The lights come on gradually.”
Nathan became more and more aware of his surroundings as the illumination increased. His mind kept returning to the rock quarry where Alisio Sr. had met his end, but he couldn’t afford the mental distraction. Right now, he needed to concentrate on the mission at hand. Each team member would be counting on every other team member to make it through the next two hours alive.
The right side of the interior was covered with large flat-screen TVs, all of which were currently dark. Nathan had never been inside a sportscasting trailer at a sporting event, but he imagined it looked a whole lot like this. Must’ve cost a fortune to set this up.
The man seated at the table stood and offered his hand. “Jack Harkin, Department of Homeland Security. I’m going to go over a last-minute update.” Harkin laid an aerial photo on the table. Everyone present had seen it. It was the same image they’d used at BSI’s academy to formulate their plan. “There are two things. Well, three, really. We’re not one hundred percent sure, but we think this is a sniper’s nest.” Harkin pointed to a peak about five hundred yards north of the ranch’s barracks building, which housed the ISIS fighters that El Lobo and Alisio were hosting. “There’s a foot trail going up there we hadn’t noticed before. It’s barely visible. Also, it’s a perfect strategic location with a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the entire area. There’s a patch cleared of rocks and bushes about the size of a king bed.” Harkin put an eight-by-ten photo on the table. “When we enlarged the area, we saw this. We think this boxlike object is an ice chest. Notice how it’s surrounded by a circle of rocks to screen it from below? Whoever set it up didn’t think about the ice chest being seen from above. Had those rocks been irregularly shaped, we might not have noticed it.”
“Good eye,” Vince said. “Nathan? Harv?”
“We concur,” Harv said. “It looks like the best way to get up there without being detected is from the north side, but we didn’t bring any climbing gear.”
“It’s not a smooth vertical wall. The limestone formations are cracked and collapsed in places. I think you’ll be able to get up there without too much trouble. The contour map indicates it’s about fifty feet high, plus or minus. As you can see, the south side of the mesa facing the compound doesn’t have nearly the vertical element.
“The next thing we changed is your extraction point. You’ll have to go a little farther on your exit hike, but it’s a better place for the Black Hawks to get in and out.” He pointed to the large-scale aerial. “By changing to this location, the Black Hawks can hug the dry wash of this canyon and stay below the horizon.”
Harkin placed another photo on the table. “This was taken earlier today. It’s a low-angle shot because it was taken from nine miles up on our side of the river. Three new vehicles are parked at the ranch house, and they’re clearly limos. So far, we’ve seen no evidence of K-9 patrols anywhere on the property, but as you can see in this same photo, there are two sentries with some kind of assault rifles guarding the ranch house. There’s no need to go over anything else in these photos—those are the only changes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harkin,” Vince said.
“Hang on while I cut the lights.”
Like the beginning of a Broadway show, the illumination slowly dimmed, then winked out.
Once outside the command post, everyone formed a circle. Switzer and Lopez joined them.
“All right, everyone, listen up,” Vince said. “Sandra, can your demo team handle the limos, if needed?”
“Yes, no problem.”
“Obviously, we’ll have to clear the sniper’s nest. We’ll talk about it on the way. We’ve got a ninety-minute trek ahead of us. Everyone gear up and power down some water.” Vince turned toward the Border Patrol brass. “Chief Switzer, Deputy Chief Lopez, no goodbyes. We’ll see you in a few hours.”
“We’ll be waiting. Supervisory Agent Mark Ristow will escort you over to the frontage road along the river and then part company. You’ll follow that to the east and look for the infrared beacon we planted. It marks the exact spot where you’ll cross. There’s a small raft with a rope that’s anchored to both sides of the river. You guys know the drill. It’s set up over a deeper spot, so the water won’t be moving quickly. Good hunting, everyone.”
Nathan felt the familiar sensation of butterflies as he walked with Harv and Vince back to their Humvee. The news of Carlos Alisio being behind the assassination of his father and the deadly attack against Vince’s family still buzzed in his head. Purely revenge driven, the shootings had been cleverly disguised as terrorist attacks. Perhaps if the shooters had been Hispanic, he might’ve seen the connection. What pissed him off the most? The senseless slaughter of so many innocents who had no connection to Alisio’s twisted quest for vengeance. It showed how vile the second-generation cartel boss was. Life meant nothing to him. In a way, Nathan was glad this news hadn’t been discovered sooner. Vince, Harv, and he might have been excluded from tonight’s action, or at a minimum, he would’ve had to cash in some IOUs to participate.
Three minutes later, they were walking downhill through t
he desert. He heard SA Ristow check with their sentry atop the ridge off to their right and receive an all clear. No one was present at the river-crossing site. Nathan wondered if the bomb-bearing B-2s were already circling overhead; if not, they were on their way.
They walked about three hundred yards through some good-size ravines. In some places, they had to scramble on all fours to make it back up the opposite sides.
Once they arrived at the dirt road, Ristow wished them luck and turned back. Since they now followed a maintained road, they didn’t need to use their night vision, but Harv kept turning his on and taking a look every few minutes. His friend seemed on edge, more than their current situation called for.
The point man reported having the beacon in sight. Since their radios were currently in manual mode, Vince pressed his transmit button and acknowledged.
“Harv?” Nathan asked.
“What?”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I think we need an advanced scout along our route once we’re across the river,” Harv said. “We won’t have eyes overhead until we’re a lot closer to the compound.”
Nathan found himself agreeing but let Vince respond.
“He’s got a point,” Vince said. “We could launch our drone early, but that’d mean losing orbit time on the back end.”
Harv continued. “I hate to say this, Nate, but we can accomplish two things at once if you’re willing to be the scout.”
“All right, you have my undivided attention,” he said.
“I want everyone in on this,” Vince said. He ordered all three fire teams to form up. “Okay, Harv, you’re on.”
“Once we cross the river, I think Nathan should scout ahead with a ten-minute lead. I’m sure everyone here has rock-climbing skills, but Nathan’s an excellent free climber. He should be able to scale the north side of the rock face, come in from behind, and take out the sniper quietly. If no one’s up there, he’ll come down the easier southeast slope and rendezvous with us.”
“I concur,” Vince said. “It’s likely we’ll have our drone overhead by the time Nathan makes it to the base of the sniper’s bluff. Since our drone’s got a high-res thermal imager, we’ll know if a shooter’s up there. If the drone doesn’t see anyone, Nathan will stop in his tracks and turn east. If a shooter is up there, Nathan will proceed as planned.”
Harv put a hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I’d feel better if we sent one of sierra’s men with Nathan, one minute behind.”
“Good idea,” Vince said.
A member of the sierra fire team volunteered right away and stepped forward. “I’ll go,” he said.
“All right, Nick, the job’s yours. I didn’t mention it during our mission-op briefing, but Nick’s worked with you guys before.” Vince added some lighthearted tone. “Could be why he volunteered so quickly.”
And then Nathan had it. “Were you part of Delta Lead in Santa Monica?”
Delta Lead had been the call sign for BSI’s surveillance team assigned to help him and Harv during an impromptu mission last year. The BSI team had probably saved their lives.
“Yes, sir, I left you the note.”
“You guys did a great job. Thank you.”
“I was in Tanner Mason’s unit in Afghanistan,” Nick said. “It broke my heart to hear how he’d betrayed everything we stand for. He seemed like a good man.”
“He was a good man,” Vince said. “He took a wrong turn and kept going.”
They resumed their hike down the road.
Nathan knew Vince wanted to change the subject. “It’s hard to believe a terrorist camp is only a few miles from our border. How can a place like that exist without local law enforcement knowing about it?”
“It can’t,” Vince said. “Sadly, a local cop can make more money from a single bribe than his entire annual salary.”
“Dirty cops are the worst,” he said.
Five minutes later, they were taking turns pulling the small inflatable raft back and forth across the river. They formed a group in a small clearing of sand about fifty yards south of the water. There was lots of cover in this spot because bushes and trees flourished along the river.
Waiting for the last two members of tango fire team to cross, Harv said, “I don’t know what I’d been expecting to see, but except for the river, there’s nothing. No fence, no monuments, no barbed wire on either side. Hell, our freeways are better protected.”
“I’ve got news for you,” said Vincent. “Our border with Canada? Security wise, it’s worse. There’s not even a river. There’s nothing but trees.”
Harv shook his head. “I guess I’m beginning to understand what the definition of porous border means.”
“The Rio Grande swells and shrinks every season,” Vince said. “You can’t really put a fence or wall right next to it. It has to be above the hundred-year flood plain. There are many areas where a wall or fence simply won’t work, especially farther east in Big Bend National Park. It takes boots on the ground to guard areas like this. Lots of them.”
The last two members of tango joined them.
“Okay. We’re going to get Nathan and Nick going. Everyone leave their radios in manual and do a final check. If anyone needs to switch out a radio, now’s the time. Verify long guns are on safety.”
One by one, all twelve members did a radio check. Everyone heard everyone else’s transmission. They were good to go. Since they’d gone over the logistics and planning many times during their six-hour briefing, Vince wouldn’t repeat too many things.
“Our scatter point is anywhere on American soil. If the shit hits the fan, everyone works their way north, takes a swim, then gets their wetback asses back to the CP ASAP.”
That got a few chuckles. Vince was a lot of things, but politically correct wasn’t one of them. There were several Hispanic team members, and they wouldn’t be the least bit offended. Everyone here would be fighting side by side and possibly intermixing each other’s blood. If you couldn’t take a little teasing, you had no business working for Vincent Beaumont.
“All right, Nathan, get going. Nick will be sixty seconds behind. The rest of us are moving out in ten minutes. Tell us once you have the sniper’s bluff in sight. Nick will cover your six on the ascent.”
“Good hunting, old man,” Harv said.
“Hey, I’m six months younger than you.” With that, Nathan began marching south through the canyon.
The hike, which paralleled a dry stream bed, wasn’t difficult from a physical standpoint, but because of the near absence of moonlight, he had to keep his NV monocular deployed and spend a lot of time looking down, watching his step. This wasn’t a vast expanse of sand—far from it. Some areas were worse than others, but this landscape was riddled with things to trip over. Face-planting into an agave lechuguilla would definitely ruin his evening and might cost him an eye. A fall could be more than painful and inconvenient; it could jeopardize the mission.
He settled on a pace mixing efficiency and stealth, not purely one or the other. Just ahead, where the dry wash turned left, he’d leave the visual cover of the arroyo and begin a fairly steep climb up the side of a small hill to maintain a due south route.
Whenever he turned to look back, he could usually see Nick, trailing by five hundred feet or so. He pulled the handheld moving map from his waist pack and checked his location. Right on target.
Except for the sporadic rasp of crickets, it was quiet. The insect and frog sounds from the river had slowly faded away.
At the crest of the small hill, he scanned the route ahead and saw no movement at all. So far, so good. Knowing Nick would temporarily lose sight of him, he started down the slope.
The next forty-five minutes went by without incident. When he came around the western edge of a low rise, he spotted the sniper’s bluff right away. He couldn’t miss it—a solitary crown of limestone sitting atop an asymmetrical cone. It didn’t look too foreboding. On a smaller scale, it looked like a tilted ham tin sitting ato
p a three-foot pile of sand. From his current position, he couldn’t yet see the compound. He’d need to gain elevation.
Gain elevation? Don’t you mean scale that rock formation in near darkness? Way to cheer yourself up, Nate.
He froze in place when he heard it.
The unmistakable clatter of fully automatic gunfire.
Harv felt his skin crawl at the crackling sound reverberating through the canyon.
“Form up,” Vince said. “Hotel one, Sierra two, you copy?”
“Affirm,” Nate’s voice came through every team member’s earpiece.
Nick copied as well.
Harv felt his heart relax. Shit, he hated that anxious feeling. He should’ve been trailing Nate, not Nick.
“Hotel one, report.”
“It’s coming from the compound, but it’s not directed at us. We’re still over a mile out.”
“Do you have eyes on the sniper’s location?”
“I can see the bluff, but that’s all.”
“How fast can you get up there?”
“If the vertical climb isn’t too bad, maybe ten minutes. Hang on; I’m taking a look with my thermal.”
Vince ordered Nate and Sierra two to hold position for sixty seconds, then said, “Harv, what do you make of it?”
“Hard to say. It could be—”
Interrupting him, a muted boom echoed through the canyon, followed by another and then the sound of more automatic clatter.
In the green image of Harv’s night vision, the southern horizon flashed, as if illuminated by distant lightning. “Those are smaller detonations, probably from grenade launchers. Unless someone else is engaging the Rio Grande cell and no one told us about it, the most reasonable conclusion is that they’re out there practicing.”
“I concur.”
“Do we scrub?” Harv asked.
“Not yet. Let’s get our eyes overhead a little early. It can be here in seven minutes.” Vince addressed Hotel four, their radio specialist. “Greg, get on the horn to command. Tell them to launch right away. It will cost us some orbit time, but we need to see what we’re dealing with.”