Say what you will about working for the DMS, it was never predictable.
“Let’s just talk. Tell me about the mission. Tell me about what happened in Mexico.”
This part of Sonora looked a lot like Arizona. She was born and raised in Phoenix, so it seemed weird to be rolling hot in an area of operation that looked suspiciously like her hometown. Only back home she hadn’t been worried about car bombs or cartel gunfights growing up, common threats the poor folks stuck here had to deal with on a daily basis.
Their convoy moved fast. The black government Suburbans barely slowed as they left the paved road and hit gravel. Carver was at the wheel of the second vehicle in line. The view out the window was creosote bushes and sun-baked rocks as far as the eye could see, just as it had been for the last hour. The only difference was now the ride got bumpier, and she began to taste dust in the air-conditioning.
Captain Quinn got on the radio. He said something in Spanish, and the last three vehicles in their convoy broke off. Those were white-and-green pickups filled with Federales. They would be setting up a roadblock to keep anyone from getting in or out of the AO. From here on in, the DMS was on its own. The Mexican government and the U.S. State Department had come to an agreement that all parties were cool with. This was the DMS’s show. Everybody official was just going to deny that this op ever happened anyway.
Their commanding officer was in the vehicle behind them. Satisfied that they were now speeding toward the target by themselves, the captain switched to the encrypted DMS channels and addressed Bowie Team.
“We’re ten minutes out. You know the drill.”
There would be silence between their vehicles the rest of the way in. Intercepting even garbled radio transmissions could warn the bad guys something was up. Carver just concentrated on driving. The loose gravel turned to washboard, which threatened to rattle their armored vehicle to death. These pigs didn’t have the smoothest ride in the best situations.
Sandbag was riding shotgun. Gator and Corvus were in the back seat. Louie was serving as trunk monkey, ready to pop open the back window and open fire with a SAW.
“You really think there’s something to this intel, LT?” Sandbag asked.
“We know Hezbollah has an exchange program going with the cartels for years,” she answered. “One side has expertise, the other has more money than it knows what to do with. Smuggling people and weapons across the border is a piece of cake to the cartel, and terrorists get an easy way into the U.S. It’s a match made in heaven.”
“Yeah, nothing like sharing your cultural traditions with others, like beheading, or car bombings,” Gator interjected.
“Well, now DMS thinks they’re sharing something else. Word is a few days ago an unknown weapon was shipped from an undisclosed location in the Middle East to this little town. Once it is ready, they’ll send it north. We just don’t know what it is yet. Which is why we’re going to nab these bastards and find out,” Carver stated. She was trying to stay right behind the truck ahead of her without rear-ending it while blinded by its plume of dust. At least the dust was obscuring the view of cactus and endless nothing. “It’s one thing to look at this area on the map, another to see it in person. They picked a village so isolated that it’s making me worried they’re playing with something really nasty.”
Her teammates readied their weapons. They were pumped. They’d done this sort of thing many times before, but it was always exhilarating. When they were only a few minutes out, Carver hit play on the sound system. This song was pre-raid tradition for them. Captain Quinn was a proud Texan, so when the DMS had set up a team out of Fort Hood, he had christened it Bowie Team. Of course, his boys had immediately decided that meant David rather than Jim.
“I’m Afraid of Americans” began playing over the Suburban’s speakers.
Carver grinned. Good. The terrorist assholes they were hunting should be.
The Suburban ahead of them was slowing down. That didn’t make any sense — the village was still a mile away — but she slammed on the brakes fast enough to keep from rear-ending them.
“Get ready.” Something was up. It could be an ambush. It could be a barricade. Regardless, speed was their ally. Getting bogged down out here meant the cartel was more likely to see them coming and get ready. “What the hell, Zeke?” she muttered. He was driving the lead vehicle and wasn’t the type to hesitate.
But nothing happened. The point vehicle maintained radio silence, lollygagged for only a few seconds, before speeding up again.
“Yo, LT. Check it out.” It was Sandbag who first saw what had caused the point vehicle to hesitate. He tapped the bulletproof glass of the passenger-side window. “There’s a — Good Lord…”
There were telephone lines running alongside the road. The poles were the tallest thing for miles, and so constant, flashing by every couple hundred feet, that she’d begun to tune them out. Only this one was different. Somebody had been nailed to it.
There wasn’t much time to assess. Hanging ten feet up… adult male, Mexican, mid-thirties, jeans and a flannel shirt, coated in dried blood. Arms extended above his head, dangling with multiple nails — no, spikes — through his hands and wrists.
Then it flashed by. She looked in her mirror, but the body was already obscured by the dust.
Since Louie was in back he’d gotten the best look. “I know the cartel leaves some brutal warnings, but crucifixion? Damn. Fucking barbarians.”
Then they passed another pole, and there was another body stuck to it. Female. Twenties. Vultures were perched on the crossbeam above her. There was more swearing and muttering. And then she, too, was swallowed by the dust.
The next telephone pole had another body hung on it. This one was elderly. Had she been somebody’s abuelita? And the next. And the next. Every couple hundred feet the spectacle repeated. Men, women, children. The soldiers quit talking. This wasn’t a warning. This was a massacre.
Numb, Carver concentrated on the road.
“All the way to the village?” Rudy asked.
“All the way,” she confirmed. “Every single pole.”
He swallowed hard. “That wasn’t in your initial report.”
Carver shook her head. “Considering what else we saw, it wasn’t that noteworthy.”
Bowie Team rolled into the village ready for a fight.
It was dead.
She’d been ready for the sound of gunfire, but there was nothing. There should have at least been a dog barking. There was no movement, no sound other than the wind. There were a few dozen small houses and other assorted buildings, but not so much as a curtain parted for the locals to spy on them. No matter how scared they were, nobody kept their heads down that well.
Ten seconds after dismounting, they stacked up on the little grocery market that their intel had said housed their targets, tossed bangs through the windows, breached the doors, and rushed inside.