Ortiz moved toward the source of the noise, on the other side of a line of bushes beyond the narrow field of tall grass to his right. Ortiz floated through it, moving only when he felt the light breeze swirling down the hill. He stopped as the breeze died down, and moved forward with the next gust.
He reached the bushes a minute later, and slowly moved a branch with the Colt’s muzzle. He spotted four guards standing about twenty feet away from him, all facing in the opposite direction.
These guys should be awarded the Pendejo of the Year award for stupidity, he thought. If you’re going to stand in the middle of a clearing, at least form a circle so that you can cover all directions.
Ortiz smiled. He quietly extended the telescopic butt of the Colt and pressed it against his right shoulder as he lined up the closest guard in the cross hairs.
Then he fired twice. The Colt responded with a barely audible blip as the laser beam zeroed in on the remote sensors attached to the yellow vest of the guard. The vest’s sensors picked up the beam and closed an electric circuit, powering up an array of red and yellow LEDs. The guard instantly lit up like a Christmas tree. Without waiting for a reaction, Ortiz switched targets and fired again. Another hit. He swiftly changed targets twice more. Four quick kills. The episode had taken less than six seconds.
“Dammit! Someone got us!”
“You’re all gone, amigos. Better roll over ‘n’ learn how to play dead.”
“Is that you, Tito?” asked one of the soldiers, calling Ortiz by his nickname.
“That’s right, amigo. Just smoked you all.” He approached them.
“Shit.”
“Start walkin’. You’re Mambo’s prisoners.”
Three other members of Mambo came out from the tree line and escorted their prisoners. One of them was Mambo’s platoon leader, Lieutenant Mark Siegel.
“Good job, Tito. You really surprised those four.”
“Gracias, jefe. They weren’t too happy about it either. Looks like I caught ‘em off guard.” Siegel was a fair leader. A little new, but fair. Ortiz knew Siegel was trying to learn as much as possible from him and the other more experienced soldiers in Mambo. At the same time, Siegel tried to earn their respect. A tough position to be in, reflected Ortiz, who had already decided in his mind that the lieutenant was good, but lacked some of the innate qualities necessary for jungle warfare survival.
“Well, they got off easy, Tito. If these would have been the real thing…”
“Si, jefe. I know.”
Siegel turned around and talked into the radio.
“Coordinator, Mambo here, over.”
“Mambo, Coordinator, SitRep, over.” Coordinator was asking for a situation report.
“Just captured the last of the yellow team. War game complete. Mark forty-five minutes. No casualties our team.”
“That’s a new record. Congratulations, Mambo. Proceed to rendezvous point for airlift.”
“Roger.”
Ortiz reached the large concrete ramp at the edge of the exercise zone, where they were to meet the helicopter back to Howard Air Force base for a well-deserved rest. He frowned. The helo hadn’t arrived yet. He sat down and simply stared at the sky. The sun was high overhead. Ortiz closed his eyes.
His mind filled with memories of his endless, bloody years in the barrio. Memories of gang wars, of his explosive youth. He had been careless back then. His life had belonged to his gang. He did what they did, behaved like they behaved. So many of his friends had fallen victim to pointless wars fought to prove one gang’s machismo over another’s. To prove that the Rebeldes were better than the Lobos. Or perhaps that the Pumas were superior to the Sangrientos. Or to claim a piece of land, which no one really owned in the formal sense of the word. It was a way to show everyone else that a gang controlled that section of the neighborhood and was willing to fight for it. Nothing else mattered. Sometimes a gang would grow in numbers and attempt to expand, which usually meant cutting into someone else’s territory. Then wars would break out. Wars in the conventional sense of the word, with automatic weapons, grenades, and homemade bombs. Long gone were the baseball bats, chains, and knives. Gang wars were so feared by the police that at times the police department would stall on purpose before attempting to break them up, to avoid too much involvement in the actual confrontation. The police were mainly there to make a report of the incident, count the dead, and settle the last few fights with an overkill of manpower. That minimized the exposure of police officers to most of the danger, and allowed the gangs to do what they wanted to do in the first place: kill each other. It made sense, Ortiz decided. In the eyes of the police, gang members were criminals anyway, so gang wars did the police department the favor of exterminating criminals. Plain and simple.
Ortiz had spent almost four years with a gang after he’d tired of his father’s constant beatings. He didn’t want to take it anymore. Older and able to take care of himself, Ortiz lived on the street, learning the ways of the world. He also learned about human nature, friendships, blood oaths, treason… death. Ortiz experienced them all, until the day reality struck home. Ortiz came to terms with the fact that he was a survivor, and there just weren’t any survivors within the gangs. No true winners. Most were destined to die or go to prison. Ortiz had seen many of his friends go both routes.
That was when he had left the streets. He’d left his beloved barrio and searched for another place to use his only skills. One day he’d walked into an Army recruiting office, and his life had taken a turn for the better. He had survived the barrio.
“Hey, Tito!”
Ortiz looked up to his right at Tommy Zimmer, another member of Mambo, also wearing a set of jungle-warfare-colored fatigues and black boots. Zimmer wore the fatigues a bit differently, though. He couldn’t take the excessive heat and humidity of the tropical hell their superiors called Panama, and had cut off the sleeves. Ortiz liked Zimmer, a young kid from the Bronx, a smart kid. Ortiz had met him at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They’d become instant friends. Although they shared a common bond. They were ghetto survivors.
“Yeah, hermano. What’s up?”
“We’re moving out, man! Would you believe that shit? Our platoon’s movin’ out. We just got the order.”
Ortiz leaned forward. “Movin’ out? What are you talkin’ about? We just finished bustin’ our asses in this exercise. Where are we goin’?”
“Some place in South America. Don’t know where. All I know is that some CIA honchos are gonna brief us. C’mon. The LT wants to talk to all of us before that.”
Ortiz stood up, wondering what in the world was going on. This side of the hemisphere was supposed to be quiet.
“Mierda! I don’t like the smell of it, Tommy.”
“Why not, man? Better than just stickin’ ‘round here doin’ nothin’.”
“CIA means secret mission. And secret mission means that if we fuck up inside enemy territory chances are no one will acknowledge us.”
“What are you sayin’?” Zimmer asked, lowering his eyebrows in a mix of curiosity and concern.
“That if we fuck up we’re as good as dead and no one will come to our rescue. That’s what it means.”