SNAFU: Wolves at the Door
An Anthology of Lycanthrope Military Horror
Edited by Geoff Brown, G.N. Braun, Amanda J. Spedding
Taking down the Top Cat
R.P.L. Johnson
Night fell in the jungle: greens sinking into blacks, shadows growing up from the valley floor like a dark liquid pooling in the deep places of the world.
Sergeant Jared Naylor scanned the compound through his binoculars as he waited for the rest of the team to make their way up the narrow game trail. From above it looked like a holiday resort. The main house nestled into the wooded hillside, its sprawling size artfully hidden by sculpted gardens that led down to the river. A helipad and boathouse on the river completed the picture. It looked more like an eco-retreat for detoxing celebrities than a drug lord’s stronghold.
“Man, I am in the wrong business,” said Garcia. He gave out a low whistle as he stared down at the luxurious compound.
“Well today’s your lucky day, Private,” Naylor said. “I hear there are going to be a few vacancies opening up in his operation pretty soon.”
Germaine McDowell lumbered past, toting the heavy MG4 as if it was a kid’s BB gun. “Of course that would mean you’d have the mighty fightin’ Delta Force bearing down on your ass right now,” he said.
Garcia shrugged. “I heard they ain’t so tough.”
Mac gave him a friendly shoulder check as he walked past. “Some of them ain’t,” he said.
“Zip it,” Naylor said. “Save the bull session for the ride home. I want it tight and quiet from here on in.”
He checked his watch; they were right on time. Not bad after a ten-mile hike through dense jungle. This hadn’t been a usual infiltration. Their target was Hernando Ramirez, head of the infamous Cascajal drug cartel. Ramirez was notoriously paranoid, and his compound was miles away from any road and well off any commercial flight path. They couldn’t afford to give him any warning, so they had been dropped two valleys away with the rest of the journey being made on foot. Other squads were hiking in from the south, and under Emcon Alpha, full radio silence, timing was everything.
“There’s the boathouse,” Jim Lowe said, the last man in their four-man fire team.
“I see it,” Naylor replied.
The boathouse was their way out. Getting away from the compound had to be as fast as their approach was stealthy. This operation was strictly off the books. The chain of command went from Naylor to his Captain straight to the commander of Delta and then to a D.C. suit. Naylor had been working operations like this for years but still got nervous when he thought about who was ultimately in charge. A Mexican drug lord might kill you, might even torture you first. But those Beltway cats would sign your death warrant with no more thought than swatting a fly if they thought it was in their interests. They couldn’t afford to get caught in Mexico. If they did, the unofficial war on drugs could become an international incident.
Fortunately Ramirez’s lavish lifestyle extended to a collection of motorboats in his private boathouse. That was Naylor’s objective: hold and secure their way out while the other squads took out Ramirez and his key lieutenants.
They made their way down the hill. If anything the undergrowth was even thicker on the south-facing slope and they were forced to hack their way through the bush.
Naylor swung his machete against a particularly tangled knot of vines when the blade struck something hard. He pulled the vines and they came away like a living tapestry, an interwoven blanket of tough, woody tendrils. Behind was a huge boulder of yellowish green rock just like the outcroppings they had seen during their hike. But this wasn’t just some slab of bedrock protruding through the topsoil, it was a huge stone head.
“Well, would you look at that,” Garcia said. “Olmec, I reckon.”
“Listen to him,” Mac said. “Just ‘cus his gran’pappy swam the Rio Grande forty years ago, he thinks he’s some kind of expert on Mexican history.”
Naylor examined the huge artefact. The features had been smoothed by time but Naylor could still make out the broad, fang-filled mouth of the Olmec jaguar God.
“Well in this case, I think he’s right,” he said. “This is Olmec country, and they liked their carvings sure enough. I even saw one like this in a museum in Guadalajara one time.”
“You know, I heard Ramirez was into all this shit,” Lowe said. “Collects artefacts, even makes out like he’s some kind of champion for the native Olmec Indians.”
“Yeah, I heard something similar,” Naylor said. “Seems like being a drug lord with more money than God isn’t enough for him. Ramirez likes to pretend he’s some kind of mystical badass, Lucifer and Sante Muerta combined. I guess it helps to keep the locals in line: stops the coca farmers from selling the crop to the other cartels. It’s all bullshit designed to keep the locals away from his pleasure palace.”
“Pleasure palace,” Garcia repeated. “I like the sound of that. Like I said, I’m in the wrong business.” He patted the giant stone head as they walked past. “I’m going to tell Ramirez about this, he might want to add it to his collection.”
They hit the boathouse at the stroke of 2:00am. There were two guards on patrol, both were chatting and smoking on a small jetty that jutted out where the river widened in front of the house. Both caught three rounds each from the suppressed MP5s carried by Lowe and Garcia. They collapsed in unison, hearts shredded, blood pressure crashing and pitching them into a deadly faint while the rest of their body caught up to the fact that they were dead.
Naylor ghosted forward to secure the bodies, afraid one of them would pitch over into the lake, raising an attention-getting splash. But they both crumpled into their own footprints, empty eyes staring up at the sky.
Naylor crouched over the bodies, scanning the boathouse through night vision goggles. There was no sign of movement, and no sign either of the simultaneous attack Naylor knew would be happening right at that instant on the main house.
That was good. Silence meant things were going to plan.
“Mac, get that SAW up here. Garcia, start prepping the boat.”
The two men moved with smooth, practised efficiency. Mac heaved a crate onto the jetty and set the big machine gun up on its bipod while Garcia started to check over the motor launch Naylor had picked.
“Lowe, give me an overview,” Naylor said.
“On it.”
Lowe took out a small drone, a quad-rotor hardly bigger than his outstretched palm, and pitched it into the air like a softball. At about twenty feet its four tiny propellers spun to life with no more noise than a family of mosquitos and Lowe flew it towards the house, controlling the tiny drone with what looked like a wireless game controller with a built-in screen.
Naylor know what to expect, but he asked anyway.
“How’s it looking?”
He could see Lowe’s smile as his teeth flashed green in the night vision.
“Sergeant, when this is over we can sell the video to the Stockade to train new Operators.”
“That good?”
“Textbook.”
“Hey Garcia,” Mac hissed, “you still want to join the cartel?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Garcia replied. “I hear the retirement plan’s kinda rough.”
Gunfire, coming from the main house. Naylor recognised the distinctive agricultural clatter of AK47s and in reply, the faster buzz of a Delta machine gun. Sounded like the cartel had finally woken up. Well, that was to be expected eventually.
“Stay tight,” Naylor said. “Garcia, how are we going with that boat?”
“Two minutes, Sergeant.”
“Damn,” Mac said. “I could throw a rock in downtown Jersey and hit three guys who could jack a boat faster than you.”