Fortress Doctrine (Maelstrom Rising Book 5) Read online

  That one had been an exception to the “don’t shoot up the vics too much” rule. They’d needed to block any retreat.

  The music had stopped. A couple of the shooters had bailed out of the second pickup, diving into the ditch on the side of the road, but a pair of harsh cracks announced their demise. The Triarii hadn’t left the ditch uncovered.

  Hank could see one of the tanker drivers through his scope. The man was short and fat, sweating despite the cold of the early morning, his hands clenched on the wheel, shaking.

  He shifted his aim to one of the pickups. The Soldado driver, wearing the black and red that had become something of a pseudo-uniform for that organization, didn’t look much happier than the tanker driver. They really hadn’t expected to get hit on Mexican soil.

  Which was interesting, given what Hank knew about the rivalries in Chihuahua State. This was not solidly Soldado or Vengador territory. They were interlopers in a state largely owned by the Juarez Cartel, La Linea, Los Salazar, some of the Sinaloa, CJNG, and what was left of Los Zetas. Somebody with some serious pull had managed this. And in this case, “pull” meant a lot of money, and a lot of fear to back them up.

  Now came the tricky part.

  The gunfire had died away, though the vehicles were still stuck, trapped between rocks that would stop them cold if they tried to drive over them, slopes too steep to manage, and the faintly smoking, bullet-riddled wreckage of the rear pickup. The desert canyon was strangely quiet.

  Hank threw off the camouflage netting and rose to a knee. He filled his lungs. “Get out of the vehicles and put your hands on your heads, or we kill you all!” He repeated the ultimatum in Spanish.

  For a long moment, no one moved. He didn’t think it was because the drivers were plotting a breakout; he’d been fighting the SdA for long enough that he knew that they were unrepentant thugs, most of them. They weren’t especially cunning when it came to tactics. They were vastly outclassed in that arena, and no amount of vato machismo was going to change that.

  No, he suspected that the inactivity was due primarily to shock. Which told him this bunch hadn’t been across the Rio Grande yet, at least not before the militia had been driven out of Lajitas.

  Or, maybe they had, and had just figured that they’d won, and no longer had anything to worry about. Which would be weird, considering they were on their way into Texas.

  Granted, Texas wasn’t what it had once been, but…

  “You have thirty seconds before we open fire!” He’d do it, too. He had to. They needed the vehicles, but there’d be another convoy, and bluffing rarely worked with cartel thugs.

  And their “revolucionario” bullshit aside, these were cartel thugs, first and foremost. The “activists” they’d run into up north—some of whom were actually more vicious than their narco compatriots, at least when they weren’t facing serious resistance—had been noticeably absent during the fighting for Lajitas and Terlingua.

  Apparently, the sicarios or mareros down there figured that after what had just happened, the men with guns who had just popped up out of the desert weren’t bluffing. First one, then another driver’s side door opened, and with both hands raised, the drivers started getting out, followed by the gangbangers who’d been riding shotgun.

  “Throw the weapons on the ground and step in front of them, with your hands on your heads, fingers interlaced!” His Spanish might be a bit crude, but that was one command he’d been damned sure to memorize carefully.

  Several AKs and a couple of AR-15s, along with a Steyr AUG and an FN P90 hit the dirt with a clatter. “Revolutionary” fervor and eagerness for martyrdom in the cause might be easy when faced with defenseless victims, or just talking shit around the campfire or online, but it becomes something else when you just watched a couple dozen of your compadres get turned into rapidly cooling meat in front of your eyes.

  Hank started to get to his feet when his radio crackled in his ear. “Actual, Two-Four. Hold what you’ve got.

  “We’ve got another three gun trucks incoming. Estimated about five minutes out. Two up-armors, and all of them are wearing Vengador camouflage.”

  Chapter 18

  Hank cursed under his breath. The Vengadores’ timing sucked. Though he should have expected this, and in fact, that was why he had Lovell and Carrington covering that direction.

  He threw the camouflage the rest of the way off and started moving. It meant turning his back on the bad guys in the kill zone, but that was an unfortunate necessity. There were still plenty of Triarii covering them.

  “Second Squad, Actual. Set up Plan B. Execute on my go.”

  The up-armors were a concern, but one that they’d planned and prepared for. They didn’t have explosives or molotovs; the explosives simply weren’t to be had without resupply, and hauling gas cans and glass bottles across the Rio Grande on their backs hadn’t seemed like a good idea, either. But they had rifles and machineguns, and a willingness to take chances that a lot of more conventional forces lacked.

  This wouldn’t be the first time they’d handled up-armored vehicles with bare hands and rifles, after all.

  He hustled up over the crest of the hill behind them, passing Evans and Faris, who were still focused on the kill zone. It took a considerable amount of discipline to keep watching one’s sector when there were bad guys coming from another direction, but even Faris was managing admirably.

  Spencer and West had fallen back to the higher hill that blocked most of the rest of the road from the S-curve they’d turned into a killing ground. Hank hustled up the slope to join them, glad that the ground was still damp enough from the midnight rain shower that he didn’t have to worry about kicking up any dust.

  He crawled the last few dozen yards to join them in the Ranger graves they’d scraped behind sagebrush near the top. “Wish we’d had a little more time; we could have dug spider holes alongside the road,” West said as he joined them.

  “Can’t have everything.” Hank glanced over at Spencer who had looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. “All the boys in position?”

  “Yup. I’d wait until the lead vehicle makes it to that hairpin turn.”

  “That’s the plan.” Hank wanted to stack the deck as much as he could, and if he could confuse the Vengadores as to where the attack was coming from, it might buy them a few precious seconds.

  Of course, the minute the Soldados had surrendered, they’d become the Triarii’s responsibility. If he waited too long, deliberately let the Vengadores think that the Soldados had ambushed them and vent their fury on the halted convoy, then he’d be as guilty of their deaths as if he’d lined them up in front of their own graves, put them on their knees, and shot them himself.

  A part of him wouldn’t mind. That part really wanted to let the Vengadores take out the trash before he hit them. But one of the matters that Colonel Santiago had made damned clear when he’d formed the Triarii was that while they might have to be a bit more aggressive and ruthless than most soldiers or cops were used to, they would maintain a sense of honor, or he’d hang them himself.

  And Hank knew that his conscience would bother him for a long time if he let disarmed, kneeling prisoners—even scumbags like the Soldados—get gunned down like animals. He wasn’t on their level, not yet.

  Even as he thought it, the memory of what he’d been entirely too ready to do to their prisoner back at the Echo Site, before he’d turned him over to Bob Morgan, floated back accusingly into his mind.

  He forced it back. Not the time. He had to focus on the problem at hand.

  Would have been nice if those SdA pricks had brought a .50. That would have made things easier. But as he’d said, wish in one hand…

  The Vengador trucks, all in their tan-and-green digital camouflage that looked far more professionally done than some of the actual military vehicle paint jobs he’d seen overseas, rolled up the road, the gunners up on their weapons and watching the desert around them.

  Hank got down behind his rifle,
his eye finding the scope as he tracked in on the lead gunner, leading him by just enough. Beside him, he could sense more than see Spencer and West picking up the other two.

  There was no complicated synchronization, no advance planning. They’d worked out the play ahead of time, with a lot of “situation dictates” attached. Each man took a target according to his own position.

  Hank’s finger slipped inside the trigger guard as he let his breath out, tightening on the trigger as his lungs emptied. His reticle stilled for a split second before the trigger broke.

  That hissing crack of the shot was the signal for the rest. West and Spencer fired before the echoes had even started to die down, their paired shots blending together into a single, ripping report.

  Hank didn’t watch the others’ impacts, but he saw his bullet tear the lead gunner’s throat out with a splash of red and a spray of debris. His aim had been slightly off. He quickly followed up, punching another round through the man’s skull as he crumpled to his knees, clasping a hand to his throat. The gunner was wearing a helmet, but it wasn’t enough to stop a 147-grain 7.62mm bullet. His head snapped to one side and he collapsed limply into the bed of the truck.

  Hank came off his sights just long enough to see that the other two gunners were down, including the one in the central vehicle, which looked like they’d started with a heavy duty Chevy dually, then added armor until it looked almost like an MRAP, complete with a top-mounted turret. Even the armored windows had been professionally installed.

  Those windows became Bronsted’s and Kandinsky’s targets as Spencer’s Mk 48 gunners opened fire. The riflemen had already opened up on the tires. The vehicles sagged and started to bog down, even as the drivers tried to gun the engines and get out of the kill zone on the rims. They were too heavy, and the road was too soft, though, even as the machinegunners blinded anyone inside. The bullets weren’t penetrating, but they were rapidly turning the armored glass into milky, spiderwebbed opacity.

  Meanwhile, Hank scrambled to his feet, followed by Spencer, West, Calvin, Brule, and Thomas. They plunged down the slope toward the rear vehicle.

  Three of the Duramax’s four tires were blown out, and the front driver’s side had dug into the dirt and gravel of the road, almost burying the corner of the front bumper. If they hadn’t welded another steel box around the cab, they might have made it out, but the extra weight was their downfall.

  The gunner was down behind the five-foot splinter shield that had been installed on a ring in the bed, the HK 21 machinegun pointed at the sky. And the rear window hadn’t been armored.

  Hank lifted his muzzle toward the sky, grabbed the edge of the bed, and hauled himself up, dropping the weapon to cover the corpse that was rapidly leaking what remained of the contents of its skull and circulatory system all over the inside. Then he ducked behind the splinter shield as movement from inside the cab warned him a split second before the glass shattered outward, bullets smacking into the steel, one burning across his calf before he got it out of the way.

  He cursed, even as West and Brule opened fire from off to the side, chopping bullets into the gunman inside and silencing the submachinegun.

  Hank then leaned out and dumped half a magazine into the cab, his hand clamped to the forearm against the side of the splinter shield. He tracked across the window, dumping a pair into each shadowy silhouette before moving on.

  Bone shattered, blood and brains flew. The only real targets he had were heads, and none of the Vengadores inside the cab had helmets on. It was all over very quickly.

  Then he was vaulting out of the bed and joining Brule and Calvin as they closed on the big one in the center.

  Calvin was already halfway up the side, as Thomas had clambered back up the hill to cover him. Someone was trying to climb up into the turret and take control of the ancient PKM mounted there, but Thomas put a bullet through his eye and he fell out of sight, leaving another splash of red drizzling down the inside of the turret.

  Hank ran to Calvin and put a gloved hand under his boot, helping to boost him up onto the roof. He got up just in time to drop flat, as bullets snapped by overhead.

  West leaned out around the far side of the up-armored truck, leading with his muzzle, and fired four or five times, riding the reset so fast that it sounded like his 7.62 battle rifle was running on full automatic. The incoming fire ceased.

  Calvin got back up, just in time to nearly get his head taken off by a burst of fire from inside, blasted up through the turret ring. Bullets pinged off the steel and whined away into the sky.

  It would have been a good point to use a grenade. Too bad they didn’t have any.

  Hank tried the back door. It was locked, as he’d expected. The cartel engineers who’d built the thing had thought to replicate combat locks.

  Calvin hesitated, hunkered down behind the turret armor. The last time they’d done this, he’d gotten shot. And he hadn’t pushed quite as hard or exposed himself as much as he was doing right now.

  But he waited until the fire from inside ceased, then stuck his own muzzle down through the turret and fired three times before rising up and doing a more thorough job. He moved back and forth, firing as he went, leaning out to make sure he was covering as much of the inside of the vehicle as he could from the turret.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the whole interior. Before Hank could say anything, Calvin had popped his sling, laid his rifle on the roof, drawn his knife, and dropped into the vehicle through the turret.

  “Fuck! What the hell is he doing?!” Quickly slinging his rifle, Hank grabbed onto the armor and started hauling himself up onto the roof to go after Calvin, even as he felt the vehicle rock under him, and yells and screams filtered up through the open turret.

  He got up on top, but had to duck down again as another bullet smacked into the turret’s splinter shield, inches from his head. West had dropped the three men who’d piled out of the lead truck, on the passenger side, but there’d been one left, hunkered down and hiding. He fired at Hank again, and the bullet went past his ear so close that the snap felt like it tore skin.

  Hank returned fire, laying his rifle down across the turret and finding the silhouette of the man hiding behind the hood. He’d shot at Hank through the windshield and rear window, both now shattered, but that first shot must have gone through the glass. The deflection had probably been the only thing that had saved Hank’s life.

  His first shot glanced off the hood, whining away over the Vengador’s head. His second and third were better placed. The second just about knocked the man’s helmet off. The impact jerked his head back and pulled him away from the grill, and then the third shot punched through his collarbone. He fell out of sight.

  Then the vehicle under him rocked again, something rattled at the back, and the rear door creaked open. “Clear!” Calvin croaked, as he stumbled out over the bodies in the back. He spat. “Fuck. I think I got some in my mouth.”

  Calvin was soaked with blood. The combat dagger in his hand was still dripping with it. He shook the droplets off, looked around for something to wipe the gore away, and finally thrust the blade into the sand at the side of the road. Not great for the edge or the point, but better than leaving the blood on it.

  “That was… not the smartest thing I’ve seen you do.” Hank was tempted to go high and right on the younger man, but they were still on the X, and still had work to do.

  “’If it’s a stupid idea and it works, it’s not a stupid idea,’” Calvin quoted. He looked up at the blood-soaked interior of the up-armor and let out a long, shaky breath. “We need some grenades, chief.”

  “No objection, if you can get some.” Hank moved up toward the front of the vehicle.

  “I don’t think we need ‘em.” Spencer was right at Hank’s side, his weapon up, covering the lead vehicle. “We’ve got our own human grenade right here.” He glanced over at Calvin as the younger man joined them. “In fact, I think you’ve got a new callsign. You are no longer Calvin; I dub
you ‘Frag.’”

  They spread out into a “V,” closing on the lead truck. Hank angled out the farthest, keeping his weapon leveled at the front of the vehicle as soon as he made sure that no one was left inside the cab.

  The man he’d shot over the hood was still twitching, but that was all. The bullet must have hit something vital after smashing its way through his clavicle. He stared at the thinning clouds above with unblinking eyes, blood drizzled across his throat and jaw. Hank keyed his radio.

  “This is Actual. Follow on convoy neutralized. One-One, what’s your status?”

  “All secured here, Actual.” As usual, LaForce was all business on the radio. “We appear to have five vehicles that are usable for transport, though a couple of them have a few bullet holes.”

  “Roger. Falling back to your position.” Hank circled his hand above his head and pointed over the hill toward their initial ambush site. “Two-Four, fall back to the secondary overwatch position, and prepare to break down and board the trucks.”

  The rest of Second Squad fell in with Hank, Spencer, and West, as they went over the hill to link up with First.

  LaForce had the captured Soldados lined up on the side of the road, facing the hill on their knees with their hands on their heads. Most of them were as stoic as most hardened criminals when captured, but a couple were clearly mid-freakout, shaking and with tears flowing down their cheeks. They must have been new to the game.

  All the vehicle doors stood open. While about half the squad was still up on the high ground, holding security, the other half were checking the trucks they planned to take with them, as well as the tankers and the bullet-riddled rear vehicle. Evans and Reisinger were even then carrying bandoliers of ammunition from the rear vehicle to one of the trucks they could take.