Ghost Sniper

86

Gil and Poncho sat smoking Delicados cigarettes in the undergrowth near a winding jungle road just after a rain, ten miles south of the pueblo Frontera Comalapa near the border with Guatemala. Their faces streaked with charcoal, each wore the digital-camouflage battle dress uniforms of the Mexican army, and each was armed with an FN SCAR Mk 17 CQC rifle with a thirteen-inch barrel, chambered in 7.62×51 mm NATO.

Poncho was a dark-skinned Mexican with distinct Aztec features, handsome and somewhat short of stature at five foot six. His English was nearly perfect, with only a slight accent. A former GAFE operator like Antonio Castañeda, he had trained with the Green Berets in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in the early 2000s.

Gil took a deep drag from the Delicado. “Shit,” he muttered, suddenly light-headed. “There’s nothin’ delicate about this fucker. It’s like smokin’ a tire.”

Poncho chuckled. “Delicados aren’t for little girls.”

Gil snickered. “I wish you’d’a warned me. I feel like I oughta put on a dress.”

Poncho smiled. He’d been paying Gil close attention for the past ten hours. “What the hell are you doing down here sweating your balls off in the jungle? I can tell from talking to you that you don’t have an interest in our problems — our politics.”

Gil took another drag and shrugged. “This is where the fight is right now.”

Poncho felt he understood. “I know who you are, you know. I don’t remember your name, but I recognize your face from a magazine. You’re the SEAL sniper who won the Medal of Honor.”

Silence hung in the still jungle air, the sun beginning to shine down through the trees in smoky rays. “Partner, you got me confused with some whole other body.”

“No, I don’t.”

Gil scratched his unshaven neck where the sweat was beginning to irritate his skin. “Then I’ll ask you to keep it a secret, soldier to soldier. The world thinks I’m dead, and I want it to stay that way.”

“Why?”

“I got taxes I don’t wanna pay.”

Poncho snorted, deciding the real answer must be none of his business.

“Let me ask you something,” Gil said. “What are you doing working for a butcher like Castañeda? You’re a soldier through and through. It’s obvious.”

Poncho crushed the cigarette against the trunk of a giant fig tree, tucking the butt into a pocket. “I didn’t come to work for him until after the truce with the government. I accept only special operations like this one. He pays very well, but I won’t make war on civilians. He knows that.”

“You helped him kill off the Zetas?” Pronounced “seta,” for the letter z, the Zeta cartel had terrorized Mexico for decades until Castañeda had crushed it with military-style tactics.

“Yeah,” Poncho said. “Those we didn’t kill either went into hiding or came to work for us.”

“So where does your loyalty lie? With Mexico? Or the money?”

Poncho looked at him. “If it was with Mexico, I wouldn’t be working for Castañeda. I’d be a bricklayer like my father.” He hesitated. “I’ll tell you a secret, though: solder to soldier.”

Gil waited to hear.

“If he ever breaks the truce and starts warring on civilians again, I’ll kill him myself. That, he doesn’t know.”

“Sounds like maybe your loyalty lies with Mexico.”

“I’ll let you say it.” Poncho averted his eyes. “I’d feel like a hypocrite.”

“All war is hypocrisy.” Gil took a drag. “It’s a thing we gotta live with.”

Poncho’s radio crackled in his earpiece, and he touched the throat mike, acknowledging the transmission. “We’re on,” he said, getting to his feet.

Gil snuffed the cigarette and got up, shrugging to adjust his harness. Seconds later they were moving fast at port arms toward the dirt road. With each footfall, Gil felt the bite of the titanium implant in his right foot, the result of a gunshot wound eighteen months earlier. He was used to the pain by now, knowing the implant wouldn’t fail him in combat.

Poncho dashed across the road to take up position behind another giant fig tree. Gil remained on the opposite side, skirting east of Poncho’s position to conceal himself behind a boulder that had been pushed there during the road’s construction decades earlier.

A small convoy of three shiny black four-wheel-drive vehicles came through the curve at forty-five miles per hour. The first truck passed Poncho’s position, and he tossed a spike strip across the road just before the second truck in line went by.

All four tires on the second truck deflated, and the truck slewed around on the road, skidding to a controlled stop.

As the lead truck approached his position, Gil stood up and machine-gunned the driver, killing him with a burst of .308 caliber fire through the neck and head. The truck crashed off the road into a ditch. He biffed a fragmentation grenade after it and then darted toward the other vehicles. The grenade exploded as the men in the truck were dismounting with their weapons. The explosion tore apart the truck and hurled their mangled bodies into the bush.

Poncho was firing on the third vehicle, which had swerved off the road to avoid crashing into the second. He killed the five men before anyone had the chance to open a door.

All four doors of the second truck, however, were flying open, and armed men were jumping out shooting. Gil shot two of them dead and rolled for cover to reload.

The gunners fired on Poncho, driving him back to cover behind his fig tree, and then quickly jumped back into the truck. The driver gunned the Vortec engine, throwing dirt with the flattened tires and pulling away.

Slapping a fresh magazine into the rifle, Gil sprang back up and shot the driver. The truck swerved sharply, and the remaining gunman dove out with the vehicle still in motion, taking a wild shot at Gil as he bounced on the road. Gil raked him once with automatic fire, and he lay still.

Poncho opened the back door of the truck and found Hector Ruvalcaba cowering on the floor of the backseat. He grabbed the old man by the collar and yanked him out, dragging him into the road. “Welcome home, cabrón.”

Ruvalcaba shielded his eyes from the now-blazing sun. “Wait!” he said in Spanish. “I’ll pay you whatever you want — millions!”

Poncho looked at Gil, who stood in the road calmly reloading his rifle. “He says he’ll pay us whatever we want.”

Gil drew his 1911. “You wanna do it, or you want me to?”

Poncho pointed south. “Garrucha isn’t too far from here, half an hour through the jungle by Jeep.”

“So? What’s in Garrucha?”

“This asshole was born there.”

Gil took a second to light a cigarette. “I’m not from around here,” he said carefully, “and sometimes I can be a little slow on the uptake. But why the hell do we wanna take him home?”

“Because they hate him in Garrucha; worse than the devil.”

“I’ll pay you!” Ruvalcaba blurted in heavily accented English. “Whatever you want!”

Gil stood looking at the man, the cigarette poised at his lips as he harkened back to Afghanistan, where village justice was swift and final.

“You don’t wanna go home?”

Ruvalcaba shook his head. “Please. You are American, no? I’ll pay you a hundred times more than the FBI!”

“I don’t work for the FBI.” Gil looked at Poncho. “You thinkin’ there’ll be less hypocrisy this way?”

Poncho shrugged. “Something like that.”

Gil pointed the pistol into Ruvalcaba’s face. “Take off your clothes. If I have to tell you twice, I’ll plant this Fort Lewis boot so far up your ass you’ll have to untie the laces to take a shit.”

Poncho laughed. “What the hell does that mean?”

Gil gave him a wink. “It sounds tough; that’s all that matters.”

A half hour later, Poncho drove a battered white Jeep Renegade into the small village of Garrucha and stopped near a large pen full of goats. Chickens ran to and fro, and human faces began poking out of shabby brick homes. Having heard the firefight up on the mountain, the villagers had run for cover the second they heard the Jeep come splashing down the jungle trail.

Poncho took Ruvalcaba by the arm and pulled him from the Jeep, shoving him down in the mud naked, with his hands bound behind his back.

“Please!” Ruvalcaba begged Gil in English. “I am a very rich man!”

Recognizing Ruvalcaba, the villagers could scarcely believe their eyes, and figures began darting from house to house, spreading the news of his unbelievable return.

Three men came around a corner and walked out into the trail holding machetes over their shoulders. The machetes were not weapons, but the tools they used to make their living.

Poncho pointed at the naked man sitting in the mud. “If you want justice for your children, here he is.”

Shocked to see the man who had tortured and abused their region for the past ten years, the men stood looking at one another. More villagers appeared, and soon twenty men stood talking in a quiet group.

“What’s to talk about?” Gil wondered aloud. “Just hack the fucker and be done.”

“This isn’t the Middle East,” Poncho said. “These are superstitious people. They believe in the Virgin, and they have to reach a consensus on how to deal with this.”

“Catholic?”

Poncho shrugged. “Mostly.”

Gil was increasingly impatient when it came to religion. He’d seen too many people maimed and murdered over it. “What’s mostly mean?”

“They’re Catholic with Mayan superstitions. It’s hard to explain because every village down here is different. But, yeah, they consider themselves Catholic.”

“Learn somethin’ new every day, I suppose.” Gil looked down at Ruvalcaba, who sat trembling at his feet. “Whatever you did to these people, I’m pretty goddamn sure you’re gonna regret it.”

Ruvalcaba lurched forward, shamelessly attempting to embrace Gil’s leg between his neck and shoulder, like a cat fawning its owner. “Shoot me — please!”

Gil stepped away. “This is between you and your people.”

“They’re not my people!” Ruvalcaba attempted to stand.

Poncho knocked him over with the rifle butt. “His men come here a couple times a year: steal the boys to work in their meth labs; steal the daughters to use as whores. Most of them are never seen again.”

Three of the older men came forward, leaving their machetes behind near a wall. They asked to talk with Poncho in private.

“Please!” Ruvalcaba hissed. “Shoot me!”

“One more word,” Gil told him, “and I’ll kick your face in.”

A couple of minutes later, Poncho returned, hauling Ruvalcaba to his feet and shoving him toward the villagers.

A group of men held him while another group made preparations to tie him to a tree. The women began gathering stones into a pile. The teenagers were told to round up the children and take them down the trail to the church. The kids held hands and sang a happy religious-sounding song as they walked away through the trees.

Gil watched the pile of stones grow. “I expected machetes.”

Poncho shook his head. “No machetes in the Bible.”

Shaking a cigarette from the pack, Gil proffered it, and Poncho plucked it out, lighting it off of Gil’s.

“We can leave. Ruvalcaba’s in good hands here.”

Gil drew from the cigarette, watching in dull amusement as Ruvalcaba attempted to reason with the villagers, his mournful overtures falling upon deaf ears as they tightly bound his wrists and ankles to the tree. “I wanna stay and make sure. This asshole’s cheated death too many times.”

Poncho took a drag. “He won’t cheat it today.”

“All the same.”

The first stone was the size of a baseball, cast by a woman whose son had been kidnapped the year before. It struck Ruvalcaba in the sternum with a heavy thud, and the old man let out a deep groan. Another stone was thrown. And another. Soon it became a free-for-all that lasted nearly ninety seconds. Many stones missed, but just as many hit the mark, and by the time the last one was hurled, Ruvalcaba was drenched in blood, his face as unrecognizable, and his chin lolled against his chest.

As the villagers walked away down the trail toward the church, Gil stepped up and found a pulse in Ruvalcaba’s neck. “You’d better tell ’em he’s still alive.”

Poncho glanced after them. “They know.”

“So where the hell they goin’?”

“He’ll be dead soon.”

“Not soon enough. Don’t they understand that’s how this bastard keeps surviving to fight another day — because people underestimate him?”

“What can I tell you?” Poncho said. “If he survives, they’ll say it’s God’s will.”

“God’s will, my ass.” Gil flicked away the cigarette and drew the 1911.

“Por favor?” someone said from behind. Please?

He turned to see an old cane farmer of at least eighty standing there with his hand out. “La cuarenta y cinco… por favor?” The forty-five… please?

Poncho spoke with the farmer and translated for Gil. “The Ruvalcabas kidnapped his granddaughter four years ago. Some of the kids found her dead along the road a few weeks later. He’s got bad arthritis in both shoulders, so he couldn’t throw any stones, but he says he carried a forty-five like yours in the army when he was a young man.”

Gil offered the pistol to the farmer butt-first. “Tell ’im there’s a round in the chamber.”

As smoothly as if he’d been handling the pistol all of his life, the old man thumbed down the slide lock and put the muzzle up against Ruvalcaba’s head, squeezing the trigger and blowing the drug lord’s brains out the other side of his skull. Then he wiped the gore from the muzzle with the tail of his shirt and offered the weapon back to Gil butt-first.

Gil shook his head. “You keep it, partner. One soldier to another.”

Poncho translated, and the farmer nodded, tucking away the pistol as he strolled off in the opposite direction of the church.

Poncho stood watching him. “And now?”

Gil let out a tired sigh. “Now I gotta go see about a girl.”

They mounted up, and Poncho gunned the Jeep back up the trail toward the jungle road, throwing mud and slimy jungle muck in all directions. By the time they reached the road, both men were completely splattered.

Poncho stopped to disengage the four-wheel drive.

Gil jerked his thumb back toward the village, his face smeared with black muck. “Sure you don’t wanna head back down?”

Poncho glanced over his shoulder. “Why?”

Gil wiped the muck from his eyes. “You missed a fucking mud hole back there. I thought you might wanna go back and hit it.”

Poncho gave him a wink. “We didn’t get stuck. That’s all that matters.”