Fear No Evil

Chapter 56

South of Oaxaca, Mexico

Matthew Butler shivered a little as the sky lightened in the east. In a few hours, it would be one hundred and five degrees, but there’d been no cloud cover during the night, and currently the desert air swirled in the thirties.

Butler had not come prepared for it, but he was highly trained. He could shut off something like pain or cold at will.

He did so as he left the spot where he’d spent the night, leeward of a wall of dull red rock. He climbed the side of a ledge, and when he got to the top, he took the raw wind straight in the face.

Butler scooted forward in the low light to where the ledge became the farthest point of a pinnacle some four hundred vertical feet above a gravel state road that wound through the mountainous terrain. He settled into a wide crack in the side of the pinnacle facing almost due south, assembled his Swarovski BTX spotting scope, and took his long-range rifle from its case.

When he had it locked in and aimed down at a tight bend in the road, he triggered his jaw mike. “Everyone awake?”

“Sipping my espresso,” Big DD said in Butler’s earbud.

“Mocha latte here,” J. P. Vincente said.

“Put caramel in mine,” Alison Purdy said.

“None for me,” Cortland said. “Caffeine gives me the shakes.”

Butler smiled. “And now we wait.”

Several minutes later, as light came on slowly, he began to be able to pick out other rock formations overlooking the road bend and the steep hillside on the opposite side where scrub gave way to groves of piñon pine.

“We’ve got them leaving the hacienda gate,” M said in Butler’s other earbud. “Three black Escalades.”

“They’ve gone with three vehicles this morning,” Butler said, relaying the word.

“Roger that,” Vincente said. “Adjusting the plan.”

“I’m with him,” Purdy said.

“We are less than twelve minutes out.”

Butler looked around at the highest point on the other side of the road, unable to make Cortland out. But the sniper was there. He’d been in place all night, lying prone beneath dun-colored camouflage, eager to prove his skills.

Cortland had been embarrassed that he’d missed the pervert Frenchman in Paris six weeks ago and had vowed it would never happen again. Butler believed him. Paris had been a rare error on Cortland’s part. Butler expected his accuracy to be exceptional when the time came.

“Six minutes,” M said and Cortland passed it on.

The sun was rising above the eastern horizon when M said, “Two minutes. Road is clear to you. Both directions.”

“Rocks,” Butler said.

Above the near side of that tight bend in the road, Butler saw a flash and heard a muffled, delayed thud as a slab of rock the size of a refrigerator broke off and fell, shattering debris across the road.

“Well done, DD,” Butler said.

“Once a sapper, always a sapper,” the big man said.

Butler got behind his rifle, dialing in his scope to the distance to the debris while calculating for the steep downwardness of the shot. He looked south, saw headlights slashing the road.

“Eyes on,” he said. “Cort, you’re up.”

“Watch ’em fall,” he said. “Cartel swine.”

The first Cadillac rounded the bend, the other two tight on its bumper. The driver saw the rocks and slammed on the brakes a little too late. He crashed into the rubble; his front wheels went up onto it with a screech before the vehicle stopped. The others hit in a bumper-to-bumper chain reaction.

“Perfect,” Butler said. “Everyone, steady now. Wait for it.”

He watched six men climb out of the first and last SUVs carrying automatic weapons. They looked nervous, sensing an ambush.

“Patience,” Butler said.

A minute ticked by, then two. The six armed men let down their guard. Two went to the middle vehicle. The other four inspected the damage on the front one.

“Still clear,” M said in his earbud.

Butler tracked the pair of men going to the middle vehicle. When the right rear window rolled down, he said, “Take them.”

Cortland’s first shot blew the top off the head of one of the four front guards. Butler’s shot hit the guard standing by the open vehicle window, dropping him in his tracks.

The other cartel men were screaming now, ducking, trying to figure out where the shots were coming from.

Cortland’s second, third, and fourth shots finished the rest of the guards on the debris pile. Butler tried to swing with the other man running away from the middle Escalade toward the one in the rear.

He could hear that SUV spinning its wheels, trying to go in reverse, but the bumpers were locked for a few moments before they freed. It didn’t matter. Purdy drove a Ford pickup around the bend, blocking any retreat. Vincente stood in the pickup bed aiming an AR rifle over the top of the cab.

Vincente shot the last armed guard as he tried to get in the rear Escalade. Big DD barreled down the far hillside toward the middle vehicle, his own gun shouldered and ready for business.

Big DD’s first shot blew out the middle Cadillac’s driver’s-side window and sprayed the passenger window with blood. Butler’s second shot got the man who’d driven up on the debris.

Big DD swung his weapon at the rear passenger window of the middle rig, shouting, “You shoot, you die! You shoot, you die!” The big man wrenched open the rear door and stuck his rifle inside.

“Don’t!” a man shouted in English. “No guns!”

“All of you, out. Now.”

The first man to emerge from the middle Cadillac was dressed in a military uniform and held his hands high. The second man out was slim and elegant with black, slicked-back hair; he was wearing a business suit and dark glasses. The third man wore a plain white shirt, jeans, and a Miami Dolphins baseball cap.

“You will die for this,” the suited man said in a thick accent.

“Not if you can help it,” Big DD said.

Vincente ran to him. They turned the men around, zip-tied their wrists, put duct tape over their mouths, and hustled them to the pickup.

After Big DD restrained their ankles, Vincente got a tarp, covered the prisoners, and slapped twice on the hood of the pickup. Purdy threw the truck in reverse and began to back away from the carnage.

“Pull out, Cort,” Butler said.

“Not yet” came the reply a split second before the driver in the third Escalade jumped out and tried to aim an AK-47 at the retreating pickup.

Cortland shot him through the side of his chest.

“Now I’m pulling out,” Cortland said.

“Pickup in three hours for you, two for me,” Butler said and ran in a crouch to his backpack, where he began dismantling his weapon and the spotting scope.

Three minutes later, he was heading northeast across a broken desert landscape toward his pickup spot some six miles away. The sun was barely above the horizon but he could already feel the inferno building.