Fear No Evil

Chapter 69

From high up the flanks of the hillsides that cradled the ranch yard, the attack came in waves of automatic-weapon fire, sniper shots, and rocket-propelled grenades. One pickup truck and then another exploded, sending fireballs into the sky.

By the time Butler and his team sprinted for their weapons, four of the ranch hands had been hit. Two of their wives died in their tracks.

Butler knew in his gut that the cartel had found them. He ran out of his cabin with an AR-15 and struggled to put on his earbud and jaw mike. He saw two of the young teens, a boy and a girl, hit from behind as they tried to flee the corral.

He went berserk, shouldering his rifle and racing toward the teens, who were weeping and trying to crawl in the dirt. “If you can hear me, I need help pronto,” Butler said into his mike.

Cortland and Big DD raced toward him, firing their weapons toward the flashes and bursts of flame on the hillsides.

Butler dragged the teens to cover and told them help was coming. Then he jumped up and ran again, barking, “Spread out! Hunt them in pairs! Talk to each other. No friendly fire!”

“Roger that,” Purdy said. “Moving with JP.”

“Hearing you both loud and clear,” Vincente said. “On your right flank, jefe.”

The sun had set. Dusk was deepening. But Butler could still make out his men peeling out to the sides of the cove. He began watching the tracer bullets, figured there were eight shooters, maybe more, firing down at them. He raised his own gun, sighted on an area the tracers were coming from, and opened fire, sending a burst of bullets three hundred yards up the hill.

He heard a man roar in pain and saw the tracers stop. “One down,” he said.

“Roger that,” Cortland said. “And many more to come. I’m going thermal.”

That’s how Butler figured this would unfold now. The average cartel thug against his Special Ops veterans? The Alejandros might be able to sneak in and surprise attack, killing women and children. But now? In a fair fight? They didn’t stand a chance.

There were only eight, after all, maybe ten men above—

The firing suddenly intensified, became a barrage, with eight rocket grenades coming at the ranch from four different angles, rifles and machine guns rattling from far more than ten positions.

“They sent an army at us,” Butler barked. “We’re going to be overrun. Retreat to the canyon. Repeat, retreat to the canyon.”

He could see the silhouettes of cartel men streaming off the hillsides, firing their weapons in short bursts. Cortland stood his ground, picking them off one by one, while Big DD retreated to a large piñon pine. This was how a controlled retreat worked, one man covering the other as they made their way safely to the rear.

Purdy and Vincente rushed by Butler, who turned to cover their exit, spraying bullets at the men coming down his side of the cove.

“Got your six, Cort,” Big DD said.

“Same here, go, Cort,” Butler said, glancing to his right to see his sniper spin around and race away from his position in a zigzag toward that big piñon pine.

Big DD opened up to cover him. So did Vincente and Purdy.

Butler saw several cartel men drop before one of their shots connected. In mid-sprint, Cortland staggered, pitched forward, and sprawled in the dirt ten feet shy of the tree trunk where Dawkins was crouched.

Big DD saw the sniper go down, leaped out into the line of fire, grabbed Cortland, and dragged him to safety.

Feeling like a wave of cartel men was about to crash on him, Butler ran toward the canyon as he heard Big DD say, “Cort’s gone. Heading your way.”

“We’ve got the canyon mouth covered,” Purdy said. “We’re high left and right.”

Butler sprinted past his cabin and up a slight incline, not caring a whit for everything that was being left behind, focused only on the black maw of the canyon ahead of him and on reaching its safety before a cartel bullet could strike him down.

He heard feet pounding over the sound of guns and picked up Dawkins coming hard to his left. Bullets slapped off tree trunks to their right and left. They pinged off the rock ledges at either side of the canyon mouth.

Butler and Big DD vanished into the blackness of the narrow canyon. But when they turned around, they could see a mob of cartel men coming up the incline behind the cabins and moving through the trees.

Butler found a boulder, got behind it, reloaded, and aimed at the killers rapidly approaching. “Give them hell, now,” Butler said. “Make them pay before we get out of here.”

All four of them opened fire at once.