Standoff

Thirty

“It’s Del Rio — Laughlin AFB,” I shouted into the mike, the connection to Arlen patched through the radio and onto his cell phone as the Black Hawk climbed at an aggressive angle into the lime-green night sky.

“Laughlin’s a training base,” said Arlen, tired and unconvinced.

“I know. Home to the 47th Flying Training Wing, the largest primary pilot training base we’ve got. Big, but not too big. And all those young student pilots are gonna be tucked up nice and warm in bed when two black King Airs land, just like they did at Horizon Airport.”

“Why there and not Columbus?”

“I don’t say trust me very often, because mostly not even I trust me; but now I’m saying it. Trust me, Arlen, okay? You need to get through to the Joint Chiefs.”

“What? Who?”

“The Joint Chiefs. You need to get them to release some assets. Fort Hood is closer than Bliss. The First Cavalry is there. We need men and gunships. You’ve also got to get onto the Wing King at Laughlin and the Security Forces commander. Apostles will come at dawn so there’s still time.”

“The Joint Chiefs? What do I tell them? I gotta give them something.”

“Tell ’em Horizon was just the warm-up for Apostles and Perez. The main game is now heading Laughlin’s way — a thousand armed killers.”

“What? Why Laughlin?”

“Because it’s the only logical target.”

“That’s not enough, Vin.”

“You said you trusted my instincts.”

There was a pause on the line, and then finally, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Arlen ended the call.

The pilot had already informed me that flight time to Laughlin was going to be just over two and a half hours, providing the tailwinds held up. Like any investigator, I liked to be right, but with regards to Laughlin I wanted to be dead wrong.

Two hours later, Arlen called back. “Just spoke with Colonel Needleman. There’s an attack in progress there.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s happening?”

“Just like you said. Mounted infantry jumped the fence. They rode straight into Mendoza’s placements.”

So I’d been wrong. I almost laughed.

“I guess you can turn around.”

“We’ll need to stop for gas.” As an afterthought, I said, “Hey, what about Laughlin. You speak to anyone there? I guess you can ring ’em up and tell ’em to go back to bed.”

“Yeah, I was just on the phone to the major commanding Base Security when the line went dead.”

Something in my throat tightened. “When they hit Horizon they disabled the cell tower and cut the power.”

“Not so easy to do at Laughlin. More than one tower and there are redundancies. Could just be AT&T not talking to Verizon. And anyway, Apostles is getting mopped up over at Columbus. I think we can relax, bud. I called Del Rio PD a little while back. They’re sending a cruiser over to check on the main gate. I haven’t cancelled that request so if there’s a problem we’ll soon find out about it.”

This didn’t feel right. “Arlen, what kind of numbers are they facing at Columbus?”

“Hang on a minute, Vin, got another call coming in.”

The pilot gave the hand signal — ten minutes out. It was coming up to 5 am. Sunrise was 6 am. The sky would begin to lighten in around thirty minutes.

“Vin, got Del Rio PD on the line,” said Arlen. “The main gate checks out fine. All quiet. They’re still at the base. You want me to ask them anything?”

“See if they’ve got a view of the apron. Are there any black aircraft parked there?”

While I waited for a response, I searched the sea of lights in the distance for the distinctive strobes used for aircraft navigation that would tell me where Laughlin was.

“Vin, I asked them about the black King Airs,” said Arlen’s voice in the phones. “They’re saying it’s hard to tell. There are rows and rows of aircraft parked on the tarmac. Anyway, I think we’re good. When I get an update from Columbus, I’ll pass it straight along. Hang on a sec … What did you say? Sorry, I was on the other line …”

I pictured Arlen juggling two phones. I wondered if they had any pool bars in Del Rio.

“Vin, you there?” Something had changed in the tone of Arlen’s voice.

“Still here.”

“The PD patrol at Laughlin. They’re saying two aircraft just came in low and buzzed the runway. They’re coming in to land. Vin, they’re telling me these aircraft — they’re black.”

The co-pilot had called the Wing Command Post for a landline connection to Base Security but couldn’t get through. I took that to mean Security Forces were either already all dead or still engaged with the militia disgorged by the two black King Airs. I guessed we’d find out soon enough, because Laughlin AFB was in our twelve o’clock and coming up fast, its runways and infrastructure lit up in the darkness like global warming was a myth.

On the highway beyond the base was a long line of traffic for this time of the morning, headlights winking green in my NVGs. There seemed to be a hold-up at the main gate. But then, as I watched, that line of headlights began to flow down the road unobstructed, past the guardhouse. The entrance had therefore been breached, which confirmed to me that the bulk of the Base Security forces had been eliminated.

“Cooper, where you want us to put you down?” the pilot asked, his voice rasping in the headset.

“Keep us airborne over the secondary runway threshold and patch me through to Colonel Wayne,” I said. A thousand militia mounted on motorcycles took up a lot of the main road through the base and snaked out onto the highway. I flipped up the NVGs, the pre-dawn light having turned the world a dull gray.

“Vin, you there?”

It was Arlen.

“Apostles is here in force,” I told him. “Base Security has been overwhelmed. They’re inside the wire.”

“Assets are on the move, Vin. The attack on a Columbus was a feint, no more than a hundred men.”

“Arlen, it’s gonna be a bloodbath here. Time to target is the critical factor. We need gunships and men, whatever you can get, but they better get here fast.”

“I’ve already called the 301st Fighter Wing in Fort Worth. They’re trying to get something to you.”

F-16s — Vipers! “Roger that. ETA?”

“No idea, but they’ll contact you on Guard frequency, so turn it up. Your call sign is Oddball. Then send them to any freq. you like. Spad Ops is 252.1, if you need it.”

“Spad to the bone” was the wing’s motto, a bad homophone for “bad to the bone”. “What else you got coming?”

“A full battalion of cavalry is in the air, along with Apache Longbows for support, but even coming across from Hood we’re talking well over an hour to you.”

“Jesus, Arlen, this is Texas, damn it! Guns are like screwdrivers around here — every house has got a set. What’s going on here is why there’s a goddamn Second Amendment. Get onto the Rangers, the DPS, PD, NRA — the PTA if you can raise ’em. Roust ’em outta bed and get ’em the fuck down here! Their sons and daughters are in need.”

“On it,” he said and the line went dead.

I quickly briefed the men in the four Black Hawks. “What’s your loiter time?” I asked the pilot.

“Forty minutes to bingo fuel,” came the reply. And then, “Cooper, we got inbound fighters for you. They know where we are. Over to you. Call sign SPAD. What freq. do you want them on?”

If circumstances were different, I might have smiled at the full circle my Air Force career had taken. Here I was again, back to being a special tactics officer calling hell down on evil-doers.

“Oddball, Oddball, this is Spad One-One,” came through the headset — the pilot of the lead Viper.

“Spad One-One, Oddball. Go.”

“Spad One-One inbound, VFR, five thousand descending to three, heading two-one-zero, five miles out, looking for words.”

“Spad contact Oddball on two-three-seven decimal zero.” This was housekeeping: we had to get off the Guard channel and onto a radio frequency no one else was using. The Black Hawk co-pilot looked back and gave me a thumbs up.

“Roger, Oddball. Spad One-Two, go two-three-seven decimal zero.”

“Two,” came the terse reply.

Another thumbs up from the co-pilot.

“Spad check.”

“Two.”

“Oddball, Oddball, Spad up your freq.”

“Spad, Oddball. Local altimeter two niner niner four. Say state.”

“Copy two-nine-nine-four. Spad One-One, flight of two Fox 16s, six BDU-33s and five hundred rounds 20mm TP diverted en route from Falcon Range. We have ten minutes play time; thirty if we can recover at Laughlin. Confirm troops in Contact? Over.”

TP — target practice ammo. Five hundred rounds of the stuff could make a hell of a mess of someone’s day.

“Spad One-One, Oddball. Negative recovery at Laughlin. Affirmative Tango India Charlie. Target is approximately one thousand, I say again, one thousand personnel mounted on dirt bikes with light automatic weapons. Civilians and friendlies in the area. How copy?”

“Spad One-One.”

“Spad lead, are you familiar with Del Rio?” I asked him.

“That’s affirmative, Oddball. Say intentions.”

“Spad, we need to buy some time. Make your passes on the traffic down Liberty Drive, the main artery off Highway 90 on a heading of one-three zero. Same again down the secondary entrance off route three one seven on a heading of two-two zero. Any dirt bike is a target. Avoid Mexican airspace if possible. You copy? Over.”

“Oddball, Spad One-One. Loud and clear. Jesus — that’s my goddamn alma mater down there! Class 01–14. Over.”

“Okay, Spad. Stay with us as long as you can. Oddball will remain on this freq., but we’ll be maneuvering below five hundred feet. You’re cleared in hot — your discretion.”

“Spad One-One copies ‘cleared in hot; my discretion.’ Spad One-Two?”

“One-Two.”

I heard the lead pilot brief his wingman: “Okay, Romeo, strafe to start. Hold on the perch at thirty-five hundred. I’ll mark the target with a BDU-33. Call ‘Smoke in sight’, and I’ll clear you in for your first pass. Conserve ammo, and be sure of your targets. Watch your altitude, and look out for small-arms fire. I’ll follow with ten-second spacing. Copy?”

“Two copies.”

Coming out of the west at around two hundred feet and four hundred knots, the two Vipers rocketed down the main runway, one slightly ahead of the other. I watched them hook into steep turns beyond the threshold and come onto independent divergent headings and climbing before I lost them in the haze.

Over on Liberty Drive, the headlights had thinned out a little as the attacking force had begun to disperse toward the base housing areas, where military folks lived. More headlights along Laughlin Drive indicated the road being secured by the cartel, confirming also that, as I’d guessed, it would be the invaders’ intended departure route to the south.

I held my breath and everything seemed to slow. A Viper came from the east, diving at a shallow angle down Liberty. Its engines shrieked, cutting through the Black Hawk’s main rotor thump. Suddenly, there was a burst of smoke followed an instant later by a row of dark asphalt spurts and a pulse of thick dust that rolled up and engulfed the traffic. A second shriek of jet engine and more geysers of pulverized asphalt followed by a cloud of dust shocked into midair.

I watched as the Vipers made two runs each over Liberty, then one over Laughlin Drive, the destruction both awesome and terrible. The dust hung lazily in the early morning air, in no hurry to settle. There didn’t seem to be many headlights on those roads now.

A burst of static started me breathing again. A voice in my ear said, “Oddball, Spad One-One. The clean-up is yours. Make it personal. Over and out.”

“Spad One-One. Oddball. Count on it.”

“Spad flight, button four.”

“Two.”

The F-16s made another low pass over the Liberty Drive. They came along faster this time and from west to east, their engines howling, no doubt striking terror into the surviving terrorists who’d just experienced their fury.

“Cooper,” the Black Hawk pilot asked, looking over his shoulder. “Where do you want us to put you down?”

“Closer to base housing. We’ll need some cover.”

“There’s a big parking lot a block back from the apron, just off Liberty Drive.”

“Let’s do it. After we’re out, dust off and give us covering fire.” I noted with satisfaction that smaller streams of those headlights were leaving the base. Did I say leaving? Fleeing would be a better word to describe it. Maybe a little taste of F-16 wasn’t to their liking. Also, I was happy to see away in the distance, around five miles back along Highway 90 toward Del Rio, a stream of flashing blues and reds heading our way.

The pilot brought the Black Hawk over the apron and cleared the hangars. Over on Liberty, I could see individual militia on their bikes. Many were down on the ground and not moving. But many more were still heading for base housing.

I could also see now that bikes were coming and going, motoring past the old retired aircraft planted beside Liberty Drive. A police cruiser was parked near the guard gate, large black numbers on its roof. The police who drove it there would be dead, as would any security forces manning the guardhouse. Bodies were strewn around on the ground everywhere I looked.

A couple of rounds banged off the Black Hawk’s armor. The man beside me had his helmet knocked sideways by another round and I heard him swear.

“Comin’ in hot, Cooper,” the pilot announced as our aircraft dropped toward the vacant parking lot, its nose high in the aggressive flare. Behind us were three other Black Hawks also coming in just as fast and taking fire, the door gunners returning it with interest.

“Make for those cars,” I told Gomez, pointing to several rows of them parked on the asphalt.

The ground, white and chalky where it was unsurfaced, rose up toward us. At the last instant, the Black Hawk’s nose came down and the skids touched the earth. Gomez was first out, running toward the vehicles. I was right behind him with men panting and boots pounding the earth behind me.

The Black Hawks lifted off as I skidded to a stop beside Gomez, the cars around us taking random fire from dirt bikes still game enough to come along Liberty. Down at ground level, the invasion seemed anything but organized. A little further along the road to the west, back toward the main guard gate where the F-16s had concentrated their fire, where the finer dust still hung in the air, smashed and broken bodies and motorcycles lay around like discarded refuse.

But despite the death and destruction, the Chihuahua assault was continuing. I saw a man walk out of a building nearby, wearing jogging gear and white buds in his ears, probably wondering about the racket interfering with his music. A rider rode past him, firing a carbine one-handed, and the jogger was dead from a burst of automatic fire before he could scratch his head.

Three riders jumped the curb into the parking lot and skidded to a stop. They snatched carbines from scabbards and started unloading on us. I took aim and shot one through the visor. Gomez raked the second guy with a burst of full auto, which disintegrated the guy’s gas tank. The fuel ignited on the hot engine and burst into a ball of flame that also consumed the rider stopped beside him.

Around fifty of us were assembled within the parking lot’s little auto-fort. The platoon’s commanding officer, a young black lieutenant, wanted to move. “El-Tee, get your troops into fire teams,” I shouted. “The residential quarters are west and southwest of our position three blocks over, less than half a mile. The situation’s straightforward. The cartel is here to kill. We’re here to stop ’em. There’s plenty of weapons and ammo on the enemy if you run out. The accuracy of fire from these guys when they’re on the move is low, but don’t take it for granted. When they stop, they’re vulnerable. Questions?”

There weren’t any.

“Oorah,” said Lieutenant Sommers. The rest of the platoon repeated it.

“You and you,” I said, nodding at two men from the weapons section armed with M249 SAWs — a couple of specialists, a Korean and a black guy. I read the names off their tapes. “Kim and Roslyn. On me.” Other units were already on the move. “Gomez, cover me.”

Sommers, the medic, and the rest of the weapons section went off at an angle while I ran at a crouch toward Liberty Drive and then across it, firing three-shot bursts from the hip at the riders motoring along the street. Gomez, Kim and Roslyn on over-watch also fired. Two riders went down, half a dozen others scattered. One of those RVs with a .50 caliber Browning got off a ranging burst before a long yellow tongue reached out from a Black Hawk’s M134 Minigun and virtually sawed the vehicle in half.

Ahead was a building with a sign on it that read AVIONICS. There was a parking lot out front. I ran for it across open ground. Making it to a Lexus in the lot, I turned and took a knee. Gomez jumped up and ran across the same open ground. Two riders left the road and sped off after him, firing. I shot one of them. He slumped forward on the bars and ran straight into a tree. Unlucky. Not many trees around here. Kim and Roslyn dismounted two more bikers with well-aimed fire as they rode past their cover. They got up, ran to the bikes and picked them up. The remaining rider in that group might have been in a panic at being fired on, or maybe he was just distracted, but he misjudged a turn and hit a pole, smashing his leg. Gomez changed direction and ran to the motorcycle as the downed rider rolled onto his side, holding his leg. Running up to him, Gomez booted the downed rider’s helmet, connecting under the chin like he was going for three points at the Super Bowl.

“Cooper!” Gomez called out, picking up the bike. “You ride?”

Kim and Roslyn were stationary, weapons up, sweeping through the angles, keeping over-watch as I ran across and jumped on behind the handlebars. For a little while, at least until friendlies arrived and shot at anything on two wheels, perhaps being on a motorcycle wasn’t such a bad idea. The bad guys might believe we were on their side until we fired on them. And, of course, we could cover the remaining ground to base housing faster. Gomez leaped on the back and tapped my shoulder, ready to go. I stomped down on the gearshift, gave it a fistful of throttle and dumped the clutch, the front wheel pawing the air as we accelerated.

The sky was fast gathering light. With more peripheral vision, my attention was caught by two joggers lying unmoving on the running track around a football field. They were probably dead. Apostles’ militia were going about their work methodically, efficiently, their training and a thirst for blood kicking in.

Three riders came at us from a cross street, gave us a friendly hand signal. Gomez and Roslyn made them pay for the familiarity, ending their lives with full automatic bursts. Gomez dropped the magazine out of his M4 and it clattered onto the road as he jammed a fresh one home.

Base housing was separated into two distinct areas by an Olympic pool, a golf course, a circular park with more mounted aircraft and a baseball diamond. The ground was billiard-table flat, making it easy to see what was going on and, Jesus, it wasn’t pretty. The cartel was slaughtering the residents in their homes and on their front lawns. It was like something from a medieval sacking. I pulled to the curb. Ahead, one of our teams was already at work, shooting the killers where they stood, the cartel’s attacking force still unaware that there was an organized opposition among them. I did a U-turn and went two streets over, Kim and Roslyn following. Screams filled the dawn. We arrived to see a man in a motorcycle helmet ripping the nightie off a woman on her front porch, under the Stars and Stripes. The woman’s husband was on his knees, the barrel of the man’s rifle in his mouth. I pulled to a stop. Gomez rested the stock of his M4 on my shoulder, took careful aim and shot out the back of the man’s neck. With no spine he collapsed at the woman’s feet, unable to do anything other than die. The woman ran naked inside her home and slammed the door while her husband stayed on his knees and retched.

We rode slowly up the street like that, Gomez using my shoulder as a rest, shooting cartel killers. The Ranger was a good shot. I could hear more screaming and the sound of glass breaking. I tried to zone in on the source of the sound when a picture frame came flying out a front door. I stopped. Gomez leaped off the bike and ran into the home. In the house next door, I could hear a man shouting. Shots fired. I grabbed the carbine out of the bike’s scabbard, let the machine fall over and ran in through the splintered front door. Inside on the lounge-room floor, a man in pajamas lay dead on the carpet in a pool of blood. A woman sobbed beside him, covered in blood, trying to make him move. Another man was standing nearby, wearing Desert Storm camos and a helmet, pointing his rifle at the woman. I shot him through the chest as he looked at me. He staggered back a step and regained his footing. I took two steps toward him and stomped him with a front kick where the blood was spurting from the hole in his clothing and the killer sailed backward through a plate glass window behind him, shattering it. Shards of glass rained down on him, slicing through his neck.

I lifted the woman off the dead man, dragged her into the bedroom. I made some noises to try to calm her but she was beyond reason. Her eyes were wild, terrified, her face covered in tears, blood and mucous. As I pulled her down onto the floor, she became hysterical so I pushed her under the bedframe and told her to stay there. Somehow the message got through to her and she calmed down in the darkness under the mattress. If there was somewhere safer to take the woman, I couldn’t think of it.

Running back outside, I picked up the bike and saw Roslyn fighting hand-to-hand with a man armed with a machete. Kim was down on the ground with a bloody gash across the side of his head, holding his ear in his hand. Pulling my Sig from the holster, I walked up to the machete wielder and shot him in the mouth as he turned toward me. Kim was bleeding badly, but wounds to the ear do that.

Two riders turned into our street and stopped when they saw us. I shot one with the Sig; I’m not sure where but he fell backward off the bike and didn’t get up. Kim picked himself off the ground, grabbed the machete and ran screaming at the remaining rider. The man stomped down on the gearshift lever with his boot, but I guessed the gearbox had jammed. Kim caught up with him, a downswing with two hands on the handle burying the blade deep in the meat of his shoulder. And then for some unexplained reason, the bike slipped into gear, the engine raced and the machine performed an instant ground loop, landing on top of the rider with the machete sticking out of him like a Halloween gimmick. The rear wheel spun wildly until the man’s hand became tangled in its spokes and that suddenly stopped it.

Kim stuffed his bloody ear in his pocket, picked up his helmet and put it on. Roslyn got back onto a bike and Kim took the seat behind him.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Better than them,” he said, nodding at the dead cartel militia on the road.

“The bleeding’s slowed,” I told him. “We’ll work through this street, turn right if we can, then come down the next street over.”

Gomez sprinted out of the house he’d gone into and jumped on the pillion seat behind me. I rode slowly down the road, the Ranger firing at cartel militia with deadly accuracy. But then bullet holes appeared in the fuel tank, thankfully above the level of gasoline it held.

“Shit!” Gomez yelled. “I’m hit.”

This was no place to stop.

“Hang on,” I called out.

Several militia had set themselves behind bricked-in garden beds. One of them jumped up and raised his fist. Roslyn, coming along behind us, saw them and rode over the curb, exposing their flank. Kim mowed three of them down, emptying a magazine on full auto into their position. A fourth man got up and ran for another position of cover. I pulled the Sig and fired. The third shot rolled him into a bed of daisies.

“How bad is it?” I shouted, half turning.

“My leg’s broken,” Gomez screamed out, presumably as the bones moved against each other.

Down the far end of the street, where we’d just been, I saw a black Texas State Trooper cruiser race past with lights flashing. Seconds later, a Del Rio PD cruiser came around the corner sideways, siren and lights blazing. The vehicle skidded to a stop and the police inside threw their doors open and took cover behind them. Cartel militia came out of several homes and concentrated their fire on the officers wearing body armor and firing AR-15s. Another PD cruiser rounded the corner, an officer firing a shotgun out the passenger window. The militia were starting to pay as the officers took control.

I thought that maybe now might be a good time for us to ditch the motorcycle before we became mistaken for tangoes. And then ahead, I saw something strange. A man on horseback, a sombrero pushed off his head and waving around behind his back in the airflow as his horse galloped across a lawn and then the road, jumped a garden bed and disappeared between two homes. I felt the weight shift on the bike as Gomez climbed off. “You go.” He winced, his voice hoarse with the pain, his leg useless. He waved me on. “Bring that fucker down.”

Kim appeared. “I’ll stay with him,” he shouted, maybe a little deaf, and Gomez used him as a crutch to get to some cover behind an SUV parked in a driveway.

I dumped the clutch and raced after … Pancho Villa. Or should I say Apostles. The bike’s knobby rear tire tore up the lawn as it fought for traction, the front wheel off the ground as I gave chase. I shot around the side of a house and saw the horse’s rump working hard as Apostles whipped it along. Dropping back a gear, I leaned over the front forks and wound the throttle to its stop. The ground was sandy and flat and I was gaining on the animal. The bike and I burst into open space between a couple of homes, and raced across a front lawn littered with children’s toys, furniture and a dead dog. A State Trooper was wrestling a man to the ground, while his partner looked up and fired his service pistol at me as I flew by, thinking I was one of the bad guys, the round taking out a chunk of masonry just in front of me as I raced between another two houses.

Apostles knew I was closing. He glanced over his shoulder, tried to change direction, head left and then right, jump a flowerbed, but the horse was no match for horsepower. The animal galloped across the street and onto the golf course. Out on the fairway there was nowhere to hide. I closed the distance fast and soon overtook horse and rider. The animal’s flanks were lathered. It had had enough and began to slow. And then it decided to stop altogether, throwing the rider over its ears. He landed heavily on the grass. I skidded sideways to a halt, dropped the bike from under me and, taking the last few steps at a run, launched myself through the air at Apostles struggling to get to his feet. I hit him in the shoulder with my shoulder and felt his bones give way. He hit the ground hard again, only semiconscious this time. I grabbed a handful of his fucking shirt and smashed my fist into his fucking cheek. And then I pulled my Sig and lifted Apostles’ bloody chin with the muzzle.

“Freeze, motherfucker. Don’t you fucking move, y’hear?”

It wasn’t me talking, it was someone behind me. Red and blue flashing lights announced that we were on the same team.

“Lower your weapon or I’ll shoot you dead, I promise you …”

Over my shoulder I shouted, “Special Agent Cooper, United States Air Force.”

“You’re on a bike. You’re lucky I haven’t already blown your brains out.”

Yeah.

“Put your weapon on the ground,” he shouted, “and your hands behind your head.”

Out the corner of my eye I could see two of them, both young, both experiencing sensory overload having witnessed all the death and destruction around them, and probably having had to deliver a share of it themselves. They were jumpy and jumpy is trigger happy. I placed the Sig on the ground and put my hands where they wanted them.

“Interlock your fingers. Do it.”

Yessir.

An approaching roar suddenly became deafening as an Apache Longbow gunship passed low overhead. The cavalry had arrived — the First Cavalry to be precise. I looked down at the man under me with crossed bandoliers on his chest, his beard matted with blood and bits of grass and twigs. It wasn’t who I expected to see. “Who the fuck are you?”