Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

Only this was no playground.

Nor was it supposed to be a battlefield.

This was a civilian tarmac on the edge of a town in the center of Mexico, where the thin veneer of civilization was being ruined by the realities of the ruling cartels. These criminal soldiers had probably intimidated everyone with whom they’d come in contact. With murderous diplomacy, they’d bullied and killed until they’d gotten what they wanted. But they’d never come in contact with SEALs, much less the men of SEAL Team 666.

Yank and Laws stood two meters apart in tactical crouches. Each of their rounds found a home inside the soft meat of a cartel soldier. Whether they were trying to bring their own weapons to bear, were trying to stand, or just trying to hide, they never made it. They fell, shocked and gut-shot, under the controlled, professional violence the SEALs were unleashing. Had they lived, they might have realized that what they’d thought was the art of modern warfare was a far cry from the reality.

Holmes shouted, “Fall back!,” and he opened fire on the survivors so that Yank and Laws could move to safety, check their weapons, and replenish their ammunition.

Walker shifted his aim to the men outside the fence just in time to see the explosive cloud behind a man holding a small tube.

“LAW rocket!” he shouted.

He heard everyone hit the deck as the 66mm antitank missile susurrated through the air. The rocket moved slowly enough for the eye to track it, but Walker didn’t try to look at it. Instead, he had his arms covering his head, well aware of the several tons of steel above him that was about to become an explosive shrapnel factory. But instead of exploding, the missile continued past. He heard the Doppler sound of it receding, then an explosion as it hit a tree somewhere in the tree line. The explosion was followed by brush crashing to the earth, then nothing more.

“Fuck me,” Laws said in amazement. “It went right through the canvas.”

Everyone knew how lucky they were. If the missile launcher had been fresh off the assembly line, a mosquito fart would have set off the detonator, but now it was forty years past its sell-by date, and no telling how many times the case had been rattled, shaken, and dropped. The detonator had completely ignored the fabric. Had it hit one of the three crossbeams, or had it hit the side of the truck, they might all be dead.

Walker wasn’t about to give them a chance to fix their mistake. The M72 Light Anti-Armor Weapon rocket system was a point-and-shoot one-time-use system, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have more. And as he sighted in on the previous location, he saw that they did indeed have another. A man was bringing it out of a box now. Walker waited as the guy depressed two buttons and extended it to full length, then charged the weapon, making it firable. He continued to wait until the man brought it to his shoulder and took aim.

Walker fired. His round met the missile just as it was coming free of the firing tube, forcing the crystal in the nose section backwards into the warhead, bypassing safeguards, and sending an electric charge into a detonator designed to pierce up to eight inches of steel plate or two feet of reinforced concrete. It detonated at eye level with the shooter and, with nothing to stop the force of the blast, killed everyone within ten feet.

“Nicely done,” Laws said.

“Plane. Incoming.” Holmes’s voice was low and steady. “We need to clear the area of beegees or they won’t sit down.”

They knew what needed to be done.

Yank pulled two hand grenades and tossed them toward the two disabled trucks. They cooked down in midair and exploded as they hit. If there’d been anyone hiding, they weren’t any longer.

Walker, Laws, and Holmes began a systematic takedown of the men near the fence. Like a game of Mexican cartel whack-a-mole, as soon as one showed his head, a round found it. Walker was quicker on the trigger than the other two, but after sixty seconds, they’d cleared the area of anyone alive.

Walker heard two things next. The deep drone of a C-130 coming in to land and the sound of sirens from somewhere near town. One thing was for sure, they didn’t have time to get rolled up by the authorities. No telling what diplomatic hurdles they’d have to jump through just to get a phone call if they all ended up in a Mexican jail. The impulse would be to shoot their way free, but as protectors of freedom and the idea of law, it wasn’t something they’d ever really do.

Walker pulled himself from under the deuce and a half. As he turned, he spied the ugly bug shape of the airplane coming in fast and hot. C-130s didn’t need a lot of space to land. This pilot ignored the first two thirds of the runway and came down on their end with a thump, followed by a squealing of brakes.

“Everyone grab something,” Holmes shouted. “We need to be airborne before the sirens get here.”

Walker glanced over and saw Jen, fear etched across her features as she grabbed a bag and a pelican case full of computer hardware. Her gaze was pinned to the ground in front of her. She was in shock. He’d seen it before. The brain pretty much shuts down until it can figure out a way to process what it has just seen and heard.

The plane swung past and nosed back up the runway. The rear ramp was already down. Everyone ran toward it and threw their gear inside. Two more trips, and they had everything they came with. Holmes urged everyone inside and the plane began to gather speed.

“Wait,” shouted YaYa. “We don’t have Hoover!”

Everyone spun to stare out the back, when suddenly the dog broke from the edge of the brush. She ran as fast as she could, but the plane was already going too fast.

Holmes grabbed the crew chief. “We’re not leaving without the dog. Either slow down or park this fucker.”

The crew chief, a thirty-something Mexican who looked like he didn’t take shit from anyone, immediately began to yell through his communications gear for the pilot to slow down. He had to repeat the word “ perro ” three times, but eventually the pilot got it. The plane slowed to crawl long enough for Hoover to close the distance, leap aboard the ramp, and collapse in a pile at the feet of YaYa. The dog’s fur was matted with blood and brush. Her tactical harness was also bloodstained. A piece of uniform was caught in her teeth.

“Looks like she took care of the drivers,” YaYa said.

The ramp snapped shut about the same time the pilot took the C-130 Hercules straight up into the air. Everyone held on, praying the engines wouldn’t stall before the pilot had a chance to level out.

Ten minutes later they leveled off.

Laws and Yank were recovering and organizing equipment.

YaYa was cleaning Hoover’s fur as best he could.

Holmes had produced a Thuraya satellite phone and was speaking animatedly to Billings.

Which left Walker, who took some time to check each of the SPG civilians, leaving Jen for last. For the most part they’d held up. As firefights went, it had been pretty one-sided. Still, as one of the techs mentioned, it was much louder than the first-person shooters he liked to play in his mother’s basement.

When Walker finally sat down beside Jen, he placed a hand on hers. She jumped, then gave him a quick look.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just…”

“I know. Let’s talk through it,” he said. “Tell me what you saw.”

“I saw them come after us and I saw your bullets go into them.” She stared at him with a look halfway between awe and fear. He hoped she’d never look at him like that again. She licked her lips and lowered her eyes. “You’re very good at what you do.”