Target Deck - 02 Page 4

  “The perfect covert submarine pen,” Pat finished for him.

  “Get First Platoon in here and we will do a quick brief. We have to capitalize on this intelligence before the opportunity is lost. I want to be rolling out of the gate within the hour.”

  10

  “VDO, VDO,” Deckard announced over the radio net. The convoy of assault vehicles slowed to a stop. The VDO or Vehicle Drop Off, was where the assault element would depart on foot and begin marching towards their objective.

  That it had been a long night was an understatement. They had pushed off in the early morning hours, driving overland across bumpy terrain on dirt roads, going off road altogether at times to take short cuts, avoiding the main avenues as much as possible. It was a long drive that had threatened to rattle the fillings out of their teeth but they had made it to the VDO just before dawn.

  As commander, Deckard had allowed his men to doze off in their seats as long as one troop stayed awake per vehicle. It was always possible, if unlikely, that another ambush was out there waiting for them somewhere. It was a tactical decision, he needed his men as fresh as possible when lead started to fly, even allowing himself to nod off for a few minutes until the rough terrain shook him awake.

  While the PKM gunners in the turrets and drivers would remain with the vehicles, the rest of First Platoon jumped off the vehicles and gathered around Deckard. Unfolding a topographical map, Deckard illuminated it with a small, red lens flashlight.

  “This is our current location,” Deckard said using a twig to pinpoint their location for his men. The mercenaries were mostly of Kazakh extraction, members of a Private Military Company that he had inherited from his former employers. There were a number of American and European troops thrown into the mix, Special Operations soldiers he had brought on as instructors who had stayed around after the initial contract.

  “We will move by foot from here on out to our objective here,” he said, pointed out the cove. “We suspect that this area here is a camouflaged base for submarines that the Jimenez cartel is using to smuggle drugs from Colombia up the Pacific coast and eventually into the United States. We could be wrong, it could be a dry hole in which case we'll turn back around and high tail it back to the compound. Once we get into position we will search the area but it should be pretty clear, there is either a hidden cove tucked inside the coast or there isn't. Search and destroy. Any questions?”

  Deckard's Russian had improved to the point that he could struggle through a mission brief.

  “Good. You've got five minutes for final Pre-Combat Inspections.”

  The mercenaries quickly applied gun oil to their AK-103 rifles, checked magazines, refilled hydration bladders from five gallon water cans on the trucks, and made ready to initiate movement to the objective.

  “Cody, this is Six,” Deckard spoke into his radio. “Radio check, over.”

  “I READ YOU LIMA-CHARLIE.”

  The kid was smart but it would take some time for him to get used to Cody's halting use of the English language.

  A hint of daylight was just beginning to break on the horizon when Deckard put the men into a single file and they began marching towards the distant sounds of ocean waves breaking on the shore. The smell of sea salt clung to the breeze, a welcome relief from the stifling summer heat.

  Leaving behind the low lying shrub land, the mercenaries had to break bush. Moving single file, Deckard eventually found a game trail to walk on and pushed through. Weaving through the jungle foliage and interspersed palm trees, they covered as much ground as they could, moving about a kilometer. Checking the Garmin GPS device that he wore on his wrist like a watch, Deckard could see that they were about halfway to the objective.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead as he led the mercenaries through the jungle. He had thirty two assaulters total which should be enough for the kind of attack he had in mind. He hoped.

  Driving on, they crept forward until the jungle opened up at an outcropping of smooth gray rock. Looking over his shoulder, he motioned the Kazakh assault element forward. In the jungle, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maneuver if they came under fire and he was glad to be out of it.

  Staying low, he leopard crawled over the rocks, eyes scanning in the early morning light. Blinking, his senses were not, in fact, deceiving him. The terrain in front of him was perfectly uniform other than a slight sagging in the middle.

  “So that's how you make an ocean bay disappear,” he said under his breath.

  A massive tarp had been stretched from the rocky cliffs all the way across the cove. Large metal pickets had been hammered into the dirt or metal hard points drilled into the rock itself where the ends of the tarp were secured with thick metal rings. The fabric itself had a photo realistic printing etched across its length and width showing a beach front. The cartel obviously had it done professionally by one of the defense firms that printed up special camouflage sheets to hide military vehicles and facilities.

  “Six this is Frank,” his OPCEN leader crackled over the radio in complete disregard for the correct verbiage that was supposed to be used on the assault net. “What's your progress, over?”

  “We just arrived at the target,” Deckard whispered into the microphone attached to the headset he wore. “It looks like the bay we are looking for has been camouflaged over. I'm going to get in close to do a leader's recon before the assault.”

  “Roger, Frank out.”

  Turning around, Deckard crept back to his men waiting in a skirmish line right where the jungle receded from the rocky area. His Russian had improved in leaps and bounds since he first took command of Samruk International but it still left a lot to be desired. Repeating himself for clarification a few times, he got his point across. The assaulters would maintain their security position while he and Sergeant Fedorchenko did a leader's recon.

  Whenever a maneuver element knew it was going to perform a raid on an enemy target it was important to be as deliberate as possible and plan out each phase of the operation. In this case they were dealing with an irregular target, it wasn't as simple as an enemy compound or camp. No one knew what they were really facing at this point.

  They needed a close recce to confirm what their prisoner had told Samantha. The prisoner that Nikita had brought back had described a secret submarine base commanded by a cartel boss that they called Captain Nemo.

  Fedorchenko was one of his best men which was why he had been promoted to Platoon Sergeant after Samruk hit a black site in the middle of the Pacific a while back. When the leadership in his platoon had been killed off during the hit, he had manned up, taken control of the other men, and defeated the enemy. They had pulled off the impossible, if at a heavy price.

  Deckard gritted his teeth as he freed his Ka-Bar fighting knife from its sheath and began to cut through the heavy tarp that concealed the bay from overhead observation.

  Here we go again.

  Cutting a Y-shaped slit through the fabric, he put the blade away, and quietly swung through the hole feet first. Setting down on a slope, he let go of the tarp and half stepped, half slid down the embankment, making as little noise as he possibly could. Slowing himself, he put two gloved hands up in front of him to stop his forward movement before he slammed into a wooden crate at the bottom.

  The tarp bounced overhead, making a slight whipping sound as the sea breeze rolled across it. Underneath the covering, half of the bay had been boarded over to create a dry dock. Wooden pylons jutted from the water, connecting a somewhat haphazard boardwalk of floating dock segments. Crates and pallets were scattered everywhere. A lone guard patrolled the pallet yard in the distance.

  Ducking down behind cover, Fedorchenko was already at his side.

  Keeping their Kalashnikov rifles at the ready, their trained eyes swept the enemy hardsite, identifying key targets. At the far side of the dock they could make out the mast of the narco-submarine that Nikita's prisoner had described. It was bigger than Deckard had expected, about the size of
an old Japanese midget submarine straight out of the WWII.

  On the south side of the dockyard were a couple dozen 55-gallon drums. Besides a place to off load contraband, the sub pen also served as a fuel depot where the midget subs would refuel before heading back to Colombia. Deckard sized up the operation in moment. There were no roads into or out of the remote hidden cartel base.

  The Colombian farmers would grow the coca plants and sell them to the cartels, who would refine the product in drug labs deep in the jungle. From there the cocaine would be loaded onto the locally constructed submarines and clandestinely transported north to southern Mexico. The subs would bring the drugs, off load them in the sub pen, then head home. The drugs would then be loaded onto boats to be taken to yet another location in southern Mexico for distribution where they would then be taken overland across the US border for sale.

  The sub pen was a site known as a “trampoline” by the cartels. The term normally referred to a way station between where the drugs originated, in Colombia and Bolivia, and the United States that was utilized by aircraft being flown by smugglers. Their small airplanes would need to stop somewhere to refuel on the way to Florida. The days of sky pirates were mostly over now, the Coast Guard having shut those corridors down years ago.

  Now the cartels had evolved by using submarines instead. The voyage all the way to the United States would be too taxing for the small submarines so instead they would have to sell the drugs to the Mexican cartels and let them take responsibility for moving the product to market.

  A clever set up, Deckard had to admit.

  At the north end of the dock were several connex shipping containers that had been converted into living quarters for the staff that worked at the submarine base. With the sun now hanging in the early morning sky, he knew that the staff and the rest of the base's security would be waking soon. They had arrived just in time, the night guard would be exhausted and ready for a shift change. The Colombians were probably catching up on some sleep before making the voyage back home. Now the men of Samruk International just had to act fast enough to exploit the opportunity.

  “I want that submarine,” Deckard whispered to Fedorchenko. “We can use something like that.”

  “Deep sea fishing?”

  “You are from a land locked country, what do you know about deep sea fishing?”

  “I have dreams you know.”

  “Alright, let's get the boys down that embankment and have them start taking cover behind these crates. It looks like they are loaded full of cocaine. White powder sandbags should be able to stop a few bullets once the shooting kicks off.”

  “Da.”

  Deckard maintained eyes on the objective, monitoring the guard as he absentmindedly paced the docks until a shift change that would never come for him. Fedorchenko glided back up the embankment and through the hole in the camouflage canvas that hung over the sub pen. A minute later, the assaulters began filtering down into the pallet yard. One by one they took up positions behind the crates, training their weapons on the guard and the living quarters.

  Positioned on the extreme right hand side of their assault line was a machine gunner with an Mk48. An assistant gunner moved with him, carrying additional belts of 7.62 ammunition. The Mk48 was the size of a light machine gun such as the M249 SAW but packed the 7.62 punch of a larger general purpose machine gun such as the M240B. The Belgium made weapon was a gift from another merc outfit that Samruk hand tangled with in the recent past. The Kazakh soldiers were finding the Mk48 to be plenty effective for immediate support by fire.

  Deckard's only concern was that one of the cargo containers that served as living quarters was situated behind the other. In the restricted confines of the submarine pen, it was impossible to get any kind of flanking fire. The second container was outside of their cone of fire and there wasn't much they could do about it at the moment.

  Nodding at Fedorchenko, he acquired the lone guard in the holographic reticule of his rifle sight. The Kazakh Sergeant was in charge of his platoon and would be the one to initiate the raid. Easing his safety from safe to semi-automatic carefully as not to compromise their position by the loud distinctive click that Kalashnikov selectors make, he gently squeezed the trigger.

  The guard seemed to react a moment before the rifle barked a stream of fire.

  Before he could turn around, the Mexican triggerman was thrown backwards as if tugged off balance by invisible puppet strings. Propelled backward, he slipped off the edge of the dock and fell into the water with a belly flop. Deckard sent two more shots just as Fedorchenko fired but they proved redundant, the shots passing just over the guard as he collapsed into the sea.

  Thirty audible clicks sounded as one. The Kazakh mercenaries were ready to get some. Deckard made a quick mental note to teach them how to wrap the selector switch in electrical tape to prevent the clicking sound, something he'd picked up on another battlefield in one of his previous lives.

  The Mk48 went cyclic, the gunner holding down the trigger for fully automatic fire.

  The Samruk mercenaries turned their guns on the living quarters, giving the enemy the wakeup call of a lifetime. 7.62 bullets sparked as they punched through the flimsy metal walls of the connex containers, the Mk48 sweeping fire from one side to the other as the gunner traversed the gun on its bipod legs. Several bloodied cartel members stumbled out of the container in their boxer shorts. The mercenaries made short work of them, each sprawled on the ground in seconds.

  Then someone threw a grenade, just to prove that no good plan survives first contact with the enemy.

  The explosion ripped through the docks, sending splinters of wood into the air. Several of the 55-gallon drums in the fuel yard exploded, the burning heat singeing the hair on Deckard's arm where he sleeve had been rolled up. The gasoline flooded across the submarine pen, burning with an intensity that drove the mercenaries back. The fire was intense enough that it was threatening to overtake their position. The gasoline used to power the submarine had spilled into the water leaving the surface layer of the water on fire.

  “Fire in the hole!” Fedorchenko yelled, depressing the transmit button on his radio. It was an operational code word that alerted the entire platoon to evacuate off the objective as fast as possible, only to be used during extreme emergencies.

  As one, the platoon stood up from their positions and peeled off, filing back up the embankment. Through the flames, Deckard could see the black outlines of human beings. Their forms shimmered in the heat mirage coming up off of the fire. It was difficult to discern their movements through the haze but they were there.

  The heat was growing in intensity, the crates that the mercenaries had taken cover behind were now on fire. If they didn't hurry, the enclosed submarine base would become their tomb. Freeing knives from their sheaths, the mercenaries began cutting more holes in the canvas to escape from rather than wait their turn filing through one opening. Like rats trapped in a cage, their actions took on a certain kind of urgency.

  Deckard stumbled up the embankment. Reaching up, he grabbed the canvas and slashed it with his Ka-Bar fighting knife. The smoke burned his eyes, causing them to water. As if Mexico could get any hotter, they had found a way to trap themselves in hell itself.

  Clenching both sides of the slit he had cut, Deckard lunged forward and back out into day light and fresh air. Gasping, he looked around at the other mercenaries. They were coughing from smoke inhalation and had the black soot of carbon under their noses and around their red eyes. Fedorchenko gave him a thumbs up. All of the men had made it out of the inferno.

  Doubled over, Deckard spat a black tar ball on the ground before standing up straight. The fire had burned through a large portion of the camouflage tarp covering the bay. The submarine would be able to escape the flames and there was no way to flank around, the embankments around the sides of the bay were too steep and rocky to maneuver around.

  Unless there was an alternate way to intercept the submarine before it escap
ed.

  Before he knew it, Deckard had jumped onto the canvas and was running across it. The fire was melting through the fabric and holes were sprouting up all around him. The commando tripped, falling on his face as the fire popped another tether from the fabric, causing it to go slack. Struggling to his feet, Deckard ran. More holes continued to appear in the camouflage covering, the entire mess threatening to collapse at any moment and plunge him into the inferno below.

  Going for his knife, Deckard lunged forward and slashed the blade across the canvas. Grabbing the edge with both hands, he somersaulted forward and through the opening he had cut. Hanging on, he could feel his gloved hands beginning to slip. It was only by some miracle that he had judged his position on the covering correctly.

  He was dangling directly over the metal connex containers that the sub crew and security personnel lived in. Releasing his grip, Deckard fell the ten feet to the metal roof, his boots coming down hard, knees bent to help break his fall. The sub pen was now a haze of black smoke, the heat threatening to overwhelm him. Under his combat gear, even the veteran soldier felt as if he might pass out, a sure death sentence. If the fire didn't get him, the smoke inhalation would.

  Moving to the lip of the connex, he hooked the inner part of his boot on the edge of the container and held on with one hand, lowering himself off the side in a spider hang. Kicking off with his foot, he dropped the rest of the way to the wooden dock. Putting his Kalashnikov back into operation after having it slung across his back, Deckard ran in the only direction available, towards the sunlight that barely penetrated the smoke.

  The entire dock rocked into the water, causing him to stumble once more. The fire was eating through the wooden pylons, making the entire platform unstable. Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes as the smoke began to sting. With his legs driving him forward, Deckard knew his body was red lining.

  Suddenly, he burst out into daylight, the sun hanging in the morning sky above the ocean. Behind him, the canvas that had been concealing the bay collapsed into the fire with a whoosh of hot air and black smoke. By now, most of the flames had been smothered by the collapse or extinguished as the dock sank into the bay.