The Oshkosh Connection Read online

  “Trent, what are you seeing?”

  He answered Max on the radio. “I count twelve additional narcos. They look well armed and are securing the perimeter like pros. Hold up.”

  Some tall white dude got out of the back of one of the vehicles. He yelled something in Spanish and pointed down the street, with men scurrying about as he did.

  “There’s a Caucasian male. Tall guy. Probably six five. Looks like he’s in charge by the way they’re taking orders from him. He’s entering the house now, with several of his men.”

  Max’s head was spinning. This was like watching a nightmare play out in real time.

  One of the newly arrived trucks suddenly moved down the block towards Max. He gripped his keys and the wheel, bracing himself.

  Then the truck made a hard left turn and positioned itself perpendicular to the empty traffic lanes, cutting off the townhome’s street entrance. Two men stood in the bed of the truck, small machine guns slung across their chests. Another narco got out of the passenger seat and stood on the street corner. Each of the men held his weapon in a way that told Max they’d had military training. Their eyes searched the streets, alert and professional.

  Max whispered, “We may need to call this off. I’ve got three of them about twenty yards away from me. They get any closer, and I’m made.”

  “You wanna abort?”

  “Stand by. Not yet.”

  A tall white guy in charge of a bunch of armed narcos, arriving unexpectedly. Max had a good idea of who it was.

  Blanco.

  Their mystery man had arrived.

  Renee’s knee bounced under the table as her eyes flipped through the multiple windows she had open on her laptop.

  On one hand, this was good news. They were finally getting eyes on Blanco, head of security for the Sinaloa cartel. But sitting here in this luxury hotel, miles from the action, she became deeply worried about the safety of Trent, Max, and Wilkes’s agent inside the building.

  On her computer, Renee monitored the video feed being broadcast from Trent’s tripod camera. El Blanco was almost a foot taller than the others and had a long, confident stride. He barked something to one of Rojas’s security men and then walked up the front steps. One of them held the door as El Blanco entered the townhome, several of his own men in tow. She could see them through the lit windows as they headed up the stairs.

  “Lot of dudes,” said Trent in a somber voice. “They don’t look like they’re here to party.”

  “Do we have audio?” asked Max. “Can we listen in to what they’re saying?”

  Renee said, “Stand by.”

  She typed a message to her hacker colleague who was assisting her from several thousand miles away. A few clicks and a moment later, one of her computer windows showed the audio signature of muffled Spanish-speaking voices. Renee was now using any phones that they thought were in the cartel’s building as eavesdropping devices. The audio was then run through a translation program, and text was populating on another window on her computer.

  Renee said, “We’ve narrowed it down to a few mobile devices. There are a few others that we think might be located in the home, but I don’t want to clutter it up as we aren’t sure. I’ll tell you what they say.”

  On the monitor, Renee watched as Blanco appeared on the rooftop lounge area, pointing at the girls and issuing orders.

  “Rojas looks pissed,” said Trent.

  Renee clicked on the audio options to listen to the raw data. The music on the rooftop stopped as Blanco had it turned off. Two of the girls were made to sit down at the center table.

  Blanco pointed at the third girl.

  Ines Sanchez. Wilkes’s agent.

  Renee’s heart pounded in her chest.

  One of the narcos walked up to Sanchez and placed a canvas bag over her head. Another man zip-tied her hands behind her back.

  “Max, they’re taking her. They just put a bag over her head.”

  Trent said, “What do you want me to do?”

  Max’s voice. “Continue to monitor and report. Do not move from your position.”

  “Roger.”

  “Renee, what are they saying?”

  Renee was reading the translated text. “Looks like Blanco is breaking up the party. He’s taking the girl and telling them to leave the building.”

  “Which girl?”

  “Ours.”

  Trent’s voice was intense. Begging to be set loose. “You want me to intervene?”

  “Negative. There are over a dozen of them, and they appear to be the varsity team,” replied Max.

  On the monitor, Renee observed an intense argument between a surprised-looking Rojas and El Blanco. Clearly Rojas was not happy about losing his prize for the evening.

  Renee heard Blanco say in English, “Take one of these bitches instead.”

  “Sounds like a British accent,” Renee said.

  “Who?”

  “I just heard him say something to Rojas. Blanco sounds like he’s from the UK.”

  Renee dug her fingernails into her palms, feeling horrified and helpless. She watched the Mexican men carry Ines Sanchez down the stairs, kicking and struggling with the bag still covering her head. Max had told Renee what the cartels did to people who cooperated with law enforcement. Their mutilations were usually made public—a message that ensured loyalty from the others.

  Ines was pushed into the backseat of the rear SUV. Blanco and his vehicles, including the one parked near Max, peeled out and sped off.

  The radios were quiet.

  Chapter 11

  Max watched as the narco pickup truck that had been parked close to him departed with its men.

  “Is Hector Rojas still in the building?”

  “Affirm. He looks like he’s gotten over his lost love and is now on to one of the other girls there.”

  Max was appalled that this Blanco character had just bagged Wilkes’s agent and was now driving her away. He realized what had been bothering him the night before, when Renee had asked.

  The DEA and others at EPIC knew about Wilkes’s agent.

  Wilkes had said he was working with the CIA’s counterintelligence division. At first, Max had assumed that was just because a foreign intelligence service—the ISI—was involved. But what if there was more to it than that? What if Wilkes was hunting a mole? Blanco had to have found out about Ines Sanchez somehow.

  Max couldn’t do anything about a leak right now. On the other hand, he could do something about Hector Rojas. The senior finance executive of the Sinaloa cartel was still in the townhome, having a good time. As far as Max was concerned, the mission was still on.

  Rojas was still on the roof with one of the girls. And there were the remaining four guards on street level, each one carrying an AR-style rifle.

  Trent had what he needed. He’d briefed the mission. Knew all the possible options for entry and evacuation.

  A buzzing in Max’s pocket. He looked at his phone. It was Wilkes, sending a message to the team. Apparently he had the same idea as Max.

  TAKE HIM.

  Max said, “Listen up. We’ll need to improvise.”

  Wilkes stood on the operations floor of EPIC, feeling pissed and guilty at the loss of his agent.

  Unlike Max and team, he hadn’t had the street-level view of the Caucasian man and still had no knowledge of Blanco’s involvement. But he’d seen the beacon in his agent’s phone from the bird’s-eye view of the drone as she was stuffed into the backseat of the narcos’ SUV.

  And that definitely wasn’t in the plan.

  The tracking beacon was tossed out the window while they were driving on the highway. The drone had kept tracking the SUV into the brightly lit city center. The drone operators did their best to follow the girl as they brought her into a large apartment building. There were so many people and vehicles in the area that it would be almost impossible to monitor all the exits.

  Which was why they had taken her there, Caleb knew.

  She wa
s blown, and they were escaping into obscurity.

  Wilkes’s worst fears were realized. The leak the CIA had suspected was now confirmed. He hadn’t told Max or team about that aspect of the mission, because they’d needed to keep the information as tight as possible in order to catch their mole. But the fact that they’d known about Ines Sanchez drastically narrowed their list of suspects. Someone with access to a high level of intel was responsible for tonight’s epic screwup. Without his agent, Max’s team would have a harder time taking Rojas.

  But it could still be done, which was why he’d sent his message. Sanchez was as good as gone, he knew. But right now, they needed to salvage what they could.

  Wilkes waited for word of Max’s movement while also thinking about what he would report to his superiors, mourning the loss of his agent, and sifting through possible leakers all at once.

  “Oh shit, did you guys just see that?” A DEA agent on the watch floor had stood up, pointing at the front monitor.

  The DEA supervisor said, “See what?”

  “Quick, look—one of the security guards just went down.”

  Wilkes saw what he was talking about. The two security guards who had been standing on the front stairs of the home were now on the ground. The drone feed was back over the townhome, zoomed in and using color video thanks to the bright streetlights. A dark blur was visible on the pavement, expanding away from the head of a dead narco. The doors of the second truck swung open and two more men ran out, holding rifles.

  “Those are more security men? Or did they just shoot the first two?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They came from the second truck. I think they’re just responding. Doesn’t look like they know where the shots came from.” The men were turning frantically, holding their weapons out, but not firing.

  The two men flailed backwards and fell to the ground. The DEA agent placed her headset on and spoke to the drone operator.

  “Somebody’s taking them all out. They’re moving on Rojas.”

  Wilkes leaned forward, placing his hands on the desk as he stared at the drone feed. A lone figure ran across the screen, past the four bodies of the narco security detail that now lay dead and motionless in the street.

  From his second-floor window, Trent had a clear shot of all four men. Less than twenty-five yards. Child’s play for someone with his experience. He fired four shots from his suppressed rifle within a six-second window. The shell casings landed silently on the soft rug at his feet. He scooped them up and placed them in a zippered pocket while he scanned the streets for movement. Nothing. He was satisfied to see that each bullet had been lethal.

  “I’m on the move.”

  “Copy. I’ll bring my car in front of the house on your word,” replied Max. Trent was glad to see that he was done arguing that point. At first, Max had insisted on entering the home with him. But Trent was worried about the response time of narco reinforcements.

  He grabbed the black bag filled with gear and hurried down the stairs, holding his rifle in front of him, finger pointed forward on the trigger guard. Crossing the dark street, he heard the deep bass notes of the beach resort dance clubs a few blocks away, and the distant rumble of summer storms out over the Pacific. Voices echoed from several floors above.

  The sounds of drunken laughter and music. A good sign. It was the sound of targets unaware of his imminent approach.

  As he moved, he calculated risk and felt the quick ticking of his internal stopwatch. It was only a matter of time before someone saw the dead men on the street. With half the city on the cartel’s payroll, other narcos were sure to come. Trent didn’t want to be here when they did.

  He crept past the corpses still bleeding and spasming on the sidewalk, scanning the area for threats. The front door was unlocked, as he had expected. In Sinaloa cartel territory, with sicarios guarding outside, why would they lock it?

  A moment later, Trent was up one flight of stairs. He could hear one of the narcos in the bedroom. Trent laid down his bag of gear, placed one hand on the doorknob, and readied his rifle with the other.

  With one lightning-fast movement, he opened the door, sent a single suppressed shot through the head of the man, and ran forward to cover the mouth of the shocked half-naked woman on the bed, just as she began to scream. Trent tore off a strip of duct tape hanging from his belt and covered her mouth. Then he hog-tied her and left her on the bed.

  Trent reshouldered his bag of gear and vaulted up the final flight of stairs. It had been approximately forty-five seconds since he had entered the home. Two minutes since he had killed the men outside on the street. His internal clock continued to tick.

  Trent placed the rifle on the floor and removed the large weapon that had been fastened to his back, a rushing sound in his ears as adrenaline pumped through his veins. From the doorway, he couldn’t see his targets, but he could still hear them, unaware. Trent stepped out onto the rooftop patio, weapon trained forward.

  Incandescent bulbs hung along the outer perimeter of the rooftop, illuminating the area with a dim yellow light. Two couches and several potted plants lined the walls, and a long wooden table rested in the center of the space. An open bottle of wine with two glasses sat on the table. His target was sitting on a chair at the head of the table, with his newly appointed mistress for the evening straddling him, facing away from Trent.

  Trent whistled loud.

  Both of their faces snapped toward him, and Rojas threw the half-dressed Latina off his lap. The woman instinctively covered herself. Rojas reached for the pistol on the table.

  Trent held an M32A1 multishot grenade launcher with two hands, the stock pressed to his shoulder and the wide barrel pointed at Rojas. It was a bulky weapon, painted a drab green, with a round ammunition cylinder similar to a tommy gun. It was designed to hold 40mm grenades, but that wasn’t what Trent had loaded into the weapon just now.

  As Rojas reached for his pistol on the table, Trent took aim through a holographic sight, its infrared laser designator targeting the man’s hairy chest.

  THUNK.

  A single 40mm blunt-impact projectile round shot into the right side of the man’s chest at a speed of 290 feet per second. The round mushroomed on impact, transferring all of its kinetic energy into Rojas’s body. This resulted in Rojas departing his feet and flying backward into the air, his arms and legs in trail. He landed hard on his back about five feet away, a motionless heap, breathless on the tiled floor.

  The woman screamed.

  Trent held a lone finger up to his lips, pointing the weapon at her and advancing in her direction. Trent thought about shooting her too, but these “less-lethal” rounds had once been called “nonlethal.” The company’s lawyers had insisted upon the change in marketing terminology for a reason—they were known to be unintentionally fatal to a certain percentage of people they hit. Especially at this range.

  Trent placed the grenade launcher on the table, walked over to his second nude and screaming woman in the past minute, removed another strip of duct tape, and went to work. He wrapped her mouth until no sound came out. She could still breathe through her nose. He tied her hands and feet together as well.

  Trent could now hear Rojas wheezing from a few feet away. Thank God. He would have been pissed if this had all been for nothing.

  Leaving the girl tied up, he went to work on Rojas next, quickly using the same duct tape technique to immobilize, blind, and gag him.

  Trent unzipped his large black duffle bag and opened it on the floor. He fought his own disgust as he threw the mostly naked man into the bag and zipped it back up.

  He brought his boom mike down to his lips. “Max, I’m going to be ready for you at the front entrance in thirty seconds.”

  Max didn’t sound happy. “Uh, that’s going to be a problem.”

  It was at this point that Trent heard the sound of multiple vehicles skidding to a stop on the streets below.

  Max, still in the lot down the street from Trent, c
ounted the vehicles now parking outside the townhome. Five…six…seven if you counted the police car with lights flashing.

  Renee was in his ear. “SIGINT is showing massive cartel movements into the area. There are also police coming. But they’re on the same radio frequency as the narcos, so I don’t think that’s good for us.”

  Max said, “Trent, can you get to the pre-positioned vehicle using your alternate exit?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Do it, and let me know when you’re safe in the car. If you can get clear, I’ll pick up Renee and we’ll meet you at the airport. If not, let me know and I’ll pick you up at the checkpoint bravo.”

  “Wilco.”

  Max said, “Renee, is Wilkes’s CIA plane at the airport yet?”

  “He just sent me a message about that. He said that there was a problem with the plane. Something about the size. But it’s there.”

  “What’s wrong with the plane size?”

  “He didn’t elaborate.”

  Max turned on his car and slowly left his lot, turning away from the townhome. In his rearview mirror, he could see the streets rapidly filling up with vehicles.

  Trent could hear the sound of car doors slamming below. Curses echoing through the street. He risked a peek over the stucco wall.

  Sonofabitch.

  There were too many of them to fight his way back across the street, where his primary egress path lay. Trent counted five trucks. Dozens of heavily armed men, inspecting the dead bodies and looking around.

  Trent forced himself to remain calm and think through the problem. The narcos had arrived several minutes quicker than he had anticipated. An unusually fast response. They hadn’t yet entered the house. Instead they seemed to be massing outside, preparing to swarm his position with overwhelming force. Wonderful.