To limit transmissions, he’d sent only one previous message earlier that afternoon. This had been a detailed verbal description of the camp, using an alpha-numeric system to provide distance between and dimensions of each structure. The US Army Special Forces advisers at Palanquero then used this information to produce a diagram of the camp for Captain Aguilar’s team.
Avery waited for the acknowledgement from the ops center. It came several seconds later: “Avalanche.” The one word response meant that Operation Phoenix was given the green light.
Avery disassembled the SATCOM unit, shutting off the radio, unplugging and collapsing the antenna. It was now time to bid his time, since Operation Phoenix was to be conducted at night, and make sure that Reyes didn’t leave the camp in the meantime.
Avery trained his scope on the commandant’s shack, shifting occasionally to any movement that caught his attention. In the event that Reyes made an abrupt departure, Avery’s job was to send the transmission back to the ops room that would abort the operation, and the helicopters would turn back. He didn’t anticipate this happening. Reyes came here to meet with a senior SEBIN officer, and as far as Avery knew, this person had not yet arrived at the camp. That was good. It ensured that Reyes wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
The next six hours were the slowest. That’s the length of time that passed before Avery finally heard the rotors of the helicopters interrupt the silence of the night.
The camp’s inhabitants heard it, too. Avery spotted some of them looking up into the sky and stepping out of their tents or shacks.
The helicopters swarmed on the camp. They’d flown in the whole way at low altitude, just barely skimming over the top of the rainforest canopy at a hundred thirty miles per hour to avoid detection by Venezuelan radar, and followed a course to avoid any villages where natives could spot or hear the aircraft. In the dead of night, the pilots relied on their night vision, terrain following radar, and FLIR pods.
There was no clear landing space for the Russian-manufactured, twin-turbine Mi-17 Hips to set down and deploy their squads, so the AH-60L Arpia gunships came in first. These are essentially an attack helicopter conversion of the American Blackhawk, developed jointly by Colombia and Israel, armed with .50 caliber machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and 70mm rockets.
The AH-60s strafed the camp with heavy machine gun fire, shredding any FARC militants in sight. A barrage of 70mm rockets blasted the barracks compound, armory, communications hut, and guard posts. Militants with RPGs appeared across the killing ground but were quickly torn apart and taken down by the unyielding onslaught. Only one FARC soldier was able to get off a shot, but the rocket propelled grenade went wide, missing its target, and the man who fired it was instantly pulverized by a stream of .50 caliber bullets and scattered messily across the ground.
The Mi-17 Hip transports hovered fifty feet over the camp, one on the south end, another on the east, while the Aprias covered them. Strands of thick and heavy black braided rope, two inches thick in diameter, dropped from the open cabin doors of each Hip. The Colombian special ops troops — clad in jungle camouflage, web harnesses, and balaclavas, and armed with M16s or Israeli-made Galil rifles — began to free fall the length of the ropes at thirty miles per hour. They dropped without the use of descenders attached to the rope, using only their gloved hands and feet to control their descent, slowing as they neared the ground. They maintained a ten foot gap between each man on the ropes.
Felix Aguilar was the first man on the ground, as was his custom to lead from the front. He sprinted several yards away from the rope and dropped to a crouch. He immediately sighted a FARC militant and took him down with a three-round burst, dropping his target.
As soon as each soldier hit the ground, they ran forward to make room for the next man down and to take up firing positions, scanning for targets through their night optics. FARC troops soon appeared, rushing the assaulters as they landed. A brief firefight ensued in which Aguilar’s troops quickly overwhelmed and gunned down the FARC fighters. Two FARC soldiers took cover behind the remnants of a blown-out cabin. A shot from a grenade launcher took them out. Then the Colombian soldiers walked amongst the FARC bodies and swiftly and coldly dispatched any survivors with headshots. Next, Aguilar’s squads split up and took off in different directions across the camp.
A third Hip deployed a squad into the forest, to set up position around the camp, secure the outer perimeter, and pick off any roaming patrols or fleeing insurgents.
It took twenty seconds for the two ten-man squads to dismount from the hovering Hips. With the last men on the ground, the helicopters immediately veered off, so as not to become targets for more RPG gunners.
The soldiers swept across the camp on foot, shooting anything that moved. Throwing in stun grenades first, entry teams systematically breeched and took down the huts and remaining structures, and gunned down militants as they appeared.
Aguilar personally led the takedown of the commandant’s cabin. It was assumed that this would be where Reyes was staying. The cabin itself was already half-demolished and peppered with holes through which there was only darkness inside and no signs of life. Nonetheless, Aguilar kicked the door in and let his Galil rifle lead him into the hut. The commandant himself lay sprawled messily across the floor, with big, red holes punched through his body from a helicopter’s .50 caliber machine guns. Blood and ruptured internal organs oozed out of his carcass, and one of his legs lay nearby.
A quick search of the cabin produced a hidden trapdoor in the floor.
Aguilar hand signaled his men what he planned to do. The three soldiers backed out of the hut to a safe distance, leaving Aguilar alone in the cabin. He then removed a fragmentation grenade from his vest and pulled the pin, keeping his thumb pressed over the spoon. He lifted the trapdoor just wide enough to throw the grenade into the hidden bunker below and shut the door and cleared out of the hut before the grenade exploded. Pieces of shrapnel tore through the wooden floor of the cabin, and smoke filtered out.
When his squad went back inside, Aguilar re-opened the trapdoor, with two soldiers covering him, aiming their rifles down into the open space, tactical lights mounted to the barrels shining into the bunker. A FARC insurgent lay face down in the corner of the bunker, bleeding from shrapnel wounds to his gut and legs. There was another body beside him, missing an arm and parts of its head.
Aguilar fastened his rifle to his vest, switched to his Beretta, and dropped the five feet into the underground bunker. He scanned around him, three hundred sixty degrees, but there was no resistance and the bunker’s only two occupants were quite dead. Aguilar squatted near the body laying facedown and turned it over. He didn’t need to pull the photograph of Emilio Reyes out of his pocket to identify of the body.
From his observation post, Avery surveyed the battleground below, watching the muzzle flashes and explosions light up against the darkness. Rotor wash blotted out all other sound as the helicopters whipped quickly by overhead, wildly blowing hanging branches and leaves in all directions. Avery was unaccustomed to being a spectator on the sidelines and not a participant, but it was a refreshing change of pace for the bullets not to be directed at him.
Three minutes into the assault, Avery was squinting through his night optic scope. Following his line of sight through the trees and down the slight slope onto the camp, he watched Aguilar emerge from the commandant’s hut. From Aguilar’s confident expression and body language, and the way he addressed his men, Avery was sure they’d nailed Reyes. Next, they’d quell the remaining resistance and then perform site exploitation.