Avery swung his rifle around his tree and fired multiple shots back at the muzzle flash when it lit up again, forcing Moreno to ease off the trigger and drop back. Then Avery covered another meter, taking wide steps, unconcerned with concealing his approach now, and he swiftly sidestepped to the left behind another tree, this one covered with termites, as Moreno popped up once more and returned fire. Avery heard the shots bore into the tree trunk he used for cover, and then he came around left and fired another burst.
Tree bark exploded in Moreno’s face, and he took cover once more.
Avery took a few more steps with his eyes locked onto another tree and quickly took cover behind this one. Here, he dropped onto one knee and looked ahead, but he still wasn’t able to see directly behind the driftwood. There was a slight gap between the bottom of the overturned tree and the jungle floor, but the space was too dark and shallow to see Moreno through it.
So Avery concentrated his eyes on the forest floor, concealed beneath shrubs and plants, further behind the tree. About four feet beyond the overturned tree, the brush shuddered.
Avery’s eyes shifted to the movement in time to see the sole of a boot slip between the bushes and the low hanging branches. He raised his aim and fired four quick shots through the flora. At least one made contact. Avery saw a leg kick out of the plants, and then it was dragged forward through the forest floor.
Avery sprung ahead, keeping his rifle trained on the growth. When he came within two meters, Moreno rolled out of the brush onto his back, with his M16 pointed up and angled toward the American now towering above him. Moreno grimaced, but he was oblivious to the blood pouring into the mud from the back of his left thigh where Avery’s 5.56mm had punctured the meat of his quadriceps, and he was oblivious to the millipedes and army ants on him. He was intent on nothing but acquiring Avery in his sights.
But Avery, anticipating the attack, and not physically impeded, moved faster. Without aiming, he triggered three shots into Moreno’s chest and throat. Moreno’s body convulsed, then his head fell back and his arms went limp and his hands dropped the M16. He wheezed and gasped and withered on the ground for a couple seconds, then became completely still. His eyes stared up at the treetops without seeing.
Keeping his M4 on Moreno, Avery took five more steps forward, slipping one leg and then the other over the top of the overturned tree. He kicked the rifle out of the dead man’s hands and did a full three-sixty sweep around him.
“Suelta el arma, y se identifique!”
The voice called out somewhere behind Avery.
Drop your weapon and identify yourself.
Avery stood completely still and held hands held out to the side. He identified himself by his call sign, Carnivore, the name the Colombian troops would know him by.
It had to be Aguilar’s men — FARC would have just shot him — but Avery’s body still tensed, would stay that way until he was sure someone wasn’t thinking about killing him.
He heard the approach of the troops from behind. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and another hand relieved him of the M4, and he was instructed to turn around. When he did so, he came face-to-face with First Sergeant Jon Castillo.
Even wearing a bandanna, with camouflage paint concealing face, Avery recognized the Colombian army NCO. There were two more soldiers spread out behind Castillo, holding Galil rifles.
There was the flash of white in the darkness when Castillo’s lips parted in a wide smile.
“What the fuck are you doing out here, Avery? You’re supposed to be hunkered down in your little shithole until we tell you it’s safe to come out.”
“I would be,” Avery said, cocking his head to indicate Moreno, “if you hadn’t let this one get by you, dickhead.”
Castillo stepped past Avery and looked down at the body.
“Oh fuck! Do you know who you just nailed? That’s Aarón Moreno. CO will be pleased. He was worried that cocksucker slipped away.”
“Nearly had,” Avery said. Castillo handed him back his M4. “But he made his getaway just a dozen meters from my OP. Bad luck for him.”
“Nice shooting,” Castillo said. “I owe you a beer when we get back to base. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
They’d done a lot of hard drinking fourteen years back. The memories were fresh in Avery’s mind, felt like a lifetime ago, but he didn’t tell Castillo that he no longer drank, fought hard not to when it was put in front of him.
“I’m not sure I’ll have the time. They want me back at Palanquero right away.”
“Well, I still owe you one. Come on. Let’s head back to the camp. We need to egress before we have the whole Venezuelan army coming down on us.”
Approximately six minutes elapsed since the Apria gunships descended upon the camp and commenced the assault. Aguilar’s team would take an additional fifteen minutes to perform the requisite intelligence sweep of the camp. Aguilar didn’t want boots on the ground for more than twenty-five minutes total. Longer than that, they were pushing the time it’d take the Venezuelan army to reach the site. They had to assume that FARC had sent a distress signal to the Venezuelans that they were under attack or that Venezuelan air defenses had spotted the helicopters
The FARC dead would be counted at thirty-three, including Reyes and the second-in-command of FARC’s Eastern Bloc. Aguilar’s team suffered five injuries, three minor.
Following Castillo back to the camp, Avery smelled cordite, burning wood, and hydraulic fluid. The campground itself was illuminated by the blazing fires of smoldering huts and trees. He felt the warmth of the fires.
Avery watched the precision and deliberation with which the spec ops troops moved as they went from hut to hut, while others tore down the camp tents to clear a space for the Mi-17 to set down.
As Aguilar’s soldiers went about their business, Avery waited onboard the helicopter with the wounded. He chugged water and poured the remains of the last bottle over his face and wiped way the camou paint, mud, and sweat. Then he removed some of his layers of clothing and kit, and went after the numerous bugs crawling around and biting his body.
The search of the camp produced three laptop computers, including Reyes’s, hundreds of documents, and several USB drives. Aguilar’s troops also took photos of all the FARC dead.
Minutes later, an American AWACS plane on station in Colombian airspace reported that four Venezuelan Su-24 fighters had taken off from a nearby base and were on a course for Táchira. They were barely ten minutes out, and communications intercepts indicated they had orders to pursue and shoot down any aircraft in violation of Venezuelan airspace. Venezuelan ground forces were likewise being mobilized.
Aguilar ordered his troops aboard the choppers. They took with them Reyes’ body, now sealed in a plastic pouch. They left Aarón Moreno’s corpse to rot where it lay on the rain-soaked jungle floor.
TWO
Looking out the forward cabin window as the pilot shifted the collective and gently lowered the Blackhawk, Avery inwardly groaned when he spotted Matt Culler and Special Agent Mark Slayton standing on the rain-swept tarmac below.
It was unlike Culler to be on hand to personally greet him. They knew each other well, having worked together the better part of the past decade, but their relationship wasn’t particularly cordial. If Culler was there waiting to see him, it meant he already had another job lined up, and the presence of the senior DEA agent not only served as confirmation but indicated it was in-country.