Avery swore, exasperated, and tried to maintain patience. He rode out the next eight minutes in silence.
Then, from the UAV trailer back at the airport, where he monitored the Predator’s feed, Contreras’s voice came in over the radio: “Okay, they’re stopping about thirteen miles up the road. They’ve arrived at a ranch, less than half a mile from the border.”
One of the Predator technicians relayed the coordinates to the DEA pilots.
“We’ve got positive ID of the Viper. She just exited one of the trucks,” Contreras’s voice reported twenty seconds later. “She’s with five, no six other men armed with assault rifles. Be careful, guys, and good shooting.”
“That’s not a helicopter.”
Trujillo continued to obsessively watch the skies after hopping out of the truck. He stepped several yards out into the dusty field, behind the rickety, dilapidated barn that looked like it was about to collapse under its own weight if the wind picked up.
Nearby, Carlos and his men unloaded the SA-24 transit crates from the Silverados. The trucks were parked near a wooden shed with a padlocked door. The shed was a recent addition to the property, and looked in much better condition than the barn. The entire farm appeared abandoned and neglected. Out in the distance, several malnourished cows grazed the land, and rotting, half-eaten carcasses of dead cattle could be found baking under the sun. Farther out, there would be signs warning against trespassing, enforced by the cartel’s men who regularly patrolled the property. The cartel had paid the old rancher extremely well for his property, and, over the past year, transformed it into an important hub for delivering drugs across the border.
The Viper stepped up behind Trujillo and followed his gaze, at first finding nothing in the open blue sky, but then she caught a reflective shimmer.
Trujillo was right. There was something out there, and it definitely wasn’t a helicopter.
It took her several seconds to realize what it was. She wasn’t too familiar with drones. They’d never been a concern for her, not the way they were for the jihadists, since drones were generally incapable of seeing through the jungle’s protective, thickly layered canopies.
The Viper turned and pushed two Zetas out of her way as she walked back to the trucks, where she retrieved one of the long transit cases. She slid the case off the bed, set it down on the ground, flipped the catches, opened the lid, peeled back the sheet of packing foam, and removed the launcher, which came pre-armed with a missile.
Re-joining Trujillo, she set the launcher onto her shoulder. She flipped the safety switch to “arm” and heard the electronic hum of the battery powering up, bringing the missile to life. She slowly panned the thermal seeker across the sky, searching. After several seconds, she found the target. The drone was within range and emitted sufficient heat for SA-24’s infrared sensor to track. She pressed the trigger, releasing the missile.
Despite its namesake, the Predator made for easy prey, as the militaries of Serbia, Saddam’s Iraq, and Iran have each demonstrated. The propeller-driven drone loitered in the sky, weighing a thousand pounds, and possessed no defensive capabilities.
The missile slammed through the Predator and detonated, demolishing the UAV.
The pilots in the command trailer immediately lost their satellite link-up with the Predator, and the drone’s flaming, destroyed remains dropped from the sky and smashed into the cactus-strewn desert floor.
The Viper handed the expended launcher off to Trujillo, and walked back to re-join the Mexicans, who had stopped unloading the trucks to watch. The Zetas exchanged looks with one another, suddenly viewing the woman in a different light. They also thought that this location was compromised and could not be used in the future. In fact, the entire day had presented numerous setbacks for the Tijuana cartel that were hardly worth the cash the Viper was paying.
Carlos shouted to his men, “Faster! We’re running out of time.”
Eager to be rid of this woman, Carlos unlocked the door on the wooden shed and pulled it open. The interior was empty. The Viper watched as the Mexican stepped inside, hit a switch on the wall, and squatted down over a square-shaped hatch in the floor that was secured by another padlock. He keyed the lock, removed it, and lifted the hatch.
Peering past Carlos’s shoulder, the Viper saw through the open hatch, down a twelve feet deep shaft that led into a tunnel.
“Follow this tunnel,” Carlos instructed her, eager to see this woman on her way. “It will take you across the border,”
“What’s on the other side?”
“It will exit into the California desert. Transportation is waiting for you, two vans.”
“They’re here!” Trujillo shouted over the sound of rotor wash.
Coming over the ranch, everyone aboard the DEA choppers saw the thin coil of black smoke extend into the air from the crashed Predator. Unaware of the disposition of enemy forces, only that they were armed with anti-air capability, the two Hueys split up over the ranch, each coming in from a different direction, the pilots searching for the closest spots to set down.
On their first pass at eight hundred feet altitude, Avery, strapped into a safety harness, leaned out over the open cabin door to see half a dozen figures scattering across the ground below, behind the barn, looking like cockroaches suddenly caught in the light. He identified a distinctly female figure disappear behind the barn, out of sight. In addition to the rifle slung over her shoulder, she carried a long, tubular launcher.
Muzzle flashes lit up from multiple points on the ground.
Avery flinched and moved deeper into the cabin as a couple shots punched holes through the Huey. Another bullet cut through the air past his face and went through the low ceiling. Avery held on tight as the helicopter banked around in a sharp turn, the pilot steering them out of the way of the enemy fire. Avery turned to the Colombians and the flight crew, to check that they were unharmed. Aguilar gave him the thumbs up.
Avery ordered the pilot to set them down nearby, anywhere he could, and the man was happy to do so, unaccustomed to evasive flying and taking incoming fire from military grade weapons. Avery thought it was stupid bringing the choppers in this close, when they knew the enemy carried SA-24 and had already twice demonstrated their proficiency with the weapon. But on the ground, it was a different story. There, Avery held supreme confidence in his ability to outmaneuver and eliminate the enemy.
The Huey touched down on its skids off the west side of the barn, some three hundred feet from the cartel shooters, putting the barn between the chopper and the shooters. It was a hard landing, jolting the passengers against their restraints.
The second helicopter remained in the air, whipping by overhead on a second pass over the ranch, calling the attention of the Zeta shooters scattered about.
They were barely grounded before Avery, Aguilar, and Diego got up, disengaged from their safety harnesses, readied their rifles, and jumped down from the cabin, ducking their heads beneath the spinning double blades, squinting against the cloud of grit and sand swarming in the air around them.
The trio leapfrogged their way to the broadside of the barn, dodging Los Zetas’ incoming fire along the way. One of the cartel shooters was crouched on a knee, the other lay prone, and it sounded like they had M16s. Their shots went too low, drilling through the ground and kicking up dirt and dust, or too wide, whipping past their intended targets.
Covered by Diego, who dropped to his belly with his NG7 cradled in front of him, Avery and Aguilar dashed across the remaining forty feet to the cover of the barn and flattened their backs against the exterior west wall. They heard the thundering staccato bursts of the NG7 as Diego sprayed the machine-gun left to right, decimating the two Zetas.