As he looked up, Rivera appeared in the open door. He smiled at Nolan and pointed an assault rifle at him. Nolan rolled desperately to one side, and a trio of bullets chipped up the concrete where he’d been standing. But Rivera was bringing the rifle around to bear on him. He knew he couldn’t avoid a burst of automatic fire, and his mind froze. He was a dead man. It was the end of the line. Rivera’s eyes squinted, and he took on a serious expression as he raised the rifle to his shoulder to make certain of his aim. When he was satisfied, Nolan even saw his trigger finger move slightly as he took up first pressure. His smile broadened, but only for a fraction of a second. He seemed to freeze. His eyes flew open wide, and the smile was replaced with a look of astonishment. Then he slowly toppled forward, out of the cabin, and onto the concrete roof.

  “Bravo Five, you need to keep that fool head of yours down. Next time, Chief, I may not be around to watch your back.”

  He felt the cold wash of relief rush over him. Vince Merano, covering the assault from a high position in a tree overlooking the compound, had seen it all happen.

  “Thanks, Vince. I owe you one.”

  “And then some, buddy. What about the helo?”

  “Can you see the pilot?”

  “Is the Pope a Catholic?”

  “Kill him.”

  The pilot’s body bucked as Vince’s double tap took him. There was no armor on the Bell 429, and the heavy, high velocity rounds penetrated the thin body and Perspex, taking the pilot in the chest and head. The machine tilted over, and the rotor blades screeched as they touched concrete, showering sparks over the roof. The massive kinetic power of the twin turboshafts kept the helo moving, causing it to turn like a children’s toy, closer and closer to the edge of the roof. Finally, with a rending crash of tortured metal it went over. As it hit the ground, the tanks exploded when the sparks ignited the spilled high-octane fuel. The Bell disappeared in a roaring storm of smoke and flames. But it wasn’t over.

  “You motherfuckers! Think you can stitch us up with a couple of cheap commie missiles. We’ll fry your asses!”

  The shout came through his earpiece, and he looked up at the familiar voice of Hammer One. The Spooky had avoided the ‘cheap commie missiles’ and was returning to finish the job. The Gecko SA-8 was a radar-controlled launcher, and the operator had taken his eyes off the screen to watch the fight on the rooftop. The AC-130 had taken the opportunity when the threat receiver reported they were no longer a target and swooped in for the kill. For the aircrew, it was payback for a very nasty moment. The Gatling gun threatened to overheat as it poured enough metal into the missile position to destroy it utterly. When the gun barrel stopped turning, all that was left of the pride of Soviet technology was a pile of twisted broken parts, intermingled with the blood, bone and tissue of the operators.

  Nolan sensed movement behind him and whirled. It was Carol.

  “Is it over?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is. That’s all of them.”

  “Until the next drug gang takes over the Salazar empire.”

  “There’s always that. But they’ll go down the same way.”

  “A lot of good people suffered badly, Kyle. They didn’t go down easily.”

  “No. But we can’t choose the way they behave. We can only fight them when they threaten our way of life.”

  She smiled. “Is that Chief Nolan’s philosophy?”

  “It’s the Seals’ philosophy. When they threaten the security of the United States, they come up against us.”

  She pulled a face. “It’s macho bullshit, Kyle. But I’ll tell you this. I’m damned glad your outfit is there. Damned glad. Enough of that, can we go home now?”

  He looked around at the smoking remains of the missile launcher, at the flames that leapt up from the burning helo, and at the corpses that lay on the roof, Rivera, Bremmer, and their Colombian henchmen. All dead. All gone.

  “Yeah, I reckon we can. We’re done here.”

  “So we can relax, the kids are safe?”

  She’s right. ‘We’ is right. We’re a team, Carol and me. How could I ever have been so stupid? I could never have done any of it without her.

  He nodded. “We can relax. It’s time to put all this behind us.”

  “Us?”

  She was waiting for him to say it, clearly and without equivocation. He grinned at her.

  “Yeah, that’s right, ‘Us’. You, me, the kids. We’re all going home.”

 

 

  Eric Meyer, Cartel Nightmare

 

 

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