Chapter 16: DeBrief

Thursday afternoon

I was feeling a little depressed, because of the way the cops figured in. Simply staging the large attack made it a huge loss for 49 and my future plans, because it would open the building. Once the cops got in they might find things like my tricked-out M113 Armored City-Bopper Vehicle (fireproofed, extra steel armor, with grenade launcher, a Gustav recoilless and extra armor) in the sub-basement of the parking garage. I rarely felt depressed, but this was an exception.

“They take over a pyramid is Mexico?” Irene asked Tony.

“Yeah, well ... a small one ... on an indian reservation in the Yucatan. They use the place twice a year. The wife and I went once for a non-lethal family holiday at the start of the summer, Memorial Day two years ago. Tonto stayed home. In the spring there was no human sacrifice, only family fun and games like massive father-son paintball wars during the day, plus adult fun and games at night. I didn’t play but my wife did disappear a few times, ‘to visit some new friends.’ It was especially great for couples with teens, they can meet and make friends. But because of the dense woods with spiders all over ... there are a lot of spiders ... so the teenage girls don’t wander off into the super dense woods with boys, everything stays in the open. By contrast the Labor day thing is a horror show. All the hard-cores gather, festivities take place at night. The pyramid was Mayan, a small earthen one maybe 40 to 60 feet tall that is now a small very steep oddly symmetrical hill in the jungle. It was actually the genesis for the gang; some founders were hiking one winter, they found it and thought it was Aztec Indian in origin. It is older than that. I will say the place has a magic about it - plus there are a lot of spiders around.”

Tony went on to explain how the gang bought the land cheap and then paid the local indian tribe to declare the area around the land a private ‘sacred’ reservation, to keep the folks away. “The authorities don’t care about the crazy gringos as long as they bring cash, leave without the cash, and don’t leave a mess where it can be seen by troublemakers, like reporters,” Tony said. “The locals have to live with serious drug cartels. The wacko twice-a-year mob of drug users counted as good people because they didn’t hang dead, tortured, naked bodies in public,” like cartels do.

At the start the so-called gang was mainly college students. A few were in biology and chemistry, they started the cooking, but most were just rebels without a cause who got lucky when they pulled a few crimes, built a lab and sold some meth. Eventually some real bad folks came in.

Using the picture from one of the mapping programs on the computer, Tony explained the layout of the Spider Woods. “I call it a woods, but most of the plant life is dense marsh growing shrubs with thorns, like living barbed wire. In the heat it is really dense, impossible to move through. Maybe a hundred years ago it was clear pasture, there is rusted barbed wire out there, but the jungle reclaimed the land.”

A gravel road ran along the North-East edge of the reservation, connecting to the sea for seasonal fishing. “The road was built where the soil changed to a almost sand and gravel mix, marking a change in vegetation. Tall grasses grow north of the road.” The west was bounded by a river that was the east end of a large nasty swamp. To the east and south was the coast of the sea.

The campground was two miles from the sea, built with an entrance to the road. There were two large clear areas, one a parking lot and the other the party space with the pyramid at one end. The two were connected by a dog-leg walkway. Tony said it was built that way to avoid a rock-strewn hill with some large trees. “Too much bother to take out, they wanted a flat path so they went around. As I said, the first members were college students.”

“What about these spiders?” I asked.

“They swarm, lots, with nasty bites including some that are fatal. Also lots of other nasties like snakes, hornets, centipedes, etc. They managed to clear and expand the parking lot and pyramid area during the first winter, when insect level is low, using burning, dynamite and then bulldozers. The founders mixed up a heavy custom pesticide, something illegal, plus a very targeted herbicide is spread on the ground. Then they fog the cleared area a week ahead of each holiday, to create a spider-free-zone for a short period. They use sealed tractors to fog and saturation-spray the poison. It is strictly a holding action, nature takes back the land each year.”

So the question was, how to stop them? If these clowns landed in LA we had already lost the war even if we killed them all. Bringing down a chartered airplane over land - even Mexico - was not something I wanted to do, they investigate it. That left engaging the enemy on the ground in Mexico. Who would notice? Who would care? Okay, those were easy questions.

But just how to engage them with the greatest chance of success? Especially since they lived in what was effectively a fort with walls that were miles thick? The entrance to the combat area was too small, the attacker would face terrible tradeoffs on strange grounds. The party was a month away, we needed a plan to train for. Well, that was a military question and it was why I had real military planners handy.

Irene had the answer, I saw it in her eyes, but she let Rojas make the suggestion.

Rojas said single word that crystalized the plan in a moment. “Mortars. Can we borrow the Patron’s...”

“Don’t say it,” I cut him off. I was already there, but I wanted to hold something back from Tony.

Irene put her finger on a spot on the satellite photo. “Around here ... in range for us to walk the party field 100%, but too deep for them to counter, even if it was daylight and they were good troops ready for it. We can wipe them out without losing a man.”

“They could escape, they have cars,” Tony said, pointing to the parking lot.

Rojas had combat experience. “If we use claymores or turn the path to fire, it closes that door. Plus, an IED at the entrance to the parking lot and it is all over. Pileup on the only exit.”

The military folks knew I had some special assets, so they left some details fuzzy, but otherwise they laid out a plan.

If we used mortars the dead-man’s party would not even see us when we dropped steel and fire on them. From the time Rojas said the word I felt better, everything else was downhill. For the first time 49 was going to run a lethal military op outside the country. We were ready. We roughed out a plan to kill them all from hundreds of yards away. They would not even see us, much less shoot back. That is the trouble with a stronghold, the walls of their “fort” would trap them in the killing ground. Their only choice was to die without seeing their attackers.

You have seen cartoon pictures of a round steel bomb with a fuse sticking out, that was a mortar shell from the 1800’s. The gunner cut the fuse to the proper length for the bomb’s travel time through the air so it exploded above the enemy, raining destruction down on wooden ships or trenches or folks charging on horses or whatever. By nature it is indirect fire which needs spotters, the shooter does not generally see what he is shooting at, and is much safer if there is high ground between bomber and target. Modern mortars were smaller and lighter and radar-guided accurate with explosives that were much more powerful. My soldiers had a dozen in the armory in downtown LA, acquired by the Patron when his soldiers left somebody’s military - they are easy to grab. They are pretty universal designs (most are copies of a French model) made to be carried by one with a second carrying the ammo. The American M2 was very popular in South America.

Irene said “Mark 25F?” I nodded, that sounded ideal. She and I knew some special ammunition the munitions company in Brazil had made up to order.

Some African customers had nasty ideas about what they wanted to shoot at their sworn enemies. About 10 years ago this not-quite-a-warlord Major ordered the design of a custom munition to shoot at his boss/enemy General, it was a method of moving up in rank. The Major ordered a production run of the Mark 25F mortar shell that “burst 100 to 300 feet over the target to fire down sub-munitions (steel bullets) coated with white phosphorus.”

Imagine a giant shotgun shooting straight down, except that the shotgun barrel is three inches across and instead of buckshot each shell packs a couple dozen flaming bullets. That was what each mortar shell was like.

These shells were not likely to be used by the military (short shelf life, dangerous for beginners, Geneva convention, etc.), but African major paid extra for a “superweapon” so the Brazilian company developed the wicked things. The company made one production run (2,500 shells) as requested. But his check only paid for the first third of the contract (mostly the R&D) so he was shipped about 10% of the shells. He complained, but the company in Brazil was not like the unarmed villagers the guy usually bullied. The arms maker was experienced with the appetites and finances of warlords.