Chapter 78: Rescue Adds A Wrinkle

For me dinner on Sunday was room service, I had maps and schedules laid out for the Yucatan operation and was in touch with the “Tuska” and the troops. Abril did not want to be in the room, she knew to many people in harms way and would not be rational if any were hurt or killed. For her, after supper and socializing she wanted me to tell her everything was over and okay with nobody hurt.

I was not going to direct the action thousands of miles away, this was essentially a 49 command staff, the tech nerds and soldiers had Irene in overall command. She had enough confidence in the men and their training that she stayed on the ship and trusted her officers in the field. My uncle Captain Martin (for ground tactics) and the Monsignor Angel (the Captain of the Tuska, dealing with air and seaborne assets) would provide advice and technical support, but they did not plan to “run” the operation.

The actual 49 members involved on the command staff and on the ground (the tank crew, the M-113 crew and the mortar crew) were ex-military. There was one outsider involved: Tony, for his rescue op. The only civilian 49 members involved were the geeks on the ship running the coms, drones, radar for the mortars and the computers. Angel said they did a great job with the tech.

After his earlier recon mission Monday August 25, Tony was not originally scheduled to go into the Aztex grounds again until the cleanup operation a week later. But during that recon Tony encountered an LA Aztex he knew, a meth-head/screw-up for life named Blue. In talking he learned that the good Sister Mary Ellen from the neighborhood had been kidnapped for the sacrifice. She was scheduled to follow after Tony’s witch of a wife on her heart-wrenching show. Tony immediately volunteered to free the Sister and her associate. Jambo insisted he would go along to cover him.

Irene agreed and put the sharpshooters under Jambo’s command.

The pair quickly drew up a plan that required some small adjustments to details of the military op but otherwise met the expanded objectives of freeing the good Sister and her assistant without compromising the primary mission of blowing Aztexs to hell. Tony took on some additional risk - too many Aztexs knew his face - but for a midnight op he felt it was worthwhile. Plus, in the worst case scenario the tank was backing him up against the naked, out-of-their-mind unarmed crazies.

There was no room inside the tank for them, Jambo intended to ride outside, with a night scope on a sniper rifle. Tony would take a jeep, pop a couple of doors, spring the good Sister, then escape to the sea in the Zodiac.

We knew that the Sister would not lie about what she saw, so they had to revise the mission plan and find a way to communicate, keeping her eyes off the military assets. She would notice a tank even at night, so they planned to keep it out-of-sight but close. Also, Tony planned to take care of the jailers with methods that looked non-lethal (curare needle).

We had already discussed trying to take Tony’s wife or any of the other Aztex brass alive, but any intel we could squeeze from them would become worthless after the first mortar volley, so it wasn’t worth the bother. They would be missed if we snatched them before then. We had all we needed from Blue (Tony’s friend), Crow (at BAD) and the cameras on sight. So there was no benefit for even a low-risk snatch. Plus trying to get uncooperative prisoners into the US or Peru can get very embarrassing at customs. The meth-heads were simply not worth the effort.

Since his wife planned to sacrifice him, live on the pyramid in an especially bloody spectacle of agony before she used a rib-spreader without benefit of pain drugs and ripped out his beating heart, Tony argued wholeheartedly that we should not make the slightest effort to save her. In fact, her death scream would call the first round of hellfire raining steel and fire on the Aztexs.

It was possible that afterward Mexico would match DNA allowing a life insurance claim that would pay for Tonto’s college education. A silver lining, perhaps.