"Thomas Bennet"
Posada en el Puerto
Port of Veracruz, Mexico
August 15, 2022
0945 Hours
I was jolted awake by the sound of explosions echoing through the streets of Veracruz. The cartel had resumed its daily squabble with Mexican Naval Forces trying to retake the port.
As I rubbed my eyes, I could hear planes pass overhead. By the whirring of the engines, they were turboprops; most likely Mexican T-6Cs doing a strafing run on cartel positions within the city itself. Risky in terms of potential military and civilian casualties, but I suspected the Mexicans didn't care at this point.
I lay there for a moment, gathering myself as I tried to stir myself into full consciousness. Sleep was difficult to come by when the nights are filled with a mix of practicing code and the sounds of artillery striking buildings all around you. Looking at your clock is always the best way to make sure you're up.
And up I was mere microseconds after I looked at it. I had a meeting with the recruiter at a cafe down the road at 10:00. The time was 9:45, and the cafe was a twenty minute walk from my hotel.
I rushed to ready myself, grabbing my clothes from my suitcase and sprinting to the bathroom to change. I hadn't been in this much of a rush since inspection day back in basic.
I shot a quick glance into the mirror as I changed out of my night clothes and into a polo and pair of black slacks. I was still there, with a mop of messy black hair, square frame glasses and slightly sunburned skin. Boy did that bring back memories of summer vacation when I was younger.
But I was no longer that boy, nor was I Rush.
I was Thomas Bennet, a New Orleans born IT consultant.
I'd honestly hoped for a more unique name, but the egg-heads at the CIA and Rainbow insisted on an identity that should have raised so many red flags with the cartel. Yet it all fell on me to sell the identity to the cartel.
To be honest with you, I bullshit my way through the whole thing. I bullshit my background, save for what I'd been told to give. I bullshit my way through the cartel's IT testing course. I'm supposed to meet with them today to find out the results. Hopefully my tardiness won't change their attitude on my potential as a recruit.
Five minutes later and I was out the door, apologetically plowing through a group of sicarios huddled up in the lobby. I probably looked crazy doing it too, considering how disheveled I was when I ran into them. I think my laptop bag actually hit one of the guys. My drill Sergeant would have straight up killed me with pushups if he saw me rushing to formation like I was to this meeting.
9:53. I had seven minutes to maneuver a street full of burnt up cars and sicario checkpoints. There'd be no issue running it, sace for the constant exchange of fire between Mexican forces and the cartel. Again, the buzz of T-6Cs echoed through the streets, followed by a series of explosions.
Along my journey, I got a peek at just what the cartel was packing in terms of equipment. You had your usual mix of technicals and humvees, complete with a variety of the typical mounted machine guns or improvised weapons the cartel managed to scrape together. The most impressive modification I saw was a quad Oerlikon cannon mounted on the back of a Humvee to serve as a (rather ineffective) anti-aircraft battery.
Sicarios scrambled around the streets, carrying ammunition and equipment to and from positions closer to the front. From what I could make out from their rushed conversations, Mexican Naval Infantry had established a beachhead near the main docks.
That… complicated things. The Mexican Navy was supposed to hold off its infantry until coalition intelligence assets, including myself, had either been extracted or integrated within the cartel. I suppose their commanders saw an opportunity to strike the cartel and took it. From a strategic standpoint, I couldn't complain.
Thud.
I looked left and saw a metallic cylinder sticking out of the pavement. A dud mortar shell, or at least it appeared to be. I sure as hell wasn't sticking around to find out. I picked up my pace and got my ass out of there.
10:01, I made it to the cafe, completely winded. The cartel guys seemed shocked I'd even attempted to make it to the meeting. I was more shocked I'd made it that far without something or someone killing me.
"Esta loco, hermano," one of the sicarios chuckled. "Did you run all the way here?"
"What… does it look like…?" I hissed between breaths.
"Isobel sent a car for you, dumbass," another sicario cut in. "Now Marco's on the phone chewing her out."
"Oh for…" I cursed myself as I replayed my route in my head. I had seen a suspicious car on my way out, but I had been too caught up in my own panic to notice. "Tell Mich- Marco to find a backstreet. There's an unexploded mortar round down the main road about halfway between here and the hotel."
"Sure, sure." the first sicario replied, rolling his eyes as he led me inside.
The cafe shuddered as another plane made a low pass over the city, the lights flickering a bit as the power grid struggled to keep power flowing into the city.
Isobel sat in the corner farthest away from the windows in the front of the store, her face buried behind manilla folders and documents scattered about her table. While she worked for the cartel, she had the added benefit of working in the more "legal" side of the cartel; a shell company called EnlaceSur, based out of Chiapas.
The air around Isobel was deathly cold, as if she herself was the grim reaper waiting to judge me. I approached her cautiously, watching for the slightest twitch of hostility from the recruiter.
She seemed to be more aware of my presence, cocking one of her raven black brows as I approached without looking up. A small frown stretched across her thin lips as she read through what I could assume to be an evaluation report before noisily slamming a red stamp on the top corner.
"Señor Bennet, you are late," Isobel said, finally looking coldly at me with her deep blue eyes. "I hope you weren't trying to slip in unnoticed. This isn't a high school, you know."
"Wha…what makes you think I was trying to sneak up on you?"
"Your footsteps are extremely quiet," she said. "Sit."
She gestured casually to a chair sitting directly across from her as she barked the order at me. I followed instructions without hesitation.
"Despite your tardiness, you have shown considerable commitment to joining our team," Isobel noted as her slender fingers worked their way through her files. "You cannot imagine how many cancellations I received this morning after the shells started falling. I must ask, why do you want to work for EnlaceSur?"
"Besides the obvious?" I mused. "More consistent weather, lovely locales, great food."
"Mm."
Her fingers stopped as she pulled out a folder with my photograph on it, her black-glossed fingertips gently prying it open. I saw my evaluation covered in red ink and my heart dropped into my gut instantly. It looked like I was about to get the boot.
"Don't look so grim." Isobel chuckled. "You passed… barely. The evaluator was impressed with some of your solutions though."
"So, I'm in?"
"At a very basic level, yes. Your payout is still competitive."
I let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in my chair. The mission was still on.
"So what's next?"
"Would you be willing to move? And how long would you need?"
"How soon would you need me to move?"
Isobel's eyes darted to the window as a cartel APC rolled by, firing off its cannon non-stop. It was hard to tell what exactly the cartel was shooting up, but whatever it was was close.
"Preferably by the end of today. My employers are pulling critical staff back to our main headquarters as the fighting continues to escalate." She said, "Wouldn't want our employees getting caught in the crossfire, now would we?"
"That's a bit sudden, but I'll bite." I chuckled. "Beats nearly getting hit by a mortar just trying to get to work."
Isobel smirked at that comment, rolling her eyes at me. I guess she didn't think something like that could happen to me. It was going to be awkward when that mortar round I warned the cartel about blows up in their faces.
12:00 PM
I sat quietly in the back of the cartel hideout as the sounds of gunfire echoed around us. The Mexican Naval Infantry had come in with a lot more preparation and forethought than their initial assault had suggested. They managed to catch the cartel's Sicarios in a pincer, with the Mexican Army and elements of the US 13th MEU. Reinforcements were still two hours out and our last attempt to extract had been foiled by a stray artillery shell flipping our car. I caught some shrapnel in my right arm and lower abdomen, but it was nothing seriously fatal. The same could not be said about the red paste that had once been our security detail.
Isobel was not content to sit around and wait for some grunts to wander in to come rescue us. She'd spent the last thirty minutes on the phone with the local buchon, demanding that a Verdugo team come pick us up. Her civilian side was showing a bit too much as she went into a full on panic.
I was in too much pain to care, or rather pretending to be. This was far from the worst injury i had ever received in the line of duty and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
Isobel's rant was only briefly disrupted when a sicario kicked open the door to the basement we were hiding in, carrying one of his buddies over his shoulders. Despite his white clothes being drenched and stained with blood and dirt, he had somewhat of a kempt appearance to him.
He rushed over to the triage and plopped his buddy onto a waiting gurney before disappearing into a nearby storeroom to get himself a new set of clothes. He was in pretty rough condition himself, his pants torn and stained with a fresh coat of blood from what seemed to be a bullet wound.
I was fiddling around on my phone when he re-emerged in a three-quarter sleeve henley and a fresh set of jeans. A tattoo of a young boy and a young girl lined his forearms where his sleeves did not reach, all the way down to his fingertips. An odd choice for a cartel gunman.
He sat down one seat to my left and buried his face into his hands as he finally took a second to breathe. He'd probably been through hell just to get to the hideout with his buddy.
"What are you lookin' at, gringo?" He said as he noticed me looking at him.
"Your tattoos," I shrugged. "Don't you guys usually get Santa Muerte or something like that?"
"Pretty worn-out stereotype." He replied, looking off to the side at his comrades. "Plus I ain't really the religious type."
"Mm."
"I don't recognize you, you new?"
"I… I guess?" I shrugged again. "I'm supposed to start working with EnlaceSur in the next couple days but… this whole war thing."
"Mierda, guey. Must be hell on Earth for you right now."
"Trust me, this is my third pair of underwear today." I joked. "Name's Bennet, you?"
"Jairo Montilla," the sicario replied proudly. "You American or…?"
"Full blooded. Family's from the South."
"Ah, la parte estúpida."
"Veta a la mierda, culero."
"¿Tu hablar español?"
"Sólo lo suficiente."
"You picked up the vulgar stuff quite fast." Jairo noted amusedly.
"One of many things my dad taught me about travel is to learn three things: how to ask where the bathroom is, how to ask for food, and how to cuss people out."
"Your dad's pretty smart… for a Southerner."
"Jesus, can we get off that for a second?" I grunted, shifting my weight back into my chair. "What about you, bud? What's your deal?"
"Job or where I'm from?"
"Either."
"I used to be a delivery driver."
"For the post office…?"
"Yes, for the post office," he sneered. "No, for the fucking carte. I just got recruited into the security unit a month ago."
"How's that going?"
"Pretty great until you Americans started showing up. I got bounced between three buchons until two days ago when I got my orders to begin training at the island."
"I'm sorry, 'island'?" I asked. Nothing in our intelligence had suggested the cartel had any naval capabilities. I played up my confusion and disbelief, which seemed to annoy him a bit.
"Si, tonto la maldita isla," Jairo said as he rolled his eyes. "Joya Verde?"
"You mean that resort that Colombia and Venezuela always bicker over?"
"The very same." Jairo grinned as the pieces began to click together in my head. "It's sort of a main base-training facility sort of deal. Outside of that, the island is actually pretty beautiful. Like, parts of the island are practically untouched."
"Uh huh."
Despite the obvious moral and ethical issues that arose from working with a cartel actively waging war within the borders of an allied nation, the idea of working from an island resort had a certain appeal to me. Like I had just been handed a free vacation in the Caribbean.
Before we could continue our conversation, the lights went out and plunged us into an abyssal darkness I never thought possible for a basement during the middle of the day. I could hear the stomping of men in steel-toed boots around me and confused cries as everyone tried to figure out what was going on.
"Jairo?" I called out, trying to find my newfound acquaintance. Then I felt the butt of a rifle being jammed into the back of my head.