Unconventional Warfare

“Politics give me a rash,” Lyons muttered. He snapped the bolt back on the compact carbine and seated a 5.56 mm round.

“I just wish we had more time to check out this set up,” Schwarz said from the backseat. He pulled an identical M-4 from a briefcase on the seat next to him and chambered a round. “We don’t know this guy from Adam.”

Blancanales reached over and pulled his own prepped and ready M-4 from the inside compartment of his door. Each man on the team wore a windbreaker over a backup shoulder holster. They had no intention of hiding their firepower when they went into the meet.

As the team stepped out of the vehicle there was a thunderous roaring as a freight train began its approach of the rail yard off to the side of the building. Lyons looked around. This was the location of the meet with the man who was supposed to take them to where their target was hiding.

“This strike you as overly isolated for a simple meet-and-greet?” Schwarz asked.

“Why, whatever do you mean, Grandma?” Lyons asked.

The freight train began to slow even further. The engineer popped its brakes with a deafening hissing noise accompanied by the screaming of steel on steel as wheels locked up on rails. Blancanales eyeballed the upper reaches of the building as they approached. The windows looked back at him, silent and dark.

Closer to the ground the building was taken up by a concrete loading dock and roll-up bay doors for almost two-thirds of its length. The other section was broken by a single metal door set at the top of a short flight of concrete steps. Spiky lines of graffiti covered the wall and doors. Displaced air from the sliding train pushed scraps of paper across the broken asphalt like stringless kites.

Juárez was one of the most polluted cities on the face of the earth and here, in its underbelly, the stench was sharp and chemical, coating the tongues of the three men as they approached the building.

The train pulled up next to the yard, arriving in a deafening din as boxcar after boxcar slowly rumbled by. Though they stood right next to each other the men couldn’t have heard one another speak. Lyons frowned and made a gesture with his hand.

The other two immediately spread out, forming into a loose triangle as they finished their approach to the front of the building. Schwarz looked to one side and saw a line of gouts suddenly erupt in the earth. He reached over and shoved Lyons to one side, then flung himself in the other direction. The line of bullets stitched its way up the middle of them while off to the side Blancanales had lifted his carbine and began spraying it at the top line of windows on the building.

The compact M-4 carbine was designed for close-in range and ease of concealment, but the 5.56 mm rounds were more than powerful enough to cross the space between the ambush sniper and the men caught in the path of his murderous fire.

Blancanales’s burst peppered the building.

Lyons rolled with the hard shove his teammate had given him and somersaulted over one shoulder. He came up and quickly scanned the building for the attackers. He saw nothing other than the single sniper trading shots with Blancanales and quickly crossed his stream of 5.56 mm rounds with those of the ex-Green Beret.

Bullets rebounded off the wall and shattered what slivers of glass still remained in their frames. He saw brilliant bursts of muzzle-flash and tried to bring his own fire to bear accurately as he continued racing toward the building. The freight train had formed a blanket of painful white nose on the entire area, and Lyons felt acutely strange, able to register the feel of his recoil and the heat of escaping gases but still almost entirely unable to hear the report of his own weapon in his hands.

Off to one side Schwarz bounced up off the parking lot and raced for the single pedestrian door set to one side of the building. Behind him Blancanales continued spraying successive bursts into the area of the sniper in an attempt to suppress his gunfire. The freight train continued to roll on past their position in an endless line of flatbed trailers and boxcars.

Snarling with the effort, Schwarz raced toward the building, his M-4 carbine up and at the ready. Closing with the short staircase, he let go of the carbine with his left hand and leaped up like a sprinter running hurdles. He caught hold of a metal safety rail running the length of the stair and vaulted over to the top of the steps.

He tucked his elbow in tight against his ribs and drew the M-4 in close to his body. With his free hand he grabbed the doorknob and twisted, jerking the heavy door open on protesting hinges. The sound of the train rolled into the building and echoed off it so that the racket was actually worse the closer the Stony Man crew got to the massive warehouse structure.

As the door swung open in his hands, he darted inside. Immediately, Schwarz found himself in a cavernous space some three stories high. He scanned the gloomy interior and let the door swing closed behind him. He had expected the structure to contain floors but he quickly shifted his tactics to compensate for the open space.

He pivoted and dropped into a crouch facing an erector-set formation of ladders and scaffolding set against one wall. Through a forest of metal bars and steel mesh he caught an impression of movement. He triggered a burst and heard the sniper do the same. Lead slugs ricocheted wildly inside the building and muzzles-blasts flared, casting crazy shadows.

Realizing he had to cut an angle on the sniper, Schwarz dived forward across oil-stained concrete and came up before triggering a second burst with his M-4. He saw a black-clad figure lean over a railing with a scope-mounted M-16, its black buttstock jammed tight into his shoulder.

The man fired down at Schwarz, and the Able Team electronics whiz threw himself toward the uncertain cover of a line of fifty-five-gallon barrels. One of the rolling bay doors directly beneath the sniper suddenly slid open to a height of about three feet and Schwarz had a brief glimpse of Rosario Blancanales lying flat on his stomach, M-4 held out in front of him.

Realizing Lyons was about to enter the abandoned factory, Schwarz raked the scaffolding with automatic fire, still desperately seeking an angle to catch on the sniper. He couldn’t force a clear trajectory out of the mess and his rounds scattered in a wild pattern around the hunched and ducking man.

The sniper rose, straightened his weapon and returned fire, his assault rifle set to 3-round bursts. A flurry of rounds began to hammer into the barrels Schwarz crouched behind. Below the man Carl Lyons pinpointed his position and turned his own M-4 skyward. The chatterbox rattled in his hands and a stream of dull gold casings arced out like water from a hose and bounced and rolled across the concrete floor.

The 5.56 mm slugs began slamming into the mesh and metal framework at the sniper’s feet and the man suddenly began sprinting toward one side of the platform above them while still trying to turn and return Lyons’s fire.

Schwarz used the opportunity to merge his own stream of gunfire with Lyons’s, only to have his magazine run dry.

He dropped the magazine from the well in the pistol butt, and curling gray smoke followed the empty box. He pulled a secondary magazine from his coat pocket and slid it home before chambering a round. In the brief time it took for the Able Team commando to switch out magazines, the faceless sniper had managed to reach the temporary safety of a double-girder overhead-bridge crane control panel and engine housing.

Schwarz cursed. The control area was like a fortress of metal squares and thick welded beams. He tried an exploratory burst but the M-4 was less than precise. He would have to settle for burst cover fire unless he could work his way in closer for a more accurate shot.

Off to one side Schwarz saw Blancanales enter the building, and three steady lines of 5.56 mm slugs now began converging on the sniper’s position. The man disappeared behind cover only to reemerge and return fire.

The situation was fast approaching a stalemate, Schwarz realized. Without drawing closer, the M-4s were too inaccurate to pose a threat at the current range. But to get closer the Stony Man operatives would have to cross open space easily within the range of the man’s assault rifle.

Carl Lyons sprinted out across the space between his position and the barrels Schwarz was using for cover. He rolled over and came up next to his teammate as Blancanales continued to fire from the edge of one of the bay doors. The train outside just continued rolling past, and the clatter rolled into the open space of the old factory through the open door and bounced around.

“This is insane!” Lyons yelled. “The asshole can’t possibly think the CIA will let him get away with setting up a meet and then ambushing American agents!”

Schwarz lifted his M-4 and sprayed another quick burst. “He must think he can run.”

The sniper poked the barrel of his M-16 around the edge of the panel and squeezed off an answering burst. Blancanales returned fire.

“The only way to find out is to take him alive,” Schwarz said.

“You want to cross that open space and charge up a ladder?” Lyons demanded.

“No, but I was hoping you would, though,” Schwarz retorted. “You are known for your temper.”

“Kiss my ass, Schwarz!” Lyons muttered, the carbine bucking in his hands.

Schwarz scanned the wide-open floor space of the factory. He realized that with his elevated position and superior range the sniper still had every advantage—even though he’d blown his initial attack.

“Let’s just go,” Schwarz said.

“What!” Lyons shouted, voice incredulous.

“Lets just boogey out of here. I mean it. Let him think we ran.”

“We need to know what that guy knows!” Lyons argued. “Our bad guy is a ghost—he’s our only lead.”

“To find out,” Schwarz said, “we need him to come down.”

Lyons opened his mouth to reply. He paused, then closed his mouth and cocked an eyebrow. He turned toward Schwarz and nodded once. “Okay, let’s do it,” he said.

“Blancanales!” Schwarz shouted.

“What?” Blancanales shouted back.

“Get the car!” Schwarz yelled. “Trust me!”

Blancanales looked at him, then nodded. In a second he was out the door. Lyons dropped a magazine from the pistol grip of his M-4 and inserted a fresh one while Schwarz provided covering fire.

CHAPTER FOUR