Chapter Twelve
Twelve
“Contacto!” Juan Carlos shouted, and then he and Court raised their rifles and aimed up the hill. Court flipped his magnifier up in front of his red dot sight, and this gave him a good sight picture at this distance, but he had no illumination to find a target.
Court quickly threw himself between the origin of incoming fire and the Nicaraguan agent Caprice, and an instant later, another flash of light from the building meant another bullet was coming their way.
It zinged again just to Court’s right and slammed into the bed of the truck, ripping metal.
The American fired a half dozen rounds in quick succession at the origin of the muzzle flash on the hill. He paused just long enough to shout, “Get in the truck!” and then he fired ten more times, ripping into the building’s windows.
When he took his eye out of his magnifier, he was surprised to find Juan Carlos and Caprice still right there with him. But when he chanced a look back over his shoulder, he saw why. The Tacoma wasn’t there anymore; it was rolling slowly away down the drive.
The man behind the wheel lay slumped forward against the door. Court processed in less than a second that the first gunshot from the hillside had taken him out, and the shooter up there knew what the hell he was doing.
The passenger rolled out of the moving truck, pulled a handgun from under his arm, and began firing up the hill at the building, but another sniper round hit its mark, spinning the man around dead, leaving him face-first on the gravel, the top of his head a ruined mess of exposed bone, blood, and brain matter.
Court fired his rifle up the hill till it ran dry, and since he was still standing in the open with his agent, and the enemy had the high ground on one side and more enemy were fast approaching from the other, he dropped his weapon down on its sling, grabbed Caprice, and began running with her towards the ramshackle restaurant.
He called to Juan Carlos as he ran. “Come with me! Get your other man to stay in cover, tell him to move through the jungle and get our vehicle. Key is under the mat.”
Juan Carlos relayed these commands into his walkie-talkie as he ran, while Court and Caprice raced along next to him. They made it to the restaurant door, where Court pulled his Glock pistol and fired a single round at the padlock.
It blew apart and he kicked the door in, and then they were inside the small shack, just as the first set of headlights swept across the windows.
The three trucks turned onto the driveway.
Another gunshot boomed on the hillside. Somehow the sniper up there was still alive, even though Court and JC had each fired a couple of full magazines in his direction.
While Court reloaded his rifle with another thirty-round magazine he grabbed from his pack, he turned to Caprice. “You can shoot?”
The woman looked terrified, but still, she nodded.
When he finished his reload, he handed her his pistol. “Sixteen rounds. No safety. Understand?”
“I understand.” She took it, asked, “What are we going to do?”
Juan Carlos had been on the radio, but he turned to Court now. “Marco is not responding. I think they got him.”
Horns began honking out front, and then men shouted, but Court couldn’t understand their words. He had taken up a defensive position by a window, but he wasn’t yet looking out.
“What are they saying?” he asked Caprice.
“Just…shouting. Bad words, mostly. I…They are hard to understand.”
Court made a face of confusion. The guy on the hill had some serious discipline, some legitimate training. But the dozen dudes honking their horns and shouting curses on the driveway right in front of a building of armed enemy didn’t sound like they had much discipline at all.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, dialed a number on Signal.
The phone rang, and a man shouted out front; his words were in English, and they seemed odd, almost slurred. “Come out, pendejos! Nothing will happen if you come out!”
Other sounds came from the three trucks; Court thought he heard bouts of laughter.
That’s fucking weird, he thought, considering the context of the moment.
Then his Signal call was answered on the other side by Matt Hanley. “Go ahead.”
Court kept his voice calm but assertive enough to convey the gravity of the circumstances.
“Extraction location has been compromised; enemy has opened fire. I have three agents down, one agent and the asset Caprice are with me, but enemy has the personnel to overrun at will. Possibly ten to twenty aggressors on our position at this time.”
Hanley did not hesitate. “Notifying Managua station. They have assets in Chinandega and I’ll get them rolling your way. Stand by.”
Fuck, Court thought. Whatever CIA Managua station had on standby up here in Chinandega would not have been given a heads-up that he would be operating here tonight; it would have been terrible OPSEC to let anyone around here know in advance what was going on.
That meant it would be a half hour, maybe more, until reinforcements would arrive, and Court had no idea how effective they would be once they did.
He looked to the two Nicaraguans in the tiny restaurant with him. “You guys have anyone you can call?”
Caprice shook her head. “In Managua, yes. But not up here.”
JC shrugged. “Same here. I was told America would have everything under control.”
“Well…I’m America…and for at least the next half hour, what you see is what you get.
“We’re fucked,” he muttered.
Laughing and shouting continued out in front of the restaurant.
Juan Carlos said, “Those voices out there don’t sound like DDI.”
Court had been thinking the same. “They aren’t intelligence agents. They sound like they’re drunk.”
Caprice looked over the pistol in her trembling hand. “Renazco gang.”
Court said, “Whoever is on the hill is something else, though.”
Juan Carlos peeked out the window, then turned in the darkness and spoke to Caprice in English. “You must have been followed.”
“No,” Court said. “She wasn’t. There was a sniper up in that building, probably a two-man team. I couldn’t tell through the FLIR. Either way, they’ve definitely been in position since before your men arrived.”
“But how?” the woman asked. “Herman just told me where to come one hour ago.”
Both Nicaraguans looked his way. As the American put the phone back in his pocket, he addressed Juan Carlos. “This op was compromised before we gave Caprice the location. Before we gave you the location.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we all got fucked. Either by Managua station…or someone in the USA.” To himself he mumbled, “Another compromise.” Neither of the other two could hear him.
Court said, “We have to fight these guys from here. We can’t win, but we can try to stall for time. Caprice, you don’t have a rifle. You go look for a back door, cover it with your pistol. Stay away from any windows, but shoot anybody that tries to come in.”
Caprice rose, moved low between a couple of rough wooden tables, around a counter, and then disappeared into a back room that Court assumed to be the kitchen.
Just after she left, a massive volley of fire erupted from the front of the property.
Court and his agent dove for the dirty floor of the restaurant, then crawled on hands and knees back behind the small wooden counter, desperate to put something between themselves and the thin walls of the structure.
The American could tell the sound of AK-47s, and he knew they fired a bigger bullet, albeit slower, than his own M4.
His weapon was superior in accuracy, and in some types of penetration.
Theirs, on the other hand, fired a far superior round for turning a little wooden shack into a pile of splinters.
After what sounded like a couple hundred rounds had been dumped in their direction, the gunfire subsided somewhat, and Court rose and began firing rapidly through the smoke and dust and debris at the light coming from gaping holes in the wall in front of him.
He targeted moving shadows, men passing in front of the headlights of the three trucks parked there in front of the Versa and the Tacoma with the dead FORNAT agent inside.
He was banking on the fact that the guys shooting at him were undisciplined enough to where they were all pausing to reload at the same time, but very quickly fresh rounds of incoming fire tore into the restaurant.
Glass shattered, simple light fixtures above him fell, and pieces of the ceiling crashed to the ground between the now-overturned tables.
It was just a couple of guys shooting; the rest were probably reloading, but they were executing mag dumps, so a lot of bullets continued pulverizing the ramshackle building.
Next to Court, Juan Carlos fired, as well, emptying his magazine first. He called for cover, then began kneeling back down so he could reload, and Court kept up his own fire until his rifle ran dry.
When it did so, he dropped back down low, reloaded again, and looked over to see Juan Carlos on the floor, blood pouring from his throat, his hands frantically trying to stanch a through-and-through wound that would not be survivable even if they were right next door to the best trauma hospital in all of Central America.
Juan Carlos would live a few seconds more, but that was it, and as harsh as it was to admit it, Court knew he didn’t have time for lost causes.
“Fuck!” he shouted out in the dusty room. While more enemy fire raked the building, he hefted JC’s rifle and crawled off through broken glass towards the back of the structure, hoping that he could, at least, do something to help save Caprice.
JC’s legs kicked, his arms thrashed, but Court left him behind.
Seconds later, he’d moved through the kitchen, now up to a low crouch, and he moved up next to Caprice, who, despite his orders to stay away from the window, was in the process of peering outside. “Just us left,” he said.
She nodded in the darkness. The shock on her face was obvious.
“Can you see out the back?” he asked.