Border War - Warning Order

Border War - Warning Order

  by ‘Black Jack’ Hawkins

  Copyright ‘Black Jack’ Hawkins 2014

  Smashwrds Edition

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  Table of Contents

  Operation Lince Norte ( Northern Lynx) .

  Black Jack Hawkins - The Backstory

  Go to Panama!

  Black Jack’s Arms Room

  Connect with Jack Hawkins

  Operation Lince Norte ( Northern Lynx ).

  Coronel Roberto Valdez and his long time right hand man, Sargento Primero Hector Hernandez, were in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. They’d been officially tasked with observing, advising and standing by with sixteen highly trained commandos of the GAFE, the Mexican Army’s elite Special Forces, in case they were needed by the local commander during Operation “Lince Norte,” ( Northern Lynx).

  Coronel Valdez was a solidly built man of olive complexion in his mid to late forties, he stood tall amongst his peers at five foot ten inches and one hundred ninety pounds. His black hair was cut short with some evidence of greying visible at the temples, over dark brown eyes grew full eye brows that were complimented by a full bush of a mustache on his upper lip. Valdez had been the Commander of 3rd Battalion of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, He was now assigned to the Alto Mando, the ‘High Command’. These were men amongst men, Mexico’s most elite warriors, the Special Forces of the High Command. The GAFE High Command was called upon to complete the most clandestine of the Mexican government’s black operations.

  The Alto Mando detachment had been busy during the three weeks prior to the start of Operation “Lince Norte,” ( Northern Lynx), the objective of which was to target the operations of a criminal cartel, Los Zetas in northeastern Mexico. The men of the Alto Mando would be operating in the shadows of that military operation, which included the deployment of 4,000 regular Army troops.

  While at the start of the operation there had been street battles in the town of Nuevo Laredo, complete with helicopter gunships engaging targets of opportunity, none of Coronel Valdez’s commandos were involved in that combat. Instead the Alto Mando focused their attention on the ‘Command Element’ of Los Zetas in the border region and had targeted Jorge Luis “Pompín” de la Peña Brizuela, the Zetas' Nuevo Laredo gang boss. The Alto Mando had been on the hunt for two weeks before his location was verified, they had worked the streets and developed actionable intel that de la Peña was holed up on a ranchero in the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo.

  Hector Hernandez was leading Fire Team Enrique through the breech that they had blown through a locked door of Los Zetas command center. It was a warehouse building on a small ranchero complex, a group of four buildings set about a kilometer from the main road. It was not the first time in his twenty year career in the Mexican military that Hector had personally led an assault, he hoped this would not be the last. Sargento Hernandez stood about five feet eight inches tall, and weighed in at a solid 180 pounds, his strict personal regimen of daily exercise kept his mind Sharp and body battle ready.

  Enrique, Hector’s ‘el Segundo’ was on his heels as the Sargento Primera entered the building through the remains of the doorway. Each member of the breeching team had their FN P90 up and in firing position, welded to his shoulder. There were no friendlies in the building, or anywhere to the front, for that matter. Hector was tracking right after making the dynamic entry, Enrique was moving left when he saw movement to his front right, to a casual observer it would have appeared instinctive, but it was his training and muscle memory that kicked in. The barrel of Enrique’s P90 swept towards the spot where a man was coming up off the floor. Enrique put three of the 5.7x28mm high velocity rounds into his head.

  The Fabrique Naitonale P90 and the 5.7x28mm round that it fires are two parts of a weapons and munition system specifically designed for NATO, to be utilized in close quarter combat. The high velocity 5.7×28mm projectiles consistently turn base over point upon impact with the target, in simple terms; they start to ‘tumble’ on impact. The FN P90 is a bullpup designed sub-machine gun that functions as well as it is formed, as modern and intimidating a piece of polymeric plastic and steel as a fellow is ever apt to run into.

  Behind Enrique came the rest of the six man breeching team, as they rushed into the room, Hector went to the interior doorway of the room they had just entered and tossed a flash bang grenade down the hallway, which exploded five seconds later, Jose and Pedro, the two newest members of the fire team then moved into the hallway, working their way towards the central area of the warehouse building. In that open area, of about three thousand square feet, there were a dozen of pallets full of marijuana packaged for shipment. Eight cots were set haphazardly by a side door, and near to four of those cots men were gathering themselves, obviously having been awakened by the blast that created the entry breech. Pedro fired first, with two quick three round bursts finding their mark, sending a red mist into the air as the back of the first man’s head burst like a watermelon hit by a truck. Pedro’s second target made a running dive towards an AK-47 assault rifle that was leaning against the wall, about six feet away from the man, a little more than his body length. He seemed to have good traction and power pushing off, and when a three round burst from the P90 added to his momentum, his body slammed into the wall like so much dead meat.

  Jose had a good sight picture as the two men to his center left were beginning to comprehend their situation, with the taller of the two men was just beginning to reach for the pistol lying on a small table to his right. His hand never came close, as four of the 5.7mm rounds from Jose’s weapon slammed into his chest, their combined kinetic energy blowing him backwards, right off his feet. Jose released the pressure on the trigger as he moved to acquire a sight picture on the second target, that man just stood there as if dumbstruck, until he was struck with three of the high velocity 31 grain bullets center mass, right in his chest, which blasting through his heart killed him outright.

  Then, from the top of the stairway, which went up to a small office at the far end of the warehouse space, there came shouts of rage and indignation, accompanied by a half dozen shots from an AK-47. The shooter, “Pompín” de la Peña, was wearing khaki pants and a sleeveless white undershirt, and firing from the hip, the 7.62x39mm rounds from the Soviet era assault rifle impacting high and wide of their intended targets. Sargento Primera Hernandez took steady aim and squeezed the trigger of his P90, dropping the last of the Los Zetas personnel that were infesting the building.

  The Los Zetas criminal cartel had originated almost a decade before when a group of Mexico’s most elite soldiers, men who had been assigned to combat the Gulf Cartel had, instead, joined the criminals they’d been sent to eradicate. Their leaders, Arturo Guzmán Decena and Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, had gathered thirty-two of their comrades, many of whom had been members of the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, GAFE, the Mexican Army’s Special Forces.

  The men of the GAFE were to have been utilized as an elite band of Mexican anti-drug commandos, but instead of serving the people of Mexico, the Zetas had gone rogue. Quickly morphing into mercenaries for the infamous Gulf Cartel, bringing a new level of brutality to Mexico’s ever escalating drug wars.

   

  Over a decade of criminal activity the Zetas, reinforced by a combination of street thugs and corrupt federal, state and local police officers, had grown into becoming a well-financed and heavily armed crimi
nal cartel of their own. Their tactics included decapitating their rivals, then hanging their dismembered bodies from bridges and highway over passes, the Zetas had gained the reputation as the most feared criminal gang in Mexico.

   

  The Zetas were not an archetypal drug-smuggling organization. They had managed to diversify their revenue streams. Beyond drug trafficking the Zetas had expanded their range of activities to include piracy, extortion, kidnapping, and migrant smuggling. They had extended their operations to include theft from Pemex oil pipelines and had even begun to levy taxes on other criminal organizations.

   

  The official press release said that the Operation “Lince Norte” (Northern Lynx)

  “… had the objective of affecting the management, financial operation and logistical structures of criminal groups in the states of San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.”

  For those who are not familiar with Mexican geography Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas all border the state of Texas.

  There had been one other mission undertaken by Hector Hernandez and Enrique Henderson on the first day of Operation “Lince Norte”, together they had gone to the home of Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, a magazine editor who was following up on the work of Noel Lopez, a reporter that had been murdered that past May. When the two commandos got to the house, Enrique swung the thirty-five pound battering ram, hit the door lock the force of kinetic energy shattering the door frame. Enrique immediately dropping the now dead weight as he pushed through the door way, the door swinging freely on the hinges.

  Hector followed maintaining a two step interval behind his El Segundo as they entered the house and moved quickly to the stairway; Enrique move confidently and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time with his FN 5.7 pistol in his right hand. Reaching the second floor he found Miguel Angel Lopez standing in the doorway of his bedroom with a baseball bat in his hands. Angel raised the bat over his head and started running at Enrique, who raising his pistol, fired two rounds into the chest of Migual Angel, which, tumbling through his heart instantly killed him. Entering the man’s bedroom Enrique quickly shot Lopez’s wife, while she was still in bed. Lopez’s fifteen year old son came into the hallway and Hector, who had followed Enrique up the stairs, shot him once in the head.

  Migual Angel, had earned his livelyhood writing a regular column in ‘Notiver’, reporting upon stories that often touched on the activities of individuals involved with Mexico's criminal underworld. His interest in telling the world of the criminal activities of the Mexican Drug Cartels had gotten his family killed. It was the last news story he would be involved in.

  “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

   

  Anonymous – who art thou.

  I had become interested in the growth of the Anonymous Collective, an amorphous group of internet activists, or pranksters, depending upon the perspective of the reader. They were often allied with the interests of the ‘Occupy’ movement, which in the Spring and Summer of 2011 was making headlines by camping out in city parks in some of the major urban centers of the United States.

  The World Wide Web and the associated digital technologies, blogs, chat rooms, even mass texts through cell phone networks had become tools of social manipulation on an unprecedented level. The ability to channel information and to target messaging was becoming pervasive. The power of it had been recognized in the Islamic Arc, marketed as the ‘Arab Spring’ by the main stream media of the United States. It looked like the beginnings of a long hard Arabian Winter to me, their societies imploding after years of political repression, with the outlook being one of increasing religious oppression.

  I received a call from Ricardo Gonzalez; who had gotten my number from Eduardo Casaraz, an old family friend from Merida, Mexico. Ricardo is a security and protection officer who works with ‘Article 19’, an extension of ‘Reporters without Borders’ in Mexico. Ricardo explained to me the problem they were having, in 2010 alone, ten reporters had been murdered, dozens kidnapped and hundreds had been threatened, all instigated by the Drug Cartels.

  Then he told me of Noel López Olguín, a freelance reporter that had been a columnist for the newspaper, La Verdad de Jáltipan . Seems that Noel had been kidnapped on March 8, by persons unknown, what was known, the unidentified men were carrying guns and drove away in two SUVs. It was on May 31 that his body was found in the city of Chinameca, buried in an unmarked grave.

  Lopez had been writing regularly for La Verdad de Jáltipan, as well as freelancing for some of the weekly papers in the area, Noticias de Acayucan, El Horizonte, and Noticias de Veracruz. His regular column "Con pluma de plomo" (With a Lead Pen) was focused upon the corruption of local political figures and the drug trade that funded it. He identified the criminals, each individual had their named printed in the paper, a practice not normal in crime reporting in Veracruz.

  Ricardo spoke of Noel Lopez’s family members, who were saying that Noel had been digging into the back story of the Los Zetas Cartel, and thought he was onto something ‘BIG’. So big that even after two corporate executives from La Verdad de Jáltipan had been kidnapped and, over the course of a few hours, been told to limit the inches devoted to Los Zetas. Noel was still going forward with his research, regardless of the risks. Even if La Verdad de Jáltipan would not publish his work, Noel knew that there were other outlets that would. His mother, Ricardo said, went on and on about how Noel thought it was going to be the story of a lifetime. A Mexican ‘Watergate’ he had told her.

  Ricardo had Noel’s notes, and expressed the idea that he could follow up on the story that may have cost Noel Lopez his life, but he was not prepared to enter the lion’s cage without a whip and pistol. Was I available, would I be able help him to keep the lions at bay?

  From the ranch in Greenback Valley, situated in the Sierra Ancha Mountains of Arizona, to Laredo, Texas is almost an even thousand miles. I had just taken delivery of a ‘new’ used airplane, a 1973 model Cessna Skymaster 337. She was kind of a high miler, but it was the airplane I had always wanted to have. I figured to have her rebuilt over the next year to eighteen months, but even with that she was air worthy as she sat. So I thought it’d be good time to put a few more hours on those old Continental engines, even if one failed it was a sure bet that the other would get me to the site of the crash.

  I told my hired man, Billy Haught, that I’d be gone for a while, a week at least, and that he should run the ranch like it was his own. He already did that, so I wasn’t telling him anything new, or earth shaking. Billy had been out of the Marine Corps for about a year, having been over to Afghanistan a couple of times, he didn’t talk about it much; I didn’t bother to bring it up as a topic of conversation. He could shoot the wings off a fly at one hundred yards; we don’t talk about that much, either, especially since I can’t even see the fly, at one hundred yards any more.

  I gave the Cessna a good pre-flight inspection, topped off the fuel tanks and then took off for Laredo, Texas, figured to be about a six hour flight, the Skymaster has a ninety gallon fuel tank, at one thousand miles the city of Laredo, Texas was about at the edge of the Skymaster’s eleven hundred mile non-stop range. I figured to be there before dark.

  The La Quinta Inn, right there at the airport was the best rated hotel in the town; things couldn’t get much easier than that. I called Ricardo when I landed and arranged to meet him in the morning.

  Ricardo met me that next morning right there at the La Quinta, which was convenient for me. He had brought along another man, Jan Keulen, this Keulan fella, he kind of reminded me of a slimmed down version of Santa Claus when I met him, his white hair and beard just took me there. Ricardo looked about as expected, not a large man, about five foot eight, with glasses and dark hair. His beard was trimmed and unlike Jan, he was not wearing a tie.

  Both of these fellows worked at protecting reporters, Jan Keulen being the Direc
tor of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF), which is a non-profit organization working on an international basis to enhance freedom of the press and improve the quality of journalism. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, funded the project and as the Sheikh’s representative Mr Keulen had just signed on to help fund Article19’s Mexican operations. The Sheikh had agreed to provide emergency financial assistance to journalists. I did seem some cynical humor in the idea that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was promoting freedom of expression, abroad, while at the same time funding a jihad against the Alawites in Syria, and the jihadi in Libya, but I held my tongue.

  After introductions were made and we had sat down at the conference table it became obvious why the two men were nervous, they had news from Mexico that was not mentioned on the local morning shows in Laredo.

  ”Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, a friend and writer from Veracruz was killed last night, along with his entire family, his wife and son, they were all murdered in their own home! I got the call not more than thirty minutes ago, Jack, it is a terrible thing.” Ricardo informed me.

  “Is there any indication why he was targeted or by whom?” I asked, perhaps naively.

  “Ahh, he had an interest in the work Noel was doing, he knew Noel and had some insights as to what was happening. It has to be that, nothing else he was doing would merit such a response, nothing he had written lately was exclusive or threatening to the kingpins of the Cartels.”