Chapter 14

Posted: April 02, 2007 - 12:02:26 am?

On the morning after Gabe and Selena arrived, Marta spoke privately with Ernesto Garza about the changes she wished to make. Garza wholeheartedly endorsed her idea of turning his company over to Gabe and Sergeant Morales.

"I hope my medical skills will not be needed, Comendadora, but with a military operation of the size on which we embark, I fear it inevitable that we will suffer casualties. The Señorita Darla appears to be an excellent trauma nurse, so we will be well prepared. Today we will set up a treatment center near the mess hall."

With that problem solved, Marta convened a war council. At the meeting were all her subordinate leaders, plus Gabe and Selena. Marta wanted to solicit ideas about how to take on Nuñez and his battalion. Gabe Ballard immediately started earning his keep, by outlining a plan.

"We wage classic guerilla warfare against them, Commander, by continually harassing them with small ambushes and attacks. We make it where they can only travel in large groups, and don't even feel safe in their own camp. We make these guys think there are more of us, by splitting into small forces, operating around the clock and in many different places. We annoy and harass them, until we make them commit to a larger fight in a place of our choosing. If what you've told me is true, they are not in as good a position as they think, despite outnumbering us three to one. Number one, because they have no air support, number two, they don't have anyone they can call on for reinforcement, and number three, they are strangers to this area. It will be hard and dangerous work, but we can grind them down."

The group concurred with his ideas, so Marta reorganized her unit to carry it out. The reorganization consisted of her splitting the column into three companies, instead of the two it had at the present. One guerilla was taken from A Company and divided in half. A squad from A Company augmented each of the two guerillas of B Company, and the reinforced guerillas were redesignated B & C Companies. Gabe took command of B Company, while Marta commanded C Company. Captain Azevedo stayed in command of A Company. The split left A company with about thirty soldiers, while B & C Companies had thirty-six each. Gabe and Morales took their troops, divided them into three squads, and immediately started preparations to move out. Gabe and his company were going to move out in the early afternoon, and establish a base camp nearer the airport. They would start the harassment that night if possible.

Morales took Gabe to the weapons locker, and proudly showed him the column's armament. Gabe was impressed with the weaponry the column had accumulated. He had Morales draw ten RPG rounds, a 60MM mortar with six rounds, and a Soviet made Kalashnikov PKM machine gun. Morales also grabbed one of the silenced VALs, one of the VS sniper rifles, and fifty rounds for each of them.

The only disappointment for Gabe was the lack of explosives. His personal stash of C4 was down to six pounds, not enough to blow up anything major. He did spot a dozen or so old Cuban AT-8 anti-tank mines, and snagged a couple of them. If he could not find a way to employ the mines for their intended use, he could certainly use the eight pounds of TNT in each of them to augment his C4. He didn't exactly know what he was going to blow up yet, but figured a target would present itself eventually.

While the Carlos Sanchez column was gearing up to wage guerilla warfare, Colonel Nuñez instituted his get-tough policy on the town of Prado. He descended on the town at midmorning and arrested the mayor, the constable, and half a dozen business owners picked at random. The citizens were taken back to the airport, and interred in the razor wire surrounded tents. Nuñez was treading carefully with the civilians, because Guzman told him torturing them was not to be allowed.

"You can detain them and even scare them some, Pedro, but do not do anything that could end up being traced back to the DAS, or the administration of President Uribe," Guzman said most emphatically.

So for the time being, the mayor, constable and businessmen were all cooling their heels in his makeshift jail.

Gabe and his company exited the caves just after one in the afternoon. One of his soldiers was the daughter of a local farmer, and knew of a good site for a camp that was only a couple of kilometers from the airport. Following her directions, they made it to the site in a couple of hours. The location was excellent; it was about halfway up the next mountain south of the caverns. The site offered concealment, and was above a stepped incline, which would slow any assault on it. Morales place the squads around the clearing, in two-man fighting positions, with interlocking fields of fire in every direction. Gabe figured out an emergency escape plan, and briefed the soldiers on it, before he, Selena, Morales and two other soldiers, moved out to recon the area around the airport.

Gabe had a couple of reasons for wanting to do the recon right away. One was to find a good spot to set up an observation post to keep track of happenings at the airport. The other was so that he could size up his opponent. They found a fairly good spot from which to observe the airport, about thirty minutes before sunset. The spot he found was on a ridgeline about three hundred meters from the road that passed in front of the airport, and about six hundred meters from the Tiger Battalion's encampment.

Gabe took out his non-reflecting field glasses, and took his first gander at the battalion's camp. He noticed two things immediately; one was that the camp was set up parade ground perfect. Tents were pitched in a neat and orderly square around three command tents, and the battalion's vehicles were parked in perfect rows. The next thing he noticed was that a partially dug in and sand bagged machine gun emplacement on each outside corner of the square, provided their only defense. The motor pool area was even worse, as only two bored looking guards flanked a guard post around it. He watched for thirty minutes, until the sun set, and not another person came near the parked trucks. Morales noticed the same things, and spoke of them first.

"I think that someone has a very high opinion of themselves, amigo. It is as if they were inviting us to attack them."

Gabe nodded his head in agreement.

"My thought exactly, Serafin, but I think they also want us to have some trucks of our own, too. So why don't we go back, get our troops, and accommodate them?"

Gabe and Morales walked quickly back to their temporary camp, leaving Selena and the two soldiers to keep a watch on the airport. As they walked, Gabe outlined his plan, and Morales helped him refine it. At the camp, Morales quickly assembled two squads, and gathered up the special weapons they would need. They were on the way down the mountain with the assembled troops and equipment within half an hour. The troops were traveling light, with only their web gear and weapons. Four of the guerillas were armed with RPGs, and four others carried an extra rocket for the launchers.

They made good time on the trail, and were back at the observation post in an hour and a half. At the OP, Morales selected three soldiers who could drive a truck, and two other men. The six of them were going to eliminate the motor pool guards, and steal three of the two and a half ton trucks. In addition, Morales selected two grenadiers and two riflemen to accompany him. He would emplace the grenadiers across from the airport entrance, on his way to the truck park. The grenadiers were tasked with engaging any vehicle leaving the airport after the stolen trucks exited.

While Morales was organizing his crew, Gabe briefed the remaining troops that would make up his assault force. Gabe wasn't planning to actually assault the AUC encampment; instead, he was going to take out the two machine gun positions on the side of the camp facing the road, and pump a couple of magazines of bullets into the tents on that side, before fading back into the jungle. If he could force the Tiger Battalion into a defensive posture, fewer of their troops would be available for offensive operations. El Tigre Gordo had the superior force on the field, but the guerillas had a tactical advantage, as long as they kept on the offensive.

The two teams moved out at midnight. Gabe would give Morales ninety minutes to get into position, before initiating the attack. The night was inky black, the almost total darkness only broken by a few mercury vapor lamps feebly illuminating the area around the airport buildings.

Morales emplaced the grenadier teams, then he and his drivers moved down the road to a point screened from the machinegun positions. Gabe followed the same procedure, but crossed out of view in the opposite direction. Both teams worked their way down the drainage ditch, using every bit of concealment and cover they could find, because Gabe was concerned that the soldiers manning the machine gun positions had night vision devices.

Gabe made it to a point centered on the two machinegun emplacements with minutes to spare. A quick peek through his night vision goggles verified that both machine gun emplacements had one gunner who occasionally scanned the area with a Vietnam era starlight scope. He had the RPG gunners lock and load a rocket. When both guards were not looking through their scopes, he had the gunners kneel up, acquire their target, and fire. The range to the gun emplacements was about 250 meters, a fairly easy shot for a good grenadier. Gabe was heartened that both of his were very good, as the positions went up in an almost simultaneous eruption of smoke and flying debris.

Before the noise of the concussion of the rockets had faded away, Gabe had his troops on line and advancing. They quickly moved forward about twenty meters, dressed their line, and then started hosing down the tents that formed the side of the square facing the road. Gabe told the assaulters to keep their aim at the tents to about waist high, and to fire in three round bursts. He was hoping to catch startled soldiers struggling out of bed, and hoped their misses would carry across the square to the find targets in the command tents or in the tents on the opposite side of the square.

Morales and his team had managed to creep out of the drainage ditch that ran beside the road to Prado, and crawl within a hundred meters of the lackadaisical motor pool guards, when the RPGs were fired. The guards were standing together, looking at the explosions, when Morales dropped them both from fifty meters away with the VS sniper rifle. Morales had originally planned to grab the first three vehicles in line, but when he saw a truck with a couple of rubber five hundred gallon fuel bladders on it, he changed his mind. Here was an opportunity to steal not only trucks, but also fuel for them.

Morales called for the soldier carrying the bolt cutters, and the men made short work of cutting the steering wheel chains of the trucks they had selected. In only a couple of minutes, they were driving out of the airport, using the trucks' blackout lights. They turned north on the road away from Prado, and headed for the pass that separated the mountain of caves from its sister to the north. Once through the pass, he made a turn onto a narrow, seldom used logging road, and wended his way up to a point near the waterfall and gorge. He parked the trucks, and walked the two hundred meters to the gorge.

When Morales reached the recognition point for the guard position at the rim of the waterfall, he gave the proper countersign so he could continue onward. After exchanging challenge and password with the guard, he used the hand-cranked field telephone located in the guard bunker to call down to the orderly room. When the charge of quarters (the 'CQ' is a soldier detailed to stay up all night and man the orderly room) answered the phone, Morales told him to relay to the Comendadora that he had left her a present sitting off the logging road.

Morales rejoined his men, and climbed in the passenger side of the big deuce and a half.

"A good night's work, amiga," he said to the woman driving. "Now make it even better by finding a place to hide this truck, that is near our camp."

Gabe saw the trucks exit the airport and called for his soldiers to cease-fire. As he started them back towards the road, one of the men turned back towards the camp, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled at the top of his lungs.

"¡Viva la revolución! ¡Viva Carlos Sanchez!"

Gabe and his assault team moved across the road and disappeared into the jungle that grew thickly down to the road's edge. His troops maintained noise discipline, but he could tell they were bursting with pride at the successful attack. Selena also was very pleased with her first military action. Gabe had not resisted when she insisted on being next to him during the assault. Sure he feared for her safety, but she was his partner. If she wanted to be with him, and it didn't jeopardize the mission, why not? Gabe had to smile to himself as they walked along. Holding a teammate's hand while on patrol was another first for him.

Back at the camp, most of the exhausted soldiers climbed into their bedrolls and went to sleep, the squad that wasn't involved in the attack providing security. Gabe thought he would be one of those drifting into dreamland, until Selena informed him she had other ideas.

"I am so aroused for you, my husband, after our first time in combat together. Having been that close to danger has made me feel the most alive I have ever been," she whispered.

As she was talking, she scrambled out of her clothes and slipped into the sleeping bag naked. Gabe and Selena had picked a sleeping spot well up the hill, and screened from the other soldiers' view. Gabe shrugged resignedly, flung off his clothes and joined her.

"If we do this, Little One, you must try to be quiet," he admonished.

Selena bobbed her head in agreement and pulled him into her arms. She was wet and ready, so foreplay would have been superfluous. Gabe slipped into her easily, and had managed only a couple of strokes before she started climaxing. True to her word, Selena managed to keep quiet. Unfortunately for Gabe, she did it by fastening her mouth to his neck, Dracula fashion. Gabe was happy that his little wildcat was having so much fun, but the biting was seriously throwing off his rhythm. Every time that he was close to orgasm, she'd clamp down on his neck or shoulder, and he'd momentarily lose the urge. Then to add insult to injury, just as he was beyond the point of no return, she had a massive climax and fainted. He was the only one awake to appreciate his huge orgasm.

The encampment of the Tiger Battalion was hard at work as Gabe and his troops slept. There would be no rest for any of them, until they had made their base more secure. The soldiers were working industriously, trying to avoid the wrath of El Tigre. Colonel Nuñez was monumentally pissed off and lashing out at everyone. The attack had not only taken them by surprise, it also was the worst loss he had ever suffered. The raid had killed fifteen of his soldiers and wounded twenty more. Five of the wounded would probably not live to see another day. In addition, he'd lost three trucks, a thousand gallons of diesel fuel, two machine guns, and two of his precious star light scopes.

What made the colonel even more angry about the attack, was that more than a few of the bullets fired had gone through his tent, and his driver and bodyguard was one of the severely wounded. There would be no more surprises, Nuñez vowed, and the perpetrators of the attack would suffer for their audacity.

Under Nuñez's glaring visage, and Major Pasada's organizational skill, the camp was quickly transformed. The large squad tents were struck and the four companies formed their square by digging two-man fighting positions with two-man tents behind them. By noontime, razor wire was stretched around the enlarged compound, fifty meters from the tents, and the battalion's vehicles were parked in the center. Nunez commandeered the airports main building and made the concrete structure his headquarters. On top of the two story flat roofed building, he put his fifty-caliber machine gun and a team of observers with star light scopes.

Nunez had been so busy fortifying his camp, he almost totally forgot the platoon he had manning checkpoints and roadblocks in Prado. His attention was brought back to them when his RTO (radio-telephone operator) came careening up in his jeep.

"Colonel, the roadblocks south of Prado are under attack!"

When Commander Zorra reorganized her column to wage guerilla warfare, she and Gabe decided that one company would operate during the day and the other would operate at night. Zorra ended up with days, based on a coin toss. Her first day of operations started off wonderfully, when she found Serafin's gift hidden under the triple canopy jungle, just off the old logging road. The truck would save her soldiers several hours of walking, and allow them to arrive fresher for their first attack. Squeezing thirty-six soldiers into a two and a half ton cargo truck made for some close quarters, but it beat the hell out of walking, so no one complained.

When Zorra planned the attack, she had given herself four hours to reach Prado. Her route was going to be over the mountain south of the one her caves occupied, then west towards the southern outskirts of town. Now that she had a truck, she used the dirt roads that encircled both mountains, and made it in a little over an hour. She stopped the truck and dismounted her troops about three kilometers south of the town, set up a hasty camp, and hid the truck in the jungle off the side of the road.

Zorra took two of her squad leaders and immediately headed off to recon the town. They struck out cross-country, aiming for the southwestern side of the city, the farthest point from the airport and El Tigre Gordo. It took a brisk hour's walk to reach the town, and another hour to recon the roadblocks on the two roads leading south out of town. At both of the roadblocks, a truck was parked in the middle of the road. The canvas had been removed from the back of the trucks, and a machine gun behind sandbags controlled the road. Two men manned the machine gun, while four men on the ground searched every vehicle leaving the town. Vehicles coming into town were simply waved on by.

After only a couple of minutes at the second roadblock, Zorra had solidified a plan.

Gabriel Ballard woke up at about ten in the morning, as the day started to heat up. Selena was already up sitting beside their bed, holding a canteen cup of steaming coffee. Selena saw that he was awake and gave him a tender smile.

"Buenos días, (good morning) my husband. How did you sleep?"

Gabe sat up and stretched.

"Not as well as you, Little One. You were unconscious before I finished making love to you."

She handed him the canteen cup of café con leche (coffee with milk) and plopped down in his lap.

"¡Oh sí, Papi, eras maravilloso ayer por la noche! (Oh yes, you were wonderful last night!)" she purred in his ear.

Gabe was content to sit and hold her while they took turns finishing the coffee. When the cup was empty, Gabe wandered over to where Sergeant Morales was brewing another pot. As the men were exchanging greetings, Gabe noticed Morales looking at him funny.

"What is the matter, my friend?" he asked.

"Gabriel, I thought you said no one was injured last night," Morales said, pointing to Gabe's neck.

Gabe had a sickly feeling of what he would find as he dug his signaling mirror out of his shirt pocket. Sure enough, his reflection showed a neck that was solidly purple on one side with hickeys and the occasional bite mark. He looked up at Sergeant Morales, chagrinned at having to explain the marks, when he caught the smirk on the old NCO's face. Sergeant Morales was well known for his wit and sense of humor.

"Yes, it is obvious that something serious has happened to you, Capitán. I think you might have been attacked in your sleep by some wild animal. Perhaps we should have Lupe take a look to see if you've lost too much blood."

Lupe was the platoon's medic. She was a pugnacious and ill-natured little woman, who believed that anyone complaining of illness or injury was just a whining malingerer. Before Gabe could say anything, Morales laughed and slapped him on the back.

"Come and have some more coffee, amigo, and then we will plot revenge on your cruel wife."

Gabe and Morales were sipping coffee, when Selena joined them. Morales started in teasing her as soon as she walked up.

"I had to keep your husband here with me, señora. He has lost so much blood from his neck that I feared for his safety."

Selena blushed a dusky rose color, but gave it right back to Morales.

"He sacrificed his neck for you, Sargento, else my screaming from his wonderful lovemaking would have kept you up all night."

Gabe had to laugh at the flummoxed look on Morales's face, as Selena took Gabe's canteen cup out of his hand and swished her ass back to their bedroll. The two old soldiers gabbed for a few more minutes, then grabbed their weapons and headed down towards their OP across from the airport. The OP had one of their few walkie-talkies, but hadn't reported a thing all last night or so far today. They reached the OP right after noon, and sat down to observe the ant-like activity of the transformed camp. Gabe was discussing moving the OP higher up the hill, in case the AUC soldiers started patrolling around the camp, when all hell broke out at the airport.

Zorra made it back to her company and had them on the march by eleven. She briefed and emplaced one squad near the first roadblock, and took one squad with her to the other roadblock. Her extra squad she left between the two positions to act as a reserve. At exactly one o'clock, both squads fired an RPG into the trucks that were blocking the roads.

As soon as the rocket hit the truck at her location, Zorra leaped up and led the charge toward the four AUC soldiers who were running pell-mell down the road towards town. Her soldiers downed three of the fleeing paramilitary men, but one managed to escape. Before she could celebrate her success, the staccato sound of a machinegun firing at the other roadblock captured her attention. She left half the squad to scavenge anything useful from the enemy position, and bolted towards the machinegun fire. Her heart was in her throat, because Peter was with the squad attacking the other roadblock.

Zorra had made about a hundred yards towards the other roadblock, when another rocket explosion silenced the machinegun. There were a few sporadic shots fired, then total silence. She pulled out her department store walkie-talkie, and tried to call the squad leader at the other roadblock. After trying three times without a response, she jammed the radio back into her shirt pocket and quickened her pace. The fifteen minutes it took her to reach her other squads, were about the longest of her life.

When Zorra peered around a small stand of trees, she was mentally prepared for the worse. At first glance, it appeared she had been correct in her fears. The roadblock site was a scene of total destruction; with the upside down hulk of a burning truck its centerpiece. There were wounded and dead soldiers on both sides of the truck. Marta was stricken as she saw the wounded being tended to by the company medic. There lay sweet little Lorena, her shirt covered with blood, and closer to the truck was Corporal Torres, the squad leader, obviously dead. Zorra searched about frantically looking for Peter, and breathed a sigh of relief when he came around from behind the truck.

Peter looked shaken from his first taste of combat, but he was resolutely following the directions of Sergeant Cruz, the squad leader of the reserve squad. Cruz was quickly organizing the withdrawal of the two squads. He had already collected anything of value at the roadblock, including all the weapons from the casualties on both sides, and had two men preparing makeshift stretchers for the dead and wounded FARC soldiers.

Zorra made a quick decision. She took out her radio and called the truck driver to come forward immediately to pick everyone up. After calling for the truck, she went to Peter, who was kneeling by Lorena, holding her hand. From the amount of blood on Lorena's t-shirt, Zorra feared the worse, but she forced a small smile and knelt down next to Peter. Peter was holding a field dressing on Lorena's left shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding. She wanted nothing more than to grab Peter and hug him until his back cracked, but she restrained herself and focused on her role as commander.

"How is she?" Zorra asked.

Peter gave her a wan smile and started tying off the bandage.

"I think it looks worse than it is, Comendadora. The bullet passed cleanly through her shoulder near her armpit. She has lost some blood, but that is under control now."

Zorra gave a relieved nod and patted Lorena on the leg.

"The truck should be here any minute to pick us up. We'll have you in Captain Garza's capable hands in an hour or so," she reassured Lorena.

Lorena gave a nod of her own as Zorra stood to check her other soldiers. She walked over to Sergeant Cruz to find out what had happened. Cruz told her that from what he'd been told, the first RPG had struck the truck directly at the rear dual wheels, and tossed it up into the air. The four men manning the roadblock were not injured by the blast, and started firing from behind the truck. Corporal Torres sent half his squad to circle around the guards to flank them, while he moved forward with the remainder of the squad. It was shear bad luck that one of the machinegunners had somehow survived the RPG, and that his weapon was intact. He started firing while Torres and two others were rushing forward, while three other soldiers were pinning down the guards behind the truck.

The burst from the machinegun killed Torres and Private Calderon. Lorena was the third soldier rushing, and was wounded by the initial burst. It took the grenadier a few seconds to load another rocket, because his spotter was with the flanking element. The second rocket knocked the truck over on its side and silenced the machinegun. The explosion also stunned the men behind the truck, just as the flanking team arrived in position and they were quickly dispatched.

Further conversation was cut short by the arrival of the stolen truck. While the dead and wounded were being loaded, Zorra tore a page out of a pocket-sized memo book and scribbled a note that she left on the body of an AUC soldier. The note said: ¡Salga de Prado o morir! (Leave Prado or die) and was signed with a large letter Z.

It was Gabe Ballard's idea to use the 'Z' as Zorro did in the movies and television. The 'Z' was a psychological ploy designed to demoralize the AUC soldiers and motivate the column. The destroyed truck at the other roadblock had a large 'Z' on its door, drawn in white chalk. Morales had also drawn a 'Z' on the forehead of the two soldiers he'd dispatched at the motor pool the night before.
Joe J & Wet Dream-Girl
Chapter 15