Chapter 15

Posted: April 05, 2007 - 09:18:10 am?

Colonel Nuñez, his face red with anger, stood staring at the note one of his men had found on the body of a dead soldier. The note was written in an almost stylized feminine script and warned the reader to 'leave Prado or die.' The large 'Z' scrawled across the bottom left no doubt about who wrote it. Nuñez took a deep breath, willing himself to calm down. He could tell by the ringing in his ears that his blood pressure must be off the charts. The thought that did the most to relax him was what he would do with this Zorra, once he caught her. He wanted her alive so that he and all his men could use her before he personally executed her.

Nuñez was an intelligent and experienced officer; as such, he realized that he had to seize the initiative from the FARC trash opposing him. So far, he had only been reacting; it was time to go on the offensive. Tonight he would plan with his company commanders, and tomorrow, he and his warriors would move into the jungle and take the fight to the enemy. As he stood there visualizing his domination of the FARC commander, one of his platoon leaders came up and reported to him.

"Sorry to disturb you, El Tigre, but we found truck tire tracks leading south on this road. It appears as if it is one of the trucks the guerillas stole. Should we give chase?"

Nuñez didn't even have to think for a second before answering the man's question.

"No, Lieutenant, an ambush waits down that road for us. We will let them have their little victory today, and annihilate them starting tomorrow."

Nuñez collected up his other roadblocks on the way back to camp. He would need those troops for what he planned for the next day. In only twenty-four hours of action, he had already lost over ten percent of his force.

Zorra had indeed left an ambush in place to cover her escape. One squad was set up on the eastern slope of their home mountain, only a thousand meters from the bathing pond. The ambush team included four RPG grenadiers and four riflemen, poised to blast any trucks off the road that tried to negotiate the curve right below them. Zorra had instructed them to stay in place until 1700 hours, and then return to the caverns. There was little chance of someone following them at night.

Once back in the caverns, Commander Zorra and Pete hung around the dispensary until Garza could assure them that Lorena would be fine and should recover completely. After Garza's assurances, the two of them walked back to her room. Once in the room, Commander Zorra, the leader of soldiers, became Marta the woman. Pete held her as she grieved over the deaths of her two soldiers. Finally, she stopped crying and hugged him with desperate strength.

"I thought something bad had happened to you, my love. The thought almost drove me crazy. I cannot think of you as just one of my soldiers, even in the heat of combat."

Pete remained silent and just held her. What was there for him to say? He was in love with her and that made her fight his fight. In addition, he knew that even had he wanted such a thing, as the commander she could show him no favoritism. Pete sat holding her for half an hour. When she regained her composure, the pair went to eat dinner with her soldiers. After dinner, Gabe Ballard and Sergeant Morales were coming to the caves for a strategy session.

Gabe and Serafin Morales ended up not moving the observation post they'd established across from the airport. They decided that keeping an eye on the camp was worth the risk. They did put in place strict instructions for evacuating the post to keep it from being compromised.

Later that afternoon, they made a plan for the second night's activities. They weren't going to try anything as ambitious as last night, instead, they were going to harass the Tiger Battalion soldiers and hopefully keep them from getting much sleep. In their own camp, they made sure their troops were getting plenty of rest while they could. After their planning session for the night was over, Gabe, Morales and Selena headed for the caverns.

The meeting with Zorra was a somber affair, as Zorra related the results of the attacks on the roadblocks. Morales was saddened by the news of Corporal Torres's death. He had personally picked and trained the man to be a squad leader. The death of the two soldiers, and the wounding of Lorena, tempered the jubilation from their successes. Finally, Gabe put everything in perspective for Zorra.

"It is tragic that we lost a couple of soldiers and it is proper that you feel the loss personally, Commander. Yet, when you wake up tomorrow morning, the Tiger battalion will still be there, only weaker because of your actions today. You need to bury your dead with honor, then make sure El Tigre has even more to bury the next day."

During the strategy session, Zorra decided that Gabe and Selena should go back to Prado to see if they could gather any useful intelligence. She sent the couple, because even the townspeople didn't know of their involvement with the column. Zorra also informed them that she and her company would move out of the caverns the next day, to set up a temporary base camp on the next mountain north of the caves.

One of the positive aspects of the attack on the roadblock was the capturing of two US made PRC-77 radios, with a couple of spare batteries for each. Gabe gave the guerillas a class on how to operate the radios, set them both on a new common frequency, and took one for his company. The two companies now had a means of staying in contact over a great range, so coordinating their activities would be much easier. Morales took charge of the radio for B Company and Zorra decided that Pete would be the perfect person to be her RTO.

Selena, Morales and Gabe made it back to their camp shortly after ten PM. Three soldiers from A Company accompanied them. The A Company soldiers helped them carry a resupply of ammunition and another half a dozen mortar rounds.

They moved out with two squads and the 60MM mortar at eleven-thirty that night. Morales took one of the squads to the fence line on the western side of the airport, the same location from which Zorra had launched her attack on the helicopters. The squad cut holes in the fence, and took up positions in the drainage ditch along the airport's perimeter road, about five hundred meters from the camp. Gabe had warned Morales not to advance further than that, because of the .50 cal machinegun mounted on top of the airport building. Morales and three men separated themselves from the rest of the squad by about fifty meters, and waited for the time to reach 0200 hrs.

Gabe and his squad moved to the northern end of the airport. The airport was situated north to south, so he was at the end of the runway, about twelve hundred meters from the Tiger Battalion camp. The camp was about one hundred and fifty meters in length on each side, with the airport's concrete building just inside its southern side. At exactly 0100 hours, Gabe sat the mortar's small M1 auxiliary base plate onto the ground, and held the tube at an angle he guessed to be about sixty degrees. He knelt directly behind the mortar tube, and visually lined it up on the airport building.

The small mortar was designed for optional handheld use; however, it was not nearly as accurate as when using the big base plate, bipod and sight. Gabe wasn't trying for a highly accurate shot; all he hoped to do was drop a round somewhere within the AUC compound. At Gabe's nod, Selena raised the mortar round up with both hands, and slipped the tail fins into the top of the tube as they had been rehearsing for the last twenty minutes. When she was set, she looked into Gabe's eyes.

"Drop it," he ordered.

Selena released the round, dropped her hands below the mouth of the tube, and turned her head. The round fell until the primer hit the firing pin fixed to the inside bottom of the tube. When the explosive charge detonated, the projectile left the tube with a distinctive dull 'THUNK.' Gabe, Selena and the other squad members watched down range as the low velocity, high angle round took its time reaching the ground. They gave a small cheer when the round exploded, briefly lighting up the camp. It appeared to them the round hit near the center of the camp, close to the parked vehicles.

Gabe grabbed the mortar tube with the small base plate still attached, and moved out towards the jungle, as a few soldiers on the perimeter of the AUC camp nervously fired off a few rounds. Gabe's purpose for dropping the mortar round into the camp was mainly to wake up any sleeping soldiers. The explosion and subsequent rifle fire accomplished just that.

Sergeant Morales had his turn to make the wake up call at 0200 hrs. Exactly on the hour, Morales and his three men stood up, flipped the selector levers on their AKs to full automatic, and emptied their thirty round magazines. As soon as the last bullet went down range, they dropped to the ground and low crawled quickly back to the fence, as everyone on this side of the camp started firing towards them. Drawing the AUC soldiers' fire was Morales' object. To insure they were noticed, every round in the magazine they fired was a tracer. The tracers became a red line connecting Morales and his men to the AUC camp.

The other eight soldiers in the squad were spread out along the ditch, ten meters apart. They had their weapons loosely aimed towards the Tiger Battalion camp, waiting for the muzzle flash of the enemy soldiers' weapons to give them a target. Unlike Morales and the decoys, they had removed all the tracer ammunition from their rifles to help mask their position. Morales had instructed them to fire five or six rounds at likely targets, and then bug out to the fence.

While Morales and his group were entertaining the members of the Tiger Battalion, Gabe and his crew had move to the other side of the runway to watch the festivities. He was watching the AUC camp through his night vision goggles, when the .50 caliber machinegun on top of the building ripped off a burst towards the fence line. The tracers from the heavy gun burned through the darkness like a meteor shower, kicking up gouts of dirt on the dirt road in front of the fence. Gabe worried about the .50 cal; it was an awesome weapon, highly accurate and long ranged. He hoped that Morales had the same respect for it that he did.

The firing died down after a few minutes, as Morales and his squad disappeared back into the jungle. Morales accounted for his men, then moved out towards the south. His squad had suffered one minor casualty during the exchange, as a rock kicked up by the .50 cal had laid open a deep gash in the cheek of one of his troops. Lupe tended to the man quickly and efficiently, chiding him for his whining.

"It is just a scratch, Jorge. I've done worse shaving my legs. Besides, as ugly as you are, the scar will only be an improvement. Now hold still while I close the wound."

Morales stood by, suppressing a smile as Lupe worked on the man. He knew Lupe's caustic attitude towards her medic duties was all a façade to cover her true concern for people. Yes, he knew Lupe very well; he certainly should since she'd been his woman for the last four years. If the Comendadora's plan for the future panned out, he could see Lupe and himself opening a little café in Prado and maybe even starting a little family. His smile grew wider at the thought of Lupe, her belly big with his child.

At the stroke of three AM, Gabe lobbed another mortar round into the camp. This time there was no return fire. They moved another hundred meters and fired again. This time the .50 cal answered them with a stuttering burst. Ricochets pinged and whined off the hard packed runway, as he and his troops beat feet back into the jungle.

After Gabe and Sergeant Morales left the caverns, Marta had her subordinate leaders in C Company prepare their troops for moving out the next day. In the morning they would bury their fallen comrades before departing. It was close to eleven before Marta made it back to her room. Stephanie helped her and Peter pack their rucksacks, then the three of them tumbled into the bed. Although bone tired, Marta was not sleepy, the day's ugly business had her too keyed up to even think about sleeping.

Stephanie figured out a way to distract Marta's gloomy thoughts. She crawled up the bigger woman's body and pinned her arms down with her knees.

"Take her hard, Pete, and make her scream," Stephanie ordered, as she lowered her little blond bush onto Marta's mouth.

Pete started to give Marta some of the oral pleasure that Stephanie was experiencing, but Stephanie wasn't having any of that.

"Just get her wet and jam it in. She doesn't need any of that," Stephanie admonished.

Pete gave his half-sister a quizzical look, but Stephanie was turned in the opposite direction. He shrugged and knelt between Marta's long shapely legs. As soon as he set the head of his rampant rod against Marta's sex, she groaned into Stephanie's muff, and humped up her hips. Pete smiled at how well Stephanie understood their lover. Stephanie's sexual awakening was truly extraordinary, he thought, as he buried himself in Marta in one long hard stroke. When he bottomed out, he grabbed her legs and pulled them over his shoulders.

The siblings had Marta completely immobilized, as they had their way with her. To her surprise, she started orgasming almost immediately, screaming her pleasure into Stephanie's steaming snatch. When Peter blasted his scalding seed into her and Stephanie drenched her face for the second time, they finally let her up. She fell asleep almost immediately, her cares and concerns temporarily forgotten, as her wonderful lovers snuggled up on either side of her.

It was a tired and sleep deprived bunch of soldiers, who stood reveille at the Tiger Battalion camp at six the next morning. For the second night in a row, the cursed FARC had kept them awake. If they were expecting El Tigre to take pity on their plight and let them rest, they were sadly mistaken. As soon as the battalion was assembled, Colonel Nuñez strode out to address them.

"My warriors, today starts the days of reckoning for the cowards who have been attacking us. Starting today, we will demonstrate the high penalty those who oppose the Tiger Battalion ultimately pay. We will extract terrible revenge on them for our fallen brothers, and make them wish they had never dared to challenge us."

The speech motivated the soldiers enough for them to forget their tiredness. Two hours later, two companies departed the camp, both on foot. One company started a reconnaissance in force on the mountain east of the airport. The other company headed north of the runway. They were tasked with patrolling the perimeter of the camp, out to a distance of two kilometers.

An hour later, a third company mounted trucks and headed towards Prado to round up more prisoners. This time, Nuñez ordered that women and children be taken. He was going to put the new prisoners in tents, in plain view in the middle of camp, to discourage any more night attacks.

Gabe and Selena were up by ten the next morning, after having spent the night next to where they cached their civilian gear. By ten-thirty, they were strolling towards Prado in their hiking outfits, holding hands and nattering on, as lovers tend to do. The couple arrived in front of the airport at about noon. As they walked past, a jeep roared out of the airport and blocked the road in front of them. One of the men in the jeep was an officer. He dismounted and demanded to see Gabe and Selena's identification. Gabe dug his passport out of his pocket, and Selena handed over her driver's license. The young officer made a production out of studying the documents before handing them back.

"Where have you been and where are you headed?" the officer asked officiously.

Selena did the talking.

"We are newlyweds on our honeymoon. We are staying at a hotel in Prado, but for the last five days, we hiked up to and climbed Nevado del Tolima (Tolima Volcano — a 5300 meter extinct volcano, forty kilometers north of Prado). We are headed back to our hotel now. We only have a few more days vacation left."

The officer looked at Gabe, who was dangling the hotel room key in his hand, and smiled at the anxious looking man.

"I know you are in a hurry to continue your honeymoon, Señor, but I have only a few more questions for you. We are here looking for a band of FARC criminals. Have you seen anything suspicious in your travels?"

Gabe put a concerned look on his face before addressing the officer.

"Our travel agent told us there was no FARC activity within fifty miles of here. Had we known that, we would have gone elsewhere. I have no wish to be kidnapped."

Selena laid her hand on Gabe's arm, as if to reassure him.

"It is alright my husband. We have the army here to protect us." Then she turned her attention towards the officer. "All we have seen unusual in the last two days was one of your trucks, which was full of soldiers, about eight kilometers up the road about three hours ago."

The officer's ears perked up at Selena's revelation.

"How do you know it was one of ours, Señora?" he asked.

Selena pointed to the patch on his shirtsleeve.

"It had the same leaping tiger on the door that you have on your uniform," she answered.

The officer was delighted with the information Selena gave him. With thanks and a snappy salute, he sent the couple on their way.

The soldiers manning the observation post on the mountain across from the airport road abandoned their position and hustled up to the base camp, when the Tiger Battalion company started up the slope towards them. They clued Morales in on the company as soon as they reached the camp. Morales struck camp immediately, and moved his troops out. They headed northeast over the crest of the mountain, and half way down the other side, before stopping at a stream about ten meters wide. He split the company in half at the stream. Morales and half the troops forded the stream; the other half erased the tracks of the first soldiers, turned right and started following the stream down slope, walking along the rocky flood plane of the creek.

Morales moved about twenty feet into the jungle above the bank of the creek. He paralleled the creek for about a hundred meters, and then spread his men out in a hasty 'L' shaped ambush, far enough inside the undergrowth, so that the creek was barely visible from their position.

The 'L' shaped ambush was a trick Gabe had taught the company, as they sat around the camp the day before. The ambush placed two men across the line of march of the unit to be ambushed. When the ambush was initiated, the two men did not fire until the signal to break contact was given. As the other soldiers in the ambush party withdrew, the two soldiers opened fire to prevent the ambushed soldiers from assaulting into the ambush. The best way to break an ambush was to charge the ambushers; the men lurking in the base of the 'L' prevented that from happening.

The other half of the company traveled another five hundred meters, before turning up hill and doubling back on their own trail. They moved two hundred meters, before stopping and hunkering down. Their mission was to come to Sergeant Morales aid if need, or to give chase if the enemy soldiers panicked and ran.

Captain Delgado, the commanding officer of the Tiger Battalion's Bravo Company, was a seasoned and skilled commander. His company was tasked with sweeping the mountain across from the road in front of the airport, and clear it of any FARC presence. His follow on mission was to secure the top of the mountain and establish a base camp there, to deny the FARC the use of the mountain. Delgado was also hoping to find a route up the front side of the mountain that could be traversed by trucks, in case he needed rapid reinforcement. His plan was to move his two platoons up the mountain in diamond shaped formations, three hundred meters apart. The four squads making up each diamond would be fifty meters apart.

Delgado and his company moved across the road and into the jungle at 0800 hours. Using the diamond for movement in the mountain jungle made the going slow, because of the need to maintain the integrity of the formation, but it was an excellent way to prevent being ambushed. His first platoon found the observation post at 0930 hrs. Delgado called a halt while he investigated the site. He informed Colonel Nuñez of the discovery by radio, then continued the march up the mountain, his scout/trackers following the faint trail left by the fleeing occupants of the observation post.

It was just before noon, when his scouts reported finding the remnants of the FARC base camp and the trail they made when they departed. When Delgado asked, the senior scout replied that he estimated the FARC unit had departed the camp no more than three hours ago, and were heading toward the mountain's plateau-like peak. Delgado was heartened that, based on the number of fighting positions and the size of the base camp, the unit he was pursuing was about half the size of his company. Delgado called a halt and let his soldiers eat their noon meal. By 1230 hours, they were back in the saddle, trudging up the mountain, trailing the retreating insurgents.

Captain Delgado called another halt, when the platoon he was traveling with reach the summit of the mountain. He radioed his other platoon leader and had the lieutenant move to this platoon's location. Once his company was reformed, he radioed El Tigre again and briefed him on their location and situation. Nuñez told him to have his scout squad follow the FARC unit's trail. Nuñez wanted to see if they could locate where the FARC established their next base camp. Delgado frowned at the radio's handset, but as all good soldiers do, he carried out the order despite his reservation. He dispatched the eight-man scout squad with instructions to return to his base camp before dark.

The scouts walked into Morales's ambush one hour later. Five of the scouts were killed outright, and the other three were wounded and captured. Morales leaned hard on the wounded soldiers to find out the disposition and location of their unit, before letting Lupe treat their wounds. When Lupe had two of the least wounded patched up enough to walk, he sent them to the caverns. The third man was too seriously wounded to treat, so Morales applied the coup de grace with a bullet to the brain.

Delgado's reservations about sending out his scouts were verified, when he heard the short but intense firefight down the side of the mountain. He even guessed the reason for the single shot that followed half an hour later. What he didn't do was send out a rescue party, instead, he hurried his soldiers along to finish fortifying their fighting positions before nightfall.

Gabe and Selena made it back to the hotel in Prado a couple of hours after they passed the airport. They luxuriated in the shower for fifteen minutes, before falling exhausted into the bed. They slept until four in the afternoon, then made their way down to the lobby to talk to the desk clerk. The man was a fount of information about the activities in the town for the last few days. Both Gabe and Selena were as shocked as the desk clerk about the women and children taken hostage that morning. The couple left the hotel and took a stroll around the town's piazza. Only a couple of businesses were open, but the general tone of the residents they talked to was openly hostile and defiant towards the AUC battalion occupying the airport.

It was after six and already dark when they returned to the hotel, so they went straight to the restaurant. They took a table in a quiet corner and ordered their first real meal in five days. As they were waiting for their food, seven men, obviously North American, walked in and occupied a large table about twenty feet away. One of the men kept looking at Gabe as if trying to place his face. Gabe stood up and then helped Selena to her feet also. Then he escorted her over to the table of men.

"Let me help you out," he said to the man who had been looking at him. "Fort Bragg, 1985, Jump Master Course. I was the senior instructor and you had trouble remembering to check for twists in the leg straps, because you hated to have your hands near another guy's balls."

The man's face lit up in recognition. He stood up and held out his hand.

"I still hate doing that. I think that's one reason I gave the SEALS up after only twenty years. I'm Gary Fletcher."

Gabe returned his handshake.

"Gabe Ballard, and this is my wife Selena."

John Riley's eyes almost bugged out, when he heard the stranger say his name. When the introductions around the table were completed, Riley took the floor.

"Are you any relation to a geologist named Peter Ballard?"

"He's my son, I'm here to take him and his sisters back home."

"Gabe, we are here for the same reason you are - to free your children. We also have a battalion of paramilitary soldiers to assist us. It will only be a matter of time before we have them safely back. How did you get here so quickly anyway?"

Gabe shrugged off Riley's question, hiding his surprise that the AUC goons were in the employ of Pete's boss. But the information gave him a glimmer of hope that he could avoid further bloodshed.

"If I manage to free my children, what will your troops do? Will you just pay them and send them home?"

"I'll pay them something if that happens, and I'll go home, but Colonel Nuñez will still pursue the FARC unit and its leader. Our friends here from the DEA have a bone to pick with the commies over a few helicopters they destroyed. They want the FARC cleared out, so they can defoliate the local coca crop. In addition, the commander of this band of guerillas, some woman who calls herself Commander Zorra, has caused the colonel some embarrassment, so he has a personal grudge also."

Gabe nodded and swept the table with eyes as hard as granite.

"If this Nuñez is working for you, then you are condoning his kidnapping of women and children to use as human shields."

The men at the table returned his look with expressions ranging from chagrin from the mercenaries to bland indifference from the two DEA agents. John Riley was the only person who felt compelled to answer.

"Now see here, Mr. Ballard, we are condoning no such thing. We are guests here, and these people have there own way of doing things. Besides, Colonel Nuñez personally guaranteed me that none of the hostages have been, nor will they be, mistreated."

Gabe shook his head and clamped down on his anger.

"You just don't get it, do you, Mr. Riley. As soon as he grabbed his first civilian hostage, Nuñez became a war criminal. As far as I'm concerned, you are not much better than him, because you are allowing it to happen."

When Riley started to sputter angrily, Gabe held up his hand for him to be silent.

"I am going into the mountains and bringing my children back. I will kill anyone and everyone who gets between me and that goal. If you can call off your goons, you need to do so immediately, if not, you all need to stay as far away from them as you can."

Gabe spun around and with Selena on his arm, strode back to their table. As soon as he pulled her chair out and seated her, he started apologizing.

"I am sorry I acted that way in front of you, Little One, but when I see something that isn't right, I just can't keep my mouth shut. It's a flaw that held me back in the military, and has cost me a few jobs as a civilian, but it's who I am."

Selena beamed at him and squeezed his hand.

"No need to apologize to me, Papi. That you feel so strongly about right and wrong is one of the things that attracted me to you. To my Muisca ancestors, honor was the most important thing in a warrior's life. The men with the most honor were chosen as warrior-priests. The traditions of my ancestors are still strong here in the Andes, despite the efforts of the Conquistadors and Catholic Church to erradicate them. That is why Sergeant Morales and his soldiers trusted you so quickly. For them and me, you are our warrior-priest."
Joe J & Wet Dream-Girl
Chapter 16