Chapter 19

Posted: April 20, 2007 - 12:01:39 am?

Colonel Pedro Nuñez was on the radio as soon as he saw the true strength of the rebels' defenses. It appeared that the crazy FARC bitch really was going to try to beat him by the strength of her defense. If that was her idea, though, she had seriously underestimated his resolve and resources. Nuñez called Major Pasada over for a meeting.

"How many casualties did we suffer, Felix?"

"Three dead and six wounded, Sir. Only one of the wounds is serious, but one of those killed was Lieutenant Vargas."

The colonel nodded, it was much better news than he'd expected, but the loss of another of his young officers was most unfortunate. Vargas had been a good and strong combat leader. Felix Pasada was his executive officer because the man was a brilliantly effective logistician and planner, but he was not and never had been a combat leader.

"How far were your men able to advance before being pinned down? Did anyone get close enough to locate the machinegun positions?"

"Partially, El Coronel. One of the squad leaders says he saw a bunker with a machinegun emplacement all the way up against the rock wall on the north side. All their defensive positions are well camouflaged, so in the heat of battle are hard to pinpoint."

The colonel nodded his head in understanding and turned the conversation to something with which Pasada was more comfortable.

"I think we are going to have to soften these devils up some more before we assault them again. How many mortar rounds do we have available, and how many fuses?"

Pasada didn't hesitate for a second in giving his commander the information he requested.

"We have six cases or 36 rounds of WP and twenty-five case or 150 rounds of HE, minus what was fired earlier. We have twenty-four cases of fuses, twelve fuses to a case. Four cases are proximity, five are variable time delay and the rest are point detonating. We also have ten cases of illumination rounds that are prefused."

The colonel nodded and took the radio handset from his RTO.

"Mortar Six, this is Tiger Six, Fire mission..."

Captain Delgado was making good progress sweeping the backside of the rebels' mountain. The jungle on the eastern side of the mountain was mostly double and triple canopy, with only spots of under brush. In the three thousand meters they'd already traversed, he'd found only a few animal trails and no sign at all of the FARC. Delgado had been heartened when he heard the mortar barrage earlier, but thought it was too short. He often thought that his commander was stingy when it came to using any resources other than men.

Suddenly, gunfire erupted from the other side of the mountain, only to fall silent minutes later. Delgado knew that the shortness of the firefight meant that Nuñez's attack had been either handily repulsed or aborted for some other reason. The thought of him and his men having to attack into the teeth of those dug in machineguns sent a jolt of dread right through him. The colonel might have bitten of more than he could chew in his zeal to eradicate this Commander Zorra, if the action so far was any indication. Delgado estimated that the battalion had suffered over fifty casualties already, yet only had evidence that they'd killed or wounded one of the FARC insurgents.

His men were starting to show the strain from the constant threat the wraith-like rebels posed. His troops were jittery and sullen, quick to argue and slow to respond to his orders. Delgado was mulling all these factors over, when the soldiers in front of him all started raising their right hands, signaling a halt. As his soldiers knelt down, facing alternately right or left, Delgado strode towards the front of the column to see what was going on. He stopped in his tracks when the point man walked back to him, holding out a cheap blue plastic radio.

"El Capitán, alguien desea hablarte (Someone wishes to speak with you)," the soldier whispered.

Sitting twenty feet up a tree about a hundred and twenty yards away from Delgado, was Gabe with the other walkie-talkie. Next to him, Selena was carefully studying the man who received the radio, through Gabe's polarized, high-powered, military issue binoculars.

"His name is Delgado, according to the tag on the front of his shirt," Selena said sotto-voce.

Gabe nodded and took a guess as to the man's rank. He keyed the 'push to talk' button on the radio, and paused for a second.

"Good morning, Captain Delgado. My name is Gabriel. I am the commander of B Company of the Carlos Sanchez Column. I think we have much to talk about. Let your men rest, as long as we are talking, they are safe from attack for the first time since they arrived in Prado."

Delgado looked around and caught his radio operator's eye. He held out his hand for the handset as he answered the radio.

"Of what do we have to speak, Senor Gabriel?"

"We will have nothing to talk about if you touch that radio, Captain, because you'll be dead."

Delgado snatched his hand back and looked around wildly. Gabe spoke again, his voice calm and soothing.

"Good decision, Captain Delgado, but I have been watching you make good decisions for a few days now. That is the main reason I am talking to you instead of killing you and your men, right now. Instead I'm going to give you the opportunity to make one more wise decision. I'm going to let you choose between you and your men walking unarmed and unharmed off this mountain, or dying and being buried on it. To help make deciding easier, I'll let you know that I have troops on three sides of you right now, and I have mined the hell out of the area down slope from you."

Delgado looked questioningly at his point man and RTO as soon as Gabe stopped talking. The point man shrugged his shoulders and laid his weapon on the ground.

"There is nothing worth dying for on this mountain, Capitán," he said.

Delgado had a feeling that most of his company felt the same way, and truth be told, so did he. Still, this could be some trick that led to him and his men being slaughtered without putting up a fight. Delgado keyed the radio and expressed his reservations.

"If we agree, how do we know you won't just kill us anyway?" Delgado asked.

Gabe turned to Selena to ask her something, then answered Delgado's question.

"Look around you, Captain. I have your entire company halted in the kill zone of my ambush. If I wanted you dead, you'd be that way already. But as a show of good faith, if your men put down their weapons, I will walk with you to guarantee your safe passage off the mountain. I'll allow you to keep your sidearm and I'll be your hostage."

Delgado answered immediately.

"I will put it to my men, Senor, and advise them to accept your terms."

When Selena saw the AUC soldiers in formation stacking arms, she looked at Gabe with complete and total awe. Her amazing husband had just talked a company of soldiers into surrendering to avoid an ambush that consisted of five FARC soldiers hidden up slope from them. Gabe had taken a chance, and sent the rest of the company around the mountain toward the defensive positions.

For his part, Gabe was anxious to get Delgado and his men off the mountain so he could return to his company. If Morales could neutralize the mortars, the Fat Tiger was suddenly going to be stranded on a mountainside between two rebel forces, which had a decided tactical edge over him. Gabe shinnied down the tree, helped Selena down, and together they walked about ten paces, and stopped at one of the men that made up his meager ambush. The man stood up and handed him the headset of one of the stolen PRC-25 radios.

Just as Gabe was giving Zorra the good news about the captured company, the first round of the newest mortar barrage fell inside the base camp. Gabe radioed Morales next, to find out his ETA at the AUC's mortar positions. Morales was upset that he was still over five hundred meters away. He couldn't move as fast as he'd like, because of the burden of RPGs and the extra rockets he carried; yet he couldn't leave the RPGs behind, as they were necessary to take out the mortar pits. The rest of Gabe's soldiers were even farther away than Morales, so Zorra was on her own for at least another twenty to thirty minutes.

Gabe was becoming a big fan of the little Radio Shack walkie-talkies, as he changed to channel B on his set, and called the corporal that Morales had put in charge of the ten men that had been tailing Delgado. Gabe had the man come forward by himself, so Gabe could brief him. He'd exposed both the soldier with his PRC-25, and the corporal, so that Delgado and his men could see that the threat to them was real. It was a little psychological warfare that Gabe figured would make them think twice about doing anything foolish. Of course, instead of having the fifteen men follow him and the Tigers, Gabe had sent them looping around to the north side of the mountain. He told them to get in behind the AUC forces attacking the north side of the defenses, and wait for Sergeant Morales. Briefings completed, Gabe took Selena's little hand in his and walked over to Captain Delgado

Morales could no longer abide by the slow pace the RPGs necessitated, so he gave instructions for them to make the best speed they could, and took off at a trot with six other men. The sergeant and his troops made it to the clearing in about ten minutes, out of breath but ready to fight. Morales took a quick peek at the camp, and deployed his men in a line along the edge of the woods. The mortars were in the rear center of the camp, about three hundred meters from where Morales had his men. The three mortar pits were encircled with sandbags stacked to waist height. Gunners and ammo bearers were working efficiently in the pits, while a dozen or so soldiers watched from fighting positions erected to protect the mortars. Morales pointed to the three soldiers closest to him.

"Take aimed shots at the mortarmen, give them something to think about besides firing. The rest of us will target their guards."

The guards and mortar crews were taken completely by surprise when Morales and his men started firing them up. The initial volley didn't hit anyone, but it made them all concentrate on taking cover instead of firing their tubes. Everyone that is, except Sergeant Galardo, Colonel Nuñez's bodyguard and driver. Galardo was at the base camp because he was one of the walking wounded. He'd been shot in the side during the first night's assault at the airport camp. His wound was painful, but not severe enough for continued hospitalization, so here he was.

Galardo sprinted to the colonel's jeep, ignoring the pain from the stitches in his side. He leaped into the back of the jeep and pulled back the large cocking lever of the .50 caliber machinegun that was pintle mounted into a steel pipe welded to the jeep's floor. When the bolt locked to the rear, he grabbed the two rear spade grips, swung the gun towards the shooters at the edge of the woods, and pressed both his thumbs down on the butterfly shaped trigger. The big gun immediately started bucking in his hands as he laid down short bursts along the wood line. The rifle fire from the jungle ceased immediately as the rebels scrambled for cover.

Up near the top of the mountain, Colonel Nuñez frowned and reached for the radio when he heard small arms fire and there was a lull in the mortar barrage. He had given Sergeant Tolivar clear instructions, one round every thirty seconds for thirty minutes. Then he heard the heavy thunder of the .50 cal. The small arms ceased, and less than a minute later, a mortar round came whistling inbound. Tolivar answered the radio soon after.

"What is going on down there, Tolivar?"

"Someone took a couple of pot shots at us, El Coronel, but Sergeant Galardo drove them off with the big machinegun. There were no injuries or damage, so we reaimed the mortars and all three are now back in battery."

Nuñez had Tolivar pass the phone to Sergeant Galardo. The colonel had absolute trust and confidence in his bodyguard, because Galardo was coldly rational and absolutely fearless. Galardo told him that the threat had been minimal.

"Probably an observation post or small patrol that can't get back to their base camp," the sergeant opined.

Commander Zorra couldn't help looking at her watch as the ground shook from the concussion of the mortar round that fell not thirty meters from her bunker. The certainty that every thirty seconds a bomb would fall was as psychologically nerve wracking as the explosions themselves. Then mercifully, after twelve and a half minutes and twenty-five blasts, the barrage lifted.

The members of the Carlos Sanchez Column had barely let out their collective breaths, when the swooshing noise of another inbound shell rent the eerie silence. Zorra groaned and flattened herself against Peter once again. The relentless bombardment was starting to take its toll on her troops, as three positions, including one machinegun bunker had sustained direct hits. 'Where are you, Serafin, my Guardian Angel?' she wondered.

Captain Delgado was full of questions when Gabe and Selena made their appearances. He was flat out dumbfounded that the man who'd been making his life miserable for the last few days was a Norteamericano. The idea of a yanqui communist sympathizer was an alien concept to him, as all he'd ever seen were CIA agents and US Special Forces trainers, all of whom were virulently anti-communist. Delgado couldn't hold back asking Gabe about that. Gabe laughed and put his arm around Delgado's shoulder.

"Captain, believe me when I tell you I despise nearly everything that the communists espouse. Hell, I spent over twenty years either killing commies or figuring out better ways to kill them. The only reason I am doing this is because my son is in love with Comendadora Zorra and she has renounced the FARC, seeking amnesty."

Delgado nodded, although he was still confused. He indicated Selena with a jerk of his head.

"What about your woman? Is she a member of the FARC seeking amnesty, also?"

Selena gave a bitter laugh and answered for herself.

"No Captain, I detest the FARC and your AUC with the blackest of hatreds. My first husband and young son died in a cross fire between a FARC and AUC patrol. I am here because Gabriel is my husband now, and my place is beside him."

Delgado's face turned crimson with embarrassment and he mumbled his apologies. Gabe then steered the conversation to something else he'd been considering.

"Captain, I think that by this time tomorrow there will be no more Tiger Battalion. Have you given any thought to your future?"

Delgado admitted that he had not, and was open to suggestions.

"As long as it does not involve war, I am amendable to anything. Do you have a suggestion for me Señor Gabriel?"

"I don't know if it is something you'd consider, Captain Delgado, but I do know that there will be a need for the services of a trucking company here soon. If a man had access to twenty or so trucks and drivers, he would be in a position to make some money legally."

Delgado broke out in a grin, as what the gringo was implying came to him.

"Ah, sí, trucks and drivers, huh? I think I might just know where to find both. Where will I find you if I do?" Delgado asked.

"In Prado, Captain, I love it here and I plan on staying for the rest of my life."

Further conversation was cut short when they heard the mortar barrage resume up on the other side of the mountain. Gabe called the column to a halt and turned to Delgado again.

"Captain, I am going to trust you to honor your word and save you and your men's lives. Off this mountain there is a rewarding and fruitful life waiting on all of us. Here, I guarantee there will only be death and destruction."

Delgado nodded solemnly and saluted.

"It will happen as I promised, Señor Gabriel. I hope our next meeting will be as civilians, scheming on how to become wealthy capitalists."

Gabe returned the salute with a grin, then he and Selena disappeared into the jungle at a trot.

Another dozen rounds leapt out of Sergeant Tolivar's mortar tubes before Serafin Morales had his RPGs in place. The mortars were well within the range of his grenadiers, but the .50 cal made standing and firing a suicide mission. Morales was contemplating having to take the time to move to the other side of the camp, when Private Benitez and Corporal Montoya quickly stood up, took aim and fired. Benitez had barely set her feet, before a pair of the heavy machinegun rounds slammed her five feet backwards. She was dead before she hit the ground, but her unselfish sacrifice bore fruit, when Montoya's rocket smashed into the gun jeep and pitched it into the air. Sergeant Galardo had thrown himself backwards off the jeep before the rocket impacted. Not that it did him any good though, as the last thing he ever saw was the upside down jeep descending on him, .50 caliber machinegun first.

With the gun jeep out of the way, it was short work dispatching the mortar positions, as Morales and his riflemen pinned down the defenders while his grenadiers acquired their targets. The sandbagged mortar pits were no challenge for the powerful shaped charge warheads of the RPG-7 rockets. The warheads were designed to penetrate heavy plate armor, so a double layer of sandbags wasn't much of an impediment.

Morales would have liked nothing better than to rest and mourn for Carmen Benitez, but his commander and over forty of his fellow soldiers were fighting for their lives a thousand meters uphill. Morales gently laid his hand on Lupe's shoulder as she knelt by Carmen's lifeless body. Lupe's shoulders were shaking as she fought to control her sobs of frustrated anger and sadness.

"She was such a good and gentle woman, Serafin. She was like a mother to all us women even though she was only a few years older than me. She was so happy for me when I told her about our plans for the future, but she refused to consider working with us. I think she had a premonition of dying, because she told me she didn't want to make a promise she couldn't keep."

Serafin rocked Lupe in his arms for a minute then turned her face towards his.

"We need to move out, my wife and go help Zorra and our comrades. I will detail a couple of men to stay here and keep watch on the camp. They will also be here to watch over Carmen until we return and take her home."

Lupe nodded and composed herself. Two minutes later they were tiredly trudging back up the mountain.

Colonel Nuñez wasn't idle while the mortars were pulverizing the FARC camp. He used the time to move his troops into attack positions he thought more likely to result in breaching the rebels' defenses. He had taken every other soldier from his southern most platoon and moved them into the center. Soldiers already in the center shifted north. He planned for Delgado's company to occupy the southern position and reinforce the attack as soon as he swept back around the mountain. He'd lost radio contact with Delgado as soon as B Company had moved behind the dense mountain peak, but the lack of gunfire from the other side of the mountain convinced the colonel that all was moving forward as planned.

Nuñez was very unhappy when the mortars fell silent after forty-nine rounds. The gunfire and explosions from his base camp were disheartening, but he had his forces in place, and was committed to the attack. He tried radioing Tolivar, but didn't receive an answer. The die was cast already, however, and attacking the camp was his only option. Shrugging, he called Pasada.

"It is time to end this unpleasantness, Major. Advance your forces now and do not stop this time. I will do the same from this side. Make sure your right flank squads knows we will be moving at the same time."

Major Pasada was better prepared for his second foray into battle as he set his squads into their attack positions. His plan was simple, he was going to push through the camp and capture the command bunker. Colonel Nuñez was going to break through the defenders facing west, then turn right and roll up the southern positions from their rear. Nuñez figured that any of the rebels who escaped towards the south would run right into Delgado's company as it completed sweeping around the mountain.

Pasada, caught up in the adrenalin rush of the attack, stood up and urged his men to charge forward with him. For a bright and shining moment, Felix Pasada, bespectacled and out of shape, was the combat leader he had always envisioned himself. Pasada took half a dozen valiant steps, his .45 pistol raised overhead in a follow me gesture, when two adjacent fighting positions and one of the treetop snipers all fired him up at once. The major took one more shambling step as his body jerked like a marionette whose puppeteer had sneezed. The second round from the sniper in the tree a hundred yards to his rear, ended it all for Pasada, but his heroics had stirred his men, and they charged forward, oblivious to the withering hail of rebel fire.

Nuñez was between and slightly to the rear of his two attacking platoons. From his vantage point, he could coordinate their advance to keep his lines formed. As a consequence of where he was standing, he saw Major Pasada fall and caught a glimpse of the sniper who did him in. With a curse, Nuñez grabbed his RTO's M-16 and emptied the magazine into the treetop. The colonel grunted in satisfaction as the rebel sniper pitched forward out of the tree and crashed to the ground. He handed the rifle back to his radioman and grabbed the handset to hurry along the troops to his right.

The gaps in Zorra's defensive lines cause by the mortar barrage were most noticeable on the north side of the perimeter. Almost half of the positions on that side had sustained either direct hits or near misses. Zorra called Sergeant Estrada, the commander of that section of the defense, and ordered him to fall back to his secondary positions. Estrada, a small wiry man who bore absolutely zero resemblance to the Mexican-American heartthrob with whom he shared a name, crawled out of his foxhole and started sending his troops to the rear, one position at a time.

As the FARC defenders fell back, the lull in their fire allowed the AUC soldiers to begin maneuvering. Nuñez saw the progress being made, and tried to exploit it by shifting another squad to the north. The new squad added impetus to the attack, and in all likelihood would have broken through, had it not been for the machinegun bunker manned by the Herrera brothers. Mario and Marco Herrera were young, good-looking identical twins, who the women of the Columna Carlos Sanchez adored. They had only been in the column for a year or so, and had been untested in combat. Zorra had thought long and hard before she took Sergeant Estrada's advise and put them together on the machinegun. Zorra saw the wisdom of Estrada's choice, as the twins beat back three charges by the Tigers against their position, as they covered the redeployment of the rest of Estrada's troops.

Zorra heaved a sigh of relief as her defenses held against the first onslaught. Nuñez paused to consolidate his gains and shift more troops to the north. Zorra used the lull to call Morales and Gabe on the radio. She was more than ready for them to execute their surprise. She addressed them both at once.

"So my Angels of Death, El Tigre the gusano (worm), is inside our original perimeter to the north, and I am shifting the western positions back to their secondary sites, to keep them from being overrun. What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"

"I just arrived from destroying the mortars, Comendadora, give us a minute to catch our breaths and we will be ready," Morales wheezed into the radio.

Gabe, who had just linked back up with his troops to the south, answered next.

"Zorra, move the southern defenses back to their secondary positions also, and tell them to be ready to join me when I attack. Serafin, move up as close as you can without compromising yourself and wait. Have our troops to the north attack when they hear me start shooting. If we can get them moving, the only direction they can go is towards you, so be ready."

It took fewer than three minutes to finish shifting the defenses. When Zorra gave him the okay, Gabe blew his whistle and his troops moved out. Gabe's troops quickly routed the few soldiers that remained to the south. The AUC men fled down the mountain at a dead run off to Morales right. Morales let them go so as not to reveal his location to the larger forces to his front and left. Gabe quickly linked up with the soldiers from the southern defensive positions, and moved to attack the right flank of the AUC's center platoon.

When the firing started erupting to the south, Colonel Nuñez thought it was Captain Delgado arriving on the scene. He realized that wasn't the case, when he heard most of the weapons fire with the distinctive 'chinging' sound of the AK. When more AK fire erupted to his north, Nuñez saw the trap that he had been suckered into. He urgently sounded the recall on the radio, then started off diagonally down the slope to the northwest, grabbing any of the soldiers he could find as he went. The dozen or so soldiers he scarffed up went with him gladly; to them, leaving that forsaken mountain was the smartest thing anyone had suggested to them in days.

It was only when Nuñez called a halt and explained his scheme to stay and capture the rebels' leader, that mutiny broke out. Ten soldiers stood up and started walking down hill, while their ex-colonel was in mid harangue. The two men who stayed, did so only because of the money the colonel said the guerilla leader was worth. Nuñez had only mentioned the money to get the men's attention. He had plenty of money stashed for his retirement already. What he desired more than anything else was revenge.
Joe J & Wet Dream-Girl
Chapter 20