Hostile Takeover Pt.1

A covert raid turns lethal at the heart of Colombia.

HOSTILE TAKEOVER Pt.1
BY: JESSE ABUNDIS

Prologue

The MH-60M Black Hawk cut through the humid Andean night, rotors turning low and slow, their acoustic signature suppressed by a classified Sikorsky dampening package—an off-the-books DARPA modification that reduced blade slap to little more than background noise below five hundred feet. At that altitude, the aircraft was nearly invisible to the ear and difficult to track on civilian radar.

Bogotá lay spread beneath them, a dense lattice of sodium-vapor lights and unlit barrios, unaware of the aircraft slipping through its airspace. Local time: 0130 hours. The helicopter was still miles from the objective—Casa de Nariño, the hardened seat of Colombian presidential power—but the cockpit displays showed nothing to suggest compromise. No surface-to-air radar emissions. No hostile spikes on the threat receiver. The frequencies were quiet.

Inside the cabin, bathed in red light, eight operators from a JSOC Delta Force assault element sat secured in fold-down seats, weapons locked between their boots. The steady hum of avionics, the muted thump of the rotors, and the faint chemical bite of JP-8 fuel filled the space.

Master Sergeant Chase Armstrong, thirty-nine, call sign Reaper, sat closest to the port-side door. Sweat darkened the fabric of his Crye Precision G4 combat uniform beneath the plate carrier, the humid cabin air trapped by armor and gear. A Heckler & Koch MP5K-PDW hung across his chest on a single-point sling—9×19mm, compact frame, integral suppressor, EOTech holographic sight zeroed at twenty-five meters. It was a close-quarters weapon, optimized for confined interiors and fast target transitions inside the palace corridors.

Beside him, Sergeant Bryce Upton, thirty, call sign Ghost, checked his M4A1 carbine with a practiced tap of the bolt release. The rifle was suppressed, chambered in 5.56×45 NATO, fed by a thirty-round PMAG. An ACOG sat forward on the rail—less ideal indoors, but effective for intermediate engagements once the team moved past the initial breach. Upton was lean, Detroit-born, Ranger-qualified, with two Bronze Stars that never came up in conversation. His eyes flicked briefly to Armstrong, then back to the cabin.

Upton’s plate carrier was heavy with purpose: fragmentation grenades, flashbangs, linear breaching charges. The rest of the assault element filled out the cabin—two additional MP5 assaulters, a dedicated breacher carrying a Remington 870 MCS, the team medic with an M4 and a full trauma kit, a communications sergeant managing an AN/PRC-152, and two precision shooters slated for overwatch, armed with suppressed Mk22 Advanced Sniper Rifles if the situation degraded.

They wore MultiCam Tropic for the urban sprawl below, Ops-Core helmets fitted with Peltor headsets, SureFire weapon lights mounted and indexed. No unnecessary movement. No wasted words.

Tonight’s objective was Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s sitting president. His expanding ties to Venezuelan narco-networks and quiet economic coordination with Beijing had crossed a threshold in Washington. Officially, the operation did not exist. Deniability was not a talking point—it was a design requirement.

Armstrong glanced at his Luminox: 0132 hours.

On schedule.

At U.S. Special Operations Command’s cyber operations cell in Tampa, a tailored intrusion package—code-named Phantom Spear—was executing its opening phase. Modeled on earlier state-level cyber weapons, the worm was tearing through Colombia’s integrated air defense network. Israeli-manufactured SPYDER surface-to-air missile batteries around Bogotá were being fed corrupted radar returns while command-and-control links degraded in real time, routed through compromised commercial infrastructure embedded deep within the Fuerza Aérea Colombiana’s network backbone.

By the time the first alert reached an operations officer, the helicopter would already be inside the city.

Bryce leaned closer, voice steady beneath the muted rotor noise. “Three mikes to infil.”

Chase nodded. Upton always ran the countdown. A habit burned in during Helmand, where missed timing meant buried pressure plates and body parts scattered across dirt roads. Superstition, maybe—but no one argued with rituals that kept men alive.

“We breach fast, we control the suite, and we’re gone,” Chase said. “Petro’s exposed. Light protective detail—Policía Nacional, maybe a dozen bodies. No armored response on site. Intel says he’s locked down after the cartel threat last week.”

That threat hadn’t come from a cartel.

It had come from Renfield—a CIA asset tasked with manufacturing instability inside Colombia’s internal security apparatus. Enough pressure to make Petro feel cornered. Enough to keep him predictable.

Bryce’s mouth pulled into a thin grin. “Once he’s restrained, air overwatch goes loud. F-15Es staged offshore, preloaded with JDAMs. Anything rolling in from the Guardia Presidencial barracks gets cratered. Exfil stays clean—LZ Bravo.”

“That’s the concept,” Chase said, checking his MP5’s selector—safe, then semi. Muscle memory. No wasted motion.
Bryce nodded, absorbing it. Then, quieter, almost amused:

“This doesn’t even feel like a mission.”

Chase glanced at him. “Let’s keep it that way.”

A brief grin. Nothing more.

The pilot’s voice cut through the intercom. “Reaper, this is Viper One. Entering hot zone. LZ in sight. No threat emissions. You are green.”

“Copy, Viper,” Chase replied. “Stack up.”

The cabin shifted as the team moved. Heart rates climbed—not from fear, but anticipation. These were Tier One operators. Selected, trained, proven. Still, no one believed in flawless operations. Murphy always got a vote.

Objective: seize Gustavo Petro alive. Immediate rendition to a black site in Panama. Attribution would point elsewhere—cartel violence, internal rivals, chaos. Another layer added to the fog.

Agency tradecraft at work.

* * *

Casa de Nariño — 0135 Hours

The Black Hawk flared over the palace grounds, skimming the colonial façade at rooftop height. Perimeter lights snapped on as Policía Nacional guards reacted late, figures scrambling along the walls with Galil rifles coming up.

Muzzle flashes erupted. Short, panicked bursts.

The door gunner answered first.

The M134 spun up, the recoil shuddering through the airframe as a controlled burst of 7.62×51 tore across the outer wall. Tracers stitched the courtyard. Guards went down hard, bodies collapsing behind the wrought-iron fence.

“Tangos down,” the gunner reported, voice flat over the intercom.

“Fast-rope. Go,” Chase ordered.

He went first.

The rope dropped. Chase slid, gloved hands burning through friction as gravity did the rest. Boots hit grass. Knees bent. Weapon up. Bryce followed, then the rest of the element—clean, practiced, overlapping sectors.

Fifteen seconds from wheels-down to clear.

The helicopter pulled away, climbing into an orbit beyond the compound.

“Move,” Chase said, already advancing.

They cut through a side entrance where the lock had been neutralized earlier—access gained through a remotely emplaced thermite charge that had been melted via drone insertion. Inside, the palace opened into marble corridors and high ceilings, oil portraits watching silently from the walls.
Security personnel appeared at the far end of the hall—Grupo de Acciones Especiales by uniform, but slow to react. Radios spat static. No night vision. No coordination
.
Chase fired first.

The MP5 kicked softly, suppressed bursts snapping center mass. One guard dropped, rifle clattering across the floor.

“Tango down.”

Bryce engaged next. Two controlled shots to the torso, one to the head. The second guard folded, momentum carrying him into the wall.
The space filled with cordite and echo.

It was over too fast.

Chase registered it as he moved—sloppy kit, mismatched patches, boots worn past regulation. Not the presidential detail he’d expected.
No time to process.

“Move out,” he said. “Double time.”

Intel from the asset—an embittered cabinet minister with promises riding on regime change—had placed Petro in his private suite, third floor, east wing. The team cleared the stairwell in seconds and stacked on the door.

Reinforced oak. Electronic lock already dead from the cyber attack.

“Breach.”

Bryce set the linear charge and stepped clear.

The detonation was sharp and contained. The door failed inward.

They flowed.

The suite was opulent—four-poster bed, antique desk, classified folders strewn across polished wood. A half-empty bottle of aguardiente sat untouched on the nightstand.

Empty room.

Bryce swept left. “Tell me this isn’t the wrong suite.”

Chase scanned fast—corners, bathroom, wardrobe. No body. No blood. No panic signs.

“Asset confirmed location two hours ago,” Chase said. “He didn’t walk.”

One of the privates—E-4 specialist, fresh from selection—piped up: "Sir, was it me, or did those guards look off? Like, not real pros."
Chase didn’t answer right away.

He was already thinking the same thing.

Alarms went off in Chase’s head—the mismatched uniforms, the lack of resistance, the cyber window that had opened too cleanly.
“Trap,” he said. No hesitation. “Abort. Exfil. Now.”

The team broke contact immediately, moving at a dead run, staying tight to shadow and cover. Chase keyed his radio as they cleared the corridor.

“Viper One, Reaper. Mission scrub. Returning to LZ. Over.”

“Copy, Reaper. Thirty seconds out.”

Had the asset been compromised? Or the operation itself?

Chase pushed the thought aside. Questions could wait. Right now, only extraction mattered.

The courtyard came into view as the Black Hawk dropped low, rotors biting the air. Relief flashed—get them airborne.

Then the night tore open.

A missile streaked from the rooftop—infrared seeker locked. No warning tone. No time to react.

The helicopter vanished in a white-orange bloom. The fuselage tore apart mid-hover, debris cartwheeling into the street beyond the compound. Burning fragments rained down. Screams echoed from somewhere outside the walls.

“No—!” Bryce shouted.

The first rounds cracked overhead before Chase could respond.

“Contact! Incoming fire!” Chase yelled under the chaos.

7.62×54R tore through the courtyard from elevated positions—PKMs firing disciplined bursts. This wasn’t panic fire. It was rehearsed.
The medic went down instantly: full-auto burst to the neck, arterial spray painting the grass

“Man down!” someone yelled.

“Suppress!” Chase returned fire, MP5 snapping short bursts toward muzzle flashes. One figure collapsed. It didn’t matter.
They were flanked.

A grenade detonated near the breach point—overpressure shredding the breacher. The comms sergeant dropped seconds later, a single round through the head. The overwatch element never made it past the wall.

Bryce dragged a wounded assaulter toward cover. It didn’t help. Fire cut through both of them. Bryce fell hard and didn’t move again.
Chase was alone.

Back against a stone pillar, he slammed home a fresh magazine and keyed his radio.

“Base, this is Reaper—requesting immediate CAS. Grid to follow—”

Nothing.

Dead air.

Static. Dead air. Like the freq was jammed from the start.

Chase broke cover, firing controlled bursts, forcing one shooter down. Return fire answered instantly. A round shattered his knee. Another punched through his abdomen. He collapsed hard, breath gone, vision tunneling.

“Motherfuckers!”!” Yelled a man, knowing death was inches from him.

Boots approached.

Chase forced his head up, blood blurring the edges of the world. He expected Colombian security.
Instead, he saw a familiar face.

Renfield.

The CIA case officer from the infil brief. Tactical vest over civilian clothes. Beretta in hand.

“You,” Chase managed.

Renfield raised the pistol without emotion.

“Nothing personal,” he said. "Just part of the plan.”

“Plan?” Chase asked.

The shot cracked—9mm hollow-point exploding skull in a wet bloom of gray matter and bone shards. Chase's body twitched once, done.

Renfield stepped back, scanning the courtyard—eight Delta operators dead beneath the palace lights. He murmured a brief Hail Mary, habit older than the job, then pulled an encrypted satellite phone from his vest.

“It’s done,” he said. “Moving on to the next site.”

He ended the call and walked away as alarms finally reached the compound.