Fury in the Gulf (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 1) Read online

  CLOSING IN

  The mercenaries were in the open, halfway across the helipad. There was no cover, no concealment. So Brannigan did the only thing he could, under the circumstances. Even as their presence registered to the lead Iranian rifleman, Brannigan snapped his AK-12 up and fired.

  The two-round burst was a coughing bark amidst the thunder of the night, the rifle cycling faster than the recoil could push the muzzle off target. Flame spat from the rifle’s muzzle brake, and the Iranian crumpled. Brannigan gave him a second pair, just to be on the safe side, then switched to the next man to the right.

  By then, the other three had joined in, cutting the rest of the Iranians down in a rattling storm of rifle fire. Muzzle blasts flickered in the dark of the outer courtyard, and then the four Iranians were down on the ground and the mercenaries were sweeping toward the still-open door.

  BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS

  FURY IN THE GULF

  Pete Nealen

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Some real locations are used fictitiously, others are entirely fictional. This book is not autobiographical. It is not a true story presented as fiction. It is more exciting than anything 99% of real gunfighters ever experience.

  Copyright 2017 Peter Nealen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, to include, but not exclusive to, audio or visual recordings of any description without permission from the author.

  Brannigan’s Blackhearts is a trademark of Peter Nealen. All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  http://americanpraetorians.com

  Also By Peter Nealen

  The American Praetorians Series

  Drawing the Line: An American Praetorians Story (Novella)

  Task Force Desperate

  Hunting in the Shadows

  Alone and Unafraid

  The Devil You Don’t Know

  Lex Talionis

  ***

  Kill Yuan

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  The Jed Horn Supernatural Thriller Series

  Nightmares

  A Silver Cross and a Winchester

  The Walker on the Hills

  The Canyon of the Lost (Novelette)

  Older and Fouler Things

  CHAPTER 1

  The Airbus A319 touched down on Khadarkh International Airport’s concrete landing strip with a bounce and a slight squeal of rubber. The engines howled as they reversed, struggling to slow the big plane before it got too close to the end of the runway. Beyond lay only a short strip of desert sand, which quickly fell away to the cliffs that descended steeply into the Persian Gulf, only a few short meters below.

  The combination of flaps, airbrakes, ground brakes, and reverse thrust successfully brought the aircraft to the pace of a fast walk, still a good three hundred meters from the end of the strip. The engines still roaring, the twin-engine jet slowly turned onto the taxiway and trundled toward the main terminal and the big cargo hangars that loomed nearby.

  Following radio instructions from the tower and signals on the ground, the cargo plane turned in to park in front of the cargo terminal. Airport workers hurried out onto the tarmac, while a white tractor chugged out behind them, towing a rolling ladder that it carefully and precisely snugged up against the airplane’s forward hatch.

  A Nissan pickup rolled out onto the taxiway behind the tractor and parked next to the ladder. Two uniformed Khadarkhi Customs Officers got out and climbed up the ladder to the hatch, their clipboards under their arms. They were relaxed, chatting in Arabic. Customs inspections for cargo were generally routine, and nothing to get worked up about.

  “It was the most amazing strike I have ever seen, Qasim,” Achmed al Qays was saying as they neared the top of the steps. “I was certain the hare had gotten away; it had dashed into the brush and rocks at the edge of the wadi. But when I tried to call the new saker back to my glove, it suddenly dove, passed right between two razor-sharp rocks, and took the hare by the neck. It was amazing!”

  Achmed al Qays was a member of the Khadarkhi royal family. A fourth or fifth cousin to the King—the precise genealogy got a little hazy at times, even to him—he wasn’t nearly close enough to the King or his immediate relations to merit much more than a cushy slot with Khadarkhi Customs, but he was a generally lazy man, going to fat, who really had no greater ambitions than to live comfortably, with as little effort as possible. Being a Customs officer suited him. He had an easy, unexciting job, he never had to worry about money or stress, he had three wives and good prospects for a fourth, and all he had to do was check lists, accept the occasional baksheesh, and go play at falconry after prayer at the mosque on Fridays. Life was good.

  He turned away from Qasim al Faroukh, who, as usual, was polite but seemed less than enthralled by his superior’s stories, and found himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

  Achmed knew nothing about firearms; those were left to his cousins and their soldiers. He only knew that the pistol barrel presently pointed at the bridge of his nose from about fifty centimeters away looked like the mouth of a cannon. He suddenly started to shake, and clenched his buttocks, trying to keep his bowels from letting go.

  “Inside,” the dark-bearded man with the gun ordered curtly. “Quickly!”

  Achmed took his eyes off the pistol’s muzzle just long enough to see that they were not alone in the cargo plane’s hold. There were at least twenty men standing amidst the various crates and equipment cases secured along the center of the hold, all of them dressed in the same khaki fatigues as the man with the pistol. They were also all wearing some kind of combat gear and carrying evil-looking black rifles, that looked far newer and more dangerous than the shiny, worn weapons that the Khadarkhi Army carried.

  “Do exactly what I tell you and you will not be harmed,” the bearded man with the pistol said. He spoke Arabic with a strange accent; Achmed was slightly too rattled to notice that the accent was distinctly Persian. He should have noticed; Khadarkh lying in the middle of the Persian Gulf as it does, there was plenty of traffic through the airport from Iran as well as Saudi Arabia, depending on the shifts in the political climate from year to year.

  “Wh-What do you want?” Achmed stammered.

  “You will sign off on our Customs inspection, and see to it that this aircraft is moved to the front of the queue to enter the cargo terminal,” the man said. “No questions asked. Understand this: if I think for a moment that you are attempting to warn the Army, or the police, I will kill both of you.”

  Achmed nodded jerkily. The thought of resistance never entered his mind. He did not want to die.

  He filled out the paperwork hastily, while Qasim watched with hooded eyes. The other man gave no indication of what he thought about the proceedings, though there might have been a faint glint of amusement in his dark eyes at seeing his soft, pampered superior so unmanned. The hard-eyed, bearded man with the pistol never lowered it, keeping that threat as immediate as possible. Once Achmed could show the man the papers, he motioned to one of the others standing behind him, and that one, a broad-shouldered, mustached man, slung his rifle and stepped forward to scribble an illegible signature in the indicated blocks.

  As the man with the rifle signed, a thought began to work its way past the bowel-loosening fear in Achmed’s mind, and he started to think that there might be a way out of this. If he could convince these men that he had to go back up to the central office in person to clear them into the cargo terminal…

/>   But his hopes were dashed as the bearded man with the pistol motioned to the phone on his belt. “Go ahead,” he said, “call the control tower, and get us into that terminal.”

  His spirits sinking even lower, Achmed took the smartphone out of its holder and called the central office. It took only a few moments to convince the bored dispatcher to move the Airbus up to the front of the line.

  Actually getting the aircraft into the terminal took a bit longer; nothing happened quickly on Khadarkh. The dispatcher had to call the crews, get through to the man in charge, who was probably sleeping, and then get them moving. It was nearly an hour later that the tractor finally started pulling the Airbus into the cargo terminal, but the armed men in the plane’s hold stood where they were, impassive and silent.

  The wait had given Achmed an opportunity to study them, though furtively, as he did not particularly want to attract their attention any more than necessary. They were mostly lean, gaunt men, with a dangerous, hard-edged look about them that frightened him. He had seen pictures and video of such men before, mostly coming from the battlefields of Yemen and Syria.

  Finally, the plane was parked in the massive hangar of the cargo terminal, and the gigantic doors slid shut behind it.

  “You may go now,” the bearded man said. “I suggest that you leave the airport for the rest of the day.”

  Achmed did not hesitate, but fled as soon as the stairs were replaced. He did not even look back to see if Qasim had followed before he made a beeline for the parking lot.

  ***

  Farshid Esfandiari holstered his Makarov as the fat Arab nearly fell down the stairs in his haste to get away, and grimaced slightly in disgust. The other Customs officer followed somewhat more sedately, but was still obviously in no mood to linger any longer than necessary.

  Esfandiari turned to the mustached man next to him as he checked his watch. “We have twenty-seven minutes before the next two aircraft are due, Jahangir,” he told his second-in-command, “thanks to these idiots’ laziness. Let us make the most of it.”

  Ardashir Jahangir nodded curtly, and began barking orders in Farsi. The men quickly started moving toward the hatch. They had been ready to deploy for over an hour.

  Esfandiari picked up his own Type 03 rifle from where he had left it in the rack, lashed to one of the equipment cases. He had wanted the more visceral, emotional impact of the pistol when he had threatened the Customs officers. Pistols have a certain curious mystique in the Arab world, he suspected largely due to the likes of Saddam Hussein and dozens of other Arab dictators. Rifles were for fighting. But pistols were for executions. Many Arabs, even those who had never lived under such a regime, feared pistols more than the more powerful rifles.

  Teams of four men had already secured the entrances and exits to the cargo terminal by the time Esfandiari reached the floor. Jahangir already had the last ten ready to head out toward the main terminal and the control tower.

  Esfandiari joined them, just as Jahangir gave the word. The double doors leading to the skywalk between the cargo terminal and the control tower crashed open under a black leather boot, and then the soldiers were rushing through.

  There was no security on the skywalk; apparently the Khadarkis had decided that there was no reason to expect a terrorist to try to come in through the cargo terminal. There were two guards at the entrance to the control tower, one fat one and one short, scrawny one, both in the dark green uniforms of the Khadarkhi Army, carrying their M16s slung over their shoulders. As soon as the men in unmarked khaki fatigues burst into the hallway, their Type 03s leveled at the guards, both sets of eyes got wide, and hands were immediately raised, in both cases with the M16s still dangling from their slings. That was when Esfandiari noticed that both rifles were unloaded.

  “Secure them,” Esfandiari ordered. Two of his men quickly put the two guards on their faces on the floor, ripping their rifles away and slinging them. Meanwhile, Esfandiari took the lead, bounding up the stairs toward the top of the control tower.

  The air traffic controllers still had no idea what was happening. They were bent over their consoles, intent on their radios and computer screens. Only when Esfandiari stepped up next to one of them and spoke did any of them actually appear to notice that they were no longer alone in the tower.

  “These two aircraft now have priority,” Esfandiari said, putting a piece of paper with two flight numbers written on it on the console next to the man in front of him. The controller started, glancing up to see Esfandiari looming over him. Just in case, he had slung his rifle and drawn the Makarov again. The message was not lost on the controller, whose eyes widened before he nodded vigorously, reaching for the paper.

  Esfandiari stayed by the man’s side while the next two Airbus cargo planes landed and taxied to the front of the terminal. Then, leaving the control tower in Jahangir’s able hands, he headed back downstairs to meet the rest of his men.

  ***

  Transportation into Khadarkh City was easy; the Khadarkhi Army might have been lazy and incompetent, but they were well equipped, especially since King Abdullah al Qays had started cozying up to the Saudi apostates almost as soon as his father had died. Esfandiari, along with Vahid Farroukhshad’s platoon, had simply climbed into the armored JLTVs stationed at the entrance to the airport and driven away.

  Behind them, shots rang out as Jahangir’s men began executing the airport guards.

  It was a quick drive into the city. While the Khadarkhi Army had no real combat experience, having sat out the fights in Syria and Yemen where both Iran and Saudi Arabia had blooded their own elite forces, though often in disguise—not unlike this operation—they had enough of a high-profile presence on the island itself that the civilian vehicles quickly got out of the way when they saw the big, black-painted armored vehicles roaring down the road in their rear-view mirrors. It took only a matter of minutes to reach their target house, minutes in which Esfandiari could be reasonably certain that the alarm still had not been raised. They had taken the airport too quickly.

  General Ali ibn Ahmadi had been the old king’s chief of staff, and had continued in the role with the rise of King Abdullah. The young king had at least been smart enough not to change things up too much when he’d taken the throne. Esfandiari was hoping that that would make his job that much easier, given the old king’s policies, which ibn Ahmadi had enforced willingly enough, according to intelligence.

  Ali’s house was a four-story mansion, with balconies at each story and several levels of peaked, red-tile roof above the arched windows and fluted columns. The white faux marble of the façade was chased with gilt. The general did not live poorly.

  The guards at his gate looked up lazily as the Army JLTVs pulled up in front, apparently not even especially curious as to why a convoy was arriving at the general’s residence mid-morning, unannounced. Their bored expressions turned to alarm when Esfandiari and his men piled out. Unmarked khaki uniforms and Chinese rifles did not fit with Khadarkhi Army vehicles. But by the time it registered that something was wrong, they were already being covered by three muzzles apiece, and any thought of resistance was immediately squashed.

  While several of Farroukhshad’s men secured the outer guards, and took up their positions at the gate, Esfandiari and Farroukhshad led the remainder into the courtyard.

  Surprisingly, one of the guards at the door inside was a brave man. He shouted the alarm and swung his M16 off his shoulder. Esfandiari whipped his own rifle to his shoulder and shot him. Pahlavi, Farroukhshad’s point man, poured a long burst into the guard’s chest at the same moment. The man crumpled to the stone steps, blood soaking his dark green uniform and spattering against the white stone tile behind him.

  The dead man’s companion had no desire to die a hero. He tossed his rifle on the steps with a crash, raised his hands, and surrendered.

  Esfandiari strode through the double doors, four more of his men flanking him. The entryway to General Ali’s mansion was even more ornate than t
he exterior, with gilt columns holding up the vaulted ceiling and expensive tile on the floors. Heavy curtains hung over the windows, to keep the heat of the sun out during the middle of the day.

  General Ali appeared at the top of the central staircase. He was a short man, going bald, his remaining hair silver but his mustache still pitch-black. He was developing a paunch, presently mostly uncovered as he was wearing only green trousers and a white t-shirt. He had a Beretta 92 in his hand.

  “General Ali,” Esfandiari said, stopping at the base of the stairs, “I have need of your authority. If you cooperate, you will not be harmed. Your family will remain unmolested. If you resist, I will be forced to kill you and do the rest of this the hard way.”

  Ali stared at him for a moment, his face stony, his dark eyes inscrutable. The general’s dossier was sketchy before he had come to serve the Khadarkhi royal house. But there was a distinct possibility that he had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, most of a lifetime ago. Looking into the old man’s eyes, Esfandiari believed it. This man was a world away from the soft-bodied amateurs that his men had already gunned down.

  “You are Qods Force?” Ali asked.

  “We are independent contractors, as the Americans would say,” Esfandiari lied. “A simple yes or no, General. That is all I require.”

  “What do you need of me?” Ali asked. He still had not put the Beretta down, but he had not raised it, either. “You seem to have the situation well in hand.”

  “As I said, I need your authority,” Esfandiari said. “I need you to order the garrison at the Citadel to stand down and surrender. It will save many lives, General.”

  Ali studied him a moment longer, then nodded wearily. He reversed his pistol in his grip and held it out.

  Esfandiari mounted the steps and accepted the weapon. “Thank you, General,” he said. He could have some respect for this man, regardless of the fact that he served a vacillating king who drifted back and forth between the Islamic Republic and the apostates, depending on how the wind blew. “We have time for you to get dressed. Transportation is waiting outside.”