Marque and Reprisal (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 11) Read online

  Surface To Air

  “Kev! Up!” Wade had pivoted, bringing his MCX up as the second helo made a pass at the stern. Bullets smacked into steel and fiberglass around them, and both Blackhearts ducked, Curtis throwing himself flat just below the lip of the helipad.

  He rolled over onto his back as the bird went by, wrenching the EVOLYS around and sending a burst at the receding aircraft’s tail. He couldn’t tell whether he’d hit it or not.

  Levering himself to his feet, he hauled the EVOLYS up and searched for the helo. It was nose down, making tracks fast, banking off to the west, far astern of the yacht.

  I still might be able to hit it. He shifted to the aft rail, bracing the machinegun and tracking in on the fleeing helicopter. He squeezed off a burst, but his range was off. Red tracers arced just beneath the bird, which jinked hard to avoid the fire and dove even closer to the water, turning away from the Dream Empire and banking violently from side to side to avoid the gunfire.

  He fired one more burst, but between the helicopter’s motion, the widening range, and the yacht’s own rolling ride, he missed off to one side. Finally, with a blistering curse, he came off the gun.

  Wade clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll get another chance.” He nodded toward the north, where the remaining speedboats had now come about and were heading away from the yacht as fast as they could. “They got a nasty surprise, but if they really want this boat, I think they’ll be back.”

  BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS

  Marque and Reprisal

  Peter 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 2022 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, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  http://americanpraetorians.com

  Chapter 1

  The attack was swift, brutal, and completely unexpected.

  Carl Hild hardly noticed the roll of the deck beneath his feet as he headed below, toward his cabin. For the most part, he was just used to it, but he was also so thoroughly miserable that he probably wouldn’t have anyway. I never should have taken this gig.

  The money wasn’t bad. The job itself, though…

  Hild had been to just about every port in the world over the last twenty years. He’d sailed with all kinds of crews, from the good, to the bad, to the incompetent and depraved. None of them quite matched this nightmare.

  Not that the crew itself was bad. Even the captain, drunk though he was, knew his business and generally treated his subordinates fairly. Even the route wasn’t bad.

  No, it was the client.

  The MV Tonka Canyon wasn’t the biggest oceangoing cargo ship out there, and her cargoes often only just about broke even. This time, though, the container at the forefront of the hold was supposed to pay for the whole voyage by itself, and that was leaving aside the other stuff they’d taken on to fill the rest of the hold.

  It just didn’t feel worth it. The container had come with its own security detail and supervisor. And that was where the pain started.

  The supervisor, who had introduced herself as simply Ms. Schrute, had never been to sea before, and it showed. Her intermittent seasickness, though, hadn’t humbled her, or even kept her out of the way. Instead, it had apparently strengthened her determination to be underfoot every minute of every day, obnoxiously reminding them of the importance of the cargo, questioning every single decision made by the captain or the officer of the watch, and generally making every second of the voyage a study in misery. She knew nothing about how to sail a cargo ship, and yet she had to be a part of every single action and decision.

  They couldn’t get to Lisbon fast enough.

  He got to his cabin, still morosely brooding over how many days they still had at sea, when something made him stop dead.

  Hild might be miserable, but that hadn’t changed the fact that he was a professional. He’d been on too many ships, too many times across the ocean, not to quickly become attuned to every noise aboard the vessel. Sometimes realizing that something didn’t sound right might mean the difference between getting to port intact and becoming another statistic of ships lost at sea. Ocean voyages might not be as dangerous as they had been back in the early days, but the sea was still a dangerous bitch, and mechanical failures could happen to anyone.

  This sound was different. It resonated through the hull, like someone had just taken a jackhammer to the bulkhead.

  Tired as he was from his shift, it took Hild a moment to identify the sound. When he realized what he’d just heard, his blood ran cold.

  Gunfire.

  He froze in the hatchway leading into the cabin he shared with Ignacio Ybarra. Another burst of gunfire rang through the hull.

  He was a merchant sailor. He’d been in his share of bar fights, but that was hardly the same thing as gunfights. He didn’t know what to do. Even the piracy drills they’d run just after leaving port didn’t seem to fit the situation at the moment. The drills were all about keeping pirates off the ship. Whoever was shooting was already on board.

  Another hammering report, that sounded like it came from only one deck up, decided him. He ducked into the cabin, swung the hatch shut, and dogged it. Then he scrambled into his bunk and crammed himself into the corner, watching the hatchway and hoping that the pirates took out Schrute and her goons and left the rest of the ship alone.

  ***

  The short, wiry man’s dark eyes had looked on carnage and torture, had seen atrocities that would have made a serial killer blanch. The dead bodies lying on the deck, leaking blood out onto the steel, didn’t even merit a passing glance.

  He walked calmly down the ladderwell into the hold, passing two of the men in storm gray fatigues, maritime plate carriers, and helmets, their faces covered, black Vector R4 rifles in their gloved hands, as he approached the lone cargo container tied down to the deck, separated from the rest of the ship’s cargo by a space of about ten feet. Six more of the men in gray stood there, weapons in hand, covering the two still-living maritime security men and the woman, all three of them down on their knees on the deck. One of the security contractors was bleeding, dripping red fluid into a growing puddle of crimson in front of him, his head bent. The other was battered, bruised, and drooling a little. He was probably concussed.

  The man whom even his gray-clad subordinates only knew as El Salvaje stepped in front of the woman and stood there for a moment, silently, until she finally looked up. He pointed to the container. “Open it.”

  Her eyes were wide, but she was apparently still in some denial about the realities of the situation. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve picked the absolute wrong ship to try to hijack. Do you have any idea who owns that container? You’re going to be hunted down, no matter where you try to hide.”

  If El Salvaje had been a little more inclined to humor, he might have smiled. She hadn’t even tried the “if you go away now, no one will follow you” gambit. She’d just blustered.

  He let his rifle hang on its sling, drew his Star M-43, and shot the bleeding contractor through the head.

  The report rang through the hold, and the woman flinched violently as the man’s blood and brains spattered on the container behind them and he fell on his face. El Salvaje shifted the weapon toward the woman’s face. “Open it. Or we will kill you and open it anyway.”

  The woman was shaking, now. She nodded, the movement spasmodic, and two of the gray-clad pirates hauled her to her feet. With trembling fingers, she began to put in the code on the container’s cipher lock. She was shaking so badly that it took three tries, especially since El Salvaje still had his pistol pointed, unmoving, at her head.

  Finally, the cipher lock opened, and she stepped back. El Salvaje shot her in the head, a fine mist of blood spattering the container side as she crumpled to the deck. The other pirates had stepped back as soon as the lock had disengaged, knowing what was coming.

  The last contractor started at the pistol’s report. “Hey, what the—” He was cut off by another gunshot, and fell on his face, motionless.

  El Salvaje stayed where he was and motioned with the pistol toward the container doors. The pirate who had pushed the woman toward the doors hesitated, just for a moment, but when El Salvaje turned those cold, black eyes on him, he quickly stepped forward to pull the doors open.

  The short, dark murderer joined the pirate and peered into the container, holstering his pistol and drawing a flashlight to shine it around the inside of the container. He scanned the contents for a moment before nodding in satisfaction. “Close it up.” He turned on his heel. “Get the rest of the crew up on the deck.”

  ***

  Hild tried not to move or make a sound as someone rattled the hatch, then banged on it loudly. He did his utmost to stay absolutely still, a hole in the very atmosphere of the
ship.

  Whoever was out there hammered on the hatch again. He forced himself to hold his breath. It was ridiculous to think that anyone could hear his breathing through the steel hatch, but he tried it, anyway.

  A muffled voice sounded outside. Then he heard a pop, then a hiss. A moment later, that hiss got louder, and then a point of brilliant light burst through the hatch, just below the first of the dogs.

  He scrambled back, or he tried to. He was already up against the bulkhead. All he could do was watch as the torch burned through the hatch, until finally it was wrenched aside and tossed on the deck with a clang.

  Two men in gray, their faces covered beneath their helmets, pointed rifles at him. “Get out. Now.”

  For a fraction of a second, Hild considered trying to fight. That lasted about as long as it took for the thought to form. After hearing the gunfire echoing through the ship, he had no doubt that they’d shoot him dead in a heartbeat. Putting his hands up, he wormed his way out of his hidey hole and went with them, trying not to burn himself on the still-smoking bits of metal where the hatch had been attached as one of them let his weapon hang and reached out to grab him roughly and haul him through.

  Neither of the men in gray said a word as they shoved him roughly up onto the fantail, where he blinked in the sun as a gloved hand pushed him from behind and made him stumble. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the brightness, at which point he saw that the rest of the crew, minus the security contractors and Ms. Schrute, were lined up at the rail, their hands on their heads, facing out to sea. Half a dozen men in gray fatigues, combat gear, and helmets, with wicked-looking military rifles in their hands, stood behind and to one side of the crew.

  His captors shoved him hard again, and he staggered toward the rail. “Put your hands on your head.” He stumbled again as he tried to comply, and he was grabbed roughly by the back of the neck and propelled the rest of the way by main force, shoved between Rafe Munoz and Kit Harris. “Don’t move.”

  He wanted to look to either side, to see if the others were okay, and if they might have some consolation, some reassurance that they were going to get through this. They’d be hostages, he was sure, but the crews usually made it through, right?

  The sight of a speedboat coming from the Ro-Ro cargo ship just off the stern, loaded with men in coveralls, didn’t lift his spirits. That looked like a skeleton crew for a freighter, not more pirates. Why were they coming here?

  He tried to look over his shoulder, but he was suddenly prodded by the hard jab of a rifle muzzle. “Eyes front!”

  Hild strained his ears for anything that might tell him what was going to happen next. He suddenly found himself thinking about home. Even his ex-wife didn’t seem like such a bitch, right then. And to think, he’d been bitching and moaning about Schrute and her goons less than half an hour ago.

  The first shot startled him. He snapped his head around, just in time to see the captain go over the fantail and fall limply toward the ocean.

  Then the row of pirates behind them opened fire. He heard a thunderous chorus of hammering reports for just a split second before a fiery pain stabbed through his torso, and then he was falling.

  He was dead before he hit the water.

  ***

  “You think this is worth adding to the fleet?” The short, stumpy man spoke with a slight Afrikaner accent. He hadn’t bothered to cover his face; there was no need, with the crew having been disposed of.

  El Salvaje didn’t know for sure why most of these men saw fit to do that, since the crews were all expendable, regardless. No one was going to be left to report on any of them, no matter the target.

  “Do you have the men or equipment to offload that container?” El Salvaje studied the Afrikaner with hooded, dead eyes. The blond man looked away quickly.

  Any other man might have turned away from the other pirate in disgust, but El Salvaje had not survived jobs with cartels, the Venezuelan-backed FARC, or any number of other such groups around the world by relying on his own formidable reputation for his safety. He watched the Afrikaner until the pirate turned away to find some other task that needed doing.

  El Salvaje stood where he could keep his back to a bulkhead, and still see what needed to be watched, and thought. Taking this cargo would be a warning shot. He didn’t necessarily agree, but he wasn’t there to strategize for the fleet. That was Cain’s job. It was his fleet. El Salvaje’s job was to kill whoever Cain wanted killed, and collect his share of the loot, at least until it was time to disappear and move on again.

  Of course, the warning implicit in making this particular package disappear was probably superfluous, given what had gone down over the last month. But again, that wasn’t his problem.

  Behind the freighter, as the pirate crew brought it around toward the north, the sharks began to gather, ready to feast on the corpses still floating in the ship’s wake.

  Chapter 2

  “Dad? Looks like Uncle Hector’s here.”

  John Brannigan looked up from the table. Hank, leaner and shorter than his father by several inches, was peering out the door at the driveway, noticeably staying out of the light, off to one side, where a newcomer shouldn’t be able to see him. The boy had been an officer, but he’d learned. He should have, given the fact that his old man had been something of an infantry legend. Still. He’d learned even more since he’d left the Marine Corps and become a member of the secretive mercenary team that called itself Brannigan’s Blackhearts.

  Brannigan shut the ledger in front of him with a faint frown and got up to step around the table and move to the other window. Sure enough, that was Hector Chavez’s car pulling up the driveway. “That’s weird. Usually he calls ahead.”

  “Maybe the cell signal’s not working up here again.”

  “Wouldn’t that be a shame,” Brannigan growled. The only reason he had the infernal device in the first place was because of the Blackhearts. Otherwise, he would have been perfectly happy to go completely off grid up here.

  Thrusting his .45 into the back of his waistband, just in case, he opened the door and stepped out as the dark blue sedan came to a halt and the driver—it was Chavez, he could see clearly enough through the windshield to be sure of that—shut off the engine. Then the only sound was the wind whispering through the tops of the pines all around.

  Chavez opened the door and levered himself out, holding up his hands. “I know, I know. I didn’t call ahead.” He looked around at the shadows under the trees. “I think you’ll agree that it was probably better to leave this off the airwaves.”

  Brannigan raised an eyebrow at that, but he just waved the smaller man toward the house and turned to go back inside. It was a nice day, but if Chavez was that worried about surveillance, then they probably should head inside, just in case.

  Chavez was about a head shorter than Brannigan, but at the former Marine Colonel’s six-foot-five, that wasn’t that difficult. He had slimmed down since his retirement, just shy of getting stars, which had come shortly after Brannigan’s own somewhat unwilling departure from the Marine Corps, but that had also been necessitated by Chavez’s heart problems.

  Hank greeted his father’s old friend, then stepped back toward the rear of the cabin, unsure as to whether he should stay or not. “Stay put, Hank. This concerns you, too.” Chavez was slow to sit down, stretching as he looked around the small log house that Brannigan had built for his wife, now in her grave for several years. It was neat, but it was a military neatness, the result of long habit on the part of both father and son, without the homey touch that a woman would have brought. He glanced at Hank, but if he’d thought of something to say about that, he kept it to himself.

  Brannigan had been working outside most of the morning, and he and Chavez went way back, so he didn’t stand on ceremony. He went to the cupboard, pulled down a bottle of bourbon, poured two glasses, and shoved one across the table to Chavez as he sat down. It was early, but this was apparently a business visit, so he figured it was appropriate. And while Chavez was a pro, and wasn’t one to wear his feelings on his sleeve, something about his manner told Brannigan that this was going to be a doozy.