War to the Knife (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 9) Read online

  Word must be getting out. There are scary monsters making Green Shirts disappear in the jungle.

  He turned back to Fuentes, Lara, Galán, and the women and kids who had somehow all crammed themselves into the back rooms of the little house, and had now come out curiously to see what was happening. “Get everyone down on the floor, and have the kids cover their ears. This is gonna get loud.” He started toward the back, but there were too many people. How had they gotten two rather large families into this tiny hovel? “Is there a back door?”

  Fuentes asked Galán, and the little farmer pointed. “There is. It leads to the barn out back.” The older farmer looked a little uncertain. “That’s mostly sheet metal, though. Will it protect them from gunfire?”

  “No, it won’t.” Wade looked around the tiny cinderblock house again. Cinderblock wasn’t bulletproof, either, as several Rangers he’d known had found out the hard way in Iraq. But it was better than sheet metal. And he didn’t think that trying to escape and evade in the jungle at night with a bunch of women and kids was going to be a recipe for survival. “Okay, then, get everybody down on the floor. We’re going to have to defend this place.” He turned back to the window, where Burgess was crouched so that he could just expose his weapon at the corner. The Green Shirts were getting closer, but still holding their fire and advancing cautiously. Wade brought his Galil up and wished that he’d had time to knock a murder hole in the wall down by the floor.

  I hate defense. Hurry up, Colonel.

  ***

  The first house was deeper inside the city than Brannigan was all that comfortable with. There didn’t seem to be many Green Shirt patrols on the streets—Quintana had explained that the Green Shirts had murdered a storeowner’s wife in the street before hanging him from a lamppost for talking to the National Army and the Americans, presumably to spread enough terror through the city that they could spare the manpower to go out and patrol the hinterlands more aggressively—but the deeper they got into town, the more likely it became that they would be spotted. Especially since the streets were all but completely deserted. It seemed like the Green Shirts’ terror tactics were more successful than anyone might have hoped.

  They’d moved on foot, even as Pacheco had slipped out of town to get the truck—and the deadly cargo in the two crates in the back. The police that Quintana was going to recruit probably had some of their own issue weapons, but even under the kind of regime the Green Shirts had put in place, regular police didn’t carry infantry weapons.

  Of course, that also meant that most of these policemen weren’t going to be any great infantrymen, either. But you work with what you’ve got, especially in irregular warfare.

  Quintana waved at the Blackhearts to stay in the alley, and stepped out onto the street. He was in uniform—the San Tabal police had maintained their police uniforms, differentiating themselves from the Green Shirts who were the real enforcement arm of the new state—and he potentially had an excuse for being out and about. The Blackhearts, in their green tiger stripes and carrying Galils, wouldn’t.

  Of course, they had to trust Quintana. The door he had pointed out on the way was about halfway down the block, and there were no other alleys or even gaps between the houses between the darkened alley where Brannigan and Jenkins waited in the shadows.

  Quintana walked casually up the street, even though it was about four in the morning. Brannigan stayed back in the shadows, but close enough to the street that he could follow their contact and cover him, if need be.

  Or shoot him, if that became necessary.

  Quintana knocked on the door. After a moment, he spoke in Spanish, apparently in response to a query from inside. Then the door opened, and he disappeared into the house.

  “I don’t like this, Colonel.” Jenkins hadn’t watched the byplay—he was still watching the alley itself, in case the Green Shirts wandered through. “He’s in there with nobody to watch him, and he knows exactly where we’re hiding.”

  “I know.” Brannigan kept his eyes on the house Quintana had disappeared into. “Which is why we’re going to di di mau out of here if anything looks off. And I made sure Quintana understood that, too.” He’d framed it more as a contingency plan, but he also hadn’t told the former deputy police chief where they might be going if they faded into the night. They’d have to put the pieces back together afterward if it came to that.

  They waited in silence. They didn’t have comms with Quintana, either, and the only signal they’d have if the policeman he was trying to recruit turned on them would be when the shooting started, or Quintana busted out of the house and ran for it.

  Then a Green Shirt patrol appeared around the corner, just up the street from where Quintana was trying to argue one of his fellow cops into rebelling.

  Brannigan tensed, his rifle coming up fractionally, his finger hovering near the trigger. That was fast. Quintana must have called his new bosses right after he entered the house.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and he lowered the muzzle. There were only three of them. And they weren’t acting like they were on a hit. They sauntered down the street, chatting in low Spanish, one of them with his AK-47 slung. One of the other two had his FNC dangling loosely from his right hand, and the third had an M16 with all the bluing rubbed off carried over his shoulder by the barrel.

  Brannigan eased back from the street, moving deeper into the shadows. Quintana hadn’t sold them out. This was just bad timing. He didn’t think even the Green Shirts, as savagely amateurish as they might be, would try to raid a potential rebel house with only three men.

  He started to scan the adjacent rooftops, and he even circled around to the other side of the alley, where he couldn’t see the patrol or the door Quintana had entered anymore, but he could see the other end of the street, and the intersection just beyond. No more foot mobiles. No gun trucks. The streets were as deserted as ever, except for those three.

  Pure, dumb luck.

  Now, just so long as Quintana doesn’t decide to come out right now.

  Even as he thought it, Brannigan knew they didn’t have time for this. Especially not with Wade, Burgess, and—even as he thought it, he flinched a little—his own son pinned down with their best hope for a new leader to keep San Tabal from turning into a bloodbath. They had to move, and they had to move quickly.

  But could he afford to get into a gunfight in central San Tabal? Even if the majority of the Green Shirts were out in the hills, there would still be enough of them in town to overwhelm two or three shooters, and they had to have loyalists on the police force. Quintana wouldn’t be so careful as to who he’d picked out to contact otherwise.

  Still, he crouched down in the alley, easing his Galil’s selector lever to “R,” and waited for the Green Shirts to come back into view. They might not have any choice.

  He heard a door open. A voice called out in Spanish, and Quintana answered imperiously. Jenkins glanced toward the street, but neither Blackheart could see what was going on. Brannigan moved back to his previous vantage point, while pointing back down the alley with a stabbing finger. There were only two of them. Jenkins needed to be watching their six.

  Easing one eye around the corner, he spotted the Green Shirts, their weapons now held somewhat more readily, facing Quintana and a skinny, short man, who was also wearing a police uniform, though it looked like he’d just put it on. His collar was still open, and his shirt was partially untucked under his duty belt. Quintana was arguing with one of the Green Shirts, his head held high and radiating every bit of officious self-importance he could muster.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the Green Shirts were buying it. They were still the powers that be in San Tabal, and the police force were supposed to be their whipping boys. Brannigan couldn’t really see facial expressions, but their body language was simultaneously confident and threatening. The one with the AK pointed toward the door and barked something in Spanish, while the man with the FNC reached for what must have been a radio. B
rannigan lifted his rifle, careful to keep the movement smooth and relatively slow, trying to avoid attracting their eye with sudden movement.

  The Green Shirts, however, were so focused on Quintana and the other policeman that they weren’t paying any attention to their flanks. Or to the covered patio on the roof of the policeman’s house.

  Brannigan didn’t see who threw it, but he saw the man with the FNC take a brick to the face from about five yards away. He didn’t even make a sound but just collapsed like a sack of dirt, knocked cold. And then Quintana and his companion moved.

  “On me.” Brannigan was already moving, even as Quintana and the other policeman grappled with the two remaining Green Shirts. Brannigan was somewhat surprised that a shot hadn’t been fired yet, even though Quintana and the other man had gone for the weapons first. He was pretty sure that trigger discipline wasn’t a concern to the Communist thugs, so it was a minor miracle that one of them hadn’t cranked off a round or a burst as they struggled for control of the weapons. Quintana had seized the AK, trying to wrench it up and out of the Green Shirt’s hands. The other man had tackled his target, driving into his midsection and knocking both of them on top of the unconscious man, the M16 pinned between the two of them.

  Brannigan got to Quintana and the man with the AK first, even as they turned away, still wrestling for the rifle. Slinging his Galil behind him, he stepped in quickly, wrapped one beefy arm around the Green Shirt’s neck, and bore down on the back of his skull with the other, pressing the V of his upper and lower arm together on either side of the man’s neck. The pressure mounted, cutting off the blood flow to the Green Shirt’s brain, and he was unconscious in seconds.

  Jenkins was standing over the other policeman and the Green Shirt with the M16, his rifle leveled, trying to get a shot.

  “No shooting!” Brannigan hissed in some horror. If Jenkins shot the man, or worse, missed and shot the cop…

  Jenkins snatched his finger off the trigger, as if he’d just then realized that firing a shot under these circumstances was going to bring half the city down on their heads. He stepped in, reversed the rifle, and in an eerie echo of what Pacheco had done before, he buttstroked the struggling Green Shirt in the head.

  At least, he tried to. The buttstock skittered off the side of the man’s skull, tearing skin and ripping off part of his ear. Blood welled from the wound, and the Green Shirt started to cry out, but the shock had given the policeman enough of an advantage that he got one hand on the M16 before rearing up and landing a vicious elbow strike to the Communist fighter’s jaw.

  The Green Shirt’s head bounced, and he stopped struggling. He was still moving, so he was still alive, but he was dazed enough that the cop was able to rip the rifle from his suddenly slack fingers and stood up.

  “We need to get these three secured and hidden and get moving,” Brannigan told Quintana. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I know.” Quintana looked up and down the street, then pointed. “That might be their vehicle up there. The Green Shirts are lazy. They don’t like to patrol on foot for very far. We can stuff them in the back and hide the vehicle in the jungle on the way to the rendezvous point.” He turned to the cop, and spoke quickly, pointing up toward the hills and the road where Pacheco was taking the truck with the weapons. The cop nodded, pulling his handcuffs out of his belt and flipping the stunned Green Shirt onto his back.

  Quintana went to work on the one Brannigan had choked out, as Jenkins held security and Brannigan moved to the man who’d been hit in the head with a brick. A glance up at the balcony showed him a small head peering over the low wall, another brick held ready to throw. One of the cop’s kids, more than likely.

  It was a universal. Boys everywhere wanted to be resistance fighters. Few ever got the opportunity.

  He checked the unconscious man’s pulse. He was still bleeding from a cut on his forehead and what might very well be a broken nose. He had a pulse, though it was slow and thready. He was alive, but he wasn’t in great shape. He’d probably be unconscious for quite some time. A concussion was a certainty.

  Brannigan pulled a length of 550 cord out of his chest rig and tied the man’s hands after dragging the FNC rifle out of reach anyway. Best not to take chances.

  “George, you’re on security.” He hefted the unconscious Green Shirt into a fireman’s carry, even as Quintana and the other cop started dragging their prisoners toward the vehicle, an old VW van.

  It took seconds to get the incapacitated fighters into the back, check their bonds, and find the keys. Then the cop started the van and rolled out, waving to Quintana. He’d ditch the van and meet with Pacheco.

  Provided he didn’t turn on them. It was doubtful, given what had just happened, but Brannigan was long past trusting anyone in a situation like this.

  “Come on.” Quintana kept going up the street. “We have a few more to find. We should be able to speed things up after this next house—both brothers are policemen, and they both live in the same house.” He glanced up at Brannigan. “And I trust them more than I do Abalos.”

  “Let’s go, then. We’re running out of time.” He tried not to think too much about Hank as they hustled up the street.

  Chapter 19

  The gun trucks parked at the entrance to Ballesteros’s house weren’t in the greatest of shape anymore—Curtis was a good machinegunner, but machineguns aren’t precision instruments. Most of the glass had been shattered and the driver’s side was riddled with bullet holes. More rounds had punched into the bed, and the PKM mounted on top of the cab had taken a single round to the buttstock, shattering the wood and making it more than a little uncomfortable to shoot.

  Curtis, currently in the back, was still bemoaning the damage to the gun. “I mean, we need all the firepower we can get, but I can’t shoot that, not now!”

  “Why not?” Flanagan saw Bianco wince in the rear-view mirror even as the words left his mouth. But it was too late.

  “Can you imagine what that splintered buttstock would do to this face under sustained recoil?” Curtis managed to sound indignant even over the roar of the wind and the engine. “Do you have any idea how many women would be devastated at the damage to such a national treasure?”

  Flanagan just rolled his eyes and kept driving. Javakhishvili didn’t want to let it go, though. “Dude, chicks dig scars.”

  “Some chicks dig scars.” Curtis wagged a finger as if he were giving a lecture. “Not as many do these days. And those who do dig scars aren’t necessarily turned off by a lack of scars. So, scarring up this handsome face will take more of the chicks out of the equation than will potentially be added.” He folded his heavily-muscled arms in front of his chest. “It’s simple math.”

  Flanagan knew better than to get involved in that conversation. Even less so when he thought he could hear gunfire over the noise the wind was making whistling through the remains of the windshield.

  He sped up, hurtling along the narrow mountain road toward the Galán farm, where Wade and the others were under siege.

  ***

  The women and children were down flat on the floor, and Galán had turned off the light. The advancing Green Shirts had noticed, too, and they’d gotten down and disappeared into the corn as soon as the house went dark. Wade, Burgess, and Hank dropped their PVS-14s and scanned the fields for their enemies. Wade really wished that he had an ATPIAL infrared laser right then, but wish in one hand…

  For a long moment, the fields below were still, the only sign of the Green Shirts being the gunners on the two trucks on the side of the road. They were definitely getting more cautious.

  Wade swept the cornfield with his muzzle, searching intently for any movement. He was beyond giving a damn about who engaged first—if he saw overhead movement in the corn, he was going to engage. He knew the best way to do it, too. The Rhodesians had developed “cover shooting” as a combination of a counter-ambush tactic and recon by fire, a pattern of finding likely bits of concealment in the
bush when you knew that there were bad guys close and at the very least making anyone behind that concealment extremely uncomfortable. He’d aim low, below where he thought the movement was coming from. Most shots missed high, so the Rhodies had adjusted accordingly.

  But the foot mobiles didn’t show themselves first, not even by movement. The gunners changed the equation.

  Both truck-mounted machineguns opened fire at the same time, their muzzle flashes flickering in the dark and tracers spewing up the hillside toward the house. The first rounds went high, but the gunners walked them down on target, and the three Blackhearts went flat as bullets punched through the window glass and chewed through the cinder block and plaster. Pulverized concrete, plaster, and bits of hot, spent lead and copper rained down on them as they tried to get as low to the floor as possible.

  Wade cursed as the battering continued, dredging up obscenities he hadn’t actually used in years. The Green Shirts might not have mortars, but the machinegun fire could keep them pinned in the tiny house until the foot mobiles could close in and toss grenades in the shattered windows, or just stick their muzzles inside and murder everyone that way.

  And lying there, pinned down, waiting to die, was not John Wade’s way.

  Worming his way across the floor, he bumped into Hank, who was huddled underneath the window, and reached up toward the doorknob. He snatched his hand back with a curse as a burst of machinegun fire punched ragged holes through the flimsy metal door, scattering hot fragments across his forearm.

  He gritted his teeth, then heaved himself up, grabbed the door handle, and yanked the door open. He could almost hear the gasp of fear behind him, but it wasn’t as if that door was providing any of them any protection as it was.