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

  No, if we can take out the Green Shirt leadership, and clear out most of the Green Shirts themselves, we might be able to stabilize the situation before bigger forces get involved. Like the Venezuelans.

  But first they’d have to break contact with the incoming force.

  The gunfire had mostly died down to nothing. The Green Shirts who had been assaulting Galán’s farm—and who had survived—had retreated into the jungle on the far side of the cornfields. Either that, or they were playing possum.

  “Quintana, can you get your boys up onto the eastern edge of the cornfields to hold security? We need to get the women and children out of harm’s way.” He kept his tone respectful, and made his op order into a request. There was no reason to antagonize the former deputy police chief, especially after his bristling in the back of the truck.

  Quintana nodded. “How are you going to transport them?”

  Brannigan frowned. He hadn’t thought about that. He’d rather keep the Blackhearts mobile and on the offensive, but somebody was going to have to drive the vehicles. “We’ll see if any of the women can drive, or if there are older teenagers who can handle it. I’d rather keep the shooters where they can fight.”

  Quintana thought about that for a moment, then nodded. It made sense. They were still outnumbered and outgunned. Splitting off shooters to recruit more shooters was one thing. Splitting them off to escort noncombatants—as honorable a task as that was—would only serve to weaken the resistance in the short run.

  He barked at his policemen, and started pointing up and to the east. The half-dozen men they’d managed to gather before things had gotten urgent picked up the Galils, M16s, and a couple of Uzis that they’d pulled from Pacheco’s arms cache, and headed up through the cornfields.

  Brannigan watched them go, noticing that they weren’t moving in much of a formation, or very carefully. They clearly thought that the enemy had been routed, so they were just moving to take a post. He almost said something, but a glance at Quintana convinced him to hold his peace until something happened. Colombia had its own version of machismo, and he’d already stepped on the pudgy man’s toes quite a bit that night.

  He keyed his radio. “Angry Ragnar, Kodiak. See if you can push out and set security up there, and start the women and kids moving down to us. We’ll get them on the trucks and get them out of here.”

  “Roger. They’ll be moving down shortly.”

  ***

  “Stop here.”

  The driver looked over at Galvez with some surprise. “But Commandante, they are still almost a kilometer away. We have not even met up with the rest of our men yet.”

  “I know. But the road is at the base of the hill. I do not want to take our entire force in to try to assault uphill toward the enemy.” Galvez didn’t have a lot of infantry experience. He was good at murdering people and setting off bombs. Fighting out in the countryside like this was not his preferred way to make a revolution. But he wasn’t clueless, either. He knew the value of using the terrain, and that it was easier to attack downhill—or across relatively flat ground—than it was to struggle uphill while taking fire from above.

  He’d had a couple of experiences with that when he’d fought alongside the FARC, many years before. Some more recent experience had been had alongside some of the more politically palatable cartels in Mexico.

  CJNG might not be proper socialists, but they were good at the combat side of things, and they were hurting the capitalist Americans and their Mexican puppets. That made it worthwhile to work with them from time to time. They hadn’t needed to know his real name, or what he stood for.

  The column stopped, bunching up on the road, and Galvez got out, waving at the others to follow. He didn’t have quite the numbers he would have preferred—there had only ever been a couple hundred Green Shirts to begin with, and the unexpected resistance had killed or maimed at least fifty already—but he still should have enough to sweep the tiny Galán farm.

  He had them where he wanted them, now. The farm might be up on a hill, but there were few ways in or out. He held up a hand to stop the driver as he got out. “Not everyone is going. I want about thirty of us up on the ridge. The rest stay with the trucks and move out on the road to cut them off.” The mountains to the south of the farm were steep and treacherous, the thick jungle making them even worse. They would have a hard time retreating without the use of the road. He hoped to catch them between the hammer and the anvil—the Green Shirts with the trucks would shut off their escape, while his assault force would drive along the top of the ridge and descend on the farmhouse from above. Then, hopefully, this would all be over, and he could salvage his plans. Ballesteros’s death had already done some serious damage, but with Clemente out of the way, Galvez could potentially become the undisputed Leader of the Revolution much more quickly.

  “Move out!”

  ***

  Wade stepped outside, hardly sparing a glance for the pockmarked walls, horrifically chewed up by sustained machinegun fire. Galán was going to need to do some serious repairs when this was all over.

  Presuming he and his family survived.

  He swept the top terrace, just in case any of the Green Shirts had lingered, hunkered down behind the terrace itself where they could pop up and start shooting once the Blackhearts and their allies thought they were safe. But the ground around the house was clear, aside from downed cornstalks that had been splintered and shredded by bullets. A few flames guttered among the drier leaves, where tracers had punched through, or bounced off the terrace itself to burn on the fallen vegetation. Fortunately, everything was still too damp for there to be much of a wildfire risk. Wade stomped on the embers he could see, anyway.

  He shifted his position to the corner of the house, watching the jungle to the east, where the retreating Green Shirts had disappeared. One of them sprawled between the edge of the cornfield and the treeline, staring sightlessly at the night sky above. Wade had gotten him with a running snap shot, tearing through his center mass even as he’d dashed toward the jungle.

  He was kind of proud of that shot.

  Hank was ushering the women and children out, with Fuentes’s help. Burgess had quietly moved up the slope behind the house, and was set in behind a forked tree, his rifle laid in the fork, watching the jungle below them.

  “Angry Ragnar, Woodsrunner. Probably best to send the civvies down the west edge of the fields. We’ll stay in place and provide overwatch.”

  “Roger.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hank. “You hear that, kid?”

  If the former captain rankled at the term “kid,” he kept it to himself. “Yeah. I heard.” He was already motioning Señora Galán toward the treeline. “Makes sense. Keep ‘em out of the open.”

  Wade had already turned back toward the diffuse glow that marked the incoming vehicles. He didn’t say anything in reply to Hank’s comment. It didn’t need a reply.

  Movement nearby drew his attention, and he turned to see Lara moving down into the cornfield. “What are you doing?” Given Lara’s importance to the resistance movement they were building, Wade might have been somewhat more diplomatic, but he’d never figured he’d been hired for his diplomatic skill. And under the circumstances, he had no qualms about barking at the “important” people if they were doing something stupid.

  Lara ignored him, but clambered down toward the third terrace down, crouching in a gap in the cornstalks, where one of the Green Shirts had popped up during those last few minutes of the firefight only to take a bullet through the teeth from Burgess. He rummaged around for a moment, then started climbing back up, an AK-47 and chest rig in his hands. He was huffing a little bit when he knelt beside Wade. “Show me how to use this.”

  Wade glanced at him skeptically. This was hardly the time or the place for basic marksmanship training. But at the same time, he had to admire the old guy’s guts. He let his Galil hang on its sling, the magazine hooked on his knee, the muzzle pointing at the dirt next to him, and reache
d out to take the old Kalashnikov. He quickly pulled the magazine, then brass-checked the chamber. The mag felt about half full, and there was a round in the chamber. He flipped the selector lever back up to “safe”—also blocking the charging handle in the process—and started to point.

  “Lever up is safe, middle is auto, all the way down is semi—that means one shot per trigger pull. Don’t use auto, you’ll spray rounds all over the place, won’t hit much, and might just accidentally shoot one of us in the back. Front sight’s here, rear sight’s here. Put that post into this slot, and put the post on the target. You can’t see that well in the dark, so there’s going to be some dumb luck involved. Never point it at anyone you don’t want to shoot. So, watch that you don’t sweep any of us with the muzzle. You’ve got a limited amount of ammo, so only shoot when you have to. Make sure you pull the buttstock—that’s this part—all the way back into your shoulder pocket, here.” He jabbed his fingers into Lara’s shoulder. The older man flinched a little, but he nodded his understanding. “That’s going to help mitigate the recoil and let you keep control of the rifle. Lean into it.” He thought for a second. “The AK doesn’t have a bolt hold-open.” When he got a blank look, he elaborated. “Some rifles will lock the bolt to the rear when the magazine is empty. The AK doesn’t do that—it’ll just go ‘click.’ Then you have to reload.” He tapped the lever at the back of the magazine well. “Push this lever, rock the mag out like this.” He demonstrated. “Then put the new one in in the opposite direction.” He pulled the magazine back until it clicked into place. Then he handed the rifle back. “Remember. Be careful where you point it, keep your finger off the trigger unless you’re trying to kill somebody, and let us do most of the fighting. You’re too important to get smoked playing hero.”

  Lara nodded as he struggled to get the chest rig on. “I cannot just sit by. We have all done that too much lately.”

  “Yeah, well.” Wade didn’t feel like having that conversation. He couldn’t disagree, but what small part of him did understand the need for diplomacy was telling him to keep his opinion behind his teeth. If more people stood up to the tyrants, terrorists, and criminals who terrorized them, there might be less need for people like the Blackhearts.

  Of course, that meant less work and less money, so it was kind of a tossup to him.

  A glance down the hill confirmed that the headlights were getting closer. “Woodsrunner, Angry Ragnar. You might want to get those civvies moving with a quickness. We’re going to have company really soon.”

  “They’re in a hurry; the last ones are almost down to the trucks. We’re moving up to join you.” Flanagan clearly didn’t want to be stuck back in the woods on babysitting duty when the balloon went up. Wade grinned fiercely. Flanagan was a quiet one, but he was a killer, and Wade truly appreciated that.

  He moved up to the edge of the terrace and got down in the prone, aiming his weapon in toward the road. The terrace would provide him some cover when the bad guys showed up. He flipped his selector to “R” and waited as the lights got closer.

  ***

  The phone woke Santelli out of a disturbingly light doze. He squinted at the clock and realized that he was getting to the age where he really probably should get glasses. Then, as the fact that it was just past 0200 registered through the fog in his brain, he snatched at the phone. Melissa turned over, her eyes opening in the dark, and murmured, “What is it?”

  “Nothing, baby.” He hit the “answer” button as he swung out of bed, hoping and praying that he was right, but without holding out a whole lot of hope. A call at that hour probably wasn’t good news, not when the team was in the field. He hadn’t even really registered the number on the screen, he’d been so desperate to get a handle on the situation, even though there was nothing he could really do from five thousand miles away.

  “What is it?” He stepped out of the bedroom and shut the door, even as Melissa sat up in bed. He caught a glimpse of the worried look on her face in the moonlight filtering through the window.

  “Carlo, sorry to wake you up, but we might have to move on this quick.” It was Mark Van Zandt.

  Santelli’s blood ran cold. “What happened? Is anybody hit?”

  It took Van Zandt a second to answer, and when he did, it was with a tone of some chagrin. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. As far as I know, everybody’s still in one piece.” He blew out a breath, the sound rasping in Santelli’s phone speaker. “Sorry. Didn’t even think about that.”

  Santelli bit back a curse. The fact that Van Zandt hadn’t thought of that possibility spoke volumes about the man and how separated he’d long been from real operations, even as the Blackhearts’ main facilitator.

  “Anyway, the client himself just called me, screaming about the team going off the reservation and off-mission. Said that they’ve violated the ROE—not that I ever got any formal ROE, even if there could be any such thing for a deniable op like this—and that they’ve disrupted the whole plan.

  “Carlo, I think we’ve got him. He gave a couple things away in that conversation. I’ve already got a plane heading up to Boston. It should get there in an hour. I need you on it. Abernathy’s going to meet us in Arlington.”

  Santelli rubbed his gritty eyes. “Sir, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. I just woke up, and my brain’s been worn out worrying about the team.” Which suggests that I really shouldn’t let John retire me. Dammit.

  “I’ll explain in person, Carlo. But this guy’s threatened to blackmail your team and my office over this. Except we just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. Get down here. I think we can have him off the team’s backs by lunchtime.”

  Chapter 21

  Bianco had taken up a new position, this time closer to the east side of the Galán farm, down in the prone behind his Negev. He was on the side of the road, most of his body cocked off into the lower ground below, with the machinegun’s bipods up on the road itself. He was still wrestling with the PVS-14s. The ProTec helmet didn’t fit his big head all that well, and so he was having a devil of a time getting the NVGs to line up right. He had to tilt his head well back to be able to see, and it was putting a crick in his neck.

  The headlights were still around the bend. He’d more than half expected them to have come around already, but maybe they were being cautious. Or maybe his own perception of time was getting skewed by the adrenaline and the stress of waiting for the first rounds to crack off.

  His hands were sweating inside his gloves. He could feel it. His heart rate was up, and his mouth was dry. Every damned time. He knew that it would pass once the bullets started flying. It usually did. But he was always scared just before a fight.

  Sometimes it spilled over into the fight itself. He still remembered that ditch in Chad, when he’d been caught dead to rights by the bad guys. He’d frozen, just for a few seconds. It still haunted him. He didn’t know if the rest of the Blackhearts had noticed—it had been the middle of a firefight, and he’d gotten back up and into the fight. But he owed his life not to his own action, but to Wade, who had shot the man who was about to shoot him.

  Never again. He clenched his gloved fist, as if he could force it to stop sweating, and readjusted his position behind the gun. The headlights were coming, and he forced his breathing into a low, steady rhythm. Sure, he was scared. But he’d never let that make him freeze again. Even if it meant he’d have to hold the line and die.

  He didn’t even think about the old aphorism, “Courage is being scared and saddling up anyway.” He just knew that he was going to be a better man, a better warrior, and he was never going to let his brother Blackhearts down again.

  The glow ahead brightened as the lead vehicle started to come around the curve. He squinted through his NVGs, trying to make out details and positively identify the enemy. He pulled the buttstock back into his shoulder and his finger slipped inside the trigger guard.

  He really wished that they had some explosives. Pacheco had said that he had some, but
all Bianco had seen had been weapons, gear, and ammo. But even if they’d had the kind of explosives they could have turned into IEDs, there had hardly been time to set them in.

  The headlights were right in his face, whiting out his NVGs. He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure they were the bad guys. If there were up-gunners on the trucks, they were hidden behind the glare.

  Hesitation kills. He fought the urge to readjust—he was right in the cone of light from the headlights, and if he moved at the wrong time, and those were gun trucks with the gunners on alert, movement would only get him killed. But at the same time, he didn’t want to jump the gun and murder a bunch of farmers.

  Then the lead truck bounced over a rock, momentarily moving the headlights away, and he caught a glimpse of the man up on the PKM in the back. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  The Negev’s rate of fire was about the same as the M-249 SAW that Bianco had learned inside and out during his years in the Marine Corps. It all felt perfectly familiar, as he walked the tracers up the hood and toward the up-gunner.

  One of the headlights shattered, and suddenly he could see better, but the driver had reacted faster than he’d expected, wrenching the wheel over and flooring the accelerator, diving off the road and into the jungle. The gunner was almost thrown clear, but still survived, as the truck lurched to a stop behind the trees.

  The next vehicle back had already stopped, and the gunner opened fire, spraying the trees and the side of the road with bullets. Green tracers spat through the foliage and kicked dirt and rocks off the road itself, coming uncomfortably close to Bianco’s position. He ducked, burying his face in the dirt, as the incoming rounds flew overhead with painful snaps and smashed and shredded the vegetation around him.