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

  There wasn’t a whole lot more to say after that. They’d have to wait for Cruz and Flanagan. But in the meantime, as they sipped the scalding coffee that Pacheco’s wife had brought in for them, their host started opening the equipment cases. They needed to be ready to roll as soon as the time came.

  Pacheco had amassed quite an arsenal. It couldn’t be legal—they’d all read up on Colombia’s strict gun laws before heading down there—but he was close enough to FARC/ELN territory, and probably had greased more than a few palms, not to mention wielded his Search Bloc history like a club, that plenty of the local authorities were probably turning a blind eye. Brannigan certainly hoped so.

  Most of the rifles were Galil SARs, the old standard weapon of the Ejército Nacional de Colombia’s infantry. The Colombians had transitioned to the newer Galil ACE or the bullpup IWI Tavor, but there were plenty of the older Israeli weapons still floating around. These weren’t the modified versions with adaptors to take STANAG magazines, so there were plenty of the older, AK-style mags to go with them.

  Curtis’s eyes gleamed as he hauled an IWI Negev light machinegun out of one of the bigger cases. “Ohh. I always wanted to give one of these a spin.” He looked down into the case. “Hey, Vinnie! There’s two of ‘em, so you don’t get stuck with a peashooter.”

  “That’s assuming I didn’t just take that one.” Bianco was a good head taller than Curtis.

  “Ha! You wish, nerd. I’d break your fingers.” He put the 5.56 belt fed down and rummaged through the ammo case. “Looks like we’ve got plenty of ammo, too.” He looked up at Pacheco. “You’ve got some serious balls, man.”

  Pacheco just smiled.

  Wade and Hank were pulling more gear out. “Looks like we’re going to be running old school. I don’t see any body armor.” Hank sounded a little uncomfortable at that, but Wade snorted.

  “Body armor’s going to be more of a liability in the jungle and the mountains than a help, Junior.” He lifted one of the old, ‘90s-era load bearing vests. “These will do fine, as long as the mags fit.” That took a brief experiment that confirmed that the mags did, indeed, fit.

  “Damn. Even night vision.” Burgess had opened yet another case. This one was full of old Pro-Tec bump helmets with NVG mounts and the green bags that carried PVS-14 night vision goggles and the necessary attachments. He looked up at Pacheco and frowned. “You’ve been ready for something like this for a long time.”

  Pacheco just shrugged as he sipped his own coffee. “We live in a country that is plagued by corruption, where the central government often as not would rather bow to the guerrillas and the narcos for a false ‘peace’ than fight for a real one. The drug wars against Medellin, Cali, and Norte del Valle might be over, but only on the surface. There might be a truce with the FARC, but only on the surface. Things have been getting much worse as time goes on, and it pays to be ready.” There was an enigmatic look in his eyes as he took another sip. “I am not the only one.”

  “Well, I’m just as glad you had this stuff. Getting it by other means could have gotten messy.” Wade was loading magazines.

  Brannigan caught a glance from Curtis. With a bit of a pang, he realized that he and Curtis were the only ones in the room who remembered the fight with the Suleiman Syndicate in Dubai. Flanagan was out in the weeds with Cruz, but of the original seven Blackhearts, only Brannigan, Santelli, Flanagan, and Curtis were still alive.

  He snatched up an ammo can and a handful of Galil magazines and got to loading. They needed to be ready when Flanagan and Cruz returned.

  Chapter 9

  Flanagan and Cruz were both wearing old tiger stripe camouflage—perhaps not the end-all, be-all of camouflage patterns, but it had been what Cruz had had on hand. It actually worked really well in the Colombian jungle—the play of light and shadow, not to mention all the thick vegetation, meant that they almost disappeared whenever they got far enough away from each other.

  The sweat was threatening to cut through the camouflage face paint that he’d carefully applied before they’d stepped off, but so long as they stayed deep in the weeds, they should be okay, even if some of it wore off.

  Both men were carrying Galil SARs and had three-day rucks on. They didn’t plan on being out there that long, but sometimes it paid to be prepared.

  Cruz was on point. He knew the area far better than Flanagan could hope to figure out just from studying the map, and the map was probably more than a little off in the first place. That was always a problem with jungle terrain—there was a lot on the ground that the map makers simply couldn’t see.

  Flanagan watched Cruz move through the bush carefully. The other man was a veteran, but he wasn’t quite as good in the weeds as Flanagan. That said, he was still pretty good. There wasn’t a lot of open-source information on the AFEAU, but rumor had it that they’d gone into the mountains after FARC, ELN, and various other guerrilla and narco groups more than once. They were supposed to be good, and if Cruz was representative of the unit as a whole, Flanagan believed it.

  Cruz slowed, holding up a hand to signal a halt, then sank down to a knee behind a screen of thick bushes and trees. Flanagan moved up to join him, placing each step carefully to avoid making noise, and then took a knee beside the other man, turning to check their six and scan the woods around them before he did so.

  They were still deep in the woods. Nothing but the jungle met his eyes, and he heard nothing but the birds, insects, and various other wildlife moving through the bush. He wasn’t sure why they’d stopped, but he had to trust Cruz.

  The two of them stayed put for a while, silent and listening. Flanagan was used to security halts on patrol—they’d already stopped several times since they’d left Cruz’s truck and started their seven-kilometer hike through the hills to the southwest of San Tabal. But this one went on longer than any others they’d done.

  He’d been doing his best to keep track of their general route, direction, and distance. It was difficult—pace counts got sketchy on mountainous terrain, and he’d had to keep checking his compass to be sure which direction they were going in the thick vegetation. It was possible that they were closer to their objective than he’d thought, but when he peered ahead of them, the slope of the mountain just kept going up, disappearing into the trees and the undergrowth, with no brighter light where the crest might be.

  Finally, Cruz seemed satisfied. “We are about three hundred meters from our observation point.” His voice was a low murmur, barely audible even from a couple feet away. “We need to be very careful from here on out. My sources tell me that the Green Shirts have been stepping up their patrols around the city, moving a lot farther out than they were just after the coup.”

  “How professional are they in the bush?”

  “Not very. From what I’ve heard, the FARC and ELN are better. But even thugs can still kill us if they catch us, and they only have to get lucky once.” Cruz hauled himself to his feet. “We will have to move more slowly and halt more often.”

  Flanagan just nodded. Not my first rodeo, buddy. But Cruz didn’t know him any more than he knew Cruz, so it paid for both of them to communicate as carefully as possible. They were in enemy territory. Ego had no place here.

  They kept climbing, moving with ever more caution. Each step was planted deliberately, testing for dead branches or loose rocks underfoot before putting weight down. Scanning was constant, and not only for the enemy. Flanagan had already seen more than a few snakes in the trees that he didn’t want to tangle with, and he could have sworn he’d heard a jaguar all too close for comfort.

  I preferred the woods in Azerbaijan. To hell with the jungle.

  It took a long time to finish that last three hundred meters. The terrain, the vegetation, and the need for stealth slowed their advance to a crawl. But Flanagan was a hunter. Patience was something he’d cultivated since he’d been a kid.

  Finally, they reached the crest, the slope falling away below them, so steep that any attempt to go down withou
t ropes would probably lead to a nasty fall. The valley opened up beneath as they moved into position under a towering brazil nut tree, careful to keep to the shadows and the deeper undergrowth. They were most of a kilometer from their objective, but a trained observer could still pick them out if they exposed themselves.

  They settled in, once again waiting, watching, and listening for several minutes to make sure that they were alone and unlikely to be stumbled upon by any Green Shirt patrols. Flanagan stayed still and sweated, as the bugs started trying to eat him alive.

  Once they were reasonably sure that they hadn’t been detected—or had picked a position right on a patrol route—they settled in and Flanagan pulled his borrowed binoculars out of his pack, getting down in the prone beside the tree, bracing the optics with his elbows planted against the roots, cupping his hands around the eyepieces.

  A medium-sized farm spread across the slopes on the far side of the valley below. Cruz had given him the rundown before they’d inserted. This farm, originally belonging to one Diego Fuentes, had always grown mostly beans and corn, feeding not only the Fuentes family but a good chunk of the locals around San Tabal. The fields sprawled over several cleared hillsides, stretching from just short of the crest of the ridge clear down to the narrow creek that ran through the bottom of the valley. The house, two stories tall with a red tile roof and the stucco walls painted green and yellow, sat about two-thirds of the way up the slope, surrounded by trees.

  Flanagan began his study with the house. A couple of ancient farm trucks were parked nearby, but they were outnumbered by the green-painted technicals that stood at all four corners, the machineguns in the beds manned by Green Shirts. He could see the source of the nickname—the dark green field shirts were the only uniform that Clemente’s fighters seemed to have. They wore khakis, jeans, or camouflage trousers. Their gear was every bit as eclectic, running the gamut from plate carriers to ill-fitting load bearing harnesses to simple bandoliers full of magazines. A couple had belts of machinegun ammo draped around their torsos—mostly without a machinegun that would take that ammo in sight.

  It became clear within a few minutes that the technicals and their crews weren’t just there to guard the farm from outside interlopers. They were there to keep the farmers in check.

  Most of the dozen or so Green Shirts he could see around the house were mostly lounging and smoking. Once, a young woman came out of the kitchen and onto the porch to throw something out. He could see from her body language that she was nervous, and the attention she was getting from several of the Green Shirts outside easily explained why.

  He scanned down the main dirt road leading to the fields. Laborers were working out there, even though it was still far from harvest time. There’s always work that needs doing on a farm, even while the crops grow.

  But the strange thing was that there were no overseers out in the fields. All the Green Shirts were up by the house.

  “You’re sure Fuentes wouldn’t willingly cooperate?” He kept his voice low and didn’t take his eyes away from the optics as he asked the question.

  “As certain as I am that the sun rises in the east.” There was no doubt in Cruz’s voice. “If he didn’t have a family to worry about—and a lot of his workers are practically family—then he’d rather die.”

  “Hmm.” Flanagan widened his scan, but he didn’t see anything new. “There don’t seem to be enough Green Shirts down there to act as overseers. I’m only seeing about a dozen near the house and the barn.”

  “Watch the barn closely.” Cruz had clearly gotten eyes on this place already, but he wanted Flanagan to see it for himself.

  He shifted the binoculars to watch the barn. It was a low, rough, cinderblock structure with a corrugated metal roof. A lot more care had gone into the house than the barn. The door was open, but it was dark inside, and he couldn’t see much past the doorway itself.

  Then there was movement. For a moment, a small face peered out before quickly vanishing back into the shadows. He shifted his gaze to see one of the Green Shirts, carrying an AK-47, striding quickly over to the barn. The skinny man leaned into the doorway for a moment before turning away and swaggering back toward his compatriots.

  “They’re holding hostages.”

  “The Green Shirts don’t have the numbers to directly control everyone, so they take hostages to keep people in line. It’s a time-honored technique.” Cruz’s voice was as flat and casual as if he were talking about ordering lunch. Flanagan still didn’t have a great read on the other man. He couldn’t tell if he was just that callous—there were a few stories about AFEAU—or if he had simply distanced his own mind from it for the sake of his own sanity.

  Maybe it was a little of both.

  “This is one of the few farms they’ve kept for food.” A little bit of contempt leaked into Cruz’s voice. “They’re more concerned with the others. So, the more they can control these farms with threats against their loved ones, the more resources they can devote to the coca farms.”

  “Were any of these places coca farms before?” Flanagan knew that might be a loaded question, but he needed as much information as possible.

  “No. There were grow areas nearby, but they’ve always been small. Clemente is trying to convert entire farms into an industrial-scale operation.” Cruz might have snorted a little. “It’s not clear what his endgame is, but if he can force some of the other cartels to their knees by undercutting them, he will have a bottomless source of funding to maintain his Communist hellhole.”

  “Not much you can do with money when there’s no food to buy.” While Flanagan had spent most of his career in the Middle East, the Blackhearts had seen some Communist hellholes, most notably in northern Burma. Plus, Flanagan, for all his backwoods manner and quiet demeanor, was an educated man. He knew Communism’s long, bloody, and nightmarish history.

  “There’s always someone who will do business with them.” Apparently, Cruz was a student of history, too.

  “So, will Fuentes help us if we retake his farm?” Flanagan got back to business.

  “I’m sure he will, if he survives and doesn’t do anything stupid. There’s a reason I showed you this farm first. Fuentes and his family have been part of the bedrock of this area for decades. He has never been aristocracy, but he is respected. If he isn’t already part of a resistance, he’ll still bring many out of the shadows to help if he stands up to Clemente.” Cruz sighed. “I suspect that the only reason he hasn’t already is that he knows he’s alone and Clemente has a gun to his family’s heads.”

  Flanagan took that in as he continued to scan the farm. He didn’t see any more Green Shirts, despite Cruz’s cautions about patrols. “Looks like it shouldn’t be too difficult, if we can get close enough. Those technicals are a threat, but these guys don’t look like they’re all that alert or disciplined.” He finally came off glass. “Are any of those coca farms nearby?”

  “Yes. We can get there before dark.”

  ***

  The movement to the next objective was every bit as punishing as the first, especially given the fact that their muscles had had time to relax and start to stiffen up while they’d been lying there observing the Fuentes farm. But Flanagan was used to elk hunting in the high country, and so he adapted. He was probably having an easier time of it than Cruz—the other man might have been a veteran of one of Colombia’s hardest units of trained killers, but he was getting older and probably wasn’t spending much of his time out in the bush anymore. The skills came back, but conditioning was something else altogether.

  It was indeed getting close to sunset by the time they neared their next OP. The terrain wasn’t as conducive to standoff this time—they had to get a lot closer. And that nearness brought new dangers with it.

  Flanagan could see the flicker of lights through the trees ahead and downhill, though they only occasionally penetrated the thick vegetation. It was already getting dark enough under the jungle canopy that he was starting to think about call
ing a halt to dig out the old PVS-14s that Cruz had brought, but it would be better to get into position while they still had some daylight to see by.

  Cruz suddenly froze, putting up a clenched fist. Flanagan didn’t bother to ask why; he just froze in turn. When you’re in the bush and in hostile territory, you don’t question the point man, even if he’s a partisan contact. Kirk trusted Cruz, and that was going to have to be enough—at least, until the man tried to sell them out.

  After a brief moment, Cruz sank to the forest floor, going prone with his rifle still held ready. Flanagan followed suit, still scanning and listening for whatever had alerted his companion.

  That didn’t take long. He could hear the rustle of movement through the trees and the sound of low voices. Someone was coming. And they were already close.

  He’d slipped under a bush, hoping and praying that he wasn’t about to lie down on a snake, or centipede, or anything else poisonous. Keeping his own Galil ready, he peered through the leaves, searching for the source of the noises.

  The three Green Shirts appeared a few minutes later. They were dressed similarly to the ones he’d watched through the binoculars back at the Fuentes place, two of them wearing ill-fitting load bearing vests, one carrying a Galil and the other an AKM. The third was wearing an ancient belt and Y-harness and carrying an old M16A2 with almost all the bluing worn off.

  It was his first up-close encounter with the Green Shirts, and if anything, he was even less impressed than he had been watching the group guarding the Fuentes farm from a distance. They weren’t in anything approaching a tactical formation, simply clumped together and strolling through the jungle, chatting and laughing. They barely glanced to their left or right, and never checked behind them.

  The three of them passed a few yards away from where the mercenary and his Colombian contact lay in the weeds. None of them so much as glanced in Flanagan’s direction as they went past, all far too absorbed in their conversation. Though he couldn’t understand most of the Spanish, the coarse tone and harsh, gloating laughter put his teeth on edge.