Frozen Conflict (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  GUNFIGHT AT BAD BREATH DISTANCE

  Staying as flat to the floor as he could, no longer able to aim, he stuck the pistol out and cranked off the last four shots in the magazine, at roughly ankle level. He was awfully aware of just how few rounds he had left, but his options were a little limited at that point.

  At least one bullet struck home, as one of the two men collapsed with a scream. He mashed the trigger of his Krinkov spasmodically as he fell, and bullets sprayed across the room, thumping into the table, the walls, the ceiling…and the man next to him.

  Blood sprayed in the dark, spattering against the doorjamb as three 5.45mm rounds tore through the second Mafiya shooter’s chest and neck. He staggered back against the jamb, holding a hand to his suddenly spurting throat, gurgling faintly, and started to slide down to the floor, as the other man thrashed in agony on the floor, grabbing his mangled boot.

  BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS

  FROZEN CONFLICT

  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 2018 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

  Chapter 1

  “You’re imagining things, Eugen,” Cezar Lungu said. He was leaning back in an overstuffed easy chair with a massy, polished wooden frame, a blond, vacant-eyed Ukrainian hooker on his lap. He was fully clothed; she was in her underwear. He picked up the shot of Kvint and tossed it back with a grimace and a loud, “Pah!” “We have an arrangement! And with what we’re paying the Russians and the Transnistrians both, we should at least get a warning if anything has changed!”

  Eugen Codreanu did not turn away from the window, but continued peering into the night. He wasn’t looking out toward the Dniester River below the dacha, either. He was looking back toward the wrought-iron gates and the guard posts, through the trees. He was looking back toward the city of Ribnitza, which was throwing its glow against the near-perpetual pall of smoke and steam coming from the steelworks.

  When Codreanu still hadn’t replied while he poured more Kvint, Lungu tried again. “You’ve been jumping at shadows for four months, Eugen,” he ventured.

  Codreanu finally turned away from the window. He was not a man who would get a second glance in most places in Europe. Going gray in the temples, his thick hair was combed back from a high forehead. He kept himself in good shape, though somewhat offset by the copious amounts of Kvint, vodka, and cigarettes he consumed on a daily basis. His clean-shaven jaw and cleft chin looked faintly bluish, his beard was so dark. He was in his late fifties but took pride in the fact that he could easily pass for his late thirties, which helped with the women, almost as much as his wealth did.

  He took a deep drag on a cigarette. The room, filled with antique furniture, the beams and columns richly carved, was already thick with the haze of smoke. “We should have stuck with small arms and munitions,” he said nervously. “The Nurlat deal was a mistake.”

  “It was the biggest score we’ve ever made, Eugen!” Lungu exclaimed. “We made millions in one deal!”

  “Yes, it was,” Codreanu replied. “But we never saw anyone watching us here in Transnistria before that.”

  “I think you’re just nervous because of the size of the deal,” Lungu said. “People are always watching everyone in Transnistria. That’s why we pay them.”

  But Codreanu shook his head. “I don’t know, Cezar,” he said. “Something feels different.”

  “Relax, Eugen,” Lungu said. “Have some Kvint. Go upstairs and have a romp with that black-haired gypsy girl. We have the best security in the country, and we’ve paid all the police and Army officers that need to be paid. We’ll be fine. No one except us and the buyers even know about the Nurlat deal. We’ve got no reason to be afraid.”

  Codreanu finished his cigarette in two more deep drags, then crushed it out. He held the smoke for a long moment, then blew it toward the ceiling with a gusty sigh, nodding as he did so. “You’re right, Cezar,” he said after a moment. “Of course you’re right.” The only loose end from the deal had been the Russian naval officer he’d bribed in order to get his hands on the old Project 877 submarine that had been held in reserve for over a decade. But his contacts had carefully arranged for the officer’s untimely death in an automobile accident during the small hours of the morning on the back streets of Sevastopol. That the officer had been far too drunk to even start the car wasn’t something that would necessarily show up in a Russian autopsy.

  He was relatively certain that none of his own organization would have sold him out. And he didn’t think the Russians would really have cared that much. It wasn’t like they had been using the old hulk. He’d been in mothballs for years.

  He turned away from the window and started toward the stairs, trying to think about Drina and her enticing body instead of his fears. Unlike the blond Ukrainian that Lungu was fondling, Drina was a convincing little minx.

  The lingering worry that the buyers might have reason to come after him wouldn’t leave his mind, however, even as he mounted the steps. He still had no idea who they were; they had money, and they had the connections to contact him with the job. That was all he knew. But buying a Russian diesel submarine on the black market wasn’t something that happened every day, and he couldn’t help but wonder what the long-term repercussions of the biggest deal in his career as a black-market arms dealer would be.

  ***

  The man known only as Redrum stepped up into the old panel van, making the shocks compress under his bulk. The shocks were shit, anyway, as he was convinced was the case with every rusting, shitty car in this shitty country, but Redrum was a big man, and even if the van’s suspension had been in good shape, he still would have rocked the van as he entered.

  “How’s it looking?” he asked.

  The skinny kid watching the camera feeds didn’t answer. He didn’t even show any sign that he’d heard. That was when Redrum noticed the earbuds in his ears. He leaned down. He could just hear the music playing, and that was with his own severely damaged hearing.

  Redrum wasn’t one to play around. And he didn’t like Stiletto in the first place. The kid was a tech whiz, but he was a scrawny hipster and arrogant as hell. Redrum had no idea how he’d gotten the job in the first place, but he really didn’t fit in with the roiding monsters that made up Redrum’s team.

  He reached down and yanked the earbud out of Stiletto’s ear, resisting the temptation to take the earring beneath with it. When the job was over, maybe then he could really put Stiletto in his place.

  The kid snapped his head around, glaring through his thick-framed glasses. Redrum was pretty sure there wasn’t even a prescription on the things. They were an affectation, nothing more. “What?” Stiletto demanded. Even his voice pissed Redrum off. It was high, nasal, and just as arrogant as the rest of his demeanor.

  “Status report,” he rumbled, glowering down at the kid.

  After a moment of the staring contest, Stiletto started to wilt. Red
rum knew what he looked like. Pale as a dead fish, shaved bald, two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle, he had black eyes and a thick-featured face that looked like a shaved gorilla, even to him. It was why he preferred Eastern Europe to any of the other regions he could work in, and wasn’t complaining about the assignment. He could sort-of blend in in the Slavic countries.

  He also knew that Stiletto was not entirely unaware of the story behind his callsign.

  “It’s quiet,” Stiletto said, turning back to the screens but unable to suppress a faint shiver as he did so. He couldn’t keep the faint quaver of fear out of his voice, either, and had to be hating himself for it.

  Good.

  “Security?” Redrum asked.

  “There are ten men patrolling the grounds, in pairs,” Stiletto said, getting back on firmer ground. “I’ve been watching them through the dacha’s camera system.” Typical Stiletto; he always had to mention how clever he was, getting inside an opponent’s tech. The fact that one of Redrum’s team had needed to break into the dacha to lay the groundwork for Stiletto’s “master hacking skills” always went unmentioned. “They check in with the central security desk, which is located on the first floor, every twenty minutes. I think this guy’s paranoid.”

  Or Faust was right, and he got made yesterday. It did seem like Codreanu was looking over his shoulder more lately, though. His security had markedly increased since the Mexico incident.

  He’s running scared. Which means that he’ll probably bolt if he thinks we’ve eyeballed him. At the very least, we’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen. Redrum was a pragmatist, above all else. He was always planning for the worst, just in case it happened. He never counted on a plan coming together the first time.

  “Keep an eye on them, and use the damn radio to call me if anything changes. Understood?” Redrum said. Stiletto didn’t look at him, but nodded a little jerkily. “And keep your damned headphones out while you’re working.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and dropped out the back door of the van.

  The surveillance vehicle wasn’t far from Codreanu’s grounds. That was mostly necessitated by the short range of the wifi transmitter that Lèzard had installed in the dacha. Otherwise, Redrum would have much preferred putting it on the other side of Ribnitza. But it did mean he didn’t have far to go to link up with the rest of the team, where they were waiting in a pair of ancient, rusty GAZ sedans.

  Looking around, he headed for the trees nearby, jerking his head to signal the rest to join him. It was dark, and there weren’t really any streetlights in that part of Hirjau, the glorified suburb of Ribnitza that stretched north along the Dniester. He wasn’t too worried about being observed. The joint Russian-Transnistrian patrols didn’t come through this part of town much, either, he suspected because Codreanu paid good bribes.

  The team got out of the cars and moved to join him. Like him, they were all still in their local civilian garb, mostly dark jeans and collared shirts, with a few wearing jackets over them. He knew they were all armed, but they had left the heavy hardware in the cars.

  “We’re going tonight,” Redrum said without preamble. “We’re outnumbered, but at the very least, we need to make him turtle, dig in like a tick and stay where he’s at.”

  In the dimness under the trees, the rest of the team looked around at each other. “We have six men,” Bèstia said. “Just how are we supposed to do that?”

  “It’s dark,” Redrum said. “They don’t have night vision. We’ve got explosives, pyrotechnics, and a lot of ammo. Figure it out.”

  The Frenchman subsided. Redrum didn’t much like him or the other Frog, Lèzard. But they were good at their jobs, so he didn’t have to like them. “Any other dumb questions?” he asked. “Good. Lèzard and Faust, Bèstia and Skinner, you’re on cordon. Cat, you’re with me. We’re the assault team.”

  The rest of them just nodded. They were getting well paid for this gig. Better be, given that we’ve got to hang out in this post-Soviet shithole. Never thought I’d meet people who actually wanted the old USSR back, and lived like it.

  Of course, the less he thought about his employers’ desired endgame, the better. They really weren’t all that different from these wannabe Soviets, if you got right down to it; they were just a lot richer and more “respectable.” But Redrum wasn’t one given to much cognitive dissonance. He just ignored such things and concentrated on what he was getting paid to do.

  “Get your shit,” he said. “We go in five.”

  ***

  Radu Anghelescu was bored and distracted. Patrolling the dacha grounds was probably the most mind-numbing job he could imagine. He’d seen every centimeter at least fifty times already that night. And the night was young.

  He kept looking up toward the house, having glimpsed the silhouette of that Roma girl, Drina, in the boss’s bedroom window. He knew that she was off-limits; she was Codreanu’s pet of the moment, but he was taken with her. He couldn’t get her out of his head, not to mention some of the things he fantasized about doing to her…

  He never got the chance to look back down, even as his partner, Dorin Sala, started to chide him for pining after the boss’s pet hooker. The bullet punched through the back of his skull and blew out his right eye, tearing through his brainstem as it went. He never even knew what hit him.

  A moment later, as the treeline around the grounds erupted with explosions and flame, a three-round burst caught Sala in the throat, even as he stared in shock at his friend’s corpse. Choking on his own blood, Sala collapsed on top of the lifeless husk that had been Radu Anghelescu.

  ***

  Redrum watched the two gate guards drop and lowered his Zastava M21. The Serbian version of a modernized AK-74 wasn’t fancy, and he’d fired a lot more accurate weapons, but it did the job, and didn’t stand out that much in the little wannabe-Soviet breakaway republic.

  Dashing forward, he took a knee next to the low wall that jutted out from the trees and bushes on either side of the gate and aimed in over the top of it.

  The long driveway was framed by more trees as it arrowed toward the dacha itself. The house was lit up far more than the surrounding suburb of Hirjau. There were streetlamps along the driveway and brilliant spotlights up on the eaves of the house’s roof, clearly installed for security purposes. The house was semi-obscured by the trees, but the lights in the windows of the plastered timber mansion were still on, silhouetting the security goons who were running down the curving double staircase toward the driveway.

  It was a longer shot, particularly with the Zastava’s open sights, which hadn’t been altered much from the standard Kalashnikov sights from 1947. But Redrum knew his guns, and knew his marksmanship. And it wasn’t that long a shot.

  The first 5.56mm bullet punched through the Romanian thug’s guts and tore a bloody hole out through the small of his back. The 5.56 didn’t tumble the same way a 5.45 would, but a gut shot was a gut shot, and these gangsters didn’t have the warrior mentality to push through that kind of pain. Screaming and bleeding, the man fell face-first down the steps, and Redrum was already transitioning to the next man, who was already ducking down below the stone railing.

  Redrum flipped the M21 to full auto and simply sprayed the rest of the magazine at the front of the house. Glass shattered, splinters and puffs of pulverized plaster flew, and chips were blasted out of the stone. There might have been screaming, but Redrum couldn’t hear it over the rattling roar of his rifle.

  The magazine went dry, and he ripped a second one out of the chest rig under his jacket, using the edge of the mag to sweep the empty out before rocking the new one in. He fired a few more rounds at the house for good measure before turning to the wiry man next to him and yelling, “Fall back!”

  He suited actions to words as he turned away from the wall and dashed toward the shadows beneath the trees across the street. A moment later, Cat followed.

  He hadn’t told Bèstia, but Redrum had a plan, and a well-thought-out one. Storming th
at dacha with two men was probably going to be suicide, no matter how poorly-trained Codreanu’s thugs were. And while Redrum might have had a lot wrong in his head, he wasn’t suicidal.

  As he ran, he heard a renewed storm of gunfire behind him, as Lèzard and Faust opened up on someone trying to get down to the river from the back of the dacha.

  The plan was going just the way he’d hoped.

  ***

  Codreanu huddled on the floor next to Drina, still wearing his shirt but otherwise just in his boxers and socks. Drina wasn’t wearing that much. They’d been just getting warmed up when the first shots had sounded outside, and he’d grabbed her and plunged to the floor before bullets started to hammer at the side of the house like hail. The walls were thick enough that they probably couldn’t penetrate; the dacha was several hundred years old, and the timbers and layers of plaster were thick and solid. But the windows had shattered under the gunfire, and several rounds had skipped through to smack craters in the wall and ceiling.

  “Come on!” he shouted, grabbing Drina by the wrist and starting to crawl toward the stairs. They had to get out of there. All his fears had been realized. Someone knew that he’d sold those unknown men the submarine, and they were coming to tie up loose ends. Or they were coming to kill him in revenge for what had happened in Mexico.

  Codreanu had seen the news. The whole world had. And he wasn’t stupid. He was sure that the sub had somehow been a part of the seizing of the Tourmaline-Delta platform. He just didn’t know what part. Nor did he particularly care. All that mattered was that it had now put his own skin in deadly danger.

  Drina was fighting his grip, struggling to stay where she was. Codreanu just twisted her arm and pulled harder. “Come on, bitch, unless you want to die!”

  But she just whimpered and pulled away some more, and as another burst slashed through the smashed window, Codreanu cursed and shoved her away, before resuming his frantic crawl toward the stairs.