Frozen Conflict (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  After the Gulf of Mexico, Wade had come up with the idea of starting their own little training cell company, both as something to do and as a way to keep their own skills sharp between missions. Brannigan had still been in the hospital, so new jobs were looking a little scarce, and it was a way to make some extra money on the side as well.

  This was their third class. And so far, it was going well enough, except that Jenkins kept coming up with new “corrections” that didn’t mesh with what the rest of them had put together for the curriculum.

  Childress supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised. It wasn’t even the fact that Jenkins had been a SEAL. In just about every such course he’d ever attended, there was always at least one instructor who wasn’t quite on the same page as the rest. Jenkins just so happened to be theirs.

  They finished out the course of fire for the day, Hancock gave the students the word for the next day, which was going to be the last of the course, and then the students headed out, and the five Blackhearts set to getting the range cleaned up. Nobody said anything about Jenkins’ little aside. That could wait until later.

  “Later” came as they gathered around the firepit behind Don Hart’s farmhouse as the sun started to go down. It was cold, though there wasn’t much snow in north Texas. Four of the five of them had beers in hand; Hart, big, pot-bellied, with a massive brown beard spreading across his chest and a prosthetic foot protruding from his pantleg, was already starting in on the Wild Turkey.

  “You want to explain why you decided to correct that kid’s shooting stance, George?” Hancock asked. “Considering there was nothing wrong with what he was doing?”

  Jenkins just kept looking at the fire as he took a swig. “The way I showed him was better,” he said.

  “Not particularly,” Wade put in. “I’ve shot both ways, and they both work fine.”

  Childress looked around the fire. Hart was pointedly staring at the flames, taking big gulps of bourbon. Vincent Bianco, their massive, weightlifting nerd and the number two machinegunner behind Curtis, was nursing his beer and doing the same, visibly uncomfortable. Bianco could be a bit like a kid; he didn’t like to see his brothers fighting. And the look on Jenkins’ face as he stared at the fire after Wade had spoken was heralding some sort of fight.

  “You’re developing a bit of a rep in this bunch as a Spotlight Ranger, George,” Hancock said quietly. “It ain’t a good thing.”

  Jenkins’ jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Being a SEAL don’t make you perfect, Jenkins,” Childress put in as he took a swing of his own beer. After all, if the others were going to beat around the bush rather than get to the point, he’d rather get it out in the open and get the discussion over with, so they could focus on drinking beer. “I know it’s something they tell you in BUD/S to build you up, that SEALs are the biggest, baddest warriors on the planet, but it just ain’t so.” He waved his beer bottle to indicate the whole group. “Every man here’s done as much as you have. Everybody’s pulled his weight on the missions. Get over yourself and just be part of the team.”

  Jenkins was staring at him with some hostility, Hart was shrinking back into the shadows, the bottle of bourbon at his lips again, and Bianco’s eyes had widened a little, as if he was bracing himself for a storm. Wade was looking at him with an expression that suggested he was holding in a belly laugh. Hancock was just shaking his head, a little smile on his face.

  I did it again. Childress knew he was somewhat notorious for being blunt. In fact, it was often said that he had no filter between his brain and his mouth. Which he figured was probably true. But he’d never thought that he’d necessarily needed to try to hold back with this bunch. The Blackhearts were no-nonsense mercs. Professionals on a level that he’d never really gotten to work with in the military. The only two he’d make a real effort to be respectful to at all times were Brannigan and Santelli, and that was because Brannigan was a leader, and with Santelli, old habits died hard.

  After all, Santelli had been the Sergeant Major who had signed off on not one, but two Battalion-level NJPs on Childress for insubordination.

  He suddenly realized that he might have to start thinking of Hancock the same way. Brannigan had tapped their hard-living, adrenaline-junkie teammate to be his second-in-command, and it had been Hancock who had taken over on the Tourmaline-Delta platform when Brannigan had been wounded.

  “Sam’s infamous smooth manners aside,” Hancock said dryly, “he’s not wrong. You did good in Burma, George, but some of your decisions since then have been…questionable.” He didn’t mention the Blackhearts tattoo that Jenkins had designed, with a fighting knife through a black heart, backed by crossed rifles. He didn’t need to. Jenkins eyes flicked down toward his arm even as he said it. They’d managed to do some damage control by naming their little training cell “Blackheart Training, LLC,” but the fact remained that Jenkins, in the name of being cool, had designed a logo for a team that legally and technically didn’t, couldn’t, exist.

  “You’ve earned your place here,” Hancock continued. “Nobody’s disputing that. But you’ve got to put the whole SEAL thing behind you and be a Blackheart, or you’re not going to last.”

  Jenkins looked like he was going to say something, but at that moment, he looked up into Wade’s pale crazy eyes. There was something about Wade, the way he stared, unblinking, that unnerved people. Childress had gotten to know the big man well enough that it had worn off for him. Wade was a good dude. He could be a bit of a blunt instrument, for certain, and he had a bit of a one-track mind at times, but he was a good dude.

  Jenkins took a quick gulp of his beer as he looked away from Wade. He just kind of nodded, though he still managed to give the impression that it wasn’t so much a nod of agreement as it was, “I’ll think about it.”

  Before anyone else could say anything, Hancock’s phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “It’s the Boss,” he said. “Looks like we might have another mission, boys.”

  ***

  “I could drive the whole way, you know,” Rachel said.

  “I’m fine with driving,” Joe Flanagan replied.

  Flanagan had met Rachel Foley at a bar and grill just before shipping out to try to liberate the Tourmaline-Delta platform from the group of still-unknown terrorists who had seized it. It had been, he’d later figured out, a setup cooked up by his friend Kevin Curtis and Kevin’s date for that night, a fake blond named Cindy. As was his way, especially when Kevin was trying to play matchmaker, Flanagan had been wary, both before and after.

  But Rachel had turned out to be the diametric opposite of every woman he’d ever associated with Curtis. The smaller man was a gambler and a womanizer, who liked his women fast and easy. Rachel wasn’t. She was warm, smart, and engaging, and while they’d hit it off there at the bar and grill that night, after he’d gotten back and worked up the courage to call her, they’d started seeing a lot of each other.

  “I know you do,” she said. She was sitting in the passenger seat, watching him. She’d been settled in that way since they’d gotten in the truck, her smile only widening as she’d watched his discomfiture at her scrutiny. “Wouldn’t it be okay to just sit back and relax for a bit on the way to the airport, though? You’re going off somewhere to work again.” Her smile got a little faded, and her tone turned slightly worried. She didn’t know exactly what it was Flanagan did when he disappeared for work, but she’d obviously worked some of the details out, regardless of how close-mouthed he was about being a merc. She was perceptive, and she could read a lot of subtext that he might have thought he was burying deeply.

  He glanced over at her, having to force his eyes back to the road. She really was the prettiest girl he’d ever gotten involved with. Her smooth, heart-shaped face was framed by thick, wavy, black hair, and her dark eyes were mesmerizing. “It’s fine,” he assured her. “You’re driving the truck back to your place, anyway. Least I can do is drive there.”<
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  She smiled a little again, and a glint of mischief came into her eyes. “Admit it,” she said. “You’re just worried that Kevin’s going to give you grief about letting your girl drive.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll find something, regardless,” Flanagan said.

  He pulled the truck over near an apartment building. Curtis’ usual hangouts were in Vegas, but he’d been up near Flanagan’s place often lately, to the point of renting a nearby apartment. He’d never said why, and Flanagan suspected he had some new scheme going. The fact that he didn’t know what it was only seemed more ominous to him. When Kevin Curtis got quiet and sneaky, things usually blew up shortly thereafter.

  And Joe Flanagan often found himself having to clean up the mess.

  He frowned as he looked up toward the apartments, and Rachel did the same. There was an awful lot of yelling going on up there, and that sounded like it was coming from Kevin’s apartment.

  Even though he was heading for the airport, Flanagan still had his STI Tactical on his hip, under his shirt. He’d leave it in the truck when he left. But now he reached back to make sure it was still covered as he opened the door. “Stay here,” he told Rachel.

  “Do I need to call the cops?” she asked.

  “Not until I know more about what’s going on,” he said. He looked her in the eyes. “Won’t be the first time I’ve had to save Kevin’s sorry ass.”

  She reached across the console and grabbed his hand. “Be careful,” she said.

  “I will,” he assured her. He barely looked at her; he was getting in the zone. The yelling and screaming was getting louder. “I’ll be fine.”

  Jogging around the front of the truck, he went to the stairs between apartment blocks and started up, taking the steps two at a time. As he neared the landing, he could tell that his initial estimate had been right. The yelling and screaming was definitely coming from Kevin’s place.

  He paused just before the door and breathed a deep, frustrated sigh. He’d warned Kevin before that one of these days, his antics were going to get him hurt, or killed. And now here he was, about to go into what sounded an awful lot like a domestic incident. There are so many ways this could go wrong…

  Keeping his hand poised near his pistol, he beat on the door with a closed fist.

  Joe Flanagan was a lean, wiry man, with a thick, close-cropped beard so black it was almost blue. There was a lot of power in his cable-like muscles, though, and his blows shook the doorframe.

  The yelling paused, then seemed to redouble. It sounded like a woman—no big surprise—and she was screaming in Spanish. Flanagan didn’t even know if Kevin spoke Spanish. He hadn’t thought so.

  Curtis’ slightly high-pitched voice rose from inside. “See what all this screaming does?” he was yelling. “Somebody probably called the cops.”

  The door swung open. Kevin Curtis was standing there in his boxers and a t-shirt. He hadn’t faced the door; it looked like he wasn’t eager to turn his back on the distraught Latina holding a kitchen knife in the center of the living room.

  Curtis stood a good head shorter than Flanagan, and where Flanagan was tanned, rangy, and dark-haired, Curtis was compact and muscular, his ebony scalp shaved clean. “About time you got here,” he said. “Can you arrest this crazy bitch, before she starts carving my liver up for Scooby snacks?”

  “I can’t exactly arrest anybody,” Flanagan said dryly, as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was still tensed and ready, his hand only inches from his pistol’s grip. He didn’t want to have to shoot a woman, but he was not in a hurry to get stabbed, either.

  “Joe!” Kevin exclaimed. “I knew you’d get here before those lazy cops did!”

  The girl, who would have been quite attractive if her face hadn’t been scrunched up in a combination of grief and hate, mascara running down her cheeks, and her hair in disarray, pointed the knife at Curtis and let go with a rapid stream of what sounded to Flanagan like Spanglish, a mishmash of too-fast accented English and a lot of Spanish profanity. Flanagan held out his off hand to her, while he kept his gun hand back, just in case.

  “Look, I get it,” he said. “He’s kind of a jerk.” He could almost hear Curtis rolling his eyes behind him, and bit off a scathing remark. “But that’s not enough to stab him for. Believe me, I’ve wanted to a time or two. Just put the knife down, and we can settle all this out without the cops having to come in here and drag you off to jail in handcuffs.” Alternately, I won’t have to blow your pretty brains all over the furniture.

  She wasn’t listening. She lifted the knife and stepped forward, and Flanagan drew.

  He knew he wasn’t the fastest on the draw out there, but it still must have seemed to the girl that he produced the gun from midair. She was suddenly staring at a .45 caliber muzzle, held rock-steady in a two-handed grip. She froze.

  “I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Flanagan said, slowly and flatly, praying that Kevin kept his big mouth shut. “Put the knife down.”

  Slowly, the tears still running down her cheeks, the girl crouched down to put the knife on the floor, still staring at the pistol. Flanagan felt nothing right at that moment. He was sure that Kevin had wronged the girl, but threats with a knife had to be taken seriously, and he couldn’t let her start carving his friend up.

  But you and I are gonna have words, Kev, my boy. This has gone far enough.

  “Now, get out,” he said coldly. “You’re better off forgetting about this guy, anyway. Fortunately, you learned that early.”

  He kept her covered until she had stepped away from the knife. Curtis moved away from her as she walked toward the door, still glaring daggers at him. She gave Flanagan a wide berth, too, even though he’d lowered the pistol.

  She spat what sounded like a curse at Curtis just before she opened the door, and looked like she was going to lunge at him again, but Flanagan tsked and lifted the STI fractionally. None of that.

  With one last glower that wished a painful and lingering death on Curtis and Flanagan both, the girl jerked the door open and stormed out of the apartment.

  Curtis gusted a huge sigh. “Oh, man,” he said. “That was a little crazier than I usually go for. I knew I should have steered clear of that bundle of psycho. Never could resist a hot Latina chick, though…”

  Flanagan holstered his pistol and turned a basilisk glare on his friend. “I warned you something like this would happen, Kevin,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “I’ve warned you about it for years. You always laugh it off, and I always come in and save your ass. Bar fights, jilted lovers, angry boyfriends…well, this is the last fucking time, you hear me? I just damn near had to kill a girl in your fucking apartment, because you can’t keep your damn pants zipped.” He’d never been so angry at his friend before. He could feel his blood pressure rising. “The next time, you’re on your own. She can carve you up like Thanksgiving turkey, for all I care.”

  Curtis’ eyes had widened a little at Flanagan’s rage. The good humor had left his face, and if a man of his skin tone could turn pale as a ghost, he would have. Understanding dawned in his eyes; Flanagan was dead serious.

  He seemed to deflate a little. He looked down at the floor. “You’re right,” he whispered.

  Flanagan ignored the admission. He was sure the introspection would vanish into the background noise as soon as another pretty face or nice body caught Curtis’ eye. Pale and shaking a little with fury and the adrenaline dump, he just bit out, “Grab your shit; we’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Curtis glanced at him, saw no pity there, and wisely kept his mouth shut. He grabbed his duffel from where it had been sitting next to the door and waved at the doorway.

  “No, you go first. If that chick’s waiting in ambush, I’m not getting stabbed for you.”

  Looking decidedly uncomfortable, Curtis led the way outside.

  There was no angry, knife-wielding woman waiting for them. They got down to the truck without any further trouble. They couldn
’t even hear any police sirens yet.

  Rachel looked at Flanagan as he got behind the wheel, fuming, and then looked back at Kevin, who was abnormally subdued, sitting slumped in the back seat of the Ram’s quad-cab. She just shook her head.

  “I hope the new squeeze was worth it, Kevin,” she said. She’d been seeing Flanagan long enough to have gotten familiar with Curtis’ antics.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Curtis mumbled.

  Rachel glanced at Flanagan, whose eyes were still pointedly fixed on the road. “So, what was it like?” she asked.

  Curtis fidgeted. “I didn’t cheat on her,” he said. “I don’t cheat. If she just wants to party, that’s fine. I knew Leticia wasn’t like that. But I started…well, I told her I was breaking up with her, and she flipped out.”

  “You started what, Kevin?” Flanagan bit out.

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “I’ve been talking to Sanda a lot lately,” Curtis admitted. “And, well, uh…it might be…going somewhere. Maybe.”

  Flanagan’s eyebrows rose. Rachel looked confused. She saw that the name meant something to Joe, but she didn’t know what. Flanagan had never told her about Burma.

  “She knows Aziz is gone?” Flanagan asked, his voice calmer.

  “Yeah,” Curtis said. “I was kinda the one who told her.”

  “And of course you didn’t capitalize on that at all,” Flanagan said sarcastically.

  “I did not,” Curtis replied indignantly, getting some of his fire back. “I might be a shameless tomcat, but that doesn’t mean I’d stoop that low. We just…talked.”

  “Well, whatever the case, fortunately for you, we should be going far away for a bit,” Flanagan said. “If you’re lucky, everything should calm down while we’re gone.”

  The truck descended into silence as they drove toward the airport.