by Peter Nealen
The competition between the team’s “Sneaky Petes” was getting interesting.
Brannigan kept the rest back by the vans until the four men in the point element were just below the crest of the hill above. Their ponchos blended well with the snow in the dark, turning them into abstract bits of movement against the dim gray. They weren’t moving fast, but they weren’t crawling, either. Time was as much an issue as stealth.
Finally, there was about a hundred yards between the two elements, and he gave Bianco the go-ahead. Having one of their machinegunners on point might have been a bit unorthodox, but the firepower wouldn’t go amiss if Flanagan’s element had to beat feet back to them.
They were on the way. One way or another, success or failure of the entire op lay ahead in the next few hours.
***
Gomez slowed as he neared the crest of the hill, and Flanagan moved up closer to him. Their Uzis weren’t going to have the greatest reach from there; if his memory of the map was accurate, they still had a good two or three hundred yards to the treeline from the crest. But better to get low and get a look-see before committing to the unknown space.
Gomez was clearly thinking the same, as he sank down to his hands and knees as he moved forward, and Flanagan followed suit. Childress was just behind him and to his left, and Jenkins was slowly getting down off to the right. Flanagan might have been keeping a bit more of an eye on Jenkins. He’d seen enough of Gomez’ fieldcraft, and he knew Childress well enough, that he knew that they were good to go in the weeds. Hell, I’ve got to step up my game around those two. But Jenkins had been a SEAL, and to someone with the infantry and Recon background that he, Gomez, and Childress shared, that made his skills on land questionable.
But Jenkins was moving well. Flanagan had to remind himself that the SEALs had seen a lot of action in landlocked Afghanistan during the last couple of decades, more than they seemed to see in any kind of maritime action. Jenkins, his oft-referenced background notwithstanding, was probably more at home doing this than he had been on the Tourmaline-Delta GOPLAT.
Getting down on their bellies, the four men crawled up the last few yards to the crest of the hill. Wheat stubble scraped at their gear under the snow as they went, and cold dampness immediately started soaking into their clothes.
Gomez halted, simply lying flat in place, silently surveying the ground ahead of them. Flanagan crawled the last yard up next to him and did the same.
They were in luck; there was a line of trees and bushes on the other side of the road off to their west, running down out of sight, behind the other line of trees that crossed in front of them.
Even so, Flanagan heard the faintest hiss of frustration from Gomez, and he fully understood. They were keyed up, anxious to get the job done and get out. Now they had to patiently backtrack, work their way over to the trees, and slip down through them. Whether the bad guys were on site or anywhere near was still unknown.
It was why a hunter needed to be patient. And why a sense of urgency could ultimately turn out to be lethal in this business. Some targets were truly time-sensitive, but rushing things was just a good way to get dead.
Squirming backward, Gomez started to move away from the crest, heading back down to where they could use the terrain to mask their movement from anyone down near Hrustovaya. Flanagan scanned the slope behind them, just barely picking out the bigger element following in trace, satisfying himself that they weren’t being followed, then headed after Gomez.
***
The farmhouse was right where Gogol had said it would be. But it was dark, there were no vehicles in view, and there was no movement.
Flanagan studied it, kneeling in the snow under a stand of trees, shoulder to shoulder with Childress. “What do you think?” he subvocalized, his voice below even a whisper, his mouth close enough to the other man’s ear that he could just barely hear.
“Don’t know, man,” Childress replied in the same tone. “They might still have Codreanu in there; either that or he was in the back of the truck at the warehouse, and the Transnistrians killed him.”
He froze. Flanagan saw it, too. A flame had just flared in the window. Somebody was inside, and had just lit a cigarette.
Flanagan looked back at the nearly invisible shapes in the woods behind them. The entire team was gathered, ready to strike. All that was needed was confirmation that the target was there.
Back in the military, they might have just hit the house anyway, just to be sure. But this op was different. Their presence was already the focus of more attention than was healthy. They couldn’t afford to draw the Transnistrians and their Russian partners in again just for a dry hole. They had to be sure.
“I’m going in for a closer look,” he murmured to Childress.
“I’ll come with you,” the gawky man replied. Flanagan just nodded. If there was anyone he could trust to have his back without making a sound, it was Childress.
He turned, making sure he was shielded from the house by the trees, and made his way slowly and carefully to kneel next to Brannigan. “It looks like it’s the house, but there’s nobody outside,” he murmured next to the big man’s ear. “There’s movement inside; somebody just lit up. Might be them, might be a farmer up in the middle of the night jonesing. I’m going to go down and see if I can get a look in the window. Childress is coming with me.”
“Roger,” Brannigan replied. He didn’t need to say anything else.
Rejoining Childress, Flanagan started down the shallow slope toward the house. He placed each step carefully, feeling for anything beneath the snow that might turn, roll, or worse, snap beneath his boot. He didn’t dare run from tree to tree, as much as every nerve screamed at him to do so. He kept his Uzi in his shoulder, pointed toward the house, the sights just below his eye. He couldn’t see them all that well in the dark, but he was still pretty sure he could get a burst on target, even at night. Marksmanship was second nature to him.
The cold air stung his cheeks and the back of his throat. It could be a good deal more tiring trying to move slowly than running. Stealth required intense concentration on every movement.
Fortunately, that idiot probably blinded himself with his lighter. His night vision will be shit for a while yet.
He paused at the last tree, barely a few feet from the back of the house. The structure loomed ahead, the plastered walls whitewashed and blending in with the snow. The window was a black, hollow rectangle in the white, overshadowed by the thatched eaves of the roof.
He glanced over at Childress, who crouched down and moved carefully to the corner, leveling his Vz.58 toward the front of the house. Security was set. It was up to him.
Feeling a bit like a Peeping Tom, Flanagan crouched down and slid to the whitewashed wall in front of him. Careful to avoid letting either his body or his weapon touch the wall, he paused and listened. He had no idea just how thick the wall was, or if brushing against it might be heard inside.
He raised himself up, every muscle clenched to maintain slow, deliberate control, and eased one eye over the sill, so that he could peer into the window while exposing as little of himself as possible.
The interior was dark, but his eyes were already night-adjusted, and he started to see well enough after a moment. The one guy’s cigarette was still glowing; he was taking his time smoking it. As soon as Flanagan picked out the glowing coal, it was easy enough to see the white camouflage and the black AK variant slung across the man’s chest.
From there, it was easy enough to pick out the man sitting slumped in a chair, his head down and his hands apparently tied behind him. That had to be Codreanu.
The smoker dropped the cigarette and turned toward the door leading into another room. He said something, and while the sound was muffled, the words still traveled through the window. But Flanagan couldn’t understand them.
What is that? French? What the hell? I thought these guys were Americans. Who the hell are these guys?
But the questions had to wait unt
il later. They had their confirmation. The target was there. He turned to head back up and let Brannigan and the others know.
What was that? He cocked his head. Was there a vehicle coming? He looked at Childress, who had slipped back behind the corner, making sure his rifle was out of view from the front. Childress pointed down the slope. He didn’t dare say anything, but Flanagan got the message. Peering through the trees, he could just see the flickering glow of headlights.
Son of a bitch. There was a vehicle coming, and given the time, and the direction it was moving, it had to be coming to the target house. Which meant that they had no time left.
They had less than he’d thought. The vehicle came roaring up the dirt driveway, closer than he’d estimated, and also from the wrong direction. Childress was hidden from the front, but he was half illuminated by the headlights as the SUV came out of the trees only a dozen meters away.
***
Redrum was glad he was driving. Flint was in a towering rage, hitting the dashboard and swearing. He would probably have wrecked the green Lada SUV before they’d gotten out of town.
“That fucking Russki fuck! Double-cross me, will he? I’ll tear his fucking gonads off and stuff ‘em down his fucking throat, just before I rip his fucking lungs out!” Redrum was sure that, if they ever caught up with Gogol, Flint would have calmed down enough that it was going to take a lot longer than that for Gogol to die. And as much as he worried about his teammate’s mental stability, he had to admit that he’d be fine with watching the Russian gangster die slowly.
The warehouse had been a bloodbath. Cat, Faust, and four of Flint’s team were dead. The remainder had just barely managed to get away, break into the SUV, hotwire it, and get out of town ahead of the checkpoints that had descended on every major road like falling steel gates. They hadn’t even been able to retrieve any of the gear off the bodies; it had been an all-out, desperate fight just to break contact and get away.
“We’re done with Codreanu,” he said, pissed off enough to be able to finally confront Flint. “You’ve been dicking around with your little interrogation games for long enough. We’re out of time. We get back, I’m putting a bullet in the motherfucker and we’re gone.”
Flint’s diatribe was suddenly stilled. He turned and looked at Redrum, and Redrum felt himself tense. He was never entirely sure just which way Flint was going to jump. The guy was as unpredictable as he was violent. Redrum was still honestly unsure just why the Board treated him as their golden boy. He was a borderline psychopath, and there were times when Redrum mentally edited out the “borderline” part.
He knew, really. The Board wasn’t interested in professionalism; they kept Flint around because he was an agent of chaos, someone you threw in when you wanted a lot of people dead and didn’t care overmuch about the lives of the contractors you sent in with him. The fact that he was almost preternaturally good at operations, when he wasn’t letting his wild side run free, only helped them justify it.
Redrum didn’t have to like it. He just had to survive it long enough to spend his paycheck. It wasn’t like there was any going back for him, either.
The Manager had made sure of that.
He checked the rear-view mirrors again. So far, there was no sign that they’d been followed, but something was nagging at him. He couldn’t help but think that they hadn’t made as clean a getaway as he’d hoped.
He’d already taken a few extra turns on the way, but they were on their final approach to the house. He lifted the encrypted radio to his lips. “Bèstia, Redrum,” he called. “We’re two minutes out.”
“It’s about time,” was the reply. Redrum’s fingers tightened around the radio. The damned Frog really did have the balls to complain about staying back and guarding Codreanu, when the rest of the team had been cut nearly in half down in Ribnitza.
Then he turned toward the house and saw the white-clad figure moving away from the back, toward the woods, pinned in his headlights.
And it was definitely not either Bèstia or Lezàrd.
Chapter 19
Childress threw himself flat, just as a strobing muzzle flash and the ripping roar of a 5.56 on full automatic tore the night apart.
Flanagan saw Childress get hit, bright red blossoms splashing across his white poncho in the glare from the headlights. A moment later, the hillside above erupted with flickering blasts of white flame, bullets raining down at the headlights and the shooter. One of the lights went out immediately, the light shattered by a 7.62x39mm round.
More fire was coming from the vehicle in response, long bursts rattling and roaring, multiple weapons spitting flame. The window above Flanagan’s head shattered, raining broken glass down on him as bullets tore through the air over his head. He ducked down, then threw himself flat on his back, pointing the Uzi up at the broken window and tearing off half the mag with a ripping hiss. He wasn’t sure if he hit anyone, but the fire from the window stopped.
Rolling to one side, he got to his hands and knees and scrambled toward Childress. The other man was still moving, so he was alive, but he was hit bad. He was bleeding like a stuck pig.
Another burst of gunfire roared out of the night nearby, blasting splinters away from the window frame behind him, but this was coming from up the hill. Somebody was coming down to join him at the house, putting covering fire on the window as he came.
Flanagan reached out and grabbed Childress by the arm. Even as skinny as the other hillbilly was, it was an effort to hold on and drag him out of the open and into the cover of the house.
It was dark back there, but Flanagan had had to treat wounds by feel before. All the same, he’d rather not have to do it himself. Sam was hurt worse than Flanagan trusted he could treat. And the firefight meant that stealth was out of the question anymore.
“Herc!” he yelled. “Medic!”
***
Redrum had bailed out of the driver’s seat as soon as Flint had opened fire, and he was glad he had as a storm of gunfire punched holes through the SUV, bullets and bullet fragments coming through the hood and the body with loud, metallic bangs. Cars made for shitty cover.
Flat on his belly, he wormed around to get the wheels somewhat between his body and the incoming fire, blasting an only vaguely aimed burst of 5.56 fire up the hill. As he did so, a body hit the snow right behind him, and he flinched. But it was, somewhat to his chagrin and anger, only Flint, rather disappointingly still alive.
Flint didn’t say a word, but scrambled to a low knee, stitching gunfire over Redrum’s head, across the top of the hood, before dashing for the front door.
He’s going for Codreanu. Knowing from past experience that if he didn’t want to get left to die, he’d better get in there after him, Redrum dumped the rest of his magazine up the hill at the flickering muzzle flashes in the woods, then half-crawled, half-scrambled to the cover of the house.
He was right behind Flint as the other team leader burst through the front door. The interior was still dark, blindingly so after the blazing illumination of the headlights against the snow and the whitewashed walls outside.
A hammer blow hit him in the front plate, accompanied by a deafening report in the enclosed space of the main room. As he gasped and threw himself flat, turning his muzzle toward the blinding flash of the muzzle blast, he heard Lezàrd yelling a frantic and nearly panicked apology. The French mercenary was barricaded on the door to the back room, partially silhouetted by the light from the broken window behind him. Codreanu was flat on his back, groaning as his own weight crushed his tied hands between the chair back and the floor, and Bèstia was crumpled beneath the broken window, his M21 lying at an odd angle, muzzle down in the floor. He wasn’t moving.
Flint cursed Lezàrd out roundly as he advanced on the room. “I should just blow your brains out right here and now, you stupid fuck,” he snarled. “But we need the firepower. Get some covering fire on that window before they kill us all.”
Lezàrd complied, dumping most of the rest of hi
s magazine on full auto out the window, shooting at nothing in particular. It was answered by a long, ravening burst of machinegun fire, that chewed at the window frame and the walls, forcing all three men to throw themselves on the floor.
Flint was crawling toward Codreanu. Redrum almost turned his own rifle on the arms dealer, but didn’t want to deal with the inevitable fight with Flint just then. He knew that if he killed Codreanu when Flint was determined to take him alive, then Flint would kill him, sooner or later. They’d deal with it when the Russians or Transnistrians, or whoever was out there in the dark weren’t shooting at them anymore.
Flint got to Codreanu and, without bothering to untie him, started dragging him and his chair toward the door. It was common sense; they’d have more cover in the front room. Redrum fired burst after burst out the window, trying to counter the machinegun fire tearing the walls apart, as the three of them plus Codreanu retreated toward the front.
***
Brannigan dashed down to the next tree, skidding on the snow and frozen leaves underfoot and colliding with the bole painfully. He shrugged off the shock and leveled his AKM down the slope at the handful of shooters still alive near the SUV. They’d bailed out through the non-contact side and were trading potshots with the Blackhearts from behind the engine block and the wheel wells.
Muzzle flashes flickered above the hood, and bullets smacked into the tree trunks and the snowy ground to his right. Frozen splinters rained down on his head from strikes just above him. He put the dark, blocky AKM sights about where the muzzle flash was and fired back, the Kalashnikov rattling and bucking in his hands. AKMs were not known for their pinpoint accuracy, having been largely designed for massed human wave attacks, with the assaulters firing on full automatic from the hip. The dark made accuracy even more difficult, especially with the single remaining headlight sending its actinic glare across the snow, turning the scene into a weird mesh of bright light and impenetrable shadow. But the shooting from the hood stopped, at least for a moment.
