by Peter Nealen
“There was a bed inside the house,” Hart said. None of them wanted to think too much about what might have happened to the family that lived there. Their bodies might be found after the spring thaw. If the shooters had indeed been part of the same outfit responsible for the Tourmaline-Delta incident, there wasn’t much doubt that they were dead. “I’ll go in and see if I can scrounge a few blankets.”
“That’ll help,” Javakhishvili said, as he started policing up Childress’ gear. “We’ll take turns carrying him. I don’t have a litter, so it’s going to have to be a fireman’s carry.”
“Nah,” Curtis said after a long pause. He took a deep breath and shivered. Curtis was a warm-weather creature, living most of his Stateside life in Las Vegas. “I’ll carry him.”
“We’re going to have a long way to go, Kev,” Bianco pointed out. “We’ll take turns.”
Curtis might have been about to protest, but he seemed unusually subdued. “Okay, fine,” he said after another moment.
Just then, Hart came out of the house with a couple of threadbare blankets tucked under one arm, his Vz.58 held under the other. As flaky as Hart could seem to be at times, he was clearly ready to drop the blankets and run the gun at the drop of a hat.
Together, he and Javakhishvili started wrapping the wounded Childress in the blankets. He was already shivering badly, which made checking his breathing more difficult. His core temperature was clearly dropping fast. They had to get him out of there.
“All right, let’s go,” Javakhishvili said.
Hart moved to the corner of the house and took up security for Curtis, who turned back toward Childress, laying his RPD in the snow. He crouched down and, with Javakhishvili’s help, got Childress up on his shoulders, one arm looped around the wounded man’s legs and holding onto his wrist. Then he crouched down and grabbed his RPD with his free hand before straightening up and carefully adjusting the weight on his shoulders. Childress bit back a moan at the movement; it had to have been excruciating. “Sorry, buddy,” Curtis grunted.
“S’alright,” Childress said through clenched teeth. His voice was weak and strained, and Javakhishvili studied him closely. His breathing wasn’t going to be great in that position, either.
It struck Herc Javakhishvili at that point that none of the more experienced Blackhearts had objected to his taking charge. He’d been in PMCs where the new guy was expected to simply shut up and pay attention, regardless of his experience. Sometimes, that was a good thing; he’d also seen companies where the new guys thought that their military rank meant they could simply jump in and start changing everything around to suit themselves. Clearly, the Blackhearts weren’t wedded to their own seniority enough to object when a professional offered professional advice.
“Let’s go,” Curtis grunted. The commotion around them was getting louder, and there were flashlights visible between the trees. They didn’t know if the Transnistrians had some kind of home militia, but given the Soviet-style paranoia and long-standing, unresolved war with Moldova, it stood to reason. And they did not want to be there when the militia got close enough to see the bodies lying in the snow.
With Hart taking point, they headed back into the trees, back the way they’d come.
***
Shouts in Russian and stabbing flashlight beams forced Flanagan into the shelter of another stand of trees. He slipped between the trunks, knelt down, hoping that his bedsheet poncho would shield him from casual observation, and went completely and utterly still.
Hrustovaya was awake, and the locals weren’t reacting well to a firefight in their backyard. They didn’t seem to be all that organized, but under the circumstances, Flanagan couldn’t imagine that was a good thing. He was expecting them to start randomly shooting at shadows any minute.
And they only had to get lucky once.
He could just see the vague shape lying flat against a shed wall ahead of him that was Gomez. If he dared to turn his head—and he didn’t, not with that flashlight around the corner of that same shed being shone around—he would have seen Brannigan another dozen paces behind him, down in the prone next to a skeletal, dead bush. It wasn’t much concealment, but they’d been caught crossing the barnyard when the militia had decided to check around behind this particular house.
There were half a dozen of them, at least, bundled up in thick coats and fur hats, mostly armed with SKSs, AK-47s, and even a few Mosin-Nagants. The Transnistrian militia out in the country clearly didn’t have a lot of money to go around. And if they were that poorly equipped, they probably weren’t much better trained, from what he’d seen.
More voices called out as the man with the flashlight stopped at the corner of the shed and swung it around, playing the cone of light over the barnyard. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to be too intent on walking out past the shed; he was just looking for any sign of the bad guys who had been shooting up the place. Flanagan silently prayed that he stayed complacent.
If he’d really been looking, he would have picked out several of the Blackhearts, lying prone or crouched behind trees. The light played over several white lumps with bits of darker cloth showing, but the Transnistrian didn’t seem to notice. He was looking for silhouettes, not for camouflaged men hiding in the shrubbery or the low spots in the field.
Flanagan suddenly remembered that Wade still had Gogol with him, and his breath caught as he waited for the gangster to give them away. If nothing else, panic might well lead him to yell or bolt. But he didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. He was probably frozen with fear, both of getting caught in the crossfire and of becoming the target of Wade’s wrath.
The light crossed the yard, then swept back again, bouncing a little as the man played it over spots that he hadn’t thought he’d looked at quite closely enough. Then he yelled something over his shoulder in Russian, and turned away, taking the light with him.
Flanagan let out the smallest bit of a breath that he hadn’t even been consciously holding. This was the third such close call since they’d left the target house. It was slowing down their pursuit, and they’d already lost visual contact with the terrorists long before.
He still waited, motionless, as the dark figures of the militia turned away, following the man with the flashlight. Ahead of him, Gomez stayed flat on the ground, equally still.
He was glad of it as one of the militiamen stopped, only half-turned toward the leader, and looked back. The man stayed there for a long moment, scanning the field, as if worried that some gun-wielding boogeyman was going to rise up out of the snow as soon as he turned his back.
Which might well have happened, had the Blackhearts been less cautious. Flanagan stayed where he was, watching the man with his peripheral vision, his eyes focused somewhere near the shed wall. Even in the dark, it was entirely possible that a man could sense that he was being watched, when someone was staring fixedly at him. No one could ever really say why. But it was something that Flanagan had observed more than once. He’d even felt it, himself.
He heard movement behind him, and his heart almost stopped. Not now, dammit. Not yet. Just freeze!
The militiaman either heard or saw something, too. He called out over his shoulder, and the rest stopped. The flashlight half-turned back toward them. Flanagan’s hands tightened ever so slightly on his Uzi’s grip. It was a long-ish shot for a 9mm, but he was confident that he could make it.
The answering words from the man with the flashlight were in Russian, so he couldn’t make out the meaning, but the tone was impatient and dismissive. We checked that, already. Come on.
Reluctantly, the lone suspicious militiaman turned away, and Flanagan could breathe again. At least a little.
Even so, the militia wasn’t moving away quite fast enough. He could feel the bad guys getting farther and farther away, while they had to wait. If the terrorists got to the road with Codreanu and got in a vehicle, it was all over. They’d never find them.
The militia was moving out of sight around the shed, the f
aint glow of the flashlight reflecting off the snow to send weird shadows dancing among the trees. Flanagan waited, even as Gomez slowly and silently got to his feet behind the shed wall, his own suppressed Uzi pointed at the corner, just in case.
Then a rattle of gunfire down to the south split the night again. A distant shout and a pair of shots was answered by a storm of gunfire, either full auto or simply semi-auto fired as fast as the shooters could pull the trigger. There were more shouts in Russian, and suddenly the militia was booking it away from the shed, into the trees to the southwest. A radio crackled.
The militia wasn’t moving as fast as the Blackhearts might have; they were clearly a little less than eager to run into that kind of gunfire. They were out in the dark and the cold because they had to be, not because they necessarily wanted to be.
But they were moving. And unless Flanagan missed his guess, they now had a general direction and distance for the terrorists. That had to have been them, running into more of the militia.
It was too dark for much in the way of visual communication, but Gomez was already moving as the militia dwindled into the woods between houses. Flanagan slipped out of his own hiding place to follow, carefully placing his boots to make as little noise as possible.
They still had to move quickly if they were going to have a chance to grab Codreanu out of the middle of the terrorists and the militia.
***
Redrum had run through every blasphemy and obscenity in his vocabulary and was starting over.
They were running toward the road now, Lezàrd pushing Codreanu ahead of him, the arms dealer gasping and stumbling, making more noise by himself than the other three combined. Flint was in the lead, and Redrum was taking up the rear, turning only briefly to check their six. He could still see the slumped forms of the two militiamen that Flint had almost bumped into, lying in the snow leaking out the last of their blood. Flint had gunned both men down with almost a full magazine, just about cutting one in half in the process. It had done the job, but it had clearly drawn a lot more attention.
Even as he started to turn back to the front, a brilliant white light stabbed out of the trees, as another group of militiamen appeared. He squinted into the glare, as a voice yelled out in Russian. He didn’t think he’d actually been spotted, but these guys didn’t seem to be all that aggressive as it was. He leveled his M21 and cranked off three shots at the flashlight. The rifle’s report sounded thunderous in the dark and the cold, flame blasting from the muzzle, but the flashlight abruptly went out, and aside from a panicked yell, there was no further sign of pursuit.
That ought to give them something to think about. He turned back and broke into a jog to catch up with the others. Flint was setting a punishing pace, heedless of Codreanu’s struggles, and Redrum, for once, didn’t mind, despite how badly his lungs were burning from sucking icy wind. They needed to move if they were going to get away.
He could see the lighter area of the road ahead, through the trees. So far, most of the houses and farms in Hrustovaya didn’t seem to have much in the way of actual motor vehicles; there were a lot more horses and oxcarts to be seen. But there had to be some cars around. If they could get to the road, they might find one they could hotwire, and then get out. Final extract was going to be tricky; this op had already gone so far sideways that it was going to be a bitch to find a way out of Transnistria. Even the Moldovans and the Ukrainians were probably going to be on heightened alert after the shooting that had gone down in Transnistria over the last couple of days.
That concern got shoved to the back of his mind as headlights illuminated the road ahead of them. The light was patchy and moving, and he couldn’t see the lights themselves from where he was, but from the sheer intensity of the glow and the distant rumble of engines, he was pretty sure there were a lot of them. Almost a dozen, if he wasn’t mistaken.
Flint had moved up to the edge of the road and taken a knee next to a tree. Peering around it, he ducked back with a particularly vile curse. “Looks like half the fucking Army’s down there,” he hissed. “No getting out that way, not right now.” He looked around. “Shit. They’re dismounting and coming up the road.”
Redrum signaled for Lezàrd to get Codreanu under cover away from the road and sit on him, then moved up next to Flint. “What now?”
Flint was looking around. They were in a patch of woods between two tiny farms. “We gotta strongpoint,” he said. “If they sweep this entire area, we’re fucked. They’re moving better than these local shitkickers.” He seemed to focus on the farm behind them, then got up and started moving. “Let’s go.”
Redrum shoved himself to his feet and followed. He half hoped that Flint was about to get a shotgun blast to the teeth, but knew that he didn’t have any other choice. He glanced back to make sure that Lezàrd and Codreanu were following.
The militia seemed to have paused after he’d shot back at them. They were definitely still out there; he could see the dancing cones of flashlight beams flickering through the trees. But they’d slowed and were sweeping the woods more cautiously. He’d bought some time, at least.
Flint got to the farmhouse, dashing from the trees to the wall, just short of the door. Stepping out, he reared back, landed a solid kick to the door, which smashed inward, and went through, his M21 leveled and his finger on the trigger. Redrum hardly had a chance to get set before he had to follow, plunging into the darkness inside the house, hoping that he could see a silhouette of a shooter before he got his own head blown off.
Chapter 21
“Kto vy?” an old, creaky voice demanded. A match flared, and there was an old man in a nightshirt sitting on the edge of the bedstead set against the wall. There was only one room in the little farmhouse, and the match lit the entire thing, if dimly. There was another shape behind the old man on the bed, presumably his wife.
“Shut up,” Flint snapped, taking two steps across the room and buttstroking the old man in the face. The man fell backward with a gurgling cry as something crunched. The match fell to the dirt floor, and Flint stomped it out, just before grabbing the old man and hauling him off the bed to throw him on the floor. The old woman was shrieking, but Flint reached in, grabbed her, and propelled her onto the floor next to the old man, with another snarled, “I said shut the fuck up!”
It was unlikely that either one of the pair spoke or understood a word of English, but they got the message, especially when it was backed up by the prodding of a rifle muzzle. They fell silent, though the old man’s breathing was still loud and labored, whistling through his smashed nose.
“Get those other two fucks in here,” Flint said. “And shut the damned door.”
Redrum savagely suppressed the urge to just shoot the man. Like it or not, he wasn’t going to fare any better at the Transnistrians’ hands if he killed his teammate. They were in this together, at least until they got out of the country. He turned back toward the door, leaning out just far enough to beckon Lezàrd in.
The French shooter jogged into the house, shoving Codreanu ahead of him. The arms dealer was in bad shape; he hadn’t exactly been dressed for the cold when they’d dragged him out of the previous safehouse. He was shivering violently, and his breathing sounded ragged and hoarse. There was a growing rattle in it, too, though how much of that was because of the cold and how much was because of whatever Flint had done to him, Redrum couldn’t say.
Redrum tried to close the door behind them, but it was only partially going back into the frame. Flint’s kick had almost taken it off the shitty hinges. He might even have cracked the frame.
“Now what?” he asked, finally giving up on the door and stepping back into the room, his hand on his M21.
“Now we wait for them to move past us, then get out and head south,” Flint said. “Maybe even steal one of their vehicles on the way; we could use a getaway car. We’ll take the long way; I doubt they’ll be looking for us in Tiraspol. We’ve still got enough cash to get past the road police.”
> “No, we don’t,” Redrum said. “Skinner had it in the SUV.”
He couldn’t see the details of the man’s face in the dark, but Flint just stared at him, motionless, for a long time. Then he suddenly grabbed the nearest chair and threw it against the wall with a crash. “Fuck!” he screamed. “Motherfucking worthless sack of shit! He’s lucky he’s dead!”
Redrum stared at Flint coldly. The tantrum was completely useless, and in fact was putting them at greater risk of compromise just from the noise. It was also dangerous, and not just to the mission. His blood ran cold as he realized that Flint was right on the ragged edge of losing control. And when Flint lost control, people died.
Only a loud, amplified voice speaking Russian, followed by a crash, from outside stopped Flint’s rampage. Which was a good thing for the house’s owners; one of them was likely to suffer the man’s more violent attentions in the next few seconds.
“What the fuck was that?” Flint asked.
“That was the door to the next house down getting kicked in,” Lezàrd announced. He was peering through the southern window. “I don’t think we can count on them simply passing us by. They’re searching the houses as they advance.”
***
Brannigan paused and took a knee next to Gomez. They had pushed away from the small farms and houses, and were skirting the larger outer fields in the trees. There was less chance of stumbling on a militia patrol that way, and they could therefore move a little more quickly, hopefully closing some of the time-distance gap with their quarry.
But now there was a new wrinkle. He didn’t know what it was yet, but Gomez wouldn’t have stopped otherwise.
Gomez was down on a knee in the shadows of another tree, and Brannigan took up a position where he could look around the other side of the trunk. That way, they could both minimize their exposure. “What is it?” he whispered. Gomez just pointed.
He peered through the dark, but it didn’t take long to pick up what Gomez had seen. The trees obscured a lot of the view, but there were men moving on-line across the small farms. It was impossible to tell how they were dressed or equipped from that distance, in the low light, but it seemed unlikely that they were more militia. These were trained soldiers. Which meant they were either Transnistrian Army or Russians.
