Enemy Unidentified (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 3)

by Peter Nealen

  There was, of course, the distinct possibility that Medina’s entire back story was bullshit, made up to explain his hard-charging viciousness in combat. That part, at least, Huerta knew was true.

  “Start getting the men loaded up and ready to move,” he ordered. “We are going to assault the platform.”

  “Sì, Contralmirante,” Medina answered with a salute. “So, their air defenses have been suppressed somehow?”

  The kid was smart; that could be a problem. “We will get to the platform,” he confirmed. “Now get your men moving.”

  He was a Contralmirante, he didn’t need to answer a Teniente’s questions.

  Leaving Medina in his wake, he headed for the back part of the hangar that had become his temporary living quarters. His own P90 and body armor were waiting there, hanging on a gear tree made of 2x4s.

  ***

  Less than fifteen minutes later, the Mi-17s were thumping into the sky, their rotors beating the afternoon air as they drove toward the platform on the horizon.

  Chapter 16

  Flanagan eased around the container set between the ladderwell and the helideck, his rifle leveled, and wished for a scope.

  It wasn’t that the distances were that long; the longest shot on the entire platform might have been two hundred yards. That was easy with a red dot. No, Flanagan didn’t want the magnification of a scope for accuracy’s sake; he wanted it so that he could look more closely into some of the nooks and crannies around the platform.

  There were a lot of places to hide, if you were a shooter setting up an ambush. It might not have seemed that way at first, but the north side of the platform, aside from the bulk of the structure of the derricks themselves, was a maze of girders, pipes, cranes, and support structures. The blue-gray of the enemy camouflage actually worked pretty well in the shadows, and he wanted to be able to zoom in when he was looking through smaller gaps in the obstructing structures.

  You can wish in one hand and take a dump in the other, and see which one fills up first. Flanagan wasn’t much of one for spending time and mental energy bitching about stuff he couldn’t change. So, he kept his gripes to himself and scanned.

  The charges that were presumably planted on the wells beneath the derricks weren’t visible from up there; they were probably down below, in the workings of the wells themselves. But given the challenge they’d been issued from the terrorist leader, he doubted that they were going to find an easy route inside.

  Hancock, Wade, Gomez, and Bianco were spreading out among the piles of equipment, containers, and various other detritus that was placed around the edge of the helideck. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Santelli’s element coming up on the edge of the helideck itself.

  For a long time, the platform was eerily still. There was the sound of the breeze in the girders and cables, the distant rumble of the generators that were still keeping the power on, and the swish of the waves against the pilings holding the platform up. But no gunshots sounded, and no one seemed to move.

  “Shit,” Hancock muttered. He was on the other side of the small container, peering around that corner. “Somebody’s gonna have to move first.”

  “If they’re set in, they’re going to wait for us to make the first move,” Flanagan pointed out quietly.

  “Unless they’ve already got the charges smoking,” Hancock countered. “Still,” he admitted, “these guys don’t seem quite like real die-hards. I don’t think they want to go down with the ship any more than we do.”

  Flanagan didn’t take his eyes off his sector, but kept scanning. There had to be bad guys out there, possibly watching them right then. But they were being disciplined and holding still.

  Then a shot cracked out. Flanagan didn’t hear the snap of the bullet’s passage, so he knew that it wasn’t anywhere near him. But he saw Santelli and the rest drop flat on the helideck, keeping back from the edge.

  He widened his search, his eyes unblinking as he scanned for the muzzle blast. It was about midday, so the contrast between light and shadow was pretty intense. A shooter huddled in the darkness had a pretty good chance of going relatively unnoticed.

  He wished he had a hat. It was an old trick, lifting an empty hat to draw fire, but he knew that it had worked in the past. He’d never tried it, but it would be worth a shot. Except that he didn’t have a hat, and he wasn’t going to stick his bare head up to see if one of these assholes took a shot at it.

  More shots echoed across the platform, coming from off to his left. A glance showed him that Jenkins had crawled up to the edge and was shooting at something, off to one side of the western derrick. Maybe he’d gotten a glimpse of the guy who’d shot at him.

  Or maybe he was doing a little recon by fire. It seemed like something Jenkins would do.

  Flanagan preferred not to give his position away if he could help it. He was a hunter; he preferred to let the enemy move first, expose himself first. Recon by fire occasionally flushed someone out, but it could also draw more fire from elsewhere.

  Which promptly happened, as a storm of fire erupted from a nearby crane, sending bullets ripping through the air around Jenkins, punching into the metal and surfacing of the helideck, and forcing him back from the edge.

  But while it might not have worked out that well for Jenkins, Flanagan now had a target. As did the rest of Hancock’s element.

  Leaning out just a little bit, Flanagan put his red dot just above the spot where he’d seen the muzzle blast and squeezed the trigger. The bark of his shot was drowned out by a ragged, rattling roar as the others opened fire on the same shooter.

  Bullets hammered at the crane’s control cab, shattering the plexiglass and punching holes through the sheet metal walls and door. There was a hint of movement inside, then the crane was still. No more gunfire came from the cab.

  But more return fire started to come from the higher decks of the skeletal structures on the far side of the derricks. There had been terrorists up there, too, watching for just that to happen. Flanagan ducked back as a bullet smacked a shiny hole in the yellow-painted side of the container, only a few inches from where his head had been.

  He snapped off a few shots in the general direction that the round had come from, but he really couldn’t see much. The shooter must have had a nice, small loophole to shoot through. Flanagan had a sudden flashback to firefights in Afghanistan, trading bullets with Taliban fighters who had been dug into compounds with thick mud walls, shooting through tiny murder holes where the Americans couldn’t touch them.

  “We could be up here all day trading shots with these bastards,” Hancock snarled, echoing Flanagan’s thoughts. “Joe, John, get back down below and see if you can get in close and deal with them. We’ll cover you from up here.”

  Flanagan didn’t argue. He didn’t even comment. Wade just uttered a monosyllabic grunt and rolled away from the corner where he’d taken cover, making eye contact with Flanagan before they both headed for the ladderwell, sprinting to get through the gap before they could get shot.

  Bullets snapped and cracked past them as they pounded down the steps.

  Payback’s coming, assholes.

  ***

  They could still hear gunfire from above them, dimly echoing hammering that reverberated through the steel fabric of the platform. Neither man flinched. They’d trained together only a little, but they soon fell into a rhythm. It was an old dance for both of them, even though Wade had been a Ranger and Flanagan a Recon Marine. The principles were the same; move smoothly, watch the corners, get eyes and a gun muzzle on any opening or angle where you might get shot.

  Of course, on the Tourmaline-Delta platform, bullets were hardly the only worry.

  Flanagan was in the lead when he stopped dead, holding up a fist. They were down in the bowels of the lower decks, having just come out of the main superstructure near the base of the eastern derrick. And, just as Flanagan had expected, there was a trap waiting for them.

  “How much crap did these fuck
ers bring with them?” Wade whispered. He’d just turned from checking their six o’clock to almost run into Flanagan, the other man’s fist right in front of his face.

  “A lot,” Flanagan said. He was wondering the same thing. It was apparent that there had been a great deal of preparation for this op, but how they’d seized the platform without anyone finding out about it prior to the attacks was still a mystery. Maybe they hijacked a supply shipment. It was about the only thing that made sense.

  Slinging his rifle on his back, Flanagan bent down and advanced slowly on the charge, while Wade moved forward with him, eyes and rifle tracking up and around through the hatch, looking for the shooter that they were both pretty sure was waiting for them to stick their heads out.

  The trap was pretty much exactly the same as the others they’d encountered; a block of plastic explosive, wrapped in a fragmentation sleeve, inside a weatherproof plastic box and wired up with IR sensors. Flanagan grimaced behind his dark beard; as familiar as the traps were getting, it wasn’t getting any less hazardous to disarm them. And the longer they messed with them, the more likely one of them would make a mistake.

  Fortunately, they hadn’t yet found a trap with a failsafe. They were fairly straightforward. At least, they had been.

  “Hell.” He looked down at the setup and knew this one wasn’t going to be as easy. The laser was affixed to the plastic box’s lid, instead of the side or the nearby wall. Which meant that opening the box was going to interrupt the beam and blow them both to kingdom come.

  He briefly thought of finding something to throw through the beam, backing off, and setting the trap off that way. But he quickly reconsidered. Any explosion that close to the wells had the potential to be disastrous. Even from where he was, he could smell the fumes. Setting the trap off would probably kill everyone on the platform.

  Of course, with the hostages having already been murdered, that just left them and the terrorists. But Flanagan wasn’t particularly interested in making that kind of a statement. He’d much rather kill the terrorists and walk away alive.

  “We’ve got to bypass this somehow,” he whispered.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Wade replied, continuing to scan over his shoulder. “They’ve been pretty thorough about covering most avenues, so far.”

  “Well, they got smart with this one, so if we try to disarm it, it’s probably going to blow up in our faces,” Flanagan said, bringing his rifle back up. He looked around, knowing that their options weren’t great. “Fortunately, it’s set pretty low, so we might be able to step over the beam.”

  Wade didn’t stare at him incredulously, but his tone when he spoke communicated the sentiment pretty well. “Just like that? Step over the beam we can’t see and hope the field-expedient claymore doesn’t turn us into pink mist?”

  “Haven’t you ever stepped over the beam to get out of a garage while the door was closing?” Flanagan asked.

  “That’s a little different, don’t you think?” Wade retorted.

  “Only because we’ll die if we screw it up instead of having to re-close the garage door when it starts to open again,” Flanagan said, standing. “But if we don’t deal with these bastards, we’ll all die, anyway.” Lifting a sodden boot, he took a deep breath.

  At least if I’m wrong, I’ll probably never know it. He kept one hand on his rifle, muzzle high, and grabbed hold of the hatch coaming with the other, to make sure he didn’t fall and accidentally break the beam that way.

  “You crazy jarhead son of a bitch,” Wade started to say, but Flanagan was already committed. He half-stepped, half-hopped over the line of the beam, just about lost his balance as he put his weight on his lead foot, then had to throw himself flat as a bullet smacked off the wall just a few inches from his hand, having missed his head by a scant hair. The snap of its passage was drowned out by the loud bang of the impact.

  He hit hard, just about driving the wind out of himself. He’d had the presence of mind to keep his rifle up, so that he didn’t land on it, but he was out of position, and acutely aware of just how little cover he had, even as Wade opened fire in response, the muzzle blasts from the M6 slapping at him where he lay on the metal deck.

  Flanagan rolled to his right, getting away from the door, and hopefully away from the charge before something set it off. Wade was still inside the hatch, shooting through it, even as more bullets hammered against the pipes and girders around Flanagan.

  “I can’t see him; I’m just laying fire!” Wade bellowed, as Flanagan got himself behind a brace of thick steel I-beams that would at least provide some cover from the incoming bullets. Getting his equilibrium back, he lifted his rifle again and eased one eye out from behind the beam, looking desperately for the shooter.

  He spotted the blue-gray shape, kneeling on one of the upper decks on the far side of the derricks, at just about the same time that the Blackhearts up on the top deck did. More fire roared and hammered from up there, and the incoming shots ceased, as the camouflaged terrorist was forced back from his firing position.

  With the fire died down, Flanagan braced himself around the side of the I-beam, pointing his rifle up, scanning for more threats. “Set!” he yelled to Wade. “Come on!”

  He barely heard Wade’s reply. “If I get blown up, Joe, I’m gonna find some way to come back and haunt you for the rest of your damned life. And I don’t even believe in ghosts.”

  There was a crash behind him as Wade overbalanced the same way he had. The beam was just high enough that it wasn’t possible to have both feet on the deck while straddling it. But nothing exploded, so Wade had managed to clear the beam without interrupting it.

  He slammed into the angled, bracing I-beam near Flanagan’s knees. “Now what?” he asked. He sounded a little out of breath, probably because of the hairiness of what they’d just done. “We’re just about at the derricks. Are we defusing, or hunting?”

  “Hunting,” Flanagan replied, without looking down. Was that more movement up there, or was he imagining it in the play of sunlight and shadow? “We won’t do anybody any good if we get shot trying to defuse the damn bombs.”

  “Lead on, then,” Wade said.

  That was going to be the tricky part. From what he’d seen so far, most of the terrorist shooters seemed to be on the higher decks behind the derricks. There had to be one or two closer in, if the bombs really were supposed to be bait for an ambush, but the ones on the upper decks were the more immediate threats. And there was a relatively open stretch of catwalk around the seaward side of the derrick, that was going to be pretty easily covered by a shooter up above.

  “Cover me,” Flanagan said. “I’m moving to that next ladderwell.” There were steel mesh steps leading up into the open tower of decking, pipes, and support equipment on the far side of the derrick.

  “I’ve got you,” Wade said. He stepped back, behind Flanagan, pointing his rifle up toward the higher decks. He spared another glance at the crane above them, but it was still bullet-riddled and abandoned. The dead terrorist’s bullpup rifle was lying on the deck not far in front of them.

  Flanagan took a deep breath, then came around the main girder and the base of the derrick, pounding down the catwalk toward the next bit of dubious cover.

  It wasn’t a long run; the catwalk was only about twenty yards long. It just felt a lot longer. And even as he neared the steel pillars that framed the structure, movement to his left caught his eye.

  There was a terrorist crouched amid the pipes leading out of the derrick, his rifle already leveled.

  Flanagan threw himself flat on the deck, hitting his shoulder for the second time in the last few minutes with bruising impact, even as a three-round burst snapped overhead. If he hadn’t been moving as fast as he had been, he’d have been dead.

  Unfortunately, even as he pointed his rifle, he saw that he didn’t have a shot. The terrorist didn’t, either, but he was effectively pinned behind the maze of pipes and supporting girders, which were now providing t
he bad guy as much cover as they were providing him. And the bad guy knew just where he was, too.

  Gunshots thundered, and he faintly heard the cracks as several bullets went high over his head. He glanced back to see Wade shooting around the side of the derrick, aiming above him. There must be another one up there, trying to shoot down at him.

  Scrambling, wincing a little as his elbows and knees beat against the hard deck, he side-crawled toward the ladderwell. The pipes were fairly level; none of them were going to provide more cover than he already had. But he wanted to get the hell away from the last spot his would-be killer had seen him.

  He got close up by the pipes, still in the “side prone,” and briefly tried to look underneath. At first, all he could make out was more pipes, along with some of the structural members keeping them level over the deck. Then he spotted a boot.

  The owner of the boot shifted a little, and he saw a bit of the blue-gray camouflage pantleg above it. It wasn’t much of a target, but it was a target. And if he did this right, it would be enough.

  He snugged his rifle into his shoulder, putting the red dot on the black boot, his finger tightening on the trigger. He knew that it wasn’t going to quite be point of aim, point of impact; the offset of the sight from the barrel wasn’t intended for sideways shooting like this. But at that range, it wasn’t going to matter.

  He fired, the LWRC bucking into his shoulder, the muzzle blast concentrated in the narrow space between pipe and decking, slapping him in the face. He kept pulling the trigger, pumping five shots at the terrorist’s foot and lower leg as fast as the trigger could reset.