War to the Knife (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 9)

by Peter Nealen

  “Hello, gentlemen.” The thickset man’s English was accented, but he was noticeably more fluent than the waitress. “I’m afraid that your friend might have led you wrong. We don’t have Chuleta Valluna here. I can suggest something else, but we simply don’t have the ingredients for Chuleta Valluna.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing.” Brannigan hadn’t been sure what the reaction would have been, but this wasn’t quite it. Kirk had told Flanagan that his friend would probably draw them into the back to talk when he heard their order, but this guy wasn’t doing that. “What would you recommend, then?”

  “I’d suggest the Arroz con Pollo,” the man said. He was still watching them, but Brannigan noticed that his eyes were never quite still. It wasn’t a nervous tic, either. He was watching the front as well.

  “We’ll have that, then.” The man nodded, said a quick word in Spanish to the waitress, and disappeared into the kitchen again.

  Brannigan frowned. Flanagan’s expression was carefully neutral, but he’d clearly noticed the same thing. “Not what Kirk told me to expect.”

  “How long has it been since he’s been down here?” Brannigan was still keeping an eye on the kitchen door.

  “It’s been a few years.” Flanagan grimaced slightly. “Things may have changed.”

  “Which means that this could go south in a hurry in the next few minutes.” But he wasn’t willing to completely abandon the rendezvous until they knew for sure.

  The waitress came out a moment later, with two bowls and plates. The rice and chicken in the bowls was steaming, and smelled really good. She slid the plates in front of them with a smile.

  A small slip of paper was on Brannigan’s plate, wedged under the bowl. He returned the waitress’s smile and pulled the paper out as she turned back toward the kitchen.

  Finish your meal, and then meet me at the north side of Santa Matilde Park.

  Flanagan had started in on his food, though he was watching Brannigan with a raised eyebrow. Brannigan tucked the paper into his shirt pocket and picked up his fork. “Looks like we’re in business.”

  ***

  Three pickups came out of the night and screeched to a halt in front of the small, red-painted bungalow. Gunmen in green shirts, carrying AK-47s, G3s, and Galils, piled out of the beds and converged on the front door.

  No one was awake inside, at least not at first. A single light burned above the door, but it did nothing to deter the men who kicked the door to splinters and rushed inside. They were in power. What was to deter them?

  Diego Galvez stepped out of the lead truck’s cab rather more sedately than his barely-leashed killers. Dressed in the same green shirt, but with a black beret on his head, his wolfish, sharp-edged features only serving to accentuate the feverish burning of his dark eyes as he watched the house, lighting a cigarette while he waited.

  The Green Shirts were not expert tacticians. They didn’t carefully clear each room—they smashed in doors and rushed toward the nearest figure that caught their eye. If they’d been up against trained soldiers—even some of the FARC’s best fighters—they’d have been cut to pieces in moments.

  Galvez didn’t especially care. He had his special troops. They were assigned elsewhere for tonight. He’d needed knee-breakers for this, so he had picked these men carefully.

  He could trust them to do two things—to be as violent as he needed them to be, and never to cross him. Every one of them had reason to fear Galvez.

  To fear him more than any of the other leaders. Even Clemente.

  Shouts and thuds reverberated through the open door. Galvez stood there, smoking, until matters had calmed down a little, then he started inside, flicking the still-burning cigarette into the garden out front. It was still too damp for the plants to burn—not that he would have cared.

  He stepped through the door, looking around at the wreckage his men had left. They had not been gentle. The door itself hung on by one hinge, the jamb splintered and cracked where the latch and deadbolt had been smashed inward by a heavy boot. Plants were scattered amidst the potting soil and the fragments of their pots on the tiled floor.

  More smashed furniture, including a shattered floor lamp, traced the trail his men had forced into the house. A mirror had been thrown on the floor, and Galvez’s polished black boots crunched in the fragments as he stepped into the living room.

  Fabian Camacho and his family knelt on the floor in front of the smashed remains of their coffee table, their arms cruelly twisted behind their backs. Blood ran down the side of Camacho’s head—he’d been struck by a rifle butt. Galvez had seen that before. He’d received such a wound himself, long ago. The scar still ran through one eyebrow.

  Camacho had had nothing to do with that. It had been a long time ago, and far from San Tabal. But Galvez looked down at the slightly paunchy financial tycoon, and his lip curled. It was just such men as Camacho who had paid the soldiers who had beaten him and left him for dead on the side of the road outside of Mocoa.

  “Did they give you any trouble?” Galvez already knew the answer, as his eyes were drawn to Lorenzo’s split lip.

  Lorenzo pointed to Camacho’s oldest, a boy of about fourteen. “That one tried to fight.”

  Galvez looked at Camacho. “Kill him.”

  Lorenzo didn’t hesitate. He shifted his rifle to one side and shot the boy in the back of the head, almost before the Green Shirt holding him could get out of the way. The bullet blasted out through his mouth with a spray of red, blood and bits of shattered bone and teeth spattering the rug. The teenager fell on his face with an awful thump. His mother screamed in anguish.

  The sound would have been heart-rending, if Galvez had not long ago extinguished any weak human feelings.

  A rifle butt to the skull silenced the woman. She slumped to the floor beside her murdered son, whimpering.

  Galvez lit another cigarette as he met Camacho’s burning eyes. “You have been helping enemies of the people escape, Fabian Camacho. That alone is a crime worthy of death.” He took a deep drag and blew it in Camacho’s face. The man blinked, his eyes smarting from the smoke, but he refused to flinch. “The only reason that you are still alive is because I need information. You are going to tell me everything you know about your counter-revolutionary friends.” He smiled, but there was no warmth in the expression, nothing human at all. “If you do, you will die quickly. If not…” He took another drag on the cigarette and then dropped the still-glowing coal on Señora Camacho’s back. She was still too dazed from the blow that had laid her out to react. “Then you will watch your family die slowly and in a great deal of pain before we even get to you.”

  Camacho glared daggers at him. “You are going to kill us anyway.”

  “Indeed. You are already condemned by your own actions. The only question is, will it be quick and relatively painless?” Galvez stepped closer and smiled down at the financier. “I can make each one of you last days if I want to.” In truth, he’d never quite managed that feat, though it was something he’d always wanted to accomplish. They usually died after a few hours.

  “Go to hell.”

  Galvez drew the knife he always carried opposite his pistol. “If there is any such thing as hell, Fabian Camacho, the closest to it will be what you witness and endure here tonight.”

  ***

  It was almost dawn. Camacho’s face was a mask of blood, what remained of his clothes soaked in it. Not all of it was his own. The beatings had been savage and there had been spatter. Several of the Green Shirts were splashed with it, and they joked under their breath as they watched Galvez work on Camacho.

  “You can kill me, Diego Galvez, but it won’t stop God’s wrath from finding you.” Camacho’s voice was a hoarse gurgle. His throat had been damaged, and the blood and phlegm running down into his lungs wasn’t helping. “Clemente will fall.”

  Somehow, Galvez couldn’t help but grin as he straightened. He hadn’t gotten the information he wanted, at least not all of it. Camacho wa
s tougher than he’d expected.

  “I know.” He drew his pistol and shot Fabian Camacho between the eyes.

  Chapter 7

  It was getting dark by the time they reached the park. There were a decent number of people on the street and strolling through the park, young and old, and they got some looks, being two big gringos, but not as many as they might have expected. Bogota was not an insular Middle Eastern city—there was still a respectable tourist industry in Colombia, especially since the drug wars had migrated north. The Colombian cartels were still involved, but they had mostly become suppliers to the far more savage and violent Mexican cartels. So, there were usually a fair number of white faces to be found, especially in large cities like Bogota.

  Of course, those white faces were usually seen in more crowded places, rather than down here in the poorer part of town.

  The two of them kept to the shadows as best they could, and tried to stay inconspicuous. That was more easily said than done, but as the sun went down and they kept to the trees on the edge of the park, near the street, the shadows made it slightly less obvious that they were two white men waiting for someone.

  They hadn’t been there long when a newish silver Nissan pulled up to the curb. “Get in.” The thickset man from the restaurant was behind the wheel. He appeared to be alone.

  Keeping his hand near his knife, Flanagan led the way, opening the back door and checking both the back seat itself and the cargo area behind it. Both were empty, so he slid inside, making room for Brannigan, who joined him and pulled the door shut.

  No sooner had it latched than the man was pulling away from the curb, smoothly accelerating down the street.

  “I don’t know who you are, but you used a recognition signal I arranged years ago with someone I trust implicitly.” The thickset man didn’t look back as he spoke, but kept his eyes on the road. “I haven’t seen him in a very long time, but he was never the kind who would give up a secret under duress. So, I will consider you his friends, until you prove otherwise.”

  “You’re David Cruz, then?” Brannigan was watching their driver as much as he was watching where they were going.

  “I am. Who are you, and how do you know Ignatius Kirk?”

  “I’m John. This is Joe.” Brannigan relaxed ever so slightly. Cruz had used Kirk’s name, and his demeanor was more a combination of curiosity and wariness than the kind of affected friendliness that might herald a double-cross. “We’ve worked with Kirk recently. He’d be here himself, but he’s a bit stove up.”

  “Business or pleasure?” From the tone and the faint glint in Cruz’s eye in the rearview mirror, Brannigan caught what he meant.

  “Business, I’m afraid. Work-related accident.”

  That did prompt Cruz to glance back at them in the mirror, his brow furrowed. “How bad?”

  “This was, what? His third surgery? Or forth?” Brannigan glanced at Flanagan.

  “Third, I think.” Flanagan was still watching the buildings slide by, his eyes following anyone on foot or in a vehicle that might seem to be giving them a bit too much attention.

  “That bad?” Cruz’s frown deepened. “What happened? He didn’t pay the girl?” Despite the flippant words, he was clearly probing for somewhat more detailed information, and not just because he was curious or playing a role. There was genuine worry for a friend in his voice.

  “Like I said, it was work-related. Doing some of the same sort of stuff he used to before he retired.” Brannigan didn’t know Kirk well on a personal level, but he knew enough about the man’s past—and Kirk had told them about his connection with the former Sargento Mayor de Comando Cruz of the Agrupación de Fuerzas Especiales Antiterroristas Urbanas, or AFEAU—that he was pretty sure the message would come through without giving away too much detail at the outset.

  But Cruz clearly wasn’t that worried about subtlety—or a bug in his car. “Did he get shot? Or blown up?”

  “Sucking chest wound.” Flanagan had decided that the extra detail might just buy a bit more of Cruz’s trust. “Missed his heart, but it nicked a lung. He’s taken some patching up.”

  “Juepucha.” Brannigan didn’t know that particular curse, but he got the idea. “So, he couldn’t come, but he sent you to meet with me.” He squinted into the rearview mirror again. “You know what? Let’s wait until we get to the house.”

  “Some reason you don’t really want to talk in the car?” Brannigan didn’t know what kind of surveillance they might need to watch for in Colombia, but if a former AFEAU operative was being cagey, he was inclined to pay attention.

  “Just being a little paranoid. Kirk and I got into some interesting scrapes when he was down here—and not just the ones with the senoritas, either. If he was just sending someone who wanted to see the sights, he wouldn’t have used the Chuleta Valluna signal.” He turned toward the darkened hills above the city. “We’ll talk when we get there.”

  ***

  “There” turned out to be a pretty nice house, up in the woods and scrub in the hills to the east of Bogota, surrounded by a thick hedge of tall pines. There was no sign of the city from up there—even if the hilltops they’d driven over hadn’t been wreathed in mist at the time, they’d descended far enough onto the other side of the ridge that they might as well have been miles out in the country.

  The fence around the property was barbed wire, and more barbed wire topped the green-painted gate at the front of the driveway. The gate was considerably taller than the rest of the fence, which was about the right height for livestock, so the barbed wire atop that was probably just for show. Brannigan didn’t ask.

  Cruz pulled the Nissan up the weed-choked driveway and parked it alongside the house, getting out and fending off the small mob of kids and dogs that came pouring out of the front door. He yelled up at the house in Spanish, and a plump, matronly woman appeared on the porch. She took a look at Brannigan and Flanagan where they stood near the vehicle, then yelled at the kids in a tone that brooked no argument. Cruz shooed the children toward their mother, then waved at the two Blackhearts to follow him.

  He led the way back to a shed or garage in the back. Less fancy than the yellow-plastered house, it was a simple cinderblock construct with a corrugated metal roof and a dirt floor. He pulled several plastic lawn chairs out of the corner and lit a Coleman lantern. It hissed as he set it on the floor between the chairs.

  “So. What brings friends of Ignatius Kirk out to Colombia?” He sat down in one of the chairs, crossing his beefy arms in front of his chest. “I would think that counter-drug operations would have most of you gringos up in Mexico.”

  “We suspect that there’s some drug involvement, but that’s not all.” Brannigan eased himself down into another chair, wary of how well it was going to handle his weight. He’d seen chairs just like this one break under him before. But while the plastic creaked a little, it held. “What do you know about a place called San Tabal?”

  Cruz went very still for a moment, but his expression was thoughtful rather than alarmed. “More than I’d like to. What’s your interest there?”

  “What can you tell us about the situation?” Brannigan wanted as much information as he could get. He also wanted to feel Cruz out about it. Kirk might trust him, but as Flanagan had pointed out, it had been a long time, and this was his country. He might not be quite as ambivalent about having American freelancers working in his own backyard. Especially if the situation wasn’t as clear-cut as their limited briefing had made it sound.

  Cruz leaned back in his chair a little. “About a month and a half ago, San Tabal became its own independent city-state. Not that the Colombian government agreed to any such thing, but as with most things in that part of the country, it’s complicated. Even after the cease-fire with the FARC, it’s been hard for Bogota to enforce its will up there.”

  “FARC and ELN camps in the jungle are one thing. This sounds like an entire city going over.” Brannigan stroked his mustache as he watched Cruz carefully.r />
  The former Colombian Sergeant Major snorted. “This is a bit of a unique situation, but since it’s on a far smaller scale than, say, Pablo Escobar laying siege to the capitol, a lot of people are brushing it off.”

  Brannigan’s eyes narrowed. “Seems a bit of a big deal to be brushed off.”

  “And it should be.” Cruz shrugged. “But look where it sits. Right smack between the FARC—which is still a pain in the ass—and Venezuela.”

  “So.” Brannigan nodded. “Venezuela.”

  Cruz made a “maybe” sort of gesture. “They’re the most obvious backer. Clemente always was chummy with the Venezuelans before he was forced to retire. And there are definitely Venezuelan forces poised on the other side of the border. They’re running ‘exercises,’ but they haven’t actually done much. Of course, being Venezuela, that might be all the training they’re capable of.” Colombia had been fighting Marxist guerrillas for decades—it stood to reason that an AFEAU operative might not have a high opinion of the Communist country next door.

  “But there’s still something weird about all of it. Sure, Bogota hasn’t been eager to fight the FARC or the ELN lately, and so locking horns with the Venezuelans might not be high on their to-do list, but for some reason they seem even more shy about Clemente and his Green Shirts. And most of them are the same people who threw him out two years ago.” Cruz shook his head thoughtfully. “No, I think there’s more to this.”

  “What can you tell us about Clemente?” Brannigan asked.

  “He’s a thug.” Cruz snorted. “Always has been. He comes from a decently connected family, and he always seemed to think that was enough to cover his ass. He’s been corrupt from the beginning, and got in trouble a lot for abusing his subordinates. Of course, he really was connected enough to keep getting promoted for all those years, but he finally got in bed with the wrong people, pissed off the wrong politicians, and got stripped of his rank and thrown out of the Army on his ear two years ago. Then he shows up with a small army, takes over San Tabal, starts tearing down the nearby farms to convert them to coca production, and nobody will lift a finger.”