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

by Peter Nealen

If the American is betraying us, then his operatives will need local support. So, who could be giving that support?

  “Give me your map.” He held out a hand to the Green Shirt subcommander standing next to him. The man gaped at him stupidly for a moment, and then fumbled at his shirt pockets before his hands fell to his sides and he looked around, as if searching for someone else to blame for the fact that he didn’t have a map.

  Galvez fumed, and his hand twitched toward the Jericho in his waistband. The subcommander saw it, and blanched.

  Galvez forced himself to reconsider. The man probably couldn’t have read the map in the first place. So he turned away, furious, and scanned the valley below once again, trying to remember more of the surrounding area. Who might be providing them support? Not the government—we would have heard already. So, it must be someone local. Who could it be?

  His scowl deepened. He couldn’t remember enough detail. He needed to get back to San Tabal—and do it without Clemente suspecting what was happening.

  It raised, once again, the question of what to do. It was apparent that the Americans were probably already on the ground, and that that part of the plan was going awry. Their ally’s phone call had warned them of it, but now the threat was far more immediate. Did he dare try to go forward with the original plan?

  Maybe he could. An idea started to form. But he needed to buy time. He turned to the subcommander. “I want as many of our men as possible to move into the hills. A full sweep to the west. Find that patrol, or else find what happened to them, and punish whoever did it.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed back toward his Jeep. “I will send more detailed instructions later.”

  Perhaps if he removed some of their support, he could slow the Americans down until he could put Clemente in their sights.

  ***

  Javakhishvili had finished prepping his gear—including the unfortunately limited medical gear that Pacheco had been able to provide—and had taken his turn on watch to allow Bianco to go down and get his own gear ready. He sighed as he scanned the jungle around them.

  While he understood some of the reasoning, Javakhishvili wasn’t as stirred up about this plan as Brannigan and some of the others were. As far as he was concerned, if killing Clemente hadn’t done the job, they could have followed up to knock off whoever replaced him afterward.

  Javakhishvili had to allow that he never had considered himself any kind of strategic genius. He was a simple man, and he liked simple solutions. If they could break the Green Shirts by killing their leadership one at a time, he was fine with that. He wasn’t sure if all this skullduggery and wondering about their client was justified. Maybe it really was a simple matter of trying for a solution on the cheap, and that was it. They could always follow up and charge more later.

  Brannigan didn’t seem to think so, and that was his call. Javakhishvili wasn’t going to get too worked up about it. He was there to kill bad guys and get paid. He had no pretentions of leadership, and if Brannigan ever called it quits, he’d probably go find another PMC to take up with. They wouldn’t get the kind of missions that the Blackhearts did—and wouldn’t pay nearly as well—but the work was the work.

  Movement caught his eye and ended his woolgathering. He was up on the hillside above Pacheco’s farm, with a pretty good view across the fields, clear out to the road. The slope of the hill thinned the jungle growth enough that he could see through the trees easily without sacrificing concealment.

  Two pickup trucks had stopped on the road, a few hundred yards short of Pacheco’s driveway. They were still a couple of miles from the house, but they wouldn’t stop there for nothing. There was nothing else nearby.

  At least, he didn’t think so. He might be a simple man at heart, but he’d survived far too many wars to take anything for granted. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Bracing his binoculars against a tree, he studied the trucks. Sure enough, they were Green Shirt vehicles—two each in the cabs, and three to four riding in back of each. They were all armed, too.

  As he watched, they split into three groups and spread out, moving into the trees to either side of the fields. They were moving roughly toward Pacheco’s farm, too.

  It didn’t take a genius to see what was happening. Either they were made, or they were about to be. He scooped up the radio and keyed it. “Kodiak, Shady Slav. We’re about to have company.”

  ***

  Pacheco might have had a history, and training, but his farm was still a farm rather than a fortress. Given Colombia’s laws, and the closeness of the FARC—peace deal or no peace deal—visible defenses might have drawn too much scrutiny. Remaining covert was the best way to survive in South America—or anywhere else, really.

  So, there were no fighting holes, no bunkers, and very little cover to be had. But the Blackhearts spread out and got ready to ambush the Green Shirts as best they could.

  Flanagan was puffing a little, sweat already staining his tiger stripes dark as he struggled up the steep hill behind the house. He was carrying his Galil in his hands, but he also had Pacheco’s IWI Galatz, the 7.62 NATO sniper variant of the Galil slung across his back. It made for more weight as he made his way through the vegetation, but if he was going to hold overwatch for the rest of the team, he needed the range.

  He got up on a narrow shelf, lined with slender trees clinging to the shallow soil between the rocks, and took a knee. “Herc! It’s Joe. I’m coming in on your right.” He didn’t like just hissing at the other man, but they only had a couple of radios. Flying in through Customs with military radios for each man would have raised some eyebrows.

  He really had to wonder what the client had hoped to accomplish with this mission. Deniability was one thing. Refusing to equip your deniable hitters—with the subsequent risk of mission failure because of it—was something else.

  “Bring it in.”

  Flanagan rose and slipped through the trees. Javakhishvili was still watching the scene unfolding below through his binoculars, though he turned to look as Flanagan approached, then twisted to check the hillside above him. It had been a risk, setting out a one-man outpost, but the Blackhearts were all experienced enough and savvy enough to be careful of their own security.

  Flanagan had always just thought of it in terms of the old mountain men. They’d rarely had a partner to watch their backs. They’d had to keep their eyes and ears open all the time.

  He moved in behind Javakhishvili, leaning his Galil carefully against the rocky slope before unslinging the Galatz, flipping out the bipods, and looking for a good window to set up.

  Unfortunately, the shelf was too narrow for him to stretch out and get all the way behind the weapon. So, he had to kind of angle himself, adjusting his position behind the weapon to keep it steady without muscling it.

  It seemed like a lot of effort for a semi-auto sniper rifle, but it was what they had, and the less his position affected the flight of the round, the better.

  The window he found through the foliage was relatively narrow, but with some work and creative readjustment, he found positions that would give him overlapping fields of fire to cover the entire farm. “Any newcomers?”

  “Not yet.” Javakhishvili had his eyes back to the binoculars. “I counted eleven, total. Looks like they’re just scouting so far. No sign that they know we’re here.”

  “They’ve got to be this far out for a reason.” Flanagan tracked his scope carefully across the woodline, looking for targets. He’d have to rely on Javakhishvili to spot for him—the scope’s field of view was too narrow. “We’re a good way outside their sphere of influence.”

  “Got to be because of that patrol you and Mario disappeared.” Javakhishvili took another break to sweep their surroundings. The ridge above them was steep enough that it wasn’t likely than an enemy would come at them from that direction, but it wasn’t impossible, either. “You put the fear of God into them, and now they’re trying to find whoever killed their buddies.” He frowned an
d got thoughtful. “You think they know about Pacheco?”

  “Who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball that lets me sit in on their planning sessions.” Flanagan stopped, peering through the scope, then lifted his head and scanned above it. “Check about…five fingers over to the right from the house, just past that really tall tree.”

  Javakhishvili shifted the binoculars. “I got nothing.”

  Flanagan had lowered his cheek to the Galatz’s buttstock again, and was once again searching the vegetation. “I saw movement, almost like somebody had just stuck their head out to take a look at the farmhouse. It’s gone now.”

  “I saw one of the bigger fire teams go in there earlier, so there’s probably someone there.” Javakhishvili grunted. “They’re hunting, all right. If they were just patrolling, they would have come up the drive already.”

  “They’ve got to know something about Pacheco, then. They wouldn’t be so cautious otherwise. Not thugs like these.”

  “Maybe. Maybe they’re just nervous. How many of them did you and Mario kill, anyway?”

  “Six.” That wasn’t a brag. Flanagan knew how many men he’d killed—well, those he could confirm that he had, anyway. Some would have seen that as slightly psycho, but again, Flanagan didn’t keep track for bragging rights. He felt he had a responsibility to know what he had done. The weight of the dead never quite left him. That was deliberate. It was too easy to make it into a game, otherwise.

  Flanagan knew himself. He knew that siren song of combat and killing. It was a song that he’d answered many times, but he also knew that if he lost himself in it, he’d never quite find his soul ever again.

  “Six of their compadres disappearing into the jungle without a trace will tend to make even the nastiest of these bastards nervous.” Javakhishvili paused, and something about that sudden silence made Flanagan lift his head.

  “Here we go.” Several of the Green Shirts had emerged onto the dirt road leading to Pacheco’s front door. They were openly armed, and while they were looking around carefully, there was still that thuggish swagger to their movements.

  “They don’t know we’re here.” Flanagan shifted his position behind the gun to get his sights on the two in the lead. “They wouldn’t come traipsing right up to the front door like that if they did.”

  “Or maybe they’re just that stupid.” Javakhishvili shifted his Galil to make sure it was within easy reach. “Maybe they think that the guys you scragged weren’t as good as they are.”

  “Maybe.” Flanagan followed the lead Green Shirt with his crosshairs. It was a head-on shot, though the increasing angle between his elevated position and the target meant he was going to have to aim a little low. The wind was negligible, even at the eight hundred yards between him and the target. “If they don’t know about us, though, Pacheco might be able to play this cool.”

  The six Green Shirts spread out as they approached Pacheco’s lawn. Most of them held their weapons loosely but somewhat ready, though the one in the lead had thrown his over his shoulder. He probably thought it made him look tough and cool, but it would take him an extra couple of precious seconds to get it down and into action.

  He looked up at the house and called out in Spanish. Flanagan couldn’t make out the words, especially at that distance, but the tone was arrogant, almost mocking. They were outside of their seized territory, they knew it, and they knew that nobody was going to cross them anyway.

  Something made Flanagan shift his aim back to the treeline along the edge of the southern field, where he’d seen movement before. Sure enough, he spotted a Green Shirt aiming in at the house. The slightly pudgy man was screened from the house by a bush, but Flanagan had a clear shot from up on the hillside.

  That explained the apparent confidence. They were nervous, all right, but they thought they were being clever, keeping a team back on overwatch. It said something about their training level. Like Javakhishvili had noted, these were thugs, not soldiers. They considered the most basic tactical measures a masterclass level advantage.

  They were about to learn the hard way, unless Pacheco talked fast.

  Apparently, the group out front didn’t get a response, at least not the response they were looking for. The man with his rifle on his shoulder yelled again, his voice even more strident. He was met with further silence.

  Flanagan carefully scanned the woods around the first Green Shirt he’d spotted. Where there was one, there would be more.

  There. That one was even less concealed than the first, his rifle in the fork in a tree, but he was a little bit farther back in the shadows, which was why Flanagan hadn’t seen him right off. That, and the limited field of view he had through the twelve-power scope.

  From there, it got easier to spot the other five. “How many did you say there were?” He kept his voice down, even though it was next to impossible for the bad guys to be able to hear them from down there.

  “I counted eleven.”

  “So, unless they got some reinforcements that we didn’t see, they regrouped to come in on the farmhouse.” Flanagan moved his sights back to the first man he’d spotted. “Which means they’ve got radios.”

  “Yeah. So, we got to get them all real quick, don’t we?” Javakhishvili was ordinarily fairly blasé when it came to the killing part of the job, and this time was no exception.

  “Yes, we do. If it comes to that. More killing at this point is probably just going to show our hand.”

  “That’s why you and John do all the thinking and planning.” Javakhishvili put his binoculars down and picked up his rifle. “I’m just here to do the grunt work. Seems to me that killing them all quick, before they can send a message, will just take eleven more obstacles out of the way.”

  “I’d rather we do that on our terms.” But the words had hardly left Flanagan’s mouth when the decision was taken out of their hands.

  The Green Shirts who had moved up to Pacheco’s porch were apparently unsatisfied with whatever Pacheco or his wife had told them. The man in the lead brought his rifle down off his shoulder and stepped up on the porch, clearly intending to shove his way inside.

  He got Mozambiqued from point blank range, the three shots coming so fast that they almost blended together into a single, rolling, thunderous report. He crashed onto his back halfway off the porch, dark red spreading across his chest and the contents of his skull spilling out onto the ground.

  A split second later, a rattling volley of gunfire ripped out from the front of the house, smashing the other five off their feet in a welter of blood and flying metal.

  As soon as the first shots were fired, Flanagan let out his breath and tightened his finger on the trigger. The Galatz’s trigger wasn’t as crisp as he might have wanted on a long-range rifle, but it still broke cleanly, and his round took the Green Shirt in the woods high in the chest. The man staggered, looking down at the bloody hole in his torso before he slumped.

  Flanagan had called the shot as soon as it had broken, and just barely registered the hit before he was shifting to the next one. That man was staring at the falling body in shock, his head turned away from his rifle.

  The shot broke slightly low, and the angle of the man’s body and the nearby trees made it a difficult shot as it was. The bullet clipped the tree trunk and ricocheted, but the man was right up against the trunk, so it went into his side, though Flanagan could already tell that it had been deflected enough to keep the hit from being lethal.

  The follow-up shot came as soon as the trigger reset, as he held the reticle just slightly higher, and put the next round through the man’s left lung and into his heart. The Green Shirt fell out of sight.

  Flanagan was transitioning to the third man when Javakhishvili opened fire.

  They were a good eight hundred yards away, much too far for the Galil to be reliably, lethally accurate. But Javakhishvili was a good shot, and he wasn’t relying on single shots like Flanagan was. He braced the rifle against the log that was his cover, making sure t
o breathe between shots, and started dropping steady, constant fire on the Green Shirts’ position.

  Flanagan worried for a second that the Green Shirts would drop to the ground and he’d lose them, but one of them broke cover instead and tried to run, thrashing through the brush. Flanagan’s shot was slightly too high as he tried to lead the fleeing killer, but it smashed into the back of his skull and he went head-over-heels into the dirt.

  The fourth Green Shirt promptly freaked out and started shooting. He was probably trying to aim for the house, but his fire was going wild, some of the bullets hitting the dirt not far in front of him.

  Flanagan moved in on the muzzle blast where he could see it violently shaking and shredding the vegetation in front of the Green Shirt’s muzzle, judged roughly where he probably was, and aimed slightly low. The first shot silenced the gunfire and made the man jerk hard enough that Flanagan knew exactly where he was. The second shot finished it. There was no more movement.

  He was searching for the last one, but Javakhishvili had stopped shooting. The echoes of gunfire faded away across the valley, and Flanagan spotted the fifth man, sprawled on his face, halfway into the field.

  “I’ll be damned. Didn’t think I’d manage to do anything but suppress him.” Javakhishvili sounded surprised and proud all at the same time.

  “Let’s move.” Flanagan got up and slung the Galatz. “We’re going to have to hit them hard and fast, now, before word about this gets too far.”

  Chapter 14

  The clouds had rolled in, and the jungle was pitch black under the trees. Even the PVS-14s couldn’t do much to mitigate the darkness.

  Fortunately, Mario Gomez was used to working in the dark. What was more, he was used to hunting men in the dark.

  He’d known that Brannigan had wondered about the recent troubles down on the border. The truth was, there were always troubles where the Gomez ranch was situated. Perhaps not to the extent they’d faced when the Espino-Gallo Cartel had invaded and taken the ranch, murdering most of the family in the process. But the Gomez boys had always needed to be somewhat proactive when dealing with the cartels and the coyotes trying to use their land as an illegal superhighway.