by Peter Nealen
Mario had grown up stalking other human beings as much as the four-legged coyotes and wolves who preyed on the livestock. There were more bodies out in that desert than even Brannigan guessed. And much of that had been before he’d ever had access to NVGs, and on moonless nights when the narcos thought no one could find them. He’d learned a lot from Marine Recon, but much of it had simply sharpened skills he’d already possessed.
Gomez didn’t need a lot of light to do this kind of work. He’d honed his other senses to make up for the lack of vision—and his night eyes were remarkably good, anyway.
Movement was still achingly slow. It had to be, even if he’d been able to see more clearly. The vegetation was thick, and that meant there were a lot of roots and fallen branches on the forest floor, not to mention vines, snakes, spiders, and all the other hazards of the jungle. The need for stealth made patience an absolute must. And that stealth wasn’t just to prevent the Green Shirt sentry ahead from hearing him. He also needed to be able to hear the Green Shirt.
The man who was about to die wasn’t staying still or particularly alert. Even though he could just make out the Green Shirt’s silhouette in his NVGs, Gomez could tell from the amount of noise he was making as he fidgeted, muttered to himself, cursed, and finally lit a cigarette. A whiff of the smoke told Gomez that it wasn’t tobacco, either. So much the better. While smoking destroys night vision—and is therefore a bad idea when on security, even aside from the fact that the ember blazes like the sun in night vision goggles—at least tobacco makes a man somewhat more alert. Marijuana was not recommended for sentry duty at night.
Gomez just hoped he could avoid a contact high while he dealt with this one. He wasn’t too worried about it—they were outside, and he was barely five yards away from his target. This would be over very quickly.
He wasn’t crawling—that would have been too slow, and up close it made too much noise. Instead, while he was low to the ground, he was in a predatory crouch, his Galil slung across his back and cinched down tightly, a long knife in his hand.
This wouldn’t have been something that he’d ever have done in the Marine Corps. While there wasn’t a Recon Marine alive who didn’t wax rhapsodic about the dream of getting that knife kill, for the most part, the Marine Corps still believed in standoff whenever possible. Going to a knife meant your rifle was down, all your team’s rifles were down, and either nobody had a pistol, or all of those had gone down, too.
But Mario Gomez’s combat experience had spanned a great deal more than just his time in the Marine Corps.
He placed each foot with exaggerated care, feeling his way with his toes before putting his weight down. He was also careful to keep at least one tree between him and his quarry as he moved closer. The jungle was thick enough that he could move from tree to tree with relative ease, and with that glowing ember of burning marijuana right in front of the man’s face, it wasn’t as if he was going to be able to see more than three feet in front of him in the dark, if that.
The sentry looked back at the lights of the house, further damaging what night adaptation he might have left, and cursed. From some of the noise up that way—pounding music and harsh laughter—Gomez could imagine why he was upset. The Green Shirts were having some fun.
Gomez’s jaw clenched. If they were having the sort of fun he thought, they were about to pay dearly for it.
Then he was at the last tree. His target was just over an arm’s length away, and still had no idea he was there. Gomez had circled around until he was behind the sentry, freezing whenever the Green Shirt had turned toward him, especially as he’d gotten closer. Now, as the frustrated young man turned back toward the jungle while taking another deep drag on his joint, Gomez moved.
The slow, deliberate movement he’d maintained for the last two hours was no more. He moved like a striking snake, knocking the Green Shirt’s rifle out of his slack hand with his own free hand before he grabbed him, almost burning his hand on the joint as he clapped a palm over the suddenly frightened and confused thug’s mouth and nose.
A second later, he brought the knife down, stabbing deep into the hollow between the Green Shirt’s neck and his clavicle. Hot blood gushed out onto his hand, and he twisted the knife, doing as much damage as possible as he held the sentry tightly, squeezing his nose and mouth shut with an iron grip.
The Green Shirt tried to struggle, but he was already dead. It took just over three seconds for him to bleed out from the cut subclavian artery, and he went limp in Gomez’s grip.
Easing the body to the forest floor, he turned toward the house, unslinging his rifle and bringing it around to the ready.
The music still thumped in the house, and hoarse, harsh voices were still raised, but not with alarm. He hadn’t heard a gunshot yet. Which meant that they hadn’t been made yet.
He would have been willing to bet that he had more knife kills than any of the other Blackhearts, but they were all deadly, and with only a couple of exceptions, he didn’t doubt that they could sneak up on a bunch of distracted, stoned thugs.
Moving through the brush like a panther, his rifle up and ready, he crept toward the fields.
***
Vincent Bianco wasn’t a stealthy man. He knew that all too well. Oh, he could move through the brush smoothly—compared to many of the grunts he’d served with back in the day, he was a ghost in the woods. But compared to the likes of Flanagan, Gomez, or the man that Childress had been, he was a blundering ox, and he knew it.
He’d never wanted to be that guy who snuck up on sentries and knifed them. If he was being honest—though he’d never admit this around the rest of the team—the idea of ending a man’s life so up close and personal made him a little ill. He’d much rather have that standoff, and the IWI Negev in his hands as he crept forward to the edge of Fuentes’s upper field, where he had a good view and field of fire down toward the house and the road below, was emblematic of the way he preferred to do his killing.
The light machinegun didn’t have an optic, but Bianco had come up before optics on machineguns had been common, so that didn’t bother him. There were enough tracers in the belts he’d brought that he would be able to direct his fire easily enough once things started off.
He scanned the farm below him carefully before checking his left and right. The Blackhearts didn’t have IR strobes for this, but Pacheco had had a few IR chemlights, so those had been cracked and tucked into shoulder or cargo pockets. He spotted the small IR light creeping out of the trees off to the right. That would be Curtis, with the other Negev. The base of fire was in place.
He settled in behind the Negev and waited for Brannigan to open the ball.
***
Brannigan and Pacheco came up from the south, with Wade, Javakhishvili, and Hank in tow. The rest were either finishing off the outer security up ahead or getting into position up above.
They moved to the edge of the fields and spotted a small IR light ahead, shielded by the trees from the house. They hadn’t seen any evidence that the Green Shirts had night vision, but it never paid to get overconfident and sloppy.
Flanagan was down on a knee behind the tree, his Galil leveled at the two Green Shirts on the porch. Additional tiny gleams of IR light to the right and left pointed out Burgess and Gomez. They’d moved in toward the central assault lane after eliminating their sentries.
Brannigan would have preferred to take all of the outer security down before moving in, but that wasn’t practical with the numbers they had, never mind the timing. Opening a hole that they could drive through to get to the house—where most of the Green Shirts were apparently sleeping—was the best they could do.
Brannigan got down next to Flanagan, sighting in on the man leaning against the M60 machinegun mounted in the back of one of the pickups stationed around the house. The others found their own firing positions, mostly kneeling. They’d have to move fast once the first shot was fired.
He let out his breath, flipping the selector lever to
“R” as he slipped his finger inside the trigger guard.
The shot echoed across the valley, the shock of it almost seeming louder than the actual sound of the report and the crack of the bullet. The bullet hit the gunner in the shoulder or side of the chest, spinning him halfway around as it knocked him away from the machinegun—which he hadn’t been holding onto.
Under other circumstances, the stoned and/or drunk Green Shirts might have stared in shock at the man groaning in the bed of the truck, or else immediately started blazing away at the jungle in reaction. But they didn’t have the chance.
Both Negevs opened fire from uphill, glowing red tracers reaching out toward the technicals. The first rounds missed, one gun’s going over, the other landing short. But the tracers quickly corrected, walking into the armed pickups and hammering holes through sheet metal, glass, fiberglass, and human flesh.
The assault element was already up and moving as the machinegun fire tore the dazed gunners to shreds. Bianco lifted his fire as they moved up toward the porch. They pushed past the bullet-riddled pickup trucks, the shattered glass and holed bodies splashed with blood, weapons up and searching for targets.
The two Green Shirts on the porch were staring at the carnage, and probably didn’t even see the dark figures coming out of the shadows beyond the trucks before they died. Each one got at least six rounds as the wedge of Blackhearts closed in and hammered them off their feet before they could even make a move for the weapons they’d left just out of reach.
None of the Blackhearts bothered to kick the weapons away from twitching fingers. Both men had taken at least two rounds each to the skull from about ten yards away. Blood and brains dripped slowly down the plastered wall as Wade moved up and, almost without pausing, kicked in the door.
He went left, riding the door, as Flanagan went right. Brannigan had been a half a step behind his second, so he followed Wade.
They spread out into the living room, which was still lit by several propane lanterns. Half a dozen Green Shirts were trying to scramble for weapons, but they were far too slow and far too late. They had clearly already gotten deep into the liquor bottles and marijuana, judging by the sickly-sweet smoke that filled the room.
Six Galils thundered and spat flame in the confines of the house, bullets tearing through flesh and bone and spattering blood and less wholesome debris across the furniture and the detritus of their partying.
It was all over very quickly.
Without a word, the Blackhearts spread out, clearing the dead spaces and checking the bodies, while Brannigan and Wade moved to the next door to continue clearing the house. It wasn’t really over until they’d accounted for every Green Shirt and found Fuentes and his family.
***
The house was large for a Colombian farmhouse out in the sticks, but it wasn’t so large that it took a long time to clear. After only a few minutes, they were back in the living room with Fuentes, his family huddled in the kitchen. The only Green Shirts in the house had been drinking and smoking in the living room, and they were all now rapidly assuming room temperature.
Fuentes was white as a sheet. “What have you done?” He wrung his hands as he stared at the corpses. “Do you have any idea what they will do now? How many people they will kill in retaliation? They’ve shot and hanged people just to send a message! They hanged Raul Jimenez as a spy, for nothing! Now…”
“That alone should tell you that you can’t stay on the sidelines anymore, Fuentes.” Pacheco’s voice was cold. He stood next to the door, his Galil cradled in his hands, leaning against the wall. “The longer you bow to these people, the more they will take, and torture, and kill. There is no end to it. There is no ‘enough’ for them. Just like the FARC.”
“There’s a peace deal with the FARC!” Fuentes’s eyes were wide, and there was a note of desperation in his voice.
“And what has that deal accomplished? Has the violence stopped?” Pacheco stabbed a finger in the direction of San Tabal. “No, it hasn’t. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that a lot of those bastards squatting in San Tabal were FARC before.”
“What do you want from me?” It was almost a scream.
Pacheco stared at him grimly. “You are an important man among the farmers around San Tabal, Señor Fuentes. If you stand up, others will follow.”
“I’m a farmer. Only a farmer.”
“You were in the Army once. I seem to remember your name being connected with that fight outside of Ocaña.” Pacheco was relentless.
“That was a long time ago,” Fuentes protested. “I only want to feed my family, give them a better life. I haven’t even shot a gun in years.”
Pacheco waved to indicate the Blackhearts. “That’s why they’re here. They know how to fight. They can lead the fight. But the others won’t fight without someone like you to rally around.”
“Diego.”
Fuentes turned to look at his wife, who had stepped out of the kitchen, facing him with her face composed and calm, though she pointedly didn’t look at the corpses sprawled in her living room. She was a small, slightly plump woman, her hair still dark.
Neither of them said anything. Fuentes was older than his wife, but not by that much. The crow’s feet around his wife’s eyes belied her age. The two of them had clearly been married long enough that they didn’t need to speak to communicate. She held his gaze, her expression frightened and yet defiant, her face pale yet her back straight and her head held high. And after a moment, he cast his eyes down at the floor, then turned back to Pacheco.
“What is the plan?”
***
The roads were narrow and treacherous, as they twisted back and forth through the mountains. The clouds lowered over the peaks, and a faint drizzle had started to make it even harder to see, even with the headlights on.
Galvez fumed in the passenger seat of the lead Nissan Frontier. This was taking too long. It had already taken him far too long to realize that a former Search Bloc operator lived entirely too close to San Tabal for comfort. Then gathering up enough Green Shirts who hadn’t already drunk or smoked themselves into uselessness as the evening got older had taken even more time. Now it was past midnight, and they still had over ten miles to go to get to Pacheco’s farm.
He didn’t know that Alejandro Pacheco had been behind the loss of his patrol. Finding out that the man had been in the Search Bloc had meant calling in favors with certain people in Bogota. It wasn’t something that was widely advertised or recorded. Families were always targets in Colombia, going back to the days of La Violencia.
The convoy struggled up toward the bend around the next finger. Only when they rounded the tight, hairpin turn and started up the other side of the ridge did Galvez’s radio start squawking.
“…alvez, come in!”
He lifted the radio to his lips. “This is Commander Galvez.”
The incoming transmission was scratchy and broken. “Some…attacked the Fuentes farm. Only a… survivors. They have control of…farm now.”
He cursed. “Stop the vehicles!” He searched the dark ahead of the headlights as the driver stomped on the brake, bringing them to a halt with a lurch, but the slope of the ridge was sheer to either side. He punched the dashboard. “Keep going. Find us a place to turn around.” They were several miles past the Fuentes farm. It would take well over an hour to reach it, and something told him that they did not have that much time. If Pacheco—or whoever was moving against the Green Shirt revolution—had struck that quickly, they would be moving while he tried to get turned around.
He was behind, he knew it, and someone was going to pay in blood.
Chapter 15
“We don’t have enough time to harden this place.” Brannigan stood by Fuentes’s kitchen table, his arms folded and his Galil hanging by its sling around his neck. Flanagan, Wade, and Pacheco stood with him and Fuentes, as the rest of the Blackhearts helped Fuentes’s hands haul the bodies out of the living room.
Brannigan suspected that t
he family wasn’t going to be able to live in that house for a little while.
“We don’t have the time, and we don’t have the manpower,” he continued. “We’ll have to move you and your family somewhere safer—I should say, we’ll have to have Pacheco and his network get you moved somewhere safer. We need to move before the Green Shirts can get their act together.” He stroked his mustache as he looked down at the map he’d spread over the table. “Since we can’t turn this place into the Alamo, we’ll have to move fast and hit them hard, keep them off balance.” He glanced over at Pacheco. “Any suggestions?”
Pacheco, for his part, looked at Fuentes. “You know the people here better than I do. What do you think?”
Fuentes still looked a little green around the gills. While Pacheco had assured Brannigan that the farmer had done a stint in the National Army, and had even fought the ELN once or twice, he was hardly a seasoned veteran, and he was still working through his shock at the bloodshed in his own living room. But he’d had a little time to adjust, and his mind was working through things. Brannigan could see him start to harden as he thought.
“A lot of the farmers are not happy, and I’m sure that if we can give them some kind of substantial plan—and a way to make it work without charging machineguns with machetes and bare hands—more of them will be willing to rise up. Especially some of those who have had their farms turned into cocaine labs.” Fuentes was soft-spoken and his English was halting and thickly accented. He grimaced. “Not all of them. There are a few, I think, who would have gladly turned their farms to growing coca if they thought they could get away with it. Serra, Nieto, and Zamora, especially, I think will probably resist if we try to turn them against the Green Shirts. We might even… no.”
“We might have to deal with them.” Pacheco didn’t share Fuentes’s reticence. “Sooner or later, we will have to deal with them. If any of the Green Shirts make it out of San Tabal alive, it will be a bad idea to leave sympathizers behind. And if they’re willingly cooperating with these pendejos, then they need to pay the price, anyway.”
