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

by Peter Nealen

  Quintana’s face had gone utterly still. He tore his eyes away from Pacheco to look at Brannigan. For the first time, it seemed, he took in their camouflage, gear, and the fact that Brannigan was a huge Anglo with a handlebar mustache and icy blue eyes.

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re friends… if you are willing to act against the Green Shirts.”

  “I thought you were the Green Shirts, here to kill me.” He ran a beefy hand over his face. “I thought that they had figured out what I was doing.” Then he froze again. “Unless this is a ploy, and you are working for Clemente.” His hand started to shake.

  “We are here to help liberate San Tabal from the Green Shirts.” Pacheco’s voice was still low, flat, and hard. “Are you going to help? Or do we have to make you disappear, like your two guards?”

  Quintana looked back at the body of the guard, noticing the blood, and he was clearly thinking. Then he lowered his hand, which had stopped shaking. He looked from Pacheco to Brannigan one more time, then folded his arms.

  For the first time, Quintana didn’t look like a frightened man waiting to learn he was going to die. He leaned back in his chair, making it creak even more alarmingly. “If you’re serious, then yes.” His expression was somewhat inscrutable. “How many have you recruited so far?”

  “You’re one of the first.” Pacheco wasn’t going to give everything away.

  Quintana nodded. “If we move fast, we can have at least a dozen people ready to act by morning.”

  Pacheco raised that eyebrow again. “Really? You’re part of the underground already?”

  “Not directly. But I imagine that the list of those I’m supposed to be watching will be useful to form such an underground.” He sat up a little straighter. “Let me go upstairs and get dressed. We need to move quickly.”

  Chapter 16

  Wade held up a fist and immediately dropped to a knee, making sure he was concealed from multiple directions. He wasn’t entirely sure where the road or the checkpoint were, but he knew they were far too close.

  Night land nav can be difficult under the best of conditions. In the dark, in the jungle, on unfamiliar terrain, it can become a nightmare. And one of Wade’s nightmares looked like it might just come true.

  He’d been walking point, taking his cues from Fuentes, who was behind him with Hank Brannigan staying close, just in case the farmer freaked out under stress. So far, both of them were doing all right, but Wade wasn’t sure how they were going to react when they realized just how close to the enemy they’d strayed.

  He’d halted at the first sound of an engine, which he shouldn’t have been able to hear, not if they were on their planned route. They’d planned to stay well away from the single road leaving San Tabal to the north. So, when Wade had seen the flickering illumination of headlights and heard a vehicle motor, he knew they’d drifted east. And when the lights stopped, a door slammed, and he heard voices, he knew they were much too far east. They were almost on top of the northern checkpoint.

  Though as he thought about it, even that was off. It should have taken them at least another thirty minutes to get that close to the city. And he didn’t think that they’d sped up more than they should have, given the thickness of the jungle and the roughness of the terrain. If anything, they should be behind schedule.

  He tried to peer through any gaps in the bush to see what they were up against, but all he could make out was the glow of one set of headlights. He frowned behind his NVGs. None of the Blackhearts had gotten close enough to the city to see one of the actual entry control points yet, but he would have expected more lights, especially since none of the Green Shirts they’d encountered so far had been using night vision goggles. If they didn’t have night vision capability, they’d be almost blind without illumination. He would have expected them to have at least a couple of work lights set up with a generator. But the more he studied the situation, the more he was convinced that the vehicle was the only source of light. Which meant this wasn’t one of the main checkpoints.

  Still, the bad guys were right there, and from the sounds of things, they were sticking. The headlights didn’t move, and after the initial sound of the vehicle’s doors slamming, he’d heard nothing but the idling of the engine, the crunch of footsteps, and voices speaking Spanish.

  He backed up cautiously, placing each step carefully so as to avoid breaking a branch—or stepping on a snake. Crouching down next to Fuentes and Hank, while Burgess watched their rear, he whispered, “We’ve got a vehicle and what sounds like a patrol immediately to our left. How close are we to the northern entry checkpoint?”

  “We should still be two kilometers from the edge of the city.” Fuentes sounded scared, though it was so dark under the trees that even on NVGs, Wade couldn’t see his expression. He could, however, see the man gripping his shotgun—which he’d had buried behind his farmhouse—nervously. The weapon was probably already illegal under Colombian gun laws—he probably wouldn’t have had time to bury it before the Green Shirts had descended on his farm. Not that Wade cared. But if Fuentes flipped out and started blasting, they’d be made, and this would get a lot more complicated.

  “Maybe it’s a patrol, then. Either way, we’re way too close to the road.” He looked around, though the jungle was so close that it was hard to see more than a couple of yards. But he knew which way the road was, so they needed to keep moving south while pushing west, away from the road and the headlights.

  “Let’s go.” He led out, careful to move as slowly and smoothly as he could. Each step took longer than it felt like it should have. He had to look all around and test the ground with his boot before he put his weight down.

  But while the three Blackhearts had NVGs, Fuentes did not. Nor was he well-practiced in moving through the bush in a combat situation. He put his foot down on a fallen branch, which cracked loudly in the night.

  Wade froze, swiveling his head to peer back toward the headlights. Maybe the sound of the engine and their conversation would mask the noise.

  His hopes were dashed a moment later, as a voice was raised, calling out a challenge in Spanish. Someone had heard the branch break.

  “Get down!” He kept his voice to a low hiss, quickly suiting actions to words and getting down into the roots of a towering tree, his Galil pointed back toward the glow of the headlights, now all but invisible through the vegetation. Burgess had done the same, but Fuentes was slow, and Hank grabbed him and dragged him down behind a fallen tree.

  Flashlight beams flickered through the forest, and footsteps crunched in the undergrowth. More voices spoke up in rough Spanish, the Green Shirts calling to each other to ask if they’d seen anything. Wade shifted his position slightly and felt something beneath him start to give. He froze again. His weapon wasn’t in a good position to shoot the closest Green Shirt, but if he moved any farther, he was going to make noise, and those flashlights were about twenty yards away and getting closer.

  He stayed perfectly still, planning every move in his head, second by second, as the Green Shirts got closer. He’d have to roll onto his back and fire between his knees. He’d put a pair into the first man, then transition to the next one to his right.

  Always have a plan.

  The lead Green Shirt stopped a bare ten yards away, shining his flashlight around the jungle. The cone of illumination swept across the bush, passing right over where Hank and Fuentes lay in the undergrowth.

  Wade braced himself. The Galils didn’t have optics or laser sights, so he’d have to point shoot. He was offset far enough from the rest that he was confident he wouldn’t hit either Fuentes or Hank. He eased the selector lever to “R,” the semiautomatic setting.

  Then another voice from back by the road called out, and the man in the lead answered with what sounded like a negative. The voice in the dark called again, sounding impatient.

  The lead Green Shirt swept the undergrowth with his light once more, then turned away and headed back toward the road.

/>   Wade let out a breath he hadn’t quite realized he’d been holding and took his finger off the trigger. That was close.

  He was going to wait until the Green Shirts got some distance, but Fuentes was already starting to get up. Hank dragged him back down, but he started to crawl away instead of lying low and waiting.

  Wade bit back an angry curse. They’d just dodged a bullet, but if Fuentes got too frisky, they might still get compromised. He wanted to hiss at Hank to get the farmer under control, but even that seemed like it would be too loud. He shifted his muzzle back toward the receding lights, as the younger Brannigan lunged forward and all but tackled Fuentes, flattening him to the forest floor and whispering fiercely into his ear. Wade couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it got Fuentes to freeze.

  He waited, his Galil pointed toward the lights bobbing through the jungle. They didn’t turn around, didn’t come back to investigate. They headed back toward the road, the sound of their passage receding as they went.

  Wade finally got up, slowly and carefully. A moment later, Hank did the same, helping Fuentes up. Wade made sure they were following, then turned back into the jungle. They needed to make tracks.

  ***

  Over the next hour, he started to think that he’d figured out how they’d drifted so close to the road. The terrain was increasingly brutal, and the tendency to drift downhill had forced them closer and closer to the bottom of the valley. But he thought they were back on track. It was still hard to be sure in the blackness of the jungle at night, but they were heading back uphill and generally south.

  He just hoped that they could get to their destination before the sun came up.

  The slope ahead had gotten steeper and steeper as they climbed. He wasn’t sure how far they were from the top, but he’d definitely slowed down. He stopped altogether when he heard a deep, grunting call off to his right, farther up the ridge.

  Fuentes and Hank caught up to him while he stayed still and listened. “What the hell was that?”

  “Jaguar.” Fuentes’ whisper was as nervous as ever. “That’s their territorial call.”

  “Well, I’m not trying to challenge him.” Wade kept scanning the jungle around them. “You know where we are?”

  “Roughly. The Galán farm should be just over this ridge.”

  “And you’re sure that’s where Lara’s hiding?”

  He glanced back to see Fuentes’s nod, though it was dark enough to only see the general shape of his head. Night vision goggles like the PVS-14 need some ambient light to work. “If he hasn’t been killed, then he has to be here. Galán is his brother-in-law. And if he’d been killed, Clemente would have gloated about it weeks ago.”

  Wade had a few questions about that, but those could wait until they found Lara. He started back up the slope, his legs burning.

  They reached the crest of the ridge without further incident, though he heard the jaguar a couple more times, raising his hackles each time. It sounded farther away, though, so that was a good sign.

  The absolute last thing he wanted was to get in a fight with a jaguar in the dark. Give me human enemies any day of the week.

  He would have slowed as he neared the crest, but the jungle was so thick and the night so dark that he was over it before he’d even realized that he’d reached it. He halted suddenly as the trees suddenly gave way to a terraced cornfield, leading down to a small stone house with a faint glow in the windows indicating that someone was probably still up with a light burning.

  Hank and Fuentes joined him. A moment later, Burgess came down and knelt next to him, scanning the field below before turning back to cover the ridge behind them. “We’re still clear.”

  “Well, Señor Fuentes, this is your game.” Wade waved him down toward the house, about twenty yards away. “We’ll cover you until you signal that it’s clear to come down.”

  It was too dark to see what Fuentes thought of that. He didn’t say anything. He just started down through the cornfield, his shotgun held up at the ready.

  I hope he’s not so jumpy that he shoots whoever opens the door. Or gets shot when they see he’s got a shotgun.

  The farmer approached the house warily. Wade watched him over his Galil’s sights, shifting the rifle over so that he could use the eye not covered by his NVGs. The moon had risen, and the clouds were breaking up a little, so there was some illum now that they were out of the jungle. He’d at least be able to get a decent shot at the doorway, especially if there was light inside.

  Fuentes knocked at the door. After a moment, he leaned toward it, as if he was speaking to someone inside, but Wade couldn’t hear from up at the top of the cornfield. However, the door opened all the way after a moment, and then Fuentes was waving them down.

  The three Blackhearts descended toward the house in a loose wedge, their weapons still up and ready. Hank had started with his weapon down at first—he probably had assumed that Fuentes’s signal had meant they were really clear. Both Wade and Burgess knew better. They weren’t going to be “clear” until they were out of Colombia and back in the States.

  Fuentes waited for them at the door, accompanied by a small, wiry man with black eyes and graying hair. The black-eyed man stepped inside, briefly revealing the ancient, rusty AK, its stock held together with duct tape, that he’d held behind his back.

  “This is Galán.” Fuentes indicated the black-eyed man as they entered the tiny house. “And this is Rodrigo Lara.”

  Lara was probably in his sixties, tall and spare of frame, clean shaven with a prominent Indio nose and dark eyes. He was still fully dressed, despite the fact that it was late at night, in a light collared shirt and dark trousers.

  “Señor Lara, we’re here to help liberate San Tabal from the Green Shirts.” Wade let his rifle hang as Galán shut the front door and Burgess took up security on the window next to it. “Well, technically we were hired just to kill Clemente, but my boss thinks that we should actually make it a proper liberation, which means taking control of the city instead of just killing the Green Shirts’ leader and letting things sort themselves out. Since you’re a former mayor, and according to Señor Fuentes here, one of the most respected men in the valley, we’ve come to secure your help.”

  “How many men have you brought?” Lara’s English was accented but understandable. Wade had been somewhat surprised how many people in this remote corner of Colombia spoke English.

  “We brought a small team of specialists.” That sounded better than “mercenaries.” “We’re prepared to help train and lead your people against the Green Shirts. We have access to weapons—and we can get more from the Green Shirts as we proceed.”

  Lara, apparently deciding that they weren’t, in fact, there to kill him, sat down at Galán’s table. “You are asking a lot. The National Army should have come to intervene here. We sent messages when we could, both before and after the coup. There was no reply.” He waved to indicate the whole valley. “These people are farmers and craftsmen. They’re not soldiers.”

  Wade let that go, knowing how close they were to FARC and ELN territory. He’d be willing to bet that there were more killers in San Tabal than Lara wanted to admit.

  “The National Army is worried about the Venezuelans. They’ve got a short brigade on the other side of the border.” He hadn’t heard solid numbers on the Venezuelan army presence, but that sounded about right for a small city in the jungle. “They don’t want to risk a war with Venezuela, especially since they’re pretty sure that the former FARC and ELN fighters will probably join the Venezuelans.” He spread his hands. “You and the locals are going to have to step up, or else spend the rest of your lives toiling for Clemente and his cronies.”

  Lara glanced at Fuentes and spoke in Spanish. Fuentes replied calmly, motioning toward Wade and Hank. Wade couldn’t make out all the Spanish, but he gathered that Fuentes was telling Lara how the Blackhearts had liberated his farm.

  He’d barely finished when Burgess called out. “H
ey, gents? I think we’d better get ready to move or fight, right now. We’ve got company coming.”

  Chapter 17

  The mansion was lit up like a Christmas tree, complete with spotlights on every corner. Flanagan looked back at Gomez and Javakhishvili. “Looks like Ballesteros is getting paranoid.”

  “From what Fuentes told us, that’s not that surprising. The man’s an opportunist, not a true believer. If he thinks things are starting to get out of control…” Javakhishvili shrugged. “Guys like him might do some pretty bad shit when they think there’s no risk to them, but as soon as the plan starts to go wrong, they freak out. If he’s part of Clemente’s inner circle, then he must have heard about the patrol we took out. That might be enough to spook him.”

  Flanagan nodded as he continued to study the mansion set into the hillside overlooking San Tabal. It was somewhat small for a “mansion,” but it was obviously a particularly expensive house for that part of Colombia. A two-story block of whitewashed plaster and glass, it sat against the hillside, overlooking a wide, green lawn that was currently dotted with hasty defensive emplacements built from partially dug-in sandbags and barbed wire. The spotlights weren’t well placed or aimed, and some of them backlit the defenses rather than shining out on the jungle at the periphery. Two trucks were parked on the driveway, where more Green Shirts with weapons leaned against the cabs or stood in the beds, looking out at the road. The whole compound was surrounded by a six-foot fence, topped with barbed wire angled outward forty-five degrees.