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

by Peter Nealen

  ***

  Brannigan helped the last of the women into the back seat of the truck, trying not to shove her too hard, even while his NVGs brightened with the approaching glow of the incoming headlights. The Green Shirts were almost on top of them, and they had minutes at best—seconds at worst—to get the noncombatants out.

  The woman drew her feet inside and he slammed the door, smacking his hand down on the hood. “GO!” Lara’s wife, a stocky but handsome woman in her mid-fifties, threw the truck into reverse and twisted around in her seat, watching out the back window as she sent the vehicle careening backward down the bumpy mountain road and around the curve below. The gun truck followed, with one of Galán’s teenage sons driving. There had been some arguing in Spanish before the kid had taken the wheel. His mother had prevailed, apparently. It seemed as if the young man had wanted to stay with his father, the resistance fighters, and the Blackhearts.

  Both vehicles made it around the curve—though the teenager almost wrecked along the way—just before machinegun fire split the night on the other side of the fields.

  Brannigan, Jenkins, Pacheco, and Quintana were already moving up into the trees when Bianco opened fire. The Negev’s ripping roar was readily identifiable, compared to the heavier and slower thudthudthud of the PKMs or M60s that the Green Shirts mostly seemed to be using.

  A moment later, Bianco’s fire was answered. First one, then two PKMs opened up, and Brannigan looked through the trees just in time to see green tracers pouring into the woods on the side of the road where Bianco had set in, just before Bianco’s fire went silent.

  Oh, hell. Not Vinnie.

  Curtis opened fire from about halfway up the hill, pouring his own stream of tracers toward the glow of the headlights, but it was almost futile. The Green Shirts’ gun trucks were still behind the arm of jungle that stretched down on the east side of the cornfields from Curtis’ position. Curtis was pouring fire into the jungle, hoping that he hit something on the other side.

  Brannigan paused, even as Jenkins and Quintana kept going. Pacheco noticed and slowed, looking back at the big mercenary commander.

  Brannigan looked back toward the road where Bianco had been set in. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to go down there and pull Bianco out, dead or alive. But a moment later, the first of the gun trucks came roaring out into the cleared section of the road, the M60 mounted in the back spitting flame, raking the cornfields with red tracers.

  The policemen threw themselves flat, all except for an overweight man named Muñoz. His back arched as bullets punched through his spine and his lung, and he fell on his face against the next terrace, sliding down to roll on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly at the thin clouds moving in over the night sky.

  Curtis shifted fire, raking the truck as it skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, and the incoming machinegun fire momentarily slackened. But then the next truck back hove into view and added its own fire, beating down the cornstalks and sweeping the terraces with a deadly rain of bullets.

  For a moment, the Blackhearts’ fire died down to nothing, as those not already in cover crawled toward the treeline and some semblance of cover and concealment. Cornstalks waved as they thrashed through the fields, but the gunners down below weren’t so much aiming as they were spraying fire all across the open ground, either trying to suppress or just hoping that enough volume of fire might hit someone. That was the only reason no more of the Blackhearts or their allies got hit.

  With Curtis silenced, the first gun truck opened up again, adding its fire to the second’s, even as two more trucks rumbled up behind them, stopping on the road and letting more Green Shirts with rifles and submachineguns pile out.

  Then a shot from up above, near the house, suddenly silenced one of the gunners. That had to be Wade. It was quite a shot, given the lack of lasers or optics and the near-impossibility of using iron sights with NVGs.

  “Move! Get up the hill and get cover!” The loss of one gunner had only made the Green Shirts intensify their fire, pouring bullets up the hill toward the house. Sheer numbers gave them fire superiority, and soon every one of the Blackhearts was pinned down, flat in the dirt and cursing their chest rigs for keeping them a little bit higher off the ground.

  This was not going well.

  Then Burgess yelled something from up behind the house and opened fire. Brannigan couldn’t see where, at first, but then the flickering muzzle flashes in the jungle to the east, up on the ridgeline, told him all he needed to know.

  ***

  Bianco returned fire for a moment, half-blindly, spraying another long burst down the road. Tracers sparked off the one vehicle he could see clearly, forcing the gunner back behind a tree, and giving him a momentary breather. But the second vehicle’s gunner responded almost instantly, raking his position with more accurate fire, and Bianco snatched the Negev to his chest as he rolled down the slope and off the road altogether. More machinegun fire chased him, but he was below the lip of the road and in cover.

  Rolling to his back, he got his feet under him and skidded a couple of yards down the narrow draw where he’d set in. This wasn’t a great position—they’d needed to stop the convoy cold, but it hadn’t quite happened. Of course, the Green Shirts had to have expected contact, given what had already happened, so this wasn’t a huge surprise.

  Unfortunately, the terrain and the timing had limited the Blackhearts’ contingency planning. Now Bianco found himself in the low ground, packing a belt-fed light machinegun, with only a limited number of options.

  He was on the wrong side of the road, and now there was a linear danger area, covered by enemy fire, between him and the rest of the team. The sides of the narrow draw he’d ducked down were relatively steep—the only easy ways out were up to the road or down into the valley below—and covered in more thick vegetation. He had to either fight his way out or run for it and try to circle around again.

  The gunfire up above him had redoubled as more trucks moved in, and the Blackhearts’ return fire had died down to almost nothing. This was bad.

  He craned his neck, still partly on his back, to look up toward the road. He caught a glimpse of a figure jumping out of one of the trucks, but even as he shrank down into the weeds, he saw that they were all moving toward the fields above, ignoring his little hidey hole.

  Gritting his teeth, he rolled to his side and started to scramble up the low slope to the west. If he could get clear, get around that curve, he might be able to get up on some higher ground—or just onto the Green Shirts’ flank—and hit them hard enough to at least gain some maneuvering room for the rest. He had to move fast.

  ***

  Flanagan was deep enough in the trees, with Gomez and Javakhishvili, that he was outside the beaten zone and therefore could maneuver more easily. He’d started moving uphill even faster as soon as the shooting started, his legs burning, all too aware that he’d already been in one intense firefight that night, and he wasn’t getting any younger. But survival is a competitive sport, and he didn’t intend to lose.

  In a matter of a couple more minutes, he was level with the house, just as Burgess opened fire on the Green Shirts’ assault element. Ignoring the bullets that snapped and zipped overhead, chopping through some of the higher leaves in the canopy, he turned and dashed for the house, keeping his head down as best he could while still moving fast. For a moment, he was fully exposed to the storm of death roaring up from the road, but a lot of those rounds were going high, and he got to the corner of the Galán house in seconds, dropping to a knee and bringing his rifle up.

  The iron sights were all but invisible, though he still tried. He found he could just barely pick up the front sight through the NVGs’ aperture, though everything beyond it was sort of black, at least until one of the Green Shirts returned Burgess’s fire.

  Muzzle flash makes for a pretty good target in the dark. Flanagan shifted his aim and fired. The Green Shirt was either hit, or the bullet passed close enough that he was shocke
d into ceasing fire and dropping prone to get out of the line of fire.

  Flanagan gave him two more rounds just to keep him honest. Precise aim wasn’t all that doable under those circumstances, but aggression was more important.

  Then he was moving again, dashing to the next corner, even though there wasn’t as much cover there. Burgess was holding his position behind a massive tree, about ten yards uphill, mag-dumping into the figures that had begun to dash forward toward the house.

  It was a bit surreal. Their targets were little more than dark green silhouettes, barely visible in the shadows under the jungle, and the most they could do was point shoot and hope they got close enough. Gomez dashed up between Flanagan and Burgess, dropping prone and hammering a pair into another charging Green Shirt. That was definitely a kill—the man staggered and fell on his face.

  But there were a lot more behind him, and soon the Blackhearts were simply raking the trees with fire. But the Galils didn’t have the ammo capacity that the belt-fed Negevs did.

  “Reloading!” Burgess went dry and ripped his mag out, letting it fall to the dirt as he snatched a replacement out of his chest rig.

  Flanagan knew he was getting close to empty, himself. “Mario! Get inside and get set!” This was about to become a siege. If they could get the team inside, without getting mowed down in the open as the fire from below continued.

  And the Green Shirts had far more firepower and ammunition than the Blackhearts.

  Chapter 22

  Bianco was panting hard, sweat pouring into his eyes and drenching his fatigues under his chest rig. He’d slipped twice already in the last ten yards, but he was almost over the little finger that ran down from the side of the road. That didn’t mean that the worst part was over, but at least he’d have a little more cover, and he’d be closer to a better position.

  The crackling roar of gunfire above him seemed to be intensifying, but that might have just been because he knew that his buddies were on the receiving end, and until he got a little bit farther, he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  Maybe I should just get up there and open up. Sure, they’ll probably kill me, but at least the others will get a fighting chance. If they’re still alive.

  That twisted his guts a little. He didn’t want to die. His earlier determination, now that he was genuinely staring such a sacrifice in the face, seemed like so much empty bravado, now.

  Don’t puss out. He got over the top of the little finger and crouched in the undergrowth. He felt himself start to slide and caught himself by wedging one boot against the nearest tree. The angle started to squeeze his foot, but he ignored the pain. They’d do it for you.

  That tore it. He turned back toward the road and started struggling through the vines and weeds, every gunshot hitting his nerves like a cattle prod. He tripped and fell on his face, almost losing his grip on the Negev. The noise almost made him freeze where he was, but the shooting up ahead was far too loud for any of the Green Shirts to have heard it. He scrambled back to his feet, hauling the machinegun back up, hoping and praying he hadn’t just speared the barrel full of dirt, and scrambled toward the top of the slope.

  He came out farther down the road than he’d thought he would, almost at the curve. He gulped as he saw how close the nearest truck was, its headlights spilling white light down the road, right in his face.

  It almost made him turn and engage right there, but none of the Green Shirts he could see were looking in his direction. All their attention was directed uphill, where even more gunfire thundered and crackled, the cacophony echoing across the darkened hills.

  With a lunge, Bianco dashed out across the road, keeping his head down and crossing in three lurching strides, his chest rig bouncing against his torso, the Negev’s weight tearing at his arms. He probably hadn’t run that fast in a long time.

  One of the Green Shirts must have spotted him, because a half dozen shots followed him, a few kicking up dirt at his heels while others sailed out into the night with hissing cracks.

  Then he was in the trees and he pivoted, dropping prone behind one of the largest ones and dragging the Negev to bear. He had half a belt left.

  It would have to be enough. He leaned into the bipods and went to work.

  By luck, he’d dropped into a near-perfect position. The Green Shirts on the road—only a handful of the men on foot had started to venture up into the cornfield—were spread out along the shallow curve of the roadway that faced Galán’s farm, but they were all within an arc that he could easily cover with the belt-fed simply by shifting his aim a few inches to the left and right.

  Starting on the left, he held down the trigger, leaning into the gun to control the recoil, stitching tracers across the line of vehicles and men. The first man, the one who had shot at him and was still moving forward with his rifle up, caught the first burst at the knees and crumpled, screaming, to the roadway. Bianco had already traversed past him, though, raking the road and the up gunners on the trucks.

  Several more Green Shirts collapsed, dead or wounded, and the fire slackened considerably as they scrambled for cover or died. Bianco reached the end of his arc and started back, but the Negev ran dry halfway across, before he could reach the first man he’d shot, who lay in the dirt, writhing and still screaming.

  Scrambling to his feet, he flipped the ammo tray cover open and ripped the drum off as he started to run into the jungle, heading up the hill toward the house.

  ***

  Brannigan couldn’t tell exactly what had happened down below, but they suddenly had a lull in the incoming fire. “Get up and move! Get to the house!” He rose to a knee and added his own fire to whoever had just jumped the Green Shirts down on the road. He ripped half the mag down the hillside at the trucks, and at least one round shot out one of the headlights. Brannigan didn’t consider that an achievement. Better if he’d hit one of the men.

  Curtis had recovered and let rip with a long, ravening burst from the next terrace up. Brannigan turned and ran, struggling up the hillside to the right, finding the shallower slope beside the terraces, rather than trying to climb the three-foot-high earthen walls. He got to the next one up and dropped prone again, resuming his fire and giving Curtis some cover.

  Curtis turned, hefting the gun and running the other way, toward the trees on the east side of the farm. Unfortunately, that was where the other Green Shirts were coming from.

  Brannigan didn’t hear the curse, but he sure heard the panic fire as Curtis skidded to a halt, snatched up the Negev like it was a carbine, and laid a twenty-round burst into the trees directly in front of him, even as more rifle fire from the house chopped into the shadows nearby.

  “Everyone get to the house! Now!” Flanagan was ordinarily a quiet man, but he could make himself heard when he needed to. His bellow sounded even over the thunder of gunfire. “Move your ass, Kevin!” A moment later, more fire plunged into the trees, answered by a pained scream.

  Curtis put his head down and sprinted up the hillside, his short legs pumping, the machinegun in his hands swinging from side to side.

  Brannigan had already started moving, grabbing Jenkins as he went and propelling him toward Quintana, who’d retreated farther up the hillside, but was moving more slowly. “Get him moving!”

  Jenkins ran forward and grabbed hold of Quintana, dragging him upward as Brannigan turned back and dumped the last of his magazine down through the cornstalks. The former policeman stumbled and almost fell, but Jenkins hauled him to his feet and kept moving. Then, as the fire from the house redoubled, Brannigan followed, stripping the empty mag out and rocking in another.

  Another burst of machinegun fire roared out of the night nearby, entirely too close for comfort. Brannigan pivoted as he chambered a round, bringing his rifle up, searching for the muzzle flash, knowing he was too late.

  But just before he fired, he realized that the automatic fire had been directed downhill. He shifted, added his own fire, and a moment later, Bianco burst out of
the trees, panting for breath, clutching his Negev to his chest as he staggered toward the house.

  Brannigan was right behind him, as Curtis opened fire from the house itself, raking the terraces and the road below. The two Blackhearts raced the last handful of yards to the door and plunged inside.

  “Headcount!” Brannigan looked around the darkened interior of the bullet-riddled structure, praying that he had everyone. Bianco was on the floor next to him, gasping for breath but already shifting his position to point the Negev out the partially open, thoroughly holed door. Curtis was at the window with the other and Flanagan was at the west window, while Burgess, Javakhishvili, and Gomez held the east side against the increasingly ragged fire coming from the Green Shirts’ assault element. Hank and Wade were also at the south-facing windows, while Fuentes, Pacheco, Quintana, Lara, Galán, and the handful of police who’d made it to the dubious shelter of the house covered the north and west sides.

  It was awfully crowded in that tiny house, and it was going to get worse as gunfire continued to erode the cinderblock walls. But they had some cover for the time being, as inadequate as it might have been.

  Flanagan had come away from the window to make the same assessment. “We’re up, Colonel.” He blew out a breath. The fire outside had slackened some, especially since the Green Shirts no longer could be sure where their opponents were. Burgess fired twice, and a yell of alarm sounded outside. A sporadic burst of fire smacked bullets into the cinderblocks, mostly high, and then it went quiet again.

  “Well, this is the Alamo.” Brannigan’s voice was grim as he peered out the doorway. “At least until we come up with a better plan.”

  He was met with silence. A better plan was going to be tough. They were pinned down, outnumbered, and outgunned. And unless Van Zandt had a relief force on the way that he hadn’t mentioned, the entire resistance was right there in one place. All the Green Shirts had to do was kill everyone in that rapidly crumbling house, and the mission was over.