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

by Peter Nealen

  More return fire came their way as the Green Shirts realized they were under attack from behind. In the meantime, Curtis, Pacheco, and the rest of their allies up at the battered farmhouse redoubled their own fire, now that the suppressive fire from below had all but ceased.

  Bianco hadn’t quite come out on the road itself, Flanagan saw. He had popped out on the first terrace, about five yards back from the road and at least four feet above it. And he had a hell of a sector of fire from there.

  Dropping prone behind the machinegun, Bianco went to work. In long, ten-to-twelve-round bursts, he raked the column of gun trucks from back to front and back again. Glass shattered, metal sparked, and blood flew as he dumped the last of his ammo into what remained of the Green Shirts’ base of fire.

  Flanagan raced across the road and into the low ground on the other side, snapping his rifle up and hammering a burst at one of the Green Shirts crouched behind one of two technicals in the center of the fields. He’d forgotten that the weapon was on auto for a second, and the recoil kind of got away from him, the rounds climbing into the body of the truck after the first two. Those had hit, but not fatally, and he ducked as the wounded man sprayed a desperate burst of 5.56 at him in reply.

  Then Gomez shot the Green Shirt through the throat, and that was over.

  The technicals at the front of the column were starting to pull away, bodies piled into the beds. One still had a gunner up, and he tried to spray bullets down the road at the Blackhearts, but a half dozen rounds knocked him off his feet and on top of another Green Shirt, who shoved him off to fall out of the bed and flop onto the road.

  Then there was no one left to shoot. The echoes of gunfire died away, replaced with the moans of the wounded as a thin, misty rain began to fall.

  Chapter 24

  Galán’s farm was in ruins. His crop was smashed, burned, and shredded by gunfire, stalks flattened under corpses leaking blood and other bodily fluids into the soil. His house was shattered, the walls holed in several hundred places by bullets, every window smashed. The interior looked like a hurricane had hit it, the floor and the furniture strewn with plaster dust, broken glass, and bits of pulverized concrete.

  Of the six policemen that Quintana and Brannigan had gathered, four were still alive. By some miracle—and most likely because of the sheer speed and ferocity of their counterattack—none of the Blackhearts had been killed. A few minor shrapnel wounds were overshadowed by the pain of exhaustion, dehydration, and numerous cuts, scrapes, gouges, and battered joints from negotiating the terrain and the jungle itself.

  Brannigan, Lara, and Pacheco stood on the top terrace, just outside the house, surveying the bodies strewn across the cornfield and the road.

  “How many men did the Green Shirts ever have in total?” Brannigan turned to Lara and Quintana. The former policeman was covered in blood, having been clipped by a bullet through his right trapezius as well as having his scalp torn by flying glass as a burst of rifle fire had shattered the window he’d been peering out of. “Did you ever get a rough count?”

  Quintana winced as he squinted against the misting rain. “I don’t think anyone ever got a complete count. And they weren’t exactly posting how many men they had. But our best estimates were less than two hundred.”

  Brannigan squinted as he scanned the carnage below, adding in his head. “Joe, how many do you think you guys killed at Ballesteros’s house?”

  Flanagan thought about it for a second. “Maybe a dozen? Twenty at the outside?”

  Brannigan nodded as he kept adding up the last several engagements they’d had with the Green Shirts. “Were they actively recruiting at all?”

  “Yes. Successfully, too. Mostly among the street gangs in the city.”

  “So, even on an optimistic assessment, with as many as we killed here, we might have cut their numbers by… what? A third?”

  “Maybe half.” Quintana sounded a little hopeful, but there was still a note of doubt in his voice.

  “Don’t underestimate the effect that word of this will have on the rest.” Pacheco sounded a little more sure of himself than Quintana. “Even if the thugs flocked to them—and there is never any shortage of such people—and if Galvez goes to great lengths to frighten his surviving men out of talking about it—and he will—word will get around, and many of even the most vicious will start to look for an escape plan. You rarely have to kill all of them. Kill just enough, and the rest will scatter.”

  “The question is, how many is enough?” Brannigan had fought insurgents all around the world over the past thirty years. He’d seen many hard lessons driven home in blood and fire. And seen just as many of them ignored.

  One of the hardest was the fact that no two insurgencies are ever exactly the same, and by definition, they’re hard as hell to eradicate.

  “How dependent are they on the leadership?” He was still thinking through contingencies and courses of action. They’d dealt the Green Shirts a severe blow here, but as long as Clemente, Galvez, and possibly others were still at large—and still in control of San Tabal, even if only through terror—then this wasn’t over.

  “More than FARC or ELN.” Pacheco had clearly done some study, even as a relative outsider. “Clemente isn’t the type to plan for a legacy. He’s a creature of appetite and pride. He’d probably sooner see San Tabal burned to the ground at his death than plan for a successor. Galvez is more cunning. He’ll have contingency plans, though once again, they probably don’t allow for his own capture or death. He’s the outlaw hero, the great revolutionary. He wants to see himself on top of the revolution, not a martyr for it.”

  “So, if we take them out, then at least we can throw the Green Shirts into enough chaos that we might be able to secure the city and the surrounding farms, drive them back into the jungle, and maybe even get the situation shifted to a state where we can get Bogota to intervene.”

  Pacheco nodded. “It seems like the most workable plan at the moment. We should continue to recruit police and concerned citizens as we go, of course.” He gestured to the bloody mess below and around them. “We have more weapons and ammunition to go around, now.”

  Brannigan cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get them divvied up and get moving. They’re off balance for now. We need to move quickly, before they can regroup.”

  ***

  Galvez hadn’t told Clemente about his fallback camp. He’d found the cavern back during his days working with the FARC. An operation had gone bad, and he had fled into the jungle, pursued by the Colombian National Army. He’d almost fallen into the tiny hole that had led into the cavern, and as the helicopters had come closer, he’d wormed his way into the dark. He’d marked where it was, and over time, as he’d come in and out of Colombia in the service of The Revolution, he’d turned it into a fallback position, one that he could even get to if he had to run from any of the other northern countries of South America. Now, while it had always been his personal hiding place, it was the best place to take his surviving Green Shirts.

  He’d considered trying to weed out a few of them, the ones he wasn’t sure of, on the way, but his assault force had been whittled down to a handful of fighters. He’d need them all in the days ahead, as much as he hated it.

  Rage and hatred burned in him as he paced the cavern floor. This entire plan had gone terribly wrong. That damned American had turned on him. I’ll make sure he dies, too. Someday. He’ll beg me for mercy before the end.

  Despite the fury that made him want to strike out, to kill, to crush, to burn, a plan was slowly forming in his head. The American mercenaries were still few in number. He’d underestimated their aggressiveness. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. He had stocks of explosives secreted in the hills around San Tabal. He’d draw them into an ambush, then blow them all to bloody pieces.

  But first he had to eliminate Clemente. He didn’t have a great reason, but he was beyond reason at that point. He’d set all of this in motion to kill Clemente and take over. He had to
finish that.

  He continued to pace, his fevered mind racing to find a way to snatch victory out of this bloody defeat.

  ***

  San Tabal was eerily silent as the morning eased toward noon, the rain slowing before it stopped, though the clouds remained, settling atop the peaks of the hills.

  Brannigan, Wade, Flanagan, and Pacheco watched from the hillside above. “Looks like everybody’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “I’m sure they are.” Brannigan peered through a pair of binoculars that Pacheco had brought along, scanning the empty streets. A face showed in a window for a split second, then disappeared. “Did the Green Shirts have any central positions within the city that they might have fallen back to?”

  Lara pointed. “The police station, there on that hill, has been their primary headquarters. Clemente himself has generally stayed in the mayor’s house, there.” His voice turned even grimmer. “They hanged Jurado outside it, in the plaza, after forcing him to watch as they executed his friends and family.”

  The police station, in its elevated position about halfway up the hill from the plaza, was easy to pick out, especially since it had the Green Shirts’ flag, red and yellow separated by a slash of black with a red star in the yellow, flying above it.

  Clemente’s stolen mansion wasn’t that hard to pick out, either. The fact that Clemente had more of the red, yellow, and black flags dangling from the balcony above the plaza helped, but it was also the largest structure in view, as well.

  He scanned the deserted streets and quiet houses. There was a tension on the air, a tension that he could feel even from up there on the hillside. Like he’d said, it was the sense that everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Green Shirts were hunkered down, waiting for the Blackhearts and their allies to come after them following the slaughter in the mountains, and the locals were hunkered down waiting for either the collateral damage that would come from an assault on the city, or for the Green Shirts to take out their rage on the local populace.

  He’d seen it happen before. Mostly in Africa. Those who fancied themselves warriors, but who lacked the moral ethos of protection of the innocent, or the training to stand against those with greater skill and firepower, usually came away from getting their asses kicked with a great deal of wounded pride. And without that moral ethos, wounded pride was often salved by proving they were still “stronger.” And it’s easy to prove greater strength when beating on people who can’t defend themselves.

  Brannigan had seen it all too many times, and he hoped to keep it from happening again here in San Tabal. But that meant they’d have to move fast. And that could present its own problems. Moving fast in urban combat was not always a recipe for success.

  Or survival.

  “Joe, you get the mayor’s house. Wade, take the police station.” He turned to Quintana. “Pick one of your most trustworthy cops to go with each element. They’ll pick out others—cops or civilians who know how to use guns—and recruit them along the way.” He glanced at the weary, dirty band of mercenaries. “We’re going to need numbers to carry this through. The ten of us aren’t going to be enough.”

  Quintana nodded. “What about me?”

  “You’ll come with me to grab more, in areas that aren’t along Wade’s and Flanagan’s route. Again, we’re going to need as many as we can get, and we’ll act as a mobile reserve. If one of those two teams gets in trouble, we’ll be their backup.”

  “And Lara?” Quintana glanced over his shoulder at where Pacheco was keeping an eye on the farmers, all of whom were armed, but were still holding back.

  Brannigan followed Quintana’s gaze. Lara looked tired and grim, as if he were already feeling the burden that he was going to have to take on as a part of this plan. He would be even more of a target if this worked—the Green Shirts probably had allies elsewhere in the country, and they would remember the man who returned to the office of mayor after overthrowing the “revolution.”

  He’d be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

  Welcome to the club, buddy.

  “I’d be inclined to say that if he wants to be a leader, he’s going to need to take some of the risks, but on the other hand, unless you’ve got a replacement handy when the new mayor gets killed before even entering office, we’re probably going to have to keep him back here, out of harm’s way.” He glanced blandly at Quintana, waiting for the other man to suggest another option. Like perhaps making him mayor, should Lara not survive…

  But that suggestion didn’t come. Quintana watched Lara for another moment. “No, best to keep him here. If he gets killed in the attack, we will never be able to get the city stabilized in time.”

  “He’s that respected?” Brannigan was feeling Quintana out a little with that question, and he suddenly thought that the other man was quite well aware. Perhaps the dullard dishrag of a yes-man cop was more than he appeared.

  “He was the mayor for many years.” Quintana nodded. “Yes, the people will rally to him, if he stands in the plaza and announces that the days of the Green Shirts are over.” He looked Brannigan in the eye. “I will follow him.” He smiled crookedly, and Brannigan thought it was the most genuine expression he’d seen on the man’s face. “After all, if he is mayor, he will be more of a target than the deputy police chief.”

  Brannigan decided to let that go. It wasn’t his decision, and it wasn’t his city or country. If they kept Lara alive, it would be his worry, his decision, going forward.

  “All right.” He looked around at the other Blackhearts. “One more push, gentlemen. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Chapter 25

  Wade was by nature a grounded, down-to-earth guy. He didn’t get creeped out. He preferred to creep other people out, mainly with matter-of-fact expressions of his complete comfort with violence, delivered with an icy, unblinking gaze that could have given Roger Hancock a run for his money in the “basilisk stare” department.

  But the empty silence on the streets of San Tabal was giving him the willies.

  He was on point—Flanagan and Gomez had teamed up again, so he figured he was one of the best fieldcraft men in his element, between him and Burgess. Plus, he just preferred to be on point himself. Behind him, Burgess, Bianco, and Jenkins led about a dozen local cops and volunteers who had joined them along the way, mostly recruited by Contreras, one of Quintana’s cops who had survived the fight on Galán’s farm. They were spread out in a rough tactical column, split along both sides of the street as they worked their way around toward the police station.

  He and Flanagan had finally resorted to Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who got which target. The police station was probably the more vital target, but the mayor’s house was where they’d probably find Clemente. Flanagan was a quiet, unassuming dude most of the time, but he still had that killer instinct and didn’t want to just let another Blackheart take the big prize.

  It’s the little things.

  Movement drew Wade’s eye, and he flicked his Galil’s muzzle toward it, only to see the curtain behind the barred window slip back into place. He didn’t relax, but kept the rifle up, covering that window as he continued to move up the street, maintaining as much awareness of every other angle he couldn’t close off as he did. Urban combat is a complex dance of multiple angles and threats that could appear at close range without warning.

  And with how quiet San Tabal was, he fully expected one of those threats to appear at any moment. It was as if the city was holding its breath, waiting for the ambush to kick off.

  He had to expand his scan ahead as he continued down the street, but he kept coming back to that curtain. For the most part, he was keeping his weapon and eyes trained on the other side of the street, while Burgess covered his side ahead of him. He still had to be careful of openings on his side, but it was easier to react and engage with a little distance.

  The curtain moved again. His Galil rose until he was peering just over the sights, his f
inger resting on the trigger guard. The selector was already on “R.”

  But he lowered it as he registered the small face of a kid who couldn’t be more than about five, peering out from behind the curtain. No target. It didn’t mean no threat—he’d certainly been places where the bad guys had had no qualms about using little kids as human shields—but he wasn’t going to smoke a little boy just because.

  If the threat did materialize, he’d go so far as to kill everyone in the house if that was what it took to neutralize it, and sleep like a baby afterward. But he wasn’t going to deliberately just murder a kid.

  They kept moving. The cops and volunteers were a little too bunched up, but the Blackhearts in the lead maintained as careful movement and constant, three-hundred-sixty-degree security as they went.

  He paused, holding up a fist, as he reached the alley that would form their last covered and concealed position before the police station. He could see the compound up ahead, just around the next bend in the street.

  The police station was a walled compound with a white plastered, blocky building with the almost ubiquitous red tile roof standing above the outer wall, which was also whitewashed plaster over cinderblock, topped with barbed wire. The closed gate faced the street, about two-thirds of the way down the wall.

  Wade got most of his assault force into the alley, except for Jenkins and Bianco, who set in behind another house across the street, just in case.

  Wade leaned out just far enough to get a decent look at the compound and the gate. Not only did the certainly locked gate appear to be steel, painted black and rusting a little where the paint had chipped over time, he was sure that any Green Shirts who were holed up in the police station would have every weapon they possessed aimed in at it. It was the only real way in, and that made it a death trap.