by Peter Nealen
Hancock gave the oldster’s shoulder a squeeze, then got up and started away, circling around the yard, staying back in the trees. Javakhishvili flanked him on one side, Santelli on the other.
Santelli hadn’t said much the couple of times that Hancock had spoken to him since this had kicked off. That was a bit concerning; the former Sergeant Major was usually a bit more gregarious. But Hancock knew that the old Bostonian held a certain fatherly regard for Sam Childress. He was worried, and he was pissed.
The trees came closest to the back of the garage right at the corner. Hancock paused, scanning for cameras or tripwires, but didn’t see anything. Good. Taking a deep breath, he looked to either side. He got a nod from Javakhishvili, and a matching one from Santelli, who didn’t take his eyes off the house. Burgess and Kirk were watching the flanks, but radiated readiness.
There was nothing more to wait on. Rising smoothly to his feet, Hancock stepped onto the grass and started toward the window.
He paused just shy of the big picture window. It wasn’t framed; it was one big plate of glass, which was an advantage. He was just wishing for a flashbang to throw through it when the Virginia woods suddenly echoed with the thunder of rifle fire.
He froze for a split second before he realized what was happening. Frank had shifted positions while they’d been moving, and, seeing where they were and that they were about ready to make entry, he had opened fire on the far end of the house as a diversion. Hancock hoped momentarily that he was shooting high enough to avoid hitting Childress, on the off chance that the younger man was over there, then he crouched down, pulled a paver out of the strip of landscaping under the window, and heaved it through the glass.
The window shattered. He stepped out, his weapon leveled, thumb on the light switch, as Santelli moved up, sweeping his suppressor across the base of the window frame to clear the glass.
Movement stirred. Hancock triggered the light, pinning a smaller man, tattoos crawling up his arms and his neck, with an MP5 in his hands. The guy squinted for a split second, before Hancock shot him. The suppressed Scorpion spat and snicked, five 9mm bullets smacked into the target’s chest and walked up toward his head, the last one tearing part of his face off as he fell backward.
Then Santelli was vaulting into the room, Burgess right behind him, as Hancock moved to the side to make sure neither man ended up in front of his muzzle. They both hit the floor within seconds of each other, Scorpions coming up and sweeping the room, weapon lights strobing, as neither of them wanted to leave a bright, glaring light to mark his position for any length of time.
The room was clear. It was doubtful that anyone else in the house had heard the shots over the hammering of Frank’s fire. That fire was going to bring the cops running, though. They had to hurry.
Hancock heaved himself into the room alongside Javakhishvili. It was a living-room sort of arrangement, with a fireplace, an expensive plasma TV hanging on the wall above it, two couches, and a coffee table. The dead man had fallen behind one of the couches, but Burgess had already circled around and fired an insurance round into his head.
There was a hallway leading off one corner. His weapon up, the light extinguished for now, Hancock flowed toward it, even as Kirk heaved his bulk in through the window.
The garage would be to the right. Hancock scanned just far enough out to the left to see there wasn’t anyone immediately waiting to shoot him, paused a split second to make sure that one of the others was right at his elbow, then hooked to the right.
He heard the snapping noise of shots behind him as either Burgess or Santelli engaged someone down that way. He couldn’t spare the attention, though, because the door to the garage was opening, and a sandy-haired man with a big pistol in his hands was coming through.
Hancock triggered the light first, even as he snapped the Scorpion up, pushing it to the limit of the sling, lining the iron sights up on the man’s chest. The guy was squinting, blinded by the glare, but was bringing that big handgun, that had a weird sort of cylinder beneath the slide, up toward him.
Hancock fired a split second before the sandy-haired man. He saw the muzzle blast only feet in front of his face and felt the bullet snap past his head as the man jerked under the impact of his first 9mm. He hammered five more rounds into him, staggering him back with the impacts, but the man was bringing that hand cannon up again, his off hand still rising even as one of Hancock’s rounds blew off his pinky. There was a set grimace on the man’s face, even as the bullets tore into his body.
Then Hancock took the fraction of a second to raise his aim, and double-tapped the man in the head. His skull jerked backward, one eye bulging out from the overpressure, and he dropped like a rock.
Hancock drove forward, putting another round into the man’s shattered skull as he went, bouncing it slightly with the impact. Blood was running out of the exit wounds onto the steps leading down into the garage.
There was a van and a Toyota SUV parked in the garage. The van was the same make and color commercial job that had been in the BOLO after the hit on the hospital.
Sam Childress was lying on the floor just inside the door, his hands tied behind him, covered in blood. He wasn’t moving.
Hancock swept past him, Burgess going the other way, clearing the corners and the blind spots behind the vehicles. Only once he was sure there weren’t any more terrorists waiting in the shadows did he turn back to Childress.
Javakhishvili was already kneeling over him, his Scorpion slung out of the way, his fingers pressed to the side of Childress’ neck. He looked up at Hancock. “He’s alive,” he said. “But he’s unconscious, and he’s been badly beaten. Pulse is fast and thready, respiration is too quick and too shallow. If we move him now, we might kill him.”
“We don’t have a lot of choice,” Hancock said. “We’ve got minutes at best.” He looked up as Santelli and Kirk appeared in the doorway.
“House is clear,” Santelli reported. His eyes moved to Childress.
“He’s alive,” Hancock answered before Santelli could ask the question. “Herc’s gonna get him stabilized as best he can in the next five minutes, then we’re moving. That means we’ve got precisely that much time to exploit this house before we need to punch out.”
Santelli’s eyes were still fixed on Childress, but he nodded, tight-lipped, and turned back to search the house.
***
It was just about the most fruitless site exploitation that Hancock had ever done. They found gear aplenty, two laptops that were crammed with information about Childress, the hospital, and anyone who had come and gone. Clearly, whoever these guys were, they had had some serious connections to get that much info. But just from a cursory search, they couldn’t find any evidence that might point to who they worked for.
“Bring ‘em anyway,” Hancock said. “If Bianco can’t pull anything off them, then I’m sure we can find a tech-head who can.” He deliberately wasn’t thinking about the possibility that Bianco might not come back from Africa. That concern could be dealt with later.
He checked his watch. “Time to go,” he said. “Kirk, grab Sam. Be as careful as you can, but we’ve got to move.”
Kirk said nothing, but slung his Scorpion before carefully lifting the unconscious Childress into a fireman’s carry. He shifted the weight a little, then nodded.
“Carlo, you’ve got point,” Hancock said. “I’ll follow in trace.” He wasn’t thinking so much about it, but it was a very Brannigan sort of stand. First in, last out.
With the house cleared, they didn’t need to go out the window. Santelli paused at the veranda and shouted, “Friendlies coming out!”
“Come ahead,” Frank replied, his voice faint from inside the house. Santelli stepped out and sprinted toward the trees. Kirk was right behind him with Childress.
Hancock waited until Javakhishvili and Burgess had crossed the yard, then took one look back at the corpses lying sprawled in the hallway. There had only been four men in the house. He didn
’t think that was all. He was pretty sure that whoever these bastards were, they hadn’t heard the last of them.
Turning his back, wishing he could clean up the brass at least, but knowing there was no time, he sprinted for the woods.
***
They were five miles away when they saw the motorcade heading back the way they’d come.
Four black BearCat armored vehicles roared down the road, red and blue lights flashing. Hancock watched them go by, frowning.
“Those didn’t look like normal SWAT vehicles to me,” Carl said from behind the wheel, his eyes still fixed on the road ahead, though he glanced back through the rear-view mirror.
“No, they didn’t,” Hancock replied, looking back at the rear windows, over where Javakhishvili was trying to assess and treat Childress on the floor of the van. It was really crowded back there. “They weren’t marked, for one thing.” Every law enforcement vehicle he’d ever seen had been marked, usually with big white block letters on black. These, however, light bars notwithstanding, had been blank.
“Not to sound cliched,” Burgess said, watching the fast receding lights, “but am I the only one who’s getting a bad feeling about this?”
“No,” Hancock said, turning back forward and glancing up, watching for helicopters. With the demonstrated resources of the mysterious terrorists, it probably wasn’t out of line to be at least a little paranoid. “No, you’re not.”
Chapter 16
Price kept them moving for a long time. Brannigan was seriously considering sticking something in the corners of his eyes just to keep awake. His whole body ached, and the scars of the bullet wounds he’d received on the Tourmaline-Delta platform were aching worse than normal. But he thought he knew what Price was up to. They weren’t meandering all over the Sahel for no reason. He expected that Price was trying to outwait the drones in the sky. Those things couldn’t have too long a dwell time, and whoever was running them probably—probably—didn’t have an endless supply. Keeping constant surveillance at range took some serious logistics.
Finally, as the first faint light of dawn was starting to brighten the eastern horizon, Price led them into a draw in the hills north of Ambay. The camp there was dark, and not nearly as extensive as the Humanity Front’s, but it was still bigger than anything the Blackhearts could put together. Brannigan had to remember the kind of resources Price likely had. He was the owner of at least one of the biggest PMSCs in the business.
Tents lined the slopes on either side of the dry riverbed that ran through the draw. There were more fighting positions dug in at each end, and a scan above with NVGs might have spotted LP/OPs on the heights. As they entered the camp and shut down the engines, Brannigan thought he might be able to hear the faint buzz of drones above. Price’s boys were being careful.
Price’s truck pulled right up to one the central tents and Price got out. He waved at Brannigan’s vehicles, then went inside.
Jenkins put the Land Rover in park and squinted around at the camp.
“What?” Brannigan asked. It wasn’t as if Jenkins was going to keep his opinion to himself for long, anyway.
“I don’t know,” the former SEAL said. “I worked for one of Price’s companies a while back. Well, it wasn’t his company anymore; he’d moved on to MMPR or whatever alphabet soup company he built after that. But I wasn’t impressed by most of what I saw.”
“I’ve heard that,” Brannigan replied, eyeing the tent where Price had disappeared. “It got too big, and the quality control went to shit.”
“Pretty much,” Jenkins replied. “Can’t say I expect any better from him now.”
“It’s a constant,” Brannigan answered, opening his door. “Trust me, it’s not limited to Price’s companies. Every outfit that gets too big starts to let quality slip. It happens to firearms companies, security contracting companies, you name it. And if he was already gone by then, you can’t necessarily hold him personally responsible for the state of the company when you joined it.”
“Maybe not,” Jenkins allowed. “But it was still his baby.”
“And these guys have generally been pretty professional here,” Brannigan pointed out. “Trust me, I’m not just accepting everything at face value here, but Price and his guys are just about the only people in this country who haven’t hassled us or shot at us.”
Jenkins shrugged. Brannigan got out, stretched, feeling and hearing his joints pop and creak, and headed for the tent where Price had gone.
Inside, a small red lens flashlight provided the only illumination except for the glow of a laptop screen on the table in the center. Price, still looking almost as chipper as ever, was standing over the table, looking down at the screen. He glanced up as Brannigan entered.
“So, who was that?” Brannigan asked before Price could speak. “And don’t try to tell me it was the Humanity Front. I got a good look at that helo. It wasn’t the same as the ones they had parked in that camp; it looked like a French Dauphin, if anything.”
Price grimaced a little. “It was a Dauphin,” he said. “And it wasn’t.”
Brannigan’s eyes narrowed a little. “It’s been a long night after a long day, Price. You’re going to have to forgive me if I don’t have a lot of patience for word games.”
“I’m fairly certain it was a Harbin Z-9,” Price said. “It’s a Chinese licensed version of the Dauphin.”
Brannigan took that in, remembering all the Chinese they’d seen in Abeche, far from where they might have been expected to be. “So, why did the Chinese try to shoot us to pieces last night?”
“They probably don’t know who you are,” Price said, leaning heavily on the table, which shook a little under his weight. “They’re after me.”
“Is that right?” Brannigan asked, folding his arms over the buttstock of his L1A1.
Price nodded. “I don’t know if they figured it out on their own—the Chinese have eyes and ears fucking everywhere—or if somebody in our government deliberately leaked that I was the prime suspect in the Anambas operation. But I’ve been on their target deck since shortly after that op wrapped up.”
“Interesting,” Brannigan said, deadpan. “I’m listening.”
“It started about six months after,” Price said, sinking into a folding camp chair and motioning Brannigan toward a cot. That was when Brannigan realized that this was probably Price’s living quarters. “I had some business in the Philippines, and within a day I noticed I was being shadowed. It wasn’t low-key, either. It was harassing surveillance; they were making sure I knew they were there, and they broke into my hotel room while I was at a meeting and ransacked the place. I didn’t have a lot of security with me at the time. I’ve since remedied that.
“Since then, it’s been getting more adversarial. It seems that I rather embarrassed the MSS a year or so ago, using some of what I found in the Yuan file.”
“You don’t act like a man who ‘accidentally’ crossed swords with the Ministry for State Security, Price,” Brannigan observed dryly.
Price smiled faintly. “I’ve done business with and against the Chinese,” he said. “I’ll admit that they screwed me on a contract in the UAE a few years back, and I haven’t forgotten it. But I’ve also seen enough to know what they’re doing worldwide, and at some point, somebody’s got to check them a little.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “You’re an informed man; in your line of work, you’ve got to be. Tell me you haven’t noticed it. The corporate takeovers, the big buyouts, the moves to secure natural resources all over Africa and Latin America. The pushing they’ve been doing in the South China Sea. China’s on the move, and hardly anybody wants to admit it.”
“You’ve suddenly changed your tune from a few years ago,” Brannigan observed. “Oh, yeah, I know about the training deal in Hong Kong a few years back. You didn’t seem nearly as concerned about Chinese hegemony then.”
Price took a deep breath. “You’re a perceptive man, Colonel,” he said.
“And you’re right. I did accept Chinese money. And at the time, I thought, why shouldn’t I? The US government screwed me over a couple of times. It wasn’t like I was training the PLA Special Forces. I was training glorified rent-a-cops who were going to be protecting assets from radicalized Muslims in Xinjiang.”
He shrugged and spread his hands. “That contract ended; frankly, I could have gotten some interesting intelligence for the US, but I got so much pressure to break it off that I didn’t have much choice. Our so-called ‘leaders’ are too short-sighted, and too many of them like to make me a scapegoat for all sorts of things.”
“Including hiring a private army to prosecute a non-state war in the Anambas Islands?” Brannigan asked. As tired as he was, he was watching Price’s reactions carefully. And what he was seeing was telling.
It wasn’t that Price was lying. In fact, he pointedly wasn’t. That much was clear. A man who was wouldn’t have admitted to taking Chinese money to train contractors—who would almost certainly be PLA—when he was trying to paint himself as the sole voice in the wilderness standing against the ChiCom horde. He was dissembling, painting himself in the best possible light, certainly. But he wasn’t lying.
He didn’t entirely trust Price; he probably never would. But he could tell that the man was as sincere as he was apparently capable of getting.
Which meant that Brannigan had a choice to make.
Hancock and the rest were overdue. He didn’t know why; they hadn’t exactly had time to make contact with the States. But if for some reason they had been prevented from coming out, it meant that he had seven men to take on that camp. Otherwise, his only course of action would be to simply head back and report to Van Zandt.
His doubts about Price’s accusation concerning the Humanity Front were rapidly dissipating. There were too many coincidences, and that camp wasn’t set up right. But with an organization with the high-profile support and resources of the Humanity Front involved, he’d need incontrovertible proof of nefarious actions before anyone Stateside would listen.
