Fury in the Gulf (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 1)

by Peter Nealen

  The tall man must have been someone important, an officer or senior NCO. Brannigan suddenly tried to remember if the Iranians really had much of an NCO corps, but couldn’t recall if he’d ever heard. It didn’t matter, anyway; whoever this guy was, he was giving orders, and the trigger pullers were listening to him.

  The guards were rushing out of the guard shack. The one who had been lollygagging by the swing arm was standing rigidly at attention, his rifle held at something close to port arms.

  The tall man barked out a rapid speech in Farsi, pointing back toward the lights of Khadarkh City. As if to punctuate his words, a series of pops, recognizable even from a distance as small arms fire, could be heard from the same direction. Things were heating up in town.

  The man pointed to two of the Iranians, rapped out what sounded like a combination of orders and a warning, and then yelled at the other four, who scrambled to grab their gear and clamber into the backs of the trucks. A moment later, the tall man, yelling a last word to the two forlorn-looking guards staying at the checkpoint, climbed into the cab of the lead truck. The two vehicles turned about and rolled back up the road toward the city and the Citadel.

  Childress looked back toward Brannigan, as if to ask a question. Brannigan shook his head fractionally. Killing the checkpoint guards might just alert the enemy to their presence before they were ready. This wasn’t a game; as soon as a kill happens on an infiltration, the infiltration has to be considered blown. Their objective was the hostages, so they would have to stay patient and sneaky until they could get to the Citadel itself. That meant leaving these two chumps alone. Just from the body language he could see through the grainy NVGs, they both looked more than a little dejected at being the ones selected to sit on guard, staring at the road, far away from the action.

  Childress had started to creep forward again, when one of the Iranians called out to his companion. The other one replied, his answer sounding cautious, but got a dismissive shout in return. A moment later, the Iranian was sauntering up into the rocks, his rifle held sort of ready, apparently determined to patrol their area, and make the most of their misfortune.

  From the tone of the back and forth, Brannigan thought he could figure out some of what was being said. The one who was ranging out thought maybe some of the bad guys causing trouble in the city might be trying to sneak in from the south, so he was going to go take a look. The other one was telling him that he was wasting his time.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t. Especially since he was walking straight toward Childress. He was going to trip over the lanky point man in the next few seconds.

  So much for bypassing the checkpoint.

  Brannigan risked looking over his shoulder, trying to spot how far away the trucks were. They were going to run out of time in a moment, and if those trucks were close enough to hear shots, they’d be turning around the instant the mercenaries took the checkpoint guards under fire. Brannigan had no desire to go toe-to-toe with a pair of 12.7mm machineguns on relatively open ground.

  The red glow of their taillights could still be seen, but they were a good distance away. And the sporadic firing from the city was getting somewhat more intense. It was possible that they would dismiss any shooting they heard as just more of the same.

  Possible. Brannigan didn’t like the odds. But they were out of options. He turned toward the man walking toward Childress, and put the red dot of his PKU-2 high on the man’s chest.

  The guy wasn’t looking at the ground; he was scanning the area around them, apparently not imagining that there could be anyone close enough that he hadn’t noticed them yet. So he wasn’t ready when Childress kicked out and swept his legs out from under him.

  He fell to the ground with a squawk and a crash, and Childress was on him in a heartbeat, a knife in his hand. Brannigan saw the point man’s arm rise and fall three times, and the Iranian’s struggles died away with a faint, strangled gurgle.

  The other Iranian called out, a faintly mocking tone in his voice. He probably thought his comrade had tripped and fallen. But when there was no reply, he repeated his query, sounding more worried. Brannigan shifted his sights toward the second man, just in time to see him step out of the guard shack and start walking toward where he had heard the commotion.

  Another silhouette was slinking across the ground toward the second man, right on the edge of the road, moving low and fast. The second Iranian stumbled on the rocks in the dark, calling out again, sounding a little scared.

  Then Flanagan was on the man, tackling him in a rush. The two figures went down with a muted crash, Flanagan’s own knife going into the Iranian’s armpit with a fast series of short, vicious stabs. After a moment, the second man’s struggles ceased, and Flanagan rose, wiping the blade off on the dead man’s fatigues before closing the knife and returning it to his pocket.

  Brannigan lifted himself to a knee, looking anxiously back toward the still-receding taillights of the two trucks. They hadn’t brightened, and were still dwindling toward the city, so neither the drivers nor the gunners must have noticed anything. He sighed faintly. They’d dodged a bullet, at least for the moment.

  He glanced around at his men, mentally nodding to himself. He’d picked the team well. They’d all recognized the imminent disaster and acted quickly, violently, and decisively, without needing any direction from him or Santelli.

  It was good to work with professionals.

  Villareal moved up to first Flanagan’s victim, then Childress’. He checked each man, then returned to his spot in the formation, his face impassive in the brief glimpse Brannigan had gotten.

  Brannigan studied the doctor for a moment. His stated confidence aside, Villareal’s mental state worried him. He’d been through the anguish of finding those dead kids in Afghanistan; he knew how badly that had torn the man up. Checking the enemy dead like that…he wondered if Doc really was as damaged as some of the others worried that he was. If he really wasn’t suited for combat ops anymore.

  If he’d freeze up, have an attack of scruples when the real killing got started.

  John Brannigan had no problem with conscience. He strove to keep his on the straight and narrow. Scrupulosity, however, worried him. It could make a man hesitate when his moral duty was not to hesitate.

  He shoved his reservations to the back of his mind. There wasn’t time for them, not then. They’d needed a doc, and Villareal had been the best he could think of on short notice. If they made it through this, he’d address the problems later. He got to his feet and moved to Childress.

  The point man was standing over the Iranian’s corpse, his own knife back in his gear. “You good?” Brannigan whispered.

  “I’m fine,” Childress replied. “Do we want to try to hide the bodies?”

  “No, it’d take too much time,” Brannigan answered. “We’ve got to move fast, now. And if we’re still on this rock by morning, we’re pretty well screwed, anyway.”

  Childress just nodded, bringing his rifle back to his front. He’d slung it behind him when he’d jumped the Iranian. He glanced over the formation, then looked at Brannigan.

  “Lead on,” Brannigan said. Childress nodded again, then turned and headed back south, staying on his feet this time. Unless there were more patrols out on the coast road, they had a pretty straight shot at the boat landing site. And if what they’d just seen was any indication, the Iranians had their hands full in town. They wouldn’t have been pulling their security in, otherwise.

  Hopefully, Aziz would make sure they were so preoccupied in town that the rest of the op went more smoothly than it had so far.

  ***

  Most of the demonstrations were in the Old City, which presented some difficulties when it came to finding a good vantage point. Aziz was a good shot, but he didn’t trust the long-range accuracy of the AK-12 that much, no matter how modernized it was compared to the older AKM or AK-74. Which meant he needed to find a spot within about three hundred yards of his targets, preferably without being notic
ed. That would be more easily said than done.

  One of the high-rise business buildings downtown would have been ideal, especially since downtown lay on the south side of the souk, right up against the Old City. But he was pretty sure that trying to break into one of those places, many of which had private armed security, get to a higher floor, set up, take his shots, and get back out was going to be a losing proposition. And he might have gone against every screaming nerve in his body to get this far, but he wasn’t set on suicide.

  As he slipped down a narrow, darkened alley, only a few blocks from the yelling, chanting mobs of Al Qays Loyalists and Sunni Salafists, he kept scanning for a good spot. He really should have picked one out on his earlier recon, but getting wrapped up with Abu Sayf had somewhat limited his opportunities for exploration. Abu Sayf hadn’t been interested in sniper positions, but in his own attack planning.

  And Aziz didn’t want to be anywhere near Abu Sayf’s operation.

  There. Another high-rise was being built, though it was presently little more than a skeleton of concrete pilings and floors. The street was littered with rebar and piles of dirt and sand, scaffolding cutting off the half of the alley that was usually taken up by parked cars.

  He jogged toward the construction site, no longer caring that much about his bulk or his AK being spotted. It was dark, and there were probably a lot more armed men in Khadarkh City that night than anyone supposed there should be.

  He reached the site without incident. Between the lateness of the hour and the mobs, he had not expected to find a crew still working, but for all his arrogance, Aziz was still enough of a professional not to assume too much when it came to operational details.

  He also wouldn’t have had any trouble gunning down the construction workers if it had come to that. Brannigan probably wouldn’t have liked it, but as far as Aziz was concerned, he was on his own, and what Brannigan didn’t know wouldn’t kill him.

  The site was deserted, as he’d expected. He slipped into the shadows among the square concrete columns in the center of the rising building, looking for stairs. There had to be some; stairs were always one of the first things added to these places. It took him a few minutes, moving from column to column, before he found what he was looking for.

  He jogged up to the fifth floor, pausing only just long enough to clear the landings on the second, third, and fourth. There was always the possibility that someone else had had the same bright idea.

  The fifth floor provided an excellent vantage point. There were two more floors above him, but he figured that having to fight his way down four floors in extremis was pushing his luck more than enough. He lay down on the dusty floor, set just back from the edge, in the shadow of one of the corner columns, and scanned the souk and the Old City below him.

  The Old City was still surrounded by some of the remains of its ancient, tenth-century wall, though it was pierced in multiple places by streets and alleys leading into the tightly-packed hodgepodge of ancient sandstone and new cinderblock buildings. There were three main avenues running through the Old City, all leading to the square just outside the barbican gate of the Citadel.

  All three avenues were currently packed with demonstrators, shouting, chanting, and waving Khadarkhi royal flags, along with a few Saudi and even some of the black Al Qaeda flags. He didn’t see any of the black and white ISIS flags; that particular franchise’s popularity had fallen of late, given the recent setbacks the core group had suffered in Iraq and Syria.

  He didn’t have a good view of the square, thanks to another taller building that looked like it had been fused together from ancient and modern construction, though he could see the towers flanking the gate. He was pretty sure that there would be armored vehicles in the square, and a quick study through the small pair of binoculars he’d brought showed him that the Iranians had some heavy weapons up in the towers, probably taken from the Khadarkhi Army.

  Moving his attention down to the crowds flowing slowly into the Old City, he thought he could pick out a few of the various shooters and provocateurs mixed in with the demonstrators. Abu Sayf and his men had bloodshed on their minds that night, and so long as he didn’t get sucked into it, Aziz was just as eager to facilitate all the bloodshed they could stomach.

  He wasn’t entirely sure of the range to the gate, and momentarily wished that he had paid more attention to learning range estimation. He was pretty sure that the towers were beyond the effective range of his 5.45mm rifle, but then, he rationalized, all he really needed to do was provoke a violent response from the Iranians, and the rest would, more than likely, take care of itself. Abu Sayf and his pack of murderous assholes were certainly eager enough to get the blood flowing in the streets. They wouldn’t need much of a nudge.

  He settled in behind his rifle, finding that he couldn’t lie there comfortably or with much stability without resting the magazine on the concrete. He vaguely remembered that being a bad idea, but then, he thought he’d heard otherwise a few times. He wasn’t sure, and frankly didn’t care, as long as the Russian gun didn’t shit the bed on him. He wasn’t much of a gun guy.

  Clicking the selector off safe, he put the red dot slightly above the position on top of the southern tower, let out a breath, and squeezed the trigger.

  The AK-12 barked twice, the muzzle brake blasting dust and debris off the concrete in front of him, some of it getting into his eyes. He blinked, both against the grit and in some surprise; he’d forgotten that the first position of the AK-12’s selector lever was two-shot burst, not single shot. He’d paid enough attention on the dhow to know that the rifle functioned; he hadn’t worried too much about the specifics.

  Looking down at the selector lever, he couldn’t see the gradations, so he shrugged and got back behind the gun. There wasn’t time to fiddle with it; he needed to get his licks in and be gone before somebody figured out where he was and decided to light the skeletal hulk of the building up.

  There was no sign that the guards on the tower had noticed anything. He was too far away to tell exactly where his rounds had impacted, either. He knew the sight was zeroed for one hundred yards, so he had to assume that they’d hit low, and the impacts had gotten lost in the noise of the mob.

  He looked around below him for a moment, hoping that the shots hadn’t been heard on the street below. The last thing he needed was someone coming up to investigate. Of course, hopefully, if they did hear him shooting, they would simply dismiss it as another one of their “brothers” shooting at the “apostates.”

  I’ve got a little something for you fucks, too. He raised the red dot higher above the tower and squeezed off another two-round burst.

  He still had no idea where the rounds went. Fuck! I need to get closer. Except that there wasn’t a good vantage point that he could see that was closer, at least not one that wouldn’t take him through a throng of frothing Salafi fanatics along the way. He had no desire to go deeper into that hell. I’ve come as deep as I intend to.

  Shit, these fuckers are probably going to touch things off even without me shooting at them. They’re certainly eager and pissed off enough, and Abu Sayf would like nothing better than to trigger a massacre in here. He knew he was rationalizing, but he figured that he’d already stuck his neck out far enough, when he’d been well within his rights to cut and run. He’d decided against going back to the boats, and had gone into the city to do the job. He figured he deserved full credit for that.

  He still couldn’t make out a lot of detail, but there was evidently something happening on the square. He brought his binoculars up, but his line of sight was still blocked.

  Shit. He got up and headed up to the roof. He wanted to see.

  The roof actually did provide him with a better vantage point of the square. About three quarters of the space around the ancient fountain was taken up by demonstrators, and they were getting rowdy, throwing rocks and other debris at the gates. They weren’t shooting, yet, but he knew that Abu Sayf had at least a few shooters
and bombers hidden in that crowd. It was only a matter of time.

  It took him a second to see what the commotion was about. The gates were slowly swinging inward, even as the Iranians on the wall above fired warning shots into the air. He was surprised. He wouldn’t have put it past the IRGC to just open fire on the crowd, mowing down demonstrators with impunity.

  The gates swung wider, and the wide, angular prow of an AMX-10P armored personnel carrier pushed out through the gap. The Khadarkhis had gotten a few of the vehicles from the Saudis, as they had been mothballed in the latter’s army in favor of the newer American M2 Bradleys. Apparently, the Iranians had commandeered them once they’d murdered the Khadarkhi Army.

  The hatches were open, and two of the Iranians were up on the guns, leveling the armored fighting vehicle’s 20mm cannon and coaxial 7.62 machinegun at the crowd. The message was clear; the Iranians were done screwing around, and the crowd would disperse or be slaughtered wholesale.

  It was a long shot, but Aziz let out a breath and put the red dot above the head of the closest Iranian soldier, his finger tightening on the trigger.

  CHAPTER 11

  The boats were still sitting where they’d been left, undisturbed. It appeared that, patrols along the coast road notwithstanding, the southern end of the island was deserted.

  It was quick work to get them back out into the water. They left one for Aziz; according to the plan, once he had stirred things up, he would exfil out of Khadarkh City, get down to the boat landing site, grab the last boat, and bring it around to join the rest beneath the breach in the Citadel wall, securing the boats for the rest of the team to exfil.

  If he didn’t make it out, they’d have to adapt and improvise. For the moment, they’d stick with the plan, Villareal climbing into Brannigan’s and Childress’ dinghy.

  Once they were in deep enough water, the coxswains started the motors, the mercenaries holding the boats steady against the swell of the surf climbed aboard, and they were moving, puttering around the east side of the rocky promontory they had used as a landmark and a terrain shield, then heading north, keeping the lights of the airport to their port side.