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

by Peter Nealen

  As soon as Hancock was in position on the other side of the double doors, partially squeezed back behind the palm on that side, Brannigan whispered, “Doc, you get the doors. Roger and I will bang and enter.”

  Villareal nodded, as Brannigan let his rifle hang and dragged a GSZ-T flashbang grenade out of his gear. Hancock held his own muzzle on the door until Brannigan was set, then did the same, dangling the stun grenade by its ring from the pinky of his shooting hand.

  Villareal stepped out from behind Brannigan, glanced at both men, then landed a solid kick right at the latch where the two doors met. The doors gave way under his boot and swung inward, and in the same second, both Brannigan and Hancock snatched the pins out of the flashbangs and lobbed them in the widening gap.

  The grenades went off with twin thunderclaps and blinding flashes. Brannigan had been a bit leery about using the Russian munitions; while he didn’t quite share Flanagan’s antipathy for “Communist” arms, he knew that quality control was impossible to account for, especially when it came to black market weapons. It had been entirely possible that they could have thrown two duds in the door, or worse, one of them could have gone off as soon as the pin had been pulled, depriving one or both of them of a few fingers.

  Of course, if that had happened, they probably would have been dead in the next five minutes, so the risk was actually more serious than that.

  Ears ringing from the blasts, the two men shoved through the double doors, hammering their shoulders into the doors themselves to bash them out of the way, riding the barriers hard against the interior walls as they rushed to clear the corners. Brannigan went left, Hancock went right. Villareal had rolled out of the way as soon as he had kicked the doors in, and was still out in the hall, crouched behind a potted palm until the main room was clear.

  Even as he swung through the doorway and cleared his corner, Brannigan’s eyes were taking a snapshot of the interior of the room. Two rows of intricately filigreed columns lined the long walls, framing high, arched windows. The floor was tiled in a geometric pattern of black, white, and gold, which was mirrored on the ceiling, between the hanging chandeliers, which were presently dark. The only light in the room came from a couple of flashlights and a pair of battery-powered lanterns sitting on a table.

  Four figures were gathered around the long, dark wooden table in the center of the hall. The tabletop was littered with laptops, radios, and what looked like printouts and maps.

  In that split-second flash image, he saw that two of the Iranians had apparently looked right at one or another of the flashbangs as they’d gone off; they were blinded, blinking against the tears and the glowing green and purple blotches that were probably obscuring their vision, rocking and swaying with their destroyed equilibrium.

  The other two had caught some of the blast, but were still conscious enough to know they were under attack. One was reaching for what had to be a pistol on the table, while the other dove for a Type 03 leaning against a chair.

  There were no hostages in the room.

  Brannigan halted, pivoted on one foot, and snapped his AK-12 around, his finger tightening on the trigger even before he had it on-line.

  The trigger broke just as the red dot settled on the man farthest to the left, the two-round burst putting a pair of bullets within an inch of each other, high in the man’s chest. He staggered, but Brannigan was already dragging the muzzle past him, his finger barely letting off on the trigger enough for it to reset before the dot was passing across the second man’s torso. Another hammering pair of bullets tore their way through the top of that man’s heart and lungs, punching ragged holes just above his sternum.

  By the time his muzzle had swung to the third man, that one was already staggering and going down, the pistol falling from fingers that didn’t work right anymore, his brain having been transfixed by two of Hancock’s shots. Brannigan shot that one again anyway. The fourth man had fallen, and was out of sight.

  He tracked his muzzle back across the group. The second man he’d shot had hit the edge of the table and rolled off. He was lying face down on the floor, blood pooling under him. The first one was still moving.

  The man was obviously dying, but he wasn’t giving up. He was struggling to get the Type 03 up off the floor where he’d dropped it when he’d been shot. Like the one with the pistol, his fingers weren’t quite working the way they were supposed to. He was visibly weakening.

  Brannigan didn’t wait to see what would happen. The man’s movement registered in his mind as a threat in the same instant the red dot crossed his crouched shape. The AK-12 roared again, echoes hammering at the ears in the open space of the hall, and the last Iranian crumpled, paired exit wounds, each big enough to fit two fingers in, gaping at the base of his skull.

  “Moving,” Brannigan called, before he started forward, moving alongside the columns, clearing each bit of dead space as he went. Hancock stayed put, so as to keep both of their fields of fire clear.

  There was another door at the far end of the hall, but the room was otherwise empty. Satisfied for a moment, Brannigan stripped the partially empty mag out of the AK-12 and rocked in a fresh one. “Clear.”

  Hancock and Villareal started moving up to join him. Whatever the Iranians had been doing there, the hostages were either above, or down in the cellar. They had to move.

  Villareal paused at the table, looking down at the papers. He frowned. “Hey, John?” he called.

  “No time, Doc,” Brannigan replied, his rifle already pointed at the door. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  “This is serious, John,” Villareal said, still looking down at one of the maps. “I don’t think the Iranians brought those missiles here.”

  Brannigan risked taking his eyes off the door to glance back. “Why not?”

  “Because this map has target locations highlighted in Iran.”

  Brannigan frowned. That didn’t sound right. So far, these assholes had acted like stereotypical IRGC fanatics, not MEK or any of the other Iranian splinter groups that hated the Council of Guardians. They sure as hell weren’t Green Revolution.

  “Grab what you can stuff in a couple of cargo pockets,” he said. “We’ve still got hostages on site, and the clock is ticking.”

  Villareal started grabbing maps and papers and stuffing them into his pockets. He probably would have taken his med bag off and used that, too, except that it was still packed full of medical supplies.

  “Come on, Doc!” Hancock barked, as he reached the door across from Brannigan. The intel that Villareal had found might indeed be important to someone, but right at that moment, intel collection was not their mission.

  “I’ve got all I can get!” Villareal announced, running to get behind Brannigan. “Let’s move.”

  Brannigan started to reach for the doorknob, just before it started to swing open on its own.

  He jammed a boot against the door, and there was a surprised yell in Farsi from the other side. With a hard shove, he slammed the door shut again, then jumped back, almost colliding with Villareal, leveling his AK at the door.

  Hancock had reacted slightly faster, giving the opening door on his side of the portal a vicious kick before stepping back, flipping the selector to full auto, and ripping half a mag through the wooden door with a rattling roar.

  Brannigan followed suit with a burst of his own, before yelling, “Back the way we came! Use the columns! Bounding! Go!”

  Hancock and Villareal complied immediately, pivoting and running halfway back down the hall, taking cover behind two of the columns. Splinters blasted from the doors as someone on the far side returned fire, dumping rounds through the increasingly chewed-up wood. The doors were made of solid timber instead of veneer, but they still weren’t thick enough to stop bullets.

  Hancock might have yelled at him, but the roar of bullets hitting the doors announced that the other man was set as well as any call would have. Brannigan put another four rounds through the door, then spun around and ran, angl
ing back toward the windows to put the columns between him and the line of fire from the doors.

  He ran past the point where Hancock was crouched behind a pillar on the opposite side of the room, flame stabbing from his muzzle brake as he hammered away at the doors. So far, they still hadn’t opened again, the mercenaries’ fire making the doorway a deadly place to stand.

  Brannigan hit a column just inside the far end of the hall, rolling around it to point his muzzle back toward the increasingly ventilated doors, just as Hancock’s rifle fell silent. Brannigan took up the fire, pouring four- to five-round bursts down the length of the hall, as Hancock started to bound back, stripping out his own magazine and reloading as he ran.

  Villareal was suddenly right by Brannigan’s side, keeping within the cover of the column. “Hallway’s still clear,” he yelled in Brannigan’s ear. It was still almost impossible to hear him; the acoustics of the hall amplified the gunfire to a hellish, thundering roar.

  “Go!” Brannigan yelled, firing another burst at what might have been movement behind the shattered doors.

  Hancock was at the portal behind them. “Doc!” he yelled. “On me!”

  Villareal clapped Brannigan on the shoulder. “Last man!” he shouted, as he turned and ran for the doors.

  “Turn and go!” Hancock was bellowing, opening fire again from the threshold. Brannigan didn’t hesitate, but turned and sprinted out the open doors and headed for the corner of the hall, driving forward to make sure no one was coming down the stairs behind them.

  He hit the corner and briefly barricaded on it. The hallway was as empty as it had been on their way in. “On me!” he roared hoarsely. His ears were ringing, his sodden fatigues were now also sweat-soaked, his chest was heaving, and his mouth tasted like the desert itself.

  As soon as he heard Villareal yell, “With you!” less than a foot from his ear, he was moving down the hall, his rifle trained on the stairway ahead. The gunfire died down behind him as Hancock came around the corner, cutting off the line of fire into the bigger room.

  Brannigan moved toward the stairs at a fast glide, the other two mercenaries right on his heels. He was hot, his chest was heaving, and his throat was raw. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, threatening to make his hands and his knees shake.

  He hadn’t felt so alive in years.

  ***

  Esfandiari guessed that the attackers, whoever they were, had retreated as soon as the stream of bullets chewing up the doors ceased. Abbasi and Ghorbani had reached the same conclusion, and immediately started to push through the doors, intent on pursuit, but a barked order from Esfandiari halted them.

  Esfandiari had not been picked to lead this mission solely because of his fanatical devotion to the Islamic Republic. He was also a canny, experienced combat leader, and his mind was racing. “No,” he shouted. “Up! They will be trying to get to the hostages! Back to the stairs!”

  CHAPTER 14

  Santelli’s legs were already burning from the climbing they’d done so far that night, and his heart was thudding in his chest. I really should have kept in better shape. He was kicking himself for his professions of boredom. The fact that he was in far better shape than most men of his age didn’t really count when he was trying to keep up with the long-legged Childress, who was gliding down the stone steps behind his AK at a good clip, keeping his muzzle trained on the next turn. Santelli had to keep stopping to check behind and above them, then hurry to catch up. And, not unlike the steps leading up to the sally port in the inner wall, none of the steps going down into the cellar were quite the same size.

  Childress paused at the landing at the bottom of the first flight, leaning slightly to one side to peer around the turn. As Santelli returned from checking their six, he glanced over the younger man’s shoulder to see that it looked like the steps took a ninety-degree turn at the landing, following the wall down to the floor of the cellar.

  “With you,” he whispered. Childress didn’t reply, or move his gaze from his sector, but only started to sidestep rapidly down the stairs. Santelli joined him, moving slightly more slowly, trying desperately not to trip on the uneven steps.

  As he came out from the shadow of the first flight of stairs, he saw that they were in a vaulted chamber, about fifty feet by fifty feet, cut out of the stone of the Citadel’s hill. A single work light, standing on its yellow metal legs next to a chugging generator, was the only source of light in the stone chamber. An arched door at the far end led deeper into the cellars beneath the Citadel.

  Santelli suddenly wondered if “cellars” was the wrong word. “Catacombs” seemed to fit better. He shook his head fractionally, annoyed at the distraction.

  Carlo Santelli had always been the kind of Marine who had been able to shut out any concern, distraction, or interest that wasn’t immediately useful to the mission at hand. Some of his subordinates, doubtless including young Sam Childress, had thought that it had made him the ultimate motard, a wind-up Marine with no life or mind of his own. Everything, even his thoughts, had seemed to be issued by the Marine Corps. If he took the time to think about it, he certainly hadn’t done anything to disabuse any of them of the idea. His personal life had always been strictly compartmented to times and places where being a Marine didn’t come first.

  Those times and places had been extremely rare.

  Santelli was not a man lacking in imagination or human feelings. He was a simple man, who gave himself wholeheartedly to his work, because his father had taught him that a man who didn’t wasn’t worth the title of a man. When his work was soldiering, he gave himself wholeheartedly to it, and let any other elements of life fall by the wayside. It was the way things were, and he didn’t bother to worry about might-have-beens, or what he could be missing.

  It was probably why things hadn’t been working out with Melissa before he’d taken the call from Brannigan. She loved him, but his blunt manner and lack of interest in things that didn’t concern him had been hard for her to take.

  None of this was actually going through Santelli’s head as he and Childress stepped off the stairs and into the vault. The only thinking he was doing was about what could be lying around the corner, and what he had to do next.

  The noise of the firefight outside, and even the shooting that Brannigan and Hancock were doing only a couple floors up, was muted in the cellar by the thick stone walls and the very mass of the hill itself. Santelli couldn’t hear any of the shooting.

  The screaming coming from the other side of the arched door, on the other hand, was all too clear.

  The two men angled toward the left-hand wall, keeping close, Santelli turning every few steps to check behind them. It might have looked almost mechanical, but that was simply because maintaining security had become second-nature to the stout old former Marine. He’d hard-wired certain habits into himself to the point that even sitting behind a desk for the last few years of his career—though his time as Brannigan’s Sergeant Major had involved a lot more helicopter flights and running around in the bush in combat gear than sitting at a desk in the CP or on ship—hadn’t erased them. He would die the Marine he had been since his twenties.

  Childress paused just outside the door. Shouts in accented Arabic occasionally overrode the agonized howling. The screams were suddenly muffled, as if the screamer had been gagged or something, though they continued as a nerve-shredding gurgle of pain and terror.

  Santelli stepped up beside Childress, fishing one of the GSZ-T flashbangs out of his vest and prepping it. He held it out so that Childress could see it in his peripheral vision, then lobbed it in through the door.

  He’d put a bit more oomph in the throw than he’d intended. The stun grenade hit the stone threshold with an audible clank before bouncing several feet inside, landing somewhere off to the left of the door. A heartbeat later, it detonated.

  Childress was through the door while the cloud of smoke from the bang was still boiling up from the floor. Santelli hurried to follow him, his own m
uzzle held high until the taller man cleared the doorway enough for him to bring it down to cover the room.

  The screaming had made him think that the hostages were in that room. But it was too small, and there were only three men inside.

  One was stripped naked, hanging by his wrists from a hook in the ceiling. He was covered in blood, and there were burn marks in various places of his anatomy, easily explained by the car battery sitting on the stool nearby.

  One of the other men, who was still wincing and blinking from the flashbang, was standing below the hanging man. He was wearing rubber gloves, covered in blood, and had a pair of pliers in his hand. The fresh flow of blood from the prisoner’s mouth answered the question of what the pliers were for.

  The third man had been lounging next to the far door, his Type 03 leaning against the wall next to him. He had been shielded from most of the flashbang detonation by the bodies of the prisoner and the torturer. He had ducked down, grabbed his rifle, and was turning it to put the stock in his shoulder when Santelli spotted him through the haze left over from the bang’s charge.

  Santelli had left his rifle on single shot since they’d reached the outer courtyard. That might not have been according to most of his old trainers, but just because Carlo Santelli was a simple man and given to certain habits didn’t mean he couldn’t learn new tricks. He was a sponge when it came to learning more about his profession, and keeping the weapon off safe when in close quarters combat had been a lesson he’d absorbed many years before.

  He only had to move the muzzle up an inch before he stroked the trigger three times. The first two rounds hammered into the Iranian’s chest, the third one punched through his skull, just below his left eye. Dark fluid splashed against the stone wall behind him, and he pitched forward onto his face.

  The man hanging from the ceiling was moaning. He had evidently been worked over thoroughly; there were nasty third-degree burns visible in several places, and he had to have lost a lot of blood. Deep gashes might have been made by the wire whip sitting next to the car battery, and more from the broken glass bottles nearby. The pliers needed no further explanation. Several of his wounds were slowly pumping blood, which was dripping into a wide, sticky pool on the stone floor.