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

by Peter Nealen

  The torturer hadn’t moved, even as his vision had cleared enough to see that the two newcomers were holding guns on him. As Santelli stepped closer, he saw that there was a bloody, broken tooth in jaws of the pliers. That explained the muffled gurgling earlier, just before they’d made entry.

  Childress had held his fire, his rifle pointed at the torturer’s face. The man was still blinking, tears streaming from his eyes, and looked scared and disoriented.

  Now you’re scared. Now that you’re not the one with all the power, not the one dishing out all the pain. Santelli lifted his AK and treated the torturer to the same Mozambique drill he had used to kill the rifleman. Two to the chest, one to the head. The man had already been falling, his heart transfixed by Santelli’s second bullet, by the time the third round blasted a half-dollar-sized hole out of the top of his skull. His body hit the bloody floor with a sickening squelch.

  “He wasn’t armed,” Childress pointed out, as he moved to the far door. He hadn’t said, “Sergeant Major,” but the tone of his voice was similar to the one that Santelli had heard him use before, usually when he knew that he was right and a senior officer or NCO was wrong.

  But Santelli wasn’t having it. He slung his AK and moved to the hanging man, kicking the instruments of torture off the stool so that he could reach high enough to release the victim’s bound hands from the hook set in the ceiling. “Yeah, I know,” he said, as he lowered the horribly mutilated man to the floor with a grunt. “That wasn’t a combat shooting. That was an execution. I’ve got no sympathy or honor for torturers.” He looked down at the corpse. “I find you guilty of torture and crimes against humanity,” he told the dead man. “I hereby sentence you to death. Sentence carried out.”

  He bent over the mangled man. It was hard to tell under all the blood, but he didn’t look like one of the hostages. Santelli couldn’t think of who else he might be, though. He pulled out his own med kit and started trying to help the man.

  “He’s dying, SMaj,” Childress said. “Doc might be able to help him, but with what we’ve got, we can’t give him more than about five extra minutes.”

  “Then that’s five minutes he wouldn’t have had otherwise,” Santelli bit out, as he tried to figure out where to start. The man’s chest and back were practically hamburger in places. He didn’t have any toenails left, and it looked like that had been the fifth or sixth tooth ripped out of his head.

  “We’ve got another twenty or thirty hostages to worry about,” Childress insisted, his eyes still on the doorway, just above his rifle barrel. “We’ve got to move. What if the guards heard the bang and the shooting? They could be lining up to kill all of the hostages right now.”

  Santelli’s lips tightened as he looked down at the prisoner. “Hang in there, buddy,” he said, even though he was pretty sure the man wasn’t even aware of him anymore, “We’ll go get the rest, then come back for you, all right?” He’d get Doc Villareal to help. Had to put that big-ass med bag to some use. That was why they’d brought the doctor in the first place.

  If the wounded man heard him, he gave no sign. Whatever the torturer had done to him, it had gone past the point of interrogation. The man was dying, and as much as he hated it, Santelli could see it. He heaved himself up, blood soaking the knees of his fatigues, and joined Childress at the door.

  “What the hell?” Childress asked. “Why would they torture the hostages? What does it get ‘em?”

  “Probably just for kicks,” Santelli growled. “I never yet saw a jihadi who wasn’t also a sadistic piece of shit.” He bumped Childress. “With you.”

  They went through the door and found themselves in another vaulted room, not unlike the torture chamber behind them. The far door was shut, and this room was empty, the dust of centuries settled on the floor.

  They hurried across the room, Santelli turning halfway to check behind them one more time. As he did so, he saw the alcove with another door in the dimly lit wall to their right.

  “Hey, Childress,” he hissed, getting a sudden hunch. “Let’s go that way.”

  The layout of the cellar so far did not match the palace above. It seemed to him like a series of chambers, running roughly north to south. If his sense of direction wasn’t all screwed up, that door to their right should lead to another chamber beneath the courtyard, between the arms of the U-shaped Citadel.

  It was as logical a place as he could think of to store hostages, if you were going to secure them in the cellar.

  The door was not large; Childress was going to have to duck to get through it. Santelli figured that was probably intentional.

  Since he had spotted it first, he got to it first, stacking up on the door, his muzzle pointed at the edge where the door met the jamb. That was where the handle was; since he couldn’t see any hinges, he had to assume that was where the door would open.

  Childress slid to the opposite side of the door, pulled out another flashbang, prepped it, and then grasped the door handle.

  It didn’t budge. Childress pushed harder. Nothing. The handle had no latch. It was barred from the other side.

  Well, in Santelli’s mind, there were few such problems that Mr. High Explosives could not fix.

  Swinging the assault pack off his back, he fished inside and pulled out a block of Semtex, identical to the one Brannigan had used on the sally port gate. His thick fingers moved quickly, mashing the yellow-orange plastic explosive into the joint roughly where he figured the bar should be, then quickly priming it and yanking the initiator. “We might want to get into the next room,” he whispered. The overpressure in that confined space was going to be murder.

  It was probably going to do a number on the hostages if they were on the other side, too, but if they didn’t get in there, the hostages were dead anyway. With the time fuse smoking, the two of them dashed for the torture room, got around the corner, ducked their heads, and opened their mouths to keep the overpressure from rupturing anything.

  The crack of the charge going off was like the world itself splitting asunder. Even with a wall of stone between them and the explosion, the concussion had nowhere to go but through the passageways of the cellar, and they still got rocked.

  It must have really sucked to be on the other side of that door. Santelli found himself hoping one or two of the Iranians had gotten close to investigate Childress’ rattling of the door.

  They didn’t have long to capitalize on the shock of the breaching charge. Santelli led the way out the door, his rifle already up and ready.

  As he’d entered the torture room, he’d seen just enough to know that the mutilated man he’d taken down from the ceiling was already dead.

  He charged the still-smoking portal. The door had been blasted to fragments and splinters, a smashed collection of shattered timbers still vaguely held together by the iron bars that formed its frame. There was a bite taken out right where the door handle had been. That part of the door was just gone.

  Santelli’s boot thudded into the remains of the door, and he almost put his foot clear through it, drawing back just enough to avoid getting tangled as the remains of wood and twisted iron juddered inward.

  His near-entanglement with the door slowed his entry, but as he bulled through the ruins and into the room, it was evident that they still had a few seconds to work with.

  As he’d suspected, the room was a long rectangle, that would have almost perfectly fit in the courtyard above. More columns held up the sandstone ceiling, and there were hostages sitting, their hands bound behind their backs, against the columns. Many of those closest to the door had caught fragmentation from the breaching charge, and were bleeding.

  One of the guards, a towering, bald-headed Iranian with a thick hedge of black beard, had been standing a bit too close to the door when the breach went off. He was down on the floor, groaning, a chunk of wood embedded in the back of his thigh. Blood was pumping out of the wound, around the jagged obstruction, pulsing in a way that suggested his femoral was cut. He di
dn’t have long for the world.

  He must have sensed that, because he rolled over as the two mercenaries came through the door, struggling to bring his rifle up. Childress shot him with a pair of two-round bursts to the chest, the noise of the gunshots reverberating painfully through the room and making the hostages flinch.

  The Iranian shuddered under the impacts, but didn’t die. Spitting blood, he tried to lift his rifle again, and Childress and Santelli both shot him in the head, blowing the top of his skull off with a trio of 5.45 rounds.

  There wasn’t time to dwell on the kill; there was another guard at the far end, who was already behind a column, his Type 03 muzzle sticking out into the room. He triggered a burst at them, more noise hammering back and forth through the room, flame spitting from the barrel and bullets smacking grit and rock fragments off the wall above the door, narrowly missing Santelli’s head. He dove for the nearest column, getting behind it as another burst ripped through the air, just inches from his head.

  He was sure that the man wasn’t really aiming; there was no way he should have missed at that range. Either that, or the Man Upstairs really wanted Mama Santelli’s baby boy to stick around a little bit longer.

  Childress fired a rattling burst from one of the other columns across the room. The younger man had even less of a shot than Santelli did; he had all of the columns on that side of the room between him and the gunman. But he was providing Santelli with some cover fire, and the shots from the hidden Iranian ceased as the man flinched away from Childress’ bullets.

  Santelli took a breath, then swung around the back side of the column and dashed down the line, almost tripping over hostages who had shrunk back behind the columns to try to get out of the line of fire. He didn’t go the full length of the room; that would have been tempting fate a bit too much. Instead, he recited the old Marine Corps mantra in his head, “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down,” and at, “I’m down,” he thudded into another column, putting it between him and the guard.

  Just in time, too. The Iranian, while having taken cover from Childress’ fire, had evidently seen him running, and bullets blasted more fragments off the column even as he took cover behind it. Childress responded with a long burst, emptying the rest of his mag, and in the corresponding lull, Santelli swung around the back of the column behind his AK, looking for his target.

  It wasn’t an easy shot; the man had huddled back in the shadows behind the column, trying to avoid the roaring, crackling stream of bullets digging pockmarks out of the far wall. All that Santelli could see was the silhouette of the man’s left side, along with about half his head.

  It was enough. Santelli was a good shooter; he always had been. He’d considered it vital to being a Marine, and had looked upon other Senior NCOs who no longer bothered with marksmanship as slackers and detriments to the reputation of the Corps.

  As Childress ran dry and the Iranian leaned out to open fire again, Santelli squeezed the trigger. It broke as cleanly as he ever expected a Kalashnikov trigger to break, and a single round blasted through the Iranian’s left eye, yawed sharply, and blew out the base of his skull. Body and rifle hit the floor with a clatter.

  Santelli moved quickly, finishing his run along the long wall, visually clearing the door as he crossed it, and kicked the weapon away from the Iranian’s lifeless hands. All that he’d seen in the chamber on the far side had been a sleeping mat, some rations, and a lantern. The room had been otherwise empty, unless there was another man hiding in the shadows. He kept one eye on the door as Childress moved to check on the hostages.

  “SMaj?” Childress called out. Santelli was going to have to tell him to cut that out. They were both contractors, mercenaries. He wasn’t a Sergeant Major anymore, and Childress wasn’t his problem child anymore, either. But it could wait.

  “What is it, Sam?” he asked.

  “I don’t think these are our hostages,” Childress said. There was a definite note of uncertainty in his voice.

  Without ever taking his eyes entirely off the open door, Santelli moved toward the center of the room where Childress was standing over one of the bound men sitting on the floor, the muzzle of his AK-12 pointed down, away from the hostages, but not too far away. Childress might not have had much of a filter on his mouth, but he was a careful man with his weapons.

  The lanky young man was staring down at one of the hostages who was sitting against one of the pillars. Santelli risked looking away from the door he was covering to give the man a once-over.

  He stopped, a frown creasing his forehead, and looked again. He scanned the entire group. “Who the hell are you?”

  These men were obviously not Americans. They were uniformly Arabs, and they were also in uniform. Or at least the filthy, tattered remains of uniforms. And Santelli thought he recognized those uniforms.

  They weren’t Khadarkhi Army, either. They were Saudi.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Santelli muttered. “Does anyone here speak English?” His Arabic was limited to a handful of phrases that he might be able to remember after a long bit of study and recollection, and they were all in the Iraqi dialect, that was supposed to be damned near gibberish to the rest of the Arab world.

  He got nothing but glares.

  “You’d think they’d be a bit more grateful that they just got their asses rescued from the torturers,” Childress drawled. “Besides, aren’t the Saudis supposed to be our friends?”

  Santelli shot the younger man a glance. He hadn’t known that their backwoods yokel could recognize Saudi uniforms, too. “Saudis ain’t friends with anybody,” he said. “And I’ve got a sudden sneaking, nasty suspicion that these guys are a good part of why there’s a small army of Al Qaeda fighters out in town right now.”

  “Well, if these aren’t the guys we’re looking for, what do we do with ‘em?” Childress asked. “Time’s a-wasting.”

  Santelli thought for a moment, then spat out a curse. “We can’t just leave ‘em here,” he said. “I might hate their guts as much as they hate mine, but they’re tied up and helpless, and we know for a fact what the Iranians are gonna do to ‘em. Get ‘em up. We’ll take ‘em with us.” He blew a breath out past his nose. “John and Roger are going to have to find the hostages. They’re not down here.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Flanagan ducked under the camo netting as Curtis set in in the prone behind his PKP. Presuming the missiles were fueled, he had enough explosives between the two of them to make the whole row go boom, and he was already planning out how to do it. There was no way he was leaving these things in the hands of a bunch of Iranian psychopaths.

  It wasn’t a strategic decision born of a deep understanding of terrorism and geopolitics, though Flanagan knew quite a bit more about both subjects than his laconic speech usually let on. No, this was a simple recognition that the Iranians, who probably chanted, “Death to America!” on rising every morning, were his country’s enemies, and he wasn’t going to leave them a weapon when he was already engaged and had an opportunity to take it out of their hands.

  It was the right thing to do, so he was going to do it. He certainly didn’t have a chain of command worried about political fallout to tell him not to.

  As he studied the missile through his NVGs, he started to frown. Something was off. He’d seen plenty of pictures of Iranian missiles, and while he hadn’t exactly memorized profiles, these seemed different, somehow. And when he moved down the length of the deadly cylinder, he saw something that convinced him. “Kev!” he hissed. “Come here and look at this!”

  “I’m holding security, damn it,” Curtis stage-whispered back. “Just describe it to me. I know, too many words make your head hurt, but I’ve got the machinegun and a line of sight on the gate.”

  “There’s an insignia stenciled on the side of this missile,” Flanagan said, ignoring Curtis’ jab. “It’s a circle, with a palm tree and crossed scimitars inside. Sound familiar?”

  “I don’t know!” Curtis said. “I’
m not an insignia encyclopedia! It may as well say, ‘Derka, Derka, Mohammed Jihad’ to me.”

  Flanagan ducked out from under the camo netting and crouched in the darkness beside Curtis. “It’s a Saudi military insignia,” he said. “Those aren’t Iranian missiles.”

  When Curtis didn’t say anything for a moment, Flanagan glanced down at the little man. He knew Curtis well enough to know that the man was more of a thinker than his exuberant party animal persona betrayed. And the fact that he didn’t have a flippant comment ready meant that he was rolling the implications around in his head.

  “Can you tell what the warheads are?” Curtis asked, his voice serious.

  “No, this isn’t the movies,” Flanagan replied. “There’s not going to be a big nuclear trefoil or biohazard symbol painted on the warheads.”

  “What the hell are Saudi missiles doing here, with Iranians holding the island?” Curtis asked.

  “My guess is that the Saudis put them here for a first-strike capability on Iran itself,” Flanagan mused. “Which means the Iranians probably came here specifically to capture them.”

  “You mean the Iranians are the good guys?” Curtis asked incredulously.

  Flanagan snorted. “Not hardly. There is such a thing as bad guys and bad guys, you know. If you read more history and fewer comic books you might understand that.”

  “Then I’d be as boring as you,” Curtis replied. “What are we gonna do?”

  “Rig the missiles to blow,” Flanagan said. “Same as before. Give me your Semtex and cover me.”

  “Nah, I’ll come with you,” Curtis said. “You’d just cut off my field of fire.” He scrambled to a knee and hefted the PKP. “This is why I have muscles; to run and gun with the machinegun.”