Burmese Crossfire (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 2)

by Peter Nealen

  There was another consideration, as well. Those scouts hadn’t been looking for the army. Whether they’d known it or not, they’d been looking for Brannigan’s Blackhearts. Which meant that they were already being hunted.

  “Set fifty percent security, bring the rest in,” he said. “We’re going to have to do this brief by NVGs, but I want to make sure everybody’s on the same page before we step off.”

  ***

  Childress led the way toward the northern sentry post, such as it was. Gomez was with him, the dark, lean man having said no more than absolutely necessary to indicate that he understood the plan.

  Childress wasn’t sure what he thought of Gomez. The guy seemed determined not to engage with anyone. He knew that he had been a Recon Marine, and that his mother was a full-blooded Chiricahua Apache. That was about where it ended. The man simply didn’t talk unless to answer a direct question or in the course of the job, and even then, he seemed to be determined to use as few words as possible.

  He was good in the bush, Childress had to grant him that. He was almost as good as Childress himself.

  Sam Childress had grown up in the backwoods of West Virginia, in an area that had only ever been a decent place to live because of coal mining. Even in his youth, the coal industry had been starting to wane, and since his family, such as it had been, had been dirt-poor anyway, it had been a hard life growing up. He’d learned to move in the woods at an early age not only because much of the time he had to sneak up on deer if they were going to eat, but because he also had to make sure he avoided the game wardens at the same time.

  The Marine Corps had at least gotten him out of poverty, and enabled him to move his mother out of the trailer where they’d lived for years in West Virginia. He’d learned a thing or two in the Corps, but his woodscraft had always been far above most of his peers.

  He glided through the forest, placing each foot with a care now hard-wired into instinct. He wove through the foliage around them instead of brushing and bulling his way through. Behind him, he could hear Gomez making a little bit of noise, but not enough to compromise them. Anyone not finely tuned to the environment probably wouldn’t notice. Anyone who was, would probably think Gomez was only an animal.

  Childress knew exactly where they were going; since he and Flanagan had been on the recon, they’d split up the two sentry posts between them; Childress would take the northern one, Flanagan the southern.

  He slowed as he got closer, straining his ears and his eyes to pick out the sentries before the two of them got too close. He didn’t want to blunder straight in, nor did he want to pass too close trying to get around the flanks. Either could be disastrous. The point of this little exercise was to eliminate the sentries as quietly as possible. Going in guns blazing would alert the camp to their presence way too soon.

  He paused, kneeling behind a tree. They hadn’t come from this direction on the recon patrol, so the ground looked slightly different. There was a clearing between them and the sentry post that he didn’t remember.

  Through his NVGs, he could clearly see the sentries. One of them was leaning against a tree, and the other one was squatting on the ground, smoking a cheroot, looking out over the clearing. That, at least, was consistent; there had only been two when they’d scouted the position.

  Carefully, trying not to move his head quickly enough to trigger the human eye’s capability to detect movement, he scanned up and down the hill, trying to pick out the infiltration route he’d seen earlier.

  There it was. They were fifty yards farther up the hill, which was why everything looked different. The terrain was masking the low ground that led up and to the right of the sentry post. Easing back from the tree, he got Gomez’ attention, then pointed down toward the shallow draw. It was probably full of water, but no one had ever said that belly-crawling up to an enemy was going to be comfortable. Infiltration routes worked precisely because they were places that the enemy didn’t want to be.

  They worked their way back down to where the draw met the trees. Both men had their rucks on, but as they reached the draw, both took them off, hooking one arm through a strap to use it like a drag bag. There was no way of making sure, if they cached them, that they’d make it back to the cache this time. The rucks were going in as close as possible with them.

  Getting down on his belly, Childress started to crawl. There wasn’t a flowing stream in the draw, but it was muddy. And dragging the ruck was proving difficult. Dragging it silently even more so. And they couldn’t afford to move quite as slowly as he would have liked.

  Inch by inch, they crept up the shallow depression. Childress wished for a ghillie suit, though there was so little cover outside of that little, muddy groove in the ground that even a ghillie probably wouldn’t have made much difference. They had to rely on the dark, careful movement, and the enemy’s presumable lack of attention. Considering one of the sentries was smoking on guard, they couldn’t be that alert.

  Time got weird, crawling along in the dark, nearly face down in the mud, trying to move as quickly as necessary while staying quiet. They had a deadline to meet; the rest of the team was going to be in position to move in soon, and if the sentries weren’t neutralized by dawn, they’d have a problem.

  Finally, though, he was past the sentry position, and the ditch was beginning to angle up and away from both the sentries and the village. Slowing down even more, and pausing often to listen, Childress started to crawl up into the grass and out of the draw.

  When he listened, he could hear the sentries chatting in what sounded like Chinese. At least, it did to Childress. He’d be the first to admit that he probably couldn’t tell the difference by ear between Burmese, Chinese, or Korean. He spoke English and a smattering of Pashto and Dari, and that was about it. And he’d forgotten most of the Pashto and Dari. It didn’t bother him. He just needed to know where the enemy was; he didn’t need to know what they were talking about.

  It took several more agonizing minutes of crawling before he was deep enough in the shadows of the trees that he was comfortable stopping, getting up, and putting his ruck back on. It was noticeably heavier, having soaked up water and gotten partially caked with mud from the crawl. The front of his tiger stripes was similarly muddy, as was his chest rig. And that was in addition to the filth he’d already accumulated from the first couple of days in this soggy hellhole. Not that it bothered him overmuch; poor West Virginia boys didn’t let dirt get the better of them.

  He quickly but quietly slung his rifle across his back, cinching it down over the top of his ruck as tightly as he could, and drew his knife. Again, this had to be quiet.

  Gomez was already out of sight. The other man had broken off before Childress had passed the sentry post, aiming to get behind the sentries from another angle.

  Crouched down, his knife in his hand, Childress began to stalk through the woods toward the sentries. He was behind them now, and they were looking the wrong way and blinded by the cheroot’s coal.

  A faint suggestion of movement off to his right drew his eye. The hunchbacked figure beginning to loom out of the dark beyond the two sentries could only be Gomez. The two men closed in slowly and quietly on their unsuspecting victims.

  Gomez struck first. With a sudden lunge, he was on the sentry who was leaning against the tree. Reaching around the trunk, he plunged the blade of his knife into the man’s neck, even as he clapped a hand over his mouth and clamped him against the bole, holding him up as he rapidly bled to death, kicking and thrashing quietly.

  The second sentry, the one smoking the cheroot, turned at the muffled sounds of struggle behind him, and Childress pounced.

  But as he seized the sentry, sweeping the rifle away with his boot, he held his knife hand frozen, suddenly unwilling to strike. Because even if Asians tended to be small people, there was no way he had his arm and hand around the throat of a grown man. The kid was probably younger than ten.

  The kid was getting over the shock, though, and starting
to fight. He bit Childress’ hand, that was covering his mouth, and when the mercenary snatched his hand away with a stifled curse, the kid wrenched his way free and started to run, yelling in whatever singsong language the two sentries had been speaking in earlier.

  He didn’t get far. Dropping his knife, Childress lunged and caught the kid with a tackle. Over two hundred fifty pounds of man, gear, ammunition, and weapon slammed into the kid and flattened him to the ground, knocking the wind out of him with an agonized grunt.

  For a moment, he just lay there on top of the kid, listening. Gomez had let the corpse of his target slump to the ground, and was now moving in to help Childress.

  Childress didn’t need help. He needed the sentry to be a grown man, so that he could kill him without it haunting him for the rest of his days, like Doc.

  Then, as he’d feared, a questioning shout came through the woods from the direction of the village. Somebody had heard the kid yell.

  ***

  Brannigan was crouched in the woods less than three hundred meters away, and he heard the boy cry out. He also heard the call coming from the village. It wasn’t in Burmese or Korean, either, and when he looked over at Towne, who was crouched in the rear of the loose wedge the Blackhearts had formed, the linguist shook his head.

  “They don’t know yet, but they’re going to,” he whispered. “The sentry yelled for help, and the other guy is asking what’s going on.”

  And when he doesn’t get an answer, he’s going to investigate. They weren’t blown, not yet. If Gomez, Childress, Flanagan, or Wade managed to kill the rover silently, they might still retain the element of surprise. Might.

  “Move in,” he ordered. It was almost dawn.

  CHAPTER 16

  Childress was frozen, huddled over the kid, trying to hold him still as he struggled, his hand once again clamped savagely over the boy’s mouth to keep him quiet. The shout came again, more strident this time.

  Gomez was unslinging his rifle, but he held his fire. The hidden figure in the darkness shouted a third time. Childress was sure they were made.

  Then Gomez shouldered his G3 and fired twice. There was a high-pitched scream of pain out in the dark, and then Childress could just make out a figure slumping to the ground.

  Now they were definitely made.

  ***

  Park and his men were waiting on the south flank of the village, already kitted up, camouflaged, and ready to go. They were waiting on Huang Chin and his men. The Kokangs were evidently far less concerned with the paramilitaries in their rear than they were about the Army to the west.

  Or else, Cao had instructed Huang to take his time, just to show Park and the North Koreans who was in charge. Which was entirely possible.

  The Kokangs were beginning to straggle between the houses as the eastern sky began to lighten. They would be moving against the paramilitaries in the early morning, after the sun was up. Which, Park reflected, was probably just as well, considering that none of them were all that well-equipped for night fighting, and as more and more of the Kokangs appeared, it was apparent that he was not getting the elite of the Kokang Army. He’d known that a lot of Chin’s “men” were boys. But it seemed that except for one or two fighters in their prime, the rest were old men. Cao was clearly keeping as many of his effectives as possible in reserve against the Army.

  Park heard the shouting off to the east, but ignored it. He had other worries. But when the pre-dawn quiet was shattered by a pair of heavy booms and a scream, he suddenly stood up and took notice.

  Park was no fool. He knew what that noise meant. “The camp is under attack!” he snapped. The paramilitaries must have moved in during the night. He had a sudden suspicion that they were dealing with something other than Burmese militias. Whoever was out there in the dark, they weren’t fighting like the poorly-trained thugs who made up the paramilitaries. They were fighting like professionals.

  What that meant could be determined after they were dead. “Get to your defensive positions!” he shouted. “Now!” Suiting actions to words, he snatched up his Type 88 and ran for the bunkers. They might just solve this problem right then and there. At least Cao wouldn’t be able to sneer at his warnings anymore.

  ***

  Brannigan and Tanaka were about a hundred yards from the edge of the village when the pair of 7.62 NATO shots announced that the infiltration phase was over.

  The initial urge might have been to go all-out and charge the village. But with the opposition’s full strength unknown, that could easily land them in the middle of a lot of trouble. So, as they’d planned, the Blackhearts continued to advance steadily and carefully. They just had to expect the enemy to be alerted now.

  They moved forward with a combination of speed and care, sprinting from shadow to shadow as they closed on the edge of the village. Brannigan had gotten to a clump of trees, just on the edge of town, not ten yards from a cinder-block house, when a door slammed open and a half-dozen men spilled out onto the road, armed and carrying flashlights. The Kokangs definitely didn’t have night vision goggles.

  They were armed, and as far as Brannigan was concerned, that meant it was “open season.” There weren’t any friendlies in this neck of the woods. He leveled his G3 and opened fire. Muzzle blast flashed and the rifle thundered across the hillside as he stroked the trigger twice. The first man with a flashlight staggered and fell, the light spinning out of his grasp as he dropped, blinding his fellows as it unexpectedly swung across their line of sight. It almost blinded Brannigan as the beam nearly whited out his NVGs.

  He swiftly switched targets, even as Tanaka opened fire next to him, and the dark shapes of Jenkins and Aziz ran past, heading for the cinderblock structure. His second target took one round just below the collarbone and began to stagger backward, taking the second bullet through the throat. He fell like a stone, his Type 56 stuttering a two-round burst into the dirt at his feet; he’d had his finger on the trigger, and clenched it convulsively as he died.

  Together, he and Tanaka raked the group with fire. The last man turned and ran, only to take a single 7.62mm round to the back. He fell forward as if he’d tripped, doing half a somersault before he lay still.

  Then all hell started to break loose.

  ***

  The kid was still fighting, trying to bite and kick, even though he had all of Childress’ weight on top of him. Childress finally twisted around, letting go just enough to suddenly shift his position and get an arm around the kid’s neck. Wrapping his off hand up behind the boy’s skull, he bore down and started choking the kid out. Meanwhile, the shooting had already started, and he had to stay low, flat to the ground.

  Gomez was suddenly looming over them, his knife in his hand again. Childress suddenly went cold, as he realized that the other man was about to kill the kid. He knew nothing about Gomez, personally, but he could only imagine that there was no other reason to have a knife out. He started to protest, but Gomez simply held the edge of the knife lightly against the kid’s cheek, and whispered, “Quit it, or I’ll have to cut your throat. I’d hate to do that.”

  Whether or not the kid actually understood him—and he more than likely didn’t catch a word—the cold touch of the steel against his flesh was plenty to get the message across. He suddenly went completely still, though Childress knew there was no way that he’d actually choked the kid into unconsciousness.

  He slowly and carefully started to let go of the kid’s neck, while Gomez kept the knife just barely pressed against his carotid artery. It was tricky; too much pressure, and he’d probably end up cutting the kid’s throat by accident. Too little, and the kid might make a break for it.

  Gomez shifted the blade to actually rest against the kid’s throat as Childress got his arm out of the way. “What do we do with him?” Gomez asked, even as the storm of fire from the assault element died down, only to be answered by shouts and whistles from the western half of the village. “He’s a kid.”

  Despite the growing noise o
f a burgeoning firefight, Childress felt a wash of relief. He didn’t want to kill the kid, either. “Can we tie him up?”

  Gomez’ expression was invisible in the dark, behind his NVGs. But he reached into his vest and came out with a length of paracord. He handed it to Childress, while he kept his knife to the child soldier’s neck. The kid was still rigid and still, apparently not fanatical enough to want to risk having his throat cut clear to his spine.

  Childress looked down at the dim figure on the ground as he retrieved his own knife and hastily cut a few lengths of paracord to tie the kid up with. He had to hurry. They’d neutralized the sentries, but that was only part of their job; they had to make sure that a counterattack didn’t end up flanking the assault element. The longer they fussed over the kid, the longer the bad guys were going to have to adjust and come after them.

  But he had to wonder just what had turned this kid into a soldier, however amateurish by his standards. As far as he knew, the Kokangs were Communists, but not very good ones, since they had no qualms about using “capitalism” to make money by selling drugs. They weren’t like the Iranians or the Saudis that they’d gone up against on Khadarkh.

  Then he had to quickly tie the kid’s ankles and hands. As soon as he flipped the kid over to tie his hands behind his back, the kid started to try to fight and yell, and he had to put a knee in the back of the kid’s neck, driving his face down into the dirt to muffle the cries. Not that yelling was going to do the kid or the Kokangs much good at that point; the shooting was picking up again. He hastily bound the boy’s hands, then got off him and swung his G3 up to where he could get it into action.

  ***

  Jenkins moved up to the first house, covering down on the corpses strewn in the packed dirt between the houses, keeping an eye on the central house that the dead men had popped out of. There hadn’t been any movement from the rest, so he was starting to think he should push the fight; if the bad guys were in there, they should take that house.