by Peter Nealen
“I don’t know,” Brannigan admitted. He looked up at the canopy of leaves over their heads. “Satcom can be almost as tricky as radio. We might not be getting through.”
“What’s the plan, then?” Hancock asked.
Brannigan smiled tiredly and humorlessly. “We do Recon shit,” he replied. “Keep trying comms, hide during the day, move at night. We got past the Chinese border without seeing any border guards, and hopefully the rest of the PLA thinks that the fighting is contained over in Burma. As long as we keep our heads down and stay quiet, they’ve got no reason to look for us.”
“And if we get all the way to Kunming without making contact?”
“It’s a long way to Kunming, brother,” Brannigan answered. It was a good two hundred fifty miles. “Situation will dictate.”
The truth be told, he was deeply worried. While the Chinese probably weren’t aware of their presence, they were definitely in hostile territory. The PRC was not going to be particularly welcoming to a group of Americans without entry visas, inexplicably appearing in the middle of Yunnan province. They had to stay in the woods and the hills until they could be sure that the extract truck was going to be at the rendezvous. And to say that he didn’t entirely trust Van Zandt was putting it mildly. Especially after they’d already been left to fend for themselves by their extract platform the last time; the Russian mafiya who had crewed the dhow that had taken them within rubber dinghy range of Khadarkh hadn’t been there when they’d returned for pickup.
He checked his watch. He’d give it an hour, then try again. And the hour after that. Until either Van Zandt picked up, or it got dark and they needed to move.
***
By the time night fell, he still hadn’t gotten through to Van Zandt. And the knot of worry in his chest was threatening to turn into outright despair. He kept it off his face as best he could, and took care not to say anything that might betray his fears as he checked on the team.
Most of his original team were almost blasé about it. “Not the first time, probably won’t be the last,” was Childress’ comment, when he heard that they still hadn’t been able to raise Van Zandt on comms.
“He’d better pick up,” Curtis said, as he watched the village below over the barrel of his MG 3. “I’ve got a hot date next week.”
“Only you would be dumb enough to actually try to set up a date when you’re leaving on a mission like this,” Flanagan said.
“That’s because I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, Joe,” Curtis replied. “Unlike some I could mention. Women also like me enough to take the chance. Also unlike some I could mention.”
Others weren’t facing it with quite the same level of equanimity. “Not fucking again,” Aziz grumbled. “I swear, I should have learned my lesson last time.”
“What the fuck, man?” Hart muttered. “That ain’t right, man. They can’t fucking do that, they can’t just leave us here to die! Somebody’s gonna know, they can’t get away with that shit!”
“Calm down,” Hancock said levelly. “Ain’t nobody been left behind yet. Comms just suck. Comms always suck. We’ll get it sorted. Just keep your heads screwed on straight. The worst is behind us.”
Brannigan grimaced slightly. He knew better. Every one of the Blackhearts knew better. Extract is always the most dangerous part of any operation. The team was tired, some were wounded, and they were low on ammo. The enemy also had to at least suspect that there might be someone unfriendly in the vicinity. Even if the Chinese didn’t know they were there, he was expecting heightened patrols on the roads, after the commotion on the other side of the border.
“Let’s move out,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”
***
It was rough hiking, through thick woods and over steep terrain. They had barely made it four kilometers, just to the next ridgeline over, by the time the sun was starting to rise above the hills in front of them and they had to go to ground again.
Brannigan decided he had to risk it. Leaving the rest of the team in their hide site on the back side of the hill, he moved out to the road, overlooking terraced rice fields in the dim gray light of pre-dawn, to try to get a clear shot at the satellite.
This time, the sat phone started ringing. It rang for a long time, but he stayed where he was, motionless on the side of the road, a grim figure in filthy, sweat-soaked tiger stripes and boonie hat, the weird lenses of his NVGs protruding from beneath the floppy brim.
Finally, the phone was answered. “Send your traffic,” an unfamiliar voice said.
“This is Kodiak,” Brannigan said. “Mission accomplished, we are en route to extract, and should reach the rendezvous point by tomorrow morning.”
“Good copy,” was the reply. “There will be a red C&C semi-truck with a green trailer at the rendezvous point from 0330 to 0430. The driver will know the pass-codes. Suggest you dump any hardware before you get there.” The unknown man on the other end hung up.
Brannigan folded the sat phone’s antenna and stuffed it back in his vest before fading back into the trees. The team would be heartened to know that they hadn’t been forgotten. They weren’t done yet, but it was a step.
***
They were all thoroughly wrung out by the time they reached the outskirts of Tuanjiecun. It had been a brutal forced-march through the woods, mostly downhill, to make it to the rendezvous in time.
Brannigan was crouched next to Childress, back in the trees, eyeing the truck that was sitting on the side of the road. The colors looked right, and it was in the right place. It was even parked on the north side of the road, where they wouldn’t have to cross to get to it.
Brannigan stripped out of his vest and laid his rifle against a tree. “Cover me,” he said. “If a bunch of PLA soldiers pop out of that thing, lay waste, because I’m going to be beating feet back here.”
“Will do, sir,” Childress replied. For a man with a bit of a “brutal honesty” problem, Childress could still be strangely formal at times. Maybe it was because he was trying to offset his lack of a mental filter the rest of the time.
Brannigan slipped down through the last stretch of trees, stepped onto the truck’s running board, and pulled himself up to the open window.
There was one man in the cab, with a lump that might have been a submachinegun under a jacket lying on the seat next to him. “Is this the road to Mengdingzhen?” he asked.
“Mengdingzhen is back that way,” the man replied, in an American accent. “This is the way to Chinshwehaw.”
Satisfied, Brannigan stepped back down and whistled. In moments, the rest were coming out of the gloom under the trees, dark specters rustling through the undergrowth.
The driver had gotten out, and was opening the trailer doors in back. “There are going to be a couple of inspection checkpoints on the way to Kunming,” he told Brannigan as the rest of the team clambered up into the trailer. “They aren’t usually very thorough, especially if the bribe is big enough, but I am going to have to open the trailer to let them look in. That means that when I stop, you guys need to get under the tarps and stay there, not moving and making no noise whatsoever. It’s going to suck, but it’s better than spending a lifetime in a Chinese prison camp.”
“If it means we don’t have to hike anymore, it’s going to be damned near paradise,” Tanaka said, as he climbed in. The rest of the gear had been ditched in the woods, buried under hastily-cut boughs, as soon as Brannigan had whistled. They were all just wearing their cammies.
“There’s water back there, and some chow, as well as baby wipes and clean civilian clothes,” the driver said. “You may as well settle in; it’s going to be a long drive.”
Brannigan waited until Hancock and Santelli had climbed in before he mounted the back of the trailer. There were tarp-covered pallets of crates and boxes nearly filling the back, with several false ones near the front of the trailer. The Blackhearts were currently cramming themselves under the tarps. Brannigan started forward, and looked back to g
ive the driver a thumbs-up before he climbed into the last one. It was stuffy and musty, but he didn’t mind. It wasn’t the jungle.
The driver swung the doors shut with a creak and a clang. A few moments later, they felt the rumble and vibration as the truck started up, and then the trailer started to rock and sway as they lurched into motion.
They were on their way.
EPILOGUE
The 727 was parked in a maintenance hangar at Kunming Airport, and the driver, whose name Brannigan still didn’t know, had simply pulled up to the entrance, opened the trailer, and let them out. It was a short few steps from the trailer to the entrance to the hangar, and they were inside before anyone took notice of the human cargo getting out of a semi-trailer. They’d all changed out of their cammies and wiped off most of the green and brown face paint, but they were still filthy and ragged, and would still be out of place if someone took too close a look.
Van Zandt was waiting next to the plane, which was facing the wide doors leading to the runway. The back stairs were lowered, and he waved at them to go ahead and board. Brannigan hung back as the rest went aboard the aircraft.
“How’d it go?” Van Zandt asked.
“We lost Doc,” Brannigan said bluntly. “But the job’s done.”
“The body?” Van Zandt’s face and tone were cool.
“We couldn’t pack it out, if that’s what you’re asking,” Brannigan replied curtly. “But we were all sterile. All they’ll know is that somebody who wasn’t Burmese, Chinese, or Korean was on the ground.”
“I guess it’s the best we could hope for, under the circumstances,” Van Zandt said. Brannigan suddenly felt the urge to punch him in the face. Juan Villareal was dead, and the best that Van Zandt could do was worry about whether they’d be identified from the body.
Van Zandt must have sensed it, because he suddenly looked Brannigan in the eye, something like realization, and maybe shame, in his own eyes. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know it’s never easy, losing people.”
As if you’d know. By the time the wars kicked off, you’d already climbed to a position where you never needed to leave the TOC, except to go get coffee.
It occurred to Brannigan that he might be letting his bitterness toward Van Zandt get the better of him. He kept his lips pressed together and said nothing more as he mounted the steps to climb inside the 727’s hold. Van Zandt followed.
“We’ve already been inspected by Customs, and we’re cleared to depart for Manila in two hours,” Van Zandt said, apparently giving up on belated condolences for losing Villareal. When Brannigan sat heavily on one of the jump seats against the fuselage, Van Zandt sat across from him.
“Look, John, I know you don’t like me,” he said after a moment. “But I didn’t make the decisions that got you forced out of the service. You did.”
“And they were the right decisions,” Brannigan told him. “Which you would have recognized, if you hadn’t been so damned worried about your career.”
“Maybe they were,” Van Zandt admitted. “You’ve certainly demonstrated that you’re still an effective commander, especially now that you don’t have to worry about politics at all.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m now in quite a different position, myself. Things that seemed clear-cut as a Marine aren’t so much anymore.” He looked down at his hands. This was awkward. He obviously had something to say, but wasn’t sure how to say it. Brannigan just watched him, his face impassive, not giving him an inch.
“Look, a lot of people in my office didn’t think this was a good idea,” Van Zandt finally said. “Sure, they wanted the North Korean op stopped, but they didn’t think you could do it. They’ve been predicting failure and a horrific international incident, maybe even World War Three, for weeks now. But you proved them wrong. For what it’s worth, I was a convert after Khadarkh, believe it or not.
“There’s an entire dimension of conflict going on in the world that most of the military and the intelligence community simply isn’t prepared to deal with, even after the last couple of decades,” he continued. “Lessons learned have been dumped for political reasons; hell, the same sort of politics you despise me for have made it impossible for us to deal with some of the nongovernmental and ‘deniable’ governmental threats that are cropping up out there. Proxies and ‘volunteers’ are the new field armies, and more often than not, our hands are tied when it comes to helping our friends and stopping our enemies, because our enemies know just the right buttons to push to make us sit on our hands.
“That’s why, if you’re interested, I can find a lot more work for you in the days ahead. Things have been moving for a long time now, and we’re behind the power curve. You and your boys have demonstrated twice now that you can get in, get the job done, and get out, without getting entangled in the sort of political intrigues that more often than not have paralyzed us when dealing with some of these factions.”
Brannigan eyed him, still impassive. All eyes in the bird were on him and Van Zandt. “So, what you’re saying is that you need a deniable dirty tricks squad, that can go places and do things that might be embarrassing for someone’s political career if the military or the IC tried it.”
Van Zandt looked uncomfortable. “That’s a hell of a blunt way to put it,” he said, “but I suppose that’s the gist of the proposal in a nutshell.”
Brannigan glanced at his team. The Blackhearts were all as expressionless as he was, but he saw in most of their eyes the same thing that had already led them to follow him into hell twice. They trusted him, and they would follow him if he went out again.
He looked back at Van Zandt. “From what I’ve seen, Mark, you’re not wrong about the threats out there. Hell, the Iranians on Khadarkh were play-acting at being a rogue group, distancing their actions from Tehran. So, depending on the job, you might well be able to hire us again.”
Van Zandt started to nod and hold out his hand, but Brannigan lifted a finger. “But,” he said, “there will be conditions. I get the full story on any mission before I agree to take the job. If it doesn’t pass my smell-test, the job’s off. Case-by-case basis.”
Van Zandt looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but finally nodded curtly, his lips pressed together. “I suppose that’s fair enough, given the nature of this arrangement. What else?”
Brannigan smiled wolfishly. “If we’re going to be the USG’s super-secret hit squad, the price tag is going to go up.” When Van Zandt started to look a little green, he added, “Way up.”
***
It was an awfully bright, sunny day for a funeral.
The casket had been closed, of course. It was filled with a hundred eighty pounds of sandbags, after all. There was no body to bury. The corpse that should have been in it was decomposing in the jungle, over seven thousand miles away.
Most of Villareal’s family was there. His mother was weeping softly; Brannigan knew that Juan had distanced himself from his family after Zarghun, and it had hurt his mother badly. Now he was gone, ostensibly killed in a traffic accident, and she could never heal that rift, a rift that hadn’t been necessary.
Brannigan’s Blackhearts were standing a little way away from the family as the coffin was lowered into the ground. All of them were stony-faced, though several eyes were red and more than a little damp. Many of them had known Doc a long time, had tried to help him with his demons, and couldn’t help but feel guilty that those same demons had finally gotten him killed.
The family only knew that they were veterans, friends of Juan’s from the military. After the graveside service was over, Manuela Villareal came around to hug men she’d never met, teary-eyed, to thank them for coming to pay their last respects. More than one could not hold her gaze for long.
Then the funeral was over, the family was heading for their own reception, and the team started to drift away. They’d paid their respects; they’d meet up later to have their own wake, somewhere private, where they could talk freely.
Brannigan, true to form, was the last to leave. “Rest easy, Doc,” he said quietly. “I’m counting on you for overwatch. I have a feeling we’re gonna need it.”
Look for more hard-hitting action soon, in:
BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS #3
ENEMY UNIDENTIFIED
In a single, blood-soaked afternoon, hundreds are killed in a string of terrorist attacks across the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico. To top it off, the terrorists bomb an energy summit in Matamoros, taking hostages before fleeing to an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
They issue no demands. No known group has taken credit for the attack. All anyone knows is that VIPs from both North and South America are being held hostage. And the first wave of Mexican Marines has been repulsed by terrorists who are far more heavily armed and better prepared than anyone expected.
The Mexican government won’t ask for help. But there is a team that the US and Mexico can agree to send in, as they do not exist, as far as the public is concerned. Brannigan’s Blackhearts have another rescue mission. And it’s going to be the bloodiest yet.
COMING SOON
