by Peter Nealen
But Flanagan just looked over at Hancock. “Remember Abu Adnan, Roger?”
Hancock snorted, the first real show of emotion he’d made since he’d shown up. “That fucker?” he growled. “Oh yeah, I remember. We wasted months chasing him, only to find out that we’d done just what the bad guys wanted us to do.”
“Abu Adnan was a rabbit,” Flanagan elaborated for those who didn’t know the reference. “His entire role in the insurgency was to show up somewhere, stir up a little trouble, get people talking, and run.” He shook his head. “And we obliged. Meanwhile, the real bad guys did whatever the hell they wanted while we focused on an HVT who was really a nobody. He didn’t know shit; he got paid and got told where to go act like the big, bad terrorist warlord. And he did it, living comfortably up until the time we kicked in his door and put a gun to his head.”
“And while it’s possible, I don’t think this is the same sort of thing,” Brannigan said. “I’ve seen similar operations in my time. But I think—and I might be wrong—that if Bevan was a rabbit, he wouldn’t have run halfway across the world on his escape.”
“That’s a point,” Burgess said.
“Like I said, I’m down,” Wade repeated. “Maybe it’s a dry hole, maybe it’s not. But it’s a target. It beats sitting around waiting for these motherfuckers to hit us again.”
Brannigan looked around at the rest of the group. “Everybody else in agreement?” he asked.
“Honestly, Colonel?” Santelli said from where he was sitting on a log, his elbows on his knees. “I think by this time we all trust you enough that if you say the target’s legit, we’re in. This ain’t the Junior Varsity anymore.”
Looking around again, Brannigan saw mostly nods. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”
He spread out the imagery that Dalca had provided. “The compound is here, on the side of a mountain overlooking Laguna de Pozuelos. It’s also at just over twelve thousand feet.” There were some choice curses at that; not everybody lived at altitude like Brannigan did. “The nearest international airport is way down south, over a hundred miles away, in Salta. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—Dalca has offered a Ciela International charter plane, and says that she’s got the contacts to get us through without even having to stop at Customs.”
“That I find a little hard to believe,” Jenkins said. “Who does she want us to think she is, that she’s got that kind of pull?”
“She’s a transnational businesswoman who also deals in smuggling and information brokering,” Brannigan said bluntly. “Odds are, she’s got somebody either bought or blackmailed. Or several somebodies. Argentina’s corrupt as hell. If the Mexican and Columbian cartels are operating with impunity there, then I’m sure Ciela has no trouble circumventing any law enforcement they like.”
Jenkins looked like he was thinking of arguing the point, but subsided as Santelli spoke up. “He’s got a point, though. Just how far are we going to trust this Dalca chick? You’ve met her, John. What’s your read?”
“She’s about as dangerous as they come,” Brannigan said after a moment. “Trusting her implicitly would be stupid. However, she’s left us a loophole. If we’re going straight through Customs with her help, then we can already have all of our loadouts ready to go on the plane.”
A few knowing nods were passed around the fire ring. Armed to the teeth and ready to rock, the Blackhearts would be a formidable force to be dealt with if Dalca tried to double-cross them.
Of course, then they’d be on their own in a hostile country, but with guns, ammo, and commo, they could work things out.
“Van Zandt has started putting contingency plans in place,” he went on. “Unfortunately, as things stand, they will be staged in San Pedro. Which gives us about fifty miles to E&E if things go bad in Salta. Once we move on the target, they’ll shift up to Villazon in Bolivia, just over the border.”
Fifty miles was a sobering distance to escape and evade. It had been done before, but those stories were the stuff of legend. And usually hadn’t involved fighting their way out of an international airport in the middle of a city.
He looked around at the somber faces, few of them looking at much besides the map. That was an icy-cold reality check if ever there was one.
“Hey, this is the deal,” he said. “Face it, if Khadarkh had gone bad—well, worse than it did—we would have been stuck a lot farther away from home. Same thing with Burma and Transnistria. None of us really expects to die in bed. And if we pull this off, then we’ll be that much closer to shutting the Front down for good.” He wasn’t sure exactly how much he believed it, himself, but he needed to get minds off of what could go wrong. Contingency planning was necessary, but sometimes, particularly for an op like this, it could become paralyzing. “If anybody wants out, now’s the time.”
He wasn’t all that surprised that he didn’t get any takers on that offer. The Blackhearts had all known what they were getting into a long time before.
“So,” he said, “we’ll need to get all of our gear, weapons, and ammo before we leave the States. I’ve got a list started, but let’s get it fleshed out…”
***
It was starting to get dark by the time they had most of a workable plan put together. The sky above the trees had turned a deep blue and the stars were coming out, while the Blackhearts lit a fire in the fire ring. There were too many unknowns for them to work up much more; they were going to have to prepare for as many contingencies as possible, and keep their eyes and their ears open.
“Quick weapons and tactics refresher in the morning,” Hancock said, his voice still flat and dead. “Then Wade and Santelli go after the rifles, the rest of us split up and get the rest of the gear.”
Santelli watched Hancock in the flickering light of the fire. He felt eyes on him, and shifted his gaze to see Brannigan watching him. The Colonel’s eyes moved back to Hancock, then back to Santelli. The short, stocky former Sgt. Major nodded slightly.
As the rest of the Blackhearts got up and started down the mountain to their various accommodations, Santelli stayed where he was. Hancock hadn’t moved, either, still standing, now staring at the fire, his face blank, the semi-permanent crease of a frown perhaps slightly deeper between his brows. Or maybe it was just the firelight.
Brannigan stood, stretched, said, “Good night, gents,” and left the circle of firelight. Then it was just Santelli and Hancock.
Hancock hadn’t stirred. Santelli got the message, though. Hancock wouldn’t talk to the Colonel. Brannigan must have already tried. But something was eating him, and Santelli knew that it had to be addressed before they went into harm’s way.
“Talk to me Roger,” he said, his Boston accent getting slightly thicker. Not that anyone else would notice; Carlo Santelli was never going to be mistaken for anything but a Bostonian “from the old neighborhood.”
“Talk about what?” Hancock asked, finally noticing that Santelli hadn’t moved.
“Don’t bullshit me, Roger,” Santelli said, his hands clasped in front of him as he leaned on his knees. “Something’s eating you. I see it. The Colonel sees it. I’m pretty sure the rest of the boys see it. Come on, spit it out. Get it out in the open before it turns into a liability that I’m going to have to talk to the Colonel about.” He rubbed his wide, calloused hands together. “I know you won’t tell the Colonel anything’s wrong that you can’t deal with, but do you need to stay back from this one? Go home and fix things?”
Santelli had always taken some pride, as a Sergeant Major, that he took care of his Marines. He’d known plenty of Sgts Major who didn’t, who thought that their new role was to be a demigod of their Battalion, and to throw their weight around. He thought differently. The teeth of a combat arms unit were the men, and while discipline was part of the Sgt Major’s job, the ultimate goal, the Commander’s Intent, was mission accomplishment. And it was going to be the young men who got into drunken brawls out in town, or bit
ched out their seniors for doing something stupid—like Sam Childress; Santelli felt another pang at the man’s absence, even though he was glad that at least he was still alive—who were ultimately going to be accomplishing that mission, often at the cost of their own blood.
But even though he understood that, and did his damnedest to live up to the standard he’d set for himself, Carlo Santelli still didn’t have much of a bedside manner. He’d been a Marine, and was now a mercenary, not a therapist.
He watched Hancock as the other man stood there, still staring at the fire, his arms folded, his jaw working. Hancock was an intense, hawkish man, who kept his head shaved most of the time.
Finally, as Santelli waited with the patience of the mountain itself, Hancock grimaced and took a deep breath.
“There’s nothing to go home to, Carlo,” he said. “Tammy’s leaving me. We’re separated already; I’m living in the RV, down by the beach. She wasn’t happy about this whole mercenary business to begin with, and now she’s had it.” He shrugged, bitterness written across his face despite his best efforts. “I guess I should have seen it coming.”
“I could talk to Melissa before we leave,” Santelli suggested. “She might be able to talk to her…”
“No,” Hancock said sharply. “I’m serious, Carlo. I’m dealing with it. I’ll be fine. Leave it alone.” He suddenly dropped his hands to his sides and stalked away from the fire, heading back down the mountain.
Santelli watched him go, frowning. He knew Roger Hancock well enough to know that the man probably would be as good as his word; he wouldn’t let himself slip because his emotions were in a tangle. But every man has his breaking point.
He’d have to keep an extra eye on Roger in Argentina.
***
The meeting place was hardly what the slightly-built former KSK commando had expected. The room was very modern and avant-garde, appointed in stark white, blue, and black, with odd angles seemingly everywhere. Everything looked brutally simple and functional, except for that slight asymmetry that proclaimed its modern inspiration.
“Herr Winter,” the portly man said from where he stood facing the floor-to-ceiling window, his hands clasped behind his back. It was a scene that suggested that the man should have a glass of brandy or a cigar in his hand, but Winter knew enough about him to know that he never touched alcohol or tobacco. He was even a vegetarian when it suited his political purposes. “It was good of you to come on such short notice.”
“I can see an obvious pattern,” Winter said. “Jason Bevan narrowly escapes being taken by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, killing more agents than they have lost in years, and within an hour, you have called me. The urgency of the situation did not need to be otherwise expressed.”
“We already knew that Bevan was under surveillance,” the portly man said, turning away from the window. “He has not been as circumspect as we might have hoped, but he has been extremely useful to the Organization. Unfortunately, the orders to the team were circumvented; I do not know by whom. They were supposed to eliminate him. Instead, they extracted him and fled to Site 117.” He said the name of the site with a tone that suggested it bore a significance that Winter was not aware of. When the former commando did not react, the portly man tilted his head slightly to one side.
“Site 117 is an Indigo Lithium site,” he said softly.
Despite himself, Winter’s eyes widened slightly. “So, a man who has now highlighted himself to every law enforcement agency in the northern hemisphere has taken refuge at an Indigo Lithium site?” he asked. “Do I understand that correctly?”
“You do,” the portly man said grimly. “And believe me, we have people already working on discovering just who changed the cleaner team’s orders. But that is not your concern.” He pointed to a manila folder lying on the glass coffee table. “Read it carefully, then burn it. You may pass on what information you deem necessary to your team, but that is the only copy of the target package, and you will destroy it within the next forty-eight hours. In short, you are to proceed to Site 117, eliminate Bevan, and make sure that anyone sent after him does not discover Site 117’s existence, or the research being conducted there.”
“And if they do anyway?” Winter asked, though he already knew the answer. He had long made it a personal policy to get such orders given explicitly, rather than assumed.
“Then you are to eliminate them as well, by any means necessary.”
Chapter 7
The jet center was across the tarmac from the main terminal. Surrounded by trees, it was easy for the Blackhearts to unload the duffels and hard cases full of gear from the trucks in the small parking lot outside the blocky, gray building.
They hauled them inside, getting a few disinterested glances from the handful of staff standing around the help desk, but despite the fact that they were all men in good shape, all exuding that sort of “meat-eater” vibe that professional soldiers tend to carry around, to the staff they were just another group using the private terminal because their company had a charter jet.
Once they got inside, however, they found Dalca waiting for them, flanked by two obvious bodyguards and a rather effeminate-looking flunky with a tablet. Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he took the group in.
Dalca had been pretty much dressed to the nines every time he’d seen her. Not this time, though; she was wearing khakis, hiking boots, and a no-nonsense tan shirt, her blond hair drawn back in a severe bun behind her head. And there was a duffel at her feet. Her bodyguards and her aide were all dressed and equipped similarly.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked, smiling radiantly.
Brannigan felt more than saw the rest of the Blackhearts’ eyes turn to him. His own face went hard and cold. “’We?’” he asked. “I wasn’t aware that you were coming.” And if I have my way, there’s no way in hell you will be. Have Dalca looking over their shoulders on an op? Hell, no.
She smiled again, and while the expression was every bit as indulgent as it had been before, he thought he saw a colder glint in her eyes. “It’s my plane, John,” she said. “I can take it anywhere I want. You are my guests.”
There it is. The catch. I knew this was coming, sooner or later. The only question now is, what exactly is her angle?
“A word, Ms. Dalca?” he said grimly, inclining his head to indicate the hallway off to their right, away from the glass doors leading to the tarmac and the baggage carts waiting for their gear.
Her smile never wavered. “Of course, John.” She nodded to her bodyguards, who were watching the Blackhearts warily. From the looks on the two young men’s faces, they must have had some prior briefing as to just what the Blackhearts had done in the past, and what they were capable of. And Brannigan knew for a fact that every man of them had a weapon close at hand, and were watching those two bodyguards and the flunky the way a hawk watches a mouse.
The two of them stepped down the hall, to where Brannigan could see Dalca’s bodyguards at the end, but his own men were out of sight. He didn’t mind; he knew that if something went down, things were going to get very noisy, very quickly.
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” he said quietly, looming over her.
“It wasn’t not part of the deal, either,” she replied. “It wasn’t addressed at all. I didn’t say I was coming; I didn’t say I wasn’t, either.” She looked up at him and her smile got mischievous, a dimple standing out in her cheek. “You’re worried about me. I’m touched. Maybe there’s hope for us, after all.”
He didn’t rise to the bait. “I don’t like last-minute changes like this. Enemy action is one thing.” He left unsaid whether he was considering her a friendly or an enemy. Somewhere in between, I think. “But throwing everything sideways at the last minute creates problems.”
Dalca sighed. “You’re worried about how much I’ll learn about your operations and the people you occasionally work for,” she said. “You can just say it, John. I work in the world of international shipping and
finance when I’m not dallying around with the global underworld. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” She laughed a little. “And sometimes it seems as if the underworld of criminals, gangsters, and spies is a lot more straightforward and less dangerous than the business world.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she pursed her lips as she studied him. “Unless you’re even more worried about something else,” she mused. “Like whether or not I might double-cross you in a pinch? Or might be setting you up in the first place?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said coldly, remembering the ill-fated attempt to purchase weapons and munitions from the Suleiman Syndicate in Dubai.
She sobered as she looked into his eyes. Maybe she was reading something there, some echo of the memory of how they’d turned the tables on the Suleiman gangsters, killing several of them with rocks and bare hands before cleaning up with the weapons they took off the bodies. She had to know just how dangerous Brannigan and his mercenaries were, but there’s a difference between the intellectual knowledge and staring a killer in the eyes, who isn’t sure if you’re on the same side or not.
“If that was my plan,” she said calmly, and a little coldly, “then I would hardly be stupid enough to ride along, would I?” She folded her arms. “Believe me, John, I am well aware of just how much havoc you and your men can wreak. I think I’m a little insulted.”
She sighed again, and put her hand on his arm. “If it’s information you’re worried about, then you should know that anything my people learn would be passed along to me, anyway. Having me along isn’t going to be any more of a security risk than taking my plane in the first place. I don’t hire idiots for things like this. I save that for more high-profile things.” She smiled again; her earlier pique apparently forgotten. She was downright mercurial, and it was one of many reasons Brannigan was wary of her.
“The bottom line is, it’s my plane, so it’s my rules,” she continued. “And I’m coming along. Besides, you don’t know the situation down there, or all of my contacts. This will go much more smoothly for you if I’m along. I know who to talk to, who to pay, and who to threaten. We may be going to a backwater like Salta, but it’s every bit as dangerous as if we were going to Còrdoba or Buenos Aires. This is Argentina, not Mexico. It’s not chaos there; it’s corrupt enough that we can act, but if you don’t have my top cover, you’ll never get out of the city with the kind of hardware that I’m sure you’re carrying in those cases and bags.”
