by Peter Nealen
She folded her arms again and looked up at him, her head slightly tilted to one side. “You want Bevan? This is the deal. Take it or leave it. I’m sure that your sponsors can find another way in that will be low-profile enough, without possibly violating Argentinian airspace to parachute in, or whatever it is you do for such things. I can get you in, and get you out, but you’re going to have to play by my rules to do it.”
Brannigan watched her silently for a long moment. She was right, as much as he hated to admit it. He was sure that there was a way to get in covertly and get on Bevan’s track, but it would take time. He was reasonably sure that Van Zandt’s organization didn’t have the inroads in South America that Dalca had; too many resources had been devoted to the Middle East and Central Asia, with the remainder focused on Russia in recent years.
And from what he’d seen of the Humanity Front so far, that time would give Bevan a chance to dig in like a tick. If they waited too long, they’d never get him out. Presuming that the Front didn’t make him disappear somewhere else while they were preparing to go into Argentina. Given what Abernathy had told them about the progress or lack thereof on multiple investigations so far, that was a very real possibility.
“All right, Ms. Dalca,” he said. “You win. This time.”
She smiled warmly and slipped her hand through his arm as they turned back toward the entrance. “Don’t worry, John,” she said. “Sharing a flight with me won’t really be that bad. I promise.
“And you really should call me Erika.”
Brannigan’s silence was thunderous as they walked back out into the jet center’s foyer.
***
The baggage didn’t go in the plane’s cargo compartment. They had too much prep to do in the air. So, it made for a marked contrast; the duffels and storm cases full of weapons, ammunition, comms, and tactical gear carefully tied down between the widely-spaced, luxurious seats in the back. The entire Gulfstream G550 was first class. Which fit, since it was a business jet, not a purpose-built insert platform for a team of soldiers for hire.
The Blackhearts found their seats after securing the cargo as best they could, and strapped in. Somewhat to Brannigan’s irritation and chagrin, Dalca found a seat right next to him, giving him a mischievous and affectionate smile as she did so. He could feel the rest of the Blackhearts’ eyes on them, though when he glanced over, none of them were actually looking at him.
It took a few minutes for the crew to finish getting the plane prepped and clearance from the tower to take off. Then they were taxiing out to the runway.
With a roar, the Gulfstream accelerated, then lifted away, the bags and cases behind them shifting slightly, but fortunately not too much. The Gulfstream was a passenger jet, not a cargo job, and there were no purpose-built tiedowns on the deck. And the gear the Blackhearts had brought weighed at least as much as two more grown men.
But there was no catastrophic cargo shift, and the lift was smooth. In minutes, they were pulling for altitude.
They were on their way.
***
To Brannigan’s relief, Dalca didn’t try to make small talk on the ascent. Once they topped ten thousand feet, he unbuckled and stood up.
“Let’s get things unpacked and ready to roll,” he said. While this wasn’t like the Burma mission, when they’d jocked up in midair and jumped in, he wanted them ready to fight once they hit the ground.
Just in case.
Cases were opened and weapons and gear started to come out. Jenkins hefted the black rifle he’d just pulled out of a long Pelican case.
“What the hell is this? Some kind of AK?” he asked. “Are we really taking Communist guns into this op?”
“IWI ACE 52,” Wade replied shortly. “It’s based on the Galil, but chambered in 7.62x51. Distantly related to the AK, I suppose. But if you don’t want one, you’re welcome to stay on the plane.” He stared icily at Jenkins until the younger man subsided, muttering under his breath.
“Where the hell did you find these, Wade?” Burgess asked, looking over his own rifle appreciatively.
“I know a guy who knows a guy,” Wade replied. “They’re not common in the States, but he was able to get his hands on a couple crates of them. They’re all over the fucking place in South America. Columbians use ‘em, Chileans use ‘em, even the Argentinians use ‘em. Ammo and magazines shouldn’t be hard to find if it comes to it.”
“No machineguns?” Bianco asked, looking over the weapons cases with a bit of a crestfallen look on his face.
“Didn’t have time, buddy,” Wade said. “Sorry. Those are a lot harder to get ahold of. We had the budget, but we couldn’t get any fast enough.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Dalca said airily. “Check those boxes clear back by the tail.”
Brannigan shot her a look, but she just put a saintly, innocent look on her face. He nodded to Wade, who was already moving back toward the indicated boxes.
“Holy shit,” he said, as he opened one. He pulled a long weapon out, with a thick, boxy receiver, a long barrel, and a high, wooden buttstock. “I’m glad you boys are carrying this and not me.” He handed the MAG-58 machinegun to Bianco, who hefted it, gazing appreciatively over the GPMG’s lines.
“I think I’m in love,” Bianco said, then glanced toward Brannigan’s raised, sardonic eyebrow and Dalca’s amused expression, and turned beet red. “I mean, thank you. These are great guns.”
“And you just so happened to have a couple of MAG-58s lying around?” Brannigan asked Dalca dryly.
“Just so happened, yes,” she replied. “You can thank me properly later.”
Brannigan ignored the not-so-subtle implication, and turned back to lift his own ACE 52 out of its case, along with the ten ribbed, 25-round Galil magazines that had come with it. Moving to the ammo crate that Kirk had just broken open, he started loading magazines.
It was going to be a long flight.
***
Fortunately, Dalca had apparently decided that he’d had enough of her teasing, and left him alone except to discuss their course of action once they got on the ground. She assured him that she’d handle their liaison with the local government, and that Ciela assets would get them to a safe house well away from the airport. After that, her part was done until extract, unless he had anything else in mind that she could help with?
He’d refused. She was a useful asset, but he didn’t dare get any more entangled with her outfit than absolutely necessary. It was too risky.
Though the truth of how deep they already were tied together nagged at him as he reclined his seat and closed his eyes, confident that the weapons and gear were ready to go, stashed in relatively innocuous-looking duffels and roller bags, and that the plan, such as it was, was as good as it was going to get prior to reconnaissance.
She knows where to find me. She hasn’t asked a ‘favor’ for her services yet, but I should know better than to assume that that’s not going to happen. She’s a CEO of a major international conglomerate and, at the very least, a smuggler and underworld information broker. She doesn’t do things out of the goodness of her heart, her protestations to the contrary.
This could get really, really ugly someday.
Knowing that sooner or later, the Blackhearts were going to have to get clear of Dalca and her organization, he finally dozed off. His dreams were not peaceful, and his sleep was far from restful.
***
Salta lay between two thickly-forested ridges, a white-and-red urban maze hemmed in by the green slopes to either side. Brannigan studied the city as it came out of the low clouds hugging the mountaintops, as much as he could as the Gulfstream turned its nose toward the city on final approach. He saw skyscrapers and high-rises lifting above a sprawl of red-roofed houses, hemmed in by the trees and the mountains, before the plane banked and all he could see was the hills to the northwest.
A few moments later, the wheels touched with a squeal of rubber, and Brannigan’s Blackhearts had invaded Ar
gentina.
They taxied off the runway and past the terminal, turning onto the pad in front of the General Aviation terminal and several large, privately-owned hangars. It wasn’t long before the plane halted with a faint lurch.
The Blackhearts were on their feet, their duffels either in hand or over their shoulders, each with a zipper open just far enough to get a hand in for a weapon, just in case. Dalca had assured them from before they’d left the States that everything would be taken care of, but none of them had survived what they’d been through already by being trusting and complacent.
The doors opened, a rolling stairway coming up to the open hatchway. Dalca and her bodyguards moved to the doorway, as she looked back at Brannigan, holding a hand up.
“Let me go ahead, John,” she said. “I promise that everything’s fine, but Huenu isn’t going to be ready for you to get off first.”
Before he could object, or otherwise react, she had stepped out of the door and started down the stairs.
He moved to where he could watch as Dalca descended the stairs, every inch the graceful but assured CEO, walking out to meet the young man in a gray suit who was standing next to a limousine and two black Suburbans. They shook hands, the young man obviously trying to act courtly, but Dalca was all business. She spoke rapidly, and the young man looked up at the plane and nodded, if a bit uncertainly. A moment later, she turned back to the door and waved at Brannigan to join them.
Hefting the duffel full of weapons, optics, and combat gear, Brannigan stepped out onto the stairs and started down, the rest following, scanning their surroundings as casually as they could.
Brannigan was watching Huenu. The younger man was watching the Blackhearts warily, clearly a little uneasy about the appearance of the twelve relatively large, fit men coming down the steps. They really didn’t look like a corporate crew, much less one working for Ciela International.
Or, maybe they did. Who knew what kind of traffic Dalca had moved through here?
Huenu was a thin young man, maybe in his mid- to late-twenties, clean-shaven and with his hair slicked back. At first, Brannigan wasn’t sure what to make of him; was he one of Dalca’s flunkies, or an Argentine government official? But as he got to the bottom of the steps, seeing the way that Huenu was looking from them to Dalca, and the looks he was getting from the wiry men in dark suits with mirrored sunglasses on standing behind the limo, he decided that Huenu was government. Which meant that if this was going to go sideways, it was probably going to do so right then.
But as Huenu looked back at Dalca, frowning slightly, Brannigan followed his eyes, and saw Erika Dalca in a slightly different light.
Her face was set and cold, her eyes steely as she stared Huenu down. He couldn’t quite hear what she said as she tilted her head slightly to one side, but it wasn’t the flirty, calculated but superficially innocent movement that she’d tried to use on him before. It was the movement of a predator adjusting her view of her prey. And Huenu knew it, too. He looked away from her quickly, and glanced at Brannigan again, though he didn’t meet the former Colonel’s iron-gray gaze for long, either.
He said something in Spanish, and Dalca took a deep breath before answering with what was clearly a number. A large one. But her tone, despite the language barrier, said, “That much, and no more.”
After a long moment, Huenu nodded, taking the papers that Dalca’s scrawny flunky held out and signing them. So, he was government. And also, presumably, a permanent employee of Ciela International. Which meant that he was on the take, and that Dalca owned him.
In moments, Huenu was retreating toward the terminal, accompanied by his security detail, and Dalca turned to Brannigan, the cold-eyed predator gone and a charming, smiling woman in her place. “Shall we go, gentlemen?” she said. “I’ve got a lovely villa on the edge of the city where we can finish unpacking and discuss the next steps.”
She turned and slipped into the limo. Brannigan looked back at Hancock, who was watching the retreating Huenu, stony-faced, and Santelli, who was watching Dalca, his face pensive and distrustful.
“Well, unless one of you has a couple SUVs in his back pocket, we’re still committed,” he said. He started toward the Suburbans in the back. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 8
Winter looked up as the hotel room door opened, his hand moving toward the Walther PPQ Q4 9mm lying on the desk. But it was just the man known only to him and the rest of the team as Delta, a thickset, dark and hairy man with the build of a powerlifter.
“We have the vehicles,” Delta said. “Two Hiluxes and an Xterra.” Winter suspected, from the faint trace of an accent, that Delta was Dutch, but he couldn’t be sure.
He had little in the way of personal information on any of the men on the team; their dossiers had been, necessarily, sparse. He was still evaluating the results of his selection, but so far, he was pleased. With the possible exception of Zeta, he didn’t seem to have any of the sociopathic loose cannons that Flint had preferred to recruit.
Predictably, it was Zeta, the youngest of the team by far, who spoke up. He was small and sharp-featured, with long, pale blond hair and what looked like fragmentation scars on his neck that were usually hidden by his hair.
“Why bother going out to procure vehicles?” he asked. “We have an Organization vehicle cache right here in the city, precisely because Site 117 is so close. Why not use those, instead of risking exposure by renting off the local economy?”
All eyes turned to him, then to Winter, who simply looked back at the small tablet where he was putting the finishing touches on the plan, studying the terrain carefully to find their staging area, closer to the target.
“It’s quite simple,” he said calmly, without looking up. “Bevan may be a fool, and a liability, but he is not a complete idiot. He fled to Site 117 for a reason; he believes that the security there will be enough to protect him. He has made a great fortune for himself; such men do not ordinarily make wildly stupid decisions. While his thought processes may be compromised by his situation, judging by his dossier, he will have invented an elaborate web of lies about the opposition and what they know for the site’s security director. He is probably expecting us, and will have told them that any group looking for him is hostile to the Organization as a whole. Given his ties on the Board and the upper hierarchy of the Organization, I expect he has some very powerful voices backing him up. Which is why Number Seven gave me our orders in private, with extensive security measures in place.”
He finally looked up at Zeta mildly, appearing more than ever like a German university professor. “The odds that there is a team, possibly even benefiting from the research at Site 117, currently watching that cache, are very high. At the very least, they will have remote sensors that will alert Bevan and the site security coordinator that the cache has been accessed. It will give them warning that we are coming.” He raised an eyebrow. “Personally, given what I know about the security on Site 117, I would rather keep as much of the element of surprise intact as possible. And if you had done your reading, you would, as well.”
Zeta looked around at the others, avoiding Winter’s gaze. Most had turned back to their own preparations, setting up their lightweight body armor, chest rigs, and night vision, and loading the magazines for their ARX160 rifles and Walther pistols. Those who had kept their eyes and ears on the conversation watched with blank, dead expressions.
Winter let his eyes briefly flick across the other faces. Aside from Theta and Iota, who were both Central Africans, the team was decidedly Central and Southern European. It had not been by design; he had had no knowledge of ethnicity before selecting the dossiers that looked like they would fit. And, though he understood the change in procedure after the disaster that had been Flint’s model for the paramilitary wing of the Organization, his long years in the military told him that it was still not the way to build a team. Twelve men who knew nothing about one another, not even names, were not going to mesh as well as they should, withi
n the time limits constraining the operation.
Fortunately, none of them had any documented history of disciplinary problems, and were all volunteers for the program. And their actions while on deployment for the Organization had been exemplary.
Zeta looked like he wanted to argue, but he met Winter’s eyes and stopped. His eyes dropped back to the Italian rifle on his lap, and he went back to loading magazines.
Winter only nodded. He was not interested in unquestioning obedience. But neither was he interested in entertaining foolish and useless questions. If Zeta had been unable to accept the reasons given, and protested for the sake of protest, he would have been off the mission.
What would have happened to him then was an open question. More than likely, it would have involved a suppressed PPQ Q4 and a barrel of sulfuric acid.
***
Gomez eyed the car dealership skeptically. The place was nice enough, though everything he’d seen of Salta so far reminded him of Iraq. Sure, the architecture was more Spanish than Arab, but there was a similar sense of dinginess; the whole place just looked dirty, run-down, and crumbling.
However, it wasn’t the building’s appearance that had him concerned. The glass front was reasonably clean, and the place looked professional. But there was no auto lot attached, which meant that the sale went down in the office, and then the customer needed to be transported somewhere else to get the vehicle. Which meant money was exchanging hands without eyes on the merchandise.
