by Peter Nealen
He glanced in his rear view again. The second biker was still there, though it looked like his gun was empty, and he couldn’t figure out how to reload without letting go of both handlebars. Burgess grinned a little.
Then he slammed on the brakes.
The biker hadn’t been ready for it; he careened into the back of the Kangoo. The impact slammed Burgess against the seat as the motorcycle caved in the back of the vehicle, shattering glass with a catastrophic bang. The biker went over the handlebars, his body bouncing off the roof and leaving a sizeable dent before tumbling onto the pavement.
Burgess stomped on the gas, surging the 4x4 forward to clear the wreckage before he threw the vehicle in reverse and started backing up as fast as he could, looking over the seat and through the remnants of the smashed rear window, swerving around the still body of the biker and the smashed hulk of the motorcycle, which was still sputtering on the ground. Something wasn’t quite handling right in the vehicle’s suspension; he figured that the impact had thrown the alignment out of whack, at the very least. The frame might even be bent; the biker had barely slowed before he’d hit.
But even as he surged around the wreck, the van that had been blocking his last turn surged out into the street behind him.
Even as he threw the Kangoo back into drive, the rusty red Ford pickup that had blocked him in before came roaring around the corner ahead, stopping right in front of his bumper. Two men piled out, dressed in t-shirts and jeans and leveling weapons. Burgess was staring at an AR pistol and a narrow, cylindrical submachine gun he was pretty sure was a Halcon.
“Get out!” the man with the AR pistol demanded. He had an accent, but his English was otherwise flawless.
Burgess had both hands on the wheel, his 938 still on his lap. He looked from one to the other, gauging distances and times.
He was generally an affable, friendly man. He didn’t see the point in being a hostile asshole all the time. That didn’t make him harmless, though. It just made him seem that way to people who didn’t know better.
“All right, all right,” he drawled, taking his hands off the wheel to open the door. He was going to have to do this very carefully. “Just calm down. I don’t know what you want, but it can’t be anything we can’t work out.”
He opened the door, then threw himself out, landing on his side on the dusty median, the 938 coming up in a flash, the sights settling on the Halcon gunner’s nose a split second later, while the man started to track toward him.
His target barely had time to register what had happened before the 9mm hollowpoint punched a hole just below his right eye and blasted a chunk of his skull into his buddy’s eyes.
Burgess transitioned quickly and double-tapped the second man in the chest. The man staggered, the AR pistol slipping from suddenly numb hands, and Burgess finished the Mozambique drill with a third shot to the head. The man flopped onto the street, and Burgess started to scramble to his feet.
He heard somebody yelling in Spanish, but his hearing was a little deadened by the reports of the pistol. Even a 9mm got really loud when an arm’s length away and coming from a three-inch barrel.
A burst of gunfire ripped up the gravel and dust right beside him, and he started to turn, but found himself staring down the black muzzles of three gun barrels, with very angry faces behind them.
Even as dangerous as Tom Burgess was, he knew when he was bucking a stacked deck. He carefully lowered the P938 to the ground.
The smaller, weaselly-faced man with the AK stepped forward and butt-stroked him in the face.
***
Gomez listened to the phone ringing, and finally hung up in frustration, slamming it back into the center console. He’d tried to call Burgess three times now, without result. He was pretty sure he knew what that meant, and it wasn’t anything good.
He pulled up to the front gate of the villa a couple minutes later. The villa was a sprawling, red-roofed mansion surrounded by grassy fields across the road from a sports club. A white-plastered concrete wall, topped by a wrought-iron fence and studded by square concrete pillars ever few yards, encircled the villa grounds.
The guards at the gate didn’t have their weapons in evidence; they were sitting in the guard shack, out of sight. But they had weapons within arm’s reach; Gomez had noticed that on the way out. To a casual observer, they would have looked like just another set of rent-a-cops in cheap khaki fatigue pants and black polo shirts. But Gomez wasn’t a casual observer; he’d seen the careful way that they scanned every vehicle that went past, and the coiled-spring look that professional soldiers carried everywhere. Ciela International paid for some good personnel.
Not that he thought they were the equal of any of the Blackhearts, or most of the other PMCs he’d worked with in the past. But they were a cut above the usual security guard, and he’d acknowledge that, anyway.
The rest of the Blackhearts were waiting just inside the gate, under the shade of a tree. They still needed to keep a low profile, so they were all in their civilian clothes, gear and weapons once again secreted in the duffel bags at their feet. The guards waved him through as Brannigan said something, and he pulled up next to the tree.
Brannigan yanked the passenger door open shoved his duffel in front of the seat, though he didn’t get in yet.
“Has Herc gotten here yet?” Gomez asked.
“Not yet,” Brannigan replied. “He’s about two minutes behind you.” Even as he spoke, the Duster pulled into the gate. “Come on, we’ve got to get this figured out. Have you gotten Tom to answer his phone within the last ten minutes?”
“I haven’t,” Gomez replied as he climbed out, accepting a duffel full of gear, ammo, and a rifle from Flanagan. “I think they caught up to him.”
“I think so, too,” Brannigan said grimly. “Which means the clock’s ticking.”
Presuming he’s still alive. It wasn’t a thought that anyone wanted to voice. This was already a bad way to start an op.
Dalca came out of the villa and down the steps as Javakhishvili stopped the Duster and got out, taking his own gear from Bianco. She had a phone to her ear.
“The police are getting reports of a shooting and car chase on Avenue Josè de Gurruchaga,” she said. “It sounds bad. That’s probably where you want to start.”
“You’ve got somebody on the police force here?” Hancock asked.
“Not quite,” she replied. “I do have friends in the local government, but this is coming from the police scanner. I have people monitoring it.” She waved. “Go start looking; I’ll do what I can to divert attention away from you, and I can buy someone off if need be.”
Gomez glanced at Brannigan. The Colonel’s face was stony, though he seemed to twitch a little at her cavalier comment about bribing police officials. But then, the Blackhearts had always operated in a shadowy underworld of covert operations. Bribing already corrupt cops wasn’t really anything new.
“Fine,” Brannigan said. “Everybody mount up. Let’s go find Tom and get him out of the sling he’s gotten his ass into.”
Chapter 10
Gomez slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. “This ain’t good.”
Flanagan just nodded as he watched the police swarming into the barrio, his eyes narrowing as he watched the black-uniformed men and women, all wearing body armor and many carrying shotguns and Sig 550 rifles, moving in on foot alongside black-and-white cars and up-armored, blue vans. There were a lot of them; the police in Salta must have just about emptied their precinct into the neighborhood.
Of course, while Flanagan didn’t know Burgess all that well, he was a Blackheart, and if a Blackheart had been taken, he probably hadn’t gone down without a hell of a fight. Which meant that there were going to be bodies and some property damage in there.
“No, it isn’t,” he replied. Especially if the cops started getting curious about the men in the Hilux and Duster that were trying to get into the barrio. He wasn’t as worried about standing out as a bunch of g
ringos, not after what he’d seen on the streets so far. Argentina was a lot more multi-ethnic than he’d expected; there were easily as many white people as brown.
But four grown men in a Hilux, all with lumps of stuff covered by towels and jackets at their feet, might draw some suspicion, especially right on the heels of what he had to assume had been a lethal shooting.
Flanagan had his ACE 52 shoved between his leg and the center console, covered by a jacket, and a towel was draped over the chest rig crammed with 25-round 7.62 mags, smoke grenades, a radio, tourniquets, med kit, and various other odds and ends that he’d always found useful in a combat situation. If the local police caught them with that stuff, it was going to get touchy, really quickly.
Actually, it was going to result in one of two things; they were either going to get in a firefight with the cops and leave a lot of dead policemen behind them, or they were going to go to an Argentine jail for a long, long time.
“We’re not going to be able to go in there with the vehicle,” he mused. “They’ll have the streets blocked off for a good radius around where it went down.”
“We’re not going to be able to go in with all this firepower without the vehicle,” Santelli said from the back seat. “I know you’re sneaky, Joe, but if you think we can just ghost in there with rifles and this MAG, then you’re buying into your own PR a little too much.”
“Of course he can,” Curtis said. “He’s a ninja. Slips through the shadows and slits people’s throats. Ain’t that right, Joe?”
“Shut up, Kevin,” Flanagan said, still watching the cops. He was wracking his brain for some solution, some way to get in there. With Burgess missing, they probably had a limited window of time to find him and rescue him.
Another pair of police cars raced past them and into the barrio, lights flashing and sirens whooping. He shook his head.
“We’re going to have to wait until dark,” he said. “The risk of compromise is just too high right now, and if we get compromised by the local cops, we’re dead.” He waved away from the barrio, and Gomez, his bronzed face impassive, turned the wheel and started the Hilux rolling. Flanagan glanced back at Curtis and Santelli. “I don’t like it, but there it is.”
“No, you’re right, Joe,” Santelli said, still watching over his shoulder. “We’re not going to do Tom any good rushing in there and getting shot to shit.” He sighed. “I’m already getting tired of this shit. This is twice now I’ve had to go and rescue one of our boys who got rolled up.”
Flanagan just nodded, turning his eyes forward; with the shooting in the barrio, the police were going to be extra alert and extra suspicious. Just because they weren’t going into the middle of the cordon didn’t mean that they weren’t going to potentially attract attention.
Even as they got farther away, they passed a pair of police cars set up at the next major intersection. The short woman in black fatigues and body armor watched them intently as they rolled past, all four trying to look as innocent as possible, the firepower at their feet notwithstanding.
“Yeah, it’s getting too hot out here,” Santelli said. “I just hope Tom can hold out until dark. Let’s go find a place to hunker down.”
***
Burgess came to slowly. His head ached abominably, and it hurt to even crack his eyes open. His face felt crusty; he must be covered in his own dried blood.
As awareness crept back, the pain spread. His entire body just hurt, though in some places it throbbed more acutely; probably where he’d been hit. After a moment, he realized that his wrists and ankles hurt even worse, and a brief attempt to move confirmed that they were tightly tied to the chair where he was sitting.
Painfully bright light stabbed through his cracked eyelids, turning the entire room around him into nothing but white-hot pain. Only after a long moment was he able to squint past the blinding glare to start to get some idea of his surroundings.
He was sitting in a small room, tied to a metal chair. The only illumination came from the work light sitting right in front of him, shining directly into his face.
He didn’t dare move his head yet; aside from the headache, he wanted to gather as much information as possible before his captors knew he was conscious. Keeping his eyelids barely slitted, he scanned the room around him.
There were boxes against one wall. The floor was concrete, cracked in three pieces. The walls appeared to be plastered cinder block. There was a single door directly behind the work light. There were no windows. As near as he could tell, he was alone.
He decided to risk lifting his head and looking around. He couldn’t hear anyone behind him, and the room was small enough that there wasn’t room for anyone to be next to him. A glance through squinted eyes confirmed his suspicions. He was alone.
It wasn’t the first time Tom Burgess had been in a bad spot. He’d gotten rolled up by local gangsters outside Lukavica once, and found himself in a similar sort of situation. They’d intended to hold him for ransom, but fortunately, he’d been smart and had let a friend know where he was going. When he hadn’t shown up, they’d gotten some of their own local toughs together and come looking for him.
This wasn’t exactly the same sort of situation. But he’d lay ten to one odds that the Blackhearts were far more dangerous than Danko and his cousins.
Which just meant he had to stay alive until they found him. Provided the police didn’t find him first. That could be bad, considering he’d killed three people with an illegal firearm during the chase.
The door slammed open, and he dropped his chin back to his chest quickly, hoping that they hadn’t noticed that he’d had his head up. Footsteps entered the room, and he heard a smatter of words in Spanish, and then the door shut.
There was something about the accent in the Spanish…something familiar. Then a hard hand slapped him alongside the head, with a barked, “Wake up!”
He moved with the blow, so it didn’t hurt as much as it might have, but on top of his already pounding headache from getting butt-stroked, it still felt like getting smacked with a hammer.
He lifted his head, squinting against the glare and the pain. A chair was dragged across the concrete and slammed down next to the work light, and a man sat down, straddling it and leaning on the back.
The man was probably half a head shorter than Burgess, pale, with receding black hair, slicked back. He was clean-shaven, though a heavy, dark beard made his jaw look slightly bluish, and his thick, black eyebrows were set in a deep scowl. He was wearing a white shirt and black slacks, the gun in his waistband clearly visible.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, in faintly accented English. “My Columbian compagni are not all that gentle. They are blunt instruments, in a way.” He held out a bottle of water. “You must be thirsty.”
Burgess squinted up at him, then looked down at his hands where they were tied to the arms of the chair. The Italian—the word “compagni” had given that away—smiled coldly, unscrewed the top, and gave him a drink from the bottle before taking it away.
“Better?” he asked. He was trying to be jovial, but Burgess had seen the type before. Behind the friendly words and the gesture of the drink, the man’s eyes were as cold and dead as a shark’s. He was every bit the killer that the Columbians behind him were. He was just trying to be civilized about it, probably because he wanted something.
“You came here with Erika Dalca,” the Italian said. “We have pictures of you getting off her plane.”
So, that was it. They weren’t Humanity Front at all; he’d stumbled into some kind of criminal activity aimed at Dalca and Ciela International. Whether it was a robbery or a power play, he didn’t know.
Not that it mattered that much; he’d end up just as dead either way, if he didn’t play this carefully.
When he didn’t answer, one of the Columbians took a step forward, but the Italian held up a hand. “What is she doing here?” he asked, leaning forward over his crossed arms. “Why has she come here with so much security?�
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“She’s an international CEO,” Burgess said thickly. “I don’t imagine she goes anywhere without a lot of security.”
The Italian traded a glance with one of the Columbians. “She is more than that, my friend,” he said.
Burgess tried to look puzzled. “Yeah?” he asked. He looked up around at the hard-faced Columbians, playing up the confused and ignorant act. “Like what?”
One of the Columbians spat something in Spanish. Burgess’ Spanish was too rusty to tell exactly what he said, but it sounded like he didn’t think that their prisoner was being forthcoming enough.
Once again, the Italian made a placating gesture. “I think you know,” he said. “You seem like a smart man; she doesn’t hire morons for her security. But I’ll let that go for now. I need you to tell me some things.”
“I don’t know much, man,” Burgess said. He knew he had to step very, very carefully. The man in front of him wasn’t going to buy a complete innocent act. But he had to stall him for as long as possible, and hopefully give the rest of the Blackhearts time to find him. He didn’t know how they were going to do it, but from what he’d seen of Roger Hancock, he expected that the man was probably already pulling some gangsters’ fingernails out looking for answers. “I just get the day’s instructions as they come out.”
“Really?” the Italian asked, tilting his head to one side. “I would think you’d know more, since you were assigned the responsibility to buy vehicles.”
“I was just along to drive, man. Only the supervisors get details.”
He was indirectly studying the Italian. He had to play as beat-up and harmless as possible, and a lot of people tend to take intense scrutiny as a threat. This man was extremely dangerous; he wasn’t just some street thug. He was going to ask very carefully picked questions, and he was going to read a lot into the answers. He’d had intelligence training, somewhere along the line.
The man just studied him for a long moment, then nodded to one of the Columbians, who stepped up behind Burgess and punched him viciously in the kidneys.
