by Peter Nealen
The villa was fitting for the Organization, though it looked distinctly odd in the barren wilderness of the Altiplano. Two levels were visible behind the six-foot, whitewashed cinderblock wall that shut off the lower part of the hanging valley where it sat, the road leading up to the gate conspicuously paved in a part of the country that otherwise had nothing but dirt tracks in place of roads. Of course, the dust had sifted across the paved road, putting a grayish cast across the asphalt.
He wondered how much it had cost to build that road. Not that expense had ever really been a consideration for the Organization. They had enough money to pursue their goals for the New Future, with plenty left over.
Winter didn’t let such extravagance bother him. That sort of thing was up to the Organization. His job was to do the dirty work to make sure that the Organization could go about its work in peace. So long as he got paid, he’d keep doing his job.
The house itself was a sprawling, L-shaped complex, designed along Frank Lloyd Wright lines, looking more than a little like a slightly disjointed stack of boxes studded with large, picture windows.
There were figures visible on the roof, as well at the guardhouse just inside the gate. Winter studied them, noting the storm gray fatigues and equipment, as well as the Steyr AUG rifles. Thinking back to the briefing materials, he was pretty sure that the rifles weren’t standard; that level of security didn’t fit a luxury compound like this one, even in a country as corrupt and going to the dogs as Argentina.
Not that the rifles hadn’t been there before. But before Bevan’s arrival, they hadn’t been openly carried. In fact, according to his briefing materials, exterior security at the Site had been deliberately obscured, to further conceal what lay beneath it.
He scanned up the mountainside, spotting the camouflaged bunker at the top, right where it was supposed to be. At least they hadn’t been stupid enough to post guards around it; that would have been a dead giveaway if anyone was looking for the place.
Of course, the heightened security was going to make his team’s job harder. Bevan had almost certainly had them lock the Site down. Which meant that, even with his Organization credentials, getting in was going to be difficult.
He was considering how to approach the problem when he heard a scrape of a boot behind him. He froze. None of the rest of the team was supposed to be up there. He had come up with Beta alone, leaving the rest of the team staged down below with the vehicles, concealed in a dry wash. They knew better than to follow without communications.
They hadn’t seen any roving patrols, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t any. Which was a problem. Especially if they were about to make contact, and the rest of his team was out of position.
It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d had to improvise. Reaching down, he slowly and carefully set the binoculars back inside his pack and picked up his ARX160.
The noise had not repeated itself. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Beta, who had leaned back slightly from the spotting scope, and had his hands on his own rifle, across his lap. He was ready to act.
There. Another faint scrape. A boot sole against gritty rock. There was someone above and behind them, approaching stealthily.
Lifting the muzzle of his rifle, Winter braced himself and turned, his finger already finding the firing selector.
Chapter 14
Flanagan searched the slope above them, looking for a spot to stop. The mountainside was mostly barren, dotted with rocks and scrub brush. There wasn’t much cover; they were going to have to just find a place and go prone.
He took a step, planting his foot and heaving himself up, paused, and breathed. They were still below thirteen thousand feet, but not by much. The air was thin and cold, and he was getting tired more quickly.
Of course, the rocky slope they were climbing would have been a smoker four thousand feet lower. It was steep as all hell and mostly bare rock, scree, and dirt. The altitude notwithstanding, every step had to be taken with care, or a boulder was going to roll out from under a boot and send him all the way down to the valley floor below.
He seriously doubted he’d survive the experience, given how much rock was between him and the bottom.
Fighting was going to be even worse. The only consolation was that it probably—hopefully—wasn’t going to be much easier for the opposition. No matter how acclimated someone was, that altitude was going to make exertion hard for anyone.
They were getting close to the crest. He slowed further, planting each foot carefully, struggling to keep his breathing deep and even. Not so much because it was getting harder to breathe, though it was. It was more because he didn’t know what was on the other side of that crest, and didn’t want to skyline himself to the bad guys, or give himself away by panting like a dog.
Just short of the crest, he found a slightly flatter spot and lowered himself to a knee, looking up at the jagged rocks above. Despite the chill in the thin air, drops of sweat were clinging to his beard. High cirrus clouds seemed low enough to brush the mountaintops.
Looking back down, he saw Gomez picking his way along the rocky slope below and behind him. The other man wasn’t nearly as much of a mountain goat as Flanagan was, but he’d been keeping up well enough. And, Gomez being Gomez, he was making very little noise doing it.
Below him, and about half a klick back, he could see the rest of the team, though their khaki fatigues blended well with the terrain and the sparse vegetation. Only Jenkins’ and Brannigan’s movement as they led the way gave even his trained eye something to zero in on, after which he could pick out the rest, though with some difficulty.
Taking another deep breath, he ran the back of his gloved hand over his eyebrows, keeping the sweat from running down into his eyes. Gomez caught up with him and sank to a knee, wedging a foot into the crack in the rock below him, to make sure he didn’t slide off.
Gomez’ expression was a calm and unperturbed as ever, though his face glistened with sweat and his chest was heaving. The altitude was kicking all their asses.
Flanagan looked down at him and raised an eyebrow. Gomez squinted back, his black eyes betraying a little of the fatigue he had to be feeling, and raised a single finger. He needed a break, however short.
Flanagan just nodded and turned his attention to the ridgeline above, scanning the rocks and listening. All he could hear was the faint whisper of the wind, and the distant rattle from down below as someone kicked a rock. He froze for a moment at that, but the sound wasn’t repeated, and there was no response that he could see or hear.
Finally, he rose to his feet and started toward the top.
It was actually worse after the rest. The body starts to shut down, to try to take advantage, and protests renewed exertion, especially over twelve thousand feet above sea level. That was why he wasn’t quite as sure-footed as he normally was, and he placed a boot badly. The edge of the sole skidded off the rock and for a moment he had one foot dangling over open space, a tiny cascade of grit going over the side and down the slope.
He got his foot back on solid rock and froze, listening. Gomez had stopped dead as soon as it had happened, as well; neither man was willing to take chances that deep in hostile territory.
That pause was the only reason that he heard the faint movement above them, and what might have been the scrape of metal against rock.
Keeping his breathing as even and quiet as he could, Flanagan lifted his rifle and scanned the slope and the rocks above him carefully. There was someone up there, and with the rest of the Blackhearts downhill and behind them, that someone was a hostile. Probably a listening post for the Front’s security; he didn’t know who else it might be.
That certainly answered the question about whether or not Bevan was ready for an attack. He wasn’t getting complacent in the fancy mansion in the mountains, after all.
There was another faint rustle above them, but he couldn’t see a target. He studied the terrain carefully, analyzing what he was looking at, forci
ng his brain to work despite the fatigue and the lack of oxygen.
That cleft up there would make a decent entry into an OP. And the sweep of the layered, rocky mountainside led directly into it, making that approach the natural line of drift. Which meant that whoever he had heard moving was probably up there.
He kept scanning the slope. If there was one thing he’d learned about combat, it was to always try to go where no one in their right mind would think to go.
That meant straight up.
It wasn’t going to be silent, and it wasn’t going to be fast. Which put him at a disadvantage.
He turned to Gomez, pointed to his eyes, then pointed up at the slight saddle above and ahead. Then he pointed to himself and straight up to the top of the ridge.
Gomez’ eyes flicked between him and where he was pointing. Then Gomez nodded, pointed to himself, and made a faint scuffing motion with his foot. Flanagan nodded back. Gomez got it. Slinging his rifle because he was going to need both hands for this, he reached up and found a handhold.
Meanwhile, Gomez squeezed past him, deliberately making faint but noticeable scuffing sounds, kicking pebbles over the side.
Flanagan scrambled up the scree and dirt covered slope as fast and as quietly as he could, as Gomez made a production of his ascent, even allowing his muzzle to glance off a boulder once, with a resounding clack that seemed to travel farther than it should have in the mountain quiet. Hauling himself around another boulder, his heart pounding and his mouth and throat as dry as the Sahara, Flanagan got to the top and threw himself flat, hauling his rifle off his back, where it had hooked on the side of his ruck. It took a bit of a struggle to get it around, and he had to force himself to move as smoothly and carefully as possible, even as he knew that the enemy was ahead, and probably already had their weapons ready.
Then a shot rang out, the crack echoing across the barren hills.
Gomez answered with a fast pair, the heavier thunder of the ACE 52’s 7.62 NATO rounds noticeable in contrast with the lighter bark of the 5.56 that had opened the ball. Then Flanagan was up and moving; somebody up there had taken a shot at Gomez, and Gomez had nowhere to go.
He dashed from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop, dropping to a low knee behind a final rock as he suddenly spotted the camouflage netting barely twenty yards ahead of him. He was right on top of the enemy, and he gulped for air, feeling the dry cold scrape his throat raw, then leveled his rifle around the side of the boulder and opened fire, the muzzle spitting fire as the heavy booms of the 7.62 shots reverberated off the slope.
***
Winter had shrunk back in the cleft as the first rounds in response to Beta’s ill-considered shot at what Winter was convinced had been a man’s shadow snapped overhead, smacking grit off the rocks above. Beta had dropped flat, but quickly recovered, scrambling up the side of the OP and out from under the camouflage netting as he tried to maneuver on the enemy and get a better shot.
Winter actually flinched as two bullets punched through Beta’s skull from up on the ridgeline, showering him with blood, hair, and liquified brain matter as his teammate slumped forward and slid to the bottom of the cleft. Winter, never one for sentiment, didn’t even look at the other man’s body as he whipped his ARX160 up and fired a fast five shots up the ridgeline in reply, the reports deafeningly loud in the narrow defile.
***
Gomez heard the shooting start in earnest, and abandoned both his clumsy sneaking act and the cover of the boulder he’d knelt behind after returning fire. A bullet scar made a white track alongside the rock above his head. The shooter up there hadn’t been shooting wildly. If he hadn’t caught a glimpse of movement and dropped, that first shot would have probably taken his head off.
A part of him resented having to play the decoy, even though it had made sense. He was Mario Gomez; he was the hunter who could give Flanagan a run for his money. Those pendejos up there should never have gotten a shot at him.
He pushed the knee-jerk sentiment aside, putting it down to fatigue. Flanagan knew what he was doing, and so did he. This was neither the time nor the place to let his personal pride get in the way.
He ducked around the boulder and forged up the rock-strewn slope, keeping low. It was too steep and uneven to get very far, very fast, and he soon had to take cover again, his chest heaving. More gunfire echoed from above, the heavier cracks of Flanagan’s ACE 52 warring with the lighter barks of what sounded like either a 5.56 or a 5.45.
Keeping his rifle leveled up at the saddle and taking a deep breath, Gomez continued upward. It sounded like he and Flanagan were about to get whoever was up there in an L-shape. Then it would be all over.
***
Flanagan ducked as a flurry of shots snapped overhead and smacked off his meager cover of a low rock outcropping, spraying him with grit and rock splinters while the bullets ricocheted away with loud, buzzing whines. Whoever was down there wasn’t going down without a fight. He eased around the left side of the boulder, trying to get a shot, and flinched back as another fusillade chipped away at that side of the rock. Only when the fire shifted away was he able to get up and move, dashing toward another outcrop, and he barely made it there before another storm of bullets sent him diving for cover, the impacts spitting grit over him as he rolled behind another rock.
He gritted his teeth. Whoever was down there was dug in like a tick, and wasn’t being shy about throwing lead around. He waited until the fire shifted away, responding to a couple more shots from below, the heavier noise identifying Gomez’ ACE 52, then scrambled out on his belly and dumped four more rounds into the netting-covered hollow ahead, the muzzle blast kicking dirt into the air in front of him.
***
Winter shrank back as accurate fire chipped away more of his barely-adequate cover. The camo netting was getting shredded, and only the fact that Beta had fallen at such an angle that his corpse was catching more of the incoming bullets had so far saved Winter’s life.
His luck wasn’t going to last, and he knew it. The OP had become an untenable position, and as much as a part of him that he had long since brought under strict control wanted to kill these men, he knew that he needed to get out. Whoever they were, they weren’t the mission. Bevan was the mission, and Bevan was inside.
It was possible, he realized, as he mag-dumped the rest of the rounds in his magazine up at the enemy shooter on the higher ground, that he’d been stumbled upon by Site 117’s exterior security, but he doubted it. The site security forces were using 5.56mm rifles, and he could hear the difference between 5.56 and 7.62 or some heavier cartridge. No, these were part of a different force. There was another player in the game.
The Board’s concerns about Bevan attracting attention had turned out to be entirely valid, after all.
But that could be dealt with later. Right at that moment, survival was his primary objective.
As his bolt locked back on an empty magazine, he was already pulling a smoke grenade out of his vest, grabbing the ring with the pinky of his shooting hand and yanking it clear. He dropped the smoke on Beta’s corpse; he would have preferred a frag, but he couldn’t guarantee that he’d get out of the defile fast enough to avoid getting caught in the blast.
As the cylindrical grenade started spewing high-concentration white smoke, he scrambled down toward the objective. It was the only way out.
His gear almost caught him, pinching him in the narrow slot between rocks. He forced his way through, then lost his purchase. The rocks and grit beneath him gave way, and he found himself sliding down the slope, flailing for a handhold while he clenched his rifle with a death grip, leaving a billowing plume of dust behind him, even as the smoke rose into the mid-afternoon sky.
He skidded down the narrow draw that drainage had carved from the saddle where he’d set up. He was momentarily obscured from the view of the Site, but he was afraid that his dust wasn’t going to be. And he was going to have to have an explanation for that, if his next gambit was going to work.
***
White smoke billowed out of the cleft, and the gunfire died away. Flanagan kept his rifle pointed at it, anyway, just in case. “Gomez!” he yelled. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” Gomez’ voice drifted up from below. “You?”
“I’m good,” he replied. “Meet me up top. We need to get the hell away from here.”
In a matter of minutes, Gomez was heaving himself up to the ridgeline, panting. “I think they broke contact and ran,” he said softly. The quiet of the mountains had returned as the echoes of the gunfire faded.
“I’m pretty sure they did,” Flanagan agreed, his weapon still aimed in. “But we just blew our cover. Anyone within earshot knows we’re here now. I’d be surprised if we didn’t have drones looking for us in another five minutes.” He chanced a look behind and up the ridge. It didn’t look like there were many other covered and concealed positions to set up with visibility on the target. Which was why they’d come here in the first place.
“We need to get on the other side of the ridge,” he said, levering himself to his feet. He felt tired and weak as the adrenaline started to wear off. “Get behind some kind of cover, at least. And we need to get the hell away from that smoke.”
“Lead the way,” Gomez said. Flanagan got to his feet and started down the back side of the slope, away from the target.
As he went, he keyed his radio. The rest of the team was closer, barely two hundred yards down the hillside. “Kodiak, Woodsrunner,” he sent. “We’re compromised. Heading to the backup site, six hundred yards to your northwest.”
“Roger,” Brannigan replied. “We’ll meet you there.”
***
Winter reached the road to find the vehicles waiting for him. That wasn’t all, though.
Four ATVs were approaching from the Site, fast. And the men on them were well-armed.
