Kill or Capture (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 7)

by Peter Nealen

  Eta was standing by the hood of the XTerra, kitted up and with his rifle in his hands. Winter, caked in dust and missing his cap, stepped up next to him.

  “I’ll handle this,” he said. Eta stepped back. He was probably relieved to do so; Winter, to the best of his knowledge, was the only one of them directly employed by the Organization. The rest were carefully-screened contractors.

  The ATVs spread out, forming a loose skirmish line across the road, stopping some twenty meters ahead of the lead Range Rover. The men were all wearing the same storm gray fatigues and gear that he’d observed at the wall and on the roof of the villa, and all carrying Steyr AUGs, except for two out on the flanks, who appeared to be carrying the LMG variant of the same rifle.

  “This is a restricted area,” the man on the lead ATV said. He was the only one riding solo.

  Winter dug in his chest rig and came out with a small plastic card. He held it out, letting his ARX160 hang on its sling, his hands well away from the firing control. “I’m well aware,” he replied icily. “More aware than you are, apparently, since you allowed a hostile force to get within three kilometers of the Site without being observed.”

  The man swung off his ATV, glancing to either side at his backup, and stepped forward to take Winter’s credentials, studying them carefully. “That could go either way,” he said. He was speaking English, but with a slightly odd accent; Winter couldn’t place it, but didn’t think that it was the man’s first language. “You are well-armed, and we weren’t informed that you were coming, ‘Alpha Two-Seven.’”

  “Because a surprise security inspection is always broadcast ahead of time,” Winter said acidly, taking his card back. “My credentials are genuine, as a scan once we are inside will reveal. In the meantime, I suggest that you intensify your exterior patrols. There is someone lurking around this place, and they have already ambushed us once.” He raised a dust-caked eyebrow. “Assuming you have exterior patrols out?”

  The man had the good grace to look slightly sheepish, but didn’t answer. “Very well, ‘Alpha Two-Seven,’” he said instead, turning back to his ATV. “We’ll go inside and check your credentials. In the meantime, I will get some of my men investigating the attack on your convoy.”

  Eta glanced at him, expressionless, as they climbed back into the XTerra. Winter didn’t respond at all.

  In a way, the opposition, whoever they were, had done them a favor. They never would have gotten inside so easily otherwise.

  Chapter 15

  The ridgeline provided little to no cover, so the backup OP turned out to be a slightly shallow depression just short of the crest, about a klick to the northwest of where the last of the tattered white smoke was still dispersing.

  The Blackhearts gathered in a rough perimeter, getting down in the prone behind their rucks, rifles propped on the packs. Bianco and Curtis were set up on opposite ends of the vaguely elliptical perimeter, their MAG-58s pointed up and down the crest of the ridge.

  Flanagan was next to Curtis, and spared a glance at the shorter man. Curtis was sweating and breathing hard; he was strong, but the mountains weren’t his natural environment, and the movement was clearly kicking his ass.

  “What’s the matter, Kevin?” he said softly. “You should be right at home. All this barren desert shit is just like Vegas.”

  “Fuck you, Joe,” Curtis replied. “I live in a civilized city, at a civilized altitude. I’m not like you barbarian mountain goats.”

  Flanagan just smiled slightly behind his beard. He’d been a bit worried about his friend; ever since he’d pulled him out of his apartment, sloppy drunk and despondent, Curtis had lacked a bit of his usual spark. As aggravating as Flanagan often found the smaller man, his irrepressible energy and big mouth were part of his personality. When Kevin Curtis went quiet, it was a cause for concern.

  “Whatever you need to tell yourself,” Flanagan said. “Truth is, all that city living’s just made you soft. Like I warned you it would.”

  “Soft?!” Curtis spluttered. “Soft?! I’d like to see you haul this fucking 240 up that mountainside with your skinny ass, Joseph!” Flanagan found it even more entertaining that Curtis was still being quiet in his indignation; their conversation couldn’t be heard past about an arm’s length away.

  “It’s a MAG-58, not a 240, Kevin,” he said. “I’d think ‘Mr. Machinegun’ would know that.”

  Curtis turned to stare at him, his eyes wide and his mouth set in a scowl, the whites of his eyes standing out in his dark face. “Really? You’re going to nitpick me on nomenclature?”

  “Well, kinda seemed like you lost your mojo,” Flanagan said, turning his gaze back on the ridgeline ahead of them. “Figured I needed to start picking up the slack. Which is bullshit, by the way.”

  Curtis was at a momentary loss for words. “Oh, hell no! I do not lose my mojo, Joseph!” he hissed. “The nerve!”

  “Face it, Kevin,” Flanagan said. “Sanda’s got you moping like a teenager.” He squinted toward the cleft where he and Gomez had had their firefight. “I did warn you.”

  Curtis muttered something, almost too quietly for Flanagan to hear. But it sounded something like, “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “What?” Flanagan asked. “Never thought you’d see the day that I was right? Kevin, I’ve been warning you about being a dumbass for years.”

  “Never thought that Mopey Joe would be right about a woman,” Curtis muttered. “Next thing you know, he’s gonna be getting all sophisticated, moving somewhere civilized, becoming a real ladies’ man.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Flanagan replied.

  “We’ll see,” Curtis said. But before he could say more, Flanagan held up a fist. Almost despite himself, Curtis fell silent, his eyes tracking along the barrel of his machinegun toward the hilltop to the east.

  Dust was rising from the far side of the mountain. Quite a lot of it, too. Someone was coming. Flanagan adjusted his position and sighted in, though a thousand meters was a long shot for a sixteen-inch 7.62 rifle with only a three-power scope. There were better optics available, but Wade had found some rugged three power prism scopes that would do the trick, and cost a lot less.

  After a moment, a pair of ATVs appeared on the mountaintop, coming to a stop just short of the cleft where the enemy had been set up. Flanagan could barely see the remains of the camouflage netting flapping in the thin breeze.

  Two men were riding on each vehicle, dressed in storm gray and carrying bullpup rifles. They were too far away to tell for sure, but he thought they were Steyr AUGs. The weapons were occasionally used by the Argentine Army, but Flanagan didn’t think these were Argentinians.

  They dismounted, their weapons held ready, and spread out, moving down toward the cleft, scanning the ground ahead of them.

  “Colonel!” Curtis hissed. A moment later, Flanagan heard the rustle as Brannigan crawled over to join them. Curtis pointed, and Brannigan peered through his own optic.

  “What do you think, Joe?” he asked. “Our friends that you tangled with, or somebody else?”

  “I don’t know,” Flanagan answered. “Didn’t get a good look at them; most of what I saw was movement and muzzle blast.”

  “Hmm,” Brannigan said by way of reply, continuing to watch the gray-clad group. “Doesn’t look like any Argentine uniform I’m aware of.”

  “Doesn’t look like anybody’s military uniform,” Flanagan answered. “I’m guessing that Bevan’s got some paramilitary security, and whoever bought their gear thought that the Army had the right idea a few years back.”

  Curtis snorted. The Army’s ACU pattern digital camouflage had been mostly gray, and hadn’t blended into any of the environments they’d been working in. Since all three men lying there had been Marines, they’d always found the Army’s choice of combat uniforms to be baffling and amusing.

  “I’m moving up higher,” Flanagan said, coming to a decision. “See if I can’t get a better view.” Without waiting for eit
her Brannigan or Curtis to respond, he started crawling up toward the actual crest of the ridgeline.

  The slope wasn’t bad there, prompting the thought that they would have been better off climbing the mountain over on this side, and then following the crest of the ridgeline to the OP. But he knew that they would have had much less cover and concealment, especially from the objective, and that they would probably have still gotten into a firefight with the shooters who had been dug into the cleft. They just would have been at more of a disadvantage, as the enemy would have most likely spotted them first.

  Crawling was always a miserable exercise, and the rocks and coarse grit of the mountainside didn’t make it any better. But in a few moments, he made it to a point where he could see over the ridgeline at the valley below and the villa compound in the distance.

  Lying flat, Flanagan surveyed what he could see. There were more ATVs out there, moving in pairs. Some were climbing up the defile where the hostile who’d escaped had slid down. Others were fanning out onto the mountainside to the west.

  Where he lay, just above the Blackhearts’ perimeter, was right about at the corner of a rough V of mountains, the wide end pointing to the valley in the next ridge across a dry riverbed where the villa sat behind a low, iron-topped wall. And, even as he watched, more of the ATVs were climbing to the top of the ridge almost directly north, the crest pointing straight back toward their position. And they were moving fast, plumes of dust rising behind their tires as they bounced over the rocky terrain.

  Something made him look above the vehicles. There was a small speck up there. He didn’t need to see it that clearly to know what it was. They might be awfully high for enemy helicopters, but small surveillance drones were another matter. He didn’t know why they hadn’t seen any already, but there was definitely at least one pacing the ATVs, and where there was one, there were probably more.

  There wasn’t time to get down the hill, decide what to do, and get back to an advantageous position. There was a time and a place for a reverse-slope defense, but from a cursory look at the lay of the land, Flanagan didn’t think this was it. Instead, he reached down to his radio and keyed the mic.

  “Kodiak, Woodsrunner,” he called. “We’ve got multiple ATV teams moving up the mountain toward us. Looks like they’re sweeping the ridgeline, supported by surveillance drones. I’d suggest getting everybody up here to my position and get ready to take contact.”

  “Roger,” Brannigan replied. “En route.”

  The rest of the team wasn’t trying to be as sneaky as Flanagan; he had eyes on the enemy, after all, so they didn’t have chance contact to worry about. They scrambled up to join him, only getting down on their bellies once they reached the top.

  Not a moment too soon, either. The drones had gotten much closer, and the ATVs were suddenly accelerating, coming up to move in on the Blackhearts’ position from two angles.

  “Here they come,” Bianco muttered, settling his cheek against his MAG-58’s buttstock and digging the bipods into the rocky soil. The others all set in and started tracking targets, while Santelli and Kirk took up rear security, watching back the way they’d come.

  Getting jumped from behind while getting sucked into the more obvious fight was a mistake that none of them were going to survive.

  The ATVs only advanced to within about six hundred yards in either direction, before they found what little defilade they could and started to dismount and spread out across the ridgeline.

  Flanagan watched as they moved forward, leaning into the hillside, their weapons carried at the alert, but not aimed in. Beside him, he could almost feel Curtis frowning.

  “Do they really think we can’t hit them from here?” Curtis asked. The men in gray were walking forward carefully but upright instead of moving from cover to cover. Cover and concealment were pretty meager up there, but this was just sloppy.

  “Apparently not,” Flanagan replied, his reticle already held on one of the advancing figures. The holdover at that range was still a little rough, but he’d be within minute-of-bad-guy, at least. “They’re probably thinking max effective range for 5.56.”

  Curtis just shook his head, settled himself slightly behind the machinegun’s sights, and braced the buttstock in his shoulder, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

  Then a drone buzzed by overhead, and Hancock shot it out of the sky with a single, well-placed round.

  The crack of the shot echoed across the mountains, and then Curtis drowned it out with a long, hammering burst.

  The MAG wasn’t loaded with any tracers; the belts were all ball, which meant there was no visual reference except for the impacts. But Curtis was good enough with a machinegun, especially a MAG-58, which was deployed, with some minor differences, by the US military as the M240, that he didn’t need them. He knew exactly where he was shooting.

  The stream of flying metal chopped into the first man’s legs at knee height and he collapsed, screaming, the sound lost in the roar of automatic gunfire. It didn’t last long, either, as he fell into the stream of 7.62 rounds. Bullets ripped bloody holes through his shoulders and face as he dropped, silencing him.

  Flanagan hadn’t been watching. He’d opened fire at the same time Curtis had, his reticle already in position. His first shot was slightly low; he’d been trying to judge the angle down the slope and had missed it by a little. But the round went right below the man’s front plate, punching through his guts and out his lower back, and he fell just as the follow-up round ripped out his throat.

  The fact that they were wearing body armor in the mountains said something about the caliber of leadership that the Front’s security was being subjected to. Not that any of the Blackhearts had any sympathy.

  Even as they scrambled for cover, firing wildly back at the Blackhearts, more of the gray-clad men were dying. Curtis was playing his muzzle back and forth, dragging his bursts across their formation, while Flanagan, Gomez, and Brannigan aimed in and dropped men as their sights settled. Six hundred yards was a long shot, but it wasn’t nearly as long for a 7.62 rifle as it was for the 5.56 bullpups the enemy were using.

  Bullets hissed and snapped overhead and smacked into the ground ahead of them, kicking up little fountains of dirt. The smaller, lighter 5.56mm rounds were still dangerous, but accuracy fell off quickly at longer ranges as they lost energy. The heavier 7.62mm bullets still packed more of a punch and flew straighter farther out.

  Behind him, Flanagan could hear more gunfire as Bianco and the others opened up on the second group. The Blackhearts’ fire wasn’t overwhelming, especially with only nine of them engaging, but even as he tracked in on a man in gray who was down on his belly, shooting wildly up the slope, one of the group down below tossed another smoke grenade, that started billowing white obscurant almost as soon as it hit the ground, cutting off his view.

  With his target lost, Flanagan shifted his aim down the mountainside. There was another pair of ATVs still climbing toward them, just inside five hundred yards, and he blasted the driver off the first one. He didn’t kill him; he’d aimed right at the bottom of the man’s front plate, but the bullet had hit the plate itself with a jackhammer blow instead of going over it. It was enough to knock him off, though, and he tumbled down the slope, taking his companion with him in a tangle of limbs, gear, and weapons, as the ATV flipped over backward.

  He took his eye away from the scope to scan the slopes beneath them. “They’re falling back!” he yelled. And they were; the ATVs that were still manned were turning tail and making tracks as fast as the terrain allowed, and smoke was wreathing the ridgeline to either side of the Blackhearts’ position, where the advancing elements had tossed grenades to cover their retreat.

  “Up!” Brannigan barked, as the dark specks of a couple more drones appeared in the sky above. A shot rang out from down the hill and one of the drones broke apart, the victim of Santelli’s aim. “We’ve got to move, before they come back with more numbers and better prepared.”

&n
bsp; Flanagan was already heaving himself to his feet, and accepted his ruck as Hancock heaved it at him. Curtis was scrambling up, hauling the MAG-58 off the ground and looping what was left of the belt around the receiver.

  “Joe, you and Mario are our eyes,” Brannigan said. “I know you’ll be more exposed, but I want you up here on the ridgeline, while the rest of us move downslope and beat feet around the west side. I need eyes on that compound and anyone coming out of it.”

  “Roger that,” Flanagan said, getting a nod from Gomez. “Give us a bit of a head start, though.”

  ***

  Winter didn’t relax as they got inside the compound, even as the ATV teams roared out through the open gate. He glanced up at the security men on the walls, and they were all looking out, across the valley at the ridge where he and Beta had been compromised.

  Whoever the intruders were, they had done Winter and his team a favor. Beta’s death was a small price to pay. But as soon as Bevan got even a hint that Winter and his team were there for him, all bets were off.

  He’d put this team several steps above the regular security personnel the Organization had put here. Looking around as he walked into the glass-fronted entryway to the sprawling villa, he saw that most of the men in gray appeared to be Hispanic, South American recruits hired, trained, and equipped by the Organization. He expected that more than a few had been cartel sicarios at one time. They were certainly dangerous; the Organization’s security arm didn’t play around when it came to training their people. But they weren’t on the paramilitary arm’s level.

  That said, he and his team were hugely outnumbered. And quantity has a quality all its own.

  Even as he thought it, a towering, heavily-muscled man in khakis and a black polo shirt, flanked by several more gray-clad men in plate carriers and helmets, their Steyr AUGs held ready in their hands. The rifles weren’t pointed at Winter at his men, not quite, but they were pointed in such a way that they could be snapped up and aimed in in a split second.