by Peter Nealen
Gomez turned away from the door and mule-kicked it just below the doorknob.
The door splintered, but held. Flanagan felt a sinking, sick feeling in his guts. He’d been on failed breaches a few times before, and they were never fun. Not that they had absolute surprise at the moment, anyway, but now the bad guys knew where they were coming in. And there were probably going to be muzzles pointed at that door as soon as it finally opened. He lifted his own OBR a little bit more, his finger just barely off the trigger. Without frags or flashbangs, this was going to be hair-raisingly risky.
Gomez kicked the door again. The jamb cracked, but the door stayed stubbornly shut. A burst of gunfire suddenly blasted through it, splintering the old wood as the bullets punched clear through, flinging stinging fragments into their faces.
With what might have been a muttered curse, Gomez hauled back and slammed his boot into the door a third time. The lock broke, the jamb shattered, and the door swung open.
There was nothing for it. Flanagan threw himself through the doorway.
Bullets snapped past him, missing by inches or less, even as he cleared the corner and pivoted to face the man who was firing at him, swiveling to try to follow his high-speed entrance. He shot the black-clad man in the throat, at just the same time that Bianco came in behind him and hammered the man to the floor with a rapid series of five shots.
Wade was right behind Gomez, and his own rifle coughed loudly in the entry hall, smashing another sicario back against the white wall. That one hadn’t been wearing plates; he left a wide red smear on the plaster as he sagged to the floor.
Then they were in, spreading out around the hall, weapons tracking for more threats. The two they’d already killed appeared to be it.
The entry hall was a short, cruciform room, with a second set of arched doors leading straight ahead, presumably toward the main hall, and open, similarly arched doorways leading down hallways to either side. A quick glance showed what might have been stairs on either side, leading up to the only second floor in the hacienda.
The central doors were shut. Flanagan suddenly suspected that there were probably shooters on the other side, their weapons trained on the doors at that very moment. That central hall and second floor were the most likely redoubt for anyone still on the compound.
He had to make a decision quickly. The longer they lingered, the more likely that they would get bogged down. With only four men, CQB got even more dangerous. Especially when they were looking for hostages.
“Going left,” he said, just loudly enough for the other three to hear him. The room where they were pretty sure the hostages were being kept was that way. Securing them needed to be the first priority. They could worry about the rest of the Espino-Gallos later.
He’d barely finished speaking when he turned down the left-hand hallway, his rifle up and canted slightly to bring the iron sights just below his eye. The scope would be all but useless in there. He needed to be able to see.
Rolling his feet as he moved, he glided down the hallway, shifting his muzzle and point of aim briefly up the staircase to his right, just before Gomez took it over as the two of them passed it. The landing above was empty, but taking chances with open spaces in a close-quarters fight was a good way to get dead with a quickness.
There were three doors on each side of the hallway ahead, before the corner. Flanagan’s lips thinned behind his beard. They were going to have to clear all of them; as relatively certain of the location of the makeshift prison as they were, this still had to be a methodical, systematic search.
So he moved to the first door, stepping aside to cover down the hallway, while Gomez took the door itself.
No sooner had Gomez stepped in to test the doorknob than a submachinegun muzzle was stuck around the corner ahead, and flame strobed in the dimness of the hallway with a loud, stuttering roar.
Flanagan dropped to a knee as bullets smacked into plaster and wood of the ceiling and the walls, snapping his rifle up and firing four fast shots down the hallway. He didn’t have much of a target, and shooting guns out of hands was a horrible Hollywood fantasy that refused to die, but he blasted chips of plaster and brick in the shooter’s face with the first three shots. He was just trying to force the guy back and get him to stop shooting for a second.
By some fluke he would never pretend to understand, the fourth round hit the Steyr TMP almost dead-center in the receiver.
The bullet smashed the receiver before it was deflected by the bolt and tore into the shooter’s hand. The man dropped the shattered machine pistol with a yell, and then Flanagan was sprinting down the hallway toward him.
He knew he was leaving uncleared rooms behind him, but the biggest rule of thumb when it came to CQB was always, “Address the most immediate threat.”
He slowed as he got closer to the corner, fighting to get his breathing under control, his muzzle pointed at the bend in the hallway. He stepped out, keeping most of his body barricaded behind the corner, and snapped the rifle up.
The narco shooter was clearly in shock, sagging against the wall, holding his bleeding hand.
For a brief second, Flanagan hesitated. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with this one. The guy wasn’t exactly a threat, not at the moment, but leaving a live one behind was a recipe for disaster in a situation like this.
Two more men in black appeared down the hall, momentarily deferring the decision, even as Wade stepped up beside him, leaning out only slightly farther into the hall to level his own OBR. The two guys in black were armed. One of them, long haired and sporting a pointed goatee, saw them at the moment that Flanagan shifted his own muzzle from the wounded man. His eyes widened and he tried to bring his shotgun up, just before Flanagan shot him twice in the chest, as fast as the trigger would reset. The suppressor’s cough was still brutally loud in the plastered hallway, especially when paired with Wade’s, who had fired at almost the same time.
The wounded man flinched back from the paired muzzle blasts, even as Flanagan’s target fell backward, sitting down hard on the dark wood floor. He looked a little confused for a moment, then collapsed onto his back.
Wade’s man had been wearing armor, and he staggered, the wind knocked out of him by the twin hammer blows of the bullets hitting his front plate. He might even have a couple of broken ribs. Wade transitioned to his head at the same second that Flanagan did, and the next two 7.62mm rounds crisscrossed just behind his eyeballs. Blood, hair, bone, and brains spattered against the wall behind him and one eye bulged partway out before he crumpled into a boneless heap.
In that second, the shock of the muzzle blasts, suppressed though they were, had knocked the wounded man out of his shocked stupor. His brain started to realize that he was a dead man if he didn’t do something quick, and he grabbed for the knife at his side.
It was the last thing he ever did. Flanagan saw the movement as the guy with the plate carrier hit the floor and pivoted, his finger taking up the slack on the trigger at the same time. He blasted the wounded sicario in the face from almost an arm’s length away.
Blood spattered and the black clad man collapsed, a ragged hole in his forehead, surrounded by powder burns.
Behind them, more gunfire erupted, reverberating down the hallway, the echoes magnified by the enclosed space and the hardened surfaces. A quick glance back showed Flanagan that Gomez and Bianco were trading fire with someone on the stairs.
He was about to push down the hallway anyway, when movement in a doorway ahead warned him. Slamming himself into Wade, he propelled the two of them across the hallway, even as a hand stuck a Glock 18 out the doorway and sprayed almost a full magazine of 9mm down the hall, the bullets skipping and skimming along the inside wall where they had just been standing.
This was definitely not going according to plan.
***
The hacienda looked deserted from the hillside, but the echoing bangs coming from inside, muffled but still distinct, put the lie to that appearance. Brannig
an crouched next to Jenkins, just behind a clump of cactus, and lifted his rifle to scan the place.
“Looks like they’ve fallen back inside,” he muttered. “Did you see where the boys made entry?”
Jenkins shook his head. He was watching the rest of the hills, letting his eyes rove for threats. “I think they went in the front,” he said. “The door looks like it’s open, though it’s hard to tell from this angle. But we were still out of sight when they went in.”
Brannigan grimaced. From the sounds of it, there was a hell of a fight going on in there, which meant that none of the boys were likely to even hear their radios, much less be able to spare the attention to talk. Which made making entry a crap shoot. He really, really didn’t want to risk a friendly-fire incident, but at the same time, he couldn’t leave Flanagan, Wade, Gomez, and Bianco in there on their own.
“Take us around the back,” he said. “We’ll hit it from the far side if we can, so that hopefully we can keep enough distance between us to deconflict before one of us shoots one of our own.”
***
Flanagan fired at the door; the narco behind it wasn’t exposing anything but his hand and the Glock 18, but 7.62 rounds blew chips and splinters into his face and forced him back.
Then Wade was pushing him toward the nearest door. “We’ve got to get out of this hallway!” he barked.
He was right. Hallways were deathtraps. They were little more than bullet funnels. They needed to take a room, strongpoint, and proceed from there.
“On me!” Flanagan bellowed down the hallway. With little more than a single backward glance, Gomez peeled off and sprinted down the hallway toward them, stopping about halfway and turning, still standing, his rifle pointed back the way he’d come.
“Bianco!” he bellowed. “Turn and go!”
Bianco followed suit, pounding past Gomez toward Flanagan and Wade, who paused at the threshold before Flanagan stepped out, kicked the door in, and immediately planted his foot and drove into the room as the much flimsier barrier shuddered inward with a splintering crack.
It was a bedroom, but as he quickly swept the space with eyes and muzzle, he saw that it was currently empty. A four-poster bed without curtains, draped in a Southwestern pattern blanket, was set against the wall, just below the window that faced the inner courtyard. A fancy chest of drawers was topped by a big, very expensive looking TV. There was a second door that looked like it led into a shared bathroom.
Wade had gone in after him, and quickly swung back around to cover on the door. Gomez and Bianco rushed in behind, each man quickly taking stock and moving to a spot to hold security, Bianco on the door facing back the way they’d come and Gomez on the window.
With a final few moments to draw breath, Flanagan fished his radio out of his chest rig. “Kodiak, Woodsrunner.”
“Send it,” Brannigan replied.
“We’ve momentarily strongpointed in a room on the inside northwest corner of the hacienda,” he said. “We’re going to start moving along the northern wall, clearing as we go. We believe that the hostages are being held in one of the northern rooms.”
“Roger that,” Brannigan replied. He sounded like he was breathing hard; they must be on the move. Only then, through the faint ringing in his ears, did Flanagan notice that the gunfire outside had stopped.
Though not for long. Gomez’ rifle cracked, and glass shattered. He fired twice more, the suppressor’s cough still sharp enough in the small room. “We need to get moving,” he said.
Flanagan glanced outside, then snatched his head back as answering bullets smashed more glass and thudded into the window frame. There was a body lying sprawled in the courtyard, but shadows were moving in doorways and windows across the way, and more muzzle flashes joined the rest.
“How many of these bastards are crammed into this place?” Wade muttered.
Brannigan was still talking on the radio. “I say again, we are going to make entry on the eastern side,” he repeated. “Watch your fire to the east.”
“Good copy,” Flanagan replied. “Watch yourselves; there might still be sentries on that side.”
“Roger,” Brannigan panted. “Jenkins just took one out. Good hunting. We’ll see you inside.”
“Out,” Flanagan replied, shoving the radio back in its pouch. Gomez was right. They needed to move.
“Going right,” he said.
“I’ve got lead,” Wade replied.
He waited just long enough to get the nod from Bianco, and then both men were out into the hallway, barely clearing each other as they went through the door. Bianco’s rifle barked immediately, as Gomez and Flanagan followed Wade.
Flanagan tapped Bianco as he went past, to let him know that everyone was out of the room. As he did, he saw a black-clad body twitching on the floor, not six feet away.
It was awfully close quarters for even the slightly shorter AR-10 pattern rifles. But they made do.
They pushed quickly to the next door. The hallway was otherwise clear for the moment, but muzzles were still trained on either end. You never knew in a CQB fight when somebody was going to pop around the corner with a gun pointed at your head.
With Wade and Bianco covering the long axis of the hallway, Flanagan and Bianco smashed through the next door and made entry, the other two quickly following them in. This room was a mirror image of the last one, and similarly unoccupied.
They paused just long enough to reset, and then they were flowing out into the hall again.
Flanagan knew they were getting closer to the room that they’d pegged as the prison. It bothered him a little that they were only clearing the inside of the hallway; the outside rooms were still going untouched. But they had to pick one side and then go back over the next, if they didn’t find what they were looking for.
The next room was a storeroom. Once again, they flowed inside, made sure it was clear, and then set up to head back out again.
This time, the door across from them opened just before Flanagan and Gomez exited the storeroom.
Two suppressed 7.62mm muzzles immediately snapped to cover the door, fingers tightening on triggers. They were mere ounces of pressure away from firing when both men stopped.
A girl was peeking out the window. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old. Her eyes widened at the sight of the dusty, camouflage-clad men pointing what had to look like huge, evil-looking tan rifles at her. With a yelp, the girl ducked back inside the room and slammed the door.
Flanagan took his finger off the trigger for a moment and gulped a breath. Damn, that had been close. And what was a little kid like that doing here?
She must be one of the sicarios’ brats. Didn’t get the word to fall back, so she hid in the nearest room she could find. Shit. Now we’ve got to either bust across and clear that room, or bypass it and hope that she doesn’t pop back out with a grenade.
He hesitated, thinking. It was a delicate decision he had to make. He hadn’t seen much of the room across the way past the girl, but it was entirely possible that she wasn’t alone in there. And it was equally possible, knowing what he knew about narcos, that she was finding a weapon to use against them right then. He was suddenly, though not for the first time that day, acutely conscious of the lack of armor plates in his chest rig.
“Dammit,” he muttered. “Across the way. With me.”
He punched out into the hallway, moving next to the door across the hall and posting up to cover the long axis toward the eastern corner. Gomez did the same toward the west, and Wade and Bianco went straight, Wade smashing through the closed door without slowing down more than a half a step.
As soon as he felt Bianco go behind him, Flanagan turned and followed.
It was another bedroom. There was a woman passed out on the bed; she had to be on some serious narcotics to still be unconscious with a firefight going on only yards away. The little girl was reaching under the bed, until Wade stepped closer and put the slightly warm end of his suppressor against her head.
“Leave it,” he said. She looked up at him. Wade’s pale blue eyes were icy cold. He’d do it.
She brought her hands out, empty, and started to cry. But there was something wrong with the sound. Flanagan didn’t think it was genuine.
“Find something to tie her up with, quick,” he said.
“Why not take care of her permanently?” Wade asked, his eyes still fixed with that unblinking stare. The little girl’s sobs had died down, and she looked up at him with the beginnings of very real fear in her eyes.
“Because we don’t kill kids,” Flanagan snapped. “Now restrain her so we can move on. Time’s flying.”
It didn’t take long to find a pair of shoes in the corner. Bianco ripped the shoelaces out and bound the little girl’s wrists and ankles tightly. Meanwhile, Wade glanced under the bed.
“Check this out,” he said, pulling out a Mini-Uzi. He looked at Flanagan. “She’d have done it to us.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Flanagan said flatly. “Bring it along. We’ve got to move.”
Wade looked a little disgusted, but did as Flanagan said, shoving the machine pistol into the back of his belt. It was a tight fit, but he got it in. Then they were moving again.
The next door was the prison, if he was remembering the layout right. Once again, they took the bare handful of seconds to set up before Bianco kicked the door in.
It clearly had been the prison. It was a larger room, but bare of furnishings except for almost a dozen sleeping bags on the floor. There were tin plates stacked in one corner, none of them particularly clean, and a bucket surrounded by flies that stank like sewage in another. The place was otherwise barren.
It was also unoccupied. The hostages weren’t there.
“Now what the fuck do we do?” Wade asked angrily from his position on the door, covering back down the hallway.
Gunfire echoed down the hall, coming from somewhere else in the hacienda. Brannigan and the rest had made entry.
“We keep clearing and searching,” Flanagan said grimly. Gomez nodded. “Keep moving and watch your targets.”
