Frozen Conflict (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  Brannigan let his gaze drift across the snow-laden firs and pines surrounding his home. He thought about it.

  Dalca was the weirdest, most disturbing woman he’d ever met. Granted, he’d spent most of his career surrounded by infantrymen of one stripe or another. There hadn’t been many women around. But Dalca was a strange case any way he looked at it. She came across as a sultry femme fatale, oozing sex appeal and blatantly using it to get what she wanted. But there was a cold, calculating, extremely well-informed and knowledgeable mind behind the sexy façade. The trouble was, he found her impossible to read; he couldn’t tell where the façade ended and the real Erika Dalca—assuming that was her real name; somehow, he doubted it—began.

  She’d done more than just support their op for pay. She had personally taken a hand in not only their insertion but also their extract, apparently having kept tabs on the entire thing as it unfolded. She’d even gone down to the Yucatan peninsula herself, taking Brannigan and Hart onto her personal yacht to get them out of there before the Mexican authorities decided to take them into custody.

  She was an enigma, and she disturbed him almost as much as she apparently disturbed Chavez. That said, she couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Nor could her overtures. Until he knew what game she was playing, he had to try to play along, at least to some extent.

  “Well, a trip to Seattle’s not that bad, is it?” he said, looking back at Chavez. “We’ll go meet with Mr. Guildenhall, see what he says.”

  He looked back at the cabin. He’d been looking forward to the last few days with Hank, but his son would understand. Duty called. Even if Hank had no idea just what “duty” entailed these days.

  ***

  The Fisherman’s Restaurant was a nice place, if rather unlikely as a clandestine meeting spot. It did provide a suitable level of background noise, between the crowds, the traffic off the end of the pier, and the lapping of the waves at the pilings beneath it. Brannigan still wasn’t particularly impressed with Guildenhall’s tradecraft, though, because there really was only one way in or out; down the pier.

  Guildenhall was easy to pick out. He’d said, when Chavez had called—using a different burner phone—that he’d be wearing white. It had seemed amateurish at the time; how many people might be wearing white in a waterfront restaurant in Seattle? But Brannigan picked him out as soon as he stepped through the doors.

  Guildenhall had to weigh well over three hundred pounds. He didn’t look soft, though he also didn’t look muscular. He’s an old-school sort of fat. Big gut, with a lot of muscle holding it up. He was sitting quite straight in his chair, and there was a strange sense of solidity to him. He reminded Brannigan of Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon.

  The white-suited, human hillside rose as they approached, a smile creasing his jowly face. His white hair was combed neatly back from his high forehead, and his eyes were alert and observant, never staying still. For all his obesity, this was a trained and undoubtedly dangerous man.

  “Mr. Brannigan, I assume?” Guildenhall asked, extending a hand the size of a dinner plate.

  Holy hell, he even sounds like Sidney Greenstreet. “That would be me,” Brannigan said, shaking the big man’s hand. He almost changed his mind about Guildenhall at the handshake. His hand, big as it was, was soft, his grip light and limp, almost a dead fish.

  “Please, sit down,” the fat man said, waving expansively at the chairs across the table from him. “I’ve ordered already, I hope you don’t mind.”

  Brannigan just shook his head curtly as he sat down. They’d had to be careful going to Seattle; neither he nor Chavez had Washington State concealed weapons permits, and Washington wasn’t particularly good about honoring other states’ permits. He was still carrying, of course; he just had to be somewhat more discreet. In this case, that meant a .357 LCR in his coat pocket.

  “I’m told you wanted to talk to me,” he said, as he leaned back in his chair. It creaked a little; he was far leaner than Guildenhall, but Brannigan was still not a small man.

  “Yes, yes,” Guildenhall said. “Right to the point. I represent an international consulting company. You probably haven’t heard of us; we don’t tend to advertise.”

  “Try me,” Brannigan interrupted.

  If he was irritated by the interruption, Guildenhall didn’t show it. He simply smiled, his eyes crinkling. “The official name is Guildenhall & Wayland,” he said. “Also known as GWI.”

  Brannigan glanced over at Chavez, who shrugged fractionally. He’d never heard of them, either. “Go on.”

  “Certain…associates of ours have alerted us to a problem in Eastern Europe,” Guildenhall continued. “A problem that requires someone of your skills and capability to deal with. A mutual acquaintance of ours put me in touch with Mr. Chavez, who led you to me.”

  “What exactly is this problem?” Brannigan asked coolly.

  Guildenhall reached inside his voluminous suit jacket. Brannigan tensed, ready to flip the table into Guildenhall’s face and grab at his LCR if the big man produced a weapon. But all that came out in Guildenhall’s large, soft hand was a fat envelope, which he placed on the table. “I believe you will find all the information you require in here,” he said. “The basics are in the top few sheets; if you decide to look further, you will find more in-depth information that should be relevant to a man of your interests.”

  Keeping one eye on Guildenhall, who leaned back in his chair as it groaned in protest and smiled, Brannigan reached across the table and took the envelope. It was sealed, and he quickly slit it open with the small pocket knife he palmed from his belt and pulled out the packet.

  Letting Chavez watch Guildenhall, he looked down at the papers in front of him. The first page was a letter.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  A certain Romanian arms dealer, by the name of Eugen Codreanu, is currently in hiding in Transnistria. There are several indicators that point to Mr. Codreanu as the man who sold the Kilo-class submarine you and your team witnessed the terrorists using to escape from the Tourmaline-Delta platform. It is considered likely that he has information pertaining to the organization behind the attacks and the Tourmaline-Delta incident.

  Transnistria is a semi-independent, pro-Russia breakaway republic between Moldova and Ukraine. Codreanu has a great many contacts there, which is believed to be why it is one of his bolt-holes. Unfortunately, someone else has apparently found him, and has already staged one attack on his dacha. The attack was repulsed, and Transnistrian and Russian authorities are investigating, but it is only a matter of time before they try again. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go to Transnistria and extract Mr. Codreanu to a safe haven where he can be interrogated.

  I believe that we have a mutual interest in this man. Should you accomplish the mission, any information extracted will be shared with you.

  The letter was unsigned. At the bottom of the page was a dollar sign with a number and quite a few zeroes after it. It was a good payday, even taking operational expenses and splitting the pay between eleven men into consideration.

  The pay didn’t interest him as much as it might have, though. It was important, certainly, but the possibility of cracking some of the secret of who they had been fighting on the Tourmaline-Delta platform, and later on the Yucatan Peninsula, was enticing as hell. He’d lost two men on that op. He wanted to know who was behind it.

  And eventually, he wanted to have a part in nailing them to the wall.

  Strictly speaking, as a mercenary, the only thing he should care about was the pay. And going into Eastern Europe, especially some post-Soviet breakaway republic that apparently was under the Russian eye, was going to be easily as hairy as Burma. But maybe he was getting desensitized to such things.

  It wasn’t a good sign, if he was. But he thought that this was more about tracking down whoever had blown up the Tourmaline-Delta platform.

  After murdering all the hostages that Brannigan’s Blackhearts had gone to rescu
e.

  “All soldiers are romantics,” he’d read somewhere. He couldn’t really dispute the assertion. He wanted a piece of this. He looked up at Guildenhall.

  “I’ll have to do some looking into this, and talk to my men,” he said. “Assuming that this is legit.”

  Guildenhall only smiled again. “Of course,” he said. “I suggest you not take too long, though. The matter is somewhat time sensitive, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. Your associate here knows how to reach me, should you decide to take the job.” His smile changed ever so little. “I think I can arrange for some corroboration that might help to put your mind at ease, as well.”

  There wasn’t anything about that statement, or Guildenhall’s expression, that particularly put Brannigan’s mind at ease. But then, maybe that was simply a side effect of being a mercenary working in the “black” side of the world. His sense of paranoia was being steadily honed to a fine edge.

  The waiter was approaching, carrying at least three plates. “Ah!” Guildenhall exclaimed. “Just in time! Would you gentlemen like to order anything?”

  Chapter 3

  By the time Brannigan got back up to his cabin, Hank was gone. He’d left a note.

  Dad,

  Sorry I missed you on the way out, but I had to cut leave short by a day. Bit of an emergency back at the unit; I’m sure you know the feeling. I’ll be back out when I can.

  Stay safe,

  Hank

  He looked down at the signature. “Stay safe.” It wasn’t something a young man usually said to his retired father. And he knew that Hank hadn’t written it by accident. He hadn’t just accidentally slipped into using terminology he was used to from talking with his fellow officers and Marines.

  You know he suspects something. He’s suspected something ever since he told Hector how to get here. And you and Rebecca didn’t raise a dummy.

  Was it time to read Hank in? After all, what if something happened downrange? What if that terrorist’s bullet had been a couple inches to the right, and had cored out his brains? What if Huerta hadn’t been true to his word, and had made the Blackhearts disappear into the Mexican version of a black site?

  He knew that Hank understood operational security. But as a father, he didn’t want to simply vanish into the dark, leaving his son wondering why or how.

  Troubled, he folded the note and put it in his shirt pocket, then put the packet that Guildenhall had given him on the table and sat down. Taking the whole thing out, he started to study it.

  The situation wasn’t encouraging. He’d never been particularly well-versed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; that threat had been deemed over with when he’d first enlisted, and then September 11th had led to a near-total focus on Islamic extremism for most of the next twenty years. He’d been aware that things were stirring in the East; they always would be. He’d never bought into the “end of history” narrative that had been going around immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. History would end when the world did. But his focus had been elsewhere.

  Moldova was a majority-Romanian state that had been absorbed by the Soviet Union after World War II, then gained its independence after the ’91 collapse. The narrow strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border, however, was largely peopled by Russians and Ukrainians, who really didn’t want to be a part of an independent Romanian republic. There seemed to be a lot of rose-colored nostalgia for the “good old days” of the Soviet Union in Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, as it officially called itself. There’d been a border war fought between the Transnistrians and Moldovans in 1992, and while the shooting had stopped, the war had never really been ended.

  Which was where the Russians came in. He shook his head as he read further. The Russian Federation had had peacekeeping troops in Transnistria since ’92, and had ignored multiple timelines to withdraw them. The Russians were using Transnistria as an outpost, and as a lever to influence Moldova and keep the tiny, impoverished country from joining the European Union.

  Brannigan looked at that part with a bit of ambivalence. He knew enough about the EU to know about its increasingly heavy-handed bureaucracy and structural problems. The EU was showing its cracks already; the Moldovans might not be any better off as part of the EU than they would have been aligned with the Russians. Neither possibility was promising, as things stood.

  Operating in Transnistria was going to be hairy. It might not be quite as dangerous as Mexico, but it would be as bad as Burma, at least. They’d not only have the locals to worry about, but the Russians, and Russians that were going to be a bit testy, given the grumbling, low-level civil war they were involved in just a few hundred miles away, in eastern Ukraine. The Russians considered the Black Sea to be their pond, and probably wouldn’t take kindly to Western mercenaries poking around in one of their protectorates.

  And that wasn’t even getting into the organized crime part. According to the packet, Moldova and Transnistria were crawling with gangsters of all stripes. The post-Soviet chaos had been a godsend to the Mafiosi.

  His head came up as he heard a vehicle outside. His hand went to the Redhawk sitting on the table next to him. Hank was gone, and Hector hadn’t been planning to come back up. So, who was this?

  This place is getting entirely too well-known. He holstered the Magnum, then stood and went to the door, reaching behind the coat rack to grasp the full-length FAL he kept back there, hidden by a duster he never wore. An almost unconscious check assured him that there was a full mag in and a round in the pipe.

  He peered out the narrow window in the log wall next to the thick, timber door. He had a good line of sight almost half a mile down the driveway from the door. That was also by design.

  There was a car laboring up the driveway, a fairly expensive four-door sedan painted an almost iridescent green. It looked like a rental to him, and it really wasn’t suited to either the terrain or the conditions. He’d plowed the driveway with the snowplow attachment on the grill of an old F250 Custom that he’d picked up for a song a few years before, but that didn’t make it a good road to drive a two-wheel drive sedan on. The driver was clearly uncomfortable, too, creeping along and still managing to slip and shimmy on the driveway.

  Greenhorns. He didn’t move from his position or put down the rifle. He still didn’t know who this was, and given that he wasn’t expecting company, he wasn’t going to relax. All of his boys had been up to the cabin before; they knew what to expect. And they weren’t dumb enough to try to drive a city car up there.

  After what felt like an awfully long time, the sedan finally reached the front of the cabin and stopped. For a long moment, there was no movement, and no sound. Brannigan suspected that the driver was taking a minute to catch their breath.

  Then the door opened, and he groaned.

  Even swathed in a heavy, faux-fur-lined winter coat, he recognized the woman who unfolded herself from the driver’s seat. How the hell did she find me? He suspected he really didn’t want to know the answer.

  Her slightly angular face was framed by a thick hood that covered her blond hair, her eyes obscured by large dark glasses. She was wearing skin-tight leggings below the coat, which hung halfway to her knees, and tall winter boots. She looked around the cabin, a faint smile that could have meant anything on her ruby lips, then shut the car door and took a few steps toward the cabin before stopping.

  “John?” she called. “I really hope this isn’t a bad time.” She tilted her head to one side as she looked at him through the window, though he knew she couldn’t see through; it was too dark inside, and there was too much snow glare outside. “You aren’t thinking of shooting me, are you?”

  I’m actually seriously considering it. But even as he thought it, he knew he wouldn’t. As dangerous as he knew Erika Dalca was, he wasn’t one for shooting people who weren’t actively trying to kill him or his. Especially not when they were women.

  With a heavy, irritated sigh, he stepped b
ack from the window and put the FAL back in its niche. Then, taking a deep breath, he opened the door.

  She hadn’t moved from where she’d stopped, but her smile widened as the door swung open and she saw him. She walked the rest of the way to the door as he held it open, trying to ignore the marked sway of her hips as she entered.

  She looked around the cabin as he closed the door, pulling her hood back and taking off her sunglasses. She had done her blond hair into a sort of swept-back arrangement with curled strands framing her face, that were in some disarray from the hood. She nodded as she looked around and finally looked back at him, unzipping her coat and taking it off. He held out his hand wordlessly, and she smiled even wider as she handed it to him.

  He made a point of searching it before hanging it up on the rack. She hadn’t had a pistol secreted in the coat, at least. He looked back in her green eyes and saw only a glint of amusement.

  “You really didn’t think I’d come all the way up here to hurt you, did you, John?” she asked. She pouted a little as she lowered herself into a chair at the table. Under the coat, she’d been wearing a long sweater that was almost as long as the dress she had on underneath it. He hadn’t needed to search her; she had no place in that getup to conceal a weapon.

  At least, none besides the ones she’d been born with.

  “I don’t know why you’d come all the way up here,” he retorted. “Hell, I’m still at the part where I’m wondering how you found this place.”

  “It wasn’t easy, I’ll grant you that,” she said wryly. “You really don’t want to be found, do you? But as you know, I have my ways, especially when it comes to people who interest me.” She smiled dazzlingly at him. “And you interest me very much, John.”

  Without responding or turning his back on her, Brannigan went to the woodstove and poured a cup of coffee, then pulled another cup down from the cupboard and filled it as well. Deciding that he may as well be polite, he sat across the table from Dalca and put the second cup in front of her.