Enemy Unidentified (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 3)

by Peter Nealen

  Hopefully, for his conscience’s sake, he could head off the bloodbath that was about to happen.

  ***

  Flint stepped off the ladder and handed off the hot Mk 48 to Scrap without a word. Turning forward, he took about ten steps through the crowded Kilo-class submarine’s control room, to where the captain was standing next to the periscope.

  The Kilo had clearly seen better days. Paint was peeling on the bulkheads and the piping on the overhead, several of the lights were out, and there was a lingering stench in the air of sweat, piss, and ass. He knew that their employers had gotten their hands on it in some shady part of Eastern Europe, but he didn’t know where.

  “It’s about fucking time,” he snarled, as the captain turned to look at him. The guy looked a frog; bulging eyes, fat lips, and as pale as a fish’s belly. And he was fat, which just made Flint instinctively despise him even more. “What the hell happened? You were supposed to be here three fucking days ago!”

  “We had mechanical difficulties,” the man replied, in a thick German accent. It sounded weird, surrounded by instruments marked in Cyrillic. “And then, when we got closer, the frigate out there was all over us. We were maneuvering for a day and a half to get in here.”

  Flint snorted. “Bullshit,” he said. “You think the fucking Mexican Navy knows shit about antisub warfare? You were just scared.” He let his hand drop close to the Field Pistol on his hip. He saw the captain’s froggy eyes drop to follow the movement, and then widen a little as he saw where Flint’s hand was resting.

  “They have been dealing with many of these ‘narco-subs’ over the last few years…” the man said, visibly trying not to stammer. Sweat was standing out on his thick upper lip. And it wasn’t even that hot in the control room.

  “And how many of them have you heard that they’ve caught at sea, huh?” Flint asked, his voice low and dangerous. “A whole lot of my team got wasted up there, waiting for you.” In truth, Flint really didn’t give a damn for the dead. They’d known what they’d been getting into. He was just pissed that he’d been waiting around long enough for somebody to actually get a rescue force aboard the platform, ruining his picture-perfect op.

  At least they’ll all burn up soon, the ones who don’t get blown to pink mist when the charges go off. He kept the satisfaction the thought gave him off his face.

  “I am sorry,” the captain stammered. “But we are here now, we are away, and we are submerged. By the time the frigate comes looking for us, we will be in deep water and well away.”

  Flint just stared at him for a long moment, letting him sweat. The guy was right, as much as he was a sniveling, slimy little frog. Finally, he nodded, and folded his arms. He saw the captain go a little wobbly in the knees as his hand moved away from the FK BRNO pistol.

  “Fine,” he said. “Head for the designated rendezvous site.” He shouldered past the captain and started forward, toward the torpedo room. The torpedoes had long-since been stripped out, and that was where his team was going to stage.

  He was a little disappointed that he hadn’t found an excuse to cap the goggle-eyed captain, but reflected that it was probably all for the best. They still needed a captain; the sub wasn’t going to sail itself. And the little 7.5mm bullets were probably a little too zippy to make firing them inside of a submerged submarine a good idea.

  Chapter 18

  Hancock had just reached the room where Tanaka and Brannigan were strongpointed, yelling, “Friendly!” at the top of his lungs as he approached, when the roar of the Mi-17s coming down on the helideck reverberated through the platform.

  He glanced up at the sound and stifled a curse. He wasn’t under any illusions that the Mexican Marines were going to be any less of a threat to the Blackhearts than the terrorists were. They might have a rep for being hard for the cartels to bribe or corrupt, but he hadn’t heard anything about them that suggested that target discrimination was one of their strong suits. And they were going to be coming in shooting, either unaware that there was anyone except the armed terrorists on the platform, or specifically ordered to bury the evidence that Huerta had gone around the chain of command.

  Meanwhile, there might still be terrorists on board, and there were definitely bombs with the fuses burning down near the wells. Which would kill them all if they went off.

  “Looks like Huerta decided to double-cross us after all,” Gomez muttered.

  Hancock declined to comment. Brannigan was sitting up against the wall, his eyes open and still breathing, his rifle in his hands, but his eyes were a little glassy; he’d lost a lot of blood, and the shock had to be hitting his system pretty hard.

  It’s your show now, Roger. Bet you didn’t think it was going to come to this so early, didja?

  “All right,” he said, thinking fast. “Carlo, you stay here with John and the rest. Don, you and Kev are with me. We’re going to link up with Joe and Wade and see if we can’t get those bombs defused.”

  “Roger,” Brannigan croaked.

  Hancock looked down at him. Brannigan was in rough shape, but he was looking up at him, and shook his head, fractionally.

  Hancock’s lips thinned. He knew what the Colonel was saying. Guess you’ve still got some progress to make on this whole leadership thing, huh? There were two serious threats facing them, and as the acting “Blackheart Six,” he was going to have to put himself in a position to deal with the hairier one. The bombs were bad business, but deconflicting with the Mexican Marines—if it was even possible—had to come first.

  “Fine,” he grunted. “Carlo, you take Don and Kev, go link up with Wade and Joe, and get those bombs defused. Watch for stragglers. The bad guys might have slacked down on the shooting some, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.” He took a deep breath. It tasted of salt, blood, and gunsmoke. “I’ll go try and make contact with our new friends up top.”

  Santelli didn’t say anything, but waved at Hart and Curtis, and headed out the hatch. There wasn’t time to waste; none of them wanted to be sitting around in the middle of the conflagration that the platform would become if those charges went off.

  As they were leaving, Hancock flipped his rifle sling over his head and leaned the weapon against the wall next to Brannigan, then pulled off his still-wet chest rig, followed by his pistol belt.

  “What are you doing, Rog?” Childress asked.

  “We don’t have any way of establishing comms with the Mexicans,” he explained, trying to keep his voice bland and steady, “and they’re probably going to ID weapons and shoot. So I’m going to go out and surrender, in the hopes that we can get this sorted out before we have a green-on-blue.” “Green-on-blue” was the usual wording for fratricide between allied forces. It had come to have a bit of a different meaning in recent years, given the number of Islamist infiltrators in Afghanistan who had murdered American and British troops under the guise of the Afghan National Army. And Hancock had to reflect that this situation potentially wasn’t that much different. For all he knew, the Mexicans were there to kill everybody, regardless.

  “You think they’re going to be reasonable?” Jenkins asked. “These ain’t SEALs we’re talking about.”

  Wasn’t “Sucks To Be A Hostage” a SEAL catchphrase? Hancock kept the thought to himself. It wasn’t the time, and he was supposed to be a leader right then.

  “I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance they’re going to blow my head off on sight,” he admitted. “But we’ve got to take the chance. Otherwise there’s a hundred percent chance we’re not getting off this platform alive.”

  He didn’t want to go out there. Not just because there was a risk that he’d get gunned down without a chance to take some of the bastards with him. Death wasn’t something that scared Roger Hancock. He wouldn’t have done some of the crazy stuff he’d done over the years if it was.

  No, it was the part that came after that he didn’t want to do, the part that would only happen if he survived the next few minutes. Talking and deconflicting while t
he boys were down below trying desperately to defuse the bombs that would kill them all.

  Some might say that his thought processes had rubbed off from Brannigan and his “lead from the front” mentality. But that wasn’t the case. Hancock had always been that way; it was the way he’d been taught from his first days as a Private. It was why he’d always gotten along with Brannigan, even as a platoon sergeant dealing with a Battalion Commander.

  He stepped through the hatch, even as the engine noise of the Mi-17 above faded, to be replaced by the rising thunder of a second. Did he hear boots thudding on the ladderwell at the end of the passageway, or was that his imagination?

  Then there was movement in the hatchway, and he held his hands out, open and empty, and waited.

  He shut his eyes as the small object clunked onto the decking just inside the hatch off the landing, and the flashbang’s concussion slapped him in the face, even several yards away. The flash was a bright light against his eyelids, but had been muted enough that there was no bright purple blotch in his vision when he opened his eyes again, to see the Mexican Marines flowing through the opening, pushing through the still-rising smoke from the banger, their P90s up, their faces covered by black balaclavas.

  He sank to his knees as the submachineguns were leveled at him, keeping his hands up and visible. “No fuego!” he called out, hoping that it got the message across. His command of Spanish wasn’t great.

  The lead Marines closed on him but didn’t shoot. The ones behind them flowed into the rooms as they passed, but at least one had his 5.7mm barrel pointed rock-solid at Hancock’s head the entire time.

  The fourth man back hadn’t joined the stacks flowing into rooms. He put a hand on the lead Marine’s shoulder and said something in Spanish. The P90 barrel lowered fractionally, but didn’t move too far away from him.

  The man then let his own P90 hang on its single-point sling and reached up to pull down his balaclava. He was an older man, his face jowly and lined, with a thin, graying mustache. “Who are you?” he asked, in accented but clear English.

  “I’m Hancock,” he replied. “I’m Brannigan’s second in command.”

  “Where is Brannigan?” the older man demanded.

  “He’s wounded,” Hancock replied. “My men are keeping him secured.” That it was only a few paces behind him wasn’t something he was going to explain, not just yet. Not until he knew that they weren’t all going to be executed.

  “So you are in charge?” the older man asked.

  “I am,” he replied.

  “I am Contralmirante Huerta, Mexican Naval Infantry,” the older man said. “What is the status of the platform?”

  “The hostages are dead,” Hancock said, as the Marines appeared to relax a little. None of the gun muzzles had moved far, but none of them were quite pointed at him anymore. He still wasn’t going to relax. The Mexicans might just make sure everything was copacetic before wasting all of them. “It appears they were executed shortly after the terrorists arrived on the platform; they’ve been dead for days. There are explosive booby traps all over the place, though we’ve disarmed the ones we’ve found in the superstructure here. We believe that there are larger charges set on the oil wells themselves; I’ve sent several of my men down to defuse them.”

  Huerta nodded. He barked instructions to the Marines, and soon they were moving down the hall. “Come with us, Señor Hancock,” he said. “We will need you and your men to keep close to me.” He pointedly didn’t say anything about assisting in the clearance of the platform, and Hancock noticed. The Blackhearts’ role in the incident might well be over.

  Just as long as it didn’t end with a bullet and a drop into the Gulf.

  “Friendlies coming in!” he called out as they neared the blood-smeared hatch where Aziz had died.

  “Come ahead,” Bianco replied.

  Hancock stepped through, followed by Huerta. The Marines, somewhat to his surprise, stayed outside.

  As Hancock retrieved his gear and weapons, Huerta looked down at Aziz’ body and the wounded Brannigan. Hancock noticed that Huerta didn’t object to his rearming; though that might just be confidence born of superior numbers.

  The man’s next words belied that, or at least they were calculated to do so. “Notice that I came in here alone,” he said quietly. “My life is now in your hands. None of my men know that I contracted you to board the Tourmaline-Delta. I do this so that you know that you can trust me.” The message was pretty clear. Huerta had imagined the thought that was going through every Blackheart’s mind as the helos had descended; that they were expendable assets that were now to be swept under the rug. And he was going out of his way, putting himself in their hands, to assure them that he had no such intentions.

  Hancock had to admit, he was impressed. He hadn’t expected that kind of honor from a Mexican officer. There were too many stories of corruption floating around from the drug war.

  “Do you have a medic, Admiral?” he asked. “Colonel Brannigan is in a bit of a bad way.”

  “Sì,” Huerta replied. “I also have a few explosives experts, though they are not true EOD. I can send them down to help your men. It would not be good if we were all incinerated after securing the platform, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be,” Hancock replied. He glanced around at the rest. Bianco and Jenkins were still posted up on the hatch, while the rest were pointedly spread out around the room, eyes on Huerta, hands on guns. “Tell them that they need to be careful, though. We don’t know how many of the terrorists are left.”

  “I do not believe that any of them are,” Huerta said. “We took fire from a submarine that was loading them aboard on our final approach. The submarine dove as we came around; I believe that they have made their escape.”

  “Dammit,” Hancock said, as a similar chorus of profanity floated around the room.

  “The ARM Hermengildo Galeana is just off to the seaward side of the platform, and is closing in,” Huerta explained. “Their escape might not be as permanent as they hope. In the meantime, however, we need to get those explosives defused.”

  “Agreed,” Hancock said. “Let’s get topside and see if I can raise the rest of my boys on the radio.” It felt a little strange, saying it like that. They were Brannigan’s “boys.” But he was in charge at the moment, so they were his.

  Huerta simply nodded, and the two of them stepped out into the passageway, turning toward the ladderwell leading up to the roof.

  ***

  Flanagan and Wade didn’t waste time heading back toward the wells, but they weren’t rushing, either. They’d seen the sub slip beneath the water, but that didn’t mean that the terrorists hadn’t left anyone behind. They might not have been intentionally abandoned, but they’d be no less dangerous in that case.

  Neither man spoke as they leapfrogged back toward the derricks. Both men were thinking, but it wasn’t the time nor the place for chitchat.

  I’m pretty sure that was a Kilo. Were these assholes Russians? Nah, that dude sounded American. So what kind of terrorists are using top-of-the-line gear and using a fucking Kilo-class submarine as their getaway vehicle? Flanagan didn’t have answers to any of those questions, and it bugged him. Sure, targets were targets, bad guys were bad guys, but he’d generally prided himself on having some working knowledge of who was who in the bad guy scene. There were Islamists, drug dealers, Communists, and gangsters. Sure, he knew that the Russians and Chinese weren’t exactly America’s friends, but most of that sparring had been over shithole countries overseas, proxy-war type stuff. This was something different. And none of it was adding up.

  All of this was a compartmentalized background note in his mind as he moved from cover to cover, pivoting to check corners and adjacent spaces as he passed them.

  “Woodsrunner, Angry Ragnar, this is Goodfella,” Santelli’s voice crackled over the radio. It was scratchy and barely readable, but it was definitely Santelli.

  “Go for Angry Ragnar,” Wade replied. He
was at the landing, waiting for Flanagan to catch up before descending.

  “We’re coming out at the base of the west derrick,” Santelli called. “What’s your location?”

  “We’re on the stairs just across from you,” Wade replied, as Flanagan came up next to him, covering the opposite angles. “Be advised, there’s a booby trap on that door that we weren’t able to disarm before coming through. You’re either going to have to go over it or find another way. It doesn’t look like it was intended to be disarmed.”

  Which, given that the bad guys had put barrel bombs on the derricks, made sense. They must have planned to send the whole platform sky-high in the first place.

  “Roger,” Santelli replied. He sounded pissed. “We’ll see if we can find a way around. Any idea how much time’s left on the bombs?”

  “No clue,” Wade replied. “Though it looks like our little friends just made a run for it in a submarine, of all things. What’s the status with the Mexican Marines we just saw fly in?”

  “Surfer was going to make contact and deconflict,” Santelli answered. “Get to those wells, we can chat later.”

  If there is a later.

  Wade had already started down the steps as soon as Flanagan had reached him. Both men were feeling the press of time; with the terrorists having abandoned the platform, they might only have seconds left.

  They clattered down the stairs as quickly as they could without completely abandoning security. Any adjacent space got a quick glance and a sweep with a rifle barrel, and then they were past and pushing into the derrick itself.

  The first bomb was pretty easy to spot. It was set up the same way the ones that they’d encountered set up on the main avenues around the superstructure had been; a fifty-five-gallon drum with an initiation system having been lowered into an open flange in the lid.

  Wade slung his rifle as he quickly advanced on the bomb. If he was feeling the strain of being that close to that much explosive, he didn’t show it. He just sized up the construction, then reached for the initiation system.