by Peter Nealen
***
It took even less time to reach the Citadel than it had to drive into the city. With General Ali dressed in his full Khadarkhi Army uniform, it was easy enough to get through the ancient barbican gate, with its twin round towers looming overhead, without even needing to make a move against the guards. Only when the vehicles were parked inside the barbican itself, and Esfandiari’s men poured out with their weapons ready, did General Ali address the garrison, instructing them to stand down when the men in khaki came to their posts. It had actually been the General’s idea to suggest that the Iranians were simply coming to help, rather than making an initial demand for surrender. Apparently, the chief of staff was less than impressed with his sovereign’s choice of allies of late.
Ali’s assistance made it a quick matter to have khaki-clad Iranian fighters at every garrison post in the Citadel in a matter of less than thirty minutes. Only then did Esfandiari give the order. “Execute.”
Gunfire rattled out across the walls and deep in the Citadel itself, as Esfandiari’s men quickly and systematically murdered the Khadarkhi garrison. General Ali did not even flinch as the shots echoed across the ancient fortress. He had to have known that this was coming.
“And what will you do with me now, Commander?” Ali asked, assuming Esfandiari’s rank. He was not far off, but Esfandiari was not going to correct him, since he was not on Khadarkh in any official capacity from any official government.
“As long as you continue to cooperate, General,” Esfandiari said, “you have nothing to fear. I do not expect you to pose any threat to us, especially now that the Khadarkhi Army has been effectively eliminated. And you might be able to help me with your ‘guests.’ Am I to understand that you are as angered by their presence as I am?”
Before Ali could answer, Karim Mehregan, one of the platoon leaders who had arrived on the last flight, blurted out, “Sar-Commander Esfandiari! We should not extend mercy to this willing servant of apostates! Let me execute him, as an example to the entire island!”
“Silence, Mehregan,” Esfandiari snapped. “I have promised the General that he will not be harmed, and he will not be. If you are in such need of something to do, take your men and sweep the New City and the harbor. Find any Westerners, round them up, and bring them back to the Citadel. We will need hostages, at least for a few days.”
His face tight, Mehregan stiffened to attention and nodded. As he turned to leave, Esfandiari called out to him, “And Mehregan? We want hostages, not corpses. You may execute one or two as examples if need be, but no more. Understood?”
The younger man looked as if he had bitten into something sour, but nodded stiffly, before marching out of the room.
Esfandiari watched him leave with narrowed eyes. I should never have let them saddle me with a thrice-damned Twelver. He will be trouble before this is over; those fanatics always are. That Esfandiari himself could be classed as a fanatic by some did not bother him.
“Come, General,” he said. “Let us go begin our conversation with your guests.”
***
Immanuel Ortiz was enjoying his coffee when he heard the first gunshots.
Ortiz was getting fat, knew it, and was no longer of the age or vanity to care much. Heavy jowls framed a salt-and-pepper mustache, and he had developed a permanent squint, below thinning silver hair.
He did, however, care very much about his ship, the Oceana Metropolis, and his crew. As the reports sounded in the quiet of the increasingly hot morning, his coffee cup froze just below his lips. “Did anybody else hear that?”
Chris Hild and Mark Tranter were the only other crewmembers on the bridge. It was morning, the Metropolis was docked, and nothing ever happened on Khadarkh until at least eleven o’clock. Most of the crew was still sleeping below; even though the island was technically a Muslim country, there was plenty of booze to be found if you knew where to look. And a few of his people were extremely resourceful when it came to finding out where to look.
Hild looked up, a confused look on his face. “Hear what?”
Tranter looked out the ports, a frown on his face. “Was that fireworks?”
Ortiz didn’t think so. It was the wrong time of day, for one thing. He’d never seen fireworks in a Middle Eastern city in the morning. Plenty at night, for any and all occasions, but not in the morning. He levered himself out of his chair and moved to the windows, peering out at the harbor and the city as best he could. The pier where the Oceana Metropolis was moored faced the east and the Strait of Hormuz, so he had to crane his head to see much of the city.
The pops were continuing, but there were no fireworks rising over Khadarkh City.
“Wake everybody up,” he said quietly. “I think there’s trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Hild asked.
“That’s not fireworks, which means it’s shooting,” Ortiz said. “We need to start getting ready to leave if this turns ugly.” He had visions of every revolution and civil war that had torn through the region for the last decade running through his head. He did not want to still be moored in the harbor when the next Yemen or Syria kicked off.
Tranter had immediately gotten on the intercom, and was blaring the warning to get up and get to stations across the ship. Paul Carver, the head of the Poseidon Maritime security contractors, stumbled onto the bridge a couple minutes later, looking bleary and hungover. With the weapons having been tossed overboard before entering Khadarkh Harbor, he and his team had had little to do. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but somebody’s been doing a lot of shooting, somewhere out in town,” Ortiz said. He was still scanning out the ports, using his binoculars. The shots had died down by then, and he was starting to wonder if maybe he hadn’t overreacted. There wasn’t even any smoke rising over the city. Maybe somebody had gotten a little carried away with celebrating something. Celebratory gunfire was not unknown in the Middle East, either.
But the strange timing still nagged at him.
“Bridge, this is Carleoni.” Vinnie Carleoni was the only crewman fatter than Ortiz, and he sounded out of breath. “We’ve got company on the gangway. And, uh, Cap’n? They, uh, look like they mean business.”
Ortiz recognized that sinking feeling in his gut. He hadn’t moved fast enough. He hadn’t overreacted; he’d underreacted. He should have weighed anchor and been five nautical miles offshore by now. Instead, he was about to get wrapped up in the latest wave of political and sectarian violence in the Middle East.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple; it takes time to get a tanker underway. But he couldn’t help but feel like he’d failed, anyway.
“Don’t try to stop them, Vinnie,” he said heavily over the intercom. “Let them come aboard.” There was no other choice. The Poseidon Maritime guys were unarmed, thanks to the laws applying to any ship that docked in Khadarkh’s harbor. Resistance was only going to get all of them killed.
He looked down at the coffee in his cup. He took a quick gulp. It tasted sour. He knew it was his own despair he was tasting; his coffee was good. He’d just lost his taste for it, having a good idea of what was coming.
Boots rattled on the ladder leading up to the bridge. A moment later, five men in khaki, with combat vests on and black rifles in their hands, stormed onto the bridge. Ortiz held his hands up, glancing to either side to make sure that Hild, Tranter, and especially Carver, were doing the same. They were merchant sailors. They weren’t in any position to try to fight, especially to try to fight soldiers, and these guys looked like soldiers.
The five men kept them under their guns, but didn’t say anything. They seemed to be waiting for something. After a prolonged, awkward silence, a sixth man entered the bridge. Short, dark-haired and bearded, he pushed past the riflemen and looked around the bridge imperiously.
“Who is the Captain?” he asked, in thickly accented English.
“I am,” Ortiz immediately answered. “Whatever you want, we won’t resist. We’ll cooperate.”
The little man looked from man to man, sizing each of his captives up. His eyes came to rest on Carver, and Ortiz thought his heart had just stopped.
“Who are you?” the little man asked Carver. “What do you do on the ship?”
Carver glanced at Ortiz. It was possible that he might manage to bluff that he was just another sailor, but he didn’t have the same look. None of his guys did. Most of them had still maintained fairly military physiques; they hadn’t had much else to do at sea so far, and the Oceana Metropolis had a decent gym, one that the rest of her crew didn’t actually use that much.
“I am a security contractor,” he said, apparently deciding on the truth.
It was the wrong thing to say. Ortiz could tell that immediately, as the little bearded man looked back at him with a sudden ugly light in his eye and a small half-smile on his face. “Security? Like mercenary?” he asked. His swagger seemed to suddenly become more pronounced, and Ortiz felt his heart sink. The would-be killer had found his convenient target.
“You protect the ship? Protect these men?” the little man asked.
Either Carver didn’t see where this was going, or he did and couldn’t see a way out. When Ortiz looked at the man’s eyes, he saw something close to panic there; Carver knew what was coming. And he knew that there was no escape.
And Ortiz cursed silently as he realized that he couldn’t think of a way to head this off, either.
“Yes, that is my job,” Carver said quietly.
The little man nodded, satisfied. Then he let his rifle hang on its sling, drew his Makarov, and shot Carver in the head.
The man fell to the deck, blood spattering on the console behind him as he dropped. More poured from the exit wound at the back of his skull, pooling on the deck. He was twitching as his nervous system shut down from the sudden, catastrophic damage to his brain. Hild and Tranter were staring in shock.
“He cannot protect you now,” the little man said, satisfied. “Any who resist will die just like him. Understand?”
Ortiz only nodded. “Yes, we understand,” he said. He momentarily wanted to protest that he’d already said they wouldn’t resist, but he knew that that would be a very, very bad idea. He’d be right there on the deck next to Carver, spilling his blood and brains out on the steel, and there wouldn’t be anyone to look after his crew. Leterrier was a good First Mate, but he wasn’t made for this kind of situation. He wouldn’t do well, trying to keep the crew together, sane, and as safe as possible in captivity, especially not captivity with the immediate threat of violent death.
The little man pointed to him. “You, come with us. Find the rest of your crew.”
Ortiz only nodded again, and followed when the man started to leave the bridge. There was nothing else to do.
CHAPTER 2
There was an envelope waiting on the step when John Brannigan came down out of the hills and got to the door of his cabin.
He looked down at it, frowning. He had a PO Box in town, but he rarely checked it, because it was rarely used. He hadn’t told many people where he had been going after Rebecca had died. And this envelope wasn’t marked. No address, no stamp. Just a plain white envelope, sealed and sitting on his porch. And from the looks of it, it hadn’t been there long. It had rained two days before, and the envelope was dry and smooth. It hadn’t gotten wet.
He picked up the envelope, opened the door, and walked inside. The cabin was snug, and though he’d been gone for a week, it wasn’t that cold inside. He’d made sure that it was well-built. It had been intended to be Rebecca’s last house. She had died before he’d finished it.
Levering the heavy pack off his back, he tossed the envelope on the rough-hewn table and started unpacking. He had just shy of a hundred pounds of venison in game bags in the pack, along with the muley’s not-inconsiderable rack. There was more hanging on the tree, back up the mountain, and he still had to go get it. But his eye kept straying to the envelope on the table. It bothered him.
His isolation and anonymity had been deliberate. When the Marine Corps had forced him to retire, just before Rebecca had been diagnosed with cancer, he had descended into a bitterness that had eaten away at him. No longer a part of the profession that he had devoted twenty-three years of his life to, and suddenly faced with an invisible enemy that he couldn’t fight, couldn’t grapple with, couldn’t blow up or shoot, he’d been tempted to descend into the bottle, but Rebecca had needed him to stay strong. So he had, and by the time she had eventually died anyway, he hadn’t even felt the temptation. He just hadn’t wanted to be around people. So, he’d retreated to the woods. Only his son, who was presently halfway across the country, following in his father’s footsteps at Camp Lejeune, knew for sure where the cabin was.
Had Hank told someone? That was the only explanation he could think of. Someone had hand-delivered that envelope, and they had to have had precise directions to find the cabin in the first place.
His eyes narrowed. It had to have been important for Hank to have talked. He just couldn’t think of what it might be.
Well, there was only one way to find out. He hung the last game bag, stepped to the table, and picked up the envelope.
There was a note inside. It was short and to the point.
Colonel,
I need to see you. It’s urgent. I wouldn’t have disturbed you if it wasn’t. Please meet me at the Rocking K in town at noon on the 22nd.
Chavez
He folded the note and stuffed it in his pocket as he looked around the cabin, already cataloging what he needed to do before he left in his head. That he was going to go had been decided without much in the way of reflection. He recognized Hector Chavez’ handwriting, as he was sure the other man had known he would. And if Hector was looking for him, he trusted that it really was important. He didn’t know why, but he felt something that he hadn’t felt in the three years since his forced retirement. It was still vague, more a hope than anything else, but it was there.
Purpose.
He had to go back up the mountain and get the rest of the meat. He wasn’t going to leave over half his kill to the bears and the scavengers. But that could easily be done by nightfall. It was the 20th. He could be in town on the morning of the 22nd with ease.
He finished getting the game unloaded and hung, and then shouldered his pack and headed back up.
***
The Rocking K was the local diner in tiny Junction City. Mama Taft had run it for years, and newcomers, like Brannigan, learned quick that Mama Taft wasn’t anyone to mess with. You addressed her as “Ma’am” when you made your order, and you said “Please” and “Thank you.” In return, you got some of the finest cooking in the county, if not the state. It had been an easy adjustment for Brannigan, since a strict upbringing, in addition to twenty-three years in the Marine Corps, had hard-wired such manners into him, at least when dealing with most people. His language tended to change when surrounded by gunfighters, but that was another habit that many men like him developed.
As he strode through the door and took off his hat—another one of Mama Taft’s unspoken rules—Ginger Taft, Mama’s granddaughter, was at the counter. “Good morning, John!” she said brightly. Ginger was as red-headed as her name suggested, and was one of the single most cheerful people Brannigan thought he’d ever met. She leaned across the counter. “There are a couple men in a booth in back,” she confided. “They’re looking for you; asked me to point you back there when you got here.”
“Thanks, Ginger,” he said. “I’ll go join ‘em. How are you and Mama this morning?”
>
She dimpled. “We’re fine, John. How did the hunt go?”
“Nice twelve-point muley, two days ago,” he replied. “I’ll bring some of the venison by later. I sure can’t eat it all myself.”
Ginger cocked an eyebrow skeptically, eyeing him. John Brannigan was six-foot-four, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. He could pack away a lot of food when he was hungry, and Ginger knew it. “I doubt that, but we’ll be happy to take some of it off your hands,” she said. “Shoo, now, those men want to talk to you.”
Brannigan headed toward the back, a faint smile on his lips. Ginger was about the same age as Hank, and it always cheered him up a little to talk to her. It made the world feel a little bit less bleak and empty, with Rebecca gone and Hank far away, putting his own neck on the line.
Hector Chavez stood up as Brannigan approached the booth, and held out a hand. Brannigan shook it firmly, looking his old friend in the eye.
Hector had been medically retired a year before Brannigan’s own forced retirement. He and Brannigan had been peers for many years, though Hector had been within reach of a star before his heart had betrayed him. He was looking a bit heavier these days, accentuated by the suit he was wearing, in marked contrast to just about everyone else in the diner.
As for Brannigan, he knew what Hector saw. The outdoor life had kept him lean and strong. His hair was a little longer, and quite a bit grayer, than it had been the last time his old friend had seen him. His thick, handlebar mustache was new, too, almost blending with the salt-and-pepper stubble from a week in the woods. None of the gray could disguise the hard lines of his angular features, the power still resident in his towering frame, or the renewed, steely glint in his gray eyes.
“I’m glad you could come, John,” Hector said. “It took some talking to get Hank to spill the beans as to where you’d gone.”