by Peter Nealen
The hours ticked by, slowly. After a while, they started to hear machinery noises from belowdecks. They got no updates; the crew were working their tails off to try to get ready on such short notice, and had no time to pass information. The mercenaries just had to sit in the sun, trying not to breathe too deeply of the smoke permeating the air, and watch the Saudis who were also up on the deck, apparently suffering far more than the Americans, who weren’t as used to the heat.
There wasn’t much talk. Even Flanagan and Curtis had subsided, the combination of the weariness of the night’s fighting and the tension of waiting conspiring to dampen anyone’s inclination to chat.
***
The engines were turning over, a deep rumble more felt through the deck than heard, when Flanagan called out, “Looks like our friends are back.”
Brannigan looked up. Sure enough, the HiLux was back in its position near the containers. It was either the same one as before, or one that looked very much like it; in the Middle East, there were white HiLuxes and then there were white HiLuxes with red decals on the sides. They were a dime a dozen, with little variation.
It did not advance, though. After a few more minutes, the mercenaries simply maintained their vigil, though they watched the pickup more closely than anything else in the port.
***
Brannigan glanced at his watch. They had to be almost ready to go. It was nearly noon.
Motion caught his eye, and he looked up to see the HiLux coming toward them, ahead of three more vehicles, all of them apparently packed with men carrying rifles. Either the locals had scared up a militia in order to try to secure the port now that the Iranians were gone, or the remnants of the Al Qaeda fighters sent from Saudi Arabia had finally rallied. Either way, this could get very bad, very quickly, especially given how little ammunition they had remaining.
“Look alive,” he warned. He needn’t have; Childress, Hancock, Flanagan, and Santelli were already on the rail, rifles held ready just below the gunwale. Curtis and Aziz were still watching the Saudi prisoners.
The cavalcade of vehicles rolled down the pier toward them, and Brannigan knew they were coming directly to the Oceana Metropolis. He pulled the magazine out of the Type 03, checked it for the umpteenth time, then jammed it home again. One thing was for sure; if this came to a fight, it was probably going to be short.
He fought back momentarily against the crushing sense of failure. To have led these men through the hell of the last couple of days, only to die in the last few moments before extract was a bitter pill to swallow.
He refused to swallow it. At worse, they would go down fighting. At best—well, he wasn’t convinced that all was lost just yet. The mercenaries still had the high ground, there was only one good approach to their position on the deck, and it was extremely canalized. Furthermore, if the Iranians had been ready to cut and run after the shellacking they’d gotten, he expected the Arabs would be even more flighty. He determined to use that to his advantage.
“Aziz,” he called softly. The other merc hesitated, but then came to join him at the gunwale. When he glanced over, Brannigan saw that most of Aziz’ mag pouches were still full; he probably had more ammunition than most of the rest of the team combined.
But Brannigan could deal with that later. The vehicles had stopped at the base of the gangway and several of the fighters were getting out.
They were a mixed bag. A few were dressed in man-dresses, one or two were wearing tracksuits, most were in jeans and t-shirts. One was even wearing slacks, an open-collared white shirt, and a dark sports coat, with an AKM in his hands. None of them really screamed “Wahhabi” at first glance, which Brannigan took as a good sign.
The man in the sports coat walked to the gangway and started up. Brannigan looked to Aziz. He yelled down the gangway in Arabic, and the man in the sports coat stopped, then yelled something back.
“He says that they are securing the port,” Aziz translated. “He’s demanding that we come down and surrender.”
“Who the hell is he?” Brannigan asked.
“I don’t know,” Aziz replied.
“Ask him,” Brannigan snarled. Aziz flushed, then complied. The other man barked a long speech in Arabic in reply.
“He says that he is Abdul Abu Bakr al Qays,” Aziz reported. “Commander of the Defenders of Islam on Khadarkh.”
“Does that mean anything to you?” Brannigan asked.
Aziz shook his head. “No, but I doubt it means that they’re going to be especially friendly to a bunch of infidels. I’m a Muslim; I’ll be fine. You guys are fucked, though.”
“Thank you for the assessment,” Brannigan growled. He looked back and studied the Saudis. “Would it change their minds if they knew that we’d rescued a bunch of their brothers from the Iranians?”
Aziz followed his gaze and frowned. “Are you serious?” he asked. “I thought they were detainees. They were going to start a war with a preemptive chemical attack on Iran.”
“And who do you suggest we hand them over to?” Brannigan asked. “The CIA isn’t going to be thrilled about a bunch of private citizens having snuck into a sovereign kingdom and blown up its Citadel. And most of the proof that they were here to gas the Iranian coast went up in a fireball last night.” He stopped. Frowned. Then he looked up. “Doc!” he called.
Crouching to stay below the gunwale, Villareal ran to join them. “What is it?” he asked.
“You still got the stuff you grabbed from that table in the Citadel?” Brannigan asked.
“It’s a little soggy, but yeah,” Villareal replied.
“Keep ahold of it,” Brannigan said. A plan was forming in his mind. He turned to Aziz. “Find out which one of the prisoners is in charge, since their old head honcho got smoked.”
“That’s easy,” Aziz said, pointing to a pudgy, balding man at the end of the lineup, sweating more profusely than the rest. “That guy, Abd Al-Aziz Tawfiq.”
“Bring him over here.”
Aziz just looked at him at first, a puzzle frown on his face. When Brannigan turned his icy glare on the other man, he hurried to comply, moving quickly over to Tawfiq and hauling him to his feet. The Saudi protested, but Aziz snapped, “Iskut!” at him, and he shut up.
“Tell him that there’s a way that everybody gets out of this alive,” Brannigan said quickly. “If he can talk those guys down there into letting us go unmolested, he and his people walk. Otherwise, they all die, and we release the intel that Doc’s got.”
The balding Saudi studied him as Aziz translated. This guy’s eyes had none of the gleam of fanaticism that had characterized his dead boss. “You would do that?” he said, in passable English. “It would destroy the relations between your country and mine.”
“I know,” Brannigan said. “You people have sworn up one side and down another that you don’t have chemical weapons. A lot of politicians would have a lot of egg on their faces if that was publicly shown to be a lie, along with all the other ones the House of Saud has spread around over the years. So, Mr. Tawfiq, that’s the deal. Talk these ‘Defenders of Islam’ down so that we can get underway, and I promise that the intel we’ve got will be burned. It pisses me off, but if it’s the price of getting me and my men out of here alive, I’ll pay it.”
Tawfiq studied him. “How do I know you will not simply release the information anyway, after you leave?”
“You have my word,” Brannigan said. “That’s going to have to do. Along with the fact that I’m not taking you hostage as safe passage. Take it or leave it.”
“What makes you think they will listen to me?” Tawfiq asked.
“Don’t insult my intelligence, Mr. Tawfiq,” Brannigan gritted. “The Saudis wouldn’t have sent nobodies for this mission. You’ve got rank, and you’ve got pull. Don’t bullshit me.”
Tawfiq’s manner changed, ever so slightly. He was no longer a nervous scientist. The mask had been pulled away. He glanced down the gangway at the man in the sports coat. Then he sighed.
“You have a deal,” he said. He shouted down the gangway, and the man in the sports coat stiffened. The Saudis must have had some direct dealings with the local militias, which stood to reason. They wouldn’t have been able to muster the Loyalist and Salafist resistance to the Iranians that they had if they hadn’t been going behind the Khadarkhi Army’s backs.
“I can buy you an hour,” Tawfiq said, after a brief exchange. “But that is all. Then they will come and take the ship by force.”
“It’ll be enough,” Brannigan said. “Get moving.”
Tawfiq called out to his subordinates, and in a few minutes, they were getting up and shuffling down the gangplank. There was no great hurry in their movements, but they were getting out of Brannigan’s hair, so he didn’t worry about it. Their lack of urgency was only buying the Americans more time.
Only once the last of the Saudis was off the gangway did he notice that the skinny man with the protruding Adam’s apple, Ortiz’ first mate, was crouched near the gunwale, on the other side of Curtis, watching. Leterrier, that was his name.
The man hurried over to him. “We’ll be ready to cast off in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Are we going to be in a firefight before then?”
“I don’t think so,” Brannigan said. “At least not yet. Though they might change their minds.” He glanced at his watch. “Good job; that was quick.”
Leterrier shook his head. “We’re nowhere near ready for sea, but we can get to Abu Dhabi,” he said. “I’ll get things moving.”
“We’ll be here,” Brannigan said, “in case our friends down there decide to get frisky.”
There was an argument going on down by the vehicles. Brannigan thought he knew what it was about; the militiamen and the Saudis were debating whether or not to just go ahead and break the deal. Tawfiq was doubtless describing their disposition along the gunwale.
He debated sending a warning shot at their feet. That might be enough of an impetus to get them to fall back, at least.
One of the militiamen looked up the gangway, said something strident in Arabic, and started to climb up.
That tore it. Brannigan shouldered the Type 03 and put a bullet into the step right in front of the advancing militiaman. It hit the metal stair with a loud bang and ricocheted, buzzing off into the distance toward the city. The militiamen all ducked as it went overhead, and the one on the stairs bounded back quickly.
Good, they were still interested in self-preservation. But they weren’t going away, either.
Just another fifteen minutes.
More debate erupted, and more than one rifle was pointed up toward the deck.
“This is gonna get ugly,” Hancock said.
Screw it. I’ve still got my pistol if they try to board. Leaning out over the gangway, Brannigan began putting single shots down on the pier. The militiamen scattered as the first round spat concrete fragments at the feet of a man wearing a dishdasha. The subsequent rounds punched through tires, into hoods, and shattered mirrors.
He wasn’t aiming to kill, or even to wound. He was just making them take cover. Buying time.
The mag ran empty and he tossed the Chinese rifle over the side, between the hull and the pier, and drew his Makarov.
Then the crewmen were running past to cast off the forward lines, and the engines were rumbling more deeply, the vibration throbbing through his bones. It was time.
There was a yell from below, answered by a shot from Flanagan. Then the gangway wasn’t touching the side of the ship anymore. They were underway.
They stayed where they were, watching as the militiamen milled on the pier, weapons still at the ready, but no fire came their direction, and they didn’t need to engage any more. In another twenty minutes, they were past the mouth of the harbor and heading out into the Gulf.
They’d made it.
Epilogue
The fire popped loudly as a pitch pocket ignited, throwing sparks into the night.
Brannigan leaned back and puffed at his cigar, before sending a plume of smoke up to join the shower of embers. “Well, now that everybody’s here,” he said, “I guess you boys want to get paid.” He reached into the haversack next to him and pulled out several envelopes. “All cash, as directed,” he said, as he handed the envelopes out around the fire. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
“So Tannhauser really came through?” Hancock asked. “I’m actually kind of surprised.”
“Hector’s a good negotiator,” Brannigan said. “And he can bring pressure to bear that we could never match. Plus, we got the ship out along with the hostages. That went a long way, believe me.”
The mercenaries each took their envelopes, stuffing them in pockets or backpacks. They were gathered at one of Brannigan’s favorite campsites, high in the mountains above his cabin. It was as good a place as any to hand out their pay and talk without fear of being overheard.
“So, anybody see any news about it yet?” Hancock asked.
Childress chuckled. “Yeah, I was looking. Supposedly, DEVGRU swooped in from the Ford and rescued the hostages just before the Iranians set off a massive bomb to try to take everyone out.”
There was a general chuckle at that, one that Aziz didn’t join in. No one commented on his silence, either.
“There’s another interesting little tidbit,” Brannigan added. “Hector told me that they’re keeping it quiet, but Prince Bassem bin Bandar has apparently disappeared. Nobody knows where to.”
“Who’s Prince Bass’em bin Band Aid?” Curtis asked.
“He’s one of the Saudi Royals,” Brannigan explained. “One known in recent years for his hardline hawkishness towards Iran. Hector thinks that he was probably the one behind the original deployment of the missiles to Khadarkh.”
Hancock leaned forward and stirred the fire with a stick. “Did he go rogue, or is he just the scapegoat for an op gone bad?”
“We’ll probably never know,” Brannigan answered. “I gave Hector the maps and papers that Doc collected, but we’ll probably never know what happens with them, either.”
“I thought we were going to burn those?” Aziz pointed out.
“That was the deal,” Brannigan replied, taking another pull on his cigar. “When old boy tried to rush the gangway anyway, the deal went out the damned window.”
“Besides,” Flanagan said grimly, “handing it to the government, even if it is through Hector Chavez, just means it’ll get swept under the rug, anyway. Nobody in high places wants that info getting out.”
There was a pause at that, broken only when Curtis blurted, “Damn, Joe, can’t you keep your morose cynicism to yourself for once? We had a win! Can’t you be happy?”
“’Morose cynicism?’” Flanagan asked, looking up at Curtis, then around at the rest of the group. “Okay, who lent Kev a thesaurus? Because I know he doesn’t know what those words mean.”
“There’s one question that we do need to resolve, sooner or later,” Brannigan put in before Curtis could get started on his reply. “Hector told me he could keep his ear to the ground for more work for us. You boys did a hell of a job, and there will be a market. The question is, are we in the business, or was this a one-shot job?”
Santelli peered at him from where he sat on a stump, across the fire. He’d already had to move three times, as the smoke seemed to follow him wherever he sat. “Be honest, John,” he said. “The real question you’re asking is whether or not you’re going to have to recruit a new team for the next job.” He snorted. “Well, you’re not recruiting my replacement, I can tell you that.”
Brannigan smiled under his handlebar. “I’ll admit, as hairy as it was, I kind of liked getting my hand back in,” he said. “You’ve got me there.” He looked around at the rest. “Okay, then, who’s still in if another job comes along?”
All of the men raised their hands, though both Aziz and Villareal were somewhat slow in doing so. When Childress looked at Aziz in some surprise, the other man shrugged with a fain sneer. �
�The pay’s better than I’d ever make back at the college,” he said.
“All right!” Curtis said enthusiastically. “But there’s one more thing, something that I brought up before. Now that we’re a real team, it can’t be ignored anymore. The team needs a name!”
Flanagan groaned. Hancock laughed.
“The name’s pretty damned self-evident, isn’t it?” he said. “After all, we got this job because it was too risky and dirty for the mil or the IC to do it. I expect that any more we get will be more of the same.”
There was a pause, all eyes expectantly on him. “Really?” he said, looking around the fire. “Nobody’s going to say it? Not one of you dumbasses gets it?” He sighed. “I would have thought that guys who’d served under John before might jump to it. They need somebody who has no qualms about going dangerous places and doing terrible things to bad people, regardless of who they are. And it was one of our old callsigns, too. ‘Brannigan’s Blackhearts.’”
Santelli nodded, as if chewing it over. “I like it.”
There was a general murmur of agreement. Brannigan’s eyes had narrowed. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.
“Too late, John,” Santelli said. “Brannigan’s Blackhearts it is.”
Brannigan smiled his surrender. “All right, you Blackhearts,” he said. “I’m gonna turn in. Don’t drink all my booze before morning.”
Read the Prelude!
THE COLONEL HAS A PLAN
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https://americanpraetorians.wordpress.com/free-fiction/brannigans-blackhearts-0-the-colonel-has-a-plan/
And now, a sneak peek at Brannigan’s Blackhearts #2
BURMESE CROSSFIRE