by Peter Nealen
“Everybody stay sharp,” he said, loudly enough that he could be heard up and down the draw. Gomez and Flanagan had moved across to join them, in a loose perimeter around the fortified machinegun nest. There wasn’t room for the whole team inside the parapet. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Boots scraped and rocks and soil pattered away from above, and he looked up. Javakhishvili was descending the ridgeline with Roger Hancock’s body draped over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. The blood still dripping from the ruin of Hancock’s skull was only the solid confirmation of what they all already knew on an instinctual level, anyway. Wade followed, his rifle held ready, maintaining security behind Javakhishvili.
Javakhishvili lowered the body to the ground just outside the parapet. Brannigan clambered over to stand over him, looking down. Javakhishvili had closed Hancock’s eyes, but the bloodied, puckered hole in his forehead was like a third eye, staring and unclosed.
“Damn it, Roger,” Brannigan muttered past the lump in his throat. He choked the feeling down. Hancock had been his friend and a trusted subordinate for a long, long time. He’d had to stomp on him a few times, mainly because of his recklessness. But he’d always been a pro, always been one of the most solid professional soldiers he’d ever known. For all his rough edges, Hancock had been a leader and a warrior both.
Brannigan wondered, looking down at the body, if he shouldn’t have made Hancock stay behind. He’d seen the rage simmering beneath the surface, and known Hancock long enough to know that having his marriage fall apart would only have thrown gasoline on an already somewhat volatile personality.
He’d never have forgiven you. And if he hadn’t come, it might have been another one of the boys lying here dead. None of us get out of this business alive, not really.
“Are we going to try to take him out?” Javakhishvili asked quietly. “Most airports are going to wonder about carting a body bag onto a plane, even if it’s a charter. And if we’ve got to go overland, that’s a whole other set of problems.”
It was a valid question. It also wasn’t one he necessarily wanted to think about, but that was the burden of command. He had to make that decision.
But it would have to wait until after they dealt with the vehicles coming their way.
“Just stay sharp,” he said. “Roger’s going to have to wait a few more minutes, I’m afraid.” He looked up at where Bianco was watching the oncoming vehicles, and started to clamber up the narrow track that the big man had found on the hillside to join him. “George, take over from Carlo. Carlo, come on up; I want your eyes on this, too.” With Hancock dead, that put Santelli solidly as the number two man in the chain for the team.
It was a painful climb, but he joined Bianco behind a rock, barely a few feet from the edge of the sheer-sided pit that had once been a mountainside, just as the vehicles pulled up short of the driveway leading into the villa’s front gate.
Brannigan got behind his rifle, studying the vehicles through the three-power scope. It wasn’t a lot of magnification, but it was enough.
The SUV was a brand-new, dark-green Range Rover. The panel trucks were painted white, with white canvas canopies over their beds, and had obviously seen some hard use. The paint was dingy and dinged in places, and dust was caked on the undersides and the tires.
Two figures got out of the Range Rover, and another four got out of the rear truck. Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he studied them; they were all dressed alike, in khakis and black jackets, carrying what looked like either short-barreled rifles or submachineguns. One of the two up by the Range Rover lifted what looked like a radio to his lips, and one of the quartet back in the rear clambered back up into the truck. A moment later, he reappeared with a heavy case, which he set down on the road and opened, crouching down to reach inside.
“Heads up,” Bianco whispered. “I think they’re gonna launch a drone.”
Brannigan didn’t say anything, though he concurred. He’d known other officers who might have wanted to get the last word in, but Brannigan hadn’t liked that mindset when he’d still been a commissioned officer.
“Let’s get set to do some skeet shooting, shall we?” Hancock’s death was temporarily compartmentalized in his mind; there was a real, visible threat down there, and if he let himself get distracted by his grief, it could get them all killed or captured.
A moment later, the quad-rotor unfolded and rose, wobbling slightly in the faint mountain winds, then steadied and started to climb over the smashed-in ruins of the villa. Brannigan tracked it with his rifle, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. It was a small target, in motion, and it was far enough away to make for a difficult shot even if it had been standing still.
He let out his breath, his finger tightening on the trigger, trying to make his body go completely still, the rifle’s handguards resting on the rock in front of him. But Bianco got his shot off first, the boom of the report rolling like thunder across the gaping void below them and the muzzle blast showering dust past Brannigan’s sight picture. If he’d been younger and less acclimated to the battlefield, the noise might have startled him after the silence of the last several minutes.
The drone jerked under the impact, shattered plastic falling away from the bullet hole, then it went into a spin as two of the rotors stopped turning. Like a wounded bird, it fluttered down in a wobbling spiral until it finally crashed into the rubble field at the base of the landslide that had half-buried the villa.
The men in black and khaki down below had dashed for cover as soon as they’d heard the shot. They were disciplined, though; they didn’t just start spraying fire when they couldn’t see where the bullet had come from.
The back door of the Range Rover opened then, and a figure got out. It was on the other side of the vehicle, so Brannigan couldn’t see more than the movement as he watched the vehicle through his scope. The figure paused just behind the back of the SUV, apparently scanning the mountainside while still mostly covered from incoming fire. Brannigan was pretty sure that a 7.62 NATO round would still punch through, but it was a long shot.
“Kodiak, Woodsrunner,” Flanagan called over the radio. “Gomez and I can move down to the riverbed and get eyes on from another flank.”
“Do it,” Brannigan replied. “They don’t seem to be too eager to come looking for us, but watch your step.”
He suspected that he knew who the men below were working for. They were dressed similarly to the guards at the Ciela International compound outside of Salta. Not identically, but close enough.
But he still didn’t trust Dalca that far. And the fact that they’d showed up after most of the shooting was over, and deployed a drone, told him that they were probably there to check for survivors before they ransacked what was left of the ruins.
He was under no illusions that Ciela International, or the underground organization that used the multinational conglomerate as a front, had gotten involved in this for altruistic reasons, no matter Dalca’s protestations.
The figure behind the Range Rover was doing something, though he couldn’t tell what. The small object just visible behind the corner of the vehicle might have been a satellite phone, but it was too far away to be sure.
He thought of the sat phone he had in his pack, though it was turned off. He briefly considered turning it on, in case that was Dalca or one of her flunkies down there, trying to contact them. But could he trust her, or anyone working for her?
There was more activity near the rear truck; several more men in black and khaki had jumped out, and they might have pulled another case out. Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he moved his scope back and forth from the rear truck to the Range Rover. If they launched another drone, would it be another surveillance job? Or a lethal drone like Flanagan had shot down just after they’d made contact with the Front’s security? If Dalca really wanted to make a clean sweep so that she could rifle through the ruins in peace…
“Keep an eye on them,” he told Bianco and Santelli, wh
o had finally joined them, huffing and puffing, dripping sweat. The grit was clinging to his damp sleeves and the knees of his trousers. “I’m going to take a chance.”
He crawled backward until he was just below the crest of the ridge, and swung his pack off his back. It took some digging to find the sat phone, but he pulled it out and held down the power button as he unfolded the antenna. It was an older model; Van Zandt had gone cheap.
Dalca wasn’t supposed to have the number to this particular phone. Only Chavez and Van Zandt were. But he’d come to expect that Dalca had ways of finding out all sorts of information she wasn’t supposed to have.
Sure enough, shortly after he’d powered it on, it started to vibrate. He didn’t recognize the number displayed on the monochrome LCD screen, either.
“Kodiak,” he growled after hitting the “Receive” button.
“I hoped that was you,” Dalca purred, her voice slightly fuzzed by the signal and the encryption. “Do you have any idea how much that drone cost?”
“I can imagine,” he rasped. “But I don’t particularly care. What are you doing here?” He didn’t bother to ask how she’d gotten the sat phone number.
“Coming to get you out, provided you were still alive,” she answered. “I’ve had a plane circling over Laguna de Pozuelo for the last several hours. After all, I knew where you were going; why shouldn’t I keep an eye on you, in case you needed help?”
“And, just coincidentally, if we were all dead, you’d have free rein to ransack the place afterward?” Brannigan asked.
“Of course,” she replied easily. “I don’t run a charitable organization, John. Not that your continued survival is going to necessarily keep me from leaving a team to exploit the site, anyway.” She suddenly lost the playful tone and turned serious. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve got one KIA and one Urgent Surgical,” he replied. “As well as about a dozen prisoners.”
“I think we can handle that,” Dalca said, “though depending on how high you are, I might have some difficulty getting to you.”
“Stay where you are,” Brannigan said. “We’ll come to you.”
That way, Flanagan and Gomez can keep you under the gun, in case things go sideways.
***
It took some time to get down the mountain. The sun was already going down by the time they came out of the riverbed and up onto the road where Dalca’s vehicles waited.
Several of her people were already in the ruins of the villa; Brannigan could see the lights dancing in the shadows as they went over what they could reach. He doubted they’d find much; he suspected that most of the sensitive materials were buried under thousands of tons of rock and shattered concrete.
The Blackhearts were thin on security; Jenkins was half-supporting, half-carrying Kirk. He was walking, and still carrying his rifle, but he was weak, in a great deal of pain, and he was still having trouble breathing after having been jabbed with a needle to relieve the pressure at least three times. Javakhishvili was carrying Hancock. Santelli was still covering the prisoners, who, fortunately, were still cowed by the shock of what had happened. They were clearly not used to being exposed to the very horrors they’d coordinated.
Bevan especially was being a handful; not because he was resisting, but because he had apparently completely withdrawn into himself out of sheer panic. He was stumbling, sobbing, and had to be constantly watched so that he didn’t wander off and fall down. Brannigan suspected that it was going to take a while to get him to talk.
That left Brannigan, Bianco, Burgess, Curtis, and Wade to hold security. Five men against any enemy survivors, the prisoners, or even Dalca’s people. Under most circumstances, Brannigan would have put the odds in the Blackhearts’ favor anyway; they were skilled and aggressive enough to overcome some serious disparity in numbers, and had proven it more than once. But they were low on ammunition, utterly exhausted, and despite their ironclad discipline, they were all feeling the loss of Roger Hancock.
Dalca was waiting in front of the Range Rover, dressed in her “field wear” outfit; khakis and a jacket, with high-end hiking boots on her feet. She wasn’t visibly wearing a weapon, but Brannigan reminded himself that she hadn’t been open carrying the pistol she’d shot Hernando with, either.
“Are we ready to go?” Dalca asked, her eyes flicking across the ragged, dusty group of armed men and unarmed prisoners.
“Not yet,” Brannigan said bluntly. “We need to bury Roger. And I’m not entirely sure if we should go with you in the first place.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re thinking of going to Bolivia?” she asked.
Brannigan didn’t ask how she knew, or even suspected, that Chavez and Van Zandt had a team there, waiting for them as a contingency. “I know I can trust the people we have there.”
She ignored the implication. “I’m sure you can,” she said, “but you’ll never get there.”
He stared at her, his eyes going cold and his finger alongside his rifle’s trigger guard. Around him, the other Blackhearts suddenly got tense, and there was suddenly violence in the air. “Care to explain why not?”
She shrugged, unfazed. “Probably because the Humanity Front has made some other enemies in the area. Their presence and their drones forced the PCC and the Rastrojos to divert one of their narcotics trafficking routes. The narcos don’t know about this place, so far as I know, but there is a small support airfield that the PCC is moving to seize. They are between you and the border.”
Brannigan just watched her impassively for a moment. He didn’t think she was lying; it was a plausible enough explanation. It was also just plausible enough to provide her with an opening. He didn’t doubt that she’d lie to secure whatever leverage and advantage she could. But under the circumstances, he wasn’t sure he could take the chance. It would be a long overland route to Bolivia, and they were critically short of ammo, if not other supplies. He keyed his radio. “Bring it in, Woodsrunner.”
Dalca’s eyes narrowed, and she looked up at the ridgeline above them as Flanagan and Gomez came out of cover and started to descend. She stared at Brannigan accusingly. “You don’t trust me.”
“No,” he answered. “I don’t. I don’t trust anybody under these circumstances. Least of all you.”
But, infuriatingly, she just smiled. “I guess I’ll have to work harder on cracking through that wall of yours, then,” she said.
“You can try,” Brannigan said, as he turned back toward the riverbed. They had a field funeral to see to.
***
Hancock’s body lay in the shallow grave that they’d scraped out under the riverbank. It was too dark to see much detail, which was a blessing. Brannigan knew he didn’t want to remember Roger Hancock as the cold, bullet-riddled corpse lying there in the sandy, rocky soil. They hadn’t had much of anything to wrap the body in; his bloodied field blouse was laid over his face.
He knew that he was the one who needed to say the words, but they wouldn’t come. He suspected that Tammy would never forgive him for not only letting Hancock die, but not bringing his body home. But there wasn’t really a workable way to do it. He wouldn’t be alone; Villareal’s remains were somewhere in the Burmese jungle. Aziz had been burned up when the Tourmaline-Delta platform had gone up in flames. Tanaka had been buried by the Mexican Marines. Hart’s bones had probably been picked clean by the African vultures. At least Hancock was getting a burial.
“Rest in peace, old buddy,” he said, finally. He looked around at the rest of the Blackhearts. Half of them were facing the grave. The other half were faced out, holding security.
This is where it ends for all of us. A shallow grave in some barren, unknown place, where no one will ever visit.
And none of us will quit, even knowing that. There’s no turning back for the likes of us.
He grabbed the shovel and started heaving the dirt over the earthly remains of Roger Hancock. They had a long way to go, and couldn’t afford the time to do anything more.
Epilogue
The black site was probably one of the creepier government installations Brannigan thought he’d ever set foot in.
It had once been an old hard rock mine. The entrance still looked like an abandoned mineshaft; there was nothing to indicate that it was anything else until a visitor got a good hundred yards back into the mountainside, where there was suddenly a steel vault door set in the side of the tunnel, with a cipher lock hidden behind a rusty plate that looked like it dated back to the late 1800s when the mine had first been sunk.
The tunnel was downright frigid compared to the scorching temperatures outside. Brannigan stepped over a pile of gravel, glancing up at the tunnel ceiling with a faint shudder. It only took being too close to a cave-in once to make it an extremely uncomfortable experience to go underground again anytime soon.
He punched in the code that Chavez had given him, and the vault door unlocked with a chunk. He hauled it open and stepped inside.
The passage beyond the vault door had been widened and reinforced. He found himself in a fairly spacious room with concrete walls, ceiling and floor, several tables, a kitchenette, a pair of cots in the corner, and several chairs. Yet another door led farther back into the mountain, opposite the one he’d come in.
Mark Van Zandt was sitting at one of the tables, shuffling a deck of cards absently. He looked up as Brannigan closed the vault door behind him and waved at the chair across the table from him.
Brannigan flipped the chair around and straddled it, his arms crossed over the back. “He still not talking?”
“Oh, he’s talking,” Van Zandt said sourly. “He’s just not saying much that we want to hear. There’s a lot of blustering and bargaining going on; he definitely started to recover after he figured out that we weren’t just going to shoot him.” He tossed the cards on the table with a bitter grimace. “We probably should have. He’s way too cocky for a man who’s been kept awake for the last seventy-two hours.”
“He’s the first real lead we’ve had into the Front’s operations,” Brannigan pointed out. “We can’t exactly squander that opportunity.”