High Desert Vengeance (Brannigan's Blackhearts Book 5)

by Peter Nealen

  It hit with a soft thud. He might have heard the faint rustle of weight shifting, but the man out in the darkness held his fire.

  He hadn’t really expected the man to be that stupid. He’d had two close calls, but not enough to panic him. If he really was the psychopath that some people said he was, he might not panic easily.

  A glance over toward Flanagan showed him that the other man was moving away from him, circling around to the left. They’d have to be careful that they didn’t spread out too much, otherwise El Destripador might slip between them.

  He stayed very still, listening and waiting, his eyes never stopping, scanning the brush and cactus ahead.

  The one thing he was reasonably sure of was that he was more patient than his quarry. That was another reason he was glad to have Flanagan staying over, rather than any of the other Blackhearts. Flanagan understood patience and stealth in the way that only a hunter could.

  That said, he hoped that Flanagan didn’t get a shot. He wanted El Destripador for himself.

  Something hit the ground near him with a soft thump. A rock. The psychopath was trying to flip the script on him. Unless it was a grenade…

  He moved his head slowly to look, knowing that if it was a frag, he was probably dead. But there was no pineapple lying there in the dirt. He couldn’t see anything within his line of sight that might have made the noise.

  Faint footsteps padded through the desert not far away. He lifted his rifle and tracked toward them, looking for movement.

  Three pistol shots rapped out, the muzzle flashes bright in his NVGs, and far closer than he’d thought. He dropped flat as one of the bullets hissed overhead, missing his skull by inches. He fired back, but it was a wild shot, the supersonic crack echoing off the hills. He already knew he’d missed, even as he crawled rapidly away from his position.

  The echoes faded, and the desert went still again. Gomez stayed on his belly in the dirt, his breath rasping in his ears. He felt blood on his knee; he’d scraped himself open diving for cover. Should have put pants on.

  He couldn’t hear El Destripador anymore. Either he’d moved far enough away in the wake of those four shots to get some serious distance, or he had been hit. Somehow, Gomez didn’t think he’d been hit.

  He started to slowly lift himself up on his hands and knees, careful to make no sound. It was difficult, especially with his gear on, but he managed it, carefully lifting his rifle off the ground once he was up on a knee, feeling the dirt, rocks, and goatheads digging into his wounds.

  The pain was quickly compartmentalized to a back part of his mind. He’d always been good at that, sometimes to his father’s chagrin when he’d needed discipline. It had impressed his instructors in the Marine Corps, particularly the Recon cadre. Now it was helping him focus on the hunt.

  Waiting, he slowed his breathing down. He was breathing through his mouth; it dried his throat out, but it was a lot quieter than nose-breathing, and he could hear better. This was as much a hunt by sound as by sight.

  It was in that silence that he first heard the sound of someone climbing onto the horse trailer over by the corral. A boot knocked against steel, and the shocks creaked.

  He glanced that way, to see a figure that had to be Flanagan climbing up onto the roof and flattening himself out behind his rifle. At the same moment, he heard a rustle of movement and pounding footsteps. He came to his feet, bringing his own weapon up, tracking toward the sound.

  Flanagan’s shot split the night, the hissing crack reverberating through the chilly air, immediately echoed by a strangled scream and the sound of a body stumbling and falling.

  His teeth clenched, hoping—even as he knew that he shouldn’t—that Flanagan’s shot hadn’t been fatal, Gomez moved in on the sound, his own OBR leveled, his finger just off the trigger.

  It was El Destripador, he saw, as he came around a bush and saw the man crawling. He could tell from the white jeans and dark shirt, though the jeans looked a little the worse for wear in his NVGs.

  From the spreading dark stain on the jeans, and the way he was crawling, Flanagan’s bullet had taken him in the pelvis. He was dying, bleeding to death into his pelvic girdle. It was going to be a long, hard, painful way to die.

  Hardly less than what he deserved.

  Gomez stood over his enemy, his rifle still leveled, but he didn’t shoot. Now, at the end, he remembered what his mother and Padre Ramirez would say.

  Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord.

  He wanted to do it. More than anything in the world, at that moment, as he saw his father, his mother, and his brother lying in their own blood in their own home, he wanted to put the scope’s illuminated reticle, the only thing he’d be able to see through the NVGs, on the young man’s head and pull the trigger.

  I’ve already come this far. I killed the patriarch and his bitch of a wife. He deserves it.

  El Destripador must have heard him, because he rolled over on his back. He still had a revolver in his hand. It glinted in the faint starlight, but it wasn’t pointed at him. Not yet.

  “What are you waiting for, puto?” the killer spat. “Go on, or are you too much of a pussy?”

  “You killed my mother,” Gomez said, his voice sounding dead in his own ears. “And my father. And my brother.”

  “Mario?” El Destripador gritted. “Is that you? You finally had the cojones to come back, after you started a fight you couldn’t finish? After you hid while we tore through your whole family? You should have heard the way your mother screamed before the end.”

  “You should talk,” Gomez said flatly. “Your father died like a bitch, hiding behind a teenage girl, begging for his life.”

  In the ghostly green of his NVGs, he saw El Destripador’s face twist with fury. “Fuck you!” he screamed, and wrenched the revolver off the ground.

  Gomez shot him in the head.

  The clap of the shot was shockingly loud. Angel Espino-Gallo’s skull bounced hard, once, as a dark spatter exploded against the ground behind him. His body shuddered and then, slowly, went still.

  The revolver fell to the ground with a soft thump. Gomez lowered the rifle.

  It was over.

  Epilogue

  “You’re in danger of getting downright social, John,” Ben Drake said, as he opened his door. He ushered Brannigan inside and shut it, plunging the living room back into its companionable dimness. “This is the second time you’ve knocked on my door in three months.”

  “I’ve got a bit of a problem, Master Guns,” Brannigan said, as Drake shuffled past him to his armchair near the fireplace. There was a bottle of Glenlivet already sitting on the coffee table, he noticed, with two glasses. “And I’m not sure I can go to Hector or Mark about it.”

  “Well, sit down and tell me about it,” Drake said, as he lowered himself into his chair. “You gonna have a drink this time?”

  Brannigan settled himself on the couch. “Yeah, I think I can, this time,” he said. Drake splashed generous helpings of the amber liquor into the two glasses and handed one over before settling back in his chair with a faint sigh.

  Drake had been Brannigan’s first platoon sergeant, many years before, when he’d been a wet-behind-the-ears boot Marine with a lot still to learn. He’d mentored the young man even as the needs of the Corps had moved them on to different assignments, and had stayed in touch right up to Brannigan’s forced retirement, when he’d gone off the grid.

  Drake was one of those soft-spoken, quiet retirees who didn’t have a Marine Corps flag flying from his porch, or a doorbell programmed to play the Marine Corps Hymn. The only mementos in sight were a US Flag next to a small Marine Corps flag on the wall, above an ancient, battered Garand and the equally battered flag of the long-gone Republic of Vietnam. But for all his lack of external nostalgia, he was a man who, even pushing eighty years old, still had his finger on the pulse of “the community.” He knew everybody. If there was a problem, Ben Drake probably knew the man who could fix it.

 
Brannigan sipped the whisky. He’d drunk far more rotgut stuff with Drake over the years, but clearly the old man had reached the point in his life when he figured he was too old for cheap booze. He’d noticed that there was a “XXV” on the label. That was a three-hundred-dollar bottle if it was a cent.

  “One of my boys had some trouble at home while we were gone,” he said, careful not to say exactly where they had been or what they had been doing. He was pretty sure that Drake had guessed; after all, the man had pointed him to Javakhishvili with the understanding that he was hiring a combat medic, who knew Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

  “What kind of trouble?” Drake asked.

  “Murder-kidnapping trouble,” Brannigan said bluntly. Drake’s glass paused only slightly on the way to his lips. “His sister’s back, but his brother and his parents are in the ground.”

  “And you need to find people to look after your boys’ families while you’re off at work,” Drake said, nodding. “Not an unknown issue, especially with guys working high-risk sorts of jobs.” He snorted. “Especially when the government can’t secure their information worth a damn.” He thought for a bit, though he didn’t go into the back for his Rolodex, like he had the last time. “I might know some people,” he said. “They won’t work for free, but they won’t break the bank, either. Old guys. Retirees. Too old for overseas work, but too ornery to just sit at home. Don’t worry, though, they can be plenty discreet.”

  “Thanks, Master Guns,” Brannigan said, taking another sip. “I can’t have this happening again.”

  “Entirely understandable,” Drake replied. “Ain’t like the old days. I don’t think anybody was really that worried that the Commies were going to go after their families. These days, though…” He sipped his own whisky. “Besides,” he continued, with a glint in his eye, “it gets expensive and dangerous, cleaning up after an incident like that. Can make your handlers mighty nervous.”

  Brannigan eyed his old mentor coolly over his glass, knowing that somehow, Drake knew exactly what had happened.

  He didn’t worry too much about it, though. He knew that Drake would have done the same thing he had. He just lifted his glass in salute and drank.

  ***

  Hart smiled at the pretty nurse at the nurse’s station as he made his way back to Childress’ room with coffee. She smiled back. It was nice to see; when he thought about it, he’d been so buried in the bottle for the last few years that he’d barely paid any attention to women. It really was looking like joining the Blackhearts, and then staying to help Sam, had been the best decisions of his life so far.

  As he turned down the hallway, he almost stopped. He frowned, but kept moving.

  The man sitting on the bench, just two doors down from Childress’ room, had been there before. He was sure he looked familiar. Younger, fit, with that “meat-eater” look that could immediately identify a soldier or contractor to those who knew what to look for. And he’d been watching Hart. Watching intently.

  He suddenly felt naked; he wasn’t carrying because they were in the hospital. He walked into Childress’ room to find his friend still poring over the computer, learning everything he could about the world of cyber operations that Bianco had introduced him to. Childress was determined not to fade away, but to find some way to stay in the fight.

  Hart relaxed just a little when he saw that Sam was okay and apparently hadn’t been bothered. He decided to keep what he’d seen to himself for the moment, as he put the coffee on the tray table next to the bed. “How’s it coming?” he asked.

  Childress didn’t look up. “Going good,” he said. “There’s a lot to learn, but I’m getting the hang of it. I’ll be able to out-nerd Vinnie soon enough.”

  Hart nodded as he sank into his customary chair. He’d placed it so that he could watch the door before, but that seemed like a more urgent need all of a sudden. His eyes scanned the room, looking for an improvised weapon.

  He sipped his coffee as he started contingency planning, just in case.

  Look for more hard-hitting action soon, in:

  BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS #6

  DOCTORS OF DEATH

  Missing Persons, Dead Villagers, and a Sinister Cabal

  When a WHO doctor goes missing in Chad, her husband is ready to move heaven and earth to find her. But most of his pleas fall on deaf ears. It’s Africa. These things happen. But his pleas eventually reach the shadowy office that arranges jobs for Brannigan’s Blackhearts. They’re headed into Central Africa, on another rescue mission.

  But there’s more to this than meets the eye. A private military kingpin named Mitchell Price is sniffing around Chad at the same time. Entire villages are being wiped out by mysterious plagues. And an ominously familiar group of Western shooters has showed up, both in Chad and at home.

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