Chance Contact
Gomez faded into the brush, bracing his Galil against a tree and going completely still. Flanagan nodded to Cruz, who stepped out into the fields and started toward the farmhouse.
Flanagan let him get a few yards away before following. He took one step out of the trees and froze.
Six Green Shirts, talking and bitching in Spanish, one of them trying to shake leaves out of his collar, had just stepped out of the woods on the far side of the field.
Cruz was already halfway to the house—the fields weren’t all that big, at least not on this side of the farm. He froze for a second, then tried to dash for the house.
Unfortunately, the sudden movement drew one of the Green Shirts’ eye. He shouted, lifting his AK-47 and opening fire.
BRANNIGAN’S BLACKHEARTS
War to the Knife
Peter Nealen
This is a work of fiction. Characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Some real locations are used fictitiously, others are entirely fictional. This book is not autobiographical. It is not a true story presented as fiction. It is more exciting than anything 99% of real gunfighters ever experience.
Copyright 2021 Peter Nealen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, to include, but not exclusive to, audio or visual recordings of any description without permission from the author.
Brannigan’s Blackhearts is a trademark of Peter Nealen, LLC. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
http://americanpraetorians.com
Chapter 1
There was no warning.
Miguel Jurado was a heavy sleeper, especially after he’d eaten well and had downed about half a bottle of aguardiente. So, he didn’t hear the door open, despite the noise outside. He was dead to the world until he found himself shaken roughly. “Mayor Jurado! Mayor Jurado! You need to wake up, Señor!”
He cracked one eye, his head already starting to pound. He couldn’t handle the aguardiente as easily anymore. It took a moment to register that it was Sebastian Casas, his chief of security, who was shaking him.
That can’t be good.
He sat up in bed with a groan, squinting against the light that spilled through the open door. He wasn’t really fat, not yet, but his body was going soft as he got older and balder, and for some reason, that meant that he always hurt when he got up, despite the alcohol.
Maria, his third wife, twenty years his junior, didn’t have that problem. She was sitting up in bed, covering herself with the sheet, staring at Casas with large, dark, frightened eyes.
“What is it?” Jurado peered blearily at the clock beside the massive bed. “What time is it?”
“It is just after one in the morning, Señor.” Casas’ voice was taut. “Please, you have to come with me. We have to get you and the señora to safety.”
That got his attention. Casas was not a man easily frightened. “What has happened?” He was already pulling the sheets aside, casting about the darkened room for his trousers.
“There was a bombing at the rancho, Señor.”
That made Jurado’s blood run cold. Juan Fernando had been throwing a party there. His eldest son and easily a hundred of his friends, many of the scions of the wealthy farmers and businessmen of San Tabal, would have been there. “My son?”
Casas shook his head. “We don’t know yet, Señor. All we know is that there was an explosion next to the house, and that there are casualties. Please, we need to get you to a safe haven.”
The Mayor’s mansion, overlooking the Grand Plaza in the center of San Tabal, was not exactly the most secure building in the city. Left over from the Spanish colonial days, its aging construction meant that another car bomb could very well level half of it, and it had never been built with defense in mind in the first place.
Jurado had always found that odd, given the history of the place.
He dressed quickly, urging Maria to do the same. She was frightened and pale, her hands shaking as she struggled into her clothes. Jurado couldn’t help but pity her a little, past his flash of irritation.
He was no stranger to the threat of violence. While Colombia was much more peaceful than it had been during the days of La Violencia and the cartel wars around Medellin and Cali which had followed, the ever-present narcos and revolutionaries such as the FARC and the various other groups—many of them influenced or supported by neighboring Venezuela—meant that the threat never really went away. Maria, however, hadn’t lived through the periods he’d seen. He’d been a child during the very end of La Violencia, and had come of age during Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror. She’d grown up since the peace arrangements with Medellin and Cali, and while Colombia could not have been called peaceful since then, with the FARC and ELN waging their perpetual narco-revolutions, it had been nothing like the old days.
Pulling on his shoes, he shooed Maria toward the men in suits standing just outside their door. “We have to go.” He looked up at Casas. “I need to know what happened, and that my son is all right. Get me Manzano.” Carlos Manzano was the San Tabal chief inspector. If he wasn’t already aware, he would need to act quickly.
Jurado didn’t know why someone might have tried to kill him or his son. That could wait.
“Manzano is already heading that way.” Casas ushered the mayor and his young wife toward the stairs and the doors below. “All the police are on alert. They are locking down the city as we speak.”
“Then where are we going?” Maria still sounded like she was on the edge of panic.
Jurado put his arm around her as they descended the
