Once they were reasonably sure that they hadn’t been detected—or had picked a position right on a patrol route—they settled in and Flanagan pulled his borrowed binoculars out of his pack, getting down in the prone beside the tree, bracing the optics with his elbows planted against the roots, cupping his hands around the eyepieces.
A medium-sized farm spread across the slopes on the far side of the valley below. Cruz had given him the rundown before they’d inserted. This farm, originally belonging to one Diego Fuentes, had always grown mostly beans and corn, feeding not only the Fuentes family but a good chunk of the locals around San Tabal. The fields sprawled over several cleared hillsides, stretching from just short of the crest of the ridge clear down to the narrow creek that ran through the bottom of the valley. The house, two stories tall with a red tile roof and the stucco walls painted green and yellow, sat about two-thirds of the way up the slope, surrounded by trees.
Flanagan began his study with the house. A couple of ancient farm trucks were parked nearby, but they were outnumbered by the green-painted technicals that stood at all four corners, the machineguns in the beds manned by Green Shirts. He could see the source of the nickname—the dark green field shirts were the only uniform that Clemente’s fighters seemed to have. They wore khakis, jeans, or camouflage trousers. Their gear was every bit as eclectic, running the gamut from plate carriers to ill-fitting load bearing harnesses to simple bandoliers full of magazines. A couple had belts of machinegun ammo draped around their torsos—mostly without a machinegun that would take that ammo in sight.
It became clear within a few minutes that the technicals and their crews weren’t just there to guard the farm from outside interlopers. They were there to keep the farmers in check.
Most of the dozen or so Green Shirts he could see around the house were mostly lounging and smoking. Once, a young woman came out of the kitchen and onto the porch to throw something out. He could see from her body language that she was nervous, and the attention she was getting from several of the Green Shirts outside easily explained why.
He scanned down the main dirt road leading to the fields. Laborers were working out there, even though it was still far from harvest time. There’s always work that needs doing on a farm, even while the crops grow.
But the strange thing was that there were no overseers out in the fields. All the Green Shirts were up by the house.
“You’re sure Fuentes wouldn’t willingly cooperate?” He kept his voice low and didn’t take his eyes away from the optics as he asked the question.
“As certain as I am that the sun rises in the east.” There was no doubt in Cruz’s voice. “If he didn’t have a family to worry about—and a lot of his workers are practically family—then he’d rather die.”
“Hmm.” Flanagan widened his scan, but he didn’t see anything new. “There don’t seem to be enough Green Shirts down there to act as overseers. I’m only seeing about a dozen near the house and the barn.”
“Watch the barn closely.” Cruz had clearly gotten eyes on this place already, but he wanted Flanagan to see it for himself.
He shifted the binoculars to watch the barn. It was a low, rough, cinderblock structure with a corrugated metal roof. A lot more care had gone into the house than the barn. The door was open, but it was dark inside, and he couldn’t see much past the doorway itself.
Then there was movement. For a moment, a small face peered out before quickly vanishing back into the shadows. He shifted his gaze to see one of the Green Shirts, carrying an AK-47, striding quickly over to the barn. The skinny man leaned into the doorway for a moment before turning away and swaggering back toward his compatriots.
“They’re holding hostages.”
“The Green Shirts don’t have the numbers to directly control everyone, so they take hostages to keep people in line. It’s a time-honored technique.” Cruz’s voice was as flat and casual as if he were talking about ordering lunch. Flanagan still didn’t have a great read on the other man. He couldn’t tell if he was just that callous—there were a few stories about AFEAU—or if he had simply distanced his own mind from it for the sake of his own sanity.
Maybe it was a little of both.
“This is one of the few farms they’ve kept for food.” A little bit of contempt leaked into Cruz’s voice. “They’re more concerned with the others. So, the more they can control these farms with threats against their loved ones, the more resources they can devote to the coca farms.”
“Were any of these places coca farms before?” Flanagan knew that might be a loaded question, but he needed as much information as possible.
“No. There were grow areas nearby, but they’ve always been small. Clemente is trying to convert entire farms into an industrial-scale operation.” Cruz might have snorted a little. “It’s not clear what his endgame is, but if he can force some of the other cartels to their knees by undercutting them, he will have a bottomless source of funding to maintain his Communist hellhole.”
“Not much you can do with money when there’s no food to buy.” While Flanagan had spent most of his career in the Middle East, the Blackhearts had seen some Communist hellholes, most notably in northern Burma. Plus, Flanagan, for all his backwoods manner and quiet demeanor, was an educated man. He knew Communism’s long, bloody, and nightmarish history.
“There’s always someone who will do business with them.” Apparently, Cruz was a student of history, too.
“So, will Fuentes help us if we retake his farm?” Flanagan got back to
