“I’m sure he will, if he survives and doesn’t do anything stupid. There’s a reason I showed you this farm first. Fuentes and his family have been part of the bedrock of this area for decades. He has never been aristocracy, but he is respected. If he isn’t already part of a resistance, he’ll still bring many out of the shadows to help if he stands up to Clemente.” Cruz sighed. “I suspect that the only reason he hasn’t already is that he knows he’s alone and Clemente has a gun to his family’s heads.”
Flanagan took that in as he continued to scan the farm. He didn’t see any more Green Shirts, despite Cruz’s cautions about patrols. “Looks like it shouldn’t be too difficult, if we can get close enough. Those technicals are a threat, but these guys don’t look like they’re all that alert or disciplined.” He finally came off glass. “Are any of those coca farms nearby?”
“Yes. We can get there before dark.”
***
The movement to the next objective was every bit as punishing as the first, especially given the fact that their muscles had had time to relax and start to stiffen up while they’d been lying there observing the Fuentes farm. But Flanagan was used to elk hunting in the high country, and so he adapted. He was probably having an easier time of it than Cruz—the other man might have been a veteran of one of Colombia’s hardest units of trained killers, but he was getting older and probably wasn’t spending much of his time out in the bush anymore. The skills came back, but conditioning was something else altogether.
It was indeed getting close to sunset by the time they neared their next OP. The terrain wasn’t as conducive to standoff this time—they had to get a lot closer. And that nearness brought new dangers with it.
Flanagan could see the flicker of lights through the trees ahead and downhill, though they only occasionally penetrated the thick vegetation. It was already getting dark enough under the jungle canopy that he was starting to think about calling a halt to dig out the old PVS-14s that Cruz had brought, but it would be better to get into position while they still had some daylight to see by.
Cruz suddenly froze, putting up a clenched fist. Flanagan didn’t bother to ask why; he just froze in turn. When you’re in the bush and in hostile territory, you don’t question the point man, even if he’s a partisan contact. Kirk trusted Cruz, and that was going to have to be enough—at least, until the man tried to sell them out.
After a brief moment, Cruz sank to the forest floor, going prone with his rifle still held ready. Flanagan followed suit, still scanning and listening for whatever had alerted his companion.
That didn’t take long. He could hear the rustle of movement through the trees and the sound of low voices. Someone was coming. And they were already close.
He’d slipped under a bush, hoping and praying that he wasn’t about to lie down on a snake, or centipede, or anything else poisonous. Keeping his own Galil ready, he peered through the leaves, searching for the source of the noises.
The three Green Shirts appeared a few minutes later. They were dressed similarly to the ones he’d watched through the binoculars back at the Fuentes place, two of them wearing ill-fitting load bearing vests, one carrying a Galil and the other an AKM. The third was wearing an ancient belt and Y-harness and carrying an old M16A2 with almost all the bluing worn off.
It was his first up-close encounter with the Green Shirts, and if anything, he was even less impressed than he had been watching the group guarding the Fuentes farm from a distance. They weren’t in anything approaching a tactical formation, simply clumped together and strolling through the jungle, chatting and laughing. They barely glanced to their left or right, and never checked behind them.
The three of them passed a few yards away from where the mercenary and his Colombian contact lay in the weeds. None of them so much as glanced in Flanagan’s direction as they went past, all far too absorbed in their conversation. Though he couldn’t understand most of the Spanish, the coarse tone and harsh, gloating laughter put his teeth on edge.
Flanagan knew what kind of men the likes of Clemente would surround himself with. Some of them might be naïve idealists, but those were actually very rare in real guerrilla movements. Most of them were unrepentant, vicious thugs, and from what he could see, these three definitely fit that description.
Not that it mattered that much in the long run. The naïve idealists quickly became the most bloodthirsty killers.
He didn’t let himself slip into a dangerous contempt that would make him underestimate the threat they posed, even given their unprofessional behavior in the bush. They thought they were secure, believed that they had no enemies close enough to worry about. He was sure that if they’d believed there was a threat nearby, they would have been much more watchful.
Flanagan had learned a long time ago never to underestimate how dangerous an undertrained but cunning enemy could be. They might not be good, but a spray of automatic weapons fire can still kill you just as dead if you get sloppy through contempt.
They waited, still and silent, until the Green Shirt patrol had passed and was out of sight and out of earshot. Only then did the pair of them get to their feet and continue on toward their objective.
The farm’s position and the lack of commanding terrain around it meant they had to move right up to the treeline. The sun was already behind the mountains to the west, but between the dying light of early evening and the spotlights set up around the farmhouse, they could see well
