The Green Shirts left him there, as they left his wife in the street, their children weeping in shock and horror at the murders, as Galvez climbed back into his truck and waved at the driver. There was work to be done.
***
Flanagan thought he was getting more familiar with the terrain. He knew it was an illusion—he and Cruz hadn’t covered nearly enough of the ground around San Tabal for him to have truly learned it—but they were close enough to the Fuentes place that he thought he recognized a few landmarks, whenever they became visible through the mist and the trees. Which was not often.
He was following Cruz again, though this time Gomez was taking up the rear. Wade and Burgess had both offered to come along, but there were still other preparations to make, and Flanagan had wanted to keep their footprint small, especially as they were on their way to one of the smaller farms, owned by a man named Otero. If this worked, they’d be heading back with new recruits, and he didn’t want to be trooping through the woods that close to San Tabal with a full squad or more.
He also realized he was perhaps being over-optimistic. They didn’t even know if Otero had enough workers or sons to commit to the resistance. Or that he wasn’t so over-cowed by the Green Shirts—or even sympathetic—that he’d refuse to step up.
Cruz halted, sinking to a knee just behind a fallen tree. Flanagan moved up to join him and Gomez settled in to watch their six a moment later.
“We are about two hundred meters away from the edge of Otero’s fields.” Cruz kept his voice low. They couldn’t see more than a dozen yards in any direction, and that was only in certain places. “I think it would be best if we stay hidden until we can observe the situation before we move in and try to make contact.”
“Agreed.” Flanagan had been on more than a few partisan linkups during this new career as a mercenary, to include their recent meeting with Cruz. Caution was always called for.
With that settled, they waited a few more moments to listen and watch for the enemy before getting up and moving on.
Movement in the jungle always takes longer than anywhere else. The limited visibility mandates a greater degree of caution, and the thickness of the vegetation is an obstacle as well. Not only that, but there are innumerable dangerous animals that must be watched for as well as enemy fighters, and they could be above as well as in front, behind, or to either side. It takes longer to move when you’re trying to scan seven hundred twenty degrees.
So, it took most of an hour and a half to cover that last two hundred meters to the Otero farm. Once again, they got low and stayed within the shadows of the treeline as they took in the farm and its surroundings.
Otero was clearly a lot poorer than Fuentes. His fields were smaller, and his house was a tiny block of plastered concrete with a corrugated metal roof. A single, skinny cow cropped grass next to a lean-to shelter that looked like it was about ready to fall over.
There was no one in sight.
Flanagan frowned. “Something’s not right.”
“What?” Cruz hadn’t noticed. Maybe it was Flanagan just being paranoid.
“There’s no one outside. No one in the fields. No movement at all.” He watched the trees and the narrow road leading off down the hillside, disappearing around a turn and into the woods.
“It’s the middle of the afternoon. This is usually siesta time. I’d be surprised if anyone was out working for another hour.”
Flanagan frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. They hadn’t had a chance to slow down enough since they’d gotten in country. He’d forgotten about the generally different schedules in Latin America.
Cruz was probably right. But something had his hackles up. And Flanagan had learned long before to pay attention when he got the heebie-jeebies.
“Let’s move carefully. Cruz, you’re on point. Mario, stay here for the moment, until we get to the house and I signal that it’s all clear.” Flanagan wanted some overwatch set in before he crossed that open field to the house, which was out in the middle of the cleared ground, unlike Fuentes’s house, which had been surrounded by shade trees.
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.
It wasn’t a good shot. He wasn’t even aiming, really. He’d just pointed and mashed the trigger, the rifle already on full auto. The Kalashnikov chattered, the muzzle climbing as the long burst forced it up and back, until the Green Shirt was drilling holes in the sky, spewing little more than flame and noise.
Flanagan had thrown himself flat in the dirt, getting down among the seedlings that had just started coming up out of the soil, yanking his own Galil to his shoulder and searching for the sights. A bullet cracked overhead and one of the
