Cruz was next to him. He was slumped against the farmhouse wall, his head bowed to his chest. He wasn’t moving. Flanagan made sure Gomez was covering security, then bent to check on Cruz.
Their primary contact was dead. He’d taken a bullet to the leg, which was completely soaked in blood. He’d taken a hit that had clipped his femoral, and he’d bled out in the next couple of minutes.
Flanagan looked down at the body for a long moment. This was bad. Without Cruz, this whole op could easily fall apart.
A small, wiry man with a machete in his hand came around the corner from the front door. Flanagan hadn’t seen a photo yet, but this had to be Otero. He stood up and stepped back, his hand still on his Galil, just in case. Cruz had been relatively certain of Otero’s reaction, but Cruz was dead.
“Mario.” Flanagan didn’t trust his own meager Spanish in this situation. Gomez rose and turned toward Otero, who was staring at Cruz’s body. Several children peeked around the corner, and Otero barked at them. They vanished.
Flanagan took over security while Gomez spoke to Otero. Flanagan couldn’t quite follow the conversation—both men were talking too fast, and with contrasting accents. They might speak the same language generally, but there were distinct differences between the Spanish spoken in Colombia and that spoken in the American Southwest.
He scanned the woods, careful not to get too sucked into one particular sector. Otero’s kids—skinny, dirty, and clearly as scared as they were curious—kept peeking around the corner, but this time their father was too absorbed in the conversation with Gomez to yell at them.
The jungle stayed quiet—as quiet as the jungle ever could be, anyway—but Flanagan was already starting to get antsy. They needed to move. Two guns would not be enough if the Green Shirts showed up in force to investigate the gunfire.
“Well, he won’t join us without assurances that we’ve got more people with us.” Gomez turned back to Flanagan without quite turning his back on Otero. “He’s got a wife and kids, and he’s way out here in the hinterlands. He’s already worried as hell about retribution for this fight.”
Flanagan eyed Otero and the machete in his hand. “He’s not thinking about proving himself harmless to the Green Shirts, is he?”
Gomez shook his head. “I’m pretty sure he hates them as much as he’s scared of them. But he’s afraid that they’re going to come looking for the assholes we just killed. And that they’ll find Cruz’s body, too.”
“Well, we’ll do what we can to protect him, then.” Flanagan glanced at Otero, who was staring at the bodies with a blank, haunted look on his face. He didn’t doubt that the little man was seeing visions of reprisals, in all their gory horror. “We’ll need some help, but I think we can get the bodies hidden in the jungle in a few minutes.” He looked down at Cruz’s corpse with a frown. “And as much as I hate to say it, we’re going to have to hide Cruz, too. We can’t carry him back with us.” They had too far to go to carry a body and hold security at the same time.
“Going to be interesting to see what Pacheco has to say about this.” Gomez was already stripping Cruz’s weapons and equipment.
“Yeah.” They hadn’t learned much about Pacheco, except that he was old-school Search Bloc. And what he’d had to do to survive that meant that he had to have a certain degree of moral flexibility.
With his rifle set aside and his gear off, any identifying papers collected and shoved into a cargo pocket, Gomez hefted the body under the arms and started to drag Cruz across the fields toward the woodline, careful to keep from leaving too many incriminating prints in the tilled earth.
Flanagan stayed where he was, scanning their surroundings, his rifle at the ready. They couldn’t afford to drop security altogether while they hid the corpses. They’d have to switch off.
He glanced up. The vultures were already starting to circle overhead. They didn’t have a lot of time.
***
It took nearly an hour to get Cruz and the dead Green Shirts hidden, well back into the jungle and covered in leaves against a massive fallen tree. There wasn’t time to bury them, and it was conceivably possible that an animal might drag them out into the open to be found, but there was a lot of jungle, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic in that area. Otero had assured them of that. He’d even helped them move the bodies, once Gomez had convinced him that they were trying to protect him and his family, and that they meant him and his no harm.
Finally, they faded into the jungle, heading back toward Pacheco’s farm. The plan had to change. Provided that Cruz’s death hadn’t just destroyed it completely.
***
“Joe and Mario are coming back.” Burgess frowned. He was on watch at the window, keeping an eye on the long dirt road that led to Pacheco’s house. “Colonel? I think they’ve got bad news.”
Brannigan joined him. “What makes you say that?”
He didn’t need to hear what Burgess said next. He could see for himself. “Cruz isn’t with them, and Joe’s got a spare rifle slung on his back.”
Brannigan turned and left the window, grabbing his own Galil from where it leaned against Pacheco’s couch before he strode out the door, moving to meet Flanagan and Gomez. “What happened?”
“We took contact at Otero’s farm.” Flanagan’s voice was even and matter of fact. The black-bearded man had always been known for his calm in stressful situations. “Six Green Shirts came out of the weeds just as we were about halfway to the house.” He shrugged. “Cruz took a round to the leg and bled out before the fight was
