“Where is the body?” Brannigan hadn’t even noticed that Pacheco had come with him. The older man was quiet.
“We hid it in the jungle, with Otero’s help.” Flanagan sounded apologetic. “There wasn’t time to bury him. I’m sorry.”
“It’s war.” Pacheco didn’t seem all that bothered. He took a deep breath. “He won’t be the first or the last Colombian soldier to go unrecovered in these mountains. I know who to talk to so that his family is taken care of.” His eyes narrowed as he shifted mental gears back to the fight. “We’ll have to move quickly. Even if they never find the bodies, Clemente will know that he lost a patrol, sooner or later.”
“Do you think he has a target list already worked up?” Brannigan wasn’t happy about the prospect of rushing a guerrilla resistance. It was largely going to depend on just how much Clemente and his Green Shirts knew, and how quickly they reacted. Not to mention what form that reaction took.
“I don’t doubt it. People like Clemente always do.” Pacheco started back toward the house. “What about Otero?”
Brannigan, Gomez, and Flanagan followed him. Flanagan and Gomez looked exhausted—and no wonder; they’d covered a lot of miles through the jungle since that morning.
“He won’t be the first one to join up. He needs to know that he’s not going to be the nail that gets hammered down,” Flanagan said grimly. “Can’t say as I blame him.”
“He might be that nail anyway, if Clemente and Galvez realize that their patrol disappeared near his farm. They don’t necessarily need to find the bodies.” Pacheco stepped through the door and into the living room, where most of the rest of the team was gathered, their weapons in their hands. “From what they’ve done already, they’ll make an example out of Otero and his family if we don’t give them something else to focus on.”
“You’ve got an idea.” Brannigan wasn’t asking.
Pacheco nodded as he pulled a map out and spread it on the table. “We could hit one of the coca farms.” He pointed. “One of these, maybe, on the far side of the city.”
“That might buy us time, or it might get a whole lot of civilians killed in reprisals.” Brannigan frowned down at the map. He wasn’t seeing a lot of options. He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “We’ve got eight more days before the ambush was supposed to go down.” He glanced up at Bianco. “I don’t think the ‘wait and see’ plan is going to work anymore. We’re going to have to push the ‘liberation’ plan.”
“And if there is a backup force?” Bianco still sounded a little uncertain.
“We’ll deal with that problem when we come to it.” He grimaced. “No, I don’t like it, either. But we’re kind of stuck at this point. That fight and Cruz’s death committed us.” He looked down at the table and sighed. “Look, it’s entirely possible that Bianco’s worries are justified. We’re used to ‘give us the job and let us handle it.’ We don’t do well with the kind of limited, ‘don’t ask questions’ info we got for this mission. In fact, if not for the implied blackmail, I would have turned this down flat.” He looked up at Pacheco. “No offense.” The other man just spread his hands and shrugged. Brannigan looked around at the rest. “It’s possible that our paranoia led us into a mistake. I don’t think that’s the case, mind you. But we need to be ready to roll with the punches if we just threw a wrench into a carefully coordinated plan.”
Wade just snorted to express his opinion of that possibility.
Brannigan looked up at Pacheco again. “I’m going to call back home and see if I can dig up any more information. But lacking that, I think that Fuentes needs to be our next step. And if we’re going to try to liberate his farm and bring him in, I’m pretty sure we’re going to need to move fast.” He turned toward the packs at the back of the room. “Everybody get ready to move. I’ve got a call to make.”
***
Santelli hung up the phone. It was a little odd, playing a support role back in the States, and even odder to be almost on the same time schedule. Decades of focus on the Eastern Hemisphere—and the Blackhearts had done more missions on the east side of the Atlantic than the west—had accustomed him to a significant time difference. He’d halfway been mentally expecting a lot of calls in the middle of the night.
Looking down at the phone, he took a deep breath. His teammates were in a bit of a crack, possibly of their own making, though he didn’t think so. They needed more information. The situation, however, required some care.
He finally dialed and put the phone to his ear. Van Zandt would ordinarily be their first contact, but Van Zandt was probably as much in the dark as the rest of them. Santelli was sure that the retired general would be doing some digging of his own, but while Santelli didn’t share the adversarial history that Brannigan had with Van Zandt, he didn’t have a terrifically high opinion of the other man’s ability to dig into the deeper, darker seams of the irregular world that the Blackhearts worked in.
The man he was calling? He might not know everything, but he came awfully close. Building connections for forty years tended to expand a man’s understanding of the shape of the world. Both in the light, and in the shadows.
The phone rang for several minutes, then went to voicemail. Santelli hung up without saying anything. He trusted the other man, but this wasn’t something
