He got Mozambiqued from point blank range, the three shots coming so fast that they almost blended together into a single, rolling, thunderous report. He crashed onto his back halfway off the porch, dark red spreading across his chest and the contents of his skull spilling out onto the ground.
A split second later, a rattling volley of gunfire ripped out from the front of the house, smashing the other five off their feet in a welter of blood and flying metal.
As soon as the first shots were fired, Flanagan let out his breath and tightened his finger on the trigger. The Galatz’s trigger wasn’t as crisp as he might have wanted on a long-range rifle, but it still broke cleanly, and his round took the Green Shirt in the woods high in the chest. The man staggered, looking down at the bloody hole in his torso before he slumped.
Flanagan had called the shot as soon as it had broken, and just barely registered the hit before he was shifting to the next one. That man was staring at the falling body in shock, his head turned away from his rifle.
The shot broke slightly low, and the angle of the man’s body and the nearby trees made it a difficult shot as it was. The bullet clipped the tree trunk and ricocheted, but the man was right up against the trunk, so it went into his side, though Flanagan could already tell that it had been deflected enough to keep the hit from being lethal.
The follow-up shot came as soon as the trigger reset, as he held the reticle just slightly higher, and put the next round through the man’s left lung and into his heart. The Green Shirt fell out of sight.
Flanagan was transitioning to the third man when Javakhishvili opened fire.
They were a good eight hundred yards away, much too far for the Galil to be reliably, lethally accurate. But Javakhishvili was a good shot, and he wasn’t relying on single shots like Flanagan was. He braced the rifle against the log that was his cover, making sure to breathe between shots, and started dropping steady, constant fire on the Green Shirts’ position.
Flanagan worried for a second that the Green Shirts would drop to the ground and he’d lose them, but one of them broke cover instead and tried to run, thrashing through the brush. Flanagan’s shot was slightly too high as he tried to lead the fleeing killer, but it smashed into the back of his skull and he went head-over-heels into the dirt.
The fourth Green Shirt promptly freaked out and started shooting. He was probably trying to aim for the house, but his fire was going wild, some of the bullets hitting the dirt not far in front of him.
Flanagan moved in on the muzzle blast where he could see it violently shaking and shredding the vegetation in front of the Green Shirt’s muzzle, judged roughly where he probably was, and aimed slightly low. The first shot silenced the gunfire and made the man jerk hard enough that Flanagan knew exactly where he was. The second shot finished it. There was no more movement.
He was searching for the last one, but Javakhishvili had stopped shooting. The echoes of gunfire faded away across the valley, and Flanagan spotted the fifth man, sprawled on his face, halfway into the field.
“I’ll be damned. Didn’t think I’d manage to do anything but suppress him.” Javakhishvili sounded surprised and proud all at the same time.
“Let’s move.” Flanagan got up and slung the Galatz. “We’re going to have to hit them hard and fast, now, before word about this gets too far.”
Chapter 14
The clouds had rolled in, and the jungle was pitch black under the trees. Even the PVS-14s couldn’t do much to mitigate the darkness.
Fortunately, Mario Gomez was used to working in the dark. What was more, he was used to hunting men in the dark.
He’d known that Brannigan had wondered about the recent troubles down on the border. The truth was, there were always troubles where the Gomez ranch was situated. Perhaps not to the extent they’d faced when the Espino-Gallo Cartel had invaded and taken the ranch, murdering most of the family in the process. But the Gomez boys had always needed to be somewhat proactive when dealing with the cartels and the coyotes trying to use their land as an illegal superhighway.
Mario had grown up stalking other human beings as much as the four-legged coyotes and wolves who preyed on the livestock. There were more bodies out in that desert than even Brannigan guessed. And much of that had been before he’d ever had access to NVGs, and on moonless nights when the narcos thought no one could find them. He’d learned a lot from Marine Recon, but much of it had simply sharpened skills he’d already possessed.
Gomez didn’t need a lot of light to do this kind of work. He’d honed his other senses to make up for the lack of vision—and his night eyes were remarkably good, anyway.
Movement was still achingly slow. It had to be, even if he’d been able to see more clearly. The vegetation was thick, and that meant there were a lot of roots and fallen branches on the forest floor, not to mention vines, snakes, spiders, and all the other hazards of the jungle. The need for stealth made patience an absolute must. And that stealth wasn’t just to prevent the Green Shirt sentry ahead from hearing him. He also needed to be able to hear the Green Shirt.
The man who was about to die wasn’t staying still or particularly alert. Even though he could
