Word must be getting out. There are scary monsters making Green Shirts disappear in the jungle.
He turned back to Fuentes, Lara, Galán, and the women and kids who had somehow all crammed themselves into the back rooms of the little house, and had now come out curiously to see what was happening. “Get everyone down on the floor, and have the kids cover their ears. This is gonna get loud.” He started toward the back, but there were too many people. How had they gotten two rather large families into this tiny hovel? “Is there a back door?”
Fuentes asked Galán, and the little farmer pointed. “There is. It leads to the barn out back.” The older farmer looked a little uncertain. “That’s mostly sheet metal, though. Will it protect them from gunfire?”
“No, it won’t.” Wade looked around the tiny cinderblock house again. Cinderblock wasn’t bulletproof, either, as several Rangers he’d known had found out the hard way in Iraq. But it was better than sheet metal. And he didn’t think that trying to escape and evade in the jungle at night with a bunch of women and kids was going to be a recipe for survival. “Okay, then, get everybody down on the floor. We’re going to have to defend this place.” He turned back to the window, where Burgess was crouched so that he could just expose his weapon at the corner. The Green Shirts were getting closer, but still holding their fire and advancing cautiously. Wade brought his Galil up and wished that he’d had time to knock a murder hole in the wall down by the floor.
I hate defense. Hurry up, Colonel.
***
The first house was deeper inside the city than Brannigan was all that comfortable with. There didn’t seem to be many Green Shirt patrols on the streets—Quintana had explained that the Green Shirts had murdered a storeowner’s wife in the street before hanging him from a lamppost for talking to the National Army and the Americans, presumably to spread enough terror through the city that they could spare the manpower to go out and patrol the hinterlands more aggressively—but the deeper they got into town, the more likely it became that they would be spotted. Especially since the streets were all but completely deserted. It seemed like the Green Shirts’ terror tactics were more successful than anyone might have hoped.
They’d moved on foot, even as Pacheco had slipped out of town to get the truck—and the deadly cargo in the two crates in the back. The police that Quintana was going to recruit probably had some of their own issue weapons, but even under the kind of regime the Green Shirts had put in place, regular police didn’t carry infantry weapons.
Of course, that also meant that most of these policemen weren’t going to be any great infantrymen, either. But you work with what you’ve got, especially in irregular warfare.
Quintana waved at the Blackhearts to stay in the alley, and stepped out onto the street. He was in uniform—the San Tabal police had maintained their police uniforms, differentiating themselves from the Green Shirts who were the real enforcement arm of the new state—and he potentially had an excuse for being out and about. The Blackhearts, in their green tiger stripes and carrying Galils, wouldn’t.
Of course, they had to trust Quintana. The door he had pointed out on the way was about halfway down the block, and there were no other alleys or even gaps between the houses between the darkened alley where Brannigan and Jenkins waited in the shadows.
Quintana walked casually up the street, even though it was about four in the morning. Brannigan stayed back in the shadows, but close enough to the street that he could follow their contact and cover him, if need be.
Or shoot him, if that became necessary.
Quintana knocked on the door. After a moment, he spoke in Spanish, apparently in response to a query from inside. Then the door opened, and he disappeared into the house.
“I don’t like this, Colonel.” Jenkins hadn’t watched the byplay—he was still watching the alley itself, in case the Green Shirts wandered through. “He’s in there with nobody to watch him, and he knows exactly where we’re hiding.”
“I know.” Brannigan kept his eyes on the house Quintana had disappeared into. “Which is why we’re going to di di mau out of here if anything looks off. And I made sure Quintana understood that, too.” He’d framed it more as a contingency plan, but he also hadn’t told the former deputy police chief where they might be going if they faded into the night. They’d have to put the pieces back together afterward if it came to that.
They waited in silence. They didn’t have comms with Quintana, either, and the only signal they’d have if the policeman he was trying to recruit turned on them would be when the shooting started, or Quintana busted out of the house and ran for it.
Then a Green Shirt patrol appeared around the corner, just up the street from where Quintana was trying to argue one of his fellow cops into rebelling.
Brannigan tensed, his rifle coming up fractionally, his finger hovering near the trigger. That was fast. Quintana must have called his new bosses right after he entered the house.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he lowered the muzzle. There were only three of them. And they weren’t acting like they were on a hit. They sauntered down the street, chatting in low Spanish, one of them with his AK-47 slung. One of the other two had his
