Brannigan eased back from the street, moving deeper into the shadows. Quintana hadn’t sold them out. This was just bad timing. He didn’t think even the Green Shirts, as savagely amateurish as they might be, would try to raid a potential rebel house with only three men.
He started to scan the adjacent rooftops, and he even circled around to the other side of the alley, where he couldn’t see the patrol or the door Quintana had entered anymore, but he could see the other end of the street, and the intersection just beyond. No more foot mobiles. No gun trucks. The streets were as deserted as ever, except for those three.
Pure, dumb luck.
Now, just so long as Quintana doesn’t decide to come out right now.
Even as he thought it, Brannigan knew they didn’t have time for this. Especially not with Wade, Burgess, and—even as he thought it, he flinched a little—his own son pinned down with their best hope for a new leader to keep San Tabal from turning into a bloodbath. They had to move, and they had to move quickly.
But could he afford to get into a gunfight in central San Tabal? Even if the majority of the Green Shirts were out in the hills, there would still be enough of them in town to overwhelm two or three shooters, and they had to have loyalists on the police force. Quintana wouldn’t be so careful as to who he’d picked out to contact otherwise.
Still, he crouched down in the alley, easing his Galil’s selector lever to “R,” and waited for the Green Shirts to come back into view. They might not have any choice.
He heard a door open. A voice called out in Spanish, and Quintana answered imperiously. Jenkins glanced toward the street, but neither Blackheart could see what was going on. Brannigan moved back to his previous vantage point, while pointing back down the alley with a stabbing finger. There were only two of them. Jenkins needed to be watching their six.
Easing one eye around the corner, he spotted the Green Shirts, their weapons now held somewhat more readily, facing Quintana and a skinny, short man, who was also wearing a police uniform, though it looked like he’d just put it on. His collar was still open, and his shirt was partially untucked under his duty belt. Quintana was arguing with one of the Green Shirts, his head held high and radiating every bit of officious self-importance he could muster.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the Green Shirts were buying it. They were still the powers that be in San Tabal, and the police force were supposed to be their whipping boys. Brannigan couldn’t really see facial expressions, but their body language was simultaneously confident and threatening. The one with the AK pointed toward the door and barked something in Spanish, while the man with the FNC reached for what must have been a radio. Brannigan lifted his rifle, careful to keep the movement smooth and relatively slow, trying to avoid attracting their eye with sudden movement.
The Green Shirts, however, were so focused on Quintana and the other policeman that they weren’t paying any attention to their flanks. Or to the covered patio on the roof of the policeman’s house.
Brannigan didn’t see who threw it, but he saw the man with the FNC take a brick to the face from about five yards away. He didn’t even make a sound but just collapsed like a sack of dirt, knocked cold. And then Quintana and his companion moved.
“On me.” Brannigan was already moving, even as Quintana and the other policeman grappled with the two remaining Green Shirts. Brannigan was somewhat surprised that a shot hadn’t been fired yet, even though Quintana and the other man had gone for the weapons first. He was pretty sure that trigger discipline wasn’t a concern to the Communist thugs, so it was a minor miracle that one of them hadn’t cranked off a round or a burst as they struggled for control of the weapons. Quintana had seized the AK, trying to wrench it up and out of the Green Shirt’s hands. The other man had tackled his target, driving into his midsection and knocking both of them on top of the unconscious man, the M16 pinned between the two of them.
Brannigan got to Quintana and the man with the AK first, even as they turned away, still wrestling for the rifle. Slinging his Galil behind him, he stepped in quickly, wrapped one beefy arm around the Green Shirt’s neck, and bore down on the back of his skull with the other, pressing the V of his upper and lower arm together on either side of the man’s neck. The pressure mounted, cutting off the blood flow to the Green Shirt’s brain, and he was unconscious in seconds.
Jenkins was standing over the other policeman and the Green Shirt with the M16, his rifle leveled, trying to get a shot.
“No shooting!” Brannigan hissed in some horror. If Jenkins shot the man, or worse, missed and shot the cop…
Jenkins snatched his finger off the trigger, as if he’d just then realized that firing a shot under these circumstances was going to bring half the city down on their heads. He stepped in, reversed the rifle, and in an eerie echo of what Pacheco had done before, he buttstroked the struggling Green Shirt in the head.
At least, he tried to. The buttstock skittered off the side of the man’s skull, tearing skin and ripping off part of his ear. Blood welled from the wound, and the Green Shirt started to cry out, but the shock had given the policeman enough of an advantage that he got one hand on the M16 before rearing
