On that note, he keyed his radio. “Any Blackheart station, this is Kodiak. We are in Sierra Bravo’s truck, coming up toward the Galán farm from the west. Watch your fires on the road to the west.”
“Kodiak, this is Gambler. Good copy.” Curtis sounded calm and collected—once the bullets started flying the man’s clownishness flat-out disappeared. “You’re going to see our gun truck first. Gamer and I are set in on the road. Woodsrunner, Shady Slav, and Pancho Villa are in the woods up to the right, so watch your fires in that direction, too.”
“Roger. We’re coming in.” He looked across at Quintana. “Tell your boys that we’re coming up on my team. Nobody shoots unless I say so.”
The San Tabal cop didn’t look happy at being told what to do, but he nodded. There might still have been a touch of resentment in his expression and his body language. He was the closest that the resistance had to a local tactical commander, and this American mercenary was taking command.
Tough shit. Those are my boys out front, and that means I’m calling the shots. Brannigan had been in far too many situations over the years where it was his boys at the sharp end, but someone else was making all the decisions, someone who wasn’t taking all the same risks and stood to lose nothing if the decision was wrong. Quintana had plenty to lose, but it was still the Blackhearts in the middle of the fight, right then.
Pacheco came around the bend and halted, the headlights illuminating a shot-up gun truck with a PKM mounted in the back, currently unmanned and pointed at the sky. Movement in the weeds to the right resolved into Vincent Bianco as he stood up, thoroughly camouflaged in his tiger stripes and face paint. He had his Negev slung as he raised a gloved hand to the truck.
Brannigan clambered down and moved to meet him. At the same time, his radio crackled. “Kodiak, Angry Ragnar. Be advised, we just saw a lot of headlights coming from the northwest. We might have a bunch more company soon.”
“Copy. What’s your status?”
“Everybody’s still in one piece, though the civvies are a little shook up.” Wade paused. “This house isn’t going to provide much cover for very long. The front is shot to hell.”
Brannigan looked back as Pacheco shut off the headlights and got out of the truck. “Can we get them out of there? If we’re going to have more company soon…”
Pacheco looked back at his truck, then at the captured gun truck with the PKM in the back. “Maybe. I don’t know how big Lara’s and Galán’s families are. And what’s the plan after that?”
Brannigan looked up toward the north, where he could see the flickering glow of moving headlights in his NVGs. “If we can, we break contact and move back to town. Securing San Tabal is still the primary objective. If the city is too hard a nut to crack, then we fall back to Fuentes’s farm, and we start choking them off by securing the farms and encircling the city with the resistance.” He wasn’t sure how effective that would be—a rural resistance could be effective, over time, but he doubted they had that kind of time.
No, if we can take out the Green Shirt leadership, and clear out most of the Green Shirts themselves, we might be able to stabilize the situation before bigger forces get involved. Like the Venezuelans.
But first they’d have to break contact with the incoming force.
The gunfire had mostly died down to nothing. The Green Shirts who had been assaulting Galán’s farm—and who had survived—had retreated into the jungle on the far side of the cornfields. Either that, or they were playing possum.
“Quintana, can you get your boys up onto the eastern edge of the cornfields to hold security? We need to get the women and children out of harm’s way.” He kept his tone respectful, and made his op order into a request. There was no reason to antagonize the former deputy police chief, especially after his bristling in the back of the truck.
Quintana nodded. “How are you going to transport them?”
Brannigan frowned. He hadn’t thought about that. He’d rather keep the Blackhearts mobile and on the offensive, but somebody was going to have to drive the vehicles. “We’ll see if any of the women can drive, or if there are older teenagers who can handle it. I’d rather keep the shooters where they can fight.”
Quintana thought about that for a moment, then nodded. It made sense. They were still outnumbered and outgunned. Splitting off shooters to recruit more shooters was one thing. Splitting them off to escort noncombatants—as honorable a task as that was—would only serve to weaken the resistance in the short run.
He barked at his policemen, and started pointing up and to the east. The half-dozen men they’d managed to gather before things had gotten urgent picked up the Galils, M16s, and a couple of Uzis that they’d pulled from Pacheco’s arms cache, and headed up through the cornfields.
Brannigan watched them go, noticing that they weren’t moving in much of a formation, or very carefully. They clearly thought that the enemy had been routed, so they were just moving to take a post. He almost said something, but a glance at Quintana convinced him to hold his peace until something happened. Colombia had its own version of machismo, and he’d already stepped on the pudgy man’s toes quite a bit that night.
He keyed his radio. “Angry Ragnar, Kodiak. See if you can push out and set security up there, and start
