“Roger. They’ll be moving down shortly.”
***
“Stop here.”
The driver looked over at Galvez with some surprise. “But Commandante, they are still almost a kilometer away. We have not even met up with the rest of our men yet.”
“I know. But the road is at the base of the hill. I do not want to take our entire force in to try to assault uphill toward the enemy.” Galvez didn’t have a lot of infantry experience. He was good at murdering people and setting off bombs. Fighting out in the countryside like this was not his preferred way to make a revolution. But he wasn’t clueless, either. He knew the value of using the terrain, and that it was easier to attack downhill—or across relatively flat ground—than it was to struggle uphill while taking fire from above.
He’d had a couple of experiences with that when he’d fought alongside the FARC, many years before. Some more recent experience had been had alongside some of the more politically palatable cartels in Mexico.
CJNG might not be proper socialists, but they were good at the combat side of things, and they were hurting the capitalist Americans and their Mexican puppets. That made it worthwhile to work with them from time to time. They hadn’t needed to know his real name, or what he stood for.
The column stopped, bunching up on the road, and Galvez got out, waving at the others to follow. He didn’t have quite the numbers he would have preferred—there had only ever been a couple hundred Green Shirts to begin with, and the unexpected resistance had killed or maimed at least fifty already—but he still should have enough to sweep the tiny Galán farm.
He had them where he wanted them, now. The farm might be up on a hill, but there were few ways in or out. He held up a hand to stop the driver as he got out. “Not everyone is going. I want about thirty of us up on the ridge. The rest stay with the trucks and move out on the road to cut them off.” The mountains to the south of the farm were steep and treacherous, the thick jungle making them even worse. They would have a hard time retreating without the use of the road. He hoped to catch them between the hammer and the anvil—the Green Shirts with the trucks would shut off their escape, while his assault force would drive along the top of the ridge and descend on the farmhouse from above. Then, hopefully, this would all be over, and he could salvage his plans. Ballesteros’s death had already done some serious damage, but with Clemente out of the way, Galvez could potentially become the undisputed Leader of the Revolution much more quickly.
“Move out!”
***
Wade stepped outside, hardly sparing a glance for the pockmarked walls, horrifically chewed up by sustained machinegun fire. Galán was going to need to do some serious repairs when this was all over.
Presuming he and his family survived.
He swept the top terrace, just in case any of the Green Shirts had lingered, hunkered down behind the terrace itself where they could pop up and start shooting once the Blackhearts and their allies thought they were safe. But the ground around the house was clear, aside from downed cornstalks that had been splintered and shredded by bullets. A few flames guttered among the drier leaves, where tracers had punched through, or bounced off the terrace itself to burn on the fallen vegetation. Fortunately, everything was still too damp for there to be much of a wildfire risk. Wade stomped on the embers he could see, anyway.
He shifted his position to the corner of the house, watching the jungle to the east, where the retreating Green Shirts had disappeared. One of them sprawled between the edge of the cornfield and the treeline, staring sightlessly at the night sky above. Wade had gotten him with a running snap shot, tearing through his center mass even as he’d dashed toward the jungle.
He was kind of proud of that shot.
Hank was ushering the women and children out, with Fuentes’s help. Burgess had quietly moved up the slope behind the house, and was set in behind a forked tree, his rifle laid in the fork, watching the jungle below them.
“Angry Ragnar, Woodsrunner. Probably best to send the civvies down the west edge of the fields. We’ll stay in place and provide overwatch.”
“Roger.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hank. “You hear that, kid?”
If the former captain rankled at the term “kid,” he kept it to himself. “Yeah. I heard.” He was already motioning Señora Galán toward the treeline. “Makes sense. Keep ‘em out of the open.”
Wade had already turned back toward the diffuse glow that marked the incoming vehicles. He didn’t say anything in reply to Hank’s comment. It didn’t need a reply.
Movement nearby drew his attention, and he turned to see Lara moving down into the cornfield. “What are you doing?” Given Lara’s importance to the resistance movement they were building, Wade might have been somewhat more diplomatic, but he’d never figured he’d been hired for his diplomatic skill. And under the circumstances, he had no qualms about barking at the “important” people if they were doing something stupid.
Lara ignored him, but clambered down toward the third terrace down, crouching in a gap in the cornstalks, where one of the Green Shirts had popped up during those last few minutes of the firefight only to take a bullet through the teeth from Burgess. He rummaged around for a moment, then started climbing back up, an AK-47 and chest rig in his hands. He was huffing a little bit when he knelt beside Wade. “Show me how to use this.”
Wade glanced at him
