Santelli rubbed his gritty eyes. “Sir, you’re going to have to spell it out for me. I just woke up, and my brain’s been worn out worrying about the team.” Which suggests that I really shouldn’t let John retire me. Dammit.
“I’ll explain in person, Carlo. But this guy’s threatened to blackmail your team and my office over this. Except we just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. Get down here. I think we can have him off the team’s backs by lunchtime.”
Chapter 21
Bianco had taken up a new position, this time closer to the east side of the Galán farm, down in the prone behind his Negev. He was on the side of the road, most of his body cocked off into the lower ground below, with the machinegun’s bipods up on the road itself. He was still wrestling with the PVS-14s. The ProTec helmet didn’t fit his big head all that well, and so he was having a devil of a time getting the NVGs to line up right. He had to tilt his head well back to be able to see, and it was putting a crick in his neck.
The headlights were still around the bend. He’d more than half expected them to have come around already, but maybe they were being cautious. Or maybe his own perception of time was getting skewed by the adrenaline and the stress of waiting for the first rounds to crack off.
His hands were sweating inside his gloves. He could feel it. His heart rate was up, and his mouth was dry. Every damned time. He knew that it would pass once the bullets started flying. It usually did. But he was always scared just before a fight.
Sometimes it spilled over into the fight itself. He still remembered that ditch in Chad, when he’d been caught dead to rights by the bad guys. He’d frozen, just for a few seconds. It still haunted him. He didn’t know if the rest of the Blackhearts had noticed—it had been the middle of a firefight, and he’d gotten back up and into the fight. But he owed his life not to his own action, but to Wade, who had shot the man who was about to shoot him.
Never again. He clenched his gloved fist, as if he could force it to stop sweating, and readjusted his position behind the gun. The headlights were coming, and he forced his breathing into a low, steady rhythm. Sure, he was scared. But he’d never let that make him freeze again. Even if it meant he’d have to hold the line and die.
He didn’t even think about the old aphorism, “Courage is being scared and saddling up anyway.” He just knew that he was going to be a better man, a better warrior, and he was never going to let his brother Blackhearts down again.
The glow ahead brightened as the lead vehicle started to come around the curve. He squinted through his NVGs, trying to make out details and positively identify the enemy. He pulled the buttstock back into his shoulder and his finger slipped inside the trigger guard.
He really wished that they had some explosives. Pacheco had said that he had some, but all Bianco had seen had been weapons, gear, and ammo. But even if they’d had the kind of explosives they could have turned into IEDs, there had hardly been time to set them in.
The headlights were right in his face, whiting out his NVGs. He couldn’t be one hundred percent sure they were the bad guys. If there were up-gunners on the trucks, they were hidden behind the glare.
Hesitation kills. He fought the urge to readjust—he was right in the cone of light from the headlights, and if he moved at the wrong time, and those were gun trucks with the gunners on alert, movement would only get him killed. But at the same time, he didn’t want to jump the gun and murder a bunch of farmers.
Then the lead truck bounced over a rock, momentarily moving the headlights away, and he caught a glimpse of the man up on the PKM in the back. His finger tightened on the trigger.
The Negev’s rate of fire was about the same as the M-249 SAW that Bianco had learned inside and out during his years in the Marine Corps. It all felt perfectly familiar, as he walked the tracers up the hood and toward the up-gunner.
One of the headlights shattered, and suddenly he could see better, but the driver had reacted faster than he’d expected, wrenching the wheel over and flooring the accelerator, diving off the road and into the jungle. The gunner was almost thrown clear, but still survived, as the truck lurched to a stop behind the trees.
The next vehicle back had already stopped, and the gunner opened fire, spraying the trees and the side of the road with bullets. Green tracers spat through the foliage and kicked dirt and rocks off the road itself, coming uncomfortably close to Bianco’s position. He ducked, burying his face in the dirt, as the incoming rounds flew overhead with painful snaps and smashed and shredded the vegetation around him.
***
Brannigan helped the last of the women into the back seat of the truck, trying not to shove her too hard, even while his NVGs brightened with the approaching glow of the incoming headlights. The Green Shirts were almost on top of them, and they had minutes at best—seconds at worst—to get the noncombatants out.
The woman drew her feet inside and he slammed the door, smacking his hand down on the hood. “GO!” Lara’s wife, a stocky but handsome woman in her mid-fifties, threw the truck into reverse
