“All right.” He couldn’t say it was genius, but it might work. “They think they’ve got us cornered.”
“Uh, they do have us cornered, Colonel.”
“Shut up, Kevin. So far as they know, we’re just mercs. They’ve got to know that we’re not locals at this point.” Brannigan scratched the stubble on his chin as he thought. “We need to make them think that we’ve bolted, that either the locals abandoned us, or we abandoned the locals.” He looked up at the ceiling. It had been a long day, with a lot of fighting, and he was tired. His brain wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders. He glanced over at Pacheco. “Who are they going to be more likely to want dead first?”
Pacheco snorted. “Probably you. They’ll figure that with you out of the picture, they can deal with the people of San Tabal at their leisure.”
Brannigan frowned. That complicated things a little. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
***
Galvez paced restlessly. Sporadic gunfire continued to echo across the valley, but his Green Shirts were slow getting into position. And Lorenzo still wasn’t back with his cannon fodder. He chewed the inside of his cheek as his impatient rage mounted.
“Commandante!” He didn’t know the young Green Shirt’s name, but Galvez swung on the man abruptly, making the skinny former ELN recruit stagger back a half step.
“What?”
The boy—he couldn’t be much older than sixteen or seventeen—gulped. “Some of them are trying to run, Commandante.” He pointed up toward the farmhouse, where some commotion had broken out.
Galvez hurried around the back of the gun truck, careful to stay in some cover, just in case. Sure enough, there was some shooting going on up there, and a voice was raised, bellowing in English.
“You pussy sons of bitches! Get your asses back here!” Another burst of fire rattled out, aimed up toward the top of the ridge, away from most of the Green Shirts.
Are the Americans and the locals fighting each other? He hardly dared think it, but a wolfish grin split his features as he watched what was happening. The farmers are leaving the Americans to their fate. Perfect. I might not even need Lorenzo’s hostages.
“Fuck!” The rage in the American’s voice was palpable.
You shouldn’t have crossed me. Now I’m going to kill you and drag your corpses by their heels through the streets of San Tabal.
All thought of his plan to draw the Americans out and make them waste their ammunition supplies vanished in a wave of eagerness and bloodlust. “Suppressing fire! Get in there and finish them off!”
***
Brannigan paused as he topped the ridge, panting and soaked in sweat. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep—they hadn’t eaten or had much water in a while, either.
He turned back, peering through the trees, then scanned the slope below them. The sun was up, but the vegetation was still thick enough that it was hard to see more than a couple of yards. Flanagan and Wade joined him.
“Curtis missed his calling. He should be an actor.” Wade sank to a knee, bracing his other foot against a tree. The slope was fairly steep there. “Think we’re far enough outside the cordon?”
“We’ll see.” Brannigan kept it short. “Keep low. Move fast.”
Flanagan nodded and turned east, paralleling the ridgeline above and slipping through the vegetation as quickly and quietly as the terrain allowed.
***
Curtis turned back down the slope, leaning into his Negev and sighting through the open door. Down in the prone, he found himself in a similar situation to the one Wade had faced earlier. The angle of the terraces and the slope meant that he didn’t have a great shot.
“That was convincing.” Pacheco was on the other side of the door, barricaded on the jamb and watching the Green Shirts moving down below.
“Well, I can’t say I’m all that happy about being the sacrificial lamb.” Curtis grimaced and got up on a knee, jamming one of the Negev’s bipods against the doorjamb to brace the gun. Now he could see the enemy. Which meant he could hit the enemy. “Just ‘cause I’m short. Fuckers.”
“It does mean that we have a machinegun here in the house, so I am not going to complain.” Pacheco craned his neck to see a little better, and then ducked as a renewed storm of machinegun fire hammered the house from below. “Especially since they haven’t hesitated to take advantage of the situation we just played out for them.” He looked over his shoulder, and Curtis followed his gaze. They had about half a dozen men with rifles, with about three magazines left for each.
Hurry up, Colonel.
***
Flanagan had gotten about fifty yards before he had to stop, freezing in place and slowly easing himself down to the ground. He couldn’t see the enemy yet, but he could hear low voices speaking Spanish and the crunch of footsteps in the undergrowth.
There hadn’t been time to warn the others, but Brannigan had still been within line of sight, so Flanagan had to trust that they’d taken cover as well. He peered over his rifle’s sights as he listened to the Green Shirts get closer.
He had no doubt that these were, in fact, Green Shirts. After what had already happened on the other side of the ridge, there was no way that any of the locals would be stupid enough to get this close to Galán’s farm before things quieted down.
Flanagan had seen some pretty insane things in warzones over the years, but it still seemed unlikely.
Ideally, they would have kept pushing, getting more distance from the farmhouse before circling around to hit the Green Shirts from the flank. But their allies—not to mention Curtis—didn’t have that kind of time. And the deception had required the enemy to see them running, so there was no hiding
