The footsteps were getting closer. Flanagan gritted his teeth. Over years of combat tours and dozens of firefights, he’d never set a rifle to “auto.” Aimed fire was his preferred method of engagement. But as the Green Shirts closed the distance and he still couldn’t see them, he knew he was going to have to break his own rule.
Flipping the selector to “A,” he leveled the rifle at about knee height. The Green Shirts were only a handful of yards away.
Pulling the stock firmly back into his shoulder to control the recoil, he opened fire. The Galil shredded the vegetation in front of him with a chattering, rattling roar, slightly higher-pitched and faster than an AK.
Bullets chopped into flesh and bone, barely three yards away. Screams erupted, nearly drowned out by the rifle’s reports, and at least one body went tumbling down the hill. Flanagan caught a glimpse of the falling man as he ceased fire, the body fetching up against a tree trunk with a sickening crunch.
At least one was still moaning and screaming in pain just ahead. Flanagan rose to a knee as Brannigan moved past him, a little higher up the hillside. The terrain was pretty restrictive, which meant that this fight was going to get really interesting, really fast.
Brannigan fired a burst of his own at something or someone ahead in the trees Flanagan couldn’t see. He tried to dash forward, but almost lost his footing as the rock underfoot rolled away down the slope as he put his boot on it with the next step.
I hate the jungle. He caught himself, keeping his rifle up and ready, and scrambled a little higher, his muzzle tracking in on the groans.
Three bodies were crumpled on the hillside just ahead, two obviously dead and the third not long for the world. The screams and moans were fading, and the dying man’s breathing was getting faster and shallower as he bled out. Flanagan moved close enough to kick the M16 away from the man’s limp hands, but the dying man didn’t even seem to notice. He let out a last, gurgling rattle of breath, and died.
But then something else moved up ahead, thrashing through the brush.
Flanagan hesitated just long enough to confirm that it wasn’t Brannigan. The big man was still up above him, braced against a tree, searching for targets over his sights. Whoever was out there was not a friendly, and was coming closer.
As much as he hated engaging what he couldn’t see, the rules of jungle warfare were unforgiving. He leveled his Galil and ripped off the last of the magazine, holding the barrel down as he pinned the trigger to the rear. The muzzle flash flickered and stuttered as he raked the hillside with 5.56 fire, shredding more vegetation, spitting splinters and bits of bark off tree boles, and tearing holes through the next couple of Green Shirts who were rushing toward the screams.
The rifle clicked. Like the Kalashnikov it was partially based on, the Galil didn’t have a bolt hold-open. He ripped the mag out, let it fall, and rocked in another, racking the bolt as Brannigan opened fire up above him, and Burgess pushed up downhill to his right.
Flanagan kept moving. The hillside was almost too steep to move from tree to tree, but he did the best he could.
He found the bodies in another few steps. They must have been moving close to each other. He’d taken both with one burst. One lay with puckered, red-soaked holes in his shirt tracking from his armpit up to his clavicle. The other had taken the last of the rounds through the throat and face.
Both were still twitching, but they weren’t breathing anymore.
Gunfire roared and thundered on the other side of the ridge, but the Blackhearts didn’t encounter any more Green Shirts as they swept along the military crest. It seemed like Curtis and their local allies were keeping the enemy’s attention.
Now they just had to move fast enough to keep their friends from being slaughtered. The weight of numbers was still on the Green Shirts’ side.
They pushed another hundred yards before turning back up toward the top of the ridgeline. It took longer than it felt like it should—the terrain and the jungle were implacable enemies. But by the time they came over the ridge, they were clear of the beaten zone centered on the beleaguered house.
The jungle was a hell of an obstacle, but in this case, it also worked in their favor. Brannigan signaled to spread out, and a ragged skirmish line with Bianco at the far left—closest to the house—descended toward the enemy that was pouring fire at their friends, still concealed and undetected.
The Blackhearts held their fire at first, as they got closer and closer. It wasn’t hard to find the Green Shirts—they were advancing toward the house, standing up and pouring fire into the rapidly-disintegrating cinderblock. The noise alone was enough to guide the mercenaries in.
Finally, Brannigan passed the nod. Bianco opened up first. The others joined in a split second later.
It wasn’t a Mad Minute. They didn’t have the ammo for that. It was more like a Mad Ten Seconds. But that ten seconds of hell did the trick.
The entire skirmish line opened up on the Green Shirts’ flank from about ten yards away, pouring a total of a couple hundred rounds into the remaining fifteen or so Green Shirts that had just reached the edge of the cleared yard around the house. Muzzle blasts spat thin smoke and flame and bullets turned leaves into flying green confetti before smashing through guts, ribs, lungs, hearts, throats, and skulls. Galvez’s assault force was torn to bloody, rapidly cooling meat in a matter of seconds, the bodies collapsing and falling on top of each other as bullets passed through one man and into
