Then they drove past the bodies and through the jungle, staying clear of the open ground, Javakhishvili, Brannigan, and Jenkins reloading as they went.
They continued to sweep down the east side, staying in the jungle. Ahead, Flanagan thought he heard someone thrashing through the brush, but the sounds were receding, not advancing.
The fire from the base of the hill, on the road, had slackened somewhat, possibly due to shock as the Green Shirts on the gun trucks realized that their maneuver element had just been wiped out in a handful of seconds. Either that, or at least two of their up-guns had gone dry at the same time, and they were reloading.
The downhill slope helped the rapidity of the Blackhearts’ advance, to the point that Hank and Jenkins both started to outrun the rest of the skirmish line and had to dial it back.
Brannigan signaled again, pointing to the southeast. They needed to move to the right a little farther. They wouldn’t do anything for their besieged comrades if they got flanked. So, they pushed out farther, making damned good and sure they were outside of any cordon the Green Shirts had gotten in place before sunrise.
The jungle, of course, fought them every step of the way. And the terrain wasn’t great, either. Soon Flanagan noticed that they were getting crowded back toward the west and the cornfields, by a combination of thicker and thicker vegetation and the increasingly broken terrain. Galán’s farm was apparently bordered on the east by a sharp finger with an even deeper draw on the other side. And that finger was a tangled mess of vines, undergrowth, and tight stands of trees.
Of course, that probably meant that the Green Shirts hadn’t penetrated far to the east, either.
He heard voices ahead, but it took a second to realize that one of them was someone down on the road yelling at the half-dozen men in the jungle, much closer and driving uphill. That realization hit almost at the same time he came out of some denser undergrowth and almost ran into the Green Shirt out on their left flank.
Fortunately, Flanagan was already on the hunt, his rifle held ready and off safe. The Green Shirt was puffing, his G3 held in slack hands, his head down as he struggled through the vegetation and up the hill.
He never had a chance.
Flanagan had left his Galil’s selector on “A,” just because of the short sightlines and the need for a glorified brush-cutter in close-in jungle combat. But with his muzzle barely three feet from his opponent, all it took was a single stroke of the trigger. The shot was deafeningly loud—not because it was any louder than the rest of the firefight that had gone down already, but simply because nobody had been expecting it right then and there.
And it cored out the Green Shirt’s heart. He crumpled where he was as Flanagan shifted toward the dim figure just beyond him, letting rip with another long, roaring burst into the weeds.
He’d moved out to the flank, probing the bush along the steep finger to their right, so he was on the outer flank. And when he opened fire, the rest of the Blackhearts did, too. More bullets swept through the jungle in a scythe of death that tore through flesh as easily as vegetation.
Bianco held his fire. He was waiting for more important targets. And this little skirmish was over quickly.
“Up!” Brannigan had just reloaded, but that wasn’t the only reason he called out. They had to push. Speed and ferocious violence were their only hope at this point. Flanagan drove forward, still careful to watch his flank and any bit of cover he could see ahead of him, while maintaining the line with Gomez on his left.
They swept down through the last bit of jungle and burst out onto the road with a stuttering storm of gunfire. Three more Green Shirts went down, sprawled in their own blood on the road.
Two more had ducked behind the rear gun truck and tried to return fire, but they were shooting blind around the taillight and over the bed, while the gunner tried to swivel around to bring his M60 to bear. Bianco was ahead of him though, and blasted him onto his ass in the bed, his torso ripped open and blood splashed against the shattered glass of the truck’s rear window.
More return fire came their way as the Green Shirts realized they were under attack from behind. In the meantime, Curtis, Pacheco, and the rest of their allies up at the battered farmhouse redoubled their own fire, now that the suppressive fire from below had all but ceased.
Bianco hadn’t quite come out on the road itself, Flanagan saw. He had popped out on the first terrace, about five yards back from the road and at least four feet above it. And he had a hell of a sector of fire from there.
Dropping prone behind the machinegun, Bianco went to work. In long, ten-to-twelve-round bursts, he raked the column of gun trucks from back to front and back again. Glass shattered, metal sparked, and blood flew as he dumped the last of his ammo into what remained of the Green Shirts’ base of fire.
Flanagan raced across the road and into the low ground on the other side, snapping his rifle up and hammering a burst at one of the Green Shirts crouched behind one of two technicals in the center of the fields. He’d forgotten that the weapon was on auto for a second, and the recoil kind of got away from him, the rounds climbing into the body of the truck after the first two. Those had hit, but not fatally, and he ducked as the wounded man sprayed a desperate burst of 5.56 at him in reply.
Then Gomez shot the Green Shirt through the throat, and
