But that suggestion didn’t come. Quintana watched Lara for another moment. “No, best to keep him here. If he gets killed in the attack, we will never be able to get the city stabilized in time.”
“He’s that respected?” Brannigan was feeling Quintana out a little with that question, and he suddenly thought that the other man was quite well aware. Perhaps the dullard dishrag of a yes-man cop was more than he appeared.
“He was the mayor for many years.” Quintana nodded. “Yes, the people will rally to him, if he stands in the plaza and announces that the days of the Green Shirts are over.” He looked Brannigan in the eye. “I will follow him.” He smiled crookedly, and Brannigan thought it was the most genuine expression he’d seen on the man’s face. “After all, if he is mayor, he will be more of a target than the deputy police chief.”
Brannigan decided to let that go. It wasn’t his decision, and it wasn’t his city or country. If they kept Lara alive, it would be his worry, his decision, going forward.
“All right.” He looked around at the other Blackhearts. “One more push, gentlemen. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Chapter 25
Wade was by nature a grounded, down-to-earth guy. He didn’t get creeped out. He preferred to creep other people out, mainly with matter-of-fact expressions of his complete comfort with violence, delivered with an icy, unblinking gaze that could have given Roger Hancock a run for his money in the “basilisk stare” department.
But the empty silence on the streets of San Tabal was giving him the willies.
He was on point—Flanagan and Gomez had teamed up again, so he figured he was one of the best fieldcraft men in his element, between him and Burgess. Plus, he just preferred to be on point himself. Behind him, Burgess, Bianco, and Jenkins led about a dozen local cops and volunteers who had joined them along the way, mostly recruited by Contreras, one of Quintana’s cops who had survived the fight on Galán’s farm. They were spread out in a rough tactical column, split along both sides of the street as they worked their way around toward the police station.
He and Flanagan had finally resorted to Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who got which target. The police station was probably the more vital target, but the mayor’s house was where they’d probably find Clemente. Flanagan was a quiet, unassuming dude most of the time, but he still had that killer instinct and didn’t want to just let another Blackheart take the big prize.
It’s the little things.
Movement drew Wade’s eye, and he flicked his Galil’s muzzle toward it, only to see the curtain behind the barred window slip back into place. He didn’t relax, but kept the rifle up, covering that window as he continued to move up the street, maintaining as much awareness of every other angle he couldn’t close off as he did. Urban combat is a complex dance of multiple angles and threats that could appear at close range without warning.
And with how quiet San Tabal was, he fully expected one of those threats to appear at any moment. It was as if the city was holding its breath, waiting for the ambush to kick off.
He had to expand his scan ahead as he continued down the street, but he kept coming back to that curtain. For the most part, he was keeping his weapon and eyes trained on the other side of the street, while Burgess covered his side ahead of him. He still had to be careful of openings on his side, but it was easier to react and engage with a little distance.
The curtain moved again. His Galil rose until he was peering just over the sights, his finger resting on the trigger guard. The selector was already on “R.”
But he lowered it as he registered the small face of a kid who couldn’t be more than about five, peering out from behind the curtain. No target. It didn’t mean no threat—he’d certainly been places where the bad guys had had no qualms about using little kids as human shields—but he wasn’t going to smoke a little boy just because.
If the threat did materialize, he’d go so far as to kill everyone in the house if that was what it took to neutralize it, and sleep like a baby afterward. But he wasn’t going to deliberately just murder a kid.
They kept moving. The cops and volunteers were a little too bunched up, but the Blackhearts in the lead maintained as careful movement and constant, three-hundred-sixty-degree security as they went.
He paused, holding up a fist, as he reached the alley that would form their last covered and concealed position before the police station. He could see the compound up ahead, just around the next bend in the street.
The police station was a walled compound with a white plastered, blocky building with the almost ubiquitous red tile roof standing above the outer wall, which was also whitewashed plaster over cinderblock, topped with barbed wire. The closed gate faced the street, about two-thirds of the way down the wall.
Wade got most of his assault force into the alley, except for Jenkins and Bianco, who set in behind another house across the street, just in case.
Wade leaned out just far enough to get a decent look at the compound and the gate. Not only did the certainly locked gate appear to be steel, painted black and rusting a little where the paint had chipped over time, he was sure that any Green Shirts who were holed up in the police station would have every
