Brannigan and Javakhishvili finished a cursory sweep of the very back, but it was empty, a police Hilux beyond the back door with half a dozen of Quintana’s volunteers in the back. And they could hear some scuffling upstairs, along with what sounded like a faint, frightened moan, quickly cut off.
The Blackhearts fell into a practiced stack as they mounted the steps, rifle muzzles shifting to cover the opening angle on the top of the stairs as they padded up to the second floor. The landing ended in a single door leading into the apartment. The plaster on the walls was cracked and dingy, the door scuffed and ill-fitting.
Gomez had reached it first. He put his back to the narrow wall, got the nod from Flanagan, and kicked the door in.
Flanagan raced through the doorway, his weapon leveled. A bullet smacked splinters off the door just above his head, and he kept going, even as Galvez, a young woman clasped to his chest in front of him, his arm around her throat, tried to track him with a Jericho 9mm.
Brannigan went in behind him, took two steps to the wall, and leveled his own rifle, his finger already on the trigger.
Galvez saw the movement and hesitated, just for a split second. It was enough.
He might have cursed, but the word was drowned out by the deafening thunder of the Galil in the enclosed space. Galvez’s head snapped back under the impact and his pistol fell from a suddenly nerveless hand. The girl screamed as Galvez fell to the floor behind her, and Gomez moved to pull her away from the corpse.
The rest of the Blackhearts spread out to quickly clear the rest of the apartment, but as Brannigan looked down at what had once been Diego Galvez, alias El Verdugo, he knew that, at least for the moment, it was over.
Epilogue
Cole Hauser stood by the plane with his massive arms folded across an equally massive chest. “Well, this is fucking embarrassing.” He eyed the filthy, tired mercenaries as they got out of Pacheco’s truck and headed for the white, unmarked Casa. Half a dozen tough-looking men in plainclothes, but carrying themselves in that way that unmistakably identified them to anyone who was looking that they were soldiers, were loading equipment cases from the plane into a pair of SUVs nearby. “We finally get the spare manpower and the authorization to come down here and play, and you boys have already cleaned house.”
Brannigan shrugged. “What can I say? We were hired to do a job.” He looked up as Van Zandt himself stepped out of the plane’s door. “Mark.”
“John.” Van Zandt waved them up into the plane. They’d already handed off their weapons upon reaching the airfield. Pacheco had taken them, accompanied by a Colombian officer who treated the old Search Bloc operator with noted deference. Brannigan wasn’t too concerned about him. “Job well done.”
Brannigan waited until the rest of the Blackhearts had gotten aboard before he trudged up the steps into the plane. He sank down onto one of the jump seats, running a hand over his face. He was desperately tired. As uncomfortable as the utilitarian interior of the Casa was, he was probably going to be asleep within minutes of takeoff.
The handover with the Colombians had gone surprisingly smoothly. Lara had stepped into the leadership role immediately, addressing the crowd of San Tabal citizens who’d come out of their homes as the gunfire died away. Lara had immediately tapped Quintana to lead the new police force, and with Pacheco’s help, Quintana had set about securing the important parts of the city right away.
When the Army had showed up, Pacheco, Lara, and Quintana had gone to meet them while the Blackhearts had kind of faded into the background. Pacheco had spoken with the officer who was now standing next to him, and a few minutes later had come to pick the Blackhearts up, quietly, on a presently abandoned street near the edge of town. Things had been a little tense at first, until Pacheco had assured them that there were Americans at the nearest airstrip, with the approval of the Colombian government, and they were not heading for prison or a firing squad.
They’d still wondered, up until they’d stopped, gotten out, and seen the Casa with Abernathy’s mysterious operators unloading it.
Van Zandt sat beside him as the door shut. Brannigan, leaning back against the padded wall of the plane’s interior fuselage, turned to look at him. “So, are we going back to a quiet paycheck, or an investigation?”
“A quiet paycheck.” Van Zandt nodded toward the exterior, where Abernathy’s operators were mounting up and joining the Colombians. “We had a bit of a chat with the client.” He looked a little chagrined. “Turned out that Abernathy had a lot more information about this little situation than my office even thought existed. The client won’t be messing with you for the foreseeable future.”
“Who was the client?” Brannigan had closed his eyes, but his voice was a low, hard growl.
When Van Zandt didn’t answer, he opened his eyes and fixed his old superior officer with an icy, pitiless stare. “Who was the client, Mark?”
“Senator Briggs.”
Brannigan snorted. “Figures.”
“It wasn’t as much the corruption that we expected as it was political naivete.” Van Zandt grimaced a little. “Dumbass thought he could score some points by getting behind a ‘reformer.’”
Brannigan eyed him narrowly. It was pretty clear that while Van Zandt mostly believed what he’d just said, he was leaving part of it out. And he thought he knew which part. “Given the fact that Ballesteros apparently screamed that Galvez was trying to kill him just before he died,
