The heat from the turbine felt warm on her neck in the cool of the predawn morning as Brossa climbed into the Eurocopter EC135. Within moments she was at altitude and winging her way north.
Twenty minutes later the chopper set down on the grassy airstrip in Gurb. The airstrip was fit only for ultralight and small civilian aircraft, and in this case, a helicopter. She grimaced at the sight of the six URO VAMTACs—Spanish versions of Humvees—with their Browning M2 12.7×99mm NATO machine guns. She had spoken with Captain Asensio by phone yesterday and thought they had agreed to a quiet insertion, rather than a provocative show of force. Clearly he had changed his mind. The CNI was an intelligence-gathering unit, not a law enforcement agency per se.
She wasn’t entirely surprised by the change of plan, either. Asensio began his career as a Spanish Army paratrooper in Afghanistan before transferring to the Guardia Civil. Quiet insertions weren’t exactly his style.
Fortunately, the captain wisely decided not to assemble his assault team in Vic, a hotbed of Catalonian separatism. He’d even had the good sense to move his combat vehicles at night to avoid detection.
Vic—pronounced Bic locally—was a small, ancient city of some thirty thousand people and the capital of the district. It was also the gateway to the Pyrenees Mountains, toward which they were soon headed. Brossa had been in the main square market just last week. It was a festive affair, crowded with farmers and merchants selling their infinite varieties of delicious cheeses, olives, and jamón to locals and tourists alike. But the surrounding windows and balconies above the square were festooned with banners demanding the release of the Catalonian prisoners, independence flags, and even revolutionary slogans.
A police killing here, even an accidental one, could turn Vic into Spain’s own version of Sarajevo and ignite another bloody war.
Brossa thanked the pilot, a woman, and her copilot before stepping onto the grass, lowering her head instinctively as the composite fiber blades spun overhead. As soon as she cleared the rotor radius, the chopper lifted back into the air with the roar of its twin turbo engines and headed back to Barcelona. The blast of warm air from the turbines felt even better in the crisp mountain air.
Brossa approached Captain Asensio, waiting by his command vehicle and kitted out like his men in green combat BDUs, a tactical vest with armor plate, and a Kevlar ATE bump helmet. She noted the H&K USP pistol on his hip but his subordinates all carried the H&K MP5 nine-millimeter submachine guns strapped across their chests. They looked less like a police operation than a full-on military strike force.
Standing next to Asensio was a man in his forties with fierce brown eyes behind his rimless glasses. He was shorter than Asensio but obviously physically fit and wore a tactical armored vest over his civilian clothes.
“This is Mr. Dellinger. He’s with the American consulate and will be observing today’s events.”
“Mucho gusto, Agent Brossa,” Dellinger said, shaking her hand.
“Igualmente, Señor Dellinger.” Brossa nodded at the tactical vehicles. “Change of plans, Captain? I thought this was a simple arrest.”
“New intelligence reports suggest they are heavily armed. I had to make adjustments.”
“We need to take them alive.”
He nodded toward one of his troopers behind a heavy machine gun. “A show of force will make them think twice about resisting. The cowards will piss their pants and drop their weapons when they see us pull up in these.”
Brossa wanted to argue, but what was the point? Asensio was in charge of the tactical operation. She was only in charge of the arrests and crime scene investigation.
“Anything else, Agent Brossa?”
“We should get moving. No telling how long they’ll be hanging around.”
“Agreed.” He barked orders into his comms and the six diesel engines coughed into life. The captain pulled open the door of his command vehicle and Brossa climbed in for the ride up into the high granite mountains above, Dellinger right behind her.
The abandoned eighteenth-century two-story farmhouse was built with rough-hewn granite stones from the surrounding mountains, as were two of the smaller outbuildings nearby, both in severe disrepair. A fourth building, a crumbling cow barn, was mostly wood. The ancient dairy farm stood at the end of a dirt track that ran off the small, winding asphalt road leading up from Queralbs, less than five miles from the French border.
Captain Asensio reviewed his plans with Brossa over their headsets inside the roaring VAMTAC. He pointed out the approaches his men would take on the infrared photographs his drone operator had made the day before. The narrow road would be blocked on both ends a half kilometer out, and his troopers would approach on foot to maintain the element of surprise.
A sniper team was already in position on the hill behind the farmhouse and reported that thirteen tangos—nine males, four females—had arrived the evening before and were still in place. At least one AK-47 and two Beretta 92FS pistols had been spotted through the windows. The sniper had permission to take out any RPG or other heavy-weapons operator on sight but to otherwise maintain fire discipline until ordered into action.
“There won’t be any problems,” Asensio assured her with a confident grin. “It will be sweet and easy, like a sip of your grandmother’s sangria.”
Flirting? Now? Seriously? she said to herself.
“Oh, Captain. If you only knew my grandmother.”
Over the captain’s objections, Brossa jogged along with the rest of the assault team, approaching the farmhouse under cover of the surrounding trees and low rock wall. Dellinger remained behind in the company of a young private as ordered.
According to the sniper team, no lookouts had been posted outside of the building, though men frequented the windows, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. It was just after seven a.m. now, and everyone inside the farmhouse appeared to be awake.
The captain raised a bullhorn to his mouth. “Attention! You inside! You are surrounded by the Guardia Civil. Come out with your hands empty and over your heads!”
His second-in-command, Vázquez, another combat veteran, ordered the remaining four VAMTACs forward at top speed.
Panicked, angry voices shouted inside the building, as the ground-floor window shutters slammed shut.
Asensio swore under his breath.
“Easy, eh?” Brossa said.
The captain jabbed a finger into her tactical vest.
“No matter what happens, you don’t move from this spot until I give the command for you to advance or I’ll shoot you myself. Understood?”
Brossa forced a single nod of her head in reluctant compliance, swearing silently to herself at the man’s arrogance.
The four VAMTACs roared up closer, skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust. They formed a ragged line some hundred meters from the house, machine guns pointed at the ancient stone walls.
“I won’t make the offer again,” Asensio shouted in the bullhorn. “Leave your weapons inside and come out with your hands over your head or we’re coming inside to get you.”
“Go away, porcs feixistes!”—fascist pigs!—a man’s voice shouted from inside, hiding behind a second-story wall. “We are assembling peacefully, as is our right under the Spanish constitution!”
“You are all suspects in a mass murder,” Asensio replied. “I have a warrant for your arrests. You have two minutes to comply.”
“That is a lie! We are innocent!” the man shouted.
Asensio whispered a command in his comms, and the four heavy machine guns racked in unison.
He cast a sidelong glance at Brossa. “You’ll see. They’ll come right out, the cowards.”
Brossa checked her Casio G-Shock. The second hand swept the dial twice.
Nothing.
“It’s been two minutes—”
Asensio cut her off with a chop of his hand in the air. He put the bullhorn to his mouth.
“Time’s up! We’re coming in! If you resist, we will shoot.”
A young man with long hair and a full beard appeared at one of the second-story windows, waving a white pillowcase in his hand. From here, he didn’t look to be more than twenty years old, Brossa thought.
“Hey, feixisto! We called our lawyer. She is on her way from Vic. She will be here in thirty minutes. Let her see the warrant. If it is legal, we will comply.”
Brossa let out a sigh of relief. “Excellent.”
The captain ignored her. He whispered a command. “Vázquez, we will advance on my order in thirty seconds. Get ready to—”
Brossa yanked his arm. “Stop! What are you doing?”
“Hold!” Asensio ordered before whipping around. “What the hell are you doing? This is my operation!”
“Our orders are to take them all alive, for questioning.”
“And that is my intention.”
“But they just said they would comply. All we have to do is wait for their lawyer.”
The captain shook his head, his eyes raking over her smaller form in a derisive inventory. He could barely hide his disdain.
“You damn desk jockeys don’t have the first idea about field operations. ‘Wait for their lawyer’? How do you know they called a lawyer? Do you know if they even have a lawyer?”
“I don’t. But thirty minutes won’t cost us anything.”
“Really? What if instead of calling a lawyer they called in for armed reinforcements? Have you thought of that, Agent Brossa?”
“I say we wait and see what happens.”
He shoved a thick finger in her face. “And I say, if you interrupt this operation again, I’ll zip-cuff your pretty little ass and put you facedown in the dirt, and then I’ll report you to Peña for endangering this mission and my men. ¿Me entiendes?”
Brossa jabbed her thin finger into his tac vest. “You and I are going to have a little talk when this operation is over, cabrón. Go ahead and do your thing. But once we’re inside, I’m the boss, and if you dick around with me in there, you’ll be the one up for court-martial.” Her eyes narrowed, and she added in her native tongue, “M’entens?”
Asensio grinned, admiring her sand. “Agreed.” His face hardened. He pointed at the ground. “Stay here until I call you in. That’s an order.”
He turned around to face the farmhouse. “Vázquez. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Smoke. Now.”
A half-dozen smoke grenades arced through the sky, thudding in the dirt in front of the house. They each popped, belching out billowing clouds of reactive granular aluminum and perchloroethane, completely blocking the view between the house and the assault team.
“Wait for it,” Asensio growled in his comms. “On my count. Five, four, three . . .”
The farmhouse and its outbuildings sat in the middle of a small open field, its grasses fed by a burbling creek that ran the length of the property behind the house. Three hundred meters behind the house was a steep, tree-studded hill where the sniper team lay in hiding.
The front of the house faced the winding asphalt road with no obstructions from the front door up the dirt track all the way to the road.
The asphalt road had been cut out of the side of the mountain, which was why its far side was bounded by a steep wall of granite, the top of which was heavily treed. The straight-line distance from the top of the granite wall to the ragged row of VAMTACs down below was less than forty meters.
Well hidden and in camouflage, Bykov—a combat veteran on four continents—followed the captain’s attack with a veteran’s eye and listened in on Asensio’s tapped comms through an earpiece. He hardly needed the latter. Popping smoke was textbook, and completely predictable.
So was the sound of the helicopter rotors beating the air, approaching right on time. Peña was as good as his word.
Forty meters from that height was an easy throw.
Bykov pulled the pin and let fly.
“Wait for it,” Asensio growled in his comms. “On my count. Five, four, three . . .”
He glanced up as he counted, shocked by the sudden appearance of the bright yellow news helicopter overhead.
“. . . two, one . . .”
The small, round green M67 grenade thudded in the dirt twenty meters from Asensio. He recognized the sound immediately—he’d thrown plenty of them himself in the Sand Box. Six and a half ounces of Comp B explosive would shred its steel casing into deadly white-hot shards in a matter of seconds.
“GRENADE!”
The M67 exploded, throwing shrapnel in a lethality radius of five meters. A private standing thirteen meters from it went down, his left calf cut to ribbons. Other shards spanged against the nearby VAMTAC.
“Go!”
The four machine guns mounted on the VAMTACs opened up, hitting the windows, keeping tight fire lanes so that the troopers could advance without getting hit by them. Blue-on-blue “friendly fire” casualties were a soldier’s worst nightmare.
“Go, go, go!” Asensio commanded, charging forward, taking the lead, eight of his men advancing behind him toward the front of the house. Six more charged in from the other three directions. Another eight of his troopers took up covering positions, weapons pointed at the house, still shrouded in white smoke.
Brossa fought the urge to follow—until she couldn’t. She pulled her pistol and charged forward toward the house through the haze.
She heard Asensio bark another order in her comms but her ears picked up the distinctive sound of spoons popping on flash-bangs. Tossed through windows, each of the devices blew in half a second, blasting an ear-busting 175 decibels of noise and a blinding two million candlepower of light.
Brossa broke through the last of the dissipating smoke toward the open space on the wall next to Asensio. He saw her approaching, and barked an angry order at her, waving her away.
“Get back!”
The house erupted.
White light blinded her, and the world went dark.
It happened so fast, Brossa didn’t really know what hit her. All she knew was her ears rang and her head hurt like she’d been on a three-day drunk. She was propped up against a tire of one of the VAMTACs, and one of the troopers, the assigned medic, was blotting a minor cut on her face with an antibacterial swab.
There were other troopers around her, more badly wounded than she, but none critically, and already bandaged. They smoked and laughed.
She blinked her eyes to clear them, only to see Asensio towering over her, his dark eyes glaring at her.
“You disobeyed my orders and nearly got yourself killed.”
Brossa pushed the medic away and climbed to her feet.
“How many dead?” she asked.
“None of my men, thank God.” He crossed himself.
“Inside?” she asked hopefully.
He shrugged. “All of them. The cowards.”
“Show me.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t recommend it.”
“I’m not your little sister, Captain. Show me.”
Captain Asensio led the way, his boots crunching on the shattered glass and wood splinters in the dirt. They reached what was left of the porch. The door had been blasted off its ancient iron hinges, fragments of it still clinging to the thumb-width nails.
The stone walls still stood, mostly. The heavy granite had done its work. The thick walls had contained the explosion, much like a firecracker tossed into a coffee can—or more accurately, a coffee can full of grasshoppers. Even from here Brossa could see the blood and hair and brain matter embedded into the ancient gray stones.
It was the wooden structures inside that had given way. The ceilings, support beams, and staircases collapsed in on themselves or, in the case of the roof and window casings, blew outward in large, jagged shards, scattered around the meadow like trash after a rock concert.
Body parts, too. A foot still inside of a shoe lay near the creek. A bloody bone fragment was wedged in the front grille of one of the VAMTACs.
The smell of burnt wood couldn’t hide the stench of the shattered torsos inside. She knew that beneath the rubble lay buried thirteen broken bodies, entrails spilling out onto the rough-cut boards, blood and waste seeping into the cracks.
Once the rubble was cleared away, the mangled remains could be removed. It would be dirty work putting them all back together again. But it had to be done in order to identify them.
The yellow helicopter circled high overhead, no doubt shooting more camera footage, perhaps even live, Brossa worried. Its blades beat out a dark tattoo that rang off the mountaintops.
“Can’t you get rid of it?” Brossa asked.
“I called it in to my commanding officer. He’s working on it.”
“How did they find out?”
He shrugged. “They’re vultures. They can smell death a kilometer away in parts per billion.” He motioned toward the smoldering wreckage inside. “There’s nothing you can do here. I’ve already called in my crime scene people. Let them handle this.”
“I have a job to do, Captain. So do you. Get out of my way.”