Target Engaged (17 page)

Coming into Maracaibo harbor was quite the spectacle. Around the breakwater and past the Faro de San Bernardo. The red lighthouse towered above the sandy lump of San Bernardo Island and the narrow channel leading into the ten-kilometer reach of a lagoon. The water was a crystalline blue, and the air was thick with the scents of palm and arid soil. The wind that had carried them so smoothly continued to favor them and promised hints of high jungles and a friendly city.

Kyle was once again at the helm and guided them up to the customs dock. The city towered ahead of them. Being on the far side of Lake Maracaibo from the rest of Venezuela, it had evolved in its own way. Other cities were a mayhem of conflicts, violence, and corruption. Maracaibo boasted a mostly peaceful culture and one of the finest universities in South America.

One of the world's longest stressed-concrete suspension bridges now connected it to the rest of the country, built to avoid the thousand-kilometer detour around the lake. That historical separation from the rest of the country and the harbor's position at the sea access to the largest lake on the continent also made it one of the most popular drug-smuggling ports in the world. Right up there with Buenaventura and Cartagena before Colombia finally started its crackdowns.

This time the team had a different story to tell the customs man. Richie, Duane, and Chad were each in a black T-shirt, dark sunglasses, and khakis. They'd been told to not say a word. Kyle wore a dress shirt and Carla was back in the killer sundress. A man and his woman moving carefully, a man who needed three bodyguards to go sailing.

They didn't try to disguise the bullet holes of the shattered window he'd shot through. Instead, they'd simply cleaned up any evidence that the bullets had come from inside rather than outside and run an obvious strip of duct tape over the window.

You didn't arrive at a customs dock bearing guns, at least not visible ones. But Chad, Duane, and Richie did each have a large military knife strapped to their thighs.

The customs official started out, well, officious. Then he found the thousand in worn U.S. bills, from Major Gonzalez's stash, folded into Kyle's passport. He pocketed the money but didn't become much more cooperative. Five hundred each in Kyle's “bodyguards'” passports helped somewhat. Kyle wondered how much of the couple thousand he'd pocketed would be left to turn in at the end of this mission.

They'd debated how much money to put in Carla's passport—none or the most. He'd thought she should have no money, just be the clueless lady along for the ride. That would be safest for her. That way the customs agents would assume she knew nothing.

Carla had been strangely quiet and offered him only a pleasant smile at the suggestion.

Now she moved forward and Kyle's eyes nearly bugged out. Where the wraparound ties of her sundress met over the small of her back, she'd stuffed a Glock. She was going to shoot the damned agent.

The woman had lost it.

She sidled up to the man until his eyes were bugging out trying to look down her cleavage. She tapped her passport on her lower lip, drawing his attention back up to her mouth, then fumbled and dropped it.

She didn't squat down to pick it up, she bent from the hip with the flexibility of a ballet dancer revealing the scant covering of the yellow bikini bottoms beneath the sundress, which would disorient any man.

She stood back up with her back to the agent. She winked at Kyle and cocked a hip—which Kyle could see had a hundred percent of the agent's attention, though oddly every bit of the color had just drained out of his face. Then she slowly turned back to face the agent and handed over her passport.

That's when Kyle finally focused on the handgun tucked in the back of her dress, the weapon she had just flaunted at the customs agent.

She'd painted it hot pink back on the ship though he hadn't understood why, and he'd been sidetracked by something before he'd thought to ask. Her weapon was the same color as the notorious AK-47 that belonged to the Empress of the Antrax kill squad.

With her coloring—it was a sure bet that the customs agent had never met a Cherokee woman before—her long, dark hair, and the surprising things that the sundress did to her cleavage, she was more than a passable imitation of a Mexican drug cartel leader, especially to someone who didn't follow such news too closely. He probably didn't see anything past the cleavage and the hot-pink weapon.

“My man and I,” she purred in English with a thick Mexican accent to the agent still white with shock, “are so looking forward to doing business in your country. And we are always so glad to show our appreciation to anyone who helps us.” Then she reached into the cleavage of her sundress and extracted a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills. Negligently she split it in half, tucking one portion back in her dress. Folding the rest—at least five grand, maybe ten—which she then took her time stuffing well down into the man's pants.

It was so perfect. Word of the takedown of the General's hacienda would have rippled through the military very quickly. It had been three days, almost four since it happened, plenty of time for rumors that it was a Sinaloa drug hit to percolate down to even a mere customs agent.

The man positively stumbled over himself to cooperate and stamp their passports.

If Kyle had to judge, the man's attitude was equal portions of avarice for more bribes, terror at thinking he faced the actual Empress of Antrax, and the desperate lust that Carla was somehow able to evoke at will. No question who the agent would be dreaming about next time he bedded a woman. Kyle liked that his own fantasy woman was the one he got to
have
in his arms.

Could make a life's plan out of that. Their schedule really needed to slow down for a minute so that he and Carla could talk about where they were going, but he didn't see it happening anytime soon. Their arrival in Venezuela was the end of their idyll, such as it had been.

The agent sent them to the small, exclusive Club Náutico marina for one of the slips held for the most-special guests of the towering Hotel Ventura. The agent had supplied his cell phone number should they ever be pulling in again and “require” an inspection. He never did look below. Their stowed weapons and other supplies remained unobserved.

Once the man and the port of entry were out of sight behind them, Richie let out a whoop.

“You go, girl!” Chad slapped her a hard high five.

“Remind me never to mess with you.” Duane repeated the high five.

Kyle did the only thing that came to mind. He dragged her into his arms and kissed her for all he was worth. Her body hummed against his.

The kiss built until it burned, searing away the niggling concern that had rippled through him on finding that Carla had wept into her pillow. This woman was so powerful and the way she felt was so right, no questions could remain about her—not as soldier, woman, or lover.

She unwrapped herself from around his body with a high laugh that sparkled out across the shining water. She did a cha-cha-cha dance around the deck.

“Guys and girl clothes. Who knew the power?” Again the laugh.

Watching her hips sway and her hair swing as she danced, Kyle could feel the power firsthand.

“And how much you want to bet”—she did a hip bump with Chad, who was snapping his fingers in applause, and continued speaking a bit breathlessly—“that rumors of our arrival are even now spreading out through the underworld. I expect we'll have drug traffickers begging for our services within the day.”

“Or a hit squad.” Kyle considered. “I can imagine that the General's friends would welcome the opportunity for a serving of revenge.”

“You're forgetting Major Gonzales.”

He was. That sobered the group even though it meant that the Major didn't have a lot of folks willing to avenge his death.

Mr. CIA Fred Smith had found many things in the Major's electronic files on the two USBs that Kyle had grabbed. One of them was a list of where the hostages he'd taken were being held. On the General's behalf, the Major had kidnapped daughters, cousins, even wives, and stashed them away under guard to ensure their relatives' cooperation. That had won the cartel a great deal of power, but very few friends.

And most of the women were under guard at a single location in Maracaibo.

“Freeing them is our next task,” Kyle decided.

“How does freeing the Major's hostages help us? Not saying we shouldn't, just asking.”

“It's either because I'm a soft mush who takes pity on them.” That got him the laugh he was after. Soft mush wasn't really in his personal profile except around Carla. “Or it's because of the mass of confusion it will cause among the cartels as they try to figure out who is doing what and why.” That got the confirming nods from the others.

Besides, Kyle had an idea to up the ante even more.

When they pulled up to the hotel's dock, two dock boys in pressed white shorts and shirts were awaiting their arrival, apparently warned by their tame customs agent.

Yes, word of their arrival was going out far and wide very soon.

* * *

The Hotel Ventura was luxurious, discreet, and had them installed in a suite overlooking Lake Maracaibo in a matter of minutes. Another wad of the Major's money cleared away any questions.

Kyle had grown up comfortably but had to work a couple of jobs for his first beater car. This “lifestyle of the rich and famous” was so not him, but the view was damned nice. Their hotel room commanded a corner of the eighth floor with a view that included both old town and the northern entrance to the lake.

Eight kilometers of water spread to the east. If they leaned out of the balcony, they could see the great bridge spanning from downtown Maracaibo to the rest of Venezuela. To the north, beyond old town, lay the outer lagoon busy with commercial and pleasure boat traffic and, as a dark blue line, the Atlantic.

When Carla joined him on the balcony and leaned against the rail with her thoughtless grace, it was even better. He snugged a hand around her waist and pulled her in hip to hip. They watched the world in silence for a time.

“Where I grew up”—Carla's voice was soft enough that he wouldn't have heard her if they were even a step apart—“you could see the backs of a couple of bars to one side, and then dry sage and creosote covering Colorado hills to the other. This view is both breathtaking and claustrophobic. There are a million and half people in this city, and we can probably see a third of them out our hotel window. Where I grew up, there weren't twenty thousand people within a hundred miles.”

Colorado. It was his first window into her past other than “Cherokee on Mom's side.” Those two tidbits and a dead brother. At least having a place in the country to picture Carla Anderson settled something inside him. Colorado.

“No wonder you can hike the way you do.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I spent a lot of time walking those hills and mountains, just me, my rifle, and a pack. We should do that sometime, Kyle. Just you and me. It's beautiful out there.”

“I'd love to, sweetheart.” He kissed her on the temple.

* * *

Carla wondered why she'd said all that. She was from the Army. Now she was from Delta. And suddenly she was spilling her guts to Kyle.

But she
would
like to take him out into the Colorado wilderness. Not the known places like Maroon Bells Lake or the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, but into the true wilderness.

“There's a swimming hole a two-day hike up Crazy Woman Gulch where you can sit for a week and hear nothing but the animals who have always lived there. Or up on the thirteen-thousand-foot peak of Hesperus Mountain in La Plata with nothing but desert and mesa country to the west. You can sit up there until the sunrise itself has a sound as it cracks the tops of the San Juan Mountains far to the east.”

Kyle nodded. “I'd like to see that.”

They had crossed over somewhere, somehow. She wanted to share that wilderness with him. He'd understand. He'd appreciate it.

Carla had always trusted the men and women of her teams. You had to, or it came apart on you and often in the worst way.

Then there was The Unit. She understood now why they referred to it that way on their side of the wire. Delta was literally “The Unit.” It was no longer a matter of trusting those with you because you had to. On the inside, you trusted because you knew you could. If it went down bad, there was no question that every last man, and now woman, would give their all.

Yet with Kyle it was more.

In The Unit she was as safe in life and limb as someone in their profession could be.

With Kyle, she herself was safe. She knew she could tell him anything about her past and it wouldn't change a thing. She wouldn't be doing that, but she knew he'd treat her exactly the same if she did.

There was a heat inside her, not the searing fire of lust, but a warmth that started somewhere deep and expanded through her. She had no experience with such a feeling, no word to pin it down with.

She wanted to grab on to the balcony rail and rant against it. She didn't want these changes.

But she hadn't taken the two words and rammed them back down Kyle's throat. Instead she had let them free, and that one act was changing her more than any other since joining the Army.

She felt things. Felt them for the man beside her. Beyond loyalty, beyond trust.

And it was real, not illusion.

It was also good. Really good.

It was just scaring the hell out of her.

She forced herself to turn to the man standing beside her and holding her as if she was important. His dark gaze was studying the city far below them, his sharp mind already deep at work on the next stage of what they'd come here to do.

But his arm around her waist spoke of far more inside him than being a Delta Force soldier on a mission. It spoke of more than lust or even companionship. It spoke of a deep caring that Carla hadn't experienced in years, perhaps never as deeply as now. This moment in this place.