Target Engaged (26 page)

A bright flash revealed no body, then another close behind it showed the body floating to the surface well out across the lake.

Then darkness.

“Next…time, steal…a…bigger…boat,” Carla managed to shout, each word knocked from her by the next wave top.

Richie had taken over the wheel because he was the best sailor, other than Kyle. Bastard laughed and whooped as nine hundred horsepower launched them off the top of another wave and sent them flying.

Even with the throttle wide open, it took them over two hours to reach the Catatumbo River delta.

Carla had spent ten minutes gearing up with every weapon she could think of. Spent thirty seconds double-checking that Tanya did indeed know what she was doing with her weapons selection. Without looking, Tanya took many of the same weapons Chad had chosen. Even their armament style matched.

Were she and Kyle that sappy? She reviewed what they each carried. It was a piece-for-piece match, right down to the number of spare rounds. Of course, she and Kyle had spent months debating their selections item by item during OTC, such as why they liked a Heckler & Koch stock suppressor versus a SureFire on the HK416 beyond ninety meters.

She and Tanya both grabbed for an AK-47. The rifles had a very distinct sound, which might identify them as allies of the bad guys.

Confuse the enemy.

So she handed each person one that they'd taken from the guards at the Hotel Castillo. Then Carla dumped the rest of the arsenal they'd taken from the tenth floor over the side of the police boat.

For the remaining hour and forty-five, Carla had nothing to do except hold on to a water bottle like it meant something, watch the clock, and keep it together.

The emptiness inside her was far more barren than the night. They raced barely ahead of the storm, lightning both in front and behind—which made no sense no matter what Richie said—roaring engines completely overrunning any other sound. Only the closest lightning strikes, hammering down sometimes barely a hundred meters away, crashed thunder sufficiently loud to momentarily drown out the engine roar.

Inside her was an echoing silence so vast that nothing could fill it. It was what she had felt as she'd looked down into the barren grave moments before they lowered her brother into it. If she died tonight, it would only be an outer husk that died.

If Kyle died…

Carla looked inside herself, trying to find the second half of that thought.

If Kyle died…

There was a yawning emptiness inside her far more vast than any mere chance of death.

* * *

They slowed as they came upon Congo Mirador. The town sat astride the entrance to the Catatumbo delta that they needed to penetrate. Tonight it didn't so much sit astride it as cower in it.

Carla looked at the one- and two-room tin-roofed houses perched on stilts just a meter off the ragged waters that already lapped up onto front porches. Small boats and canoes had been hauled onto those porches. As they puttered the police boat carefully down the main street of the town, only darkness greeted them.

“Hit the lights.” She kept her voice low. She could feel the eyes watching them, but needed to know if they were armed as well.

Richie flipped on running lights and the big spot. It would be easy to see that they were a police boat.

Under the glare of their bright spotlight, the houses appeared to have only two colors: blue worn to a gray, and gray worn bluish. The only structure over a single story was the church's steeple made of dark, unpainted wood.

Carla took the microphone on the PA system and flipped it on.

“The governor of the state of Zulia has asked us to perform extra patrols tonight. If anyone needs help during the storm, fly a sheet from the corner post of your deck. We will be nearby. Be safe.”

Tanya looked at her oddly.

“In case Bolívar Estevan has a spotter in the town, it will help to explain our presence.”

Tanya's shrug matched her own assessment. Fifty-fifty that the ploy would work.

They stayed in the main channel to the east as they left the town. That would further allay the fears of any of Estevan's watchdogs. His compound lay just a few kilometers up the west branch.

At a likely spot on the west bank of the eastern branch, they grounded the boat where it would be protected from the worst of the storm's battering.

The team and Tanya huddled in the small cabin of the boat. At that moment, the storm unleashed a pounding rain that sounded so loudly on the aluminum roof that they had to shout at each other to be heard.

Richie turned on a map display of where they were. It cast an eerie blue light across their faces. Everyone had painted their faces with broad streaks of green-and-black camouflage paint stick. Tanya and Chad pulled dark watch caps down over their light hair. The five of them positively bristled with weapons and spare rounds.

“We cross this hundred-meter island at a bearing of two-five-oh, trying not to get mired if it's swampy. There's a channel ten meters across; sentinels will be watching it for a boat. Use a log to cross, because we have no idea of the depth or current speed. Beyond that we have a complex terrain of bush and trees that will be thick with unknown personnel, many of them armed.”

“Indentured workers,” Tanya informed them, “practically slaves. They will be unarmed innocents and will scatter into the jungle at the first sign of trouble. But he will have many guards.”

“Oh good,” Chad remarked drily.

“Makes it easier,” Duane offered. “Plenty of distractions for the bad guys.”

“Our one surveillance photo”—Richie brought it up on the screen—“is off a mapping satellite pass from three months ago. It shows very little, a few indeterminate structures. There is a house, and Estevan will assume that to be our primary point of attack. Watch it, but avoid it. Questions?”

There was a pregnant pause from the guys that she interpreted easily. Delta had a very specific form of action when a combat situation went dynamic. A stranger, if they moved differently, might inadvertently become a target.

They were waiting for her to solve it diplomatically.

“Tanya, you stick close by Chad. You don't know our methods. If you stay by him, you'll be safe.”

“Relatively,” she commented.

“Relatively,” Carla agreed. “One friendly is out there”—at least she hoped to God he still was—“though we can bet he's unarmed. Anyone else with a weapon simply goes down with extreme prejudice.”

The night-vision scopes were useless. The Catatumbo lightning flashed and flared. Each unpredictable flash of light maxed out the sensors, and the scopes automatically shut down to protect users' eyes. The recycle recovery time was too long and would leave them even more blind than the lightning's aftermath.

Worse, visible heat signatures through the goggles could be either lightning reflected off a wet tree or an enemy poised to fire.

Movie theater. They'd practiced doing a terrorist takedown in a large theater while a movie was running. Light, dark, light, constantly changing visibility with the images on the screen.

Carla let that training roll over her and tuned her actions to match the moment.

Light: freeze, shoot.

Dark: move, pre-aim.

They crossed the stream and moved forward in a wide line.

Something blocked out the sky. The Catatumbo flashes were now dimmed beneath the forest canopy, except there weren't enough tree trunks for it to be a jungle.

Camouflage netting. Estevan's entire compound was covered with it. That's why there'd been nothing to see on the photo. Even if they'd had a bird to overfly it, there wouldn't have been anything to see except the house.

Under the netting, cargo containers, work sheds, and piled-up equipment were spread over an acre or more. It was going to be hell to secure with just five people.

Unless…

Hell, if someone was going to be nice enough to set a trap for them, why
not
walk right into it?

Carla trotted along the edge of the netting line and swept up Richie and Duane as she did so.

A brief burst from an AK-47 off to the south said that Chad and Tanya were probably occupied at the moment.

Quick signals had them in position, prone and ready to fire. They each unslung their AK-47s. They'd sound like friendlies, adding to the confusion.

In a dark moment between bursts of lightning, she popped a flash-bang and heaved it through the front window of the house. For an instant the house was brilliantly illuminated from within. Outlines of men were at every window looking out.

Richie had been right. Estevan had set it up as a trap. Kyle would be stashed somewhere else.

Time for Delta to get to work.

In moments, there were six less of the enemy.

Four more ran out into the night clutching weapons and were dropped in their tracks.

This time she tossed in an incendiary.

At the first flash of fire, three more emerged and were mowed down.

Duane sprinted up to the house and did a quick circuit, popping up to check briefly through each window while she and Richie provided cover. Twice he fired a double tap at someone inside. No point in counting how many when they didn't know the total. Fewer than they started with.

Duane finished his circuit and made a sweeping upward signal with his left hand. “Come.” No more danger. Also, no Kyle about to be caught in the fire.

The AK-47 was spent. Rather than reloading, Carla dumped it and swept her first HK416 forward.

They split up as they moved. Carla chose the northernmost path and shifted five meters off-path into the lush bushes to follow it. Three combatants came running down the trail from the opposite direction as she worked her way along beside it. She dropped each one as they passed by, shooting during the flash of lightning to hide her suppressed muzzle flash and be certain of her aim.

They were all rushing from somewhere back toward the beacon of the now actively burning house. It spat up a tower of flames despite the deluge.

The rain was so thick that it was getting hard to breathe. Each intake of air included the need to suppress a cough.

Carla trotted through the brush and arrived at a wide-open area. The camouflage netting overhead muted the flashes, but not enough to make the night-vision viable. The net extended out over the water but couldn't hide the unmistakable shapes.

Conning towers rising from bulbous cylindrical decks.

She'd been right, submarines.

Three of them.

Two were still on land, one in the water.

She dumped a magazine and reloaded. A dozen men stood on or around the subs. All armed. Any workers had long since gone for cover.

Multiple rounds of gunfire and cut-off cries sounded south of her, so she was probably on her own for the moment. Her radio remained quiet, so no calls for immediate Delta backup.

She chose a line of three stout trees and lay down beside the first one. She pulled off her second rifle and tossed it toward the third tree.

Deep breath. Next time she'd wear a hat with a brim to keep the rain out of her eyes.

The wind gusts were so strong that even at a mere twenty meters from the men guarding the submarines, she was going to have to compensate.

Another deep breath.

Lightning flash…and go!

She fired four shots, choosing two men standing well apart so that the fire would appear to come from several directions. She didn't wait to see the two men drop.

Rolled to the other side of the first tree.

Dropped two more.

Rolled to the far side of the second tree and fired from there. Then back to the leading edge of the second tree and dropped another.

She did the same at the third tree. It would look like there were six shooters in the trees rather than one.

In a panic, those remaining began to fire wildly.

When she rolled over her second rifle, she dropped the first one nearing empty and began shooting with the second one.

She worked her way back to the first tree, shoot-roll-shoot until she'd swept the line of guards who had frozen in place assuming they were surrounded.

With a final crash-bang of lightning—it landed so close that the hair stood up on the back of her neck—she took out the last visible guard before he could discover the ruse.

She waited.

She kicked out the empty magazine, the bolt having rung empty on the last shot.

Then she reached for a fresh magazine.

There was a soft click from close behind her, a safety coming off. It echoed in the sudden silence between crashing lightning bolts.

“Welcome, Señora Torres.” Bolívar Estevan's voice was soft and as grim as death from close behind her.

His voice was just far enough away that there was nothing she could do before he'd shoot her. A cautious man.

Carla's Lesson Number One:
You're on your own, girl!
had just toasted her ass.

“You are a most impressive shooter. I understand why you are known as the Empress of Antrax. I regret that you must now join your husband who I had to dispose of earlier. Now you will both be rubbing shoulders with the fishes.”

Carla put her head down against her gun.

Kyle.

The hard edges of the rifle's top rail and scope cut into her cheek.

Dead.

No longer an “if” statement.

She'd been too slow. Not good enough. Not fast enough.

Without Kyle…what was the point?

Was that what he'd meant when he said he loved her? That his world would be empty without her?

Maybe yes.

In which case, it was a good final thought to have in her head when she died. Perhaps she could carry into the grave the memory of how much she loved him.

There was a flash of lightning.

Estevan gasped in surprise behind her.

Then a quiet double-spit from an HK rifle before it rang open on an empty chamber.

She was…alive.

She felt the ground by her feet shudder with the impact as Bolívar Estevan collapsed.

The shots had come from her own rifle, the one she'd left nearly empty by the third tree.

A flash of lightning revealed Kyle kneeling by the tree with the empty rifle in his hands.

A very alive Kyle Reeves.

Her training had taught her never to hesitate.

So she didn't.

She threw herself at him.