Target Engaged (4 page)

Only once in the last month did the day's orders have anything to do with hygiene—a daily harangue in regular Army. They'd had a half day off, just one, after the shooting assessment. They'd been advised to clean up before going into town. That was it. She'd gotten a pizza and a soda and then spent the rest of her half day asleep, knowing they were far from done. Three guys had dropped because the next day's march hadn't mixed well with a crashing hangover. Good, she didn't want any grunts with the play-hard, fight-hard mind-set beside her during trouble anyway.

“Have a good 'un.” Sergeant Major Maxwell offered the standard Delta end-of-instructions. They each said it with an easy Southern accent, whether they were Yankee, Texan, or inner-city LA. She'd asked one of the training cadre about that after he'd cleared her to continue through an RV in the middle stage of a brutal hike that crisscrossed a mountain six different ways in a star pattern like a bad Jewish joke. Seems the saying traced back to the sergeant major who'd helped form the unit.

“Have a good 'un.”

And with just that much ceremony, they were ready. They were released at three-minute intervals. They had five RV points to hit on the hike, but how they got there was up to them. Shortest possible route was forty miles. Longest route? Depended on how lost you got.

Kyle's number was called first out. Figured.

“Kiss ass,” she called out to him as he hauled on his ruck and headed out.

“Whatever works…girlie.” Then he was gone before she could nail his cute ass to the trail.

Later
, she promised his retreating form.

“Blue Five.” The number she wore today was nineteenth of twenty off the line.

Fifty-seven minutes cooling her heels. She should have taken a nap.

Carla hated it, but that was just something you learned to do. Cooling your heels was definitely
Army
Lesson Number One.

* * *

Kyle Reeves followed his first heading easily. The opening six kilometers of tonight's hike was along a “trail”—which in Delta-speak meant something a Humvee could force its way down if you were being chased by a rabid horde of zombified Chinese.

He was allowed to follow the trail, if possible, but he couldn't get within fifteen meters of it. Fifteen meters into the thick Carolina brush, six klicks in a straight line. After the first week of brutal road hikes and then three more of orienteering, this leg was a piece of cake.

He'd faced a lot of grueling workouts; Green Berets were good at that. His dad had been one too. A tae kwon do, kung fu, and weapons sensei who didn't hesitate for a second to knock you down if your defenses were weak, not if you were his son and not if you were a teenage girl. He wasn't brutal—he'd never hurt you more than a hard block and a tumble, maybe leave a black-and-blue mark or two—but he wore you down until you learned.

Mom had a full-time office gig, so after school, the bus dropped Kyle at his dad's dojo. There he got a snack, did his homework, and then hit the mats right through until the evening classes were done. Didn't matter what the class was, he was in it. Advanced weapons at the age of six, white-belt introduction for first graders when he was fifteen and wearing black himself.

Saturdays were in the dojo until two, then as often as not, they were out the back door and headed up into the fishing streams of Washington State. Mostly car camping, with tent and campfire. Those were the times he loved the most. He, Mom, and Dad standing in a glacier-fed stream together and pretty much doing nothing.

The hard discipline of Delta was so familiar to him, between martial arts and Green Berets, that it seemed to make sense when he bothered to think about it.

It was almost a shock when he reached his first marker of the hike, a sharp bend in a narrow but fast stream. He crossed it, getting wet to the thighs in the strangely warm water. He'd never get used to that—mountain streams were supposed to be so cold that just thinking about them made your balls shrivel.

No training cadre member was waiting at the RV. For a moment he wondered if he was in the wrong place. They were always there to make sure you were on track and coherent enough to keep reading your map. Also to dispense their constant offers to quit.

Not tonight. Tonight he and the others were on their own, though a trainer probably sat nearby watching him through night-vision gear even now. Might as well be alone, which was fine with him. No way to spot a Delta operator who didn't want to be seen, though he'd bet on the snarled clump of bushes about ten paces out.

He took a moment to drink water and check his map and compass. He refilled his canteen from the stream, dropped in purification tablets, and hung it back on his harness. It would get plenty of shaking as he walked. The next leg was three kilometers…if you were an eagle. Being merely human, it was a four-kilometer-long, brutal-looking ridge ascent then descent on a nearly direct line—or an eight-kilometer walk around. Only the RVs mattered—you couldn't miss those. How you got there was up to you.

He'd been moving well so far, but he wouldn't be able to count on that at the other end of sixty-five kilometers. The shorter route would be faster, just riskier. He was used to risk.

He resettled his ruck, checked his watch.

Fifty-six minutes. He was already sore, sweaty, and barely a tenth of the way done, at least in distance. Looking at the map, that first section was definitely going to be his fastest stretch of the night. Well, he wasn't covering ground standing still. But just for the hell of it, he kept his eye on his watch, letting his body rest another forty-five seconds.

There.

Fifty-seven minutes.

He strode out at exactly the same moment Carla Anderson would be taking her first step. He liked the feel of that, as if they were walking along together though they were six kilometers apart.

Keep blowing wind up your own backside, Reeves.

They weren't walking together, as nice as that sounded, but apart. She'd be coming for his ass on this hike. Well, that only made it all the better. He dug in. She'd have to run to catch him, even with those amazingly long legs of hers.

That woman did something to him. Well, she did something to every one of the guys. The way she looked, it was impossible not to. But the other guys mostly left off at the sexual fantasies.

In addition to her poster-soldier-of-the-month looks, Kyle also liked her no-nonsense attitude. Guys would spend evenings in the mess hall or around the campfire if they were out in the wilderness, reliving the brutal day or the stupid psych test or griping about only getting a half-day shooting course.

Didn't they get that this wasn't training? This was selection testing. Delta only let them shoot a half day because that was all it took to make sure you could at least handle and use a weapon without killing yourself or the guy beside you. They'd train you in their own way once you were through and into the Operator Training Course. That was the next prize, getting into OTC, but most guys didn't seem to be looking much past today and maybe tomorrow.

Carla Anderson did. She didn't waste time with griping or complaining; she just got it done. One of only three to shoot thirty out of thirty—it just didn't get any better.

Though it was hard to imagine her as a regular-forces soldier. There was a core feistiness that he bet ran right over anyone in her way, which must have been ugly.

However, to his best guess, that made her perfect Delta material.
Go walk thirty klicks across impossible terrain with marginally sufficient information.
She'd be the second one into the RV—hot on his heels despite his gender advantages.

Now he was walking with her—though
not
with her—in the dark of the Uwharrie. He fought his way up the ridge, steeper than it looked by the map's contour lines. More than once he unintentionally kicked a rock loose and listened to it bound down the hillside. He hoped no one was directly below, the sharp clack and clatter of each rebound the only sound other than his own harsh breathing.

He made a bet with himself; Carla would also choose this shorter route over the ridge. He wanted to stop here, wait for her, make love on the hillside beneath the starlit sky.

Yeah, and he'd ended up with boot prints right over his back as she raced toward the goal.

What is your goal, Carla?

Funny how little they'd actually talked. Some teasing, some Army—he was starting to suspect she'd seen a lot of action despite being a female in the regular forces—but nothing more.

He crested the top of the ridge in forty-five minutes and thanked the sudden breakout of moonlight from the high clouds, which was the only thing that stopped him from starting the descent much more abruptly than he'd planned; it was a knife-edge ridge. It would be fifteen more minutes until her footsteps started crossing over his back at the bend in the stream.

He liked being that much ahead but could feel the pressure of her closing in. He chose his route down from the ridge and pushed ahead hard. No one had ever caught him yet.

And he had his pride. No one was going to.

Especially not a woman who kept tempting his thoughts off his route.

He skittered down a scree slope of broken bits of mountain, moving in a diagonal crossing pattern to minimize the chance of starting a rock avalanche.

Was that intentional, Carla's constant distraction of him?

No. The woman didn't flaunt herself a bit, other than frying Ralph's brain on that first day. Maybe that was the problem. Perhaps his own brain had been partially toasted in the backlash though he'd been an innocent bystander—his eyes drinking her in like a cool slash of water.

Kyle had seen enough women “working it” in the Green Beret bars to know—women hunting a Special Forces husband knew how to take command of the room.

If anything, Carla understated herself, which was one of her attractions.
Take it or leave it, buddy. What you see is what you get.

And he wanted to take it. Bad.

So much so that he almost did a header off a short cliff near the base of the scree slope. He snagged a tree at the last moment and slowed his descent enough to make a clean transition to the lower slope.

Barely.

Damn her!

“Get out of my head, woman!” he barked at the night, knowing it wasn't going to happen.

For one thing, if he was so angry at her, why was he smiling like an idiot eight kilometers into a brutal hike?

Time for a new mind-set.

“Bring it!” he told the night. “Just try to catch me, girlie!”

He laughed and broke into a slow trot despite the heavy ruck as he circled to avoid a steep canyon, well worth the extra two kilometers.

* * *

By the time she hit the bend in the stream, Carla had passed eight of the eighteen ahead of her. There were those who believed in conserving energy at the start, but
come on, dudes!

She'd driven herself over the first ground and made good time. At the stream she didn't even slow down except to scoop full an empty canteen as she crossed; the cadre observer back in the bushes had to dodge out of her way before she ran him down.

She'd stop after two hours for three minutes max. She'd studied the first three map sections before starting, had chosen and memorized her route.

Carla took a bearing and kept to the shortest travel line. Three kilometers right over the peak to the next RV. She'd hiked the Continental Divide Trail—far less known than its Appalachian or Pacific Crest brethren—during her last two summers of high school. It required six months of walking over the highest peaks of the country, from the Crazy Cook Monument in the deep desert of New Mexico to Glacier National Park in Montana: three months south from Colorado, and three months north to the Canadian border.

These Appalachian mountains made her feel like she was merely warming up, no more than that. She had to admit, even if she wouldn't say it aloud, that the Forty-Miler with full ruck and an M16 did add to the challenge.

When Carla crested the peak, Sergeant Major Maxwell was standing there.

“Sergeant Major.”

“Blue Five.” Not a single instructor had yet used her name or anyone else's outside of morning roll call. “Figured you'd be the one batshit crazy enough to follow this route.”

“Yes, sir.” Carla was itching to keep moving, but you didn't brush off a sergeant major. And she liked that the head of testing had decided to place himself in position to wait especially for her.

“So, you're done? No shame in it. You've destroyed pretty much every betting pool so far. You can walk away proud of what you've done. We'll give you a top letter back to your regular unit. Even recommend you to SOF.”

Carla didn't know whether to shout at him or laugh in his face. A hundred times she'd been asked that question in the last thirty days, and she'd told them a hundred times no.

Though a recommendation to Special Operations Forces was damn high praise, especially coming from The Unit. But she didn't want to be the first female Ranger or the first female Special Forces Green Beret or anything else. She was going to be Delta.

It took an effort, but she managed to keep her voice steady. “Think I'll keep walking for a bit, Sergeant Major.”

“Show me that your flashlight works and show me where you are on your map.”

She hadn't used her flashlight yet, preferring the moonlight, and she was standing on the peak of the mountain. She did both without comment, and he nodded and stepped aside with, “Have a good 'un.”

Carla made it about three steps past him when a sudden thought struck her. Turning back, she studied Maxwell's face in the moonlight.

“
Pretty much
every betting pool?”

“Pretty much.”

“Your money still in there, Sergeant Major?”

“Oh, I put my money down on the first day. Haven't seen any reason to place a bet since.”