Target Engaged (7 page)

OTC was not at the top of Kyle's “can't wait” list. And despite the Colonel's suggestion, sleep was about the farthest thing from his mind.

He showered, pulled on his civvies and a leather jacket, and walked out to his Ducati. He hadn't been on it in thirty days.

Parked beside his machine was a midnight-blue Kawasaki Ninja. Leaning back against it was Delta Trainee Carla Anderson in those same long, lightning-bolt-yellow and smoke-gray leathers he'd seen her in on the first day.

“
Damn!
” Not the best greeting, but it was just knocked out of him. She was about the most amazing sight he'd ever seen.

She grinned and waited him out while he recovered.

“I was thinking of going for a ride before dinner.” He went for the casual glance up at the sun still a few hours above the horizon, though it was hard looking away from her for even a moment.

“There a good pizza place in Beaufort,” she offered lazily.

“A hundred and sixty miles. Take us an hour and a half tops.” Kyle's bike was just as fast as hers.

“Uh-huh.”

“Awfully close to the Marines down there.” Camp Lejeune wasn't the issue; keeping his hands off her for that long was.

“Yeah, Marine cooties are a problem.” Her voice remained casual and lazy, and wrapped around him with all the certainty of a cowboy's lasso. “I know another spot. I'll lead, you follow.” She didn't give him a chance to argue, just pulled on her helmet and climbed on her bike.

He pulled on his helmet and swung onto his own motorcycle.

“That's assuming you can keep up with me on your pansy-ass lipstick-red machine. Don't get lost, tough guy.”

“I'll be right on your tail, girlie. And it's
wildfire
-red.”

“Uh-huh.” She grinned and fired off her machine.

They idled out of the Delta gate along with the other five trainees, two on bikes, a Camaro and a Vette, and Richie's older model Toyota Prius. They were really going to have to talk to him—the man was going to be an embarrassment. Most of them turned for the South Gate, headed to Fayetteville. Chad was seeing a girl in Raeford, so they lost him at the Longstreet Gate. Carla led Kyle across the width of Bragg to the Manchester Gate, out past Pope Army Airfield. No one else was headed out that way.

She opened the throttle before the gate's stick was even half raised. She had to duck to clear it. If he'd hesitated even half a second, she'd have been gone.

One thing Kyle had learned from this afternoon's demonstration of the room clearing: never hesitate.

On that very first day, he'd wanted to see Carla Anderson flying down the road in her lightning leathers, but he'd never imagined it like this.

She hung low over her machine, laying into the corners. His view from close behind was spectacular; that part was much as he'd imagined. It was the heat he hadn't accounted for. July in the North Carolina lowlands was brutal, but he didn't give a damn. It was the heat he had for this woman that was all out of proportion.

If there were cops in Carthage, they didn't stand a chance. To Carla, a red light was an excuse to explore the back roads, only at highway velocities. The open highway itself was more akin to a race course, a race that there was no way in hell he would be losing.

It was only when they flew out of Carthage and were cracking 130 that he saw the sign for their possible destination flash by.

No way!

A dozen miles and five minutes later, the answer was “Yes, way.”

They crossed into the Uwharrie National Forest going about thirty times faster than the last time they'd been here.

Now that he knew where they were headed, he could have hiked there over the rough country, but he had no idea how to get there by road.

Carla did. A wild part of her brain had tracked the truck's route that had hauled them back from the Forty-Miler.

The woman was incredible.

* * *

Carla took the dirt fast. Might have been able to dust Kyle if she'd really tried, but somehow she doubted it. You couldn't dust the likes of Kyle Reeves unless he let you. She was counting on him not letting her and wasn't disappointed.

She caught air coming over the rise where they'd met at the end of the Forty-Miler, and Kyle was flying right beside her. They hit the final RV exactly in sync, as close together as when they'd hiked it just seventy-two hours before, but this time they were going over sixty across the grassy clearing in the trees.

After crossing the RV, she throttled back and let the bike ease down and coast along the narrow trail to where the final campfire had been.

“Hope you brought the spiced wine,” she called out as she shut down her machine and peeled her helmet off. His machine thudded to silence close behind her.

When he didn't reply, she turned to face him.

Kyle Reeves, five-foot-nine of hard-bodied soldier, slammed into her. From standing apart, they went to full-body contact, lip-lock, and full-on grope faster than she could blink.

She unzipped his leather jacket and shoved it off his shoulders. It trapped his arms at the elbows. While he struggled to free himself, she had his T-shirt up so that she could get to his chest. Oh, damn, but the man had an amazing chest. After the workouts of the last month she shouldn't be surprised, but…damn!

Carla broke their frantic kiss so that she could step back and see his chest. Yep! It looked exactly as good as it felt.

Kyle finally freed one arm and shed the jacket and the shirt.

She let him come at her, caught him as they slammed back together. Her need to get skin to skin was fire-hot, but that was a discovery he'd have to make on his own.

His teeth raked her breast through the leathers. If he left bite marks on the leather, it would be his last act on Earth no matter how incredible it felt.

Then came the moment she'd been waiting for.

Kyle pulled down the front zipper on her leathers and froze. His dark brown eyes went nearly black as he looked down at the exposed narrow V of skin that started at her neck and reached down to her solar plexus with no other material to block the view.

For an instant, he looked her in the eyes, and then, like the good soldier he was, returned his attention to the primary target zone. So slowly that she could feel each zipper tooth release right down inside her, he ran it the rest of the way down.

He may have whispered a prayer of thanks when he peeled the leathers back off her bare shoulders and down to her waist. He stared down at her chest for a long moment in silence.

Carla expected him to grab, to devour, to take. That's why she hadn't worn a stitch of clothing under the leathers. She'd been aching for a month for this man to simply take her. Instead, he brushed fingers along the side of her breast so gently it sent shivers up her body.

She didn't want gentle; she wanted heat, but she couldn't do anything. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't think as he bent down to take her in his mouth. The heat she wanted slammed into her like a physical blow.

The sound started low. For half a moment she wondered if another bike or a bear was coming to their corner of the woods. Then she identified the source. It was rising from the depths of Kyle's throat.

Without warning, he stripped off the rest of her leathers with a violence that tested the strength limits of the material and tossed them aside. He scooped one arm around her shoulder and the other between her legs with a hand clamped on her butt and lifted her like she weighed less than a rifle.

He knocked half of the wind out of her as he slammed her down to lie atop her own clothes. His mindless growl grew louder as he fought off his pants and dug protection out of a pocket.

There was nothing delicate in how he took her or in how she welcomed him when he landed on her. He entered her in one clean shot, all the way in until they couldn't get any closer. The heat she'd wanted was nothing compared to the roaring fire that erupted between them.

She locked her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, and held on for the best ride of her life. He wasn't some do-it-and-done guy. He'd proven his stamina on the trail and he proved it now.

It wasn't a question of driving each other upward. They started at the top and shattered themselves into the beyond from there.

If she were the sort of woman who clawed, she'd have shredded his back. Instead, she simply held on as the ball of heat exploded and rolled through her in massive waves of raw power.

She wasn't often on the bottom, submissive wasn't her style, but she was past caring, past control. He pawed her breast and shifted down to drag it once more into his mouth without breaking the amazing rhythm of him pounding into her.

Men satisfied her; she enjoyed them.

Kyle must not be a man then, because he sure didn't stay within the bounds of those mundane descriptors. Her body writhed of its own accord. The more he did to her, the more it writhed. Her breath came shorter and shorter, until her hard gasps were exploding out of her with each stroke of his driving rhythm.

She'd never been vocal but couldn't stop the cry that ripped from her throat as her body came apart in tidal waves of glory.

Kyle clamped her hands in his and pinned them above her shoulders, but it wasn't entrapment. It was merely a way to hold on to each other as he drove his mouth against hers and drank down her next cry of sweet agony.

She arched up to meet him. To meet his heat. Because everywhere they touched, Kyle was pure heat…except deep inside her where he was raw fire.

At his release, the waves inside her were reborn, flashing to life and rebounding across her body. All she could do was ride them until they subsided to gentle washes, then echoes…and finally silence.

Kyle lay heavy in her arms, his heart still thudding against her chest, his breath still rough and close by her ear.

He shook it off enough to prop himself up and look down at her. “I didn't hurt you, did I? I've never needed anyone the way I needed you.”

“Kyle, I hereby issue you a permanent pass to hurt me just like that anytime you want. That was delicious.”

“Delicious?” A smile quirked his lips, so she kissed them and discovered that her own were quite sore.

“Mmm,” she managed, a hum of contentment—all that was in her.

“You want delicious? That's different.” And he kissed her lips, nuzzled her neck, caressed her hip.

“No. Kyle. I—” Any further protests died as he began working his way along her body. She could do no more than lie back against the bank—the very bank where they had stretched out side by side when they finished the hike—and watch the trees and the darkening sky as he took her aloft once more.

Delicious didn't begin to describe it.

* * *

Kyle had known Carla was a smart woman. She'd proven it again by stuffing energy bars and a bedroll into her pack.

Kyle's head had been too clouded with lust to grab more than a water bottle.

He figured tomorrow they'd find a restaurant and a hotel room. Or maybe a hotel room with delivery pizza. Right now, she was snuggled up against his shoulder, her soft hair spilling across his chest and one of those impossibly long legs thrown over his hips. He wasn't sure how such long legs fit on a woman her height, but they looked just fine.

Impossibly, despite everything they'd done to each other this evening, the mere thought of her was arousing him again. He didn't want to wake her. After all, she deserved her rest as well.

But the need was building, not diminishing.

And Carla didn't strike him as a woman who complained much.

She mumbled something unintelligible when he brushed his fingers over her.

She seemed only half-awake as he rolled her on top and she straddled him, her hands braced on his chest, her head hanging down. Her face remained masked the fall of her hair—the ends of which tickled his chest.

Her body came fully to life as she arched back in the moonlight that painted forest shadows against her dusky skin, and she moaned like glory when he drove upward into her and sent her flying once more.

He'd never had a woman like her before. Of course, no woman had ever been Delta before either.

Carla trotted silently down the darkened hallway. The four other trainees were clustered around her as they moved.

They'd lost Harry and Max in the last six months of the Operator Training Course. Harry decided he just couldn't hack the mental side. Delta wasn't for your average Joe, not even when you were exceptional enough to qualify. They learned everything from how to attack a helicopter to how to fly one. Comm gear, rifles, medicine, languages…the list grew rather than shrank as they started redesigning it themselves to address their own strengths and weaknesses.

They were expected to pick up at least one new language on top of the training time.

Carla already had Spanish and parts of Russian, so she'd gone for Mandarin. Kyle already spoke Mandarin, chunks of French, and gutter Spanish; he'd opted for Russian. Their lovemaking, when they could steal a moment, had become a strange mash-up of polyglot exercises. It was easy to be sexy in Spanish or sly in Mandarin, but for seriously raunchy, Russian kicked ass.

Max had dropped out with a torn knee courtesy of a bad nighttime parachute jump into the high Rockies—though he'd successfully completed the five-day mountain-survival exercise wearing a splint and swore he'd be back in the next class. Delta had given him a pass on Delta Selection; he'd go straight into OTC with the next group.

They approached their target. The door in the hallway had no exterior hinges, no obvious dead-bolt lock, just a flat sheet of metal. Training cadre never duplicated a single exercise, always creating something new.

Duane had shown a real skill with blowing shit up and was now their chief breacher. His smile was bright in his tanned face as he started prepping the door. Richie and Chad were rigging a haulback to snatch the door out of the way as soon as Duane had it blown. The trainers had put a sign on the far wall that said, “This wall isn't here. Don't use it.”

Fine. They appropriated a handy forklift to act as the counterbalance. If it got dinged up by the flying steel door, that was training's issue, not theirs.

Carla spotted a shadow high on the wall. She stepped back to squint up at it, lost in the darkness beyond the hanging light fixtures. She flashed a signal to Kyle, pointing upward.

He looked up over his shoulder, assessing what she'd found. In answer to her question, he dropped his back against the wall and cupped his hands. The man was really good at risk assessment and instant decisions, way faster than she was.

Three running steps, a foot planted in his palms, and in a moment she was standing on his shoulders, his hands bracing her ankles. He held her there easily on those strong shoulders of his.

His grip was as solid and assured as when he was driving her body to new extremes of release—she hoped that he never tired of that particular avenue of exploration as he'd proven to be awe-inspiringly creative—or holding her while they slept. What man actually held you in his sleep? Kyle Reeves. That she'd grown to like it, that was the really weird part.

Focus!

A quick glance through the vent she'd spotted proved her right.

She slid an electric screwdriver out of her thigh pocket and in moments had the grill removed from the heating duct. She set it atop a nearby light fixture and leveraged herself into the ventilation system.

One minute and two turns later she was looking down into the shoot room through a ceiling ventilation-intake grate. Once again, Colonel Gibson was doing the spiel to the crop of new trainees who had just survived the selection process. Her team hadn't seen him more than once or twice since their own graduation.

Not daring to make a noise—not even a whispered radio report—she pulled out a cell phone, snapped four images, and texted them to the rest of the crew. She loved going low-tech.

Stay high or drop in? She decided on high, mostly. No need to explain; her team would be looking for her.

Her cell texted back, “Three.”

Carla counted in her head,
Two. One.

And the door blew.

Under cover of the blast, she flipped the ceiling grate vent cover aside and quickly slid forward headfirst until her hips hit the edge of the vent before jamming her feet to the sides of the duct to brace herself.

Hanging upside down, dangling halfway down from the center of the ceiling, she closed her eyes for an instant to avoid being blinded by the flash-bang.

Then firing from her position like an inverted swivel-gun turret, she took out three of the terrorists with double-taps to the head. By the time she finished, the four guys were in through the door and had taken down the five other terrorists—eight dummies in the room this time, two dressed as housewives, but still armed.

Even as she did a drop-and-roll into the room—long before the “hostage” trainees had a chance to recover enough to see how she entered—she saw the smile flicker across Colonel Gibson's lips. Impossibly, he'd known she was there above him, damn the man. Someday she'd surprise him.

Right. That was about as likely as surprising Kyle Reeves. Just wasn't gonna happen… Wouldn't keep her from trying though.

She reached up with her rifle to knock the vent back into place. To the trainees, it would appear that she'd been teleported magically into the center of the room. In a way she had. When she'd had her first turn sitting on the couch, she'd sat there thinking she knew shit. Now Carla had the sneaking suspicion that maybe, at long last, she finally did know some shit. At least a little.

They finished the weapons strip and “security” shots before turning toward the door. Six trainees had made it through the selection process this time and were just starting to tune in to what had happened around them. Five guys and another woman.

Saddle up, girl. It's gonna be fun.
Of course, there's only one Kyle Reeves, and she had him. So, the woman was going to have less fun than Carla, just for that fact alone.

Carla didn't speak to her, of course, or even acknowledge her existence, but the woman's blue eyes were certainly tracking her. Carla could feel the want, the deep-rooted need to conquer this. It was a look that Carla had seen in the mirror every single day, which she figured gave the woman good odds of making it.

Out in the hall, they repacked their gear while the trainees did their inspect and wonder. After his pronouncement about OTC graduates, Colonel Gibson left the trainees behind while he led Carla's five-person team to the airplane mock-up.

Over the last six months, they'd run through the six doorways off this hallway hundreds of times each, though it felt like more. At first, moving step by step with lights on and firing Simunitions that did little more than sting and leave a red-colored dot. Then in pairs, finally as a full team. One terrorist, two, five. Then the same progression but with live ammo. Living room, airplane, ship's bridge, tunnel-and-cave system…they'd done them until the scenarios had oddly all become the same.

The environment controlled what was possible, but not what was required. Each scenario became simply another integrated layer of possible actions, practiced until the varying terrain could be addressed without thought and thus the targets could receive her full attention.

The colonel led them to the far end of the concrete hallway, where they could still hear the echoes of the surprised murmurs of the recent graduates. Last door on the right led them into the nose of a 747. The front hundred feet of an old 747-100 had been put here. They climbed the stairway to the first class lounge.

Duane dug water bottles out of the steward's station and began tossing them around. They all dropped into a group of deep leather airplane seats facing one another.

* * *

Kyle rolled the water bottle across his forehead. The action phase was measured in seconds and the overall operation itself in mere minutes, but that didn't make it one bit less of a workout. He knocked back half the bottle and inspected his team.

He wasn't the leader, not really. They were five individuals who were exceptionally good at working together. Drop in another operator or take two away, which they often did during training, and it didn't matter. Delta was flexibility. Not
about
flexibility, rather something they simply
were
. Yet he'd be sorry if this team split up. Not just he and Carla—which was a horrifying possibility that they'd only been able to tolerate discussing once—but this whole team just plain hummed.

Chad was their hammer. His blond good looks and cherubic smile hid a Detroit street fighter who'd clawed his way out of the gangs and would have your back until hell froze over. He was pretty much as sharp as Kyle on tactics. Kyle often used him to lead the other group when they split the team; Chad always knew what to do with them. They tried tagging him with “Farm Boy” for his Midwestern Scandinavian looks, but it hadn't stuck until the day Kyle had watched him during a rapid-fire practice and tagged him “The Reaper.”

In contrast, his best buddy, Duane, came from a privileged Atlanta background. He was milder, funny, but no less dangerous when cornered. Carla had called him rock solid once, and he'd been called “The Rock” ever since because it fit him so well. Duane was a really straight-ahead thinker, but he really got it done once you had him aimed in the right direction.

Richie was their boy genius. He was Kyle's age, but it was as if he was walking the planet for the first time. He overanalyzed the shit out of everything, served up exactly the information you needed, and then threw himself full tilt into any situation. His shortcoming was that he often overthought things, but knowing that, he let himself be guided into action easily when needed. He was a huge James Bond fan, so that tag of “Q” had been inevitable.

There'd been an early tendency to put Carla on a pedestal, but she'd slammed down the kibosh on that. Kyle had managed to compartmentalize and only worship her in the bedroom. The rest of the time he simply respected the hell out of her.

Over the months, the team had eventually looked to him.

He didn't really take command, but he could see from an overview level what was needed and lay it out for them. By the time OTC was over, he could do it with three words and a couple gestures. He knew exactly how best to deploy the team's strengths. He'd often assign someone to their weakest skill to get practice in it; they never questioned him about that. It was a giddy feeling, being able to shape such an elite force to the mission at hand.

Richie had tried to tag him with “Bond.” Chad had shot for “Superman,” based on Kyle's last name, which Duane had immediately rejected with a suggestion of “Clark Kent” because “ain't Kyle so purty and nice?”

Carla was the one who finally tagged him with the simple “Mister Kyle,” as if he were in the
Avengers
TV show and she was his pretty and dangerous sidekick. She'd rejected “Ms. Peel” by knocking Chad back on his ass when he suggested it. Instead, his prone epithet of “Wild Woman” had been what stuck, because she could unleash “wild” big-time when that's what was needed.

For all her attitude, Carla never questioned Kyle either. She was simply a fantastically creative weapon that he could aim and fire with no question of her ability to deliver every time. In planning, in operations…and in bed.

They'd been sleeping together for half a year—sharing a place just off base when they were here at Fort Bragg—and oddly, he knew her less well than most women he'd slept with.

She had proven herself as capable as Kyle or any of the guys. Any lack in upper body strength was more than compensated for with sheer tenacity. And in bed she always packed a sexual fire that burned him up in the very best ways.

He studied her sidelong, but nothing stood out, other than being an exceptionally beautiful woman. But despite giving selflessly to the team and to him personally, it was almost as if she wasn't there.

Then she turned and caught his inspection, and he knew he was being an idiot. Her frank look showed a woman who was one hundred percent present and accounted for. It must be the jags of coming off the live shoot that were confusing him.

Yet he'd had such thoughts before. Or he was losing his mind. Always a possibility.

They were done with the Operator Training Course. There would be plenty of specialty training, on top of the never-ending general training of Delta. But none of them knew what came next.

And they certainly looked out of place here, every one of them.

The airplane's first class shoot room was somewhat the worse for wear, but the maintenance guys were pretty good at putting it back together each time the trainees tore it apart. So here they sat in a room that could have been comfortably cruising at thirty thousand feet, dressed in tight-fitting black and wearing enough live ammo to take down a dozen shoot rooms. They sat as comfortably in vests loaded with magazines and with HK416 suppressor-equipped, night-vision-scoped rifles across their laps as real first class fliers did with their whiskey miniatures and tablet computers.

“You're only the second one ever to notice the vent system.” Colonel Gibson opened the conversation.

Carla hesitated and then nodded. “And you were the first. I was wondering how you guessed I was there. As we walked the hallway, I found myself wondering how smoke is cleared out of the rooms without any windows.”

“I spotted the vents clearing the smoke during the initial demonstration. Happened to have blinked my eyes closed and turned away when the flash-bang went off. Spent six months waiting for a chance to use that fact.”

She stuck her tongue out at the Colonel, who laughed softly. Colonel Gibson didn't look as if he was someone who did that very often.

Kyle could see the others exchanging looks. He agreed with them. “Wild Woman” was the most out-of-the-box thinker they had. None of them had thought about how the room itself functioned.

“As you are no doubt aware,” Gibson resumed, “the operational tempo at Delta has never been higher. After twenty years of mostly being called to the point of launch and then receiving mission aborts, The Unit has been on continuous deployment for over a decade. For the last four years we have often run four or five operations a night in one theater or another. Over six thousand al-Qaeda, Taliban, and al-Shabaab high-level assets are no longer on the line because of Delta and DEVGRU.”