Target Engaged (9 page)

Fifteen kilometers, and they'd need some time once they were at their target. So, now she needed to focus. Carla shoved “lover Kyle” out of her brain. When that didn't work so well, she mentally patted him on the head and nudged him into a back corner pocket. Damn him!

She smelled the air and listened. There was a rich loaminess so different from Colorado Rocky Mountain high (thank you, John Denver, for making that sound stupid in perpetuity) country. That meant stuff had rotted: fallen trees that could collapse under your weight, trail holes washed out between arched roots.

The wildlife night sounds, silenced by their landing, continued to build. Small bugs making large noises. Somewhere a bullfrog setting up a bass rhythm section. Soon it was active enough that if they stayed soft in their passage, it might continue. Also, once they were in position, the animals' silence would make a good alarm system for roving bad-guy guards so it was worth paying attention to.

Then she pictured the terrain she'd studied for much of their flight down from LAX, twisted her mental compass to match the real one on her wrist, and set out at a fast stride with the others falling in close behind her. Three hours if it went well, four if it didn't.

* * *

The jungle practically flew by. One thing Kyle had learned about Carla: she took pity on no man. He counted on her for that. She moved at an unvarying five kilometers an hour no matter what hell the terrain unleashed. He'd followed her through canyons, waterfalls, and dense jungle foliage—all on this hike alone—and still didn't know how she did it. The same way she'd made up fifty-seven minutes on the Forty-Miler.

The same way she made love. Kyle had counted himself very fortunate in women, until he'd made love to Carla. His lovers were generally more passive, letting the man take control. Some participated more actively than others, but there was a softness and gentleness about them he'd always enjoyed.

That so wasn't Carla.

She was a constant revelation in a hundred ways. She inspired him to constantly find new and creative ways to sate them both; except they'd both proven that satiation was but a brief moment between the storms for them.

They'd avoided the shoot rooms, as there was no way to tell if the monitor cameras were on or not. Neither of them was interested in putting on a show for others. But taking her inside an M2 Bradley after a day spent learning to drive and fire the tank had certainly been memorable. As she remained strapped in the driver's seat, taking them back to the base from the shooting range, he'd fed on her until the rumbling engines had masked her cries. Twenty thousand feet of free fall had proven quite how much you could do in two minutes despite a jumpsuit and a full parachute harness—the unexpected catching air and the resulting tumble only adding to the fun.

Carla shared her body and joined in the initiation of sexual play unlike any lover he'd ever had before. Kyle sometimes found himself wishing that they could slow down and just talk a bit, be together. But when they did, every conversation slid into the current stage of the OTC coursework or devolved rapidly into a glorious wrestling match that he would never refuse.

The woman did everything full tilt, whether they were going down on each other until they both nearly wept with the pleasure of it or covering fifteen klicks of impossible terrain through a dense Venezuelan jungle.

Even now, headed into their first mission deep in the heart of a “friendly” country, he wanted her. Wanted to bury himself in her and never come back. She was a drug he would overdose on if he could and count himself a happy man.

But there was a reserve, a remoteness inside her that he'd yet to breach. Sometimes he could imagine her as wife, mother to their children, the two of them as happy together in later life as his parents. At others, it was hard to imagine her as more than the soldier by his side.

Until he could solve that conundrum, he'd keep his mouth shut. At times he wanted to shake the answer out of her, but if he tried, he knew that those shields of Delta steel would come slamming into place. For a man who daily walked the edge of risk on the thin line between life and death, Carla's occasionally blistering temper represented a line he didn't dare cross just yet. But if he didn't solve it soon, he'd grab the bull by the horns and take the risk. That or he might go stark raving mad.

At 0100 hours, exactly three hours from parachuting into the Venezuelan jungle and after only two three-minute breaks, the team flopped into position atop the cliff's edge to look down at their target. In near unison, they pulled water bottles and traded smiles. “Water doesn't do you any damn good unless it's in your body.” Only heard that a thousand times.

The hacienda of General Carlos Vasquez sprawled down the hillside. It was a classic mix for a South American drug lord—part opulent home, part military fortification. The tiny village of Cubiro lay in the narrow notch of a valley five kilometers away.

Vasquez had a towering rock-wall defense perimeter on two sides like a medieval fortress topped with concertina wire. Any attacker from the valley would also be hampered by the one-lane road at the bottom of a sharp slash of creek bed. The third side was protected by a fifty-meter climb from a very fast river with tiers of barbed wire anchored in the top ten meters.

The fourth side, directly below, presented them with eighty meters of near-vertical cliff. It soared upward behind the hacienda, which gave their team a perfect position to sit, look down, and study.

The compound itself was alternating sections of pitch dark and floodlit pathways. Mistake one, all of the floodlights pointed down, lighting the compound. They also masked the entire cliff in darkness, because it had been perceived as impenetrable and secure.

That's what had convinced Kyle that this was their best approach when he'd been studying the CIA's briefing package.

Smaller structures huddled all around the inside of the towering stone walls. Sheds, garages, somewhere were barracks for guards. The center of the compound was dominated by an opulent two-story structure that might have looked fine along the boulevard of a wealthy Miami community.

“You been a very bad man, General. We here to spank you.
Sí, mis amigos
?” Carla whispered in a cartoonishly broad Spanish accent. She made it sound as if she were a
matrona
, not someone who had just trotted over fifteen kilometers of jungle-covered mountains.

Kyle laughed as he studied the compound through the night scope on his rifle. The woman had a direct line to his funny bone.

“
Sí, señorita
.” They answered in unison, except for Richie. As their most fluent Spanish speaker, he decided to answer in German. “
Ja, mein Fräulein
.”

General Vasquez had been a very bad man. In his governmental role, he'd taken U.S. drug-war money and used it to buy himself a major stake in the drug-smuggling business. A trio of government Huey 212 helicopters—that Colombia had purchased through large Foreign Military Sales loans that would never be repaid—had taken to servicing his Venezuelan stake. That was going to end tonight.

“Lookee what's parked to the east,” Chad whispered softly.

There was one of the helicopters in question.

Kyle swung his PSG1 sniper rifle to check the view. Out of his other eye, he could see Carla tracking exactly the same way, as if they were mounted on the same turret. He'd never been so in sync with another fighter, not in the Army, Green Berets, or Delta. It was almost symbiotic how perfectly they matched each other in the field. Whereas their lovemaking was anything but. That was a constant world of exploration and discovery, of carnal delights often barely raised above primal—

Later
, he promised his libido and sighted down the scope at the bird. Twin M240 machine guns. They either had to use or deal with those. The chopper itself was very tempting, but it would certainly get attention from the whole compound—and not in a good way.

Ha! Yes. It certainly would.

They spent fifteen full minutes inspecting the compound's layout and then pulled back a hundred meters into the trees and started planning. Delta was about improvisation and flexibility. It was about being so unexpected that not only would the bad guys never know what hit them, but they wouldn't be able to figure it out afterward either.

It took him two minutes to lay out his plan and twenty minutes for the team to buff and polish it. Twenty more to prep for it.

They set the bulk of their gear back in the jungle. Kyle had Duane rig a surprise that would utterly destroy it along with whoever poked at it the wrong way. For this operation they were going to be moving fast and light.

In many ways.

Carla moved into the shadows of the jungle to shed her bra and undo her khaki shirt far enough that no man would ever think to look at the danger in her expression until it was far too late. Hell, Kyle could barely think seeing her like that: double holster slung around perfect hips, two bandoliers of spare magazines, and the two rifles across her back, muzzles sticking up over her shoulders like Japanese swords. She undid her ponytail and let her hair swing loose across her face.

The other three were at the cliff edge preparing their gear.

Kyle took full advantage of the opportunity. He grabbed her by the bandoliers of ammo, spun her about, and slammed her back against a tree so big that the entire team wouldn't be able to reach around the trunk.

He pinned her there with one gloved hand inside her open blouse and cupped her butt hard with the other. He drove his mouth against hers and plundered.

She fisted one hand in his hair to drag him in harder and then grabbed him through his khakis, rubbing her palm against him in rhythm with the attack of his kiss. It lasted one second, maybe two, five… How the hell was he supposed to know? He just knew that she left him hard as a rock and ready to take on the world.

“First Delta mission, Mister Kyle. Don't fuck it up,” she mumbled against his lips.

“I won't if you won't, Wild Woman. And I'll be saving that particular verb for you, for later.”

Her grin was feral when she slid out from between his body and the tree. She didn't even bother to straighten her shirt before they joined the others.

Kyle hung in the darkness above the General's hacienda near the tail end of a hundred meters of black, nine-millimeter climbing line. His feet were braced against the cliff wall just a meter above where the floodlights shone down into the compound. He would be invisible here to anyone looking up from below, or even well to the side. The baddies should have had defensive lights that shone up the cliff, but clearly they weren't paranoid enough.

Should have been; Delta was coming.

He locked his descender to hold him in place and slid his PSG1 sniper rifle free. Through the scope, he could see that Carla hung in a position similar to his own on the far side of the compound, with Richie close by. Duane was midway between them and higher up the cliff. Chad was their high reserve, still at the cliff top eighty meters above.

Everyone except Carla had pulled up the black bandanna they wore about their necks. The bandannas had been in the kit provided by the CIA. On the front of them were printed the lower half of a white skull with fangs and a pair of spread eagle wings down by the throat. It was the symbol of the lethal Los Antrax, the elite kill squad of the Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel reportedly run by Claudia Ochoa Felix, the Empress of Antrax.

Sinaloa hadn't been in Venezuela as far as anyone knew, but the woman was hot in the news as the Kim Kardashian of the Mexican cartels. She had very similar looks to her Hollywood counterpart and also boasted a massive social media presence. She kept a very high lifestyle, a constant circle of armed guards, and a custom-made hot-pink AK-47 that she was reputedly exceptionally skilled with. Even mere rumors of her hitting a site deep in Venezuela would certainly stir things up.

The fact that intelligence pointed to the much quieter and less visible sisters Luisa Marie and Marisol Torres as being the actual Empresses of Sinaloa and Antrax didn't matter for Delta's purposes; the news and hype is what they were leveraging. And the Empress of Antrax was a lethal force, no matter which woman actually held the reins.

The CIA was leaving the three women alone because one of the greatest interruptions to the flow of drugs through Mexico had been the drug war between the Mexican cartels themselves. The Delta team was here to see if they could spread that type of confusion into Venezuela. If the cartels were busy killing each other, they'd be spending less time killing Americans with their drugs.

Kyle checked his watch and eyed the patrols. They still had five minutes before 0200. It was risky to hang here, but since General Vasquez was military, they were counting on a fairly standard changing of the guard at two.

As they'd anticipated, he ran a tight ship. Right at the hour, a half-dozen armed soldiers came out of a room near the front gate. They were still yawning and scratching, which meant that was the barracks.

Carla slid to the ground, down into the darkest corner of the compound, and then came out moving fast. Her hair was tousled, which hadn't been Kyle's doing (or maybe it had—it was difficult to remember details like that when she was in his arms), and her shirt was still mostly undone, which he'd certainly enjoyed. Her black bandanna hung rumpled at her throat. She looked exactly as if she'd just crawled out of someone's bed.

She strode right into the middle of the compound as if she belonged. A lot of the guards stopped to admire her passage across the flagstone courtyard but, as he'd guessed, not a single hand reached for a weapon. Her hips swayed and her hair masked her face, almost forcing the men's attention downward. That she wore all those weapons only added to the wet-dream fantasy she was drawing for them.

She was inside the walls, so she must belong.

Right?

So not, guys.

Carla timed her walk exactly per his plan.

He watched her stride to the barracks entry on the far side of the hacienda at exactly the same moment that the six now-wide-awake soldiers reached the men they were replacing. Instead of six men manning the broad arc of the hacienda's perimeter walls, there were now twelve.

And all twelve were eyeing the hot babe walking through the middle of their compound at two in the morning, not watching for an attack over the walls or even checking on each other.

A dozen ducks perched in a neat row and facing away from the rest of the team.

Kyle and the other three Delta began dropping the teams from the rear as the guards gawked. Two shots to the head each. He took out the left hand of the closest pair, while Duane took the right. Richie and Chad “The Reaper” began laying them down in neat rows from the other end of “duck row.” Even from the top of the cliff, these were short-range shots for their sniper rifles. Since everyone was looking toward Carla's approach to the front gate barracks, those still alive didn't see what was occurring behind them along the walls until it was too late.

The last pair of guards closest by the front gate had time to turn and startle at their dead companions before they too dropped to the ground with a pair of bullets where their brains used to be.

The quiet spit of Delta's suppressed weapons hadn't woken anyone. Everyone changed out magazines even though they weren't empty.

While they were shooting, Carla had entered the barracks. The next few seconds were going to affect their next steps.

There was a long silence, at least ten heartbeats. Had Carla faced overwhelming odds, she'd have solved it with a grenade. Instead, she stepped out of the barracks doorway, dropped a magazine out of both of her silenced Glock 17 handguns, and reloaded them with fresh magazines from her bandolier.

The guards weren't the only ones having wet-dream fantasies about this warrior woman. She was like a sucker punch to Kyle's hormones every time he saw her. And when she did something like that…even Hollywood never had it so good, because Sergeant Carla Anderson was the real deal.

Kyle and Richie slid to the ground, heading toward the main building that intel had identified as the General's most likely personal residence. It was a grand, two-story affair close to the cliff at the center of the compound. Duane kicked off the cliff face and timed his fast descent down the last of the rope to land on a second-story balcony.

At that moment, the compound's lights went out. Carla must have stumbled on the generator that they'd been unable to locate from above. Darkness only improved their advantage.

Kyle pulled down his NVGs and studied the one side of the building they hadn't been able to observe from above. Heavy front door, enough so that it might be fortified and guarded. But there were low windows to the sides.

There was a shout from the far side of the compound, but it didn't last long. Chad took care of it from on high.

It was a warm night and Kyle had observed during their high reconnaissance that one of the windows was open. He dove through it and rolled to his feet in a living room with a layout so similar to the shoot room they'd just cleared twenty-four hours earlier that it was actually disorienting for a moment.

The man sleeping beside the door and cradling an Uzi never woke as Kyle ended his dreams. Richie came in from clearing the other side of the first floor.

Even in the green tones of the night vision, the opulence of the room was fantastic. Marble floors covered with thick rugs that now padded their footsteps. Large comfortable chairs, a dining table fit for feeding twenty. A huge marble fireplace that had to be strictly for show in this tropical country. Chandeliers of gold and crystal. Art on the walls that his night gear couldn't resolve, but he'd wager was equally astonishing.

An old lady came out of a back doorway, wrapping a scarf over her head as she did so. She gasped but didn't scream, so he whispered to her softly, “
Silencio, señora
.” Showing she was a smart woman, she nodded several times and then moved backward through the door she'd entered from.

He followed.

It was a long and narrow kitchen. Whatever money the General had invested elsewhere, he hadn't bothered here. It was a rough and rude space with only the soft hum of a modern refrigerator breaking a scene that could have easily served during the time of the conquistadors.

The woman returned to a mattress in the corner and sat on it, doing her best to mask three sleeping children, the oldest a girl in her early teens. No man, no weapons. Kyle held his finger to his lips, which she'd see by the light of the single night-light. Her nod confirmed her lack of desire to have any part in what was about to happen.

She would also give a useful report about the man with the white skull mask, so it was even advantageous to let her go.

Returning to the living room, Kyle followed close behind Richie, who was already well up the stairs.

Six doors, six bedrooms. The first two were empty. The next had a rifle propped just inside the door and an older man in the bed with a very young girl—as young as the one sleeping behind the cautious cook. From the briefing materials they'd studied during the flight from LAX to the drop zone, he recognized the man as Major Gonzales, the General's chief assistant. He was a vicious assassin who had helped the General control whole sectors of the military through intimidation and hostage-taking among officials' families. The man woke to a gag entering his mouth and zip ties snapping around his wrists.

The girl whimpered but didn't cry out.

Richie jerked the man from the bed to the floor and then bound his ankles.

Kyle scanned the room for other weapons and caught the girl sliding her hand under the pillow. The move was too surreptitious. Kyle didn't think…didn't have time to…didn't need to. His training kicked in and he shot her twice between her small breasts and once between the eyes. Her body's final flinch pulled a long-barreled, stainless-steel Smith & Wesson 686 revolver into plain view.

Shit!

He knocked the weapon clear of her dead hand, then kicked Major Gonzales in the kidneys on his way back to the hall, receiving a very satisfying grunt despite the gag.

Duane entered through the balcony door and held up two fingers. A pair of hidden guards outside, no longer a problem.

As the three of them were moving back into the hall, Kyle heard the first whine of the helicopter starting up and then the climbing cry of the engines.

Carla was still on the move, and that would draw all attention her way.

Two more empty rooms and then the door at the end of the hall. Locked, of course. And probably not in a way that could be simply kicked in. He flagged Duane forward.

When Kyle saw the size of the breaching charge Duane was setting up, he knew the door was even worse than he'd thought. General Carlos Vasquez was a man who didn't sleep comfortably at night.

Kyle tapped Duane's shoulder and signaled that he and Richie were going in from the outside. They went back down the hall and entered rooms to either side. In moments, he was out on the balcony that encircled the upper story. He'd chosen the side closer to the chopper.

He couldn't see Carla, but he could hear her exhorting the pilots to action.

“
El Jefe!
” she kept screaming at them. “The Chief!” She would look as if she'd just come from his bedroom with urgent orders for the General's men to get the helicopter.

As he arrived to one side of the long line of French doors and windows that lined the balcony for the whole length of the master suite, a spate of loud gunfire sounded from inside, shattering the glass. With his panicked shots, the General had just given them his exact location.

A loud
krump
sounded as Duane blew the door.

He and Richie rolled in and tackled the General from behind as he turned toward Duane's destruction.

They had him facedown on the floor as a line of gunfire raked over their heads. A woman stood in the center of the mattress, firing an AK-47. She was shooting above their heads into the darkness, but would realize and correct her mistake in a moment.

Duane shot the woman where she stood, clothed only in the light of her weapon's backfire. Her face matched the photo of the General's wife.

General Vasquez cried out in deep pain from where he'd been pinned to the deep-pile carpet as she crumpled slowly onto the mattress. The fight went out of him in that moment.

They dragged the General down the hall and gathered up the Major as they went. Kyle quickly rifled through the small office off the master bedroom and came out with a backpack of matériel. Richie was doing the same in the Major's room where the dead girl still sprawled on the bloody mattress, her mouth open in a small O of surprise.

Kyle forced himself to focus and gathered up a laptop, a messy inbox, and a couple dozen file folders that Richie had unearthed.

Then Richie tugged on a picture above the desk. It didn't move. He ran his gloved hands around the frame, then under the edge of the desk where he must have hit a switch. The picture swung away from the wall above the desk. There was a safe behind it.

Kyle slapped his shoulder and made the American Sign Language gesture for the letter
Q
.

Richie grinned and waved Duane over to blow the safe, which took him only seconds.

Money. Big wads of it. Bloody waste of time.

Kyle scooped the money out onto the desk. The safe had a hollow panel in the bottom. Two USB memory sticks. He jammed them in a shirt pocket and started to walk away from the million or so in cash. What the hell. He tossed a couple bundles of hundreds into a thigh pocket in case they needed any big bribes to get out of the country, but left the bulk of it.

Someone would sort through the intel later; that wasn't part of their assignment. They dragged the two men downstairs as the helicopter came to a hover above the master suite, right where it could drop a ladder down onto the balcony.

His team exited the house through the kitchen where he was glad to discover that the matron and her kids were nowhere to be seen. He hoped that the girl in Major Asshole's bed hadn't also been one of hers.