For twenty minutes he kept them skimming along so close to the water that Tanya couldn’t look out the windows. She soon noticed that no one else was either. Even a whole team with nerves of steel were having trouble with it. This version of Richie taking down the Expediter almost made sense.
Certainly no radar installation was going to see them. And probably no lookout either unless Richie accidentally rammed a boat. She spotted only a few fisherman in the calm waters—any one of which could have a radio, of course.
Richie finally landed and eased them toward the beach, but holding offshore. Here, Route 90—fancy name for a partially paved two-lane—angled in from the northeast and looked as if it bounced off the shore to turn back to the southeast. For this one stretch of fifty meters, the road emerged from the low trees. They were thick here and hid everything except the curve of the road mere feet above the narrow sandy beach.
Five minutes later, a trio of Toyota HiLux pickups rolled into view.
“Guns visible, but aimed at the sky,” Tanya called out as she moved back to the cargo bay door just as Richie slid alongside the shore, grounding one pontoon with a soft shush into the sand.
Melissa swung open the door on the copilot’s side, which faced the sea. She stood on the door’s threshold, allowing her to shoot her M4 easily over the roof if necessary.
Tanya caught her breath at the stifling heat that washed into the cabin. It was easy to forget they were so near the equator up in the mountains of Medellín. And the carrier group out to sea had been tempered by a light breeze. Here the air reeked of roasted mangrove swamp. She had to fight off the cough of her body trying to expel it from her lungs by telling it sternly that it would only have to drag in more of the fetid air if it did.
Meanwhile, Chad had popped the hatch in the ceiling of the cargo bay and stood on a couple of seats so that his entire upper torso stuck out of the top of the plane. He must have been a sight, three feet of his Mk 21 sniper rifle emerging before his head even came into view.
Tanya settled for her Uzi, taking speed of fire over pinpoint accuracy as Chad already had that covered.
The HiLuxes eased to a halt, spread out enough that they’d make difficult targets. More men than she’d like spilled out of the first two trucks. A variety of M16s, M4s, and AK-47s—but they were also aimed at the sky or the ground. It was the third truck that worried her. That one had parked head-on to their plane. It had a camper canopy with a wide window at the front. It was hard to see in, but there was a thin slit below the window that ran the entire width of the canopy. Just the perfect placement for a hidden heavy machine gun to exercise a wide field of fire. It could shred them and their plane in seconds.
What she couldn’t fix was best ignored.
“Who are you?” The leader came to stand on the beach, just beyond the wingtip.
“Wrong question,” Tanya called back.
The man smirked, “Okay, señorita, let me see your money.” His tone implied there were other things he wanted to see as well.
“Señora,” Chad snarled from above. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the long barrel of his sniper rifle lower until it pointed at the man’s chest.
Was that anger real? Or all part of the undercover act? She still couldn’t tell with him.
“Señora,” the man said a little more respectfully.
Tanya picked up two packets of fifty-dollar bills from the briefcase behind her and waved the stack at him. “Now let me see your product.”
The man casually raised a hand. Signal to kill them all and steal the money or…?
One of his men reached into the bed of the middle truck and held up a kilo brick.
She hopped down onto the pontoon, then stepped on the sand. Walking alone up to the main guard, Tanya was glad that Chad had found an excuse to lower and aim his rifle at the man’s heart. At least if she went down, she wouldn’t be going alone. She was careful to walk enough to the side to stay out of Chad’s and Melissa’s lines of fire.
She traded the ten-thousand-dollar bundle for the brick—close enough to the right exchange rate.
“Fifties?”
“My client prefers the lower likelihood of counterfeit than US hundreds have.”
The man plucked a note out of the middle of each bundle and held them out to the man who’d brought the brick down the beach. He trotted up the beach with the two bills.
Tanya opened the plastic of the cocaine brick. Gray-white, just the right tone off white. She rubbed a pinch between her thumb and index finger—oily with no grit at all. Touching her fingertip to her tongue, the numb sensation slammed in.
“Very pure, señora.” The other man returned down the beach and handed back the notes. “Like your money. One million is a hundred kilos.”
Tanya laughed in his face and he shrugged, “That is today’s price.”
“That is today’s price in Mexico; we’re still in Colombia.” She handed back the brick and took back the bundle of fifties before he could argue. “You can keep the two bills for your time.”
“Aww, lovely lady—”
There was a sharp click of the safety coming off on Chad’s weapon, the only sound in the quiet morning. No gulls or other shorebirds. No cars on the lonely stretch of road to nowhere except for the three Toyotas. There was just the quiet lapping of the water and the sound of a pissed-off Delta operator.
For a long tense moment, no one moved. She didn’t grab her sidearm, but she did casually position her hand for fastest draw and fire.
“Vasco?” Richie called from behind her and the man flinched. His hand actually dropped to his sidearm, but he had the brick of cocaine in one hand and the two fifty-dollar bills in the other.
Half of the guards reacted by raising their weapons, but the man stopped himself.
“Vasco, it’s Richie. Moore Aviation,” Richie dropped out of the plane and walked up the beach.
“Richie? Amigo? I thought you died in the jungle.”
“I thought the same of you.” They did one of those handshake-in-the-middle, one-armed-hug-and-thump that seemed to be the world’s standard greeting for macho guys.
Except Richie had about the least amount of macho possible for a Delta operator.
“Yeah, that Expediter bitch, she left us all to die. You ever get that sexy blonde?”
“Married her!” Richie hooked a thumb over his shoulder to where Melissa was still standing with her rifle resting on the roof of the plane.
Another manly hug-and-thump.
Then Vasco waved. Melissa waved back, but didn’t leave her perch or shift her weapon.
Was Tanya supposed to know about this? Or not? She tried to remember her role here, but couldn’t. Normally she had no problem keeping her cover story straight. But with Chad, the lines were blurring. Married or not. Three years apart—never apart. Took down Estevan together—worked for Estevan until someone else took him down.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
For Daniela, Tanya had been there, working for the Expediter.
For Vasco, he would know that she hadn’t been there. Now her cover stories were splitting and multiplying. She knew from experience that was a bad sign. When a cover began to fracture, it was a sure indication that the mission was going to hell.
For now? Survive. She opened her eyes after no more than a blink, ready to get back in the game or go down fighting, but Richie spoke first.
“So what’s this price bullshit?” He was playing the chummy guy in a way she’d never imagined he could pull off.
“We don’t know you. Then you get first-timer’s price.”
“But you do know us. You gotta remember Chad, too,” Richie waved a hand negligently toward the plane.
Tanya glanced over to see that Chad’s rifle was still unwaveringly aimed at Vasco’s chest.
“Hi, Chad. Sorry I no recognize you, amigo.”
Chad grunted a greeting, but didn’t shift his aim.
“Some things never change,” Vas
co whispered.
“Nope,” Richie offered commiseration. He was displaying a whole range of unexpected emotions. Richie’s two modes were typically geek-like enthusiasm and super-geek-like enthusiasm. It was almost as if…
Tanya had to cough to cover her laugh. It wasn’t almost; it was exactly as if Richie had studied Chad and was doing his best to imitate what Chad would do. And he was making it work. To cover her next laugh, she had to look away but spotted Melissa’s smile. She was watching Richie with her isn’t-he-the-cutest-thing-ever expression. It wasn’t a smile of benevolence or admiration of a team member. It was a look of love as clear on her features as if the word was painted there.
Tanya glanced up at Chad. Because of the pontoon’s height and his position standing up through the top hatch, he was the highest point around, even higher than the roofs of the trucks. Chad looked like a blond Nordic god—again Thor came to mind. A very pissed off, very protective Thor.
Tanya didn’t want a man who was lovingly amused by her. But she didn’t mind having an angry god of thunder watching over her shoulder. Didn’t mind that at all.
By the time she, Richie, and Vasco had haggled a price, they actually had a relatively good deal—a hundred and fifty kilos of uncut cocaine in exchange for a million dollars US.
The money would be flooding out as payments to other members of el Clan del Golfo right away. Hopefully, a number of the bills would be streaming into Medellín, the nearest large city in the Clan’s operations. That’s the real reason she’d chosen the fifties over the hundreds—they were far more likely to be spent than stashed.
A million dollars in secretly marked bills—all traceable to this one transaction.
“Could hump you blind right now, woman. You’re amazing.”
Unable to help himself, Chad hauled her into his lap as soon as they were airborne.
“I can’t believe that you had the balls to laugh in the guy’s face. You are the best woman ever.”
Tanya did one of her inscrutable looks, one that might have had another laugh hidden in it, then she kissed him. It wasn’t a laughing kind of kiss. It was the hard release of post-mission adrenaline. He knew it well. Finding a willing woman right after a high-stress mission was just the best combination. But holding the woman who’d been at the center of the mission? That was blowing his circuit breakers.
She lay her head on his shoulder, content to stay in his lap for the entire forty-minute flight back to the carrier.
And all he could do was hold her.
No need to talk.
No sex in the open cabin plane with Richie and Melissa sitting right there in the pilot seats—especially not with Melissa turning around to grin at him every five minutes. He stuck his tongue out at her and it just earned him a silent laugh.
Yeah, Chad Hawkins the Sucker!
Maybe he finally understood the others: Kyle, Richie, Duane. He’d always thought of Kyle and Carla as inevitable. The two best operators of their entire class—of course they belonged together. Richie and Melissa—a geek’s delight, in both directions. And maybe he was getting some insight into Duane and Sofia. She wasn’t just some hot babe with a brain even more amazing than her body that Duane had somehow landed.
Did they feel like this when they were together? The way he felt holding Tanya? For Duane’s sake, he sure as hell hoped so.
Did they all feel that way? The “one right woman” crap?
What if it was actually true?
He tightened his arms around her and she sighed happily. And he could feel his cheeks were hurting. Even after he leaned them against her sleek hair. She made him smile so damn much that it hurt despite his face finally being mostly healed. How nuts was that?
Upon their return to the aircraft carrier, the same damn lieutenant JG rode out to meet them.
Good. Chad needed something to distract him from other thoughts that he wasn’t ready to be having.
“Appreciate the loan of the million bucks.”
Chad could see the JG flinch as he learned that he’d handed a million dollars in the briefcases to what he thought was a drug runner.
“Got some good value for your money,” Chad began tossing bricks of cocaine to the chief petty officer. “Hundred and fifty kilos, about five million on the Street in the US. Yessir, five times return in value in just a couple hours. US military oughta just get into the drug trade since the drug war is such a flop. Wipe out your national debt in no time.”
The chief was smiling, but the JG blew his cork.
He stormed up to Chad, yanking out his sidearm. “I ought to waste your drug-running ass. Right here. Right now.”
Chad might have just ignored it if the JG had only targeted him.
But when he swung his weapon to cover Tanya as well—
Chad slap-grabbed the weapon out of the JG’s hands. He released the clip and the magazine dropped between Chad’s knees where he sat on the edge of the cargo deck. It bounced off the plane’s pontoon that the boat was sidled against and disappeared into the waves of the Caribbean Sea.
Then he popped and dropped the slide, “Oops!” That bounced and sank as well. Finally he heaved the receiver in a high arc over the boat. Like a dumb deer in the headlights, the JG instinctively turned to follow its path and plunge.
Once his back was fully turned, Chad grabbed him by the nape of his bulletproof vest and lifted him up until he was dangling helplessly a couple feet in the air.
“Facing away from your known enemy? Didn’t they teach you crap?”
The JG began struggling, and Chad lifted him higher. His men were watching, but the chief signaled them not to raise their weapons.
“Oh dear,” Chad snarled in the JG’s ear. “Lost your sidearm on a friendly mission? And now you have seventeen rounds unaccounted for. That’s real bad. You know what command thinks about that. You’ll be lucky if they don’t bust you a grade or two—knock your ass right out of any future promotion track. Wanna keep playing, buddy? I know so many ways to make you hurt without ever touching you, it’d make your head spin.” Chad gave him a good shake, then pulled him in close so that he could whisper.
“You never, ever aim a weapon at that woman. You hear me?” He gave the guy another shake, then tossed him back on the deck of his boat where he crumpled to his knees.
Either the guy was going to learn the lesson and shape up now to make an exemplary officer, or he was going to crawl back into whatever officious civilian hole he belonged in. Chad didn’t much care either way. But goddamn it! If you signed up to be an officer in the US military, you should damned well behave like one. Half the time, that’s what was wrong with the military corps.
“Chief,” Chad called out to him. “You better give this asshole the credit for ‘capturing’ five million in cocaine. It’s about the only thing that will save his sorry ass. Richie,” he shouted into the plane, “Get us out of here before I actually get mad.”
He and Tanya pulled in their legs and he slammed the cargo door as Richie got them moving.
“Shit,” Chad lay down on the rear cargo deck rather than moving to a seat. In moments, Richie had them skimming over the wavetops, making Chad repeatedly bang the back of his head on the decking without having to put out the effort to do so himself. It had been such a good day and then a guy like that made you wonder if you were even fighting for the right side.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Tanya looking down at him with wide eyes and a thoughtful expression.
“What?” It came out hard, so he eased off and tried again. “What?” Better, but not much. He was still too pissed at a US officer threatening to shoot her.
She finally shook her head and lay down beside him on the hard steel deck. He hooked an arm around her and she rested her head on his shoulder.
Well, at least one thing had gone right.
25
Tanya spent the next two days wandering around in a Chad-induced haze.
He hadn’t said he’d loved her.
C
had Hawkins might never do that.
But he’d shown that it was true beyond a shadow of a doubt.
He’d lifted that JG as if he weighed less than a sack of potatoes, not straining for a single moment. An Army sergeant beating on a Navy lieutenant? Even from one branch to another of the service, it was a court martial offense—not that the guy would dare to report it. Maybe Chad would be safe because the only people who had his name for the exchange were the CIA and they wouldn’t care what a Navy lieutenant had to say. But she doubted if that thought would have changed Chad’s actions in the slightest.
He hadn’t done more than tease the guy until the moment the JG had threatened her. She’d seen Chad defending his teammates in dangerous circumstances. He was always casual, glad to deliver a joke along with his lethal sniper skills.
This time he’d been anything but calm.
She’d been in far more dangerous situations than this—many times. People had defended her as she’d defended them: because they were on the same team.
Not once! In all of her memory, not once had anyone ever tried to defend her because they cared about her. She had no answer to that. No idea how to react.
For two days they had worked to exhaustion laying the groundwork for Daniela’s la Frio Purga—The Cold Purge. Tanya felt as if she knew every block of every street of Medellín. That was impossible, of course. The city was the fastest growing in Colombia. Roughly one in ten Colombians lived here. Along the outer reaches of the hilly barrios, whole new streets had probably been created just in those two days, as more and more of the rural population left the countryside to accrete around the edges.
Traffic was a nightmare, but the public transit system whisked them around Medellín with splendid efficiency. The main-line train ran up the middle of the river valley that was the heart of the city. A branch line followed the most populated tributary a short way to the west. And as fast as they could, they were adding cable cars up into the hill neighborhoods. With the ease of new connections, money was flooding up the hill as workers flooded down the hill. Meter by meter it drove back the drug trade that had thrived for so long in the poorer areas.
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