Why was—she laughed. There were no gravity effects. If anything, gravity would accelerate her round as it fell; it certainly would make it drop away from her target. She spun the dial on her scope to recalibrate from five hundred meters to zero, because that’s effectively what was happening ballistically.
She punched down a guard with his rifle at his shoulder exactly where she meant to hit him.
Shifting over fifteen meters, she dropped another, and then a third. Now that she had the range and angle zeroed in, she went for thigh and upper arm shots.
Chad was doing the same and soon there were ten down.
Five more each, they’d barely dented the crowd. They changed out magazines.
“That should do it,” he called over.
Tanya extended her right foot to circle once more over the street, except now it had become a battle zone.
Right. Otoniel was inducting two new members to fill out his leadership circle. None of them would quite trust the others yet and all would have brought the enforcers most loyal to each of them. She and Chad had just stirred up a three-sided war as each set of guards assumed the other two were shooting at them, so were busy taking vengeance. That’s why it had been okay to wound. A well-trained guard, if only wounded, would probably hang on to his weapon—he would then shoot widely and indiscriminately, deciding he was in the battle for his life.
As the mayhem grew, she refocused on the central compound.
There was action there, but not mayhem. These guys had good control. Cell phones were out—tested, slapped, and finally heaved aside as useless. Richie’s CREW Duke blocker was definitely doing its job. Landlines were grabbed, but Smith had done his work and those were dead as well.
Chad dropped one of the interior guards with a chest shot.
As everyone spun to look at the falling guard, Tanya dropped one on the other side of the open courtyard.
Now everyone had their guns out.
“Now?” Chad called.
“Now.”
In the next ten seconds, every guard was down—permanently.
There were only the three leaders left, huddled back to back and looking around them in terror.
Chad spilled air out of his paraglider and descended fast.
As she followed him down, Tanya could see that the war out on the street was still going on. The various outposts they’d set up were cutting down anyone who tried to run—cross fire along the streets by the Delta teams kept them hemmed in on three sides. On the fourth side, Daniela and Silva slowly walked up the down escalator to keep their sights even with the southern escape route. Certainly no one on the ground was paying attention to the two paragliders now falling out of the sky.
The big chutes landed so gently that she barely had to squat to absorb the impact. Instead, she landed with her rifle zeroed on the face of Otoniel immediately in front of her. Chad had the other two covered as his chute collapsed behind him.
“Is there a reason you’re still holding your guns?” she asked, doing her best to imitate that wonderful laughing tone of Chad’s that always pinpointed the absurd in the moment.
One of the new leaders raised his weapon—Chad shot him in the biceps and his sidearm clattered to the ground as he yelped.
The other two set their weapons down very carefully. The gunfire outside the compound was tapering off rapidly.
“Now.” Tanya looked at him.
“No. Gotta kiss you first.”
He spun her around so that her back was to their three captives. Before she could protest, she could see that he was watching their captives past her cheek. Under her arm, he still had his Mk 21 zeroed on them. Not a one looked like they were even breathing.
So she let herself melt into his kiss for just a moment. It felt like none prior. It wasn’t about sex—she knew that one. It wasn’t about post-battle adrenal lust—knew that one too. She wanted to label it as love, but that didn’t fit…quite.
No, it was…pride! He was proud of her. She was pretty pleased with herself, but Chad’s adulation was unmistakable. He finally let her go and spun her around until once more she was facing their captives, but now she knew she wore a ridiculous grin.
“Now,” he declared. “Though its one weird-ass way to go about it.” But there’d never been a woman like Tanya and he’d do anything she said.
Richie had turned off his jammer, so Chad dialed his phone, though he kept his weapon on the Clan’s leaders while Tanya systematically frisked and bound them.
Teniente Coronel Sánchez of the Colombian National Police picked up on the second ring.
“Major Jenkins!”
Jenkins? Oh, right, he’d used Duane’s name.
“I hadn’t expected to hear from you so soon.” But Sánchez sounded delighted that he had.
“I need a favor.”
“Anything, mi amigo.”
“I need clearance to transport some folks out of the country. I picked up some guys while I was looking into things and want to get them extradited before their friends find out.”
“Extradited?” Sánchez’s voice was suddenly strained. “That isn’t the easiest thing to arrange.”
Chad knew that, but Tanya had insisted that was exactly the card they had to play, so he played it. Chad answered his concerns with silence.
“How soon?”
“Can you do it in the next thirty minutes?”
“What?” Sánchez practically screamed into the phone.
“Well, if you can’t help me, I can always ring Gonzalez—” Sánchez’s direct boss and the man Sánchez would be hoping to replace with Chad’s help.
“No! No. Your friend Sánchez will take care of it for you. Thirty minutes?” He started sounding worried again. Exactly as Tanya had predicted.
“I’ve got a runner outside the front gate of your building,” Chad continued on the script Tanya had set forth. “Sitting in a taxi. He has a couple of bundles that might help any squeaky wheels.”
“Okay. Okay. I know someone.”
Meaning a crooked judge.
“For how many people?”
“Why don’t you leave that blank and meet me at the southwest gate of the Olaya Herrera Airport, the one near the medical response group? Half an hour. Counting on you, buddy.” And he hung up.
29
Chad met Sánchez at the gate. It had taken him forty-five minutes, but the instant he spotted Chad, he held aloft an envelope proudly.
“Excellent! Come with me. I’ll show you what’s going down.” Chad led him through the gate and the back door of the run-down hangar. Red brick placed around gray concrete beams. The high roof was a graceful semicircle of rust-pocked sheet metal, marred further by the missing windows here and there in the panels under the eave. The rear door might have once been blue-painted steel, but now it was rust red shreds of flake.
They stepped across the threshold and Sánchez stumbled to a halt.
“You said a couple.”
“Nah, buddy. I said some, but let’s not quibble.”
Three hundred and seven guys were lined up in chains of fifty—literally. They were bound hand and foot and all still wore gags. The three leaders and their twenty main assistants were in a chain of their own. All of the rest had been Tier III people captured by La Frio Purga that had been run by the restaurants of Medellín. Those guys tended to be huddled together for warmth and the fight had definitely gone out of them. There was another chain of the ambulatory ones left over from the primary strike on the three leaders. The wounded had been shipped off to a local hospital.
Tanya had told the restaurant owners that they were done. If they kept checking fifties, they’d start running into second-hand money and might be arresting the wrong people. Not a single civilian injury, though there had been a few wrestling matches reported and Daniela’s people had shot seven of the guys before they behaved. The Red Cross medics were checking them over now.
Chad pulled the envelope out of Sánchez’s nerveless fingers and ha
nded it over to the airport manager and the customs official they’d invited over to witness the event.
After careful inspection, they announced that everything was in order.
The manager picked up a radio and called his tower. “Authorized to land.”
Moments later, the roar of a big jet coming in hard rattled the hangar. Then another—and a third.
Richie and Duane slid open the big front doors as a trio of US Air Force C-17 Globemaster transport jets rolled up and parked in front of the hangar. An Air Force Security Force team debarked with weapons drawn. The younger guys stumbled in surprise, but the senior master sergeant simply grinned.
“Now ain’t this a purty picture. I’ll be taking them off your hands right quick.”
Smith handed him a dossier and a thumb drive including all of the photos of the criminals with their marked fifties. “Inside that case,” he indicated a large trunk that two of the Security Force guys were struggling to load, “is enough evidence to lock most of them away for life: all the laptops and master files we could lay our hands on. Payouts, bribes, murders—I only did a first scan, but there’s more real good stuff there. Choose the right state, at least three might face the chair.”
“Outta my hands, but I’ll sure make the suggestion,” the sergeant turned. “Load ‘em up!” That got his men moving.
Sánchez was still watching, goggle-eyed, trying to figure out how much trouble he was in.
“Teniente Coronel Vicente Sánchez.” Daniela came to stand squarely in front of him. “What are you doing here?”
Sánchez swung his jaw, but no noise came out. Looked like the man had just stepped in some serious shit that wouldn’t wipe off any time soon.
Daniela glanced at Chad with a look that could curdle steel.
“Not me,” he held up his hands palms out. “Talk to her,” he nodded to Tanya as she approached.
“I thought you two ought to meet,” Tanya said as if she was introducing a couple on a blind date.
Sánchez looked back and forth between them, then found some backbone.
“I’ve been so worried about you, Daniela. How have you been? What have you been doing?”
Daniela now aimed her soul-killing gaze at Sánchez.
“Oh,” Tanya spoke as if surprised. “I didn’t realize that you knew la Capitana.”
Sánchez stared at her as frozen as if he’d spent the day in one of the refrigerators.
Then he snarled and yanked out his sidearm.
Chad broke his wrist, then handed Sánchez’s weapon to Tanya.
He needed popcorn for this. Or to sell tickets. He could make some serious money—the rest of the Delta team had drifted over as the Air Force security guys took over the prisoners. Silva too came over to listen.
Then Chad noticed there was one more in the circle than he expected. It was…
“Holy shit!” He snapped to attention. You never saluted a superior officer in the field because it drew the attention of snipers with mischief on their minds. But it was hard to resist the urge.
The others all looked at him in surprise, followed his gaze when he rolled his eyes to the right. Then each snapped to attention in turn as they noticed Colonel Michael Gibson had joined their circle.
Except for Tanya, who simply looked at Daniela and they both shrugged in confusion.
Chad thought about explaining just who had joined them, but decided it was safer to keep his mouth shut.
“At ease,” Gibson growled.
Kyle, with the balls of steel that made him the leader, stepped forward and shook the Colonel’s hand.
“Can’t say as we were expecting you, sir.”
“I’m here. Carry on as you were,” Gibson nodded to Tanya.
Tanya shrugged as if she didn’t know what was wrong with the rest of them. She spoke to Daniela as if the commander of all of Delta Force—and the most highly decorated soldier in the Unit’s history—hadn’t just appeared out of thin air.
“I wanted to give you a choice. You kill Sánchez here and now, no one on this team will blink.”
“We won’t?” Chad didn’t like the guy, but that seemed harsh. He glanced at Gibson, but the dude was as unreadable as ever.
Silva spoke for the first time in a long time.
“My sister—”
“Oh,” Tanya said softly. Chad had figured that out a couple days ago—it was the only reason a single, straight guy wouldn’t melt into a puddle of guy protoplasm around Daniela. That or the single straight guy was in love with Tanya—which took him out of the running.
Maybe it had been circling in the sky with her, or landing in the middle of the battle, or falling out of the helicopter together forever ago. Didn’t matter, still true. No one else in the world for him—that much he knew for certain.
“My sister,” Silva started again, “gave her body to Gerald the Boatman in an undercover sting operation to bring down South America’s largest drug trafficker. She was a second lieutenant at the time. Sánchez here took credit for it, took the promotion to captain that she deserved, then tried to rape her in the bargain. When she refused him, he announced she was a slut, an ‘easy woman.’ For that alone I could kill him.”
“Or take off his goddamn balls!” Chad jerked out his knife and held it out to Daniela handle first. Now he understood why a woman would do that to a man. Someone tried to do any of that shit to Tanya, castration would be the least of his worries.
Daniela shook her head slightly.
Chad waited a moment in case she changed her mind before putting his blade away.
“However,” Tanya spoke up. “There is another option. He just bribed a judge with a hundred thousand dollars of clearly marked drug money—all in fifty-dollar bills. The judge is aware of this and has reported it to the authorities. However, he stands behind his extradition order. He signed an additional order so that we can send Sánchez to the US along with the rest of these worms. Or we can leave him behind to be tried here in Colombia.”
“Where will they treat him the worst?” Silva’s voice was bitterly cold.
“La Modelo Prison, here in Colombia,” Daniela said thoughtfully.
“Yes,” Tanya agreed. “The judge actually suggested that as the most suitable place for him to contemplate his sins. Both the right- and left-wing factions of Colombia—who basically control the two sides of the prison—will want to shred him alive. One side for all the arrests he made, or at least took credit for. The others because they were jailed for corruption and want to take it out on someone other than themselves.”
“No! Not there!” Sánchez squeaked in terror, his skin gone as white as Chad’s.
Tanya stepped forward and plunged a shot into Sánchez’s arm. In moments, Chad had to catch him as he sagged.
Tanya waved forward one of Daniela’s taxi drivers who’d been waiting off to the side. In moments, Sánchez was loaded into the trunk with instructions to deliver him to a Judge Hermosa.
Tanya waited until the taxi had pulled away and all of the prisoners were loaded aboard the C-17s with a one-way ticket to the US.
“Well?” Daniela asked her, her arms folded over her chest.
Tanya didn’t have a good answer, but she knew one thing. She turned to the compact man that had shocked everyone—surprised her too because she never saw him arrive. He seemed to keep fading slightly from her attention from one moment to the next.
“Your load is complete. Feel free to dump them in the ocean if they give you any trouble.”
“Just might have to consider that,” he said in a wry tone that had her liking him.
“Are they ever going to introduce you?”
The man shook his head in a tight negative.
“Not until I see how you solve the rest of this.”
He waved a hand at the Air Force Security Forces. In moments, the C-17s were raising their rear ramps and ramping up the engines they’d never wholly shut down.
Soon the jets were on their way.
; Only the action team and the unknown man remained in the vast space that smelled of old concrete and many men’s weary curses.
That’s when Tanya realized who the man was. She’d heard whispers of him from her first days in Mossad—America’s super soldier. As if Captain America existed outside the comic books and movies. No wonder he’d been able to sneak in with no one noticing, this was the fabled Colonel Gibson.
He didn’t look like much. A few inches shorter than she was, not particularly broad-shouldered, blue-gray eyes, and graying at the temples. He looked like someone’s aging dad. Then she started to notice his stance…that wasn’t a stance. And his hand position that wasn’t poised, but appeared perfectly positioned for any action. Any action—no matter what it might be. She remembered her martial arts instructor’s metaphor. If ever there was a tenth degree black belt, his name must be Gibson.
Yet the moment she looked away from him, he seemed to disappear. When she glanced back to assure herself that he hadn’t, he offered her the briefest smile, then slid back into his neutral space.
No one spoke until after they’d watched out the door and all three of the massive jets roared down the runway to head aloft. The echo inside the hangar had time to die completely away before Daniela was finally the one to break the silence.
“I’ve never seen a Delta Force team in action. You people are formidable.”
Gibson eyed Daniela curiously, but didn’t say a word.
“They are, aren’t they? I love this team,” Fred Smith hovered nearby. And Tanya now knew that he meant it. Chad told her that today had been a demonstration of how far above and beyond he often went to deliver whatever they needed to complete a mission—once they’d gotten him broken in, of course.
“When did you know?” Tanya asked her.
“I knew you were American military when you and Chad both shot the stop sign from twelve hundred meters at night—”
“Dude,” Duane whispered softly.
Sofia slapped him on the back of the head.
“Ow! You too, Tanya.” He rubbed a hand where he’d been hit.
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