by Tracy Brody
Deadly Aim
A Bad Karma Special Ops Novel
Tracy Brody
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental, unless you’re my friend as I do occasionally, with their permission, name a character after friends as a thank you for their support. So be nice to this author and you can show up in a book.
Deadly Aim
Copyright © 2020 by Tracy Brody Books 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
ISBN: 978-1-952187-03-2
First Edition
Also available as an ebook
ISBN: 978-1-952187-02-5
Created with Vellum
To my awesome and supportive husband and family.
To our military members and their families. Thank you for all you sacrifice.
Contents
Praise for Tracy Brody
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
A Shot Worth Taking Excerpt
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for Tracy Brody
“What do you get when you have a kickass female Black Hawk pilot, a sexy Bad Karma Special Ops elite soldier, and a deadly cartel out for revenge? You get toe curling romance, heart-stopping suspense, and a daring rescue that will keep you reading late into the night. Deadly Aim is a book you won't be able to put down.” ~ Sandra Owens, author of the bestselling K2 Team and Aces & Eights series.
“What an incredible book. This book has all the feels. Romance, action, adventure and mystery all in one book. The ending was perfect!” ~ Christy (Goodreads review)
“Seat of the pants action with true military insight!” ~ Robin Perini, Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller.
“I love Tracy’s writing style and voice (and that her heroine is just as kick-ass as the hero!)” ~ Christina Hovland, author of the Mile High Matched series.
“Tracy weaves action and heart together with crisp writing that kept me turning pages.” ~ Colette Dixon, author of Love at Lincolnfield series.
“Mack and Kristie will have you glued to the pages in this action-packed story.” ~ Merry (Goodreads Review)
“This is the first romance novel I've read where the characters felt like 100% authentic people. …. I absolutely loved both of them. This is what I want from romance novels. … Highly recommended.” ~ Beckett (Goodreads review of Desperate Choices.)
“Wow, what an excellent debut for Bad Karma Special Ops series. A well written storyline that is fast paced, action packed with danger, suspense, romance and all around good feels. The characters are captivating and easy to fall in love with. Read this in one sitting, I couldn’t put it down. Looking forward to reading more in this new series.” ~ Maggi West (Goodreads review of Desperate Choices.)
One
Colombia, South America
Training mission, my ass.
Kristie Donovan banked her Army Black Hawk to the right and pushed the helicopter to max speed. It wasn’t the time for an I-knew-it moment over her suspicions that there was more to this assignment than being sent to train Colombian Army pilots on the electronic instrument systems in their newer Sikorski UH-60 Black Hawks.
Command radioing new orders to pick up a “package with wounded” had Black Ops written all over it. Especially when the coordinates took them right into the heart of an area known for cocaine production. Army “need to know” at its best.
“How far to the LZ?” she asked her Colombian co-pilot trainee.
Josué checked the GPS. “Thirty klicks. If I am right, this is not what you call ‘landing zone.’”
“Meaning …?” Even with the tropical heat and full uniform, goosebumps erupted over her arms.
“Like sixty-meter clearing.”
“You use it for practice?” She could hope.
“Never.”
“But helicopters use it?”
“Small ones owned by cartel.”
Josué might be a relatively inexperienced pilot, but he knew the players here, and his wide, unblinking stare told her more than she wanted to know about who used this clearing. And for what. Great. Let’s use a drug lord’s landing pad. I’m sure he won’t mind. He might even send a welcoming committee—a well-armed one.
Sixty meters—if the jungle hadn’t encroached. Drops of sweat trickled down her neck the closer in they flew.
She pulled back on the cyclic stick and slowed the helicopter. The blur of the jungle came into focus. She leaned forward, her gaze sweeping left to right through the windscreen at the terrain below. Nothing but trees, trees, and more trees. The thick veil of green hid anything, or anyone, on the ground.
“Do you see the LZ?” she asked her crew chief and gunner.
“Negative,” they reported from their vantage points on either side of the aircraft.
“We’re not giving anyone extra time to make us a target. Not in daylight.” She keyed the radio mic to hail the package on the ground. “Ghost Rider One-Three to Bad Karma, come in.” Energy drained from her limbs as she envisioned the scenario that would keep them from answering. “Ghost Rider One-Three to Bad Karma, come in.”
Continued silence saturated the air. No, she wasn’t too late. She refused to believe—
“Ghost Rider One-Three, this is Bad Karma Two-One. We have a visual on you. Popping smoke.”
Thank God. She could breathe again.
The Bad Karma radioman’s perfect English screamed American. No doubt now this mission was covert, classified, and maybe even suicidally dangerous.
“I see them.” Josué pointed to where a thin smoke trail pinpointed their location.
Kristie banked left.
“Be advised, we have tangos inbound,” the radioman reported, “and
one friendly in their vicinity.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered. Her gunner couldn’t deal with the tangos when they could hit one of their own. Why the hell wasn’t he with his team?
She ground her teeth as the answer came. Someone special volunteered to do something incredibly brave—or incredibly stupid—to protect his team. Exactly the way Eric would have done. Had done.
Her throat constricted, and her eyes burned. She pressed against the seat. Breathe, Kristie, don’t go worst-case. She couldn’t change the past, but this time it was her responsibility to bring these soldiers back to their families. Alive. All of them.
Come on. Heroics time is over. Hightail your butt to the LZ, so I can get you and your buddies home.
A flash of light slashed through the dense wall of trees north of their position. “Was that movement at our twelve o’clock?” she asked Josué.
He studied the jungle in front of them. “I only see trees.”
“Watch the area at my twelve,” she ordered the gunner. She kept the location in her peripheral vision as she surveyed the area to her three o’clock, praying their friendly emerged from that direction.
They had to get down and back up faster than a Hellfire missile. She hovered the aircraft to evaluate the landing zone. Most combat missions on her tour in Afghanistan involved desert landings in open spaces. She could execute those in her sleep. Jungle landings required more precision—and time.
Time they didn’t have.
“Heading down.”
She pushed the stick, descending as rapidly as she dared.
Before the craft even touched the ground, men in U.S. Army camouflage raced from the jungle’s cover toward the bird. Four men carted a stretcher between them. Behind them, a soldier held a slight figure with long, black hair in a fireman’s carry. His arm wrapped around a slender leg below the girl’s blue plaid skirt.
Kristie maneuvered to give the soldiers a safe, straight-in approach to the aircraft’s open side. When her crew chief jumped out, she scanned the clearing’s perimeter. “Thirty seconds and we dust off.”
Movement ahead yanked her attention to where an oversized black SUV came to a hard stop just past the tree line. The doors burst open, and four men emerged, all taking aim with automatic weapons. Shit!
“Tangos at my one o’clock!” Her pulse pounded in her ears over the engine noise, but her hand remained steady on the stick. The American soldier holding the back of the stretcher stumbled as they neared the craft. A dark circle formed and spread over the sleeve of his arm, now dangling at his side.
Her gaze shot from her fellow soldiers to the cartel gunmen. She didn’t dare rotate the aircraft, but there was no way her gunner could fire at the attackers from his position—and someone had to.
Adrenaline surged through her. She popped her safety harness buckle. “You have the controls,” she ordered Josué.
“Wh—” Josué started, but she tugged out her communications line before he confirmed the order or called her loca.
Training took over, and she wrestled the M-4 from the mount beside her seat. Josué reached to stop her, but she ducked out, her elbow slipping through his grasp. She stuck close to the door for cover, raised the weapon’s butt to her shoulder, and fired a burst of rounds at the vehicle.
Everything happened in slow motion: the tug on her arms and the bounce of the muzzle as she squeezed the trigger.
The slim, short-haired tango near the front passenger side of the vehicle jerked, then clutched a hand to his stomach. She made out the blood staining his light shirt and seeping over his fingers before he collapsed to his knees and fell forward.
A gunman in a plaid shirt and jeans came around the door and knelt at the injured man’s side. He fired once more, then began pulling the wounded man behind the cover of the door. Another man darted around the back of the SUV, lifting the legs of the wounded man as they loaded him into the back seat.
From behind the relative safety of the hood, the driver stopped firing long enough to take in the men frantically motioning him inside. He shoved the rear door closed, then climbed in the driver’s seat. With the passenger door wide open, the SUV snaked back into the forest.
Kristie’s breath came in gasps as she held her position and aimed shots near where the vehicle disappeared. Her gaze swept the tree line. The soldier carrying the woman deposited his load to the ground. His broad back blocked most of Kristie’s view of the young woman who scooted into the craft’s belly as the soldiers crowded her in further.
The operators hoisted the stretcher inside. The soldier who’d been shot dove in, wincing in pain as he rolled out of the way. The remaining three operators spun to cover the area. Kristie climbed in, plunked down into her seat, and secured her weapon. A bullet hit the nose of the aircraft. She flinched, and Josué ducked to the side. Son of a bitch. These guys didn’t quit. But neither did the operators, who unleashed a storm of return fire.
By the time she buckled in, there was only the sound of the Black Hawk’s blades and engines. The operators switched to handguns. If they were out of ammo, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. With shaking hands, she jammed in the plug for her headset, missing whatever Josué said.
The last of the operators scrambled aboard.
“All in?” she asked.
Josué jerked the controls, and they lifted into the sky. His rapid ascent tilted up the nose up before leveling and rotating for the gunner to lay down fire at any remaining enemy.
“Hold up!” The choked voice of her crew chief, McCotter, sent a chill through her body.
Kristie glanced into the body of the aircraft. The linebacker-sized operator leaned to speak directly into McCotter’s headset.
“I still have a man down there. We are not leaving him behind.” The deep, unmistakable voice of Ray Lundgren enunciated each word.
Oh, God, no. No!
“You said all in.” Josué’s voice hinted at panic. He didn’t change course.
“We’re going back.”
“Bad idea.” Josué shook his head. “Herrera very powerful. Has weapons to shoot us down. The cartel leaves no survivors.”
She was not leaving a man behind. No way. Kristie reached for the stick. “I have the controls.”
Josué maintained his grip rather than acknowledge the requested handoff. Kristie’s pulse throbbed in her ears, dulling the roar of the turbine engines and the thwack, thwack, thwack of the blades slicing the air.
She checked her passengers. A shell-shocked teenage girl cowered between the soldiers flanking her. Their resolute faces locked on Kristie. The Special Ops team leader loomed over McCotter. She knew Lundgren, knew his family. If Eric had continued serving under Chief Lundgren, her husband would likely be alive today.
Save herself and others or leave a man to certain death? She didn’t have to take orders from Ray.
In that second, she knew what she had to do. The price might be her career, but better to take the risk than live with the knowledge she’d left a man behind.
“Hang on, everyone.” She leaned into Josué’s field of vision and gripped the stick. “I. Have. The. Controls.”
Two
Bark chips sprayed Mack’s face as a second bullet thunked into a tree a foot away. Too close. He ducked behind the trunk, eyeing the jungle for denser cover. He gulped in air. So much for an easy retreat. Squawking birds and the nearby screech of monkeys drowned any noise made by the oncoming men.
Crouching, he dropped into the underbrush. The tang of damp earth filled his mouth and nose as he commando-crawled toward the base of two trees, which put him closer to the thugs on his tail.
The distinctive thwap of the Black Hawk blades reverberated through the jungle. He was out of time. Peering through his scope, Mack locked onto the lead cartel gunmen and took the shot.
It went wide to the right, just where he’d aimed. The group veered left, toward the claymore mine he’d set to buy his team time for the extraction. He kept h
is eye on his targets. That’s it. Go that way. The lead unfriendly tripped the wire.
The ground shook as the explosion ripped through the underbrush. Dust, debris, and bodies flew.
Mack sprang to his feet and hauled ass, not turning to see how many tangos were on his six. Leaves whipped at his face. He vaulted bushes and darted around trees, hurtling toward the LZ.
The stuttered bursts of M-134 mini-gun fire joined the chaotic symphony of animal voices. Through a break in the foliage, he glimpsed the Black Hawk—above the treetops.
Across the clearing, men at the tree line fired on the departing craft.
That was my ride, you assholes.
Mack sank to a knee, steadied his rifle, and took the kill shots between heartbeats. Two men crumpled to the ground, and Mack scanned the area through the scope for more tangos. None. He pivoted. How many thugs were searching for him?
If he survived … No. Don’t think that way. Images of his daughters, arms outstretched, running to hug him invaded his mind. He forced them aside to concentrate on the now—survive and come up with Plan C to get the hell out of a jungle crawling with men paid to kill him.