Deadly Aim (Bad Karma Special Ops Book 2)

by Tracy Brody

  “A big gray truck.” She described Sheehan’s. He wasn’t near Ray’s size but had blond hair. “Look, that’s all I’ve got. Unless you want to take me back to Fort Bragg …” she dared them. If they believed her, they might kill her now. In their line of work, neither were the kind of men to trust anyone.

  The two stepped away and conferred in low voices. She rocked in pain, managing to pick out a few words. City. Pierce. Picture. Truth. Here. Now. She didn’t understand enough to make sense, but it looked like she’d bought some time, especially when Hugo took a picture of her with his phone.

  “No more escape.” Herrera gripped the sledgehammer with both hands.

  No promises.

  Rather than handing the instrument of torture to Pedro, he swung it back like a golf club. This time she saw it coming.

  But couldn’t react.

  The impact above her ankle nearly toppled the chair. She heard the crunch of bone.

  Bright spots of light exploded in her eyes, clouding her vision.

  The pain triggered intense nausea, and she gagged on the bile her stomach expelled. Hanging her head might keep her from passing out, but as the world darkened and sounds muted, she only wanted relief from this torture.

  Was she dreaming? No. Same room.

  Same nightmare.

  Except someone had the humanity to cut the ties and lay her on the bed. Her head, her foot, and her ankle throbbed. And not even in unison. Raising up on her elbows, she grimaced at her swollen foot and the unnatural angle of her ankle.

  She was alone in the room. Apparently, if she couldn’t stand or walk, they didn’t want to waste the manpower guarding her. A faint aroma grew stronger when she inhaled. She sniffed again, craning her neck until she found the source—a plastic bowl of food and cup of water sat on the nightstand.

  Pain ripped through her leg as she twisted to reach for the water, but she powered through, grabbing her prize. Her hand trembled so hard that water sloshed onto to her hand she lifted the cup to her lips. She swished the liquid around her mouth to rinse away the dirt and blood, then swallowed it down rather than waste any precious drops.

  The eggs were cold and rubbery, but after a few bites, her stomach stopped cramping. Should she save some? Who knew when they’d give her more, but she didn’t entirely trust it wasn’t laced with drugs.

  Giving Herrera a name must have eased up his moratorium on food, and based on the sun’s position, she must have slept a few hours after blacking out. It wasn’t enough that she was going to buy into the notion he had any redeeming qualities. Besides, when he found out that she’d lied …

  Yeah.

  If she crawled—dragging her foot?—she’d get caught before making it down the stairs. If she didn’t pass out before then. If she could make a splint to immobilize her foot, maybe she could bear some weight. Minimally, it’d reduce the agony whenever her leg moved.

  What to use? The only thing in the room other than the bed was the bedside table. Its spindle-type legs were longer than the length from her ankle to her knee, but it was all she had to work with.

  Forty-One

  Through night-vision goggles, Mack studied the flat field below. He pulled the right handle to steer his chute closer to the tree line. Seconds later, he tugged both handles to slow his rapid descent.

  His boots touched down, and with two slight steps forward, he stopped, his chute settling to the ground with a ruffled whisper.

  Several of Bravo team drifted silently the last few hundred feet through an inky sky. Within minutes, the men had disengaged and gathered up their chutes from the high-altitude jump.

  They took refuge under cover of the jungle where they shoved the chutes into camouflaged kit bags. They tucked them around the base of a low palm. Mack drew out his knife and cut off fronds to further hide the stash of chutes. Maybe they’d recover them. It was hardly a priority. But Herrera’s men finding them could blow this mission and risk lives. Theirs and Kristie’s.

  The tip of his knife nicked Mack’s pinkie when he sliced through the stem of a palm leaf. Shit. Focus.

  Plan A had been a total washout since Herrera’s plane hadn’t landed on U.S. soil to refuel. They were operating on a roughed-out Plan B—get to Colombia, then wing it.

  If the drone hadn’t picked up Kristie’s tracker last night, they wouldn’t have a target location at all. But they’d lost the signal around 0500.

  What the hell did that mean? Had they discovered it? Turned it off? Destroyed it? Moved her? If so, she could be anywhere by now. Every one of those possibilities conjured up images that ate away at him like gangrene.

  What if their target location really did belong to the Colombian coffee grower listed as property owner? They’d be back to square one if Kristie wasn’t in the compound mere miles from here. They had a few hours of darkness left to surround the house and begin surveillance.

  Unlike the rescue of the judge’s daughter, Herrera would expect them this time. He’d be lying in wait, with a trap set. And Kristie as bait. The upside of that meant he’d keep her alive. Mack put several more fronds over the packs as his team started the trek up the hillside.

  The electrified chain-link fence was eight feet tall and topped with razor wire. Shuler rested a long strip of a leaf against it, waiting to give the signal the moment the power went out.

  Shuler had the easy job—as long as he kept his hand back from the metal. Maybe the second easiest since Ray just held his phone, waiting for the text notification from the DEA’s inside guy at the power plant. The rest of the Bad Karma team waited with wire cutters ready to go. Based on the “experimental” outage earlier, they’d have no more than three seconds before Herrera’s back-up generator kicked in.

  The team had surveyed the area around Herrera’s compound, but they’d learned little in the past few hours. Mack knew in his gut Kristie was in the house. A coffee grower didn’t need miles of electrified fence and armed guards to keep people out. The team needed to breach the perimeter, get closer, get proof, and get her the hell out.

  “Going down in thirty,” Ray said.

  The men crowded into position. Mack crouched, his cutters poised over his first spray-painted mark. His teammates did the same. The muscles in his arms tensed as Ray counted down.

  “Four, three, two, one, zero.”

  “Clear!” Shuler shouted.

  Mack cut, repositioned, cut, repositioned, cut.

  “Aaah, shit!” Grant cried out. He fell to his ass after making his last cut.

  “You okay?” Ray asked.

  “Yeah.” Grant didn’t sound convincing. He shook his arms. “I wasn’t going to be the reason we had to wait or risk shutting down the power grid for a third time. Think I pissed myself a little.”

  “You aren’t supposed to admit that.” Vincenti gave him a hand up. Once Grant was out of the way, Vincenti bowled his rucksack at the fence where they’d cut. A segment over two feet square fell to the ground.

  Success. Grant would shake off the shock in a minute or two. A small price to pay for the mission. Mack tossed his ruck through the hole, then handed his rifle to Vincenti before dropping to the ground and wiggling through on his back. One by one, his buddies passed their rucks and crawled through. Ray squeezed through last, his shoulders barely clearing the opening.

  They were inside Baltazar Herrera’s inner sanctum. Time to split up, do thorough reconnaissance, then make their plan to start living up to their bad karma name.

  Mack polished off his MRE and a bottle of water while waiting for Porter and Shuler to get to the rendezvous point to the east of Herrera’s mountainside hacienda. The house itself wasn’t all that impressive in size and hardly appeared to be a fortress. Getting through the fence hadn’t taken a rocket scientist, just a bribe to a guy at the power company. Periodic outages were a common occurrence in Colombia. Didn’t even have to be weather-related.

  None of the Bad Karma team expected this to be a cakewalk, though. They’d spotted the bunkhouse
outside the security perimeter. It could probably accommodate a good twenty men. Mack liked their chances with the current numbers, but Herrera’s hired men had set up two enclosed tents and were constructing two outhouses. That could double the number of men here.

  When Porter and Shuler finally showed up, Ray made the call to Alpha team’s leader. He put his phone on speaker, and the men crowded around to hear the intel update.

  “Got all kinds of news for you,” Simpson said. “We flew the drone over. I’m sending you footage. Got thermal readouts on the house’s occupants, and on the bunkhouse and who’s there, too. We owe this DEA agent big. Not only were they on target with getting the power shut down, but Machuca is now in the employ of Baltazar Herrera.”

  “That fast?” Ray asked.

  “Using the story Vincenti came up with and paired with our new DEA pal, the guy Herrera’s got recruiting fresh muscle talked to Machuca for a few minutes, asked if he knew how to handle a weapon, then told him where to report in the morning for training. Gave him minimal info, but”—Simpson did his signature dramatic pause—“our DEA agent picked up enough bits of conversation to learn that Herrera wants everyone in place by day after tomorrow.”

  “How solid is that?” Mack asked. They wanted to launch their rescue as soon as possible, but having time to establish patterns and determine the best time to strike upped the chances of a successful extraction.

  “The DEA agent wouldn’t bet her life on it, but in a way she is. So is Machuca, and he’d appreciate you not shooting him if the recruits roll in before the op goes down.”

  “We plan to have the package and be long gone by then,” Ray stated. “Keep me updated.”

  After reviewing the footage from the drone video feed, they had a good idea where Kristie was being held—the room where a prone figure barely moved. At least she moved. But they didn’t know for certain it was her. Mack wanting it to be her didn’t make it so. As much as he hated her being captive, the idea of having this wrong, of having no idea where she was, scared him even more.

  The numbers they were up against were not even close to overwhelming at this point. But if the buzz the DEA agent heard was accurate, Herrera had another twenty or thirty men coming. They might be raw recruits, but you put a powerful weapon in their hands, aim them in the right direction, and a few were bound to hit something or someone. It could be anyone on the team or Kristie.

  “Too many unknowns,” Ray muttered after an interminable silence. “Rozanski, get the parabolic mics up. I want to know Kristie Donovan is in there. I want to know if Herrera is there or gives an order that impacts our mission. I want to know if someone so much as scratches their ass inside that house.”

  “Got it, Chief,” Rozanski assured him.

  “You determine an overwatch position?” Ray used his I’m-your-boss voice and looked Mack dead in the eye, shooting down his hopes of kicking in the door and being the first to lay eyes on Kristie.

  “If that’s where she is, there’s a location with good elevation, adequate cover, and clear view where I should be able to cover that room and the front entrance to the house.”

  Ray nodded, sealing Mack’s spot. “We’ll use the Landcruiser and the Chevy truck at the house for exfil. Dominguez, have them ready to load and roll.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  “Gates?” Ray asked Porter.

  “Guards there have remotes to open it. Plan is to clone the wireless signal whenever someone comes or goes.”

  “If not …?”

  “We have to blow it.” Porter patted his pack with an eager smile. “Rig it to activate remotely is Plan B. Or, Plan C, we fire a rocket on approach. May have to do both depending on timing.”

  “Thermal imaging showed about fifteen targets around the bunkhouse. Two guards at the gate. One each at the front and back door of the house. What kind of weapons?”

  “All of ’em are armed with Skorpions, AKs, and ARs that we’ve seen,” Mack said, with Dominguez echoing confirmation.

  “Herrera is too much of a wild card to take at face value. I want everyone in position. Now. We’ll continue surveillance and plan to strike at oh-oh-forty-two. But be ready to execute at any minute.”

  Mack shook the water from the brim of his boonie hat. None of the team complained about the steady rain coming down for the past hour. Not when they knew for certain Kristie was in there. They’d heard her voice. Mostly cursing and some whimpers, but it was her.

  The rain didn’t totally keep the locals inside, but nobody came tromping around checking the perimeter, and the showers reduced visibility. Those worked in the team’s favor, but the two-thousand-percent humidity fogged Mack’s scope to the point he’d already had to use an anti-fogging wipe. Not being able to see his target at the crucial moment was a sniper’s worst nightmare.

  “We’ve got an incoming vehicle,” Shuler updated the team from his post. “Black Mercedes. Looks like one occupant. Window tint is too dark to get a picture of the driver or see in the back seat.”

  “Captured the wireless signal for the gate,” Porter crowed softly.

  “Got eyes on the vehicle,” Ray said minutes later.

  The guard at the front of the house stood straighter when the car came into view. Prickles broke out on Mack’s arms.

  “I have a visual on the driver. He’s solo. Not Herrera. Sending images to command to identify,” Ray updated the team.

  Through his scope, Mack tracked the man who exited the vehicle and strode to the house with a determined, military bearing. He bypassed the guard without saying a word.

  “Rozanski,” Ray rumbled.

  “On it, Chief.”

  The team went silent. Listening. First, it sounded like footsteps, then knocking. Mack upped the volume a notch. His Spanish was good enough to follow most of the conversation, although Dominguez gave a loose translation that confirmed men were being trained and brought here. Like a day or two of shooting practice compared to their years of training and experience.

  “Must be Herrera asking about the soldier whose name she gave them,” Dominguez said.

  What had they done to her to make her talk? Drugs? Torture? Part of Mack’s soul died. Whose name had she given Herrera? His? Ray’s? Another?

  Then one of them said, “Ben Pierce.” Mack couldn’t keep from grunting out a laugh. God love her. But, man, did Herrera sound pissed.

  “Our new arrival is Hugo Saavedra. Herrera’s right-hand man. Former Colombian military,” Ray cut in.

  That was fast intel. Of course, they didn’t have to look far into Herrera’s known associates.

  “What was the last thing he said?” Ray asked.

  “He called her a bitch. Said she’ll pay for lying. And for Diego to bring him something. Or someone.”

  Shit. This was not sounding good. Ray was the team leader, but—

  “We may need to move. Stand by,” Ray declared as if he’d read Mack’s mind.

  Forty-Two

  Loud voices stopped Kristie’s unsuccessful attempt to rip the sheet into strips to brace her foot. She slid the table leg under her pillow. The other pieces she’d broken apart were under the bed, and she prayed they didn’t notice the table was MIA.

  Based on Herrera’s angry tone, the real nightmare was about to begin. Heavy feet stomped on the wooden staircase.

  The door slammed open. Herrera stormed in first, his eyes dark and mouth contorted with rage. His security chief followed, equally pissed off.

  Herrera loomed in front of her. “You think you can lie to me, and I not find out?” He lowered his face to inches from hers and forced her to meet his gaze.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You tell me man I want is Ben Pierce. He is fucking television character. You will tell me real name!” he screamed.

  “No. I won’t.” Ever. I’ll die first. “Those soldiers you’re after, they didn’t kill your son. I did.”

  Herrera scoffed. “Pilots fly. It was soldiers. N
o woman.”

  Oh, fuck you, you bastard.

  She’d pushed that day out of her memory, but now the scene played out in slow motion. “There were three men firing at us from the cover of a black SUV. I grabbed my weapon and fired back. I hit the passenger. Was Juan Pablo wearing dark pants and a light-colored shirt?”

  Herrera’s head jerked back, and his mouth hung open. She’d just signed her own death sentence. If it kept him from going after the men of the Bad Karma team and their families, it was worth the gamble—because it had been her. “If you want vengeance, a life for a life, then all you have to do is kill me.”

  Herrera’s arm twitched, and she could almost feel his hands around her throat, crushing her airway and squeezing the life out of her. Only he didn’t move.

  He took in every inch of her. His expression changed from hatred to something more evil. More crazed. More frightening. “A life for a life.” He repeated the phrase in Spanish. “Vaya, Hugo.”

  “Pero—” Hugo began to question the command.

  “¡Ahora!” Herrera shouted, pushing him out of the room.

  Hugo stumbled backward before following orders to go. Herrera closed and locked the door. Then he turned, slowly, fixing a barely lucid smile on her. “You took my son.” He unbuckled his belt and started to unfasten his pants. “You will give me another—before I kill you.”

  Oh, hell, no.

  He shoved her onto her back. He grabbed her shorts, tugging at them, and wrenching her injured leg.

  Screeching, she fought through the pain to reach under the pillow for the only weapon at her disposal. Her fingers made contact and dragged the table leg free. She swung with everything she had, and it made solid contact with the side of his head.

  His hands released her shorts, but the blow didn’t stop him completely. Getting a better grip on the makeshift club using her other hand, she took another swing. This time, it caught him under the chin. Falling backward, he managed to seize the hunk of wood.