by Diana Palmer
Colby’s eyes lit up. He smiled. “She’s like me,” he said with helpless pride. “Stubborn and proud, and she’s not afraid of anything. She’s smart, too, like her mother.”
“What does her mother do?”
Colby sighed. “She’s a clerk for an oil company.”
“Not a career woman,” Tate murmured.
“Lucky for me,” Colby chuckled, reaching into his closet for his clothes. “I could never settle with a woman who had a profession.”
BY THE TIME Colby was dressed, Tate knew all about the pint-size female version of her father. He grinned at his former partner’s enthusiasm for the child. He’d always thought Colby would make a good father. He was afraid some years ago, though, that it was Cecily whom Colby had seen as the mother of his children. But Cecily had eyes only for Tate, as he’d learned to his delight, and the two of them had been very happily married.
“What does Sarina look like?” Tate asked.
Colby smiled. “She’s blond, slender, very lovely. Dark eyes. And she’s a terrific mother.”
“Maybe Cecily and I will get to meet her one day under better circumstances.”
“I’m sorry about the way it worked out today,” Colby said ruefully. “I had plans to storm her apartment tonight. But I can’t let Hunter down. We’re setting up a drug bust, and I’m essential personnel.”
“Shoot straight and remember to duck,” Tate cautioned.
“I remember how,” Colby chuckled, and patted his friend on the shoulder. “I hope to be back tonight.”
“If you’re not, we’ll lock up on our way out of town. But I want to hear how it went with Sarina. And the drug bust.”
“I’ll make a point of telling you, even if it has to be by phone.”
COLBY DROVE to the office, parking in front where he saw Hunter’s SUV. He checked his sidearm, pulled an extra clip from the pocket of his vehicle, locked up and went inside.
Hunter, old man Ritter, two DEA agents including Alexander Cobb, and five members of the Drug Task Force from other law enforcement agencies were gathered in Ritter’s office. Hunter introduced Colby, and then pulled him to one side.
“You still look pale,” Hunter said quietly. “If you’re not up to this, say so.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Colby said. “I’d never risk anyone else’s life by showing up half prepared. You know that.”
Hunter smiled. He clapped the other man on the back. “Okay.” He reached in his belt and handed Colby an HK MP-5 automatic weapon.
“I miss my old Uzi,” Colby told him, tongue-in-cheek, as he handled the weapon. “Is it legal for us to have these?”
“When you’re backing up government agents, it is,” Hunter chuckled. “Never mind, just use it. And don’t ask where I got it,” he added, with a quick glance at the Houston SWAT team that was already gearing up to give support.
“Okay.” He holstered his Glock and checked the magazine in the MP-5 before he cocked it and put on the safety.
Alexander Cobb, a senior DEA agent, moved to the front of the group. “We’ve got two of our people supposedly working in the warehouse. They’re known to the employees and apparently just checking out a shipment for Mr. Ritter, so they won’t raise eyebrows. If they see anything suspicious, they’ll…”
He stopped as his cell phone jangled. He flipped it open, put it to his ear and listened. “We’re on the way,” he said at once, closing it up. “It’s a go,” he told the others. “They’re just beyond the first line of pallets, and shots have been fired. Don’t shoot each other,” he added with a faint smile.
Which was a cue for the others to shrug into their jackets, which identified them in large white letters. Colby and Hunter exchanged glances. They weren’t wearing ID.
THEY WENT OUT THE DOOR and piled into their various vehicles, Colby sharing Hunter’s, and gunned the engines on their way down the block to the main warehouse.
The parking lot was well lit, and there was a van backed up to the loading dock. Nobody was near it. As the group exited their vehicles, with weapons drawn, and started into the warehouse, more shots were heard.
Colby hesitated long enough to draw his firearm and cock it. As he paused by the door, a local policeman came up beside him.
“Hold it right there! You’re not wearing ID,” the man said curtly, his pistol menacing. “Who are you and what are you doing here? We were told to wait for orders.”
“I’m Ritter security,” Colby replied.
“Oh. A rent-a-cop,” the man said with faint contempt. “Well, don’t get in the way when we go in. You might get hurt.”
Colby gave the man a glare that could have stopped traffic. “You wait for orders, if you like. I’m going in.” Before the policeman could say another word, Colby darted inside the warehouse with his MP-5 raised in position.
Two men with automatic weapons opened fire at once from behind boxes stacked on wood pallets down a long aisle.
Colby dived, rolled, and fired two quick shots. One man fell. He was on his feet again and down the aisle in a heartbeat. This was old hat to him, after all the long years in counterintelligence and covert ops. He was vaguely aware of the policeman following in his wake, and shadowy figures against the opposite wall of the sprawling warehouse which were probably the drug task force.
He wondered where Cobb’s undercover agents were, but he didn’t have time to look for civilians. He was up to his neck in drug smugglers. They seemed to come out of the woodwork.
He tapped his earpiece, but the unit that connected him to Cobb and the others wasn’t working. Hastily he felt behind him and his fingers touched a dangling wire. The connection was broken, but he didn’t have time to fix it. Another smuggler was firing at him.
He dodged behind a stack of boxes and closed his eyes, listening for sound. He heard a board creak above his head and loud breathing from just behind him. He whirled in a heartbeat, the MP-5 suddenly leveled calmly at the policeman’s nose.
The other man had time to gasp before Colby cursed and drew the weapon up into a forty-five degree angle pointing at the ceiling. He snapped off several quick rounds at a moving shadow, paused and fired several more shots just ahead of the second creak his ears detected. There was a cry of pain from above and a faint thud.
He turned, avoiding the policeman’s curious gaze, and eased down the aisle as softly as he could, with a determined lack of rhythm. He’d learned as a hunter that rhythmic steps always denoted a human, especially in the forest. Even here, it was a giveaway, despite his rubber-soled shoes. The footsteps behind him quickly followed in his own pattern.
He drew a long breath as he continued. There was another shot, and another. He hoped Hunter wasn’t in trouble. Damn the stupid electronic ear that wasn’t working! He had no idea where the other members of the drug unit were, or where the undercover agents were—he didn’t even know who they were, or what they looked like! The whole situation was a tragedy in the making. It would be a miracle if it worked out.
He thought briefly of Sarina and Bernadette, and how lonely his life was going to be without them if he couldn’t make things up with Sarina. But such thoughts were dangerous, right now. He had to concentrate on the situation at hand.
Two men in sweats darted across the aisle, firing as they ran. Colby quickly dropped one with a shot in the leg.
“Get the other one!” he called to the policeman behind him, who darted across the aisle with his pistol raised next to his ear, ready to fire. A shot from nearby shattered the sudden silence. But it was followed by two more shots, each from a different gun. Colby had long ago learned to tell the difference.
As Colby rounded the next corner, he was just in time to see a man in a dark suit running down the aisle and vanishing into another stack of boxes. On the floor, doubled over, was a figure in a baseball cap and a black jacket with DEA in big white letters on its back. The figure seemed to be in pain.
Colby ran to the downed agent and knelt beside him, still scanning the are
a for other armed men.
“Are you hit?” he asked curtly.
“Just…a flesh wound,” came an oddly familiar female voice. “Don’t sit there, get after him! Don’t you dare let that son of a bitch get away!”
He turned his head toward her, gaping as he met flaming brown eyes in a flushed face. The baseball cap concealed a head of long blond hair. “Sarina?” he exclaimed, shell-shocked. “Sarina! What the hell are you doing here?” he exploded.
She glared at him. “Never mind that. It’s Brody Vance,” she said angrily. “He’s with the smugglers and he shot me. Go get him!”
“You’re wounded!” he bit off, staring at the torn upper arm of her jacket as he tried to reconcile what he was seeing with what he’d known of Sarina’s job.
“It went through, clean. I tell you, I’m all right, Colby. Don’t let Vance get away! And don’t shoot Rodrigo—he’s with us.”
The policeman joined them, whipping off his tie. “I’ll take care of her,” he told Colby solemnly. “You’re better armed than I am.” He indicated the MP-5. “Go!”
Colby spared Sarina a last, anguished glance, before he jumped to his feet and rushed down the aisle in the direction Vance had gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
COLBY HAD TO FORCE his mind to work again. The shock of seeing Sarina wounded was bad enough, without the knowledge that she was almost certainly working with the Drug Enforcement Agency. She had a pistol and apparently knew how to use it. She had skills she hadn’t shared with him, even when they’d been the most intimate. The implications hurt him. She’d lied to him. She’d made him believe she had a dull, safe job, and here she was participating in a dangerous raid. She had a child! What was she thinking?
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Faint gunfire from the back of the warehouse caught his attention. He moved toward it, the MP-5 raised and ready. His eyes were almost black with fury. God help the smuggler who moved into his path right now.
With his back to the high pallet of boxes, he eased around another corner and cautiously peered into the aisle.
Rodrigo Ramirez was there, his back to Colby, his hands raised. He was also wearing a DEA jacket, and suddenly everything made sense. Rodrigo and Sarina weren’t lovers, they were partners. They were DEA agents! In fact, he was certain that they were the two out of state undercover agents Cobb had been so furious about. They’d been right under Colby’s nose, and he hadn’t known. He wondered if Hunter had.
He clenched his teeth with muffled fury. But there was no time for speculation now. He had a situation developing right in front of him. As he watched, it became clear that one of the drug smugglers had the drop on Rodrigo. The man with the gun was speaking in rapid Spanish into a cell phone, and nodding as he stared at Rodrigo.
While he was diverted, Colby darted into the aisle and dropped the man with one quick shot into his hip. Even as the smuggler fell, groaning, Colby moved relentlessly toward the downed man with his gun leveled at him. He paid no attention whatsoever to Ramirez.
In rapid-fire Spanish, he questioned the wounded man, who was holding the bleeding wound tightly.
“Tell me!” Colby demanded in a calm, icy tone. “Where is Vance?”
The man grimaced and Colby kicked the cell phone out of the way, dropped to one knee, and put a thumb squarely over the man’s carotid artery. “Tell me,” he said softly, in a voice that cut like a knife, “or die here.”
The man saw in Colby’s eyes that he meant it. He managed to swallow and then said that Vance was headed for a barge anchored in the canal just behind the warehouse.
Rodrigo moved to join him, bending to retrieve his .45 from the smuggler’s waistband. “That means we’ll have to work our way through a civilian crew,” Rodrigo said coldly as he checked and cocked the weapon, putting on the safety.
Colby got to his feet and looked at the other man for the first time. “You’re DEA. So is Sarina,” he said coldly.
Rodrigo looked back at him with the same controlled anger. “Yes. And you’re no military man. I knew you looked familiar, but I couldn’t place you until I heard the way you spoke to that pendejo,” he added, nodding toward the downed man. “I was in Africa six years ago, when Cy Parks brought you in to interrogate a prisoner. I could never forget the technique you used. The intel you got from the man saved our lives. Even if your methods were, shall we say, eccentric,” he added, tongue-in-cheek, “we owed you for the favor.”
Colby remembered a man in fatigues who wore sunglasses and was part of another paramilitary group headed by Dutch, Archer, and Laremos. His eyes narrowed. “You were with Archer,” he said abruptly.
Rodrigo nodded curtly. “And you were with Parks. Both of us were mercs.”
“Does she know?” Colby asked.
“No,” Rodrigo replied, his eyes cold with dislike. “Not about either one of us.”
Colby didn’t say a word. It was surprising that Ramirez hadn’t blown his cover.
“Think you’ve got me over a barrel, don’t you?” Rodrigo asked. “Well, Sarina won’t mind, even if you tell her. We’ve been partners for three years.”
“DEA field agents,” Colby said icily. “And she’s got a little girl!”
It had occurred to Rodrigo that Colby was going to be so upset when he knew what Sarina did for a living, but the man was more than upset, he was livid.
“The hell with it,” Colby bit off. “I don’t have time for personal problems. We’ve got drug smugglers to catch.”
“Where’s Sarina?” Rodrigo asked.
“Back there with a local cop,” Colby said, averting his eyes. “She caught a bullet. Just a flesh wound.”
Rodrigo had to fight the urge to run back to her. But he knew his duty. He had to do it.
He pulled out the .45 and glanced at Colby. “Why do you get an MP-5 and I only have a pistol?”
Colby gave him a superior glance. “Hunter gave it to me. He likes me.”
“He likes me, too,” Rodrigo said curtly.
“Yeah? Well, he likes me better,” Colby shot back. “Let’s go.” He hesitated as they rounded another corner. “If your earpiece still works, better tell the task force where we’re going.”
Rodrigo did.
THE CANAL WAS FULL of vessels, everything from boats to barges. The Houston channel ran between warehouses and shipping offices all along the waterfront. Civilians were everywhere, and there were at least three barges snuggled up against the piers.
“Damn!” Colby exclaimed. “Which one?”
Rodrigo was thinking. He noted the names of the barges and mentally compared them against cargo lists he’d been checking earlier that day. “The black one,” he said at once. “The Bogotá.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But it’s not a bad guess,” Rodrigo replied, walking quickly toward it. “Cara Dominguez is from Colombia.”
“Not bad,” Colby had to admit, but he did it grudgingly.
Rodrigo holstered his weapon. “You’d better put that away as well,” he told Colby. “If they know we’re looking for Vance, we’ll never get aboard.”
“He’ll tell them we’re after him,” Colby said.
Rodrigo shucked his DEA jacket, leaving only his suit coat showing. He placed the jacket on the side of a box near the docks. “He’ll be hiding below. He probably won’t even see us coming.”
“Got any idea about how we’re going to board that vessel?” Colby asked.
Rodrigo smiled. “Wait and see.”
The older man ignored Colby’s glare and walked elegantly to the ship, where its captain was going over a cargo list with two other men.
“Good evening,” Rodrigo said in Spanish. “We understand you’re preparing to leave port with your cargo.”
“Yes,” the captain said, frowning suspiciously. “What business is that of yours?”
Rodrigo pulled out his wallet and flashed his badge just enough so that the captain could see it, but not read it. “We’re ICE,
” he said blithely, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have reason to believe that you have two illegal aliens on your vessel. We’re here to apprehend them.”
The captain, who’d been tense and nervous, suddenly relaxed. “Illegals.” He shrugged. “Well, we might have one or two. I don’t have time to check backgrounds on every crewman I hire. What are their names?”
“We don’t have names,” Rodrigo said smoothly. “Only descriptions. I’ll know them when I see them. I have photographs.”
The captain frowned, checking his watch. “I have a timetable,” he began.
“Fifteen minutes,” Rodrigo told him. “That’s all I need. My assistant—” he jerked his thumb toward Colby “—and I will find them in no time if you’ll allow us aboard.” When the captain hesitated, he added, “It will take longer if I have to call my superiors and have them send additional personnel.”
Not to mention the suspicion it would cause, the captain was thinking. He cleared his throat. “Very well, then. But no more than fifteen minutes.”
“Of course,” Rodrigo said carelessly.
He motioned to Colby and they walked right aboard the vessel without a single hitch.
“You’re handy,” Colby mused.
“I do a lot of undercover work,” Rodrigo replied. “Which is why they have me on this assignment.” He glanced at Colby. “I infiltrated Lopez’s organization several years ago. I know things nobody else does about how the drugs are transported.”
Colby was impressed against his will. “Cy Parks said that he was acquainted with an undercover agent. He meant you, I suppose.”
“I had a cousin who worked for Lopez. He was killed shortly after the last big raid, in Jacobsville.” He sighed. “Lopez killed my sister as well. She was working in a nightclub and he took a fancy to her. She resisted him and he killed her.”
Colby glanced at him. “I’m sorry,” he said genuinely.
Rodrigo shrugged. “It could as easily have been me. I got lucky.” He didn’t mention that Alexander Cobb had raised hell when he knew that Ramirez was one of the two undercover DEA agents. They had a history. Rodrigo had ransacked his office just after his sister’s death.