Target of One's Own

by M. L. Buchman

  No lurking guards.

  Dry hole.

  The others were waiting back by where he’d parked his bike.

  “Moving?” Nikita asked about what he’d found. It had always been Drake who had been the talker of the couple, but their year together since he’d made the jump from flying with the Night Stalkers to fighting with the SEALs had made him quieter rather than drawing her out.

  “Ahead slow. On our toes.” Ain’t gonna find shit, but no dying in case we do.

  He pointed at Nikita and Drake and waved them down the trail.

  Nikita had been the first woman to make it into ST6 through the front door because she was just that goddamn tough. And Drake had proven himself in Honduras, getting Nikita to fall in love with him while he was at it. How did that shit happen?

  He’d been there and seen it go down.

  He’d given away the bride, for crying out loud, since her dad had gone down ugly years before.

  Luke still had no idea how that kind of shit happened.

  And their skills? They’d become his absolute go-to pair in the entire squad because they coordinated like no one else. It had taken going through hell and high water—and a fair amount of very fine Scotch one night—to convince his commander to sign off on them both remaining on his team. The results had spoken for themselves.

  Signaling “No Relation” Coogan to follow him left, he knew the last two would ride to the right as they came in on the target. Coogan had protested one too many times that he was no relation to somebody and the tag had stuck. Not to the actor who’d played Uncle Fester in The Addams Family. Not to Coogan’s Irish pub in New York or Coogan’s tavern in Boston. “No Relation” was also the newest member of the team and Altman liked keeping him close for that reason. Better trained than dead, though he’d transferred over from another ST6 team so he was no slouch.

  Nikita and Drake would know to move slower up the middle to give the two pincers time to sweep wide. That would also allow them more time to check out what was happening ahead.

  Apparently the answer was nothing.

  No landmines, no tripwires, no claymores, bazookas, machine guns…not even a damned potato gun. They rolled into Hathyaron’s compound, scaring up a grand total of squat. Only a caretaker they startled awake…who insisted he was alone. Carrying no weapon except for a Makarov handgun so old Luke wouldn’t dare fire it for fear it would shatter in his hand. And no radio. Guy was too frightened to be faking it, swearing up, down, and sideways that he knew nothing. He’d just been told to come watch the place starting this evening.

  Fuck all! That’s what was here. Luke knew it happened, but it didn’t make it suck any less.

  No need to tell his team to check it out, they were already on it. And he’d bet good money that they weren’t going to find a single personal item: no clothing, photos, none of that. He knew that because they wouldn’t if it were him.

  He climbed off his bike in the center of the main courtyard and studied the soil. This had never been an arms depot—Hathyaron didn’t work like that. He was a broker, never actually touching the goods himself. You needed a hundred thousand rounds for an AK-47 or a dozen Strela-2 man-portable missiles? Maybe a Russian Tupolev Tu-22M jet-bomber? He quoted a price and had someone else get his hands dirty with the delivery. It was part of what had made him so hard to find.

  Luke studied the heat signatures while the rest of his team moved in. Footprints, some six hours old that must belong to the caretaker, and a few real faders were probably closer to eighteen—about dawn on New Year’s Eve. No obvious booby traps. Meant Hathyaron hadn’t been spooked; he’d planned to leave. The question now was for where, because the place felt as if he wasn’t planning to come back.

  The soil hadn’t been stirred up by helos. Rather, a lot of tire tracks. Mostly size 245 tires with all-terrain tread appropriate for a Toyota Hilux or a Range Rover. Some narrow P205s for the ubiquitous Toyota Corollas that seemed to be taking over the world. Crap! That’s what his dad had always driven. Gutless little rattletraps that just wouldn’t die no matter what you did to them. At least not until Luke had pulled the plugs and dumped iron filings into the cylinders, which had destroyed the rings on the day he left for good. Did the same to the bastard’s lobster boat on his way out of town.

  But there was one heavier pair of tracks.

  It wasn’t like Hathyaron to have a truck big enough to run 275 duallies with similar tires on the trailer it towed. By the depth of the impression in the loose soil, he’d estimate that whatever he was towing was below the maximum gross weight, but it wasn’t exactly light either—there was only a slight bulge of side tread from the flexed tires imprinted on the soil.

  The tracks led out the compound’s front gate and turned toward Peshawar. He followed them to their source around the back of the main building and up to a sprawling workshop building.

  Everything about the compound was traditional Pakistani—wealthy but traditional. It wasn’t some heartless concrete fort like bin Laden’s place. The man had lived here. But he’d hear, if he didn’t already know, that this place had been found and raided. No way was he coming back here any more than Luke was ever going back to Maine.

  He peeked through the workshop’s window with his NVGs, but what he saw made absolutely no sense.

  Zoe had slid the Raven down to thirty thousand feet for better resolution. At six miles up, she could read the tags on a car’s license plate. If there’d been a postcard in decent light, she could have read the address. She set one of her cameras to a wide area view so that there’d be no surprises if someone else approached. She set another to auto-track the first bike off the helo Carrie-Anne. That would be six-four of Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman, a full foot taller than she was. He always led from the front—except for the one time she’d forced him to follow in Drake Roman’s wake.

  She’d done it half because the mission called for it, but half to see if she could convince the bull-alpha SEAL to take a secondary role. She still wished she’d had some way to make a photographic series of Luke’s various frustrated expressions on that mission—The Many Grimaces of Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman. A bestseller for sure—or at least some great fodder for her social media channel.

  Her vlog had begun as a way to show her parents that there was more to life than an under-stimulated, so-boring existence. Of course, her actual career was almost entirely classified as top secret, so she couldn’t use that at all. She’d started developing her feeds on herself—creating a persona that had been comfortably distant from herself—long before she joined the military. She’d spent a year trying different hair colors and cuts—frequently surveying the results with her various followers. Eyeglasses (all decorative, of course), clothes, shoes…she’d done the research and created an entire flighty persona that had nothing to do with her real personality. Yet it had taken off in a huge way. Her loyal following of budget-conscious hopefuls were near fanatic.

  Over time, she’d become more comfortable in the role than in the person. Did that mean that’s who she was becoming? That…persona on the screen? That didn’t sit very comfortably in her, but she didn’t know what else to do with it.

  The Cutey-Edge had changed its name when she’d joined the military.

  The Soldier of Style: Living in the Cutey-Edgy Budget Battlespace.

  She never mentioned joining, it was simply a better name. Fan numbers had skyrocketed. Her fan group, The Soldier of Style Brigade, was far larger than a mere brigade. It wasn’t the 1.3 million of the US military, but it was fast approaching the half million active personnel in the US Army.

  Outside the military, she doubted if one in a thousand believed she actually was a soldier. On the inside, she’d sometimes run into someone in the PX or a chow hall who would startle to find her actually on a military base. Rather than telling them she was a Chief Warrant Two with a top secret unit, she always told them she was just a clerk in Army intel—they’d know not to question her about anything. O
r they should. Those who did were quietly reported, even if it cost her a fan every now and then.

  Her online reputation had garnered her more than a few dates, and a serious pile of inappropriate propositions from: married men (some of them officers—whose wives she tipped off), overeager teenage boys (especially during her “experiments with leather” series), and the like. Nothing interesting, never mind long term.

  She wanted a man…not boring. At least she knew that much. A writer, maybe an artist. Someone she could understand and who understood her. Someone so not like The Many Grimaces of Lieutenant Commander Luke Altman.

  Altman had never mentioned her alternate, social self—he barely appeared to recognize her soldier-self from one mission to the next. At first it was understandable, the 5th Battalion E Company was new and the Team 6 SEALs only occasionally flew with them. But over time, the bonds had tightened and it was rare for the 5E to fly for anyone other than ST6. Still, Luke remained a puzzle; no tease elicited more than an infinitesimal frown. Definitely not an artistic, self-aware sort of person. Too bad for Altman that she couldn’t stop herself from needling him because he was her polar opposite.

  Way back on his first mission with the 5E he’d said he was married. To her mind, that also made him a safe target to tease. Actually, it had almost become mandatory. She’d imagined his home life.

  “Welcome back from your latest life-threatening mission, dear.”

  Manly grunt.

  “Did you have a good time?”

  Another grunt. Then a beer and ball game before hitting the weight set. Better yet, a man cave with the weight set, the big screen TV, and the beer fridge. There he’d gather with his SEAL buddies and be…guys.

  Such a charming image Zoe wanted to barf.

  Yet hadn’t he gone on a date with Sofia once? What kind of married asshole did that? He didn’t wear a ring, but that didn’t mean anything in Special Operations. Spec Ops guys didn’t like things that could catch or conduct an electrical charge to an explosive trigger…or reveal the least thing about having evolved to Cro-Magnon rather than Neanderthal—never mind modern humans.

  But there was no questioning that Luke Altman was one of the best warriors in the military and it would pay to keep an eye on him. Not hard at all. He might not be the artistic type, but he definitely wasn’t a burden to watch.

  So, while ninety-five percent of her did her job, looking for some clue as to where Hathyaron had gone, the other five percent followed Luke’s progress. Racing ahead of the others to the outer perimeter, then walking away from the heat signature of his parked bike.

  Again with the other five SEALs, entering the compound.

  His unmoving stance in the center of the deserted site as the rest of his team moved ahead with rapid precision. His very stillness an anomaly that echoed along her camera feeds.

  She and Sofia had had the Raven RPA circling high overhead since late afternoon and there’d been no movement. The Activity had reported Hathyaron’s position two nights ago. Thirty-six hours, and they’d lost the biggest arms dealer in Pakistan somewhere in that window. Satellite overpasses were less consistent than drone coverage, and he must have left during one of the gaps in coverage—he’d know when those were, of course. He’d survived far too long not to. The Activity’s call had sent them rushing from Italy where they’d been running missions into Libya, taking out ISIL infections one at a time.

  Luke’s heat signature was on the move again. Afoot by his speed. Yes, the tiny radar image of his stealth bike remained in place. She followed him around the main house—a two-story structure of typically four-square stucco design. He continued to an outbuilding almost as big as the house.

  “Raven?” It was the first transmission of the night from the mission team.

  “Yes?” Zoe answered, knowing full well what he was asking. Making the man actually speak was half the fun—he was pure gruff-warrior-hero to the core. He’d always looked it too. Clean-shaven with dark hair just long enough to look charmingly scruffy, fitting his roles when he had to go undercover, but not so long that he’d feel non-military. He wasn’t like some Delta soldiers who took hairy and bearded permission to untidy limits and beyond. Never attractive to her. She liked Luke’s neatness. No wasted actions. No wasted words. And certainly no wasted looks at her—even if she hadn’t been watching for them.

  “Raven.” He said it like Du-uh!

  “Yes?”

  “Zoe! Are there any damn stray heat signatures you can see on this building before I walk into it?” He snapped it out like a single-word curse.

  “Nope!” Could she sound anymore facile and airheaded? Probably not. Her normal games never worked with Luke. Maybe it was because he had the sense of humor of a rock.

  His helmet’s camera feed came online and she split-screened his feed with her drone’s eye view of his position. Sofia took over the piloting and flight status consoles. It was fun how seamlessly two women could fly together.

  She kept wanting to ask men if they ever did that, but the pilots who had sufficient security clearance that she could actually discuss her job with, counted very close to zero. She should ask Danielle or Pete Napier next time they were back in Alabama—except the Captain and Major were a little daunting in their perfect synchronization. Besides, maybe it was because they were married. Rafe and Julian in the lead DAP Hawk would just assume she was flirting. So not with those two self-proclaimed comedians!

  For now, she was the eye in the sky protecting Luke’s back.

  The insides of the outbuilding were so bizarre that she had to blink as if that would clear the monitor’s view. It was an auto shop. No, it was far more than. It was one that would put any American service garage to shame. The equipment was all top-of-the-line gear and it gleamed. In a land where dust penetrated everything everywhere, this shop looked surgically sterile.

  She recognized the gear from her father’s shop catalogs—he’d certainly never been able to afford even half of this. It was as if someone had driven up a big, red, Snap-on tools van and stocked one of absolutely everything. Rachet sets, welding gear, computerized emission testers, wheel alignment lasers…everything—right down to the girly calendar, even though Snap-on had stopped those when Zoe was a little girl (Hathyaron had the Sports Illustrated swimsuit one instead). She could practically smell the fine sheen of oil wiped over the sparkling tools to protect them, the latent hint of heavy weight motor oils, and the sharp tang of lubes and greases.

  “Wow! Stop moving so fast.” Luke was just scanning the room, turning his camera as fast as he was shifting his gaze. She couldn’t see all the cool toys when he didn’t focus on them for long enough.

  “It’s car shit, DeMille. What do you care?”

  I had such a boring childhood that I used to read Dad’s catalogs for fun. Nope! Not going to find her saying a word about thinking this was cool.

  Luke turned to leave.

  “Wait. Go back!” She’d seen something. But what?

  Luke turned back more slowly.

  “Stop there!”

  “Didn’t know you were into cars, DeMille.” She wasn’t looking at the tools anymore, though she could tell by the angle of view that he was.

  “This place isn’t mere cars, you goof. Look at the poster.”

  “So?” The view shifted and centered on it. The poster hung in the place of pride, centered above the workbench. It was black, with a few silver lines that suggested an Arab wrap around a man’s head and shoulders. Below it simply said, “Dakar” and the date.

  “It’s the Dakar Rally, the toughest car race in the world. The Tour de France-scale ultimate endurance race of motor sports.”

  Luke took a step closer to it. She could feel him squinting at it in confusion from ten thousand miles away.

  It was the announcement poster for the most amazing race ever. And the next run started in just a week.

  “Well?” Luke was back to his one-word sentences again.

  “Wait a sec,” Zoe
did a quick search of her social media fan base to confirm something, then looked back at the image of the poster Luke faced.

  “DeMille.” Wasting my time here, DeMille.

  She composed a quick message to Christian Vehrs. He was one of her superfans—and a racer in The Dakar Rally.

  “It means…” Zoe dragged it out to buy herself a moment.

  Christian pinged back immediately, announcing that he was always at her service.

  “…that we’re going to Dakar.”

  “Fine print says the race starts in Argentina.”

  “Uh-huh. Which is why you and I are meeting in Dakar, Senegal, in twenty hours. If you want Hathyaron, get your cute ass moving.”

  Luke just offered one of his questioning grunts.

  Sofia looked at her in some surprise.

  Zoe offered her a conspiratorial grin—woman to woman, even if she wasn’t half the woman her commander was. “Gotta keep him on his toes,” she whispered even though she hadn’t keyed the microphone.

  Sofia’s smile didn’t quite buy it.

  Zoe wasn’t sure why she’d thrown in that last bit. She wasn’t a woman who watched men’s asses—that was more of a cliché from Sleepless in Seattle than reality as far as she was concerned. Though, being a SEAL, his would be exceptional. Didn’t mean she was actually interested.

  Also, drone pilots simply didn’t go into the field. But she’d done it once for the Honduras mission and was suddenly itching for an excuse to do it again.

  “Really?” Sofia’s arched eyebrow—lovely, of course, and only one raised, something that Zoe couldn’t do no matter how much she’d practiced in the mirror as a kid—looked very skeptical of her motives.

  Zoe nodded, Yes, it is necessary. She long ago learned not to look at her motives too closely because she never liked the answers. Not since she was eleven and—

  So not going there!

  Sofia shrugged her acceptance—she’d make sure it was square with the company commander.

  Zoe keyed the mic to Luke. “It’s on the westernmost tip of the African bulge. The farthest point into the Atlantic, if you’re wondering.”