“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Standing tall, looking like you’re ready to take on my fellow pilot to defend your women,” Julian punched Rafe in the arm hard enough to receive a snarl. That was Julian’s gift, he could always joke Rafe out of a mood. Nikita had seen it a number of times.
“Shit!” Rafe scrubbed at his face. “Sorry about that, but you’re supposed to pick a goddamn side and stick with it.”
“Yes,” Esly nodded. “I know that now. But it was better than ending up dead in the streets. I already knew too much. If I refused when they said I must switch… You do not live in Honduras. Do not pretend that you know its problems.”
Nikita liked that she said it simply, without anger or pushing back against Rafe’s load of attitude. She could see the quiet-spoken police woman despite the pretty clothing they’d purchased for her.
“But something sure happened to the Duck-man,” Julian went for the distraction and it served to finish shifting Rafe’s attention.
His eyes finally focused on how closely they stood.
“I didn’t do this to him,” Nikita protested but didn’t back away. “Drake did it to himself.” It wasn’t in her power to transform a man so wholly.
Zoe’s sharp laugh was soon joined by Esly’s.
“Oh, my friend, Nikita,” Esly actually hugged her. “Of course you did. It is the power we women have on men.”
“I’d rather shoot them,” Nikita grumbled out. That was so much easier. Get assigned a target, complete with a long and bad history, then infiltrate, acquire, take down, and exfiltrate. This whole trying to understand the man beside her was much harder.
“We have the VIP helo at the local airport because we knew you were coming in today,” Julian was explaining to Drake. “The rest of—” he glanced at Esly, “—our people are offshore.”
Nikita didn’t know of an aircraft carrier group in the area. So either a helicopter dock ship or a littoral combat ship was parked outside of territorial waters. Or Belize’s waters, which were less than a hundred kilometers away.
“We’d like to go on a sightseeing tour today,” Esly finally spoke up.
She hadn’t struck Nikita as being stupid in any way. But she…was teasing Rafe just moments after facing him down.
Go, Esly.
“I would so love to see the pretty islands of Roatán and Utila from the skies. I have never seen Honduras from a helicopter.”
“Lady,” Rafe protested, “you know that we’re busy here. Besides, there’s a tropical storm coming. It’s supposed to stay out to sea, but it’s still going to make for some very lumpy air.”
Julian caught on immediately of course, but Esly was able to string Rafe along for several more pedantic declarations before he noticed his copilot’s big smile and figured it out.
Drake could think of far worse ways to travel than a luxury helicopter flown by two of the best heli-pilots in the military.
Whereas the whole maid and butler treatment in a cruise ship’s luxury suite was actually creeping him out. It was like everyone was always watching him, the entire ship’s complement. Nikita and Zoe’s rumor campaign had definitely taken hold and he couldn’t go anywhere without being nudged for exciting tales to fill the other passengers’ boring lives. Thankfully, there’d only been one other like the banker who had actually tried to hire his clandestine services to deal with a competitor.
Word of the treadmill race, and many hints of the steamy aftermath, had also gotten out. That story didn’t appear to need any help from Zoe to spread far and wide. He was propositioned in the dining halls, in the bars, and on the gangway by women ranging from a very sultry Frenchwoman who happened to mention she had just started lycée this year (how did the French look so mature when they were just starting high school), to an Italian grand dame offering him the keys to her Amalfi villa at any time—bringing along “the girl” was optional, but only if she liked the right kind of games.
Sanctuary had not been achieved by clinging ever more tightly to Nikita. For her part, she merely appeared amused, or perhaps bemused.
He’d taken on a mythic persona and the only ones who could see through it were all on this helicopter. And he wasn’t even sure about that. He often caught Nikita looking at him, just watching, as if she didn’t know him at all.
Once again he and Altman were in the back-facing seats.
“Okay, Altman. You’ve got to admit that we are two damned lucky guys,” Drake nodded across the narrow cabin toward the three women.
Altman grunted something that might have been agreement, it might not. What did they do to people when they turned them into SEALs?
Across from them were three very attractive women who couldn’t be more different if they tried.
In the middle sat the dark, sultry Esly. She wore the tough-as-nails outfit on a killer body.
Zoe was across from Altman, still just as cute as hell in the outfit she’d been wearing all morning—an airy silk caftan in wild tropical colors that was constantly falling off one of her fine shoulders. The plunging neckline could only be worn by a woman as lean as she was. And it just brushed her knees.
On Nikita it would be…he pictured it…then tried to picture anything else, but couldn’t. On Nikita’s taller, more powerful build, she’d reveal deep cleavage rather than an expanse of smooth skin. And it would land ever so high on her thigh. That he definitely had to see. He looked at her dressed in a long flowing skirt of woodsy colors, and the simple white blouse that said it wasn’t about the clothes at all, it was all about the woman inside them.
And it was true.
They left Roatán and flew sixty kilometers across the storm-dulled Caribbean Sea. After they made landfall they flew the same distance again up into the rugged hills of eastern Honduras. Drake spent much of the flight chatting softly with Altman about just what it had taken for the first woman to become a SEAL. Slowly at first, but warming to the tale of his prize pupil, he revealed just how impossibly high Drake was shooting if he was going after Nikita.
Time to really gear up, Duck-man. Because going for her was Number One on his personal mission list.
“It is all so different from the air,” Esly sounded deeply perplexed.
Nikita had finally switched seats with Esly so that she could look more easily out the window. Julian had fished out a small pair of binoculars and handed them back for her to use.
The rolling eastern mountains of Sierra Rio Tinto National Park were covered in trees completely foreign to Nikita. Southern Alabama was mostly river flood plains and bottomlands of the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers. Even Cheaha Mountain, the highest point in the state, topped out at twenty-four hundred feet and had a resort lodge and RV park atop it.
The mountains of eastern Honduras climbed little higher, but they did it in steep slopes covered in dense jungle. Trails were few and roads fewer as they flew further inland.
Nikita had carried out missions in these kinds of jungles and they were hard work. It always seemed she spent half her time trying not to be bitten or even eaten. It was her first trip to Honduras, but she’d been plenty close. She’d had to shoot a variety of fauna: a cougar in Nicaragua, several charging wild boars in Guatemala, and there’d been a time in Panama where it had been touch-and-go as to who got who first—her shooting a Mexican drug lord brokering a major deal or the jaguar that had been stalking her hideout through the long, motionless afternoon.
She didn’t like these jungles.
They were following the Sico River up into the hills as well as they could, but it meandered as it flowed, occasionally disappearing entirely in dense growth. The flat light of the overcast sky wasn’t helping: hiding instead of revealing terrain and water.
She alternated between looking out over Esly’s shoulder and Zoe’s.
“You have changed him, you know,” Zoe whispered without turning as Julian announced they were crossing from Sierra Rio Tinto to Sierra El Carbón National Park. It didn’t look any diffe
rent to her.
“We have gone too far. Make the pilot turn us back. We are very close. I have not been here since my first lover when I was sixteen, but I remember it well. I will know when I see it.”
Drake passed Esly’s instructions to the pilots and they circled.
“How have I changed him?” Nikita kept her voice low.
“The Drake Roman I know was always a follower. Good at what he does, damn good. Like he’s born to it. But it still felt like he was just loafing.”
“You have to be better than good to ‘loaf’ along in this crowd.”
Zoe nodded her agreement, “He is. And if you doubt that, look at who one of the 5E’s most eligible bachelors is attracted to.”
“What…”
Zoe turned, her bright blue eyes only inches away. “You, you goof. Drake Roman is completely and totally gone on you. How many other female SEALs do you see in the military who qualified the hard way? None. Duh! Delta has what, two or three now? That puts you in a very elite category. I don’t think he understands yet what it means that he’s attracted to such an amazing woman. You really, really make me wish I could be more like you.”
Nikita sat back and stared straight ahead. Between Drake’s and Altman’s seats she had a small view out the forward windshield. So far the flight had revealed more jungle-covered peaks undulating ever higher into the distance. They’d overflown a line of high-power transmission towers leading to a big construction site lower on the river. Now they were headed back that way.
She’d actually been envying Zoe her apparent ease with the world around her and with her own body. Again Nikita faced that strange dichotomy of the SEAL who knew exactly what to do with her body and the woman who didn’t have a clue.
Esly and Drake were both leaning forward and looking down at something, probably still trying to trace the elusive river toward the unknown waterfall.
Drake Roman.
Zoe was right. Nikita had always liked him well enough, as much as she ever liked anyone. But now Drake stood out from the crowd. And not just in the ship’s dining room, but in the crowd that included two top pilots, and maybe even Luke Altman. There was a focus, a drive that Drake had never revealed before.
Nikita had wondered at Zoe’s original selection of each of their roles, placing Drake in the character of Head Mercenary. It was not a selection she ever would have made. Now she couldn’t imagine it being anyone else. And if he was leading a contracting firm instead of flying for the 5E, maybe, just maybe she’d be willing to work for him.
Oh god, she was losing her mind!
There was no way she was leaving DEVGRU, not until she was too old to maintain the training level. And certainly not for a merc outfit, not if God herself was in charge.
But Drake was an amazing man to serve with. He hadn’t been mad when she’d been injured, he’d been furious. When Rafe had threatened Esly—a team member in only the most tenuous sense—he’d tromped down on it. He commanded loyalty as easily as—
Esly’s shout of excitement said that she’d finally spotted what they were looking for.
At the same moment, dead ahead, Nikita saw a telltale spark in the jungle.
“Incoming!”
Her shout had Rafe slamming the controls in a hard evasion to the north. “Where?”
“Downriver. Range two thousand meters, minus.”
As he twisted the helo around and plunged toward the trees, the side view opened to the east. They’d overflown somebody who now was very unhappy about their return.
“I’m guessing that we finally found what we’re looking for,” Zoe spoke up.
“I’m so thrilled,” Altman tone was impossibly drier than usual as he actually teased her back. There was no time to be surprised.
Nikita could see whatever was coming at them still burning fuel against the dark clouds. And it turned!
Not an RPG—rocket propelled grenades didn’t have guidance systems. This was a guided munition of some sort, but not a SAM. Surface-to-air missiles were generally supersonic and would have fried their asses already; an American Stinger or Russian Igla hustled along at Mach 2, ten times the speed of a helicopter. From just two thousand meters, they’d have been dead already.
The Bell 429 wasn’t a DAP Hawk. There weren’t countermeasures. Nothing aboard to return fire.
“It’s following,” she shouted.
Drake and Esly were now staring at it as well.
As the helicopter twisted down and away, she turned in her seat to follow it but lost it. No more heat trail.
“Too small to show on this radar,” Julian called. A civilian Bell’s radar was all about not hitting another helicopter or a massive squall line. Actually, their helo was new enough, it should be able to see one of those stupid hobby drones as well.
Which meant whatever was following them was very small.
Rafe began twisting and turning the bird in hopes of losing its track.
“Bank hard right and climb!” Nikita shouted out.
Zoe was forced against her as they carved the turn. Maybe, if her guess was right—
She was looking too high to see the explosion, but she saw the flash coming from close below them.
The helicopter pinged and rattled as shrapnel peppered the helicopter.
There was a sickening twist—the kind that reminded her of other helicopter crashes.
“Someone find me a landing zone,” Rafe called out as warning alarms began bleating from the cockpit.
Everywhere Nikita looked—which was a wide range as the helicopter began spinning awkwardly—was jungle. Tall trees and helicopters were a lousy mix. She’d gone down once very memorably in an Alaskan cold-weather training mission and never wanted to do it again. The only reason they hadn’t all died had been because they were on the verge of a scheduled night parachute jump.
Her team made it out, though one lost a foot to a bad tumble and a slice of the rotor blade. The two pilots had died high in the trees.
“Waterfall,” Esly called out. “There was a large pool below a waterfall. Would that work?”
“If I can reach it,” Rafe banked them carefully back toward where they’d been shot as he bled altitude. They were already below the ridgeline, soon they’d be below the treetops. At least they would be out of the line of fire that way.
“Whoever shot us is going to come looking for us,” Drake was looking right at her.
She nodded, exactly her thought. “Julian, do we have a flare gun aboard?”
A moment later, he tossed a plastic case backward between the pilots’ seats.
It hit Drake in the head as the helicopter slewed one way, bounced off Altman’s lap as it carved the other direction, and Zoe managed to grab it. She popped the latches and turned it to Nikita.
As she was reaching for the flare gun, they almost lost it to a gut-wrenching yaw that meant the helicopter had almost no time left aloft.
“Shrapnel must have caught both the rear rotor and a main blade,” Drake shouted to her.
“Perfect!” She managed to grab the bright orange pistol and the three flare cartridges. She shoved one in the gun and the other two deep into her pocket. She then clutched the weapon to her chest with both hands to make sure that she didn’t drop it when they impacted. It was the same training that had let her hang on to the beer bottle in the bar fight—never let go of your weapon.
She’d enjoyed that fight.
The trees were now flashing close by either side of the helicopter. If a rotor blade clipped one, they’d be going down hard. Trust the team. Not in your hands.
Instead she thought about having a beer and a girl talk in a rowdy bar with Sugar. She actually hoped that she’d have a chance to do that. She’d bring along Zoe, maybe Esly too and—
A blade caught and the helo twisted hard. Flew backward for a moment, then continued around in a corkscrewing flight.
Trees…
The river running away from them…
More trees…
A massive waterfall towering over a hundred meters above them…
Trees…
Another view downstrea—
They plowed into the water, tail first. A horrendous shearing sound of ripping metal sounded close behind her.
The twist continued, tumbling the helicopter on its side.
The rotors beat water and shattered just as surely as if they’d hit concrete. Out at their tips they were spinning at nearly the speed of sound.
The helo flailed and jolted for a long moment, but the water buffered the motion.
With a last ratcheting grind, the transfer gears sheared. Then the racing turboshaft engines ingested a load of river water and died.
In slow motion, the helo tipped the rest of the way onto its side.
Zoe lay on her and she lay on Esly, their seatbelts only keeping their waists in place.
One heartbeat. Two. Three. The engines gurgled to a shattered halt.
All stable. As a bonus they apparently weren’t going to blow up right away. She’d have to send Bell Helicopter a thank you letter.
“Go! Go! Go!” Altman shouted. He opened the high-side door, the downward facing one offered a clear view of rounded river rocks beneath the water.
In moments, they were out. No obvious blood or breaks.
She pointed at the First Aid kit floating in the water and Drake grabbed it as he followed her out.
“Nice landing, Dude,” Julian’s voice was thick with sarcasm as he climbed out the pilot’s door.
Nikita could barely hear him over the roar of the waterfall. Instead of a clear fall, it spilled down over a massive, water-carved rock face thirty meters wide and twenty stories tall. A fine mist of spray filled the air over the broad pool at the base of the fall. Jungle crowded close to all sides. Even taking root up the rocky face to either side of the cascade. It would be a breathtaking view if she had time to admire it.
“Hey,” Rafe replied as he crawled out of the cockpit favoring one wrist. “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.”
“You call that good? This helicopter ain’t walking away from anything. So who is gonna tell the Army they have to buy a new one? It isn’t me, I can tell you that much. The base commander is gonna be so pissed.”
Target of Mine: The Night Stalkers 5E (Titan World Book 2) Page 17