Target of Mine: The Night Stalkers 5E (Titan World Book 2)

by M. L. Buchman

  The trio of Gutierrez’s own Bell TwinRangers began cranking to life. The timing of the meeting between the two helicopter groups was going to be too close. Nikita’s Tac-50 had an effective flash suppressor. His own borrowed M-16 didn’t—and they’d be able to see where his shots were coming from.

  That would ruin the whole play.

  He draped the guard’s jackets that he’d taken into a jumbled pile in front of him, weighting them in place with a couple of stones. Then he nudged the muzzle into the folds of the jacket and flipped the firing mode to semi-auto. He’d just have to hope that the jackets hid his muzzle flash.

  “In sight,” Nikita whispered.

  “Hold…hold…hold,” the first two TwinRangers crawled aloft. These were the two armed patrol ships that had flown out to check on their downed 5E helicopter at the waterfall. The VIP craft was still waiting for the last people to board.

  “Tell them to hurry,” Nikita whispered. Both helicopter groups had to be aloft and nearby at the same time for this to work.

  “Remember not to actually shoot them down.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “You want to face five heavily armed helos with a rifle?”

  “I’m not that crazy.”

  “Just crazy in love with me?” Wow. Time for another one of his do-overs. His timing sucked.

  “Definitely not that crazy,” but she didn’t sound upset. “Damn it, Roman. Don’t make me laugh when I’m about to shoot at multiple gunships loaded with corrupt military.”

  Laughter wasn’t exactly the response he’d been hoping for.

  The third of Gutierrez’s helicopters—the transport with the suits aboard—made it aloft. The two gunships were hovering fifty meters up.

  “Go!”

  Nikita began plinking at the three helicopters incoming from the military base. Firing a half-inch round out of a high-precision sniper rifle, it was actually hard not to shoot them down. It should be two shots right through the windshield. Dead pilot and copilot. Crash. Done.

  But that wasn’t Drake’s master plan.

  So, instead, she shot at one of the skids and missed. The wind had continued to pick up and was playing havoc with the bullet’s and the helicopter’s flight paths.

  She worked the bolt and aimed for something bigger. She dropped a round on the FLIR camera in the front. It would knock out their night-vision camera, but it shouldn’t go through the frame and kill anyone.

  Nikita could hear Drake firing down by her feet. Snap!...Snap! Snap!

  She chose another helo and shot it high in the windshield. Her round would either skip off the windshield or punch through into all of the electronics directly over the pilots’ heads.

  It took surprisingly few shots before Drake called hold.

  In moments the military Hueys and Gutierrez’s TwinRangers were in a full-fledged battle directly over where he and Nikita lay in the mud.

  It had been so simple. The two groups of helicopters had approached each other with their radios out of commission due to Zoe’s jamming. Add in a nighttime rainstorm and a panicked evacuation.

  A few shots head-on at each group of helicopters with no detectable origin, and they’d each assumed the worst and attacked each other.

  “There goes one,” Nikita called out as one of the military’s Hueys appeared to stumble in the air. It didn’t autorotate down, it plummeted.

  Drake tapped her shoulder and led her racing back the way they’d come.

  As they circled behind the parked earthmoving equipment, a helicopter flew close above them. The blast of wind said that it was far bigger than any of the helos currently fighting it out in the storm, but the sound was odd, far more like a washing machine flying away from them than a five-ton DAP Hawk flying toward them. It settled on the mud for the briefest of moments and she and Drake piled aboard.

  She was glad to be sitting once more on a hard steel deck instead of the red mud of Honduras that had penetrated her every pore. She was sopping wet.

  Someone at the crew chief position handed her a headset.

  She recognized one of the gunners from the 5E’s big Chinook helicopter but couldn’t remember his name at the moment.

  “How goes the battle?” she asked over the intercom.

  “The locals,” Julian called from the front seat, “are tough contenders this year. They’re not to be put down lightly, sports fans. Each side is down one bird, and I mean down as in hard. Nobody walking away from those.”

  Nikita looked out the open cargo bay door, but the battle must be on the other side of the aircraft. The DAP Hawk was circling back out of the way. She dangled her feet out the door and over the abyss.

  Someone—Drake—snapped a harness around her waist. She felt him tug it to make sure that she was securely attached to the frame. Then he slid his feet out beside her. For a moment they both just sat with their rifles across their laps, staring out at the wind-torn darkness.

  She leaned her shoulder into his and just listened to Julian’s play-by-play as the DAP Hawk jounced through the turbulent winds.

  The Honduran Navy was down to one as the second bird autorotated into deep jungle, snared high in the trees, and exploded long before it hit the ground.

  Julian’s slow circle brought the construction site back into view.

  Drake pointed an arm.

  Three helicopters spinning and twisting across the sky. Actually two doing the dance and one hightailing it out of there.

  “Gutierrez,” Drake knew he was right. “Julian, we can’t let that third bird escape.”

  “I’m not supposed to shoot them down. Any suggestions?” But he climbed, circling wide around the continuing battle, and laid down the hammer to chase the departing aircraft.

  Drake looked down at the M16 in his hands. That wasn’t the answer.

  If the military won, they would declare themselves heroes. If they lost, well, they’d probably be declared heroes anyway.

  But if Gutierrez was shot down, there would be far too many questions. He was too important. Everything could come to light. But if he escaped, he would just start all over again somewhere else. Still, there couldn’t be any cause to look beyond a conflict with the military.

  Drake watched the last two helicopter pilots battling it out. Neither was Night Stalker caliber, but they knew their machines. Their battle was lit in strobe flashes of lightning and distorted by sheets of rain. The drops stung his legs where they dangled out in the DAP Hawk’s slipstream, but neither he nor Nikita pulled their legs in.

  Instead they watched.

  Watched until the military Huey made the first mistake. Apparently noticing that Gutierrez’s aircraft was slipping away, it turned to shoot him down.

  The remaining armed TwinRanger raced directly at it with a fusillade of fire streaming off its side-mounted M230 chain gun.

  Realizing his mistake, the military pilot carved a hard turn to bring his own weapons to bear, but they were too close.

  The two helicopters tangled their rotor blades as they passed. They twisted and slammed their tail sections together as they sped by one another. A moment later, they were both gone from sight, plunging into the river at unsurvivable speeds.

  So much for the military solving the problem. Now Gutierrez was free—unless Drake could stop him.

  Stop him but make it look like an accident before they lost him in the storm.

  The storm!

  “Julian.”

  “Yes, Mr. Roman of the dangerous reputation?”

  “Screw you.”

  “You wish. Only the finest of the ladies get to play with this body.”

  “Julian,” Drake started over. “Is he following the power lines?” Drake could picture the tall transmission lines climbing the hill toward the interior, away from the storm.

  “He’s right over them, following their break in the jungle to keep out of sight.”

  “Does he know we’re here behind him?”

  “No, he’s now flying at a
standard cruise speed.”

  “What happens if we fly over him?”

  “Not much.”

  “I mean right over him. Like a couple meters.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Family mourns loss of Franshesco Gutierrez in storm-related accident.

  Nikita read the headline on the suite’s bedroom television screen again and tried to feel sorry about it, but she couldn’t. The bodies of Gutierrez, two bankers suspected of drug running, and a dirty chief of police known for his generous payoffs were found in the crashed helicopter. Of course none of those details were listed, but command had confirmed who they’d been.

  “Why was the entire head of the snake onsite for a meeting?” she asked Drake where he lay beside her.

  “Because,” he poked a finger in her shoulder, “they were worried about the great Drake Roman coming their way. Your rumor campaign was big enough that it got back to them somehow and must have scared them spitless.”

  Nikita remembered the moment that their DAP Hawk had overflown the Bell TwinRanger. A flash of lightning had strobe-lit the moment. The down-blast of the DAP Hawk’s massive rotors disrupted the air flow over the much smaller Bell helicopter, and its blades had lost all lift.

  Another flash, this time of man-made lightning as the helo snagged one transmission line with one skid, twisted, and laid the tail across the other. It had lain there for a long moment, arcing and flashing with light, before the rotor sliced one of the massive wires and then the aircraft plummeted down into the clearing. There had been no explosion, but they had landed on a boulder field from fifty meters up. There was no question of survivors.

  The newscast flipped to the next news item and Drake chuckled beside her.

  “Show off,” she accused him and he didn’t argue, instead pulling her more tightly against his side. Nikita snuggled as she joined his laugh.

  Police sergeant goes undercover to unmask environmentalists’ killer.

  Nikita couldn’t help smiling back at the image of a grinning Esly, soaked by the rain, standing with her M16 over a dozen well-bound mercenaries. Drake’s move of calling in the press had been a brilliant way to make sure the entire site’s security detail was taken out of operation. Apparently the guards had tried to tell stories of the 5E team, but Esly had simply said, “Others who wish to remain anonymous for their safety offered some assistance.” It made it sound like a locals’ movement seeking retribution for the killed environmentalists, which would only make the whole event more popular.

  President declares Esly Escarra a national hero.

  “He didn’t have a lot of choice, did he,” Drake asked the screen rhetorically.

  Tropical storm Kyra gives coast glancing blow.

  They both sat up as the images flashed across the screen.

  The ride back to the ship had been a wild one as the storm buffeted the Roatán coast. It had been a dozen times more violent on the island than it had been up at the El Carbón dam site. At midnight, in the heart of the storm, they had fast-roped down from their helos onto the top deck of the cruise ship as it wallowed and bucked against the pier despite its protected harbor. She and Drake from the DAP Hawk, Altman from one Little Bird, and Zoe from the other. With no one the wiser, they’d reached their suite. Drenched, filthy, but back in their suite. A quick call to Norma and they were all logged as being back aboard—much earlier in the evening.

  Drake had declared it would be best if they were found here. Less chance of an official connecting their leaving the ship with what had happened up in the hills. He had proven himself as a strategist so many times that no one questioned his judgment anymore.

  But no one had slept until it was reported back that the three helos had flown through the storm wall and safely landed on their ship in the relative calm of the eye.

  The newsfeed shifted from showing the mainland to footage of the islands:

  French Harbour had been hammered.

  Fishing and tour boats were cast up on the beach, others were sunk at their piers.

  Houses had been damaged.

  Then Nikita saw the palm tree rammed through the front window of the Junk Boutique.

  She was up and half dressed before she knew it and Drake was right there beside her.

  Out in the main suite’s living room, Altman and Zoe were also dressed for hard work.

  At the ramp, the ship’s attendant tried to convince them to stay aboard. “The seas are too rough for us to leave today, but we strongly suggest that all passengers remain aboard.”

  They brushed past him, though it took a while to find a truck making its way toward French Harbour that they could hitch a ride on.

  Where Drake led, Nikita and the others followed. He was a sergeant and Luke Altman a lieutenant commander. Drake was actually the lowest ranked of the four of them, but there was no question who was the leader.

  They arrived at the Junk Boutique ready to go to work. Mercedez was inside with a mop. She was in a good mood despite the damage, “I am better off than others. It is only broken glass.”

  As a team they managed to pull the tree back into the street. Emmanuel found a roll of thick plastic in the back room and they soon had it tacked over the window. Then Mercedez shooed them on their way with a sincere hug for thanks.

  The sky was still overcast, but the rain was no more than an occasional spatter and even that tapered off as they worked along the street.

  When they reached the harbor itself, Nikita saw that it had been the worst hit. It wasn’t long before Altman found the local tour divers and began going down with them to help refloat sunken boats. Nearby, Zoe used her magnetic charm to turn the people working at random along the beach into a team that dug half-buried boats out of the beach sand and hauled them back into the water.

  Nikita stuck with Drake. They lifted, moved, dug, and mostly consoled people until her muscles burned, but still they didn’t stop.

  When they managed to get a restaurant put back together enough to make food, they were served the first lunch. Zoe and Altman soon joined them and they sat out at the end of a pier with their feet dangling over the turquoise water. The harbor waters were active without being rough. The fishing boats that survived and those they’d been able to refloat or relaunch bobbed at their moorings once again. A group of children were making a game of swimming out to floating plastic furniture and hauling it onto the beach.

  “What next?” Nikita would be content to sit here all day, her shoulder brushing Drake’s each time one of them lifted a conch fritter for another bite. It was hard to imagine being anywhere other than at his side.

  “I don’t know,” Drake said softly.

  She’d meant what was next after they’d eaten, but Drake wasn’t scanning the beach for the next task, he was looking at her.

  “You tell me.”

  The conch seemed to stick in her throat as she looked up at his dark eyes. The subject of the future hung between them. She turned away before the sadness overwhelmed her.

  In perfect irony, the midday sunlight finally broke through the parting clouds and the turquoise water seemed to turn golden.

  If this was like any other mission, they would return to US soil and she’d catch the next flight to Virginia Beach. As much as she enjoyed working with the 5E, they had accounted for less than ten of her missions over the last year. Without them she’d fought piracy in the Persian Gulf, tracked kidnappers across Africa, taken down terrorists in Indonesia, and any number of other missions.

  “I could,” it hurt to say, but she forced it out, “switch—”

  “Hey,” Zoe’s shout interrupted their whispered conversation. “I know that boat.”

  Nikita looked up as a massive black motor yacht idled into the harbor.

  Zoe jumped to her feet and finally managed to flag them down. The boat turned and headed for the pier.

  They all rose to their feet to catch lines and greet them.

  Nikita couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. She loved
being a DEVGRU SEAL. But life without Drake Roman—she didn’t know if she could face that.

  Drake pulled Nikita tightly against him as Jared’s boat finished nosing alongside the pier. Drake buried his face in her hair and kissed her on the temple.

  If a man ever needed proof that a woman loved him, it just didn’t come any higher than what she’d been about to say.

  He whispered for her alone, “If you ever even hint at leaving DEVGRU for me again, you’re really going to piss me off. Just so you know.”

  She turned her face into his shoulder as if hiding there. “Then what do we do?”

  Drake smiled, “I have an idea on that one.” But he wasn’t ready to give it a voice yet.

  Nikita looked up at him and, after a long look, gave him a kiss that promised a lifetime if he could just figure out how to make it happen.

  A massive hand crashed down on his shoulder, “Damn, military!”

  Jared had a hold on both his and Nikita’s shoulders and was shaking them like clothes on a line during a storm.

  “Hey, mercenary,” Nikita shot back, but her smile said she was no longer reacting to her past. Drake was so proud of her. How in the world was he supposed to tell an ST6 SEAL that he was so proud of her it made his chest hurt?

  Jared shook them some more. “You weren’t kidding about the whole ‘being invisible’ shit. Been watching the news feed and there isn’t even a goddamn hint you were there. That was damn sweet work. Damn sweet.”

  “I think,” Sugar eased up beside him, “that may be the highest praise I ever heard from J-dawg.”

  Asal nodded her agreement from close beside them.

  Drake handed her his plate, which had one more conch fritter on it. She nibbled a corner, paused, and then began eating it happily.

  “I got the names and faces of those mercs,” Jared was practically effusive. “They were all GSI hires, which means they were bad news anyway. Can’t believe you caught Hank Jaffer; I’ve been after that bastard for years. I spread the word that if any of those assholes ever get out of Honduran jail, Titan will be taking down any outfit that hires them—all the way down. They’re blacklisted for life.”