“Our one surveillance photo”—Richie brought it up on the screen—“is off a mapping satellite pass from three months ago. It shows very little, a few indeterminate structures. There is a house, and Estevan will assume that to be our primary point of attack. Watch it, but avoid it. Questions?”
There was a pregnant pause from the guys that she interpreted easily. Delta had a very specific form of action when a combat situation went dynamic. A stranger, if they moved differently, might inadvertently become a target.
They were waiting for her to solve it diplomatically.
“Tanya, you stick close by Chad. You don’t know our methods. If you stay by him, you’ll be safe.”
“Relatively,” she commented.
“Relatively,” Carla agreed. “One friendly is out there”—at least she hoped to God he still was—“though we can bet he’s unarmed. Anyone else with a weapon simply goes down with extreme prejudice.”
Chapter 29
The night-vision scopes were useless. The Catatumbo lightning flashed and flared. Each unpredictable flash of light maxed out the sensors, and the scopes automatically shut down to protect users’ eyes. The recycle recovery time was too long and would leave them even more blind than the lightning’s aftermath.
Worse, visible heat signatures through the goggles could be either lightning reflected off a wet tree or an enemy poised to fire.
Movie theater. They’d practiced doing a terrorist takedown in a large theater while a movie was running. Light, dark, light, constantly changing visibility with the images on the screen.
Carla let that training roll over her and tuned her actions to match the moment.
Light: freeze, shoot.
Dark: move, pre-aim.
They crossed the stream and moved forward in a wide line.
Something blocked out the sky. The Catatumbo flashes were now dimmed beneath the forest canopy, except there weren’t enough tree trunks for it to be a jungle.
Camouflage netting. Estevan’s entire compound was covered with it. That’s why there’d been nothing to see on the photo. Even if they’d had a bird to overfly it, there wouldn’t have been anything to see except the house.
Under the netting, cargo containers, work sheds, and piled-up equipment were spread over an acre or more. It was going to be hell to secure with just five people.
Unless…
Hell, if someone was going to be nice enough to set a trap for them, why not walk right into it?
Carla trotted along the edge of the netting line and swept up Richie and Duane as she did so.
A brief burst from an AK-47 off to the south said that Chad and Tanya were probably occupied at the moment.
Quick signals had them in position, prone and ready to fire. They each unslung their AK-47s. They’d sound like friendlies, adding to the confusion.
In a dark moment between bursts of lightning, she popped a flash-bang and heaved it through the front window of the house. For an instant the house was brilliantly illuminated from within. Outlines of men were at every window looking out.
Richie had been right. Estevan had set it up as a trap. Kyle would be stashed somewhere else.
Time for Delta to get to work.
In moments, there were six less of the enemy.
Four more ran out into the night clutching weapons and were dropped in their tracks.
This time she tossed in an incendiary.
At the first flash of fire, three more emerged and were mowed down.
Duane sprinted up to the house and did a quick circuit, popping up to check briefly through each window while she and Richie provided cover. Twice he fired a double tap at someone inside. No point in counting how many when they didn’t know the total. Fewer than they started with.
Duane finished his circuit and made a sweeping upward signal with his left hand. “Come.” No more danger. Also, no Kyle about to be caught in the fire.
The AK-47 was spent. Rather than reloading, Carla dumped it and swept her first HK416 forward.
They split up as they moved. Carla chose the northernmost path and shifted five meters off-path into the lush bushes to follow it. Three combatants came running down the trail from the opposite direction as she worked her way along beside it. She dropped each one as they passed by, shooting during the flash of lightning to hide her suppressed muzzle flash and be certain of her aim.
They were all rushing from somewhere back toward the beacon of the now actively burning house. It spat up a tower of flames despite the deluge.
The rain was so thick that it was getting hard to breathe. Each intake of air included the need to suppress a cough.
Carla trotted through the brush and arrived at a wide-open area. The camouflage netting overhead muted the flashes, but not enough to make the night-vision viable. The net extended out over the water but couldn’t hide the unmistakable shapes.
Conning towers rising from bulbous cylindrical decks.
She’d been right, submarines.
Three of them.
Two were still on land, one in the water.
She dumped a magazine and reloaded. A dozen men stood on or around the subs. All armed. Any workers had long since gone for cover.
Multiple rounds of gunfire and cut-off cries sounded south of her, so she was probably on her own for the moment. Her radio remained quiet, so no calls for immediate Delta backup.
She chose a line of three stout trees and lay down beside the first one. She pulled off her second rifle and tossed it toward the third tree.
Deep breath. Next time she’d wear a hat with a brim to keep the rain out of her eyes.
The wind gusts were so strong that even at a mere twenty meters from the men guarding the submarines, she was going to have to compensate.
Another deep breath.
Lightning flash…and go!
She fired four shots, choosing two men standing well apart so that the fire would appear to come from several directions. She didn’t wait to see the two men drop.
Rolled to the other side of the first tree.
Dropped two more.
Rolled to the far side of the second tree and fired from there. Then back to the leading edge of the second tree and dropped another.
She did the same at the third tree. It would look like there were six shooters in the trees rather than one.
In a panic, those remaining began to fire wildly.
When she rolled over her second rifle, she dropped the first one nearing empty and began shooting with the second one.
She worked her way back to the first tree, shoot-roll-shoot until she’d swept the line of guards who had frozen in place assuming they were surrounded.
With a final crash-bang of lightning—it landed so close that the hair stood up on the back of her neck—she took out the last visible guard before he could discover the ruse.
She waited.
She kicked out the empty magazine, the bolt having rung empty on the last shot.
Then she reached for a fresh magazine.
There was a soft click from close behind her, a safety coming off. It echoed in the sudden silence between crashing lightning bolts.
“Welcome, Señora Torres.” Bolívar Estevan’s voice was soft and as grim as death from close behind her.
His voice was just far enough away that there was nothing she could do before he’d shoot her. A cautious man.
Carla’s Lesson Number One: You’re on your own, girl! had just toasted her ass.
“You are a most impressive shooter. I understand why you are known as the Empress of Antrax. I regret that you must now join your husband who I had to dispose of earlier. Now you will both be rubbing shoulders with the fishes.”
Carla put her head down against her gun.
Kyle.
The hard edges of the rifle’s top r
ail and scope cut into her cheek.
Dead.
No longer an “if” statement.
She’d been too slow. Not good enough. Not fast enough.
Without Kyle…what was the point?
Was that what he’d meant when he said he loved her? That his world would be empty without her?
Maybe yes.
In which case, it was a good final thought to have in her head when she died. Perhaps she could carry into the grave the memory of how much she loved him.
There was a flash of lightning.
Estevan gasped in surprise behind her.
Then a quiet double-spit from an HK rifle before it rang open on an empty chamber.
She was…alive.
She felt the ground by her feet shudder with the impact as Bolívar Estevan collapsed.
The shots had come from her own rifle, the one she’d left nearly empty by the third tree.
A flash of lightning revealed Kyle kneeling by the tree with the empty rifle in his hands.
A very alive Kyle Reeves.
Her training had taught her never to hesitate.
So she didn’t.
She threw herself at him.
Chapter 30
Kyle really had to remember to come back from the dead more often. The perks were great.
Carla’s kisses and throttlehold by both of her arms around the back of his neck were almost as powerful as the full-body impact of her flying into his arms and driving him backward into the mud.
By the time he’d untangled himself from Carla, the battle was finished. The others filtered into the clearing until they stood staring at the submarines.
The worst of the storm had blown through and only the higher-elevation lightning, now rippling and rumbling benignly across the heavens, lit the subs in successive flashes.
“I am so damn proud of you, guys.” He hugged the sopping wet Carla who was still clinging to his side. She hadn’t spoken yet, but she hadn’t let go either, so he wasn’t complaining.
“Thought you’d be dead, bro.” Chad slapped him on the shoulder away from Carla.
“I was. At least Estevan thought so. I was about to try to tackle my personal firing squad barehanded when a ground-strike lightning bolt had them blinded for a moment. So I tumbled into the water and curled right back under the dock while they shot up the empty river. Then I swam well out and let myself drift to the surface. Good thing these guys didn’t know to do an extra shot to make sure I was dead. Would’ve stung like hell.”
He said it with bravado, but he’d been far more terrified when he’d spotted Estevan with a pistol aimed at the back of Carla’s head as she lay helpless before him.
“You, by the way”—he kissed her temple—“were magnificent. We definitely need to add that to our training. I started swimming over from the opposite shore of this piece of the river when the mayhem began. I thought the entire team was here, not just you.”
Carla squeezed him a little tighter around the ribs but didn’t look at him.
Richie came over from where he’d been inspecting the subs. “You know, I think these things would actually work. And all three are already loaded.”
“Loaded?” Chad looked at him in surprise. “With what?”
“Large bales of very expensive drugs. Fred Smith said around ten metric tons in each boat. So figure thirty tons total or about twenty percent of what enters the U.S. each year is sitting right here. We found their main submarine guy.” He gave Estevan’s expensive, Italian leather boot a kick.
“Dude.” Chad high-fived Richie. “If I was still on the street, I’d be rich.”
“Yeah, too bad we can’t get it out of here. Only one of the subs looks finished, at least I think so. The other two don’t have fuel or their electronics suite yet.”
“The one in the water works,” Kyle agreed. “When I was swimming in the lake, I could hear them testing the engines.”
“Too bad we can’t tow the others outta here and get rid of them somewhere deep.”
“Richie, my man.” Chad wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “You just said the magic word. C’mon, babe.”
Tanya fell in beside him and they disappeared back into the woods.
* * *
Carla was still having trouble speaking. She did manage to stop clinging, but she’d be damned if she let Kyle out of her sight. She was far from over the miracle of his resurrection.
They prowled through containers and sheds, marking several for destruction.
When Chad and Tanya had pulled the policía boat into the backwater of Estevan’s compound, they returned to the subs. Duane loaded up on charges and moved off to blow shit up. In a matter of moments, Chad had pulled the other two subs into the water where they rode comfortably, tied so that they could be towed in a line off the powerboat’s stern. They wouldn’t be able to go fast or far, but it would be enough to get the subs out into the lake and sink them deep.
“Too bad we won’t have anything to show for it.” Richie was looking at them sadly. “They’re actually impressively well-thought-out craft.”
“You know…” Carla knew her voice was rough, and she could still only speak facing away from Kyle. Each time she looked at him, her heart was too full to allow words to escape. She tried again. “You know, Q…” She drawled the moniker. “I’ll bet that you could pilot a submarine.”
It only took a moment before he latched on to the idea and was racing to the finished sub still tied to the dock to study it in more detail.
“That was cruel.” Kyle came up close beside her and slid an arm around her waist.
Carla nodded. Richie would never tire of telling stories about the day he’d captained a narco-sub. They’d be living with that for a long time to come.
She turned into Kyle’s arms and looked up at his eyes for the first time since he’d miraculously come back to life. By the flickering light of the now-distant Catatumbo lightning she could see how he looked at her.
That too was something she could live with for a long time.
But the words were still locked up, so she merely tucked her face into his collarbone and breathed him in. He smelled damp, muddy, and one hundred percent Kyle.
* * *
They gathered for a moment around Bolívar Estevan’s corpse.
Kyle felt as if he deserved a moment of silence. Another drug lord would rise up in his place, and he too would have to be beaten down, but the bastard had been a good and worthy opponent and a major kingpin.
Tanya was last to join them and wore a wicked smile.
“What?”
“Found these in your kit bag.” She held up an Antrax black kerchief with the silver jaw of a fanged skeleton on half of it. And, by the next fading flash of lightning, he saw that she held aloft one of the shoulder boards from his Venezuelan general’s military uniform. On it was the round “Sun” pin of his pretended rank.
“Shall we confuse them out of the living daylights?”
“Timothy Dalton’s first Bond film,” Richie intoned. “Bond girl was Maryam d’Abo.”
They turned to stare at him.
“What? The Living Daylights. Opium wars, bad generals dealing drugs. Maryam is pretty hot. It all works.”
They turned to stare back down as Tanya tied the kerchief over Estevan’s face as a declaration of who had done the deed. And then attached the sun pin right between the fangs on the kerchief.
Kyle had to smile. He wasn’t sure he had a laugh in him, but it was very good.
It was an invitation to a war. Drug cartel against drug cartel right across international boundaries. The bloodbath at Estevan’s compound by the hands of a supposed alliance between Sinaloa and an unknown faction of the Cartel de los Soles would change the entire landscape of the Latin American drug trade.
For the worse, if yo
u were in it.
Chad swept Tanya into his arms to plant his approval squarely on her lips.
Kyle nodded his thanks.
“Now let’s get out of this place.”
There wasn’t a single complaint.
Chapter 31
Chad and Tanya towed the two nonfunctioning subs out to the deepest point of the lake with the rest of them following in the sub that Richie was driving.
Kyle really hoped that Richie got the hang of it soon. He was improving, but they tended to yaw side to side unexpectedly, once doing a full circle before continuing forward and then nearly diving with the hatch still open.
Once they were out over the deepest part of the lake, Duane spent time aboard each of the derelicts before joining them on the operational sub. The unfinished boats were already sinking out of sight.
“I opened the ballast tanks to the lake. I rigged a thermite charge in the cabin to go first. That should burn up the cocaine or at least most of it. If someone had told me I was going to be incinerating twenty metric tons of the stuff, I’d have come better prepared.”
“Twenty billion delivered, six or seven times that on the street.” Chad sighed. “Now that’s some walkin’-around money.”
“Yep,” Duane agreed, “but then you’d have assholes like us after your sorry ass. See, crime doesn’t pay, bro. Anyway, after that burns for a while, around when the sub reaches the lake bottom, the small charges I set will slice each sub into about eight parts. Shouldn’t see anything up here but bubbles.”
“Like a giant fart.” Chad sounded as pleased by that as by the idea of twenty billion cash in his pocket.
“A sweet one.” Duane had to have the last word.
Tanya had been at the controls of the police boat, shuttling Duane where he needed to be with Chad as his assistant. In between, they’d moved their gear and finally all boarded the functioning sub.
She pulled up close alongside.
“Come on over.” Chad held out a hand. “We can just let that boat drift. No one will care.”
She didn’t bring it any closer.
Target Engaged Page 28