“What now?” Consuela finally asked.
“I guess I have to quit working intelligence and come home…” Sofia could feel the wrench in her gut. “It could take some time. You can’t just walk away from Special Operations, they have to let you out as well. At my level we are serving at the President’s pleasure, not our own.”
Consuela was silent for so long that Sofia turned to see what Duane was thinking. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead he was plucking stems from the perfectly mown lawn and tossing them away. They’d flutter for several inches before falling to the ground in the vicinity of his feet.
Leaving Special Operations would mean leaving a job she loved. And it would mean leaving Duane, even their temporary connection. She couldn’t ask him to come be with her, not that they had that kind of relationship. He’d be no happier leaving his team than she would be leaving The Activity.
“I wish there was another way,” she said softly to him.
He nodded without looking up from his task of trimming grass one blade at a time.
“What if there was?” Consuela’s whisper was so soft that Sofia almost missed it.
“I’m listening.”
“If Nana dies…” her sister’s voice choked off and for the first time in far too long Sofia wrapped an arm around her little sister’s shoulders.
“When,” Sofia felt as if she was being wise in echoing Nana’s own admonition—the feeling was horrible. “But maybe with the doctors who are seeing her now, we’ll be able to delay that.”
Consuela nodded but didn’t speak.
“What’s your idea?”
Her sister looked at her, took a deep breath, and then plunged in full force.
“Look. I know you care about the winery. About preserving and growing all this. And someday you’ll care enough to come back home, but that isn’t now. Let me do it. I have a dual masters: an MBA as well as Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis. I don’t care about ownership. I care about our wines. Let me be your manager. Let me—” Consuela reeled herself in with a groan.
Sofia couldn’t help but smile.
“Stop grinning at me. I’m an idiot.” Consuela hugged her knees to her chest and put her forehead on them.
Duane was smiling too, his blue eyes sparkling. It wasn’t the look of a man pleased that his lover wasn’t leaving him right away. He was grinning at Consuela’s intense passion. That was something else Sofia shared with him—without that passion, they’d never have gotten to where they had in Special Operations.
“You’re really not an idiot,” she reassured her sister. “I just don’t know when you grew up so much. I still remember the little girl who followed me everywhere.”
“I wanted to be just like you, Sofia. Beautiful, smart, you have breasts,” she waved at her own slender figure in dismay. “And you knew so much about everything: horses, wine, people, the business. I remember following you into the Corazón de las Vides wine lounge and watching every little thing you did so that I could do half as well someday.”
“I can tell you that you were a real pain whenever I brought a boy home. Always underfoot.”
Duane’s “Good!” had them all three laughing.
Laughing? She hadn’t laughed in years and on this crazy day of all days, she could feel her heart loosening as she did.
Sofia looked at her sister for a long moment and knew Duane was right about her. Here was a smart, passionate, grown woman who missed nothing. She was also family; the only family she had left other than Nana.
“Okay, Consuela. This is what we’re going to do. As of today, you are the manager of the Forteza combined estates. Not only Colina Soleada, but all of the other vineyards and labels as well. When you need advice, feel free to call me, but go ask Nana first. We need to ease her burden, but keeping her involved in the operations may help her recovery, too. Give her hope and a purpose. But don’t bother her with the little things; those are yours to decide.”
“Really?” Her beloved little sister—who in many ways she hadn’t seen in years and years—was suddenly looking up at her with her childhood’s disbelieving eyes.
“Really.” There was something more. “What is it?”
“The Dundee Harvest Festival is next week,” she was rushing out the words again “With Nana’s injury and moth—Camila and Emilio gone… Will you still be in the country? I’ve got it all organized, but without Nana to attend the booth we need you.”
It was one of the most important events of the marketing year for the estate. “Perhaps you didn’t hear me. You are now the manager. You will represent the estate and the family. Isabel will help you.”
“But what if I make mistakes?”
“You will make them. But you’ll learn from them. So will I in your monthly status reports to me. Be sure that you include the bad with the good. But if you’re half as successful as I think you will be, in two years you get a quarter interest and in five you get half ownership.”
Consuela stared at her in blank shock for so long, Sofia was starting to feel self-conscious.
She wasn’t ready when Consuela threw her arms around her and burst into tears. She kissed her sister on top of the head and held her close.
She did have a family! That was a surprise beyond any others on this trip.
What would she have in two years? Or five?
She couldn’t help but look at Duane as she wondered.
Chapter 18
“No plan,” Duane scratched at his chin.
“Nope,” Fred Smith offered cheerfully.
It was classic Delta, without being classic Delta.
“Usually you at least give us a damned target,” Chad’s growl filled the small, highly secure conference room at the Yakima Research Station with a dangerous sound.
The Unit was typically provided with very specific tasks, but not specific methodologies. The how was their specialty, achieving the impossible. But this time they weren’t being told what they were supposed to be achieving in the first place.
Smith finally spoke up, perhaps to avoid destruction-by-Chad. “We have spent a week introducing you to all of the intelligence we have on Venezuela’s current regime. It’s a vicious dictatorship only marginally cloaked in due process. The judiciary is a puppet of the state and the parliament—dominated by the opposition party—risk their very lives every time they show up for work. It’s so bad that even members of the hyper-loyal military and police are protesting, though only a very few.”
“Sure,” Chad put in. “We heard about the guy who flew over the Supreme Court building and dropped a couple of hand grenades on them.”
“Right,” Duane agreed. “He should have dropped some five hundred pound bombs on the Palacio de Miraflores if he wanted to make a real impression. Smack in the courtyard while the President and First Lady were in residence.”
“At least,” Sofia put in, but her response sounded more force of habit than from really paying any attention.
Smith shook his head. “The President of our country has ordered that there is to be no direct action against the official government of Venezuela, which includes the President. The US can’t be seen as staging a coup.”
“No matter how awful the man is?” Melissa offered one of her rare questions.
“No matter how awful we think he is,” Smith agreed. “If you—”
“The government,” Sofia spoke slowly, as if she hadn’t heard anything else going on. “Is only propped up partially by the military. It is really underpinned by SEBIN.”
“Yes,” Smith tapped the closed files on the table that they had memorized inside and out. “Their secret police has its fingers everywhere.”
“So, let’s take them down!” Carla thumped a fist on the table.
“No obvious direct action,” Smith repeated.
“They’re not the government. They’re the secret police.”
Duane watched Sofia and waited. This was what she did. He had known he was within minutes of losing her at the v
ineyard. She would walk away and run her estate and protect her grandmother and sister. They might get together a time or two, but they’d drift apart as he fought new battles in new places.
What had surprised him at the time was how much that idea had hurt. Another shocker had been his pleasure at the simple solution that had presented itself. No, that Sofia had conjured up out of thin air with Consuela’s help as if it was the most natural thing ever—something the two sisters had created between them.
“Make it up as we go?” he asked. “It worked once.”
Everyone looked at him curiously. All he or Sofia had told the team was that their helicopter broke and they’d been delayed waiting for an FAA-certified repair tech to get the part and show up at Sofia’s home. The estate’s marketing machine had kicked into gear, minimizing the news and keeping Sofia and Consuela’s names out of it completely. The two attempted murder trials, if Camila and Emilio were too stupid to just plead guilty, would make the news at some later time.
Sofia started nodding. “First we need to get their quietly.”
“The boat!” Richie jumped in immediately. “Let’s go grab the boat. Guys, we gotta see what it can do, don’t we? I mean it’s an AB 100. We just gotta.”
“That ain’t real quiet,” Chad was laughing. Clearly he wanted it too.
“Sure it is,” Duane wouldn’t mind a boat ride. “Because it looks like it belongs to a rich idiot, not a Delta team.”
The women started asking what boat, and Richie and Chad began filling them in about the super-yacht abandoned in the Portobelo, Panama boat house.
Only Duane was watching Fred Smith who was smiling happily. Of course he’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d showed it to them. This moment was his first reason for showing it to them. The GoldenEye was the perfect way to infiltrate the country—the arrival of wealthy and powerful business people.
“You with us all the way, Smith?” Duane asked quietly while Richie was busy lecturing everyone else about the nineteen-hundred horsepower of each of the three MAN engines versus hull design factors in designing super-yachts capable of exceeding a fifty-knot speed.
“Me?” Smith sounded shocked. “Oh, I’ll keep you company back to Panama, but I’m just an analyst desk jockey.”
“What about her?” He indicated Sofia with a quick swing of his eyes that wouldn’t draw anyone else’s attention.
“That’s up to her,” Smith said quietly with a worried expression. “I hate to send her out into the field again, but—” His shrug was very expressive.
Yeah. Duane would hate it too, but he’d wager their odds of success would increase drastically with Sofia along.
Also, he’d wager that there wasn’t a chance of stopping her.
Sofia decided that the boat tucked away in Portobelo, Panama was everything the boys had advertised it to be. It was the middle of the night and no one wanted to turn on the boathouse’s interior lights for fear of attracting attention. And even in the dim glow of the flashlights it was amazing.
The boat roared with testosterone, even sitting dark and vacant inside the aging boathouse. It was a boy toy that no macho Venezuelan would be able to look away from. Arriving in Caracas—the capital city—aboard this vicious-looking beast, not a single man would ever remember how many were aboard much less what they looked like.
Sofia felt like some rich, jetsetter, party girl from the moment she stepped aboard. The low dock was level with the swim deck, which had a garage that held a Zodiac inflatable boat and a pair of jet skis. Across the middle of the garage door GoldenEye had been emblazoned in what might actually be gold laid into the Philippine mahogany.
Up a flight of stairs, the aft deck was a great expanse of teak with a cushioned area big enough for ten people to lounge in the sun, and an outdoor glass dining table for an equal number. The interior carpeting was a thick, charcoal gray that invited a girl to take off her shoes and wiggle her toes in its lush depths. The inside was as sleek and macho as the outside. Chrome, granite, indirect lighting, leather…definitely a boy toy.
Someone risked turning on the boat’s interior lights, soft and low. A great sectional couch curved in a large U-shape and faced the rear view and a monster big-screen television set close by the aft door. Forward of that was a formal dining table and a two-seat command station clearly intended to humble the uninitiated. It also made the boys completely geek out.
She decided she’d wait until they were safely away before exploring any further and did her best to stay out of the way.
All of them, even Duane, was swept up by the excitement of it. In minutes, it was clear that she and Carla were completely superfluous. They retreated to the vast lounge sofas to watch the show.
Richie, Duane, and Chad were all over the boat. Checking everything out, including the wiring, and getting ready to quietly steal it.
“What’s with her?” Sofia asked. Melissa was right in there with the boys.
“She’s a boat gal, too. She and Richie are the best sailors we have, pilots too if we ever need to fly something. Can add you to that list with your helicopter skills. None of us have that beyond basic survival in case we ever need to steal one.”
“I’m just a civilian rotorcraft pilot, not military.”
Carla shrugged, “More than the rest of us have. Kyle is also a good sailor and anything the others do Duane and Chad certainly have to try. Me? I grew up in Colorado. When it comes to boats, I’m smart enough to stay the hell out of their way.”
There was a low roar as the engines rumbled to life. In moments, lines had been released, Smith swung open the doors to the boathouse and waved from the dock. They back out beneath the stars and into the tropical night. There was a smooth assuredness to the action that made her suspect Richie and Melissa really did know what they were doing.
At barely a stroll, they eased through the sleeping harbor. Out the large side windows, Sofia watched the few lights on in the town glide by. She couldn’t see any changes. No signs of anyone awake to witness their departure.
For twenty minutes they crawled, dodging among the anchored boats, slipping past buoys and channel markers. They reached the open sea with no sudden searchlights or chase boats.
Then Richie opened up the throttles and the boat roared to life. It was a very civilized roar, well muted on a luxury yacht, but the sense of power was undeniable.
Sofia did her best to shove aside the obvious parallels with Duane Jenkins.
The boat lifted its nose slightly and flew ahead.
“Let’s explore,” Carla tugged on her hand.
At the front of the expansive main cabin, “It’s called a salon,” Melissa informed them as she hustled by on some inscrutable task, were the pilot’s seats. There was nothing to be seen out the sweeping window in front of Kyle and Richie except the darkness. However, the big display screens probably were telling them more than their eyes could, even in broad daylight. To the left, a door led outside. To the right a stairway led down.
She and Carla started their down-below tour at the front of the boat. Two side-by-side cabins each with twin bunkbeds, obviously for the crew or kids.
Next was a galley kitchen done completely in brushed steel.
“Shit! I’ve never had a kitchen this nice,” Carla began poking through the cupboards which were filled with canned and dry goods. The refrigerator was empty, but the freezer was packed solid. “Mahi-mahi,” she held up one package. “Chicken breasts,” another. “Score! Wagyu beef tenderloins.”
Sofia took it, dropped it in the sink and turned on the warm water tap to trickle over it. “These will be thawed enough to cook in an hour.”
“I’ve never had a fifty dollar-a-pound steak before,” Carla dug out some snacks and sodas, placed them on a silver serving tray and carried them upstairs. She dusted her hands together when she returned, “There, that will keep them busy while we prowl some more.” Carla popped the lid on a Pringles can, handed Sofia a couple inches of chips, and headed down th
e aisle scattering a trail of crumbs to follow.
There were three more suites—one king bed and two queen size—before they hit the master suite.
“Oh, yes!” Carla said appreciatively when she peeked through a door of the main suite. “Sorry, Sofia. You can have the suite with the king size bed. I saw this one first and I’m taking it. You gotta see this.”
Sofia peeked into the master bath. It was worthy of her family’s estate house. There was no tub, but the level of luxury was incredible. Toilet, bidet, and a stand-up shower big enough for an orgy. The bedroom itself had a comfortable desk, closet, dresser, and the inevitable large-screen television.
“Six bedroom, five baths—this boat is bigger than anywhere I’ve ever lived.” Propping up a couple pillows, Carla stretched out on the bed and continued working her way through the Pringles.
Sofia sat in the chair and took the steady hum of the engines as a good sign. The boat was well enough built that it wouldn’t be hard to sleep even though the engines must be directly below them and running fast.
“So, are you going to tell me or do I need to go find a gold-plated crowbar?”
Sofia knew the question was inevitable, but she didn’t know which answer she should give.
“I saw the news article—ever so carefully edited. I connected that to your helicopter ‘breakdown,’ though I doubt if anyone else did.”
Oh, that answer. She’d been thinking about Duane.
“I did,” Melissa came in, lay down on the bed, and accepted the short stack of Pringles that Carla offered her. “Did they really try to kill you?”
“Me and my grandmother. Duane would have just been collateral damage.”
“Isn’t family just fucking precious?” Carla sounded bitter.
Melissa started to shake her head in disagreement, but Carla cut her off before she could speak.
“Don’t listen to her. Melissa’s parents are far too normal and pleasant. You should have seen them at her and Richie’s wedding. We ended on this little Bahamian island—where the concierge was terrified of you the entire time for reasons you still haven’t explained, girlfriend,” Carla’s tone was accusatory, but she didn’t slow down for an answer, “—and everyone wanted to adopt them before it was over. My mom died in the service and my dad is a worthless shit I haven’t spoken to in years, but even I wanted to adopt them.”
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 19