Heart Strike (27 page)

“He warned me first. He pushed a bit when I didn't get it right away because I didn't expect him to try something so sneaky. It's not like him.”

Carla blinked at that and dropped her tone from murderous to merely vitriolic. “No, it isn't. But what does the bastard have to be sneaky about?”

“I'm not sure. He said that something wasn't right. We came out of the jungle and he froze like an Irish Setter on point. He attacked me to get the guard's attention and, by my beating him up, he made sure he won their sympathy.”

The anger Carla had been displaying so vividly a moment before was blanked off her face and replaced in a single instant by an intently focused Delta operator. No wonder she was called Wild Woman; she'd made the mood change with no sign of transition at all.

“The way you are with people, that's what Richie has with systems only way more.”

“I kind of got that,” Melissa agreed sarcastically.

“No, you don't. It's like you or I but times a hundred. He'll see a shift hours ahead of when it could possibly be detected, yet he does. The fact that he used you to get to the guards either means that he has magically turned into something that he isn't—I still can't believe that he thought of that—or it's a big change and has him spooked.”

“Before that he said he couldn't see something and asked me to look for him.”

“Shit,” Carla said softly and now looked at Melissa through narrowed eyes.

“What?”

“He really trusts you. I don't mean just a little. I'll bet he was watching you and not the field.”

Melissa nodded. “When I finished my survey—and I didn't see crap by the way—he
was
looking at me.”

“He was watching your reactions, trusting your training to focus on what was out of sync, even if you didn't notice.”

“But I didn't see anything.”

“How long after that did he attack you?”

“Seconds.”

“Shit!” This time Carla's curse was far more emphatic. “Come on.” She grabbed Melissa's arm and dragged her toward the entry of their DC-3 living quarters.

Melissa stumbled along behind, a sense of alarm building. What if…? She wanted to rush back to the end of the field. Richie was alone with half of the shift's guards. He needed support. Defense. He wasn't capable of… No! He was Delta. He was the most capable man she'd ever met. So she sent a quick prayer that he wasn't in over his head and followed Carla.

Kyle, Chad, and Duane were sitting on either side of the narrow aisle, playing Truco.

“Where's Dayana?” Carla asked Chad in the most casual way, again going through a mercurial shift from operator on the hunt to idly curious.

“She pulled a day shift at the lab.”

“Bummer.”

Chad shrugged and started to return to the game.

Duane tapped him on the arm, which also alerted Kyle. Then Duane looked at Carla and nodded.

“We're clean.” Duane was their breacher, their master of explosives, but he was also their backup tech. He and Richie swept the DC-3's cabin for bugs and made sure there were no hidden microphones on each return to the plane.

Carla shifted back to Delta operator. “Tell them.”

So Melissa told them. About his alert, exactly what she'd seen about who was posted where from her scan of the field, and the fake attack that Richie had staged to attract the guards' attention.

“Your right knuckles are redder than your left,” Kyle observed. Just the sort of thing Richie would have said.

She looked down and saw they were far redder. She flexed her fingers and they hurt—from punching Richie with all the force she could muster while lying flat on her back. The only men who'd ever grabbed her hard between her legs uninvited were such jerks that maybe she had unleashed more than she'd intended.

“It had to look convincing.” She did her best to shake off the last feelings of the violation. He'd known exactly how to make her angry. Knew her far too well and she wasn't feeling very comfortable about that either. A good pilot, an amazing lover, and an open window into her heart that was so wide she didn't know what to do with it.

She could see the team start preparing themselves. Most of it was mental because there wasn't much physical to do; all of the flight crews that served the jungle strip were armed at all times. They had their plane's service parts tucked into a small shed they'd been offered close behind the plane. Their extra weapons and ammunition were stowed and locked in the plane's small baggage hold. Their duffel bags held nothing that they couldn't afford to lose.

But Duane checked a small bag that he'd slipped under a chair on the DC-3. Kyle tested the voltage on his small radio. Chad simply checked his knife and sidearm.

Kyle looked up at her. “So what the hell did he see?”

Melissa didn't have a clue.

Richie rubbed at his jaw again. It didn't really hurt
that
much—thank goodness he'd had her mostly pinned to the ground, making it harder to really drive the blow home—but he was getting good sympathy points. It had been hard to get the reaction he'd wanted out of Melissa. He'd had to pretend he was that jerk Drill Sergeant back in Basic who was always trying to manhandle female recruits no matter how many times he got slapped.

Richie had discovered just what kind of a soldier he was going to be during the fourth week of Basic. Despite the risks, he took down his own Drill Sergeant in the middle of an attempted rape and delivered him gagged to the base commander's office wearing a sign that said, “I am a serial rapist.” It was written and signed in the man's own hand, photographs attached, and he'd been duct taped to the commander's chair in the middle of the night. No one knew who tied him there, least of all the Sergeant.

That had made it clear to Richie that he himself cared about justice, not about being acknowledged for it. Something he'd learned four years later was a required Delta trait.

It wasn't until the Commander's Review Board at the end of Delta Selection when they had questioned him about it that Richie knew he'd been identified at all. As far as he knew, only the Private he'd rescued had known it was him. That the Drill had gone to Leavenworth Penitentiary to finish out his military career and a lot longer besides had made it all the more satisfying—once word got out that he was under investigation, a lot of women had stepped forward.

Richie had needed Melissa's reaction to be authentic, and he felt awful that it had worked. It would have been so much easier if she'd figured out he was playacting a few beats faster—and probably less painful for him. But it had been convincing.

The guards had thought it amusing that he'd been beaten up. And by a woman.

Jerks!
was all he could think.

But if anyone knew what was going on around the base, it would be the guards. He'd gone to some trouble to befriend several of them over the last few weeks.

“Hey, Jose, can you help me roll this oil drum closer to the plane?”

“No hay problema, campañero!”

“Marco, is that a Steyr AUG? Cool! I've never fired one of those.”

Marco had taken it with him when he deserted the Ecuadorian Jungle Infantry Brigade.

Richie had considered trying a few lines about women, like Chad would have, but knew he couldn't pull it off, so he'd stayed technical because Q was a technical boy. It had worked well enough.

But how to get information out of them now?
What's going on here that I'm being too damn stupid to see?
didn't seem like the best ploy. So he kept them engaged, built a whole scenario of how he just couldn't control himself around Melissa, which was pretty much the truth. She was like a drug he couldn't get enough of. The quiet Canadian turned Unit operator. The beautiful woman who could fly like a dream and take him down with a hard right cross when he deserved it. And most of all the woman who responded to him so strongly that he was constantly dumbfounded and unable to speak in her presence.

Vasco dropped down to sit beside him. “That
señorita,
she sure knows how to walk.” All of them had admired the effects of Melissa's fury as she'd stalked away. Only Richie had caught the shift when she'd abruptly squatted to retie a boot that hadn't come untied—and inspected him through that stunning fall of bright hair still glistening with the water of their morning swim. When she stood back up, there'd been a hurry to her stride that hadn't been there before she'd squatted down. On cue, she'd rushed to get the rest of the team.

“She does have an amazing walk,” Richie agreed.

“You pissed her off pretty good,
amigo.”

He had.

Richie didn't make a big deal of it, doing his best to shrug it off as if it was the woman's problem. He surveyed the camp further. He still couldn't see what had shifted. One part of his mind he kept focused on the idle chatter among the guards. Some pulled out cigarettes, resting their rifles against a handy tree. Others dropped down and made a show of checking their boots—hard to blame them, the guards were kept circulating on long shifts with next to no breaks.

Another part of his mind he kept waiting for one guard or another's eyes to shift. Perhaps they were aware of something that wasn't visible.

And he let his eyes drift lazily over the camp. He knew if he concentrated, he wouldn't see whatever had caught his subconscious, but if he kept sweeping, he might stumble on it again. The morning light dappled down through the canopy to light the whole field. A great shaft of a sunbeam through the flight passage struck the line of parked planes like a searchlight.

Over by the drug lab, he recognized Dayana and her ever-present ATV. She was hauling some chemicals around for the cocaine processing. No sign of Chad.

Along the “town” side of the field, there was almost no one moving about. The chow tent was dark; everyone should be asleep during the daylight hours. The five aircrews that were on site had bedded down for the day. The only activity was by the DC-3 that had been assigned to Moore Aviation's team. He spotted Carla and Melissa assessing him over the nose cone several times, then ducking out of sight. He kept an eye out for other activity there, but didn't see any. At least the team was alerted; now if he only knew what to tell them.

The “itch” feeling hadn't gone away, but he'd seen no further evidence to alarm him in any way.

On the airport side of the field sat the
Tin Goose,
a trio of the small short-haulers, one of the sleek Gulfstream twin jets, and Pederson's big BAe 146. Even as he watched, Analie Sala descended the stairs and began circling the plane.

Richie was losing the guards' attention. Soon they'd be drifting back to their duties. He needed to hold them until he figured out what was going on. Time to try channeling Chad even if it wasn't going to work.

“Now there's a sleek outfit.” Even at this distance Analie's slenderness stood out.

“Don't go sniffing there,
hombre
,” Vasco chided him.

“Why not? Pederson doesn't scare me.”

Maybe faux-Chad did work, at least on other guys.

“Pederson doesn't scare anyone,” Jose agreed. “That
loba
, she eat you alive.”

She-wolf, huh? “What's her story, anyway?” Though the plane rested several hundred yards away, it was easy to see how she moved—like a knife. Not a wasted motion or gesture, the ultimate woman of business. Dangerous business, yet her motions weren't military or even militia. If she was a fighter, it was very well masked.

“No one knows.” Vasco shrugged. “She shows up, assesses, and hires your ass or not. Doesn't care if you drool or cower when she goes by. Cold bitch.”

Marco hadn't said a word. Of them all, he'd been the only one to remain standing, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his eyes roving.

“I think Marco has a sweet spot for
la loba
.” Sounded like a tease Chad would make.

“I'd be glad to mount that bitch,” Vasco whispered, “if I thought I could live through it.”

“Might be worth it anyway.” Jose pushed to his feet.

She was moving about the BAe jet, checking it over carefully.

“Do they ever fly that anywhere?”

“No. It stays put. But always ready to go. She does a full check twice a day.”

Richie watched her. Analie Sala wasn't just doing a perfunctory preflight inspection. She moved like a pilot inspecting the craft she was about to trust her life to. Richie had seen the change in Melissa as they both became familiar with the
Tin Goose.
She'd transitioned from overly cautious about checking every detail and carefully following the checklist to the letter, to absolute surety of her actions and her familiarity with the craft.

If Analie was a pilot, it had made her the perfect person to assess and recruit people for a drug-running operation. It certainly would explain her insistence on being on the “swordfish to Miami” flight.

“I guess it's nice to have your home always ready to go.”

Marco scoffed, speaking for the first time. “It is what is in her belly that makes her so special.”

At first Richie assumed he was talking about Analie's belly, but he couldn't quite make sense of the comment.

“It's her insurance policy. Thirteen tons, highest grade.”

Thirteen tons of pure cocaine in the jet's cargo hold. Three hundred million delivered, over a billion dollars on the street. “One heck of an insurance policy.”

“She's a machine,” Marco agreed.

But he wasn't looking toward Analie. Instead, he was continuing to scan the field. All of the others were gazing toward Analie and fantasizing about the woman and the billion dollars.

Except Marco wasn't scanning randomly. He was looking at the lab.

A forklift was parked and waiting for the next pallet of outbound product by the front hatch. A pair of guards were lounging by the rear hatch—no smoking around the volatile chemicals used in cocaine processing, but they looked bored enough that they probably wished they were allowed.

Dayana's ATV was parked midway between the hatches, where the wing had once been attached, before it had been ripped off during the DC-6's final, fatal descent into the jungle.

Except there was nothing near to where she'd parked. No opening for chemicals to be delivered or product moved. It was as if she was parked along a blank wall of a warehouse far from the nearest entrance or exit.

Richie hadn't been inside the fuselage turned lab, but he'd bet that she was directly outside the heart of the lab process itself, right at the center of the wreck.

Marco's attention had shifted back over to Pederson's plane as the conversation turned to bantering about what it would be like to spread Analie Sala inside that beautifully appointed aircraft, especially knowing there was a billion dollars of cocaine stored in the hold beneath her sleek ass.

Everyone agreed that Pederson was a
muy afortunado hombre.

Richie was the only one who saw Dayana raise back into view as she stood up from where she'd been squatting between the lab and her ATV. She surveyed the area quickly up and down the line. Definitely acting as if she wasn't supposed to be there.

Richie was careful not to have his face turned in her direction, but rather watched her sidelong while facing up the field.

She surveyed him and the cluster of guards still gathered around him. Then climbed back aboard the ATV.

What could she have picked up there beside the processing lab?

No, what had she left there beside lab? That was the right question. By how quickly she was moving away, there seemed only one likely answer.

The Delta team wasn't the only undercover operator on the site.

That was it! That's where the pattern had broken. The most normal thing in this whole crazy place, Dayana scooting around the jungle airfield on her ATV. It made her a familiar face to everyone, gave her broad access to everything. Except he'd never seen anyone near that part of the lab's fuselage before.

It was time to get the team and get them out of here.

Fast.

Before Dayana, or whoever she really was, blew up the lab and all hell broke loose.

Richie was wondering how to extract himself from among the guards when he spotted something bright on the move. If he hadn't been perched as high as he was and looking in just the right direction, he wouldn't have seen it.

From the DC-3 where the team was staying, he could just pick out the brilliant shine of Melissa's hair…and she was moving toward the lab.

He slapped his thigh. No radio.

Dayana was driving the ATV from the lab, around the back of the chow tent, and crossing the field down beyond the farthest planes. She stopped at the first one. She was too far away for him to tell if she was refueling the plane, or doing something more nefarious.

Either way, this really didn't look good.

“I'd better go face the music,
mis amigos,”
he told the guards.

“Just make sure it isn't organ music for your funeral.”

“
Si!
You know what kind of music to show her.” Jose made a hip-pumping motion that earned him a round of jeers.

Several of them thumped Richie on the back in a friendly fashion. These guys didn't deserve to get caught in whatever was coming. And he'd bet it was coming soon.

He pulled Marco aside.