Heart Strike (30 page)

It was a glass cockpit, with way too many display screens and each mode buttons all around them. Hardly a single decent, familiar, round-dial readout anywhere.

So he watched the number that he understood, ignored everything else, pulled back on the yoke when he dared, and climbed for a hole that his radar—at least that's what he guessed it was—was telling him, “No way!” in loud alert tones and red flashing proximity alarms.

“Gear up,” Melissa called as she toggled the switch. He felt the hum and
thunk
through the fuselage as the wheels retracted. That would improve his speed and control.

Leaving the wheels down wouldn't have helped anything anyway; they were far past landing again if he didn't make it.

The jet kept accelerating. They were already faster than the top speed of the
Tin Goose
and he didn't dare trying to slow down to give himself more time to maneuver. He always flew the Twin Otter through the entry of the jungle airstrip as slowly as he dared. He was going three times faster than that already.

The hole was coming at them so fast.

Tops of trees so close below.

Canopy close above.

Jungle ahead.

“Climb. Climb! Climb!” The last was a shout begging the plane to lift for him.

They raced toward the narrow opening at over two hundred miles an hour and accelerating.

* * *

The Gulfstream burst out into the midday sunlight.

Melissa felt as if she'd been reborn.

She could practically feel the shards of her past self falling away, tumbling slowly down toward the jungle.

And she looked over at Richie, he was side-lit by the sun streaming into the cockpit.

He looked…magnificent. Nerd, genius, warrior, and jet pilot. No one else could have jumped from a sixty-year-old turboprop to a ten-year-old jet and gotten them out alive.

Richie had just saved her life. And the lives of the whole team. He was right; it was a matter of give-and-take and it felt amazing.

He was circling over the hole in the jungle. The fire had climbed up and burned away the canopy from both sides. The whole airfield was exposed to the sky.

She figured out the radio and called Agent Fred Smith.

“Do you still have that 747 around?”

“Sure, it's parked at…well, I can't tell you that, but it's not far away. What do you—”

She cut him off. “Load it with water. There's a fire at the location we gave you. It wants putting out.”

“You burned it? That's great. Why would I want to stop it?”

“Because you want an intel team on the ground there. There are also pilots with plenty of delivery information, a communications bunker, and a load of civilians still on the ground and none of them are going anywhere.”

“Okay, I've got the 747 on the move. I'll get a ground team in right behind it. Did you take down the whole operation?”

She didn't answer. Instead she looked at Richie.

He shook his head without speaking.

Analie Sala had gotten away.

“Pederson would know where she's going, wouldn't he?” Richie asked her.

Melissa considered going back into the cabin and beating Analie's destination out of Pederson. But she wasn't so sure.

Melissa thought about it and became even less sure. “Remember the interview aboard the BAe 146? She was the one sleeping in the cabin at the rear of the plane when we raided it. She was the first one to lean forward to shake hands on the deal even before Pederson did.”

“Huh!” Richie agreed. “That means she left Pederson to run around camp in his underwear because he'd been in someone else's bed rather than hers, as we always assumed.”

“He was the front, but she was the brains. That's why she flew that stupid swordfish job with us; she didn't trust anyone else's judgment. I'd wager that she didn't trust Pederson with her next hidey-hole.”

Richie was nodding in agreement. “So how do we find her?”

“You want me to do the thinking for both of us?”

“That's my Ilsa. You do the thinking, and I'll do my best not to crash this jet in the meantime.”

Analie Sala had played her cards so close that it was hard to imagine what she was thinking. Her jet was capable of reaching North or South America, but not Africa. But maybe, just maybe…

“Head north.”

Richie didn't ask why. He simply trusted her and turned the jet.

Then Melissa started studying the console in front of her.

Richie did his best to fly by the seat of his pants, because Melissa was doing something that kept scrambling the screens in front of him. Every time he thought he had figured out something, there would be a blink and the information was gone. She was using that joystick control which must be the display commander. Hopefully it didn't also have a James Bond ejection seat switch or he was in trouble.

Airspeed here—then over there. Engine temperature—not quite redline but gone before he could see if it was stable or getting worse.

He took to watching out the window.

They were already over the mountains of the Venezuelan coast. This bird was fast. Minutes later they flew over Maracaibo and then were out over the Caribbean. Still no midsized jet out ahead of them. No air traffic at all except for one of the rare commercial jets climbing out of Maracaibo airport.

He'd been staring out at the water for a while when the console finally stopped changing and Melissa spoke very proudly over the intercom.

“There's the bitch, Richie. Go get her.”

He had to blink at the screen several times before it made sense. It was a radar sweep. And ahead of them, way ahead of them, there was a little blip. He looked out the front windshield. Still nothing but water.

“How can you be sure?”

“Straight line flight from her hole in the jungle to Honduras. She needs to refinance and she has a billion dollars of cocaine in her hold. She's headed to the drug capital of Central America, Honduras, in a straight line. She'll offload there and then rebuild her operation somewhere that we'll never find. You've got to stop her.”

“Any brilliant suggestions? We're moving at Mach 0.85, which is almost six hundred miles an hour. We can't exactly open the door and shoot her down.” Over the mountains, the land turned semiarid, and then in a flash they were over the intense blue of the deep ocean. “How about calling Fred?”

“I did that.”

“I didn't hear you do it.”

“I switched you out of the circuit. I figured you were a little busy flying. Didn't want to distract you from keeping us alive.”

“Oh.” Richie tried to think of something more intelligent to say, but repeating, “Oh,” was all he managed. “What did Fred have to say?”

“No assets that can get here in time. Panama we have a lot of assets, but none that can beat her now; it took me too long to find her. In Honduras we only have a small helicopter group. There's a British frigate now turning for Honduras, but they're half a day out; closest U.S. Coast Guard vessel is a couple hours behind it. We're the only asset that can get to her before she lands. I don't want her to land; she's far too slippery.”

He was already moving at very close to the Never Exceed speed, which was a little faster than Analie's plane could do. He corrected his course and kept crawling up to her, closer and closer.

Richie looked over his other shoulder and saw the rest of the team sprawled out in the cabin. Carla came forward when she saw him looking back.

“What's the plan?”

Richie pulled back the ear of his headset so that he could hear her.

“Ilsa The Cat here wants me to take on Analie, jet to jet.”

“No other assets in the area,” Melissa explained quickly. “She's on the ground in an hour and fifteen, then she's gone. I was worried that she'd put the plane on autopilot and parachute out, but I don't see her doing that with a billion dollars of cocaine in her plane's cargo hold.”

Carla slapped Richie on the shoulder. “Get me close and I'll shoot her down.”

“We can't exactly open the door at six hundred miles an hour.”

That silenced Carla for all of about five seconds. “You'll figure it out, Q. You always do.”

Richie grimaced. “Great! Thanks for the big help.”

* * *

Melissa held on to her seat as Analie Sala's plane came into view. The Gulfstream was faster, but not much. It had been an agonizing forty-five-minute chase, with no one coming up with any brilliant ideas on how to avoid this. Both planes were at thirty thousand feet. The idea of shooting out a window and catastrophically depressurizing the plane had been the best they'd come up with.

Except for one. And now that they'd come to the moment, Melissa really didn't like it, even though she was the one who'd thought it up.

“Richie. It was stupid. We've got to come up with something else.”

“My Ilsa doesn't have stupid ideas. We're approaching from her six. Just like Vito The Priest said, she'll never think to look directly behind her until it's too late.”

“Your confidence is charming. But this has got to be an exception. Six-hundred-mile-an-hour bumper cars?”

Richie shrugged. “I want her down as badly as you do. A third of the cocaine that reaches U.S. soil came through that camp. Pederson said they'd been in operation for seven years. She gets set up again, you know that she'll be even harder to find.”

Melissa had tried flying the jet for a few minutes but didn't like the feel of it. It felt as if they were constantly on the edge of tripping and tumbling out of the sky. If she was going to trust anyone, it would be Richie's steady hand and sharp mind.

“Okay, Richie. Do it.”

“Wish I could kiss you first.”

“Later. Just as often as you want.”

“That's a deal, sweetheart.” He put on his best Bogey for her. If he had any doubts, he wasn't showing them to her.

She watched him take a deep breath, then another, and another as they drew closer and closer to Analie's plane.

The risk of what they were about to do was insane. The chances of surviving it were… She'd rather not try to calculate that.

But there was a question that wanted asking. Needed asking. Something she needed to know just in case there wasn't a “later.”

“Richie?”

He turned to look at her for a moment, but she wasn't even sure he recognized her. He turned back to stare at the plane now just a few hundred yards off their nose.

She knew the look.

The warrior was in complete control.

Melissa's question was going to have to wait.

Damn it!

* * *

Richie tapped the high tail of the airplane in front of him by flying right over it and then lowering the Gulfstream's nose onto it as hard as he dared.

It didn't turn out to be much of a tap but it must have shuddered up the length of Sala's airframe.

She twisted her plane to the left and Richie followed. He had the feel of the Gulfstream now. Could stay like glue right on the tail of the bigger, less maneuverable jet.

As soon as it settled, he whacked it again, much more sharply this time.

Again. The pilot corrected hard and he hung close.

Time was ticking.

No sign of the shore yet, but it wouldn't be far now.

He flew up alongside the big jet, so that he could see the pilot. He pointed down. As if to say,
You land the plane where I want, or I will land it for you
.

With a twist of the controls, the pilot sent her far larger jet sharply into his path.

A twist, a pull, right rudder. He dodged the maneuver.

Out of options, he circled behind once more.

This time he hammered his nose down on the other plane's tail. A whole side of it bent sharply.

He heard a scream. Metal or human. It all sounded the same.

The big plane started a spiraling descent. One side of its tail section bent completely out of shape.

He followed it down. The pilot managed a partial recovery.

He drove in and bashed the other side of the tail control surface. Again the crunch and scream. The Gulfstream shuddered from the abuse.

Sala twisted and fought the controls, but the aircraft was now beyond help and going down hard.

He pulled up to watch her final descent.

Except the Gulfstream didn't pull up. It struggled; it wallowed.

He glanced back. The wings looked intact. He couldn't see the rear-mounted engines despite what someone had told him to do at another time in another world.

He tried the controls again. The problem wasn't the plane; it was the controls. He'd crippled the nose of his own plane where all of the wires and everything ran from the cockpit back to the control surfaces. The plane could still fly, but he could only barely control it.

Sala's big jet tumbled into the ocean, shattering against the hard waves. Huge chunks flailed off in different directions. Wing, engine, tail, a luxury couch, bales upon bales of cocaine.

Richie didn't have a moment to howl in triumph.

He heard a Mayday. From the downed plane? Impossible. From his? Didn't matter.

He pulled power. Extended flaps. Held up the nose and fought the twisting descent.

Pilot like he was in a floatplane. With a single pontoon made of a smooth fuselage. Low wings were bad. The ocean was rough.

Waves six feet. Maybe ten. More than the Twin Otter could handle.

Not in the Twin Otter. In a jet.

Didn't matter. Same tactics.

He aimed down the furrow of the waves.

Land high on the slope of one wave, and glide down its face like a surfboard, riding it right into the trough. Bleeding speed.

Nose high.

A hundred feet.

Fifty.

Stall warning.

Time the wave.

Time it.

Now!

With Chad's help, Melissa dragged a dazed Richie into the raft. The Gulfstream had two rafts and the team had managed to deploy both. There were plenty of bangs and bruises, but they had all made it. Richie was the most battered and dazed of them all. Chad laid him along the bottom of the raft with his head in Melissa's lap. Then he gave her a nod that she gathered was his final acceptance of her role on the team. She returned the silent acknowledgment.

She held Richie close against her; Carla and Duane were also in this raft. Chad clambered across to join Kyle, who had Dayana and Pederson in the other one. The Gulfstream G250 was slipping beneath the waves and shattered pieces of the bigger BAe 146 were scattered everywhere, sinking a piece at a time.

She could hear Kyle and Dayana debating who got Pederson. Melissa knew that the British frigate would be here in just a few hours—they were the closest when she radioed her Mayday—and that would answer that question.

Melissa couldn't tell if Chad was more bummed that he wouldn't be accompanying Dayana after the American ship caught up with the Brits or that he hadn't found her out before the final escape. The two of them were talking about military exchange programs. Or their next leave. But Melissa would bet it was never going to happen. They'd had their fun and they were done with it, or soon would be.

Melissa didn't want “a moment” or “some fun.”

Richie was coming around but didn't speak. Instead, he held on to her tighter and tighter until she could barely breathe. It was the best feeling of her life. She wanted to wake every day with this man in her arms.

They'd serve together and fight side by side. And someday they'd—

“You had a question?” Richie mumbled in her arms.

“Did I?” She was impressed that he remembered.

“You did.”

“Well, you did say I was supposed to do the thinking for you.”

Richie nodded. “I like giving that task to the smartest one in the relationship.” Not a chance that was her. Yet maybe it was in some ways. Carla had complimented her again on her clear and accurate perceptions of people. Richie might be the genius, but Melissa knew she was smart about people.

“Does that make you Ilsa and me Rick?” Melissa teased him.

“Anything you want.” Richie snuggled his face against her belly. “As long as I don't have to put you on a plane for Lisbon. I like having you in Casablanca.”

Duane kept his silence. Carla was working the radio with the USCG frigate.

“Not going anywhere without you,” Melissa agreed.

There was a sharp spit of silenced gunfire which made her jump.

“What was that?” Richie struggled up, but then dropped back into her lap with a grunt. He was battered in a dozen spots and possibly concussed by the crash landing.

Melissa looked over at the other raft.

Chad and Kyle had brought over most of their weapons and ammo when they'd deplaned. They were taking turns shooting at the water.

She looked around. Floating all around them were one-kilo bags of cocaine from the shattered BAe 146. Each one they shot quickly flooded and sank.

Kyle noticed her attention. “Don't want these floating ashore anywhere. Nothing else to do while we wait.”

Duane strapped a knife to one of the oars and began stabbing bags. Pederson groaned with each kilo of cocaine that sank out of sight. The guys started tallying their “kills” in hundred-thousand-dollar-per-kilo increments to rub it in.

“Any sign of Analie?”

Kyle nodded grimly and Melissa returned her attention to the beautiful man still lying in her lap.

“I think,” Richie mumbled against her belly, “that I'd better keep being Rick. I just don't think wearing a dress is my style. Sure wouldn't mind seeing you in one someday though.”

“We'll see,” Melissa teased him. “But no more showing off my breasts to a bunch of drug-runner guards, okay?”

“I can work with that.”

“Bro,” Duane grumbled. “Way too much mush. Just kiss the woman and tell her.”

“Tell me what?” She looked at Duane.

He pointed for her to look at Richie.

She did. “Tell me what?”

Richie looked at Duane for a long moment, then back at her.

“Tell me what?” she demanded with about as much imagination as a one-track Amazonian parrot…but she knew what. It was what she'd wanted to say just before Richie crashed them into Sala's jet.

“Ilsa.”

“Yes, Richie?” She brushed a hand over his face unable to believe how good it felt to do so.

“This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“What?” Melissa thumped the side of her fist down on his chest and he grunted when she nailed him on the medallion. “That's what you have to say to—”

He laughed as he dragged her down to lie on him at the bottom of the raft and kissed her. Kissed her like a promise that no one had ever made to her, and he warmed her all of the way through to the very center of her heart. So completely that she'd never be cold again.

To a background of silenced gunfire slaughtering kilo bags of cocaine, Richie whispered in her ear.

“Love you, Ilsa.”

“Love you, Richie.”

“And I do love looking at you, kid…in or out of your clothes. I look forward to doing it for as long as we both shall live.”

She fisted his ribs hard enough to make him grunt, but not hard enough to interrupt the kiss he pulled her back into.