Wild Justice

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Something had shifted.

Between one moment and the next, “normal-Duane” the overly-garrulous macho Unit operator was gone. A very precise man took his place.

He handed her an earpiece as he announced to his team, “Two on.”

Sofia wondered just what comments had been occurring before that made him feel that it was necessary to announce her addition to the circuit, then decided that she’d rather not know.

“Hey there, Sofia.”

So, they knew who she was. That in itself was interesting information about the abilities of Duane’s team.

“I’m Chad. Ignore the other voice, Richie was born a dweeb and still hasn’t recovered. I mean his nickname is Q, like the geek in James Bond. How sad is that. He’s even more of a dweeb than the dude you’re all cozied up with at the moment.”

“Main gate,” Duane declared, shutting Chad down quickly. He shifted to a rapidly whispered monologue, breaking down the encampment for his team. “Designate A. Fence ranging three to five meters high, topped with single-coil razor wire,” tracking his rifle scope over each item he described. He broke down the fortification in minute detail—weak spots, close proximity of large trees, and so on—working his way around clockwise. “B,” he began describing the left side of the compound.

Not only was he describing details she hadn’t noticed, he was describing things he couldn’t possibly see. When she figured out that he’d scouted all of the way around the camp before coming up to her—and that she hadn’t caught a hint of him—it said that in addition to acting like a macho jerk, he also had incredible skills.

Then he did the same narration for the camp itself, layer by layer.

It felt like a painfully slow process, but the twenty minutes by her watch flew past. Half of it was practically in code, giving her trouble keeping up, but Duane sent a surprisingly detailed description to go with the images he was transmitting as he tracked his scope around the camp.

“That’s full sweep.”

“Roger that,” and the radio circuit went silent.

Now there’d be some long drawn-out plan that was probably being discussed in Washington who would then… That part of it might be out of her control, but if the general showed his face, she’d take him down herself and worry about other details later. The more she learned about General Aguado, the creepier he became. Worse than her Uncle Maximiliano, the pederast who had mysteriously died during a family hunting expedition. Eaten by a bear or fed to a bear? Her grandmother—who’d been the only other one along that day—never said.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

Sofia could only look over at Duane in alarm…then realized that she couldn’t see him. While they’d been concentrating through their scopes, observing the well-lit camp, night had fallen over the jungle. The bird calls, which had been a constant throughout the day (sometimes so loud she thought she’d go mad with it), had faded away. A jaguar roared in the distance and the fast flap of wings above said that the bats were emerging for their nightly feed.

The sweltering heat hadn’t shifted a single degree down here on the jungle floor. The temperature might only be in the high eighties, but in tropical jungles, the humidity climbed at night and was now nearing a hundred percent.

No, exactly a hundred percent—it began to rain. A loud pattering began high in the trees. Within minutes, massive raindrops bigger than the end of her pinkie were plummeting down out of the sky. The water gathered on leaves in the canopy far above until a sudden release would scatter the oversized rain to the jungle floor far below—each drop almost big enough to hurt. In moments she wondered if a person could drown lying atop a hill in this godforsaken place.

She wanted to protest, but Duane had already moved out of sight of the camp behind a tree and was shedding his ghillie suit. Unsure what he was up to, she finally followed and unsuited herself.

With a quick flick, she had her night-vision goggles clipped to her helmet and swung down into place. The jungle turned from black to shades of green and pink. The image intensifier made her view as bright as day, and the blended infrared mode lit up everything with heat. Even in the rain, every guard, now huddled beneath the roofs of their open-sided green towers, was painted in shades of hot red.

It was her first time in the field with Delta. She’d been out with DEVGRU, better known by their thirty-year-gone name of SEAL Team 6. They moved in packs with the aggressiveness of Marines.

Duane moved alone as if he was dancing. He wasn’t a particularly big guy, just a few inches taller than she was, but his movements were light and smooth. He wore a large pack that didn’t seem to slow him down at all. It wasn’t a major survival pack, but it was still hard to believe he’d been wearing it the whole time under the ghillie.

He moved so smoothly that, if not for her night vision, she’d have lost him within a dozen steps as merely being an element of the landscape.

It had taken her seven hours to infiltrate to within half a kilometer of the encampment.

It took less than two hours to cover that final distance.

At the speed Duane was moving, it should have taken ten minutes, but he was following a crazily weaving path, cutting sharply east, then back west. His movements were a study in smooth confidence or she’d have begun to worry that he was stoned.

He finally leaned back against a gigantic Ceiba tree within fifty meters of the tree-trunk fence. The Ceiba’s roots rose like vertical walls, rising out of the soil in great triangles a foot thick and climbing to twice her height before joining the huge trunk. They leaned side by side against an expanse of smooth bark that was as wide as her apartment’s living room wall and rose for fifty meters into the darkness.

“Eat. Drink,” he grunted at her.

“Drink? I’m drowning!” The rain hadn’t eased but once or twice in the last hour. Still, he was right. She knocked back half a water bottle and began chewing on an energy bar.

Duane kept chewing in silence.

“Why are you doing the drunkard’s walk?”

“Searching for bobby traps, trip wires, anything to warn them that we’re coming. Haven’t seen squat. You sure this guy is as bad as you think?”

“Worse.”

“Okay, sister. Guess we should do something about him then.”

“Not your sister.”

“Whatever you say, sugar.”

Well, she’d walked into that one.

“You remind me of my brothers.” She used her rifle butt to push herself back to standing, planting it firmly in the middle of Duane’s gut. His grunt sounded sincere.

“They that good?” He’d recovered too fast—next time she’d ram his gut.

“That awful.” She hated even thinking about Emilio and Humberto.

He offered no answer to that, which actually felt like unexpected sympathy—if she was to credit a man with having an actual emotion unrelated to s*x, food, or power.

Her nerves must have topped out at some point, because she was perfectly calm as they walked close around the perimeter wall. Duane barely broke stride at the towers, leaving her to watch cautiously upward at the base of the guard cabin directly above them for less than thirty seconds each time. Nothing, not even a spy cam of any sort. The general was an incautious man and she was going to make sure it cost him.

The rain streamed off her night-vision and over her cheeks like warm tears.

It was the dead of night when they rested again, this time behind a huge vertical liana vine close beside the main gate, so thick it made the tree it covered unidentifiable.

“Twenty meters to the gate. Two guards outside. Rain’s easing,” Duane spoke for the first time since they’d started circumnavigating the fence line.

“In ten,” a woman’s voice broke the radio silence that had lasted more than two hours.

“What’s in ten minutes?” Sofia asked Duane.

“Go ahead and slip your weapon around the tree. Aim for the left guard.”

She shrugged and did so. Just the barrel and the scope, nothing else showing. The scope fed the image into her night-vision goggles. As she aimed her rifle squarely at the man’s nose, she herself remained safely tree-protected. It was an odd position, but she’d been trained in it.

Sofia glanced at her watch. Just past twenty-two hundred hours. Ten-oh-seven at night. “How long—”

“Three. Two. Fire…now!”

Not ten minutes.

Ten seconds.

She fired. Twice. And then a heart shot.

Exactly like training.

Except this was a live person. She’d—

“Duck!” Duane grabbed her around the waist and hauled her against him with a hard power that knocked the wind out of her in more ways than one. Part of it was his whip-strong forearm wrapped across her gut and slamming her back against his chest, but part of it was simply the effortless strength with which he’d moved her.

Then he held his other hand in front of her face, allowing her just enough time to see that he held a remote trigger.

His thumb went down.

The response was immediate. A blast of light washed the jungle beyond their hideaway as if daylight had suddenly been reborn.

A cascading heavy Thump! of powerful explosions followed a moment later.

“What the—” Though Sofia still lay in Duane’s arms, she had to shout to be heard. The jungle went insane: screaming bird calls, grunts of wild hogs, and the monkeys. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the monkeys were beyond loud. It was like a secondary explosion of pure sound had been lit off by his trigger.

But Duane was up and on the move.

“Stay close behind me,” he shouted.

She raced to keep up.

“Check for shoulder badges before you shoot.” He tore aside the covers on his shoulders revealing small squares that were brilliantly bright reflectors in her infrared imaging. She pulled her own shoulder tabs open to identify herself as a friendly to any other shooters wearing night vision as she raced after him.

Straight into hell.

The four towers were gone. Cut off at the legs, they’d fallen outward exactly as Duane had planned. During their “walk” around the encampment, he’d placed cutting charges of C-4 plastique explosive on each leg outside the wall. He’d also placed a contact explosive where he’d expected the tower cabs to hit. Sure enough, all four towers hit their charges and the secondary explosives shredded them, along with any armed guards who might have otherwise caused trouble.

All of the camp lights had conveniently been attached to the towers, so the camp was plunged into darkness. Stupid design—perfect for his purpose though.

He’d also placed a larger charge against the midpoint of each tree-trunk wall. Those charges had punched massive holes that could be used three abreast.

“Better overkill than underkill,” his explosives instructor had always been clear about that and Duane had thanked him for the lesson any number of times. There was an art to precision, but if the wall didn’t come down, it could screw the whole operation.

He slapped a quick set of charges on the main gate and once more pulled Sofia against him before hitting the trigger. This time he merely blew off the hinges so there wasn’t much to hide from, but she felt so damn good against him the first time that he couldn’t resist even the briefest excuse to hold her again.

She felt even better this time.

Women never really worked out for Duane, they were always too mild. Sofia Forteza felt like she was ripped steel—inside and out.

After the explosion, he let her go and turned back to the gate.

“It’s still standing, Mr. Rock,” Sofia even looked amazing. Her face covered by goggles and camo paint. Her body hidden by an armored vest adorned with more electronics and less ammunition than he’d ever carry, but still pure soldier. And a G28 in her hands.

“You just keep giving me that sass, sister.”

“I said I’m not—”

He kicked the gate. With the hinges gone, it tipped slowly inward, finally crashing to the ground.

“Okay,” she said just a little louder than the quieting jungle. “That was nice.”

“Uh-oh, a compliment. Hold on to that thought.” Then he moved in. “Follow behind me with security shots. Only shoot people that I shoot.”

Exactly as planned, the guards were still moving about in bewilderment at the shock-and-awe with which he’d just slammed into the compound.

He fired two rounds in the face of the first one he spotted.

No third round came from behind him.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Sofia was standing there like a statue. Staring.

“In the heart, like this.” He fired a round into the falling guard’s heart. He was already dead, but it was an absolute guarantee that he wasn’t getting up anytime soon.

He took out the next.

He only waited a heartbeat before adding the third shot himself. It arrived at the same moment as Sofia’s.

Good, she was back from whatever had thrown her.

Duane spotted the rest of his team rushing in through the other three holes he’d breached in the perimeter fence.

Three other holes in the wall, five other members on the team. Didn’t matter which was which, not at a Unit operator level of training.

“Come on!”

Less than twenty seconds from breaching the main gate, they were up against the general’s bunker. It was the only concrete building in the camp. The door was heavy steel. Really heavy steel, like a bank vault.

Duane’s smile suddenly turned evil.

“What?” Sofia wondered what he was going to do now after the spectacular job of taking out the towers and breaching every wall of the encampment simultaneously.

If she was overwhelmed, then the guards must be in cardiac arrest. The Delta shooters who came in through the walls moved so fast they were little more than blurs in her memory.

No radio traffic.

No elaborate planning. Definitely no achingly long conferences in some remote Washington office as she’d expected. Delta simply got it done.

They’d blown into the camp, as hard and fast as their explosive charges, and were fast taking down anyone holding a weapon.

“I’m just a Southern boy havin’ a heyday, sugar,” Duane was practically chortling. “Watch my back.”

Not that there was much to watch. Armed guards were falling faster than mayflies, far too busy to worry about two soldiers blended into the night.

He dropped his pack and pulled out a large rope, coiled tightly. He began unrolling it and smashing it into the wall, several meters from the door. The rope stuck to the wall.

“But the door…”

“Belongs in a bank,” he finished slapping on the rope in a rough circle four feet in diameter, which must be more C-4 explosive. “Besides, going in through the door is what’s expected, darling. Where’s the fun in doing the expected?”

He stabbed in a pair of detonators, then signaled her to lie flat against the wall well to one side of the circle of C-4. He flattened himself against the wall on the far side, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled out a handgun.

Again, he showed her the trigger as he pressed it so she was ready for the explosion. Without Duane’s arm around her, she wasn’t ready for the shock wave—it almost knocked her down. Note to self: lean into the explosion next time.

Before she was steady on her feet and the cloud of concrete dust cleared, Duane dove fast and low into the new doorway he’d blown right through the wall.

There were four loud reports from his weapon. Then two more before she nerved up enough to go through the doorway herself.

Two corpses lay on the floor. Duane was kneeling on a third person, face down and struggling even as Duane zip-tied his wrists together behind his back.

“Is this your boy?” Duane flipped the man over. The lights in the bunker were still working.

Sofia flipped up her goggles and looked. Six months she’d been chasing that face, she’d know it anywhere: graying hair, pinched nose, worm-crawl style goatee around thin lips. “That’s him.”

“Alpha target in captivity. Building A-4. Two friendlies inside.”

“Roger, west clear,” someone called over the radio.

“South clear,” a deep voice that she was fairly sure belonged to Chad.

“Hang on,” the geek’s voice, Richie. So he might have been born a dweeb, but he was still an operator for The Unit no matter what Chad said about him.

She didn’t breathe for the next ten seconds. There were several loud rattles of gunfire outside, but all of Delta weapons had silencers—so what she was hearing was panicked fire from the last of the guards. Finally the audible gunfire stopped.

“Okay, east clear as well.”

“C’mon, Richie. Get it in gear,” the deep voice needled him.

“Eat s**t, Chad. The guards’ main bunkhouse is over here. What did I hear from you, three lousy takedowns?”

“Five.”

“Liar. You never—”

“Full sweep. Assemble on A-4. Three minutes,” a no-nonsense woman cut them off. She must be the mission controller, back in some remote aircraft.

“Let’s check the room while we’re waiting,” Duane suggested.

No ledgers. No handy safe. No records of any kind. Not his main base of operations. But there was a large bin stacked solid with cell phones, probably taken from the women as they’d been kidnapped and imprisoned here before being trafficked off to the highest bidder.

Hadn’t anyone thought to trace the phones’ chips?

They were powered off, which didn’t necessarily make a trace impossible. Then Sofia tapped the bin they’d been stashed in. Metal—blocking any ping from the chip.

She began booting them up. They all had some degree of charge on them. Most of the login screens were unique, meaning the women in captivity here should be able to pick out which phone was theirs.

“Find the general’s phone,” she called out to Duane.

He handed it to her a moment later.

Locked.

“Password?” Sofia asked nicely once.

The general barked out a laugh.

She nodded to Duane, expecting him to deliver a kick to the general’s kidneys.

Instead, Duane slammed Aguado into a desk chair, cut his hands free and pinned them both to the desk with one big hand around the general’s two wrists. The general struggled, but it was useless against a man of Duane’s strength.

Duane snarled something into the general’s ear and one of his hands twitched.

Duane rammed the muzzle of his sidearm down on the back of the general’s hand.

“Five. Four. Three…”

General Aguado gave up his code at Two.

She opened his phone and discovered exactly what she’d expected. A Bitcoin account—a very well-funded one.

Sofia flashed what she’d found at Duane.

His brilliant blue eyes were still hard as steel, but she could get to like his smile.