Target Engaged

Chapter 8-2

Damn, she was no closer to solving her relationship with Kyle Reeves at a thousand feet than she’d been at thirty-five thousand or before the graduation exercise.

Chad flashed his infrared strobe three times and popped his chute on the third. The black ram chutes blossomed below her: Chad, Duane, Richie, her own slamming her in the crotch, and Kyle above her, though he was now hidden by her own canopy.

They stacked up, each slipping forward and down barely in front of the one below until Kyle’s feet were above her hands and his riser lines lay against the leading edge of her chute. Her feet were above Richie’s hands. Chad’s chute was the lowest and hence farthest back—like the base of a stack of blocks about to topple forward.

Chad steered them in and, like they’d practiced, they thumped down into the forty-meter clearing in the jungle, each landing a half second and five meters apart.

She gave Chad a high five as they gathered and buried their chutes in the soft, loamy earth of the jungle floor. A small flask of acid that ate nylon, much like Kyle liquidated a package of chocolate-chip cookies, ensured that there’d be nothing much left to identify but a clump of metal buckles if anyone chanced to dig them up.

They unslung their rifles and spent a moment huddled together to verify that their GPS trackers were working and all showed the same location. The nearest trail was two kilometers to their east, but they were going north. Fifteen kilometers from their target. Eight hours of darkness remaining.

The jungle was thick with smells and sounds she didn’t recognize. The uncertain chirps of birds that might have included parrots settling after the disturbance of the team’s abrupt arrival. In moments, the unique flutter of zipping bats returned as they hunted back and forth across the clearing, occasionally silhouetted by the bright stars visible directly overhead. All around them, nothing but the blackness of towering trees marked the thick jungle.

No Hoo-ah! No command to move out. A shared nod, a swallow of water, an energy bar, and she took the lead. She was best at deep-and-rough country; Kyle was best in towns and cities. You’d think the guy had been born a second-story cat burglar the way he moved through a building, yet he was a kid who used to fish with his mom and dad in Washington State.

Fifteen kilometers, and they’d need a few minutes once they were at their target. So, now she needed to focus. Carla shoved lover Kyle out of her brain. When that didn’t work so well, she mentally patted him on the head and nudged him into a back corner pocket. Damn him!

She smelled the air and listened. There was a rich loaminess so different from Colorado Rocky Mountain high country (thank you, John Denver, for making that sound stupid in perpetuity). A smell that told her stuff had rotted: fallen trees that could collapse under your weight, trail holes washed out between arched roots.

The wildlife night sounds, silenced by their landing, continued to build. Small bugs making large noises. Somewhere a bullfrog setting up a bass rhythm section. Soon it was active enough that if they stayed soft in their passage, it might continue. Also, once they were in position, the animals’ silence would make a good alarm system for roving bad-guy guards so it was worth paying attention to.

Then she pictured the terrain she’d studied for much of their flight down from Miami, twisted her mental compass to match the real one on her wrist, and set out at a fast stride with the others falling in close behind her. Three hours if it went well, four if it didn’t.

The jungle practically flew by. One thing Kyle had learned about Carla: she took pity on no man. He counted on her for that. She moved dead silent and never below five kilometers an hour no matter what hell the terrain unleashed. He’d followed her through canyons, waterfalls, and dense jungle foliage—all on this hike alone—and still didn’t know how she did it. The same way she’d made up fifty-four minutes on the Forty-Miler.

The same way she made love. Kyle had counted himself quite fortunate in women, until he’d made love to Carla. His lovers were generally more passive, letting the man take control. A few participated more actively than others, but there was a softness and gentleness about them he’d always enjoyed.

That absolutely wasn’t Carla.

She was a constant revelation in a hundred ways. She inspired him to constantly find new and creative ways to sate them both; except they’d both proven that satiation was but a brief moment between the storms.

They’d avoided the shoot rooms, as there was no way to tell if the monitor cameras were on or not. Neither of them was interested in putting on a show for others. But taking her inside an M1 Abrams after a day spent learning to drive and fire the tank had certainly been memorable. As she remained strapped in the driver’s seat, taking them back to the base from the shooting range, he’d fed on her until the rumbling engines had masked her cries. Twenty thousand feet of free fall had proven quite how much you could do in two minutes despite a jumpsuit and a full parachute harness—the unexpected catching air and the resulting tumble only adding to the fun.

Carla shared her body and joined in the initiation of s****l play unlike any lover he’d ever had before. Kyle sometimes found himself wishing that they could slow down and talk a bit, be together. But when they did, every conversation slid into the current stage of the OTC coursework or devolved rapidly into a glorious wrestling match that he could never refuse.

The woman did everything full tilt, whether they were going down on each other until they both nearly wept with the pleasure of it or covering fifteen klicks of impossible terrain through a dense Venezuelan jungle.

Even now, headed into their first mission deep in the heart of a friendly country, he wanted her. Wanted to bury himself in her and never come back. She was a drug he would overdose on if he could, and count himself a happy man.

But there was a reserve, a remoteness inside her that he’d yet to breach. Sometimes he could imagine her as wife, mother to their children, the two of them as happy together in later life as his parents. At others, it was hard to imagine her as more than the soldier by his side.

Until he could solve that conundrum, he’d keep his mouth shut. At times he wanted to shake the answer out of her, but if he tried, he knew that those shields of Delta steel would come slamming into place. For a man who daily walked the edge of risk on the thin line between life and death, Carla’s occasionally blistering temper represented a line he didn’t dare cross…yet. But if he didn’t solve it soon, he’d grab the bull by the horns and take the risk. That or he might go stark raving mad.

At 0100 hours, exactly three hours from parachuting into the Venezuelan jungle and after only two three-minute breaks, the team flopped into position atop the cliff’s edge to look down at their target. In near unison, they pulled water bottles and traded smiles. Water doesn’t do you any damn good unless it’s in your body. Only heard that a thousand times.

The hacienda of General Carlos Vasquez sprawled down the hillside. It was a classic mix for a South American drug lord—part opulent home, part military fortification. The tiny village of Cubiro lay in the narrow notch of a valley five kilometers away.

Vasquez had a towering rock-wall defense perimeter on two sides like a medieval fortress topped with concertina wire. Any attacker from the valley would also be hampered by the one-lane road at the bottom of a sharp s***h of creek bed. The third side was protected by a fifty-meter climb from a fast river with tiers of barbed wire anchored in the top ten meters.

The fourth side, directly below, presented them with eighty meters of near-vertical cliff forming a deep bowl into which most of the compound was tucked away. The cliff soared upward behind the hacienda, which gave their team a perfect position to sit, look down, and study. The perimeter security atop the cliff had been impressive—a fine selection of mechanical traps and electronic sensors—but nothing that would slow down a Unit team by more than a few minutes.

The compound itself was alternating sections of pitch dark and floodlit pathways. Mistake One, all of the floodlights pointed down, lighting the compound. They also masked the entire cliff in darkness, because it had been perceived as impenetrable and secure.

That’s what had convinced Kyle that this was their best approach when he’d been studying the CIA’s briefing package.

Smaller structures huddled all around the inside of the towering stone walls. Sheds, garages, somewhere were barracks for guards. The center of the compound was dominated by an opulent two-story structure that might have looked fine along the boulevard of a wealthy Miami community.

“You been a bad man, General. We here to spank you. Sí, mis amigos?” Carla whispered in a cartoonishly broad Spanish accent. She made it sound as if she were a matrona, not someone who had trotted over fifteen kilometers of jungle-covered mountains.

Kyle laughed as he studied the compound through the night scope on his rifle. The woman had a direct line to his funny bone.

“Sí, señorita.” They answered in unison, except for Richie. As their most fluent Spanish speaker, he decided to answer in German. “Ja, mein Fräulein.”

General Vasquez had indeed been a bad man. In his governmental role, he’d taken US drug-war money and used it to buy himself a major stake in the drug-smuggling business. A trio of government Huey 212 helicopters—that Colombia had purchased through large Foreign Military Sales loans that would never be repaid—he had taken to service his Venezuelan stake. That was going to end tonight.

“Lookee what’s parked to the east,” Chad whispered softly.

There was one of the helicopters in question.

Kyle swung his MSG90 sniper rifle to check the view. Out of his other eye, he could see Carla tracking exactly the same way, as if they were mounted on the same turret. He’d never been so in sync with another fighter, not in the Army, Green Berets, or Delta. It was symbiotic how perfectly they matched each other in the field. Whereas their lovemaking was anything but. That was a constant tussle of carnal delights often barely raised above primal—

Later, he promised his libido and sighted down the scope at the bird. Twin M240 machine guns. They either had to use or deal with those. The helo itself was tempting, but it would certainly get attention from the whole compound—and not in a good way.

Ha! Yes. It certainly would.

They spent fifteen full minutes inspecting the compound’s layout and then pulled back a hundred meters into the trees and started planning. Delta was about improvisation and flexibility. It was about being so unexpected that not only would the bad guys never know what hit them, but they wouldn’t be able to figure it out afterward either.

It took him two minutes to lay out his plan and twenty minutes for the team to buff and polish it. Twenty more to prep for it.

They set the bulk of their gear back in the jungle. Kyle had Duane rig a surprise that would utterly destroy it along with whoever poked at it the wrong way. For this operation they were going to be moving fast and light.

In many ways.

Carla moved into the shadows of the jungle to shed her bra and undo her khaki shirt far enough that no man would ever think to look at the danger in her expression until it was far too late. Hell, Kyle could barely think seeing her like that: double holster slung around perfect hips, two bandoliers of spare magazines, and the two rifles—combat and sniper—across her back, muzzles sticking up over her shoulders like Japanese swords, one short, one long. She undid her ponytail and let her hair swing loose across her face.

The other three were at the cliff edge preparing their gear.

Kyle took full advantage of the opportunity. He grabbed her by the bandoliers of ammo, spun her about, and slammed her back against a tree so big that the entire team wouldn’t be able to reach around the trunk.

He pinned her there with one gloved hand inside her open blouse and cupped her butt hard with the other. He drove his mouth against hers and plundered.

She fisted one hand in his hair to drag him in harder and then grabbed him through his khakis, rubbing her palm against him in rhythm with the attack of his kiss. It lasted one second, maybe two, five… How the hell was he supposed to know? He knew that she left him hard as a rock and ready to take on the world.

“First Delta mission, Mister Kyle. Don’t f**k it up,” she mumbled against his lips.

“I won’t if you won’t, Wild Woman. And I’ll be saving that particular verb for you, for later.”

Her grin was feral when she slid out from between his body and the tree. She didn’t bother to straighten her shirt before they joined the others.