Carrying the Heart's Load Read online

  Carrying the Heart’s Load

  a Special Operations military romance story

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Story

  Delta Force Captain “Killer Kristine” knows how to carry the load, right down to her very bones. Yanking some scientist out of a Venezuela prison is just another burden to bear.

  But the man she rescues is no average nerd. His hard questions force her to face how long she’s been carrying that load. And just what’s possible if she could ever set it down.

  1

  “Gonna be a cakewalk, Captain Killer Kristine.”

  “Pretty arrogant for someone who doesn’t have a clue, Mankowski.” She’d be damned if she’d call him by his first name. And being the only woman in the squad, there was no way she was using Master Sergeant Connie “Girlie” Mankowski’s tag. Having “Girlie” be her only other option just wasn’t going down.

  Command must have it in for her. Actually, Command notoriously had it in for all Delta Force operators but she seemed to draw the short end of the stick a hell of a lot—or maybe it was the electrified end.

  “Hey,” Mankowski protested as he rewrapped his MREs. “I’m not arrogant. I’m awesome.” A Delta operator who liked to talk too much—and of course he ended up on her team.

  They were both sitting on the hangar deck of the USS Peleliu helicopter carrier doing the standard mission prep. Last she’d heard, this ship had been decommissioned. But here it was as big as life, a secret floating base for the Night Stalkers Spec Ops helicopter guys. Too bad the air jocks couldn’t do shit to help on this one except dump them five klicks off the Venezuelan coast and wish them luck.

  Standard mission prep included pre-dissecting their Meals-Ready-to-Eat. With a little judicious opening and culling, they could cut down the volume-per-meal they’d have to carry in their packs by as much as fifty percent and mass by thirty percent. Wrap the retained meal packets in a strip of hundred-mile-an-hour duct tape and they were good to go. Every kilo less food equaled an additional pair of thirty-round magazines for her HK416 rifle or five seventeen-round mags for her Glock sidearm.

  The mission was only supposed to be ten hours. The last one-night mission she’d been on had gone for five days, so she packed enough food for two people to last three days as a compromise.

  “I’ve walked Syria and Afghanistan. This ain’t no worse.” Like he was trying to impress her.

  She was so immune to that crap. Her big brother had thought she was an ideal playground, until she’d nutted him so hard that he hadn’t walked right for a week. That had set the tone of her life. Uncle Juan, Steve who’d missed a whole season of high school football because she’d had to shatter his foot to back him off, three guys she’d left bloody in Brooklyn, and five she’d left dead out in the Congo.

  That had been another fine command decision, Puerto Rican dark didn’t pass for African black anywhere except in the two-tone colorblindness of America—white and not. Sure as hell hadn’t passed her in the Congo. This time at least they were sending her into Venezuela, so her skin would be okay, if not her accent. Of course Mankowski was a Chicago white boy—target right on his fucking face—she was so screwed.

  “Besides, walking beside a hot number like Killer Kristine, nobody’s going to be looking at this old boy anyway. I’m safe as can be.”

  Kristine wondered who was going to kill this guy first, her or the nightmare that was modern-day Venezuela.

  It was a bum assignment anyway: walk into a major military base in an exceptionally paranoid country, find idiot scientist, extract him out of whatever shitstorm political hole he’d gotten himself stuck in, and make sure he comes back alive and in one piece. Command had really stressed the alive and intact part of the mission—while being equally careful to not say one word about what condition men like Girlie Mankowski had to be in upon their return. Or her for that matter. But they were hella concerned about one Dr. Ray Ewing.

  You know, he’s one of “those” kind of scientists, her mission briefer had said.

  Yeah, and you’re one of “those” kind of briefers who would be clearly happy to eat his own shit and spew it back out again.

  One of “those” scientists? Absentminded, unworldly, or just an arrogant know-it-all pain-in-the-ass? She so couldn’t wait to find out which.

  “Where you from, Killer?”

  “Hell.”

  “No really.”

  She stopped slit-packing MREs and looked at him until he stopped opening his and faced her.

  “What?”

  “Hell. Really.”

  2

  Once she was done with organizing meals, water, and ammo, she started considering how she was supposed to extract a civilian alive. She sure wasn’t going to give him a weapon; he’d be as likely to shoot himself or her rather than the bad guys. But she stuffed one in her pack just in case by some miracle of Mother Mary he did know which end to hold it by.

  She didn’t wear issued armor. Between the weight and freedom of movement issues, she typically wore no more than a Dragonskin vest—even if it wasn’t official issue. It worked better and weighed a quarter of the fully-plated Improved Outer Tactical Vest with its heavy ceramic plates, it just wasn’t politically correct. But then she wasn’t either. This time, she’d layer up with both Dragonskin and the heavy armor of the IOTV, then she’d let the eminent Dr. Ewing wear the heavy shit on the return leg.

  Over that, she pulled on her MOLLE. The Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment was a fancy way to say a harness vest. Its entire surface was covered with inch-wide horizontal straps, spaced an inch apart. Every Delta operator’s was unique because it was wholly configurable. The base MOLLE—pronounced Molly—carried eight magazines. Then various holders of the PALS—Pouch Attachment Ladder System—were added on to an individual’s preference. The various pouches interlaced through the straps in such a way that you could probably do a helicopter hoist extraction by any of them, though it had the ring on the front for that.

  A lot of operators put the med kit on the very back of their rucksack—Not gonna need it anyway. She kept it front and center so that she didn’t have to dump her pack to access it every time she was patching up some asshole who was too injured to reach the kit on their back, or worse, had dumped their pack in order to survive an op gone bad. Flares, breaching charges, timers, hydration bladder, extra mags for her sidearm and ankle piece, satellite radio, backup radio, batteries…the list was endless of what she wanted to carry. And now she had to dump half of it so that she could carry gear for some civilian who’d probably bitch the whole way.

  Girlie Mankowski only whined a little about how much of it there was, but took his share after she offered to remove his pelvis with the Benchmade Infidel blade she wore in a wrist sheath if he said another word.

  “Just jokin’, man,” he muttered to himself.

  By some mutual agreement, she didn’t point out that she was a woman and he didn’t mutter “bitch” aloud, even if she could hear it anyway. Oddly, that’s how she’d gotten her tag, she’d threatened to kill the next bastard who called her a bitch. It was Day Two of the month-long Delta Force Operator Selection. “Killer Kristine” had sounded from a Green Beret wag…and it had stuck. As had she. The Green Beret hadn’t made it to Week Two—not her doing either.

  Besides, the name was far too appropriate, even if no one would ever know. She let it stick because it was God’s honest truth.
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  Cursing herself before she even did it, she tied another MOLLE harness onto her pack along with a dozen empty utility pouches threaded into the straps. Whatever the good Dr. Ray Ewing felt he needed to take out of the country, he could damn well carry it in his own rig.

  “Ready, Mankowski?”

  “Gotta pee.”

  “You’ve got until I reach the helo, then we’re leaving you behind.”

  “Sure, Killer.” But then he looked at her face and hurried toward the can.

  Yeah, “Bitch” versus “Killer.” Everyone meant it the same way. Thank God that Delta Force favored individual capabilities over team capabilities or she’d be out on her ass. Delta operators worked in solo or pairs and only came together when they had to. SEALs, however, hated breaking into smaller teams even when they had to—it tended to make them snivel like sad puppy dogs.

  She did take the steps from the Hangar Deck up to the flight deck slowly, so the Black Hawk was just easing off its wheels when Girlie Mankowski dove through the cargo door.

  “What’s wrong with you, man?” He was seriously ticked, probably about the long, wet dribble down his pantleg where he’d pulled it in before he was quite done.

  She knew only too damned well what was wrong with her.

  3

  “Five klicks back out,” Mankowski whined.

  The sea had been kicking up rough and their small Zodiac boat had made hard work of reaching the coast from where the Night Stalkers had dropped them. They’d made it, but a glance at the charge on the batteries said there was no way the electric motor was getting them back to the pickup point.

  “We’ll find some other transport. Sink it.”

  Mankowski groaned, but did as she instructed. She felt battered as well, but the weather was picking up and it would an even harder ride back out. No way his doctoral eminence would make it in a rubber boat even if they had the power.

  With the charges set, Mankowski aimed the tiny boat out of the inner La Guaira harbor. They’d landed near the entry of the long harbor formed by a massive two-kilometer-long breakwater that arced outward and then paralleled the Venezuelan coast, creating a narrow line of protected wharves. The autopilot held the little boat in line out into the darkness, plunging over the waves that had so inundated them on the trip in.

  The Zodiac made it three hundred meters out before the charges fired. Even with night-vision goggles it was hard to see the flashes that ruptured all of the bladders and destroyed the motor as well. Already unidentifiable, in seconds it would be at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  “Now what?”

  Kristine surveyed the long breakwater of heavy granite stone as another wave shattered on its far side and sent spray climbing skyward. She wasn’t going to complain about having a bigger boat when they ventured back to sea. Even if it was physically impossible to get any wetter after their night crossing, she could feel her gear becoming heavier by the second with water weight. Especially all of the extra kit for himself. No one had bothered to tell lowly Delta operators why he was so damned important.

  “Go find us a boat.”

  “What?”

  “This harbor has commercial, ferry, and naval piers. I can see a half-dozen boats from here. Night Stalkers will be on station in five hours to retrieve us. You have four hours to find one and pick us up right here. But don’t grab it until I radio that I’ve got him and we’re coming out.” She always did better on her own anyway.

  Mankowski didn’t look happy, but he didn’t argue.

  They went their separate ways. Him scouting the two kilometers of wharves to the southeast while, moving quickly over the big stones that lined the public ferry terminal; her making her way west.

  Just as planned, she ducked out of the passenger terminal, closed for the night, and slipped through the fence into the yard for the goods shipping terminal. What the satellite photos hadn’t really showed was just how few container ships were willing to deliver goods to a country that could no longer pay any of its bills. Some of the largest crude reserves in the world and they were bankrupt. Beyond bankrupt, the people were starving to death before they could die of poor health care, broken sanitation, and all the other disasters here that made Brooklyn, New York look almost habitable.

  She’d planned on dodging through the container field…except there were far more open spaces than containers in the yard. That wasn’t at all helpful.

  While she was surveying her options, one of the country’s notorious blackouts conveniently rolled through. Taking the risk, she sprinted across a long open stretch. The power and lights didn’t come back on until she was out of the yard, across the street, and through the electric fence that was supposed to be protecting Naval Base Antonio Picardi. She even had time to resplice the section she’d cut so that no one would know she’d crossed through. It would also make it that much faster when she crossed back out.

  Inside the base, she lay under some leaves of a palma llanera that the wind was beating into a frenzy loud enough that she couldn’t hear herself think. The storm was really kicking some unpredicted ass, which would make for better cover and made her happier that the Zodiac was at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  Straight ahead lay an Olympic-sized swimming pool with diving boards, lounge chairs, folded up and now flopped over umbrellas, and a serious-looking bar and food stand, currently well-shuttered. It was almost midnight, so that made sense.

  It was a good thing that the general populace wasn’t starving to death or anything. Oh, wait, they were. Just the military wasn’t. No wonder the assholes were loyal—they had the only cushy jobs left in the country.

  At that moment, a surprisingly cold rain slashed out of the darkness.

  Yep! It was a Delta-style fun night.

  4

  Thankfully, the Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela felt themselves to be sacrosanct. In the midst of the storm, there were very few patrols and none with night-vision gear or much interest in anything other than getting back under cover after hurrying along their prescribed routes.

  In an hour she’d worked around a dormitory, mess hall, and training center—probably could have done it in half the time with how lame the patrols were. The sheeting rain didn’t let up and they were doing their duty on the hustle with their heads down.

  Ultimately, Building Fourteen was right where the spy for the opposition had said it would be; not all of the military loved their corrupt, paranoid president-turned-dictator-turned-total bastard. The mole had given the CIA the tip about where to find Dr. Ewing—in the secure detention facility on the third floor.

  Apparently the CIA had gotten tired of waiting for the government to finally collapse under its own weight. In her estimation that wasn’t the issue. The real issue was that if the military and the SEBIN secret police finally went down hard, they sure weren’t going to leave behind any prisoners to tell the tale. Either way, tonight was Ewing’s lucky night.

  Kristine waited for the latest patrol to sweep by. Figuring that the most secure position was close behind them, she hurried along in their wake, circling Building Fourteen. As she went, she strategically placed charges she might need to make good their escape.

  The moment the patrol ducked inside, she stepped out into the courtyard and gauged the height of the building—three stories, nine to ten meters. Reaching back over her left shoulder, she snagged the lifting loop on her grappling hook and pulled it and a hank of 9mm tactical line free from its PALS pouch. With a practiced flick of her wrist, she spread the three tines out and they clicked into place.

  Five fast spins and she had smooth control of the spinning grapple. With a hard upward release, it soared aloft in a high arc. The coil of tactical line slid off her palm in a neat flow. For a moment she thought a gust of wind was going to ruin her throw, but an immediate counter gust dropped it well over the roof’s edge. A sharp tug gave her under a meter of slippage and then a hard set that easily took her weight.

  She snapped a pair of hand jumars onto the l
ine, walked her feet up onto the wall, and began working the ascenders. They slid upward without resistance, but not downward unless she hit the release. Two minutes later, she lay on the roof pulling up the line.

  The wind, which had been blocked while she was down among the buildings, whipped hard at her. Much more and they’d be in a tropical storm. Wouldn’t that be a joy.

  A quick tour of the roof revealed the maintenance hatch. Locked from the inside, she snapped together a thermite torch—about the size of a three-D-cell flashlight—put on dark glasses, and cut the hinges off. Five thousand degrees of fun. There were some things she loved about Delta Force, and the cool toys factor was definitely high on the list.

  She dropped into the middle of Building Fourteen’s detention floor. Nightlights illuminated the corridor and a guard sleeping at the far end of it. Make that drunk and asleep because her entry letting in the storm had been far from silent. She woke him up with a strip of duct tape over his mouth, then cuffed him to his heavy chair with zip ties.

  “Which cell is Dr. Ewing in?” Kristine whispered in Spanish as she pressed the tip of the torch under his chin. She’d let him see it just enough to know that it was like nothing he’d ever seen before, not that she was planning to melt open his head with it. “Grunt the number of times for his number.”

  The guy’s eyes rolled in panic.

  “Now or I’ll tape over your nose too and leave you to rot.”

  Apparently he believed her and grunted out a six.

  5

  Cell Six was third on the left. Through the observation window she couldn’t see shit. Flipping down her night-vision goggles, she could see that it was a much larger space than she’d anticipated. A man lay asleep on a corner cot. To the other side was a long workbench with a computer and an array of stuff that looked like a chemist’s lab.