Target Engaged Read online

  They dragged the General down the hall and gathered up the Major as they went. Kyle quickly rifled through the small office off the master bedroom and came out with a backpack of matériel. Richie was doing the same in the Major’s room where the dead girl still sprawled on the bloody mattress, her mouth open in a small O of surprise.

  Kyle forced himself to focus and gathered up a laptop, a messy inbox, and a couple dozen file folders that Richie had unearthed.

  Then Richie tugged on a picture above the desk. It didn’t move. He ran his gloved hands around the frame, then under the edge of the desk where he must have hit a switch. The picture swung away from the wall above the desk. There was a safe behind it.

  Kyle slapped his shoulder and made the American Sign Language gesture for the letter Q.

  Richie grinned and waved Duane over to blow the safe, which took him only seconds.

  Money. Big wads of it. Bloody waste of time.

  Kyle scooped the money out onto the desk. The safe had a hollow panel in the bottom. Two USB memory sticks. He jammed them in a shirt pocket and started to walk away from the million or so in cash. What the hell. He tossed a couple bundles of hundreds into a thigh pocket in case they needed any big bribes to get out of the country, but left the bulk of it.

  Someone would sort through the intel later; that wasn’t part of their assignment. They dragged the two men downstairs as the helicopter came to a hover above the master suite, right where it could drop a ladder down onto the balcony.

  His team exited the house through the kitchen where he was glad to discover that the matron and her kids were nowhere to be seen. He hoped that the girl in Major Asshole’s bed hadn’t also been one of hers.

  Carla met them at the back door, her Mexican drug cartel bandanna now covering her lower face, just as Chad shot an RPG into the helicopter from above. The rocket-propelled grenade struck the top of the cockpit, crashing through the windshield before it blew. The pilots and gunners were dead in that instant. The helicopter hovered for several long seconds as if nothing had happened, then plummeted all at once down onto the roof of the master suite.

  Rotor blades screeched across clay roof tile as they shredded, then the roof collapsed and the Huey 212 disappeared from view.

  Damn thing didn’t have the decency to explode.

  Then Kyle saw the sharp arc of Chad’s second RPG plunging down from the top of the cliff. He and Carla grabbed the General by the arm, Duane and Richie had the Major, and they sprinted along the cliff away from the main house.

  This time the house shattered. The jet fuel in the helicopter went off like a bomb and sent a pillar of fire into the sky that did a partial mushroom-cloud thing, bathing the entire hacienda in a garish red-yellow light and a wave of heat. Kyle hunched with his back to the explosion as chunks of brick and stone rained down from the sky, though none of the heavy stuff reached them.

  At the cliff base, a doubled line was waiting for them. They tied the General and Major to one side, while Richie and Duane began climbing the other. The line was run through a pulley at the top of the cliff. The two climbing Delta operators counterweighted the General and the Major so that the four of them ascended the cliff at the same rate. If the bad guys with their hands bound took a couple of dings as they bounced and scraped over the cliff face, tough.

  Kyle crouched where pavement met cliff and took a moment to survey the results of the last seven minutes. Carla squatted close beside him, her weapon raised and ready, but there didn’t appear to be any need.

  No guards were alive atop the perimeter walls. The only people moving were rushing out the small door in the front gate, not even trying for the vehicles. Which was wise because Carla would have booby-trapped anything that could move.

  There was a massive krump! on the far side of the compound, followed by a cascade of auxiliary explosions and the whine of rounds cooking off, more squeals and bangs than a July Fourth on the Seattle waterfront.

  The people at the front gate pushed and shoved more frantically to escape.

  “I must have accidentally dropped something in the General’s weapons’ store. Bill me.” Carla spoke the first words of the entire operation and made him laugh.

  Then he remembered the two shots he’d placed between barely pubescent breasts and sobered. That was an image he wasn’t going to forget anytime soon. He’d half feared she was going to pull a doll out from beneath that pillow as he shot her. He wanted to go kick the Major again, but he was already halfway up the cliff and would be in his own world of hurt soon enough.

  The main house was a shattered wreck. This would look like a drug hit, a particularly violent one. The shattered helicopter, now at the center of a roaring inferno that had once been a plush mansion, would hide the fact that the General had not died there along with his soldiers. What would happen to him would be up to the CIA, not some half-mad hopefully soon-to-be ex-President of Venezuela who was clearly also on the take—obvious for how he’d been defending the General against extradition.

  Somewhere along the way, Carla had re-buttoned her blouse. Now no one but the Carla soldier knelt beside him.

  Kyle found it disorienting. She had this switch somewhere deep inside that she could throw on a whim. He could focus on a mission just fine, but that didn’t stop him from being a man who could not get enough of the woman beside him.

  Yet at moments like this, there was no woman. There was almost no Carla Anderson the person. She was pure soldier. He had put her at the top of his own list of who he would most like to fight beside. She’d just proven that was the correct choice, but she wasn’t the most predictable person.

  He was starting to wonder if the correct choice was the wise one.

  * * *

  Carla could feel Kyle thinking as they crouched together at the base of the cliff in the shattered remains of General Carlos Vasquez’s hacienda. And she could feel him thinking about her, despite or perhaps because of what they’d just done.

  His plan had gone off like clockwork. There’d been a dozen variations on the theme as they went, but he’d nailed it—right down to the helicopter destroying any evidence of the General’s continued existence. How could Kyle see so much ahead of time? It was like his brain wasn’t trapped by the clock. Give her a task and she could kick ass, but not view and execute whole operations at once. And he’d done it without issuing a single order or making a single demand.

  The only demands Kyle Reeves made were on the limits of her body and her brain. That fiery, testosterone-laden grope and kiss at the top of the cliff had certainly rung her bells. Her adrenal glands had fired up on all cylinders and continued to build under the pressure of the action phase of the operation.

  As she’d sashayed across the compound, confounding the guards who were about to die, all she’d been aware of was Kyle’s raking inspection through his sniper scope. Standing in the barracks entry and killing eleven more men had definitely lessened that awareness.

  But not removed it completely.

  There’d been this thread of connection throughout the action. She knew where the whole team was—that was Delta training. But she could feel where Kyle was.

  She didn’t want this connection with any man, not even one as exceptional as Sergeant Kyle Reeves. Not that she wasn’t enjoying it; she just didn’t want it.

  A glance aloft showed the rest of the team was nearing the top of the cliff. No one left in the compound was showing the slightest interest in the activities going on seventy meters above in the dark of the night.

  Kyle tapped her shoulder, and with a nod, they moved together to a pair of ropes. At the last second she peeled off her bandanna and let it flutter to the ground where it would be discovered by anyone investigating the wreckage. The U.S. military had never been here. It was strictly a drug war hit, folks. Nothing more.

  Lashing on her ascenders and double-checking Kyle’s harnes
s while he checked hers, she felt her awareness of him continue to climb.

  Get a grip on your hormones, girl. But it wasn’t only her hormones that were the problem. She liked this man as well, and that didn’t sit comfortably.

  Both safely on their ropes, they headed aloft. She climbed ten meters, then turned and unslung her rifle to watch for bad guys—the ones not smart enough to be sprinting for the horizon—while Kyle climbed past her to twenty meters and then shifted to guard position while she climbed past him.

  Their passage to the top of the cliff was uneventful.

  They recovered the lines and unrigged the booby traps on the packs they’d left behind. She cut the ankle ties on the two men they’d captured. They were going to be moving some distance, and it would be easier if their team didn’t have to carry the prisoners.

  She heard Chad say quietly to the two bound men, “You can walk, or we can carry you. But if you don’t use your legs, we’ll cut them off to save the useless weight. Comprende?” He didn’t wait for their answers. Chad could be scary as shit behind that boyish face; she actually believed he’d do it.

  Carla checked her watch, fifteen seconds shy of 0220. Under twenty minutes total contact time on the site from top of cliff to top of cliff.

  Right on Kyle’s schedule, which didn’t surprise her for a second.

  Trusting that, she had set up a surprise of her own.

  She called the others over to the cliff edge to look down one last time. The fires were still going; not a soul moved in the compound.

  She held out her hand where the others could see it lit by the flames below and folded her fingers to count down: five, four, three, two…

  Her timing was off a little. On one a ripple of explosions cascaded across the compound. Every vehicle exploded in a shred of metal and a ball of flame.

  “I’ve been taking lessons from Duane. There was a surprising amount of C4 and a bunch of very cute triggers in the General’s toy collection.”

  Then the massive gate exploded, and the heavy archway over it, like an old fort’s, collapsed in on itself.

  “Carla’s Lesson of the Day: Never do anything by halves.”

  They slapped high fives all around.

  Duane grabbed her shoulder and gave it a hard shake of congratulations. “The teacher is so proud, Wild Woman.”

  She punched his “Rock”-hard arm in thanks, and they began their walk back into Yacambú Park.

  The General cooperated, though he was out of shape and it slowed them down, but Kyle was unwilling to remove the gag to give him more air. The Major needed the occasional rifle butt to the kidneys to remind him who was in charge, which Kyle meted out with atypical severity. Knowing they’d have at least one hostage, Carla planned a slower, easier hike out.

  Five kilometers and ninety minutes later they arrived at a different section of the park, at the head of a large waterfall that stair-stepped downward in cascades for several stories. It was ten meters wide and simply gorgeous. Each tier was so square that it looked hand carved. She’d bet at another time—that wasn’t 0400 in the middle of an exfiltration—it would be a beautiful and idyllic getaway.

  An image of her yanking down Kyle’s shorts as they splashed about in the lower pool rocketed through her nervous system, and Carla filed it away for future reference.

  They put lifting harnesses on their two captives and rebound their feet. Carla could see the Major eyeing the jump down into the lower pool. It was just marginally possible, if he weren’t bound.

  She moved close to whisper in his ear. “Try it, Señor Mayor. Take the dive. Please. I’ll gladly put two rounds up your ass before you hit the water. Bet I can get both to go swish, right in the old butthole.”

  “And I’ll shoot off your fucking balls while she’s at it,” Kyle snarled right in the man’s face. Then, even though the Major was taller than Kyle and overweight as well, Kyle lifted the guy by the throat with one hand and slammed him onto the ground hard enough to knock all the air out of him.

  Carla had never heard such a sound from Kyle or seen him so angry. There was a livid fury there that the Major recognized as mortally dangerous. He stopped eyeing possible getaways and lay there gasping for air through his gag.

  She led Kyle aside. “What was that about?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t shake me off, Kyle. Others, okay, but not me.” Now where the hell inside her had that come from? Since when did she care?

  He walked away from her, and she felt like she was the one who’d just gotten a rifle butt in the kidneys.

  Well, she was only sleeping with him, she wasn’t his keeper. His choice.

  Still…it hurt.

  * * *

  No goddamn way was Kyle going to take that nasty image from the Major’s bedroom and give it to Carla.

  He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, so no need to signal their arrival.

  Chad and Duane put fresh batteries in their night-vision goggles and moved into the trees to set up a perimeter. The Major and General had made so much noise that the silence of the jungle about them had been complete. Even now, they were crunching branches and grunting at each other through their gags.

  Apparently tired of their fussing, Carla nudged the General from sitting to his side. When he rolled onto his stomach, she sat down on him and aimed her rifle lazily at the Major’s crotch. That seemed to calm them both down.

  A parrot squawked questioningly from the trees.

  Richie swung down his backpack, pulled out the satchel of intel they’d dragged out of the hacienda’s offices, and began sorting through it.

  Yeah, they might as well.

  Kyle squatted beside him, clicked on a small flashlight, and began scanning the folders.

  He hoped someone cared about the content of these files, because he sure didn’t. Long sheets of payments to coded entries, a couple of old appointment books…assorted crap. Nothing that looked immediately actionable, which was all he really cared about. If he found something that said, “Drug shipment tonight leaving from…” But he didn’t, so he could leave it all to the analysts.

  Richie didn’t have any better luck.

  The laptops both had passwords.

  Kyle turned to force their prisoners to key them in, but Richie stopped him.

  “Nope. They could have a second code that destroys everything on the drive. I could crack it, but I don’t have the tools with me. Leave it for the CIA.”

  First Kyle had heard of that trick, but he wasn’t Q.

  They dumped it all back in the bags.

  He checked his watch: one minute to exfil.

  That would be good. Get in the air and get the hell out of this country. Maybe then he could figure out what the hell was going on in his head. He was such a mess right now because of that young girl that if he’d tried to explain anything to Carla when she’d pushed, he’d probably have wound up leaning into her shoulder for support or some such stupid-ass move.

  That would actually be stupid in a whole lot of ways. Not the least was that he’d bet that Carla would have less of an idea of what to do with that than he did when a woman wept on him.

  Get it done. Get out of here.

  Eleven seconds before scheduled pickup was the first moment he heard the helicopters. They came out of nowhere, fast, and one slid to a hover thirty meters up, barely clear of the treetops. A line snaked down three seconds early as the other bird set up a circling patrol. The U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment was banging it out like usual. He’d only ridden with them a couple of times as a Green Beret, but they were always there within a thirty-second window.

  He went down the line checking that each person was snapped in. The SPIES rope—Special Patrol Insertion-Extraction System—included a series of embedded D-rings separated by a few meters each.
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br />   He moved to the last ring in the line, hesitating just a moment at Carla’s second-to-last position to brush a hand of thanks over her shoulder for not pushing. She looked at him like she was some kind of pissed or hurt, hard to read in night-vision green. Not the time to ask.

  At the last position he snapped the D-ring onto the lift point of his vest’s harness and held both arms out to his sides with his thumbs up. The others were doing the same, except for the two with bound hands.

  A spotter high above them noted they were all ready and took them aloft.

  Even before they cleared the trees, SOAR was reeling them up and moving out—fast. Kyle, in lowermost position, kept pulling up his feet as they approached treetops at over 150 miles per hour. The more they reeled the group in, the more his bare clearance over the trees remained unchanged. As the SOAR pilot bobbed and dodged above the terrain, they were also descending by exactly the amount he was being reeled in. It was freaky how good these guys were. With each slow spin, he had a clear view of the smaller Little Bird attack helicopter flying rear guard.

  He was last aboard as they swooped down into the countryside of the coastal lowlands.

  The outside of the helo had looked strange as he came aboard and he’d been unable to identify the chopper by sound, which was odd; he’d had a lot of training in that. Carla helped pull him in as the helicopter actually climbed to clear a pile of hay in a field and then descended once more.

  From the inside, he could see it was a Black Hawk. Kyle could fly a Black Hawk, but only if he was desperate. SOAR made the machines dance and sing.

  A final glance out the open cargo-bay door; he watched a house go by at eye level, a one-story house. He looked back inside quickly as the helo bobbed upward, then back down—probably avoiding a gopher hole mound at this altitude.

  “These guys are cool,” he shouted to Carla as one of the crew chiefs snapped a safety line to the D-ring on his chest and then demonstrated with a yank that it was well attached to the helicopter’s frame before she released him from the SPIES harness.