Midnight Trust

by M. L. Buchman

  This side of the river represented the “New FARC” who had refused to lay down arms along with the FARC revolutionary army. Drug running and kidnapping for ransom was too profitable. Now that it was no longer even tentatively connected to political ideals, it had become an even uglier business.

  That’s what the Delta team was banking on.

  Once the boat was loaded, the drug mules huddled beneath the verge of the jungle. Six of the armed guards climbed onto the boat, their weight dropping it almost to the gunwales. But the river was calm here and posed little threat as they motored across.

  He could feel Tanya glancing over at him, then down at Renata. The woman hadn’t moved from her log. It was up to him to call the abort. Everything was in place except for that one woman.

  “Alpha out,” he whispered quietly over the radio. His was the “Alpha” position of Sofia’s plan. Calling themselves as compromised hurt, but it was the safest move.

  A second later, just as the boat was grinding into the shallows on the far side of the river, the two Delta teams on the Venezuelan side opened fire. They were far back in the trees and well shielded. It would appear as if their fire was coming from the Venezuelans and striking the ferryboat’s crew. In moments, the six guards on the boat were down without a shot fired by either side—it had all been Delta.

  However, the Colombian contingent, still guarding the cowering drug mules, assumed that it was the Venezuelans’ doing. Exactly as Sofia had expected, a hail of gunfire was aimed across the river. Soon, magazine after magazine was being emptied back and forth across the river.

  Duane should be using his sniper rifle from vantage on this side, to make sure that the Venezuelans were actually going down. He and Tanya were supposed to be adding to the idea that it was a cross-river war, but still Renata didn’t move.

  “What the hell is she waiting for?” Tanya whispered.

  Chad didn’t know, but he didn’t like it.

  They couldn’t risk shooting her in the back. It would be obvious to anyone who found her that she’d been shot from this side of the river.

  Besides, Sofia had said that they had to leave her alive if they wanted to break the trust and interrupt this supply chain. By creating a border war among the drug smugglers, they’d waste time fighting each other rather than suspecting intervention by some “Drug War” team. Sofia’s plan called for letting her escape, if possible, to spread word of the Venezuelans’ “betrayal.”

  Finally, Renata stood and simply walked away into the woods as if going for a Sunday stroll.

  Tanya was up and on the move half a heartbeat later.

  “Tan—” no point in whispering, she was already gone. Cursing to himself, he moved out after her. It would make sense if she was pulling back. Perhaps Renata had uncovered their position earlier, in which case getting away from here before Renata could sneak around behind them was a good idea.

  Instead Tanya was angling down the hill to intercept Renata under the trees.

  He slipped along behind her. In the jungle, the evening was already full night. Pulling on his night-vision goggles, he plunged into a world of green heat signatures. Tanya prowled ahead with the lithe moves of a jungle cat. The woman was hot even in NVGs and he wasn’t talking about her infrared signature.

  What did he really know about her? They’d fought one battle together three years ago.

  Had she somehow tipped off Renata to save her from what was about to go down?

  A lot of money flowed along the cocaine trail and maybe they’d found Tanya’s price. Half of her team had gone down last night—one dead and one badly wounded. Plus the Chinook gunner and his helo being badly shot up. It was rare for someone to get the drop on the Night Stalkers.

  Really rare.

  Majorly not a good sign.

  He slung his sniper rifle and pulled out his silenced Glock 17. It was better for close-in work among the dense trees.

  Be a real shame to mess up such a fine-looking woman with a hole in her head, but if that’s what was called for… Shit, man!

  Lately, Tanya had heard rumors of the rise of la Capitana. As significant a player in the Colombian drug world as the Torres sisters were in Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. The rumors also said that, unlike Luisa Marie and Marisol, la Capitana didn’t run her operation from behind the scenes. But neither was she some social media slut like Claudia Ochoa Félix who posted lewd images of herself and her hot pink AK-47 lying on a giant mound of hundred-dollar bills.

  Most had said la Capitana was actually a man, hiding his identity behind a female nom de plume. The woman striding away through the jungle might be working for such a man.

  But what if she actually was a female who wasn’t going to hide her gender under any lousy male identity like El Capitan even if it would decrease the risk? What if she was the true leader? It would offend Tanya’s own sense of righteousness to have to hide behind some male’s name. Maybe this woman felt the same.

  If Renata really was The Captain, it would be the first confirmed sighting—ever. La Capitana was a rumor, a ghost who Tanya had crossed the trail of in the unlikeliest of places—a trail that had always been too cold to follow very far. Was she part of some massive operation like Pablo Escobar had been? Was she a loner like the “Expediter” who had abruptly disappeared two years ago and not been heard from since?

  Three years. Three long years she’d followed the Expediter’s trail only to have it go up in smoke right in front of her face. Literally.

  She almost stumbled on an arching root. The Expediter had worked for a kingpin who’d been burned alive in a massive explosion at a jungle processing camp. Tanya had been less than five miles away when a massive explosion had blown so high and hard that it had formed a mushroom cloud. The camp had been deserted, with little more than charcoal left by the time she’d reached the destroyed airstrip in the jungle. Pederson’s corpse—the purported male leader—had barely been recognizable.

  There hadn’t been a single peep anywhere of the Expediter since that time.

  Had this team been the one to clear them out—if that’s what had happened? If so, it was a major event that was still rippling over the drug cartel landscape. They’d left a huge hole in smuggling operations that still hadn’t been healed.

  Not her concern at the moment.

  Any normal Renata could be allowed to escape, but la Capitana was far too important to let go. She had to be taken, or taken down.

  Tanya caught up with her just as the woman kicked a Yamaha 250 dirt bike to life. Spotting Tanya at the last moment, she popped the clutch hard with full throttle. That explained how she’d gotten here without any roads—she didn’t seem the sort to move at pack mule speeds. The thin red dirt of the jungle floor bloomed into an impenetrable cloud even as the rear wheel peppered Tanya with flying detritus.

  Two other bikes were parked close by. She jumped on one and, cranking the throttle to full herself, shot off into the darkness following la Capitana’s dust trail. As she wound around a ceiba and ducked under a palm frond, a branch or something caught at her shoulder, snapped loudly, and let her go.

  Chad only managed the one shot and it had been mostly blind through the dust.

  He could hear Tanya shift up another gear, so it was a miss.

  “She bolted. With Renata. I’m in pursuit,” Chad reported over the radio.

  Carla’s soft, “You’re kidding,” was backed up by the sharp clack of the bolt working on her rifle as she continued implementing the on-going operation.

  “I wish.” But he didn’t bother transmitting his reply.

  He turned for the third bike and just barely caught the heat signature of some asshole rushing at him with a knife blade. Two rounds to the face and one to the heart, the guy dropped like the sack of shit he was. NVGs really had crappy peripheral vision, but they were better than being night blind.

  “Never bring a knife to a gun fight, bro,” he told the stupid corpse who had an AK-47 hanging over his shoulder.


  At least the drug runners kept their getaway machines in good shape. The bike kicked to life on the second try.

  Damn the woman to hell! She’d strolled back into his world and played him for a complete sucker. Gotten a signal to Renata to keep her safely out of the game. And now he was out of the game as well, not keeping up his part of the plan. His job was to put holes in a pair of the airplanes and their pilots—from the Colombian side of the river. One would be allowed to slip away—without the money or the drugs. Because someone had to take the news of the Colombians’ “betrayal” back into the heart of Venezuela.

  Instead he was out here trying to follow a fast-fading dust trail. With his own engine running, he could no longer hear Renata’s or Tanya’s bike. The dust and dirt showed only as a dimming of the forest. He finally spotted what he needed; his NVGs revealed the heat plume of the bikes’ exhaust as they left a hazy trail that wound around trees, ducked under branches, and jumped off logs.

  He’d stolen his first motorcycle at thirteen and showed his first time a good time with a fast ride out into the countryside north of Detroit—they’d done it in some weekender’s master bedroom while half-snorked on his Crown Royal. Chad was a late bloomer; she’d already been working the Street for a year by the time she hit that age. She hadn’t even charged him until he’d run out of gas halfway back to the city. It had been a long, cold-shouldered walk back to the Dale in the heart of the city. He’d always watched the gas gauge carefully ever since.

  Talk about cold-shouldered bitches, this one—

  He twisted aside. He’d almost ridden between two towering ceiba root walls, which would have plowed him head-on into the trunk. One exhaust trail had led around the north side of the tree and the other around the south, making it look as if they’d gone straight through.

  Tanya hadn’t even had the decency to fuck him before she, well, fucked him.

  He’d give her credit for one thing, the woman could really ride. Half a dozen places he almost ate it, only to spot at the last instant how Tanya had avoided disaster.

  The heat plume of her exhaust was getting brighter in his NVGs. Finally, he caught sight of a flicker of taillight. With their tracks as guidance, he was able to gain ground faster than they were making it.

  The two bikes wove and twisted like the women were playing with each other.

  Two bitches. Bitches on bikes.

  Well, one of them was going down.

  They were climbing a ridge fast. Once over the ridge, who knew where they’d end up. No way to catch them before they crested it.

  He chose his spot.

  At a slight rise of the trail, there was a clear view of the ridge ahead.

  He dumped the bike, hit the ground in a roll, and came up with the butt of his Mk 21 sniper rifle against his shoulder.

  The first bike cleared the ridge and was gone.

  He timed it for the second one, waited for his heartbeat, then fired.

  5

  Tanya catapulted to the ground. With no helmet, she tucked and rolled. Bouncing over rib-bruising rocks, she finally slammed back-first against a particularly stout palm tree. Her NVGs flew aside and disappeared into the brush.

  Too dazed to figure out what had happened, she lay still for a long moment. She’d been chasing someone. A ghost. A mirage.

  La Capitana!

  She tried not to groan as she rolled to her feet and fought her way through the thinning jungle to the top of the ridge—she’d lost any trace of the switchbacked track they’d been racing along. She’d been less than twenty meters behind the woman. With no way to free up a hand to shoot—not over such challenging terrain—she’d still have been close enough in another minute for Tanya to pull alongside la Capitana and simply ram her.

  Tanya collapsed at the top of the ridge and looked down.

  Nothing…

  Nothing…

  There!

  The trail had cut sharply north as it descended back into the trees on the other side. Tanya yanked out her HK416, which remained strapped to her through the fall. Her shoulder hurt like hell—it had been getting worse the longer she rode since that branch had gouged her—but she ignored it.

  She lined the rifle up on the headlight dancing off into the distance.

  Her eyes were still tearing from the pain of the fall and the massive blowback of la Capitana’s dust she’d been riding in.

  No time to wipe them.

  She blinked hard, ignoring the grit-filled scratchiness, and sighted through the scope. The glass was badly fractured.

  She tried firing blind, but all she heard was a dull click. Somewhere along the way, she’d hit the magazine release and the weapon was empty.

  A blinding light shone in her face. She raised an arm to block it.

  “Don’t move.” She couldn’t see who was behind the motorcycle’s headlight, but there was no mistaking the voice.

  “Chad. Thank god.” She twisted to look over the ridge, but la Capitana was long gone.

  “I said don’t move!”

  “Why? Am I hurt?” She had walked the last few steps to lie prone atop the ridge, hadn’t she? She checked…and quickly centered on her shoulder. “Ow!” It was a long slice and her fingers came away hot and wet.

  “So, I didn’t miss,” he sounded smug as he killed his bike’s engine and stepped off the machine without dousing the blinding headlight. He pulled aside his NVGs.

  “You…”

  Her shoulder hadn’t been caught by a branch?

  He’d shot her?

  “Got a lot to answer for, Zimmer.”

  She struggled to her feet. She had a lot to answer for?

  Chad had shot her. In the shoulder.

  She could see his smile in the backwash of the motorcycle’s headlamp.

  Giving it everything her father and Kidon had ever taught her, she smashed her fist into Chad’s face. The surprise of it slipped past all of his defenses.

  He fell backward over his motorcycle and collapsed in a heap.

  “Never bring a gun to a fistfighting!”

  “Fistfight,” he groaned.

  She kicked the sole of his boot for good measure.

  Her shoulder now truly hurt like hell, but she was feeling much better.

  “Aww, what happened to Sleeping Beauty’s pretty face?”

  Chad considered giving Duane a demonstration, but decided against it.

  “That eye is really something,” Melissa was unrolling a med kit.

  “Leave me the hell alone.”

  “It’s not for you. It’s for her.” Melissa pulled out the shears and cut away a section of Tanya’s blouse. “It’s a clean graze, mostly just sliced the skin. I’ll hit it with antiseptic and glue it for you. Should heal fine.”

  “Don’t bother. We’re gonna question the bitch, then bury her.” Chad took the water-soaked kerchief that Duane handed him and placed it gingerly over his eye. Which stung like a son of a bitch. Probably be a day or two before he could even open that eye again. Woman had a hell of a punch.

  Tanya’s bike had been a write-off—he’d punched a round into the transmission. When he’d fallen backward over his bike, a rock had snagged the chain and snapped it.

  It had been a long and very silent walk back to the agreed rendezvous point. A little too reminiscent of his long, silent walk at thirteen after running out of gas—with none of the good parts beforehand.

  “Why did you shoot me?” Tanya glared at him over the shoulder Melissa was fixing.

  “Why did you warn off Renata?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Trust me,” he looked at the others of his team gathered around. “She did. When I was on recon, I could set my watch by Renata’s schedule. Suddenly, she changes everything? She’s always been on the boat. She always does the transaction herself.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Yeah, right. And what made you think you could escape with her?”

  “I was chasing her, you idiot.”

  C
had opened his mouth, then hesitated. “No. We agreed to let her go.”

  Tanya sighed.

  Everyone else was quiet. Even Melissa, kneeling close behind Tanya, was no longer moving. Melissa had passed off her weapons to Sofia before approaching Tanya to avoid having them grabbed—at least he wasn’t the only one treating her with caution. Chad had marched her back in at gunpoint—even one-eyed he could take her down at five paces. Duane now raised his weapon quietly so that it was centered on the back of Tanya’s head.

  “Yes,” Tanya sounded exhausted. “That was a good idea, until I figured out who she must be.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “Mierda!” Sofia cursed softly.

  “What?”

  But Sofia wasn’t watching him, she was watching Tanya. “Really?”

  Tanya shrugged, then cursed, “Scheisse!” She brushed her fingers over her wounded shoulder.

  “It fits,” Sofia was nodding.

  Chad had learned that when Sofia used that tone, there was no point arguing because she always turned out to be right. But right about what?

  “Who is she?” Carla asked.

  He felt a little better that Carla hadn’t figured it out either.

  “La Capitana,” Tanya and Sofia said in unison.

  Carla cursed just as Sofia had.

  Chad glanced at Duane, who gave him back an infinitesimal shrug. Neither Melissa nor Kyle knew who she was either, which made him feel a little better. Richie was too busy fixing Tanya’s rifle to pay attention.

  Still, no way was he going to be the one to ask who The Captain was.

  6

  “Oh, you people. You always bring me the best and the worst news.” Fred Smith practically crowed with delight.

  Tanya glanced at Carla, who shrugged amiably as if a garrulous CIA agent was somehow normal. She’d found most of them to be taciturn, misogynistic bastards with crappy ideas of what international cooperation with an ally was supposed to look like. That no mere CIA agent—outside their black ops Special Operations Group—could even understand, never mind match her level of training didn’t seem to dent their American air of superiority. And the SOG was so dark and dirty that even she didn’t want to mess with them.