Midnight Trust

by M. L. Buchman

  Chad sighed.

  Tanya couldn’t wait to see who won the staring contest.

  Daniela sat as calm as a queen on her throne. Carla slouched on the sofa, her feet crossed on the low marble coffee table, her fingers laced together over her belly, and her head resting back against Kyle’s arm. Two elemental forces.

  Tanya had always prided herself on being an elemental force. And curiously, she now sat in a room full of them. Sofia’s brilliance, Carla the out-of-the-box fighter, and the guys had praised Melissa as much as any of the others. If ever there was a group of women worth hanging out with, this was it. Too bad all of them were supposed to kill Daniela, who was equally impressive. And then, with the mission over, the Delta team would disappear back into the mists as if they’d never existed and she’d be on her own again.

  Daniela didn’t break eye contact, but she did offer one of her infinitesimal smiles. A smile that made Carla burst out with one of her barks of laughter.

  “Okay,” Carla spoke first, but didn’t shift her position at all.

  She looked so casual, which Tanya knew was a total and complete sham. Though she did it well enough that Tanya could almost believe her.

  “Sofia said you had a mission and needed some help. None of us will give you a hand with sex- or child-trafficking—unless you want us to break up an operation. We’ll do that for free. Anything else, we’re open to negotiation.”

  “I want to hurt someone.”

  “I’m listening,” Carla declared herself the leader. Kyle was their actual team leader and everyone knew that, except for Carla when she found it too inconvenient.

  “El Clan del Golfo is going down the day after tomorrow. Sofia said that you and your friends might be able to assist me in this matter.”

  Tanya watched that ripple around the room.

  She and Chad had had several days to understand that Daniela was not who she appeared to be. Sofia and Duane had had one. To the rest of the group, this was a facet of la Capitana they’d never imagined.

  “The poster,” then Fred clamped his jaw shut once more. “I told you so.” Then he clamped it harder.

  “We were discussing your bounty, la Capitana,” Carla revealed that they knew who Daniela really was. “Ten million a head speaks of great motivation. You must want control of their operation very badly.”

  “I said nothing about maintaining their operation.”

  Again the ripple ran through the team and this time Carla waited her out.

  Daniela glanced briefly at Sofia, then Tanya. Her eyes showed the pain that she’d revealed in the privacy of the jungle.

  Tanya nodded that, for now, her secret was safe.

  “My reasons,” Daniela finally turned back to Carla, her face once again composed. “Are my reasons. The reward stands.”

  “How far down do you want to take them?” Carla had done one of her mental leap things as if all doubts were now gone and they were suddenly all on the same side.

  “I will be grinding as much of their operation into dust as possible.” There was no doubting the sincerity of Daniela’s words.

  Carla made a show of looking around the room, not that anyone would dare correct her if they didn’t like her answer. But they would like it. Tanya had observed that this team was so deeply integrated that the seven individuals (even the outsider Fred Smith—who couldn’t seem to rip his eyes away from Daniela) functioned with a level of group-think consensus that almost made them a single unit.

  That’s where she’d failed. All of a sudden, that was wholly obvious. She’d personally led a number of teams. She had led them. She’d been the one in charge.

  Despite Carla’s role as apparent leader, she was really just the spokesperson for the integrated team. And even during Tanya’s brief mission with them three years ago, they’d welcomed her (once they’d decided she hadn’t betrayed them—odd, she hadn’t thought about that repeat of patterns). The first time she’d had to prove herself to Carla. This time she’d almost been killed over the much harder task of proving herself to Chad. What would it be like to stay in one place long enough that she didn’t have to prove herself over and over again?

  Tanya couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. She’d been doing it every single day since her father had flayed her back.

  Carla faced Daniela once more.

  She didn’t negotiate.

  She didn’t pretend there was any question.

  Carla simply asked, “Have you got a plan?”

  “For the top thirty.”

  Thirty would be a triumph, if it was the right thirty.

  Tanya tried to picture the vast network of informants and shooters that would require. Each additional informant increased the chance of someone tipping off the target. One call and the entire clan’s leadership would scatter.

  In twenty minutes, Daniela laid out her plan—well-placed shooters with up-to-date information.

  In two hours, no one had improved on it and they’d gone down to Estela’s restaurant for lunch. Estella never let on that they were Delta Force—just the new badasses in town. It was a good break, walking out the front door and looking across the curving road to the top of the escalator. Locals stepped off as if relieved to be coming ashore from a long boat journey—down into the foreign world of downtown Medellín. Tourists stumbled off as they tried to assess the dangers (which were very few now) and gawk at the stunning view, getting completely in the locals’ way.

  Around the corner, they returned to Paisan Comida and its wild mix of cultural art and local flowers. Tanya let her mind wander as she watched Estela bubble over the team—expanding her cheerful influence to rapidly include Daniela and Silva as well.

  Chad, however, seemed to be the center of Estela’s adoration.

  “She and Ramiro got together ’cause of me,” Chad explained when she remarked on it. “Well, me and Duane, but he doesn’t really count.”

  Duane clearly overheard him, was meant to, and chose the best option of pretending not to.

  “Local drug gang hotshot,” Chad continued in a softer tone. “Earned himself a trip Stateside…in a cage. She no longer pays la vacuna—the vaccine, as they call protection money. But most of their friends still do. We’ve been working on that.”

  “Vacuna…” Tanya rolled the word around on her tongue.

  How had she traced people in the past herself?

  There were only two directions. Follow the coca: up from the source, through labs and tiers of distributors, and finally to the money. Or follow the money back down to the source.

  The money!

  “Estela,” Tanya flagged down the owner as she hurried by with large bowls of ajiaco chicken soup. “How well connected are you to the other restaurant owners in Medellín?”

  “I married one of them,” she nodded toward Ramiro’s next door. “Yes, we have lived and cooked here all our lives. We know many and they know many more.”

  “And they are sick of la vacuna?”

  Estela pretended to spit on the floor.

  “I thought so. Thank you.”

  She watched Estela hurry off. Restaurants. Everywhere in Medellín there were restaurants. And they were all sick of the drug cartels. Of the drug cartels’ militias’ demands for money.

  The money trail. It led up from la vacuna. It also led back down to—

  “Fred,” Tanya interrupted an intense conversation he was having with Daniela about the logistical structure of el Clan del Golfo. He appeared as fascinated by Daniela’s knowledge as the woman’s beauty.

  Fred actually glared at her for the interruption—as intense an emotion as she’d seen in her few hours of acquaintance with him. Daniela merely looked at her and waited.

  “Can you get me a million dollars in American cash? Even half a mill will do. No, a million would be better.”

  That garnered her everyone’s undivided attention.

  “How fast?”

  Tanya made a show of looking at her watch.

 
Fred harrumphed, but didn’t hesitate for long before rising up to go back to his computer upstairs. Before he left, he briefly rested his hand on Daniela’s shoulder.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Duty calls.”

  Tanya called out a few other requirements that had him groaning as he left.

  Daniela watched after him until he was gone.

  When she turned back, Tanya tried to ask the silent question of what she was thinking.

  Daniela’s steady gaze didn’t offer even a hint.

  The others didn’t ask questions. They simply looked at her, waiting.

  She couldn’t help smiling—this was what it felt like to be part of a team.

  Tanya could really, really get to like this.

  24

  Richie flew the big seaplane with easy skill.

  “I like flying too,” Melissa explained to Tanya, half-turned from the copilot’s seat. “But Richie is so good at it that I prefer watching him fly to doing it myself. Sooo sexy.”

  Richie turned enough that Chad could see him blinking in surprise.

  The geek odd couple—Richie constantly surprised by Melissa. Melissa goofy-gone on Richie.

  “I ever get like that about you,” he whispered to Tanya. “Just shoot me.”

  Tanya held out a hand and they shook on it.

  He wanted Tanya. Even more than this morning if that was possible. She’d cooked up a plan while everyone else had still been trying to find the starting line. That was his idea of seriously sexy.

  Sofia had been impressed too—even as she was embellishing and expanding Tanya’s initial idea—which was saying something. It was real hard to one-up that lady when it came to planning. Then Daniela had pitched in with the last bit of information that made the whole idea snap together. Tanya was already making her mark.

  Wasn’t any question anymore, he was headed to Kidon. He’d have to ask her about it when none of the rest of the team was around. Telling the team? That was gonna be damn hard and he didn’t want to face that before he had to. He’d miss Duane, but Carla was going to pitch a major hissy and experience had shown that those were very dangerous.

  The Army had replaced their team’s Twin Otter airplane that had been destroyed while taking down the Expediter. Moore Aviation—named for its putative owner, Melissa Moore—only flew intermittently, but it was always a good scam when they needed it.

  This time, Richie expertly skimmed the Otter’s pontoons into the rolling waves close by an aircraft carrier a hundred miles north of Colombia—well out into the Caribbean Sea. Even with Fred’s clearance, Melissa had to do some fancy tap dancing on the radio to get them permission to approach the carrier group without eating a SeaSparrow missile. But between them, Richie and Melissa did their magic and the Twin Otter was soon rolling easily in the light chop.

  Their plane couldn’t land on a carrier, not even one as big as the USS Harry S. Truman. It simply wasn’t built for so short a runway. From the water, the carrier didn’t appear to be small at all. It loomed ten stories above them, not counting the command tower, and seemed to stretch forever end to end.

  “Just in case we needed a lesson in feeling small,” Richie noted, leaning forward to gawk upward through the windshield. He never got tired of rubbernecking around the big boats. Actually around anything mechanical.

  Chad was busy watching the carrier’s armament—which wasn’t much—and the frigate floating to their other side, which carried enough of ten different kinds of firepower to obliterate an entire fleet of Twin Otters in ten different ways. SeaSparrow missiles, 20 mm Vulcan cannons, .50 cal heavy machine guns, 5-inch artillery, probably even cruise missiles tucked away somewhere deep in its guts.

  He almost missed seeing the little Zodiac launch that was lowered to the water from one of the carrier’s lower decks and was making quick work of slipping over to them.

  Chad shifted to the rear and swung open the twin doors near the back of the cargo bay. The Twin Otter was essentially a high-winged, two-propeller bus. The two large pontoons lifted the cargo deck about two meters above the sloppy waves. Only the most forward seats had been left in, just enough for the team—two on one side and one on the other with a narrow aisle between. The Otter’s cabin was under five feet high, which made him feel like a troll crouching under a bridge as he peered out at the approaching Zodiac.

  Except it wasn’t a four-man rubber boat as he’d thought. Again the sheer size of the aircraft carrier had fooled him. The boat coming to meet them was a rigid-hull SURC—Small Unit Riverine Craft. It was forty feet of nasty with a pair of M240 7.62 mm machine guns mounted at the bow and an M2 Browning .50 cal heavy at the stern. It was loaded up with nine guys, all in full combat gear, heavily armed, and looking serious as hell.

  “Could have used you guys yesterday. Where the hell were you?”

  “Who the hell are you?” They used a loud hailer even though they’d come to rest just a boat-length out.

  “Me?” Chad sat on the edge of the deck and dangled his feet out over the water. “I’m just your friendly neighborhood drug runner who wants his pay.” That was the role that Tanya had picked out for them and he didn’t see any reason to break cover for a bunch of Navy pukes. And he could see the cases strapped down in the middle of the SURC’s deck as if they were massive pallets of gear and not just a sack and two ZERO Halliburton aluminum briefcases.

  “Having a problem, honey?” Tanya slid her long legs out and sat beside him on the cargo deck’s edge with her PSG sniper rifle casually resting in her lap in addition to her handgun, spare mags, and sheathed knife all on clear display. They were all dressed for the undercover role—boots, jeans, and black t-shirts—Tanya’s of course fitting like a layer of greasepaint to her fine figure. Then she leaned over to kiss him.

  No complaints from him. He let it run long enough that it was sure to really piss off the Navy swabbies.

  “So,” he turned back to them. “You got my money?”

  “Identify yourself or prepare to be boarded.” A lieutenant junior grade in his armored vest, life preserver, and helmet, armed with a sidearm and a loudhailer, was starting to go red in the face.

  Chad turned back to Tanya. “Aren’t they just the cutest things?”

  “They are,” she agreed happily. Damn but she was an amazing woman. She’d picked up on his messing with other unit’s heads and was playing right along. Of course, swabbies were such easy targets that he could feel himself losing interest.

  “Look, jerkwad,” he addressed Mr. Lieutenant JG they’d sent out to guard the precious cargo—they really shouldn’t let junior grades out of the oven until they’d cooked a bit more. “I’m the guy with all of the clearances to be allowed to land in the center of a carrier group. I’m also the one who knows what’s in those cases you’re carrying and I’d wager a fifty that you don’t. So, do I call the admiral and get your ass busted back to an E-2 seaman apprentice or do you give me what I came for? Daylight’s wastin’.”

  “Sir,” a chief petty officer stepped up to Mr. JG and spoke softly.

  “Do it!” the guy snapped out, then started to raise a camera. Standard procedure.

  “You take a picture of us and you’re gonna take a ride to Leavenworth so fast that you’ll think a carrier jet launch is a slow and lazy way to fly.” It wasn’t true, but Chad wasn’t going to tell him that.

  JG put the camera away and pretended to look busy while the crew sidled the boat in against the pontoon.

  The chief offered him a friendly shrug of “these are the burdens we bear.”

  Chad shook his hand as he took the two aluminum briefcases. Navy chiefs were what kept the Navy tolerable—about the only thing that did. Besides, it was good manners to shake the hand of a man who gave you a million dollars.

  “Heard you also wanted these.”

  Chad looked inside the sack. Tanya looked very pleased at the hundreds of markers pens, even leaned down to kiss the chief’s cheek, which earned her a big smile.

  “On
e last thing.” And he handed over a thermo bag that Chad could feel was still warm. The moment he cracked it, he wanted to cry. A whole bag of American treats direct from a US Navy mess. Life just didn’t get any better.

  “Tell that JG he owes you fifty for stopping us from shooting his ass.”

  “Roger that.” The chief signaled his crew and in moments they were racing back toward the carrier.

  Richie started the engines and Chad closed the doors while Tanya went forward to distribute the hamburgers and fries. The latter were cooling and soggy…and tasted like heaven.

  Daniela had provided the radio frequency and password.

  And Tanya could only hope that it didn’t get them killed. Daniela had made no promises on that point.

  “Urabá Trader. Inbound Twin Otter. Over.” Daniela had said to keep the transmissions short. The Gulf of Urabá was at the very north end of Colombia, close by Panama. Populated mostly by fisherman and drug runners, it was where el Clan del Golfo got their name. This was their center of operation and if they decided that the team was military, or working for la Capitana, end of story.

  “How much?”

  “One million US. Betoyes.” Daniela claimed that their passwords were a rotating list of paramilitary massacres that had been perpetrated in Colombia. Not necessarily by el Clan del Golfo, but still, a horrific practice. The more she heard, the happier she was with the idea of taking them down.

  There was a long silence while the clan considered and Richie kept flying straight into the throat of the monster. The Clan controlled hundreds of tons of cocaine a year and tens of billions of dollars. Not even Daniela could make such a claim to—

  “Where Route 90 touches the bay north of Tie,” crackled in over the radio, which then went dead. Clearly the end of the conversation.

  If their password was correct, they’d have a deal. If not, that’s where they were going to die.

  Melissa was consulting a map, “That’s forty miles into the Gulf of Urabá. They’re going to be watching us all the way down the coast.”

  “Let them try,” Richie took them down lower until the pontoons were mere feet over the wavetops.