Target Engaged

by M. L. Buchman

  A bunk bed nestled in a tiny room opposite a comfortable head and shower. The forward stateroom boasted sun-yellow walls, shining mahogany trim, and a double bed with generous pillows.

  He crashed down into them.

  Moments later he felt Carla’s weight depress the mattress beside him, and strong hands began digging into his shoulder muscles.

  “Carla, I don’t know if I can—”

  “Shut up, Reeves. Do I look that stupid?”

  “No. Most beautiful woman on earth, maybe. Stupid, no.”

  “You’re biased.” She dug a knuckle hard into a locked-up trapezius muscle.

  “Totally,” he groaned as it let go. “Doesn’t make it any less true.” And it didn’t. She was a knockout beauty, a knockout soldier, and a knockout lover. Three knockouts definitely counted for something. In boxing you only needed one to win. That meant Carla was…

  He lost his ability to speak or even think coherently as she dug into successive shoulder muscles and forced them to let go. For a long time he let himself float and groan as she worked his neck, shoulder, and back until he was in a near-liquid puddle of happy soldier.

  For everything he didn’t know about Carla, there were many things he did know. First and foremost that there would never be another woman for him. She was it. He was lock, stock, and barrel in love.

  “Love”—it was like a whisper through his soul as sleep took him under—“you.”

  * * *

  Carla froze with her fingers on Kyle’s latissimus dorsi near the base of his shoulder blades.

  No fucking way!

  “‘Love you’! Are you full of shit, Reeves? You did not just say that to me!”

  In answer, Kyle released a soft snore.

  She raised a hand to pound it down on his back. To roust him but good and make him explain that.

  Take it back!

  Say you were dreaming of doing the two blonds on the beach, both at once. He wasn’t. He hadn’t even had the decency to ogle them, just kept watching her in her damned wet T-shirt and fluorescent bikini.

  Then she caught sight of her hand silhouetted against the midday light streaming through the skylight hatch above the bunk.

  It wasn’t flat to smack down. It was a fist and it was clenched bone-shatteringly hard as if she could trap his two words there until they were crushed to sand, and then bludgeon them back into the man.

  “Breathe! Goddamn it! Just breathe!” Her orders to herself were barely managed gasps that cost her more air than they recovered.

  She couldn’t unclench her fist. Already it ached. It was going to sting like mad when she managed to open it. She did manage to bring it down into her open lap and clench it with her other hand.

  Love you?

  “That was nowhere in the bargain, Reeves.”

  He slept on.

  Maybe she’d misunderstood him.

  In her dreams. He’d spoken it and she’d heard it.

  Maybe it was in his dreams. Yeah, and maybe he was…thinking of the great food here. Maybe he’d been poisoned by… They’d eaten the same food and drunk the same drinks for the last six months.

  Six months? She’d only had a couple lovers who lasted that long. Okay. One. And he’d run off with a singer and it had been about time. She’d never wanted a lover for that long in the first place. Her heart had died long ago, just her body and her brain didn’t know it yet so she was getting good use out of them.

  How was she supposed to give something to a man like Kyle after her father had disowned his family and Mom’s heart had long since stopped beating? Kyle deserved more than she’d ever—

  “You okay, Carla?” Chad stood right in front of her.

  Somehow she’d escaped Kyle and wandered halfway down the companionway. A cautious glance behind her showed that she’d closed the stateroom door on Kyle’s sleeping form.

  “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  She nodded, though she wasn’t sure which question she was answering. Shaking her head didn’t make it any clearer for either of them.

  Chad was starting to look worried. The roughest soldier on their team was being solicitous; she must really look a total mess.

  “He’s asleep,” she kind of blurted out.

  “You should get some shut-eye too, while he gives you a chance.” He offered a wink.

  At her blank nod, he looked even more concerned.

  Without another word, he guided her into the bunk room, the other only space on the boat with a door, and nudged her onto the lower bunk before closing it behind his exit.

  She lay down on her side, could feel her eyes stinging with the strain of staring at the blank wall. She forced herself to blink, which did nothing to ease the burning.

  Rather than get eyestrain from staring, Carla finally forced her eyes closed. She curled up in a ball around the fist she still didn’t dare unclench.

  Chapter 15

  “Here we go!” Kyle called out.

  An hour after sunset, Lola Maloney had flown her Black Hawk by, a hundred meters ahead of the sailboat at less than five meters above the waves. They were getting close enough to the Venezuelan shore that they didn’t want her flying overhead to lower their cargo because she’d show up on the Coast Guard’s radar. Dead ahead, she tumbled out the two bundles of gear that they’d assembled while still on the Freedom.

  Kyle kept his gaze on the packages’ blinking lights. It was just like a drug delivery, which was an amusing parallel.

  He eased the sailboat to a near standstill, bow to the wind, coming even with their supplies to the lee side. Duane and Richie manned boat hooks. When they drifted down on the bundles, they snagged them and heaved them over the lifelines and onto the deck.

  He eased off the wind. The boat leaned back in and began making way once more. Lola flew by once more off their bow, far enough out to not rock the boat overly much. With a side-to-side wobble of her bird, the equivalent of a wave, she disappeared back into the darkness. She’d turn on her running lights when she reached the LCS ship steaming slowly a hundred miles offshore—out past where she’d draw any Venezuelan attention.

  “What did we catch, boys?” Kyle called forward.

  Boys? No Carla visible. Man, he’d slept like a baby after the massage she’d given him. Solid right up to the moment Chad had knocked on the forward hatch above the stateroom bed and told him the helo was inbound. He’d crawled out the hatch and taken over the helm. Carla must be down below; he’d have to remember to thank her. He rolled his shoulders again. They felt good and loose.

  “Caught us a load of good shit.” Duane peeled open the waterproof cover and flotation ring from the first big pack. He toted it to the companionway ladder and handed it down to Chad, who’d gone below. Man probably couldn’t wait to get his hands back around a gun.

  Richie hauled back the next one and handed it down as well. “What should we do with the covers?”

  “Sink ’em. We don’t want any signs that we were picking up cargo.”

  “Roger that, boss. We don’t want a country rife with corrupt cocaine smugglers to think that someone else is doing smuggling on their turf, do we?”

  Duane went forward to lose the delivery packaging. Kyle handed the tiller off to Richie; he wanted to see for himself that the gear had arrived intact and was stowed out of sight.

  He swung down the ladder. Chad had a big pack set out on each table and already had one open.

  “Where’s Carla?”

  Chad nodded toward the bunkroom. “Probably still sacked out.”

  Kyle had bolted from the bed so fast that he only now registered that he’d been sleeping alone. That was odd.

  “I’ll get her. We need to go over this gear carefully.”

  When he went to move past Chad, the man didn’t give way.

  Kyle went to p
ush by, but the man didn’t budge as if he was anchored in place despite the bob and sway of the sloop as she cut once more through the waves.

  “What?”

  Chad studied him for a long moment before speaking very softly. “Not sure. But you might want to think about walking softly there.”

  “We’re Delta. We always walk softly.” Kyle’s attempt at making a joke of it fell flat. He took a breath, then nodded.

  Chad studied him again before moving aside.

  As Kyle squeezed past, he spoke softly. “Thanks, buddy.” Whatever was awaiting him, he’d have to face it.

  Chad nodded and turned to pull a stack of C4 blocks from the open bag.

  * * *

  Carla had slept.

  How in the world had she slept?

  At least until the guys started running up and down the decks like a herd of elephants. The packs hit the deck with a wet splat right above her head, resounding through the thin fiberglass.

  She heard the helicopter whisper by once more and knew it was gone.

  Kyle was coming. She heard him clambering down the ladder like it was second nature to him. The sailboat had remained foreign to her though she’d picked up a lot watching Kyle and Richie. The boat was both too big and too small. It felt large and clunky compared to the high-speed rubber boats they often used. And it felt too small because there were only the five of them rather than a hundred on a ship of war. No guns, no torpedoes, no radar watch officer. Just them. And its normal state wasn’t level, but rather heeled over. She was lying as much on the hull as the bunk.

  Kyle was still coming, and she still didn’t know what to do about it.

  There was a discussion that she couldn’t make out through the stateroom walls. A long silence followed by a soft knock on the door. And then it cracked open and Kyle peered in at her.

  “You awake?”

  “No. Duh!”

  “The gear is here.”

  “I heard.”

  Kyle squinted at her carefully. The light was behind him, so he was in silhouette in the doorway. “You sleep okay?”

  “Sure.” Much to her surprise. No thanks to you! But she kept that thought to herself. “You?”

  “After what you did for me?” He rolled his shoulders to make his point. “You’re fantastic.”

  Carla closed her eyes for a moment. So, he didn’t remember speaking the words as he fell asleep. Could she pretend everything was unchanged and somehow make it be?

  She was Delta. She could do anything.

  Sitting up, she nodded to Kyle that she was ready. The space was small enough that she couldn’t really rise as long as he was standing in the doorway. He backed off and held the door wide for her.

  She looked down at her right hand, still clenched closed even while she slept.

  Sure, pretending was something Delta trained for. It was a key part of infiltration and recon—the fine art of blending in. But no matter how much she wanted to pretend, those two words had been spoken.

  She unclenched her fist and set the words free, could almost see the whisper of “Love you” slide out into the light.

  The one thing she couldn’t pretend away was that the words weren’t out in the world.

  Now if only they didn’t make a circular run, like a bad WWII torpedo, and destroy her.

  Chapter 16

  Kyle and Carla were fixing breakfast in the galley down in the main cabin. They were about four hours out of Maracaibo, and everyone had gotten at least six hours of sack time. The other guys were on deck and all the gear from the packs was stowed where a casual inspection wouldn’t find it.

  If a customs agent tried a more thorough inspection, well, Kyle had a plan for that as well.

  They worked together in easy familiarity even if the ingredients were strange. Breakfast was going to be strong coffee and a bowl of yogurt filled with some of the strangest fruits he’d ever seen. Pineapple and papaya were normal enough, but the others…

  It was fun, tasting two similar round, red fruits, one like a plum and the other a sour cherry.

  “Wow.” Kyle saved his comment until after Carla had tasted the unholy combination that made her eyes cross as well. “There are two fruits that should never be eaten together.”

  “You got that right.” She rinsed her mouth out with a glass of pineapple juice. “Ick. That’s even worse.”

  “Try this one. Vendor said it’s called a mispel.”

  “You try it.” So he did. It was egg-shaped, but the size of his fist. The flesh was dark brown. He bit the edge carefully and was almost overwhelmed with flavor. He swiped at the juice dribbling down his chin and licked his fingers.

  “That good, huh?”

  He held it out to her and she took a bite right over where his had been, causing more juice to dribble down his hands. He licked them clean again and still the flavor washed across his senses: powerful, sweet, almost a woody taste, but more like liquid sunshine.

  “Wow! That’s almost as good as sex.”

  “Nothing’s as good as sex with you.” That earned him a smile, but nothing stronger. Normally he’d get a saucy smile, a deep kiss, a quick grab. Something.

  Instead she turned to the counter and began cutting more of the vari-shaped fruit. The next one was conical and peach yellow inside. She tasted a small piece and nodded her approval before she started cleaning out the center seeds.

  “Is this what normal couples do, normal families?” she asked without looking up.

  “What do you mean, cook together, treat each other decently?”

  She nodded once, tightly, without looking up from her knife work.

  “What the hell kind of a past…” He clamped down on his tongue. He could feel the impossible tension in the air. Could see it in her white knuckles. In fact, if she kept cutting that way, she was going to end up with several fewer fingers.

  Chad had been right about walking softly.

  Kyle rested his hand over both of hers to stop her before she hurt herself. With a brushstroke along her cheek, he turned her gaze toward him.

  Carla was putting up a good front about something. She looked straight into his eyes, brave as ever, but he could see the caution there. No cringing as if she expected a blow, so her past hadn’t included that kind of abuse. It was something else. Well, he would hope that offering her the truth somehow helped, even if he wasn’t ready to risk the truth that he loved her.

  “Yes. This is what a normal couple does together. Cook. Take time. Talk.”

  She bit down on her lower lip before speaking. “I—I don’t know how to do that.”

  “It’s like girl clothes. Wear it for a while. See how it fits.”

  She nodded once, then again. And then she returned to cutting up the fruit for breakfast as if everything was exactly as it had been moments before.

  He might have even bought into the show, if he hadn’t seen the salt stains where she’d wept against the dark pillow. He hadn’t known Carla to ever be even sentimental. To have wept…

  Well, whatever it was, knowing Carla, she’d find a way to swallow it down and be back to normal soon. Or it would explode full force when she finally decided to let it out.

  Two things were for certain: no matter what it was, it wouldn’t affect her performance as a soldier one iota, and no matter how rough the ride, he’d be there for her. One of the best lessons he’d ever learned from his dad.

  * * *

  “We’ve got incoming.”

  Carla heard Duane’s call from up on deck and stopped slicing the mispel to peer out the small galley window. It was still a smudge, but it was a fast-moving smudge.

  “We’re still too far offshore for a customs inspection. It’s not moving like Coast Guard.”

  Carla would take Kyle’s word for it. “Who else is in these waters? Agent Smith said ther
e were no other U.S. operations in the area.”

  Chad squatted at the head of the companionway ladder. “They’re pleasure-craft size: ten meters long and throwing a big bow wave. No way to outrun them. I’ll give you one guess.”

  “Or two guesses, but the second one doesn’t count.” Duane was standing behind Richie at the helm so that he’d be mostly hidden, looking through binoculars. “Yup, bad news. At least three aboard. All hombres, at the rail, one with binocs.”

  “What would pirates want with us?” Richie called from the tiller.

  “Not pirates, Richie,” Carla called out to him, “smugglers. Okay, sure, pirates. Attacking on the high seas and all that. They see our hot sailboat and think it’s perfect for the first leg of the Maracaibo-Aruba-Europe cocaine run. So smugglers and pirates.”

  “Problem is”—Kyle peeked out the windows at the rapidly approaching craft—“that means that they want our boat for their own uses. Best scenario?”

  “They take the boat and then they shoot us,” Chad answered.

  “Worst case?” Duane continued to study them through the field glasses. “They shoot us first.”

  Carla had studied piracy as part of OTC training. How to counter it and how to retake a ship. They’d practiced on oil tankers, cruise ships, and pleasure yachts. But now they were on the receiving end.

  “Well, they’ve certainly seen the three of us,” Chad reported. “If we go below, they’ll just shoot up the hull. What’s the next bright idea?”

  “Get them talking,” Kyle called out.

  “Great advice, dude.” Duane turned away.

  Kyle pointed to the row of windows behind them on the opposite side of the cabin.

  Carla nodded and pulled the curtains across them. Now she and Kyle wouldn’t be silhouetted from behind. It would be very hard to see into the shadowed cabin through the other windows. Kyle was already pulling up the bunk that they’d stowed the rifles under.

  She went for handguns first, then she pulled out a Milkor MGL. The U.S. Marines had been the first to get the Multiple Grenade Launcher…after The Unit. Like a revolver on steroids, it shot six 40 mm grenades as fast as she could pull the trigger. It had been one of her favorite toys in training. She pulled out a box of six more loads and set it on the cutting board, close at hand though she couldn’t imagine using it.