Target Engaged

by M. L. Buchman

  “That fits.” Duane spoke up. “They hadn’t spotted me any more than you did.” He cuffed the back of Chad’s head and received a grin in return. “I saw one take out Richie and tried to move in. That’s when another of them darted me.” He nodded over to Richie. “If it makes you any happier, bro, the guy who dosed you, I broke his ribs bad before I went down. He was definitely spitting blood. Expect a corpse to show up somewhere soon.”

  “No pity from me, man. Thanks.” A thumbs-up confirmed it.

  Four hours. It was one in the afternoon by the bedside clock that continued to count each relentless second aloud.

  “We can’t just sit here while Kyle’s—”

  Carla held up a hand to silence Chad’s protest. She had to think.

  Bolívar Estevan. Everyone’s favorite uncle. A meticulous planner, which meant at some level he would be predictable, a fact she filed away for later. Two daughters at university, but he’d mentioned three children. The third would have been the one they’d freed from this very hotel.

  Where would he take her? Back to his family home, wherever that was. Certainly not close to the city; that would be too exposed, too indefensible.

  Damn! She’d seen his flinch but not understood it.

  “Can’t you see it, honey? A condo here in town near the nightlife and a quieter place along the lake, out of the fray when we want to work. Ooo! I just love the way that sounds.”

  Her idiotic gushing had struck too close to home; that was exactly Estevan’s setup.

  Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! But how could she have known?

  Yet he’d been here in town for the meeting.

  There was something there, but she couldn’t come at it head-on the way Kyle did. She’d have to circle around it for a bit and then jump the idea when it wasn’t looking.

  She thought back to her first day at Delta. The “inde-fence-ible” fence that was in reality so well protected. How did you find protection here? Not protection, safety.

  Why did Estevan need safety?

  He didn’t just have a place out on the lake. He didn’t just have a drug business. He had a drug transport business.

  And that had been the exact niche she’d talked about moving into. Estevan would have millions or billions of dollars tied up in something that…the Empress of Antrax had just threatened. That’s why he hadn’t simply taken her out. He thought he was neutralizing her by taking Kyle.

  “He didn’t neutralize me. He’s pissed me off!”

  “What was that?”

  She ignored Chad. Bolívar Estevan needed safety for his drug transport business. Why? A place along Lake Maracaibo. A place where you could…build submarines?

  “Estevan builds the submarines himself,” she guessed aloud. “Our move masquerading as Sinaloa to horn in to the drug export business was a mistake, because it’s a direct threat to his own operation. His own operation out on the lake.”

  Carla glanced at Tanya, who nodded her agreement. “It would make sense. I should have been surprised that he accepted the meeting. He is very powerful and very well-known. It was a dangerous move for him to come out in public. I should have seen he had special reason to come—to defend his territory. Against you.”

  “He knew that nothing less would draw out the Empress of Antrax.” Then a chill ran up her spine.

  “What?”

  Carla sprang to her feet, unable to sit still. She paced from Richie’s chair by the door over to the window beside Chad. Seven very unsatisfying steps but even that was better than sitting still.

  “My disguise was not designed to hold up to the level of scrutiny he will bring. I intended to fool a customs agent, not a drug lord. Clearly they haven’t met, or he would know I’m a phony. But he’ll know it soon. Then he won’t be giving Kyle back.” Not even in little pieces, a truly sick part of her brain pointed out. “Kyle is bait to draw me out of the city where Estevan fears I have other forces. He plans to capture me and eliminate the Empress of Antrax. Or, as soon as he finds out we’re phonies, kill us both anyway.” She didn’t know where the chess pieces were now—but maybe she could control where the crucial ones were going to be.

  “Who has a map of the lake?”

  Richie pulled out his guidebook and turned to a foldout map.

  She studied the terrain. Maracaibo fronted the narrow mouth of the roughly circular 150-kilometer lake. Before the bridge was built, there had only been a ferry to cross the gap or a thousand kilometers of road. Now that the bridge was in place, most of that thousand-kilometer perimeter road would be abandoned or little used. There were dozens of streams and rivers draining into the lake, but only a few were big and deep enough for a submarine.

  Where in a hundred miles of lake was Estevan hiding? His camp only had to be big enough to build a craft a hundred feet long. His material supply chain would be even more easily hidden: fiberglass, Kevlar, an engine; nothing to stand out.

  She needed detailed bathymetry, not a tourist map. Where was deep enough? Where too shallow?

  She needed Kyle.

  The blow of that thought was unexpected and knocked the wind out of her.

  She started pacing again, past the blabbering TV, into the bathroom, back out until she reached the windows, and turned once more. She hated that the others were waiting for her, watching her, could probably see the panic on her face.

  She needed Kyle. The feeling had nothing to do with her inability to plan her way out of this.

  The impossible ache was wholly personal.

  The Carla Anderson she knew never needed anybody. Waves of fear and need crashed together in her gut. If she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours, she’d be barfing it up right about now. The room spun worse than during her single drinking expedition. After burying her brother, after carrying his flag into the Army recruiting office and signing up, she’d gone on a bender before reporting in the next morning.

  She’d drunk and eaten and been sick and drunk more. She’d woken up on somebody’s sagging couch in a run-down apartment with peeling paint and no idea of how she gotten there or who her benefactor was. Her clothes had been cleaned and were laid out neatly beside the couch, with her brother’s folded flag on top that she’d somehow managed not to lose. By its careful placement, she guessed that a retired soldier had kept her safe from herself that night. There’d been no sign of the small backpack she’d shoved a change of clothes into before flying to her brother’s funeral. Didn’t matter, the Army would be clothing her in the future.

  She’d left before the snorer in the one-bedroom woke up. Left a thank-you note and slipped out. And, my God, her father did that to himself every night? Even now, standing in a Venezuelan hotel room, she couldn’t fathom his state of mind.

  Whatever disease he had, she didn’t. She was strong and—

  She stopped her pacing. Closed her eyes until she forced the whirling madness in her head to a stop through sheer will power.

  When she opened her eyes, she was facing the television. For a disorienting moment, her inside turmoil appeared to have transferred to outside turmoil.

  The talk show had shifted over to news, which was showing weather footage. A storm was coming. A big one. Not a hurricane, but nasty.

  A glance out the hotel room window confirmed that the sunny day was already darkening to the north and winds were starting to shake the fronds of the palm trees in the small garden beside the hotel. The sun still shone brightly, but it wouldn’t for long.

  Tonight. Under cover of darkness and storm.

  She always worked better with a deadline.

  Carla turned back to the rest of the room.

  “A storm is coming. I think”—she pointed at the three guys—“you three should go for a sail.”

  * * *

  Kyle woke slowly and then wished he hadn’t. His head hurt like hell. He’d sensed the coming blow
at the church, but too late.

  It had come from his most protected quarter, which he should have been ready for. Just as the lights went out for him, he’d twisted enough to see Richie unmoving on the bench. Totally unmoving.

  God, he hoped Richie wasn’t dead.

  Kyle fought against nausea, did his best to suppress any noise. He was…alone?

  He went to open his eyes, only to realize that he already had, but to no effect. He tried blinking but could sense no change. In a blackout cell or gone blind? He’d assume the former for his own peace of mind.

  He wasn’t tied. He’d been dumped here. Wherever “here” was.

  His head pounded out a rhythm like a bad Venezuelan cover band trying to do Swedish pop music. If only Carla was here to soothe it with the cool touch of her strong hands.

  Carla!

  Kyle jerked upright, only remembering to duck his head at the last moment, but he didn’t hit anything. No warship. No Navy bunk bed where they’d…

  A gentle testing found a thin mattress, steel floor, and corrugated steel walls. He didn’t try to stand but instead crawled about his cell. If he was under observation, he wanted to appear weaker than he was…which was pretty pitiful, considering how every movement still sent sparklers into his vision from where he’d been clipped at the base of the skull.

  His cell was three meters long, piss pot in the corner, and twin steel doors at one end. He made a show of using the door for support to struggle upright. Reaching upward, the ceiling was right at the limit of his reach.

  He was in a cargo container. He hoped he wasn’t being shipped somewhere, though he could sense no motion through the whirling nausea that had resulted from the head blow. His ear against the steel revealed no noise except his own pulse and breathing.

  The air inside the container was hot and thick, but breathable. At least he wasn’t out in the baking sun. If he were, he’d have been cooked alive by now.

  He slumped down against the right-hand door as if too weary to return to the mattress, which wasn’t far from the truth. His head hurt like hell. Not knowing what was happening to the rest of the team made the panic rise. It took all he could muster to keep it down.

  He’d failed them, hadn’t been smart enough. Were they drugged? Injured? Tortured?

  If he simply knew they were dead, it almost might be easier.

  Except Carla. He couldn’t imagine the world without her in it, even if he wasn’t. He pulled up his knees and rested his head on them. He didn’t dare be caught lying down or asleep when the container door opened.

  If it opened.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  Chapter 25

  It was a risk to the team, and Carla hated it. But it was the best she could do without Mr. Master Planner Kyle around.

  Richie would take the sailboat out onto the lake. He’d use the comm gear to squirt a message back to Agent Fred Smith.

  Duane and Chad had taken most of the remaining cash from Major Gonzalez’s safe and were going to buy, rent, or steal the fastest small powerboat they could find. They would meet Richie somewhere out on the lake, away from prying eyes, and transfer the weapons and other gear into the high-speed boat. It would take a minimum of sixteen hours to sail the length of the lake, and they were going to have far less than that…once they knew where they were going.

  Carla had finally snuck around and tackled the idea in a way it hadn’t expected. Now if they could just pin it to the map…

  She and Tanya got on the phones to the cab companies that the team had hired the night before to carry away the hostages from the raid on the tenth floor.

  Thirty cabs from six companies.

  Twenty-two used by the hostages, eight went home paid for but empty.

  Cabs with single women in them, nineteen. No question where the Major’s taste in tactics lay—focus on the women.

  Nine had left Maracaibo city. Six cabs had returned within the hour. Two had only returned a few hours ago from a long drive far around the lake.

  Carla marked the drop-off points of the hostages on the map.

  One cab was overdue and not answering his radio or his cell phone. It could be a coverage problem. Or a breakdown.

  Or it could be that Bolívar Estevan had his favorite daughter back and wanted nothing leading back to them.

  Her instincts said that was the case.

  She managed to charm the cab’s radio frequency and the driver’s cell number out of the dispatcher. It had taken a trip to the office, a deeply unbuttoned shirt, and a surprisingly small wad of bills to get the information, which was good because that was all she’d kept from the Major Gonzalez stash. She’d of course been issued walking-around money, but with the reports that she’d have to file about every damn céntimo she didn’t turn back in, she’d rather not touch it.

  Once Carla was back in the hotel room, she crossed out the other two cabs that had gone partway around the lake.

  Sorry, Mister Cabbie, we may have just sent you on your last ride. Now, where did you go?

  Tanya did what any smart operator did while stuck in a hotel before a mission. She ordered room service. Carla marked it down on her mental list of advanced techniques they didn’t teach you in Delta.

  The maid who delivered their food was cheerfully talkative, and Carla wanted to gag her and shove her out the door. Tanya was clearly on another tack.

  “My sister and I have been in Venezuela a week,” she told the maid.

  And if the maid bought that, she was both blind and stupid. Carla’s lean-and-dark build had not a single thing in common with Tanya’s built-and-blond look except that they were about the same height.

  The maid was neither blind nor stupid and instantly assumed they were lovers. She relaxed even further, as if they were suddenly just gals together. Actually, by the woman’s manner, maybe she swung both ways despite the ring on her right hand. She was young, pretty, and there was no fucking way.

  Carla was about to shoo her from the room before she got any bright ideas.

  “We were wondering,” Tanya cut her off smoothly, “does anything interesting happen in this town? We only just arrived in Maracaibo, and it seems so quiet and safe…and dull.”

  Carla took a bite of a tequeños to stopper her mouth before she said something stupid. Tanya was asking for news on the aftermath of their raid last night. Just last night? Back when she’d still thought everything would be okay between her and Kyle. He could say he loved her as long as he kept coming to her bed.

  But no, that wasn’t good enough for him. Well, she wasn’t going to lie to him simply to sleep with him.

  Kyle was such a pain in the ass!

  She dipped the deep-fried soft cheese into the green sauce and bit down.

  Damn him anyway!

  She gasped.

  Her mouth was on fire!

  Tanya rose, fetched a bottle of water, and opened it for her.

  “My dear sister doesn’t recognize guasacaca from guacamole.”

  Despite the water, the sauce’s fiery heat—on top of the still molten cheese—had tears streaming out her eyes.

  Tanya dabbed Carla’s eyes with a Kleenex, gave her shoulders a hug, and kissed her on top of the head, just the way a lover would, continuing the myth for the maid.

  Just the way Kyle would. Which brought back the seasick feeling in Carla’s gut that—in a way she’d never understand—she had betrayed him.

  “Oh, things happen in Maracaibo,” the maid offered in a suggestive tone.

  Tanya returned to the bed and stretched out on the top of the covers like she was posing for a men’s magazine ad. Or in this case a lesbian one.

  Carla had been using “womanly wiles” a lot in the last forty-eight hours herself. Which were also the first times she’d ever used them. She was disgusted that they worked, disgusted at herse
lf for using them, and wished that the whole world could go back to the way it was when they were merely jumping out of a speeding jetliner in the middle of the night. Back before she strode across the hacienda compound with her blouse open down to her belly button and way before the goddamn yellow bikini.

  The maid breathlessly recounted an outsider’s view of what had happened the night before. A few new details, but nothing substantial, other than the first hostages arriving over a year ago.

  “Really?” Tanya had gasped breathlessly with wide eyes and bosom heaving in all of the appropriate places.

  Carla did her best to look surprised. “In this very hotel?”

  “Right here, on the tenth floor.” The maid sounded oh so pleased at being able to shock.

  Carla expected Tanya to offer a shiver of delight, and then the maid would probably try a tumble onto the bed.

  Carla wished the guys were here; a little testosterone to clear the air. She was going to leave if the maid and Tanya started anything. This also reminded her of just how little she knew of this woman she had chosen to trust. How far would she go? Was Tanya actually interested, despite having slept with Chad? Wouldn’t he be bummed. The thought almost made her smile. Almost.

  Instead of simpering, Tanya glanced over at her. “I don’t know, sister. Perhaps we should look for a different hotel. It sounds quite horrid.”

  The maid finally realized her gross indiscretion. The mood in the room shifted abruptly as she politely backpedaled, reassured, and escaped as fast as she could.

  Tanya simply smiled at Carla once they were the only ones left in the room.

  “You’re a manipulative bitch.” Carla could never…but she had. Perhaps not at another woman, but she had nonetheless.

  “Guilty, sister. Whatever works on an assignment.” Tanya remained stretched out on the bed and pretended to send her a kiss.

  Okay, so being “girlie” had its uses, which she was going to do her damnedest to keep to a minimum. And she’d never use them on Kyle. Not ever. Though an image of wearing that black dress for him and having him take it off…