At the Slightest Sound

by M. L. Buchman

  But he was Night Stalker and she was Delta. That didn’t bode well for the future.

  The future.

  He hadn’t even slept with her, yet there was no question about it. The future—their future—needed a terrain that included the two of them flying together, and not just when the odd coincidence put one particular Delta woman aboard his aircraft.

  He didn’t find his hill, but rather another dry arroyo—deep and wide enough to swallow the whole helo this time. It ran close behind a low ridge. The channel would reflect all of his engine and rotor noise upward. El Glotón’s compound lay less than a kilometer away by the time he eased down to land in the bottom of the dry arroyo. Even if someone did hear and came to check things out, very few would think to look down rather than up for a helicopter.

  “Slick!” Anton offered high praise and held up a hand for a high-five, which Jesse acknowledged with a hard slap. Then Anton was bailing out one side of the cockpit as the door on his own side opened.

  He knew who was at the door by her short height and the starlight catching her blonde hair.

  There wasn’t even a thought before he leaned out to kiss her. It was awkward with the full helmet and their relative positions, but it was every bit as intense and incredible as that first kiss in the jungle. That kiss might have helped Hannah create the raucous noise that drew off the NERC guerrillas, but that wasn’t why he’d pulled away so suddenly. It was because a first kiss was not supposed to feel like he’d been with that someone his whole life. The timeless quality of it, like he was kissing his lover, his best friend, and his life’s partner all rolled into one had shorted out every one of his circuits.

  And here she was, in his arms, rolling out an even better one that had his toes curling in his boots so hard that he was half surprised they didn’t punch through the soles to clutch them on the rudder pedals.

  “You feeling even half of what I’m feeling?” Jesse managed on a whisper.

  “I hope so. Because if there’s anything that’s double this, I’m in serious trouble.”

  “Trouble’s my middle name.”

  “I thought it was Outlaw.”

  He held her a moment longer, even though he could feel the mission pulling her away. “You come back safe or I’m gon’ be real upset. Y’hear, my love?”

  “I hear.” Then Hannah was gone into the night with Ricardo and Anton.

  He watched on the FLIR until they’d climbed up over the lip of the arroyo and were gone from sight out into the chaparral.

  He couldn’t be in love with a woman he’d met only forty-eight hours ago. He checked his watch, corrected for the time zone. Nope, he hadn’t.

  Jesse had met Hannah just forty-six hours ago.

  How could something so crazy feel so right and true?

  Well, that was a question he wasn’t going to be wasting any extra time thinking about. It just flat-out did.

  The moment before he’d let her go, Jesse had tucked something into the breast pocket of her vest. It wasn’t some sexed-up gesture, because a fighting vest was about the least sexy thing a woman could wear.

  Once Hannah topped out of the arroyo and had settled into the middle position of a single-file fast trot across the sandy soil, with Ricardo leading and Anton in the rear, she remembered and slapped the pocket. Inside were two magazines of rounds for her assault rifle, and a thin stick. She pulled on it, sure that it hadn’t been there before.

  The size was familiar. It was—

  A Tootsie Pop. The second and final one from his mission stashes. Oh, she was going to be so good to that man later tonight, he’d never know what hit him. She unwrapped it and tucked it in her cheek. Strawberry!

  To give up his last Tootsie Pop—twice now—the man must really love her.

  She dodged around another clump of bunch grass and almost trotted straight into a cane cholla cactus.

  No.

  She found her running rhythm again. Anton didn’t say a word.

  No way had he said…

  She jumped over a dry streambed.

  But she had.

  She jogged left at the rock and around the prickly pear cactus.

  He couldn’t have meant…

  But he was Texan, which meant he’d never lie to a lady. Tell a tall tale maybe, but never outright lie.

  Y’hear, my love?

  She’d heard and it was freaking her out.

  They’d only known each other for… She looked at her watch but couldn’t make sense of any of the information there.

  She didn’t…and yet, at some level, she did. If ever she was to bolt herself onto one man, it would be Jesse Outlaw Johnson. Which made no more sense than racing across the Mexican desert—while on leave.

  Ricardo led them around a low hill, down into a shallow arroyo with such steep sides they had to take time getting hand- and footholds to clamber back out. He was first over the top.

  The air was so dry that it hurt to breathe.

  It tasted of mesquite and…empanadas!

  She grabbed Ricardo’s boot and tapped a signal to get down and stay down. Anton squirmed up beside her very quietly.

  After a moment, Anton pointed through the sagebrush and held up three fingers. Then he indicated a circle and pointed at their positions around it. A campfire. A small one that didn’t throw much light into the late evening, but that would explain the smell of a cooking dinner. They were probably even too close to retreat safely.

  Anton made a show of tapping his handgun, knife, and rifle. Something at their waists as well.

  She signaled the other two to wait. She shook her hair out of its ponytail, then stood up and walked into the makeshift camp.

  “Hola, mis amigos.” Her accent was trained for South America rather than Mexico, but it was the best she had.

  Unsure of what was going on, the three guards placed their hands on their weapons but left them holstered. As she’d planned, their attention tracked her as she circled around to stand on the far side of the campfire.

  “Qué pasa?”

  Ricardo and Anton emerged from the shadows behind the still seated guards. She nodded her head: one, two…. On three, she stepped in and placed her Glock handgun against the nearest guard’s temple. The other two were treated similarly, and in moments, all three guards had been dragged back into the shadows and tumbled down into the arroyo with their hands and wrists tied. They’d be able to untie each other so they wouldn’t die out here, but they’d first have to wake from the knock-out shot Anton gave each of them.

  Back to the fast trot. The half-moon rose just as their team reached the western wall of the hacienda. Every bush and clump of grass threw hard shadows that her instincts tried to treat as a hole, but Delta had run her through too many similar scenarios to stumble.

  They’d come up to the back of the hacienda. It was surrounded by a massive, two-story adobe wall that was unbroken on this side. Atop the wall, she could spot roving guards, bright in her night vision. She was glad they were pressed back against the wall before the moonlight grew bright enough to do more than throw shadows. Getting out of here could be much dicier.

  “Shit!” Anton’s curse was soft enough to not carry, but emphatic enough that it wasn’t something she wanted to be hearing right now.

  “He doesn’t sound happy,” Hannah whispered to Ricardo.

  “DEA boys are supposed to be right here,” he answered back as he eyed the top of the wall.

  “Not a good sign?”

  “Not a good sign. Looks like our simple pickup just went to shit.”

  “And since when is that news?” Anton whispered.

  The south wall of the hacienda was an unbroken expanse two stories tall. No openings, and scaling it from here wasn’t going to happen.

  Jesse happened to be looking at Michelle when she jolted as if she’d been slapped. He grabbed her arm to keep her steady.

  The three of them had set up a circling patrol of the helicopter. They weren’t likely to be discovered out her
e, so they’d risked staying together as they circled.

  Jesse had enjoyed getting to know the two women. Letting go of his awe for Isobel Ricardo the actress was hard, but she was so consistently cheerful that it was easy to lose focus on the persona and just enjoy the woman. Michelle was having the opposite effect and became more daunting the more he spoke to her. There was a remoteness that he couldn’t seem to breach.

  “She’s always like this when her half-half Anton is in the field,” Isobel had explained.

  “Am not.”

  “So are, Michelle. Not even worth arguing.”

  Whether it was nerves or predisposition, he had much less of a feel for Michelle and what her reactions might be if things went sideways.

  Michelle had frozen mid-step, nodding several times as if in a conversation, but not saying a word. Oh, right. Telepathic connection with Ricardo Manella. It still seemed unreal if not outright impossible and he had a hard time remembering that something so bizarre not only could happen, but actually was.

  “Isobel,” Michelle broke off. “The DEA boys aren’t at the meet-up. Can you track them down?”

  “Shit no! Not at this distance.” Isobel’s heartfelt curse said that maybe her projected calm only ran actress deep. She rushed over to the helicopter, which had served as the center of their fifty-meter-radius circling patrol.

  By the time Jesse arrived, Isobel sat cross-legged on the cargo bay deck. She had a tablet computer booted up and was studying pictures.

  “Where are they?”

  Michelle barely hesitated to communicate with Ricardo. “Center of the south wall.”

  “Tell Anton to start with the front gate.”

  “You want six-five of armed black man to walk in the front gate of a drug lord’s hacienda? Are you people insane?” Jesse should never have let Hannah out of his sight. Especially because it was far too easy to imagine her doing that as easily as she’d walked into a Colombian guerrilla compound to borrow their radio.

  “Remember Anton is a See-er. But he needs a mental starting point.”

  Jesse shut up.

  Despite her clear agitation, he noticed that she passed none of that on to Michelle. It was a crazy kind of telephone game. Isobel studying pictures and describing the hacienda aloud like a movie set. Michelle repeating it silently to Ricardo who would be repeating it all, hopefully verbatim, so that Anton could perform a virtual walk through.

  “You people do this a lot?”

  “Always a first time,” Isobel cricked her neck while Michelle passed on the latest guidance.

  Jesse decided that his best option was to return to patrol, but before he could turn away, Michelle spoke.

  “Got them. Not good. Five meters to the left of where Anton, Ricardo, and Hannah are squatting. They’re in a small room hard inside the south wall. They have the target, but there’s a major search for them going on. They don’t have long.”

  He looked at the section that Isobel had highlighted.

  “No way out. The open courtyard would expose them too much. They’d never make it.”

  It reminded him of a certain clearing in the Colombian jungle. He and Hannah had been unable to escape north, east, or west. The only way out was south—even if it had been a crocodile-infested river. “They have to go south.”

  “Did I mention that there’s a wall there?” Both women looked at him strangely.

  “Blow a hole in it.”

  Michelle answered, stumbling through the words as Ricardo must be speaking very fast. “We can’t risk a breaching charge. A charge big enough to bust the wall would probably kill everyone in the room. Then it would bring every guard down on our…their heads.”

  “Damn it!” Jesse walked away from the open door of the helo’s cargo bay where the women were sitting hip-to-hip with an arm around each’s waist.

  He rubbed at his mouth. He could feel Hannah cursing in his exact same tone—though probably more colorfully. Not some civilized pretend curse, but forthright and pissed. He could feel her—

  Jesse rushed back to Michelle, “Let me talk to Hannah.”

  “I’m not a telephone.”

  “Sorry, uh,” this was definitely the craziest situation he’d ever been in. “Tell her that the wall, the material in the wall, must have a weakness. Like Jericho and blowing the trumpets that brought down its walls in the Bible story. She needs to set up a resonant frequency of sound to vibrate and then crumble the wall.”

  “That’s—” But Isobel cut Michelle off.

  “Tell her.”

  After a brief pause, Michelle spoke again. “Have you lost it, Outlaw?”

  He smiled as that could only be Hannah’s voice coming back through this crazy line of communication.

  “I, she,” Michelle continued, “doesn’t have the power even if that would work.”

  Michelle shook her head as if trying to clear it.

  “What does that even mean?”

  He needed to get to Hannah but couldn’t. Flying to her would attract every gun The Wolverine’s security force could muster. “Is there time for me to run to her?”

  Isobel shook her head. “Whatever they do, they need to do it fast.”

  Jesse looked at Michelle. Her connection to Ricardo was so sure across distances—globe-spanning distances if they were to be believed. He and Hannah had to be in physical contact.

  Or did they?

  Who knew how all this worked. Certainly not him.

  “Hurry!” Michelle’s voice was urgent.

  Jesse grabbed her hand. “Have Ricardo grab Hannah. You and Ricardo have to be the conduit that connects us.”

  Isobel squinted at him, then nodded.

  “Tell her to try it now.”

  “Do it up, Hannah.” Ricardo had grabbed her shoulder and there was a surge of connection. Not with Ricardo, but with the man who felt like no other. No time to think about how; she could feel Jesse at her side even though he was a kilometer away.

  She turned her attention to the wall and wondered what it would take to create a resonant frequency rather than a boom of sound. A vibration that would emanate out of her and shake the mortar loose from the rock itself.

  A frequency that somehow matched the stone. More than that, like the focused shockwaves doctors used to break up kidney stones.

  The outer layer of stucco slid off the adobe brick wall, but nothing she did could touch the brick itself.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Ricardo whispered. “But I’m being told to do this.” Then Ricardo wrapped his arms around from behind her, hugging her hard against his chest. Holding her as a brother might. She imagined Jesse doing the same with Michelle—it had damned well better feel sisterly was the thought she didn’t have time to voice as the power surged into her.

  A broad circle of adobe dissolved in front of her like the powdered dry mud that it was.

  Even before the dust cleared, two heavily armed men stepped through the hole herding a third man whose hands were bound and mouth gagged. They all were working their jaws as if trying to clear their ears.

  Anton whispered a soft, “Holy shit!”

  Ricardo gave her a brief squeeze before releasing her. “Boy, oh boy. That’s a sound I won’t be forgetting—half buzz saw and half cattle stampede just trying to pierce my skull.”

  As always, Hannah hadn’t heard a thing.

  Anton took the lead. The two DEA men herding the third who must be The Wolverine. At first she could barely walk without Ricardo’s strong arm around her waist.

  There were definitely some details they needed to work on here. There had to be a technique so that the use of her “gift” didn’t bring her to her knees every time.

  Their trip back to the helicopter wasn’t a smooth one, but it was nothing the team couldn’t handle. Her hands were steady by the time a cartel patrol in a pair of Humvees came racing in their direction.

  The big TAC-50 rifle she’d chosen punched holes through both of the drivers’ side windows, which stopped pursui
t half a kilometer away. She made sure no one else took the drivers’ places by dropping a few armor-piercing rounds into each of their engine blocks. The other shooters took down anyone dumb enough to exit the armored vehicles and try to fire back—which turned out to be all of them.

  Jesse had the helo running by the time they reached his hiding place, probably cued by Michelle through Ricardo.

  All she cared about was that they were airborne the second everyone was aboard.

  Chapter 10

  For Hannah, the rest passed in a blur.

  Back across the border. An entire phalanx of DEA agents took away el Glotón and the intel that the DEA guys had delayed their departure to grab. That delay had nearly gotten them killed.

  “Darned lucky they didn’t end up being the D-E-A-D guys,” Ricardo muttered to her.

  But they had snagged a complete set of Los Zetas cartel’s border route maps and the next several weeks’ delivery schedules—in addition to anything the DEA would be coaxing out of The Wolverine.

  “Neither of you is in any condition to drive home after that,” Anton said as he landed and dropped them off behind the house at Jesse’s ranch.

  Ricardo collected their weapons. “We’ll bring your rental over tomorrow and talk about when you’re signing aboard. I think that you should—”

  Isobel pushed him back toward the helo while he was still talking. She gave Hannah a strong hug, then caught up with her brother and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.

  Jesse led her to the ranch house porch. She leaned back against him as they watched the helo take off—lit by the half-moon before it disappeared into the darkness.

  She’d thought that her equilibrium was gone and her energy spent, but she could feel it returning even as Jesse held her. Held her as they watched the helicopter filled with their new friends taking off into the starlit sky.

  It was easy to imagine having those extraordinary people in her life. Women who each had skills of their own and didn’t judge her for what she was, but rather accepted her for who she was.