Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3)

by M. L. Buchman

“Not very subtle.”

  “Picky. Picky. Picky.” Carmen shrugged and climbed to her feet. “Unless you want us to land you directly on the ship in the middle of a firefight—even if it would only be a simulated one—can’t help you much.” She wandered off whistling an old Bee Gees song. Soon the entire helicopter crew was working their way through “Sinking Ships.” He supposed it was better than the Mission Impossible theme.

  He looked at Sofia sitting on one of the Zodiac’s low seats, leaning forward to look at him. The zipper at her throat was down just enough to expose her collarbone. No more, but it had been giving him trouble throughout the flight. Every time she spoke it took everything he had to not stare at her throat or lips as they moved. He’d been around plenty of pretty women—Carla and Melissa were knockouts in their own way—but Sofia was action-flick wet-dream stunning.

  At least she was for him.

  Was there a “look” for each guy? On the first day of intake testing, he’d seen Kyle go nuts for Carla. Duane hadn’t known who Kyle was yet, but Carla as the only woman in a testing group of over a hundred had stood out big time. From the first moment Kyle had been front and center to greet her.

  Richie had done the same thing the moment Melissa showed up. Richie, who only got hot and bothered by the latest piece of tech gear, had turned…well, nasty wasn’t in him but, much to everyone’s surprise, ultra-protective was.

  Chad’s normally successful play for any pretty woman had fizzled on Sofia even worse than it had on Melissa. Maybe Chad was losing his touch ever since he’d briefly landed Tanya Zimmer from Mossad—she’d certainly spun his head around but good.

  Duane couldn’t force himself to look away from Sofia. He hadn’t slept longer than a minute at a time of the last four hours, not with Sofia sitting so close by. And no Spec Ops soldier wanted to be awake for the entire duration of a storm flight, but he had been. Women didn’t give him those kinds of problems. Yet she did…

  For a moment he flashed on how she’d look in a bathing suit, all wet and—

  He laughed.

  She raised just one of those dark, strong eyebrows at him in question.

  Duane called Carmen back as he thumped a hand twice on the hard rubber of the Zodiac boat. Chad looked up from his spotless rifle, then snapped it back together with a fast series of sharp clicks. The other four who’d been asleep but leaning against different parts of the boat jolted awake, automatically resting their hands on their pistols as they blinked to life and made sure of where they were.

  Duane made a circle motion with his hand, calling them together.

  “Bet you look great in a bikini,” he whispered to Sofia alone.

  That sent her other eyebrow arching up, saying not a chance.

  He could still hope.

  Chapter 6

  Sofia had considered kicking Duane’s thigh again, but missed her chance before everyone had gathered around and he’d begun laying out his plan.

  Now she was standing at the back of the Chinook helicopter’s rear ramp, gaping open above the night-dark ocean. It was her second time in twenty-four hours and only her second time in over two years to be in such a position. Was the night-ocean-helicopter paradigm a Delta Force thing or was this somehow her doing?

  They’d flown out of the storm twenty miles back. They were now in the wind shadow of the fifteen-hundred-meter peaks of Panama’s Serranía de Tabasará sheltering the Mosquito Gulf and the waves were at least manageable. Still, she was glad not to be in the tiny Zodiac.

  They’d dropped the Zodiac and the other five team members several miles back, then raced to the ship with only her and Duane still aboard. She wore heavy gloves and had her rifle—loaded with Simunitions so that she didn’t kill anybody on this training mission—strapped over her shoulder.

  Outside the helicopter was nothing but black ocean. She wanted to turn, look up the length of the helicopter and out the front windshield to see the approaching cruise ship, but that wasn’t her worry right now.

  She’d been uneasy enough with her first solo recon trip into the jungle. Sometimes ISA agents came back with “there I was, suddenly in the center of the action” stories, but they weren’t common. ISA typically slipped in smooth and quiet, gathered their intel, and then slipped out just as quietly to brief the action teams.

  Not this time. She was in it and, at least for the moment, appeared to be stuck in it. She and Duane were poised and ready—too late to be nervous.

  The female loadmaster with the alto singing voice was pure business now. Every ten seconds like clockwork she said, “Hold… Hold… Hold” barely breaking the rhythm of the current rendition of “The Sound of Music” that the crew had picked up for some inexplicable reason.

  Sofia could feel the adrenaline surging through her. If not for Duane standing close beside her, she might shake apart from the power of it.

  A careful coil of thick rope lay at the loadmaster’s feet. The top of the FAST rope was attached to the overhead. She and Duane wore thick gloves that would allow them to slide down the ropes quickly without burning their hands.

  Beyond the steel lip of the cargo ramp lay nothing but the night. The helicopter was racing so close over the surface of the ocean, that it felt as if they were no higher above it than the edge of a swimming pool. Even without the stealth modifications, the pilot was flying to keep the big helicopter below the cruise ship’s radar.

  “Hold… Hold…”

  The helicopter jolted upward. The sudden force almost took her knees out from under her to sit on the steel deck. They were now climbing upward hard to clear the towering wall that was the side of a cruise ship.

  “Five,” the loadmaster started her countdown. And the crew’s singing fell silent, though Sofia bet it would restart as soon as they were gone.

  Sofia hadn’t had a moment to explain or even apologize for what had happened in the past that had gotten an entire Chinook crew kidnapped in the heart of Israel’s Negev Desert. The fault had been The Activity’s. It had freaked out everyone and they’d initiated a full-team study. Every member of ISA, almost two hundred people, had spent three days analyzing every nuance of the events to make sure it never occurred again.

  “Four,” Carmen continued—still climbing fast.

  She could only remember two other events of similar scale. It was before her time, but she’d been told that they’d broken down and analyzed the 9/11 attacks in half that time—of course, every intelligence agency in the world had been working on that one.

  Now there wasn’t time.

  Sofia grabbed hold of the thick FAST rope at the same moment the loadmaster kicked the coil off the back of the helicopter ramp.

  “Three,” there was a tug on her belt as the loadmaster unclipped her safety harness and the umbilical cord for the intercom. The climb eased and the helo slowed.

  “Two,” Sofia counted silently in her head. “One.”

  Carmen’s slap on her shoulder came at the same moment Sofia stepped off the end of the ramp and out into dark space.

  Everything happened at once.

  The helicopter had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. It was hoped that no one would notice her and Duane’s arrival, thinking the helicopter had simply been doing a side-to-side overflight to see what they could see of the “captive” ship.

  As she slid down the rope, the black ocean was replaced by the brightly lit uppermost deck of the cruise ship. They had climbed over a dozen stories in the last few seconds and were now crossing side to side over the center, just high enough to not tangle with any of the safety rails or rigging.

  Using her gloved hands and boots wrapped around the FAST rope to control her speed, Sofia descended on faith that their target would be there when she reached the bottom. Otherwise she was going to have a long fall over the side and into the ocean.

  Sofia slid down the rope and—at the exact centerline of the cruise ship; with a timing she’d never understand but thankfully the loadmaster had—she plunged into the shi
p’s top-deck swimming pool.

  “Let go,” Duane’s shouted from just five feet away where he’d been sliding down a second rope just like hers. It reminded her to release her grip before the helo dragged her into the sidewall of the pool.

  She was a moment slower at remembering to unwrap her feet. The delay flipped her face-down into the pool as the helo dragged the rope a moment longer before the loadmaster let it fall free. One of the ropes fell onto the deck, the other slammed down into the pool on top of them like a very heavy snake driving her back under the water before she could get a breath.

  When she surfaced, coughing and sputtering. Duane was already on his feet. The water was chest high. His rifle was up and on his shoulder as water streamed off him and he swept a quick circle to make sure they were clear.

  “Wet look is good on you, sugar,” his back was to her as he spoke.

  “Still never get me in a bikini, Delta.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  The thing was, the wet look was good on him too. Rising out of the water and armed to the teeth, water sheeting off him and leaving a sparkle in his short hair... That was her kind of man, if she had a kind.

  Men are way more trouble than they’re worth, she had to remind herself as they slogged to the side of the pool. At least so far, some naive, uninformed part of her answered. She still had hopes of finding a decent guy, no matter how unlikely that hope might be. Of course, if she did, it wouldn’t be some hardcore Unit operator type.

  They left the ropes floating in the pool, wading together to the steps and clambering out among the empty beach chairs. The loudest sounds in the night were the deep grind of the tugboat towing the cruise ship toward port and the splatter of the two of them dripping on the polished wood deck.

  Duane sliced a hand left then forward then he’d right and forward himself.

  The ship itself was a good fit for the model that she’d built and briefed the team on.

  Of course some intel was easier to gather than others.

  The helicopter carrier USS Peleliu that they’d spent the last eighteen hours aboard, for example. She hadn’t been able to verify the existence of it, even though she’d been sitting aboard, using a satellite uplink through its comm system. Every site she could find agreed: the Peleliu had been decommissioned and towed away for scrap. Too bad there hadn’t been time to figure out how they hid an eight-hundred-foot ship in plain view.

  Determining which cruise ship they were going to be boarding from a news item about the breakdown was easy. Then the layout: Oceanwide cruise line’s website had detailed deck plans, at least for the public areas. She’d had to log into ISA’s databases to get the lower deck configuration as well.

  At the time, Duane hanging over her shoulder had bothered her. Now she understood that he hadn’t been trying to look down the front of her t-shirt, or at least he hadn’t only been doing that. He’d also reviewed and memorized the deck layouts even as she transferred them to a tablet. She’d enjoyed keeping from him that it wasn’t really necessary to memorize anything past the general layout anymore.

  Sofia had stacked the deck plans in 3D and fed the wireframe model to everyone’s on-person computer. All they had to do was tap in their starting point and the exact direction to the bow of the ship. That would give the GPS a reference point to calibrate the model to its current heading. After that they could refer to the ship’s layout while on the run, following the projection inside their shooting glasses. Virtual reality mapped over what they could see through the lenses, just like the helicopter pilots had, but reduced and ruggedized enough for on-person systems.

  The Activity had spent three years developing the system. Since this was just a training mission, the Delta team had agreed to be the first to guinea pig it. They’d spent three hours running around the Peleliu—which also had required a surprising amount of work to get the plans for. Their consensus? The system “kicked ass”…then they’d given her thirty-seven mods they’d like added to the system ASAP. Turns out that Richie had implemented nine others while they were testing—which shouldn’t have been possible.

  On the cruise ship’s projected wireframe model, she could see that the pool deck had an outer running track that split to either side of the exhaust stacks. With a tap, she was able to see a deck overview in the background that showed Duane racing down the other side. She cleared it with another tap so that she could see what lay beyond the lens more clearly.

  From the top deck, Sofia had a real-world view down on the slightly wider deck below them.

  Every time she saw someone standing at the rail and searching outward, she shot them.

  Simunitions were simulated ammunition that were accurate to a hundred meters, left a tiny paint dot, and stung when you were shot with them. She left four “hostiles” cursing behind her. Remembering her experience with Duane, she made sure to shoot each one three times—twice in the helmet and once in the chest when they spun around to figure out who was shooting them from above.

  One was angry enough to shoot back at her even though he was technically dead, but she was protected by the high railing designed to make sure that tourists didn’t fall overboard.

  Duane didn’t have to wait long for her at the front of the top deck.

  “How many, sister?”

  “Four. You…brother?”

  “Crap! Three.” And now he was starting to sound like her too. Definitely time to drop the “sister” thing. He’d initially done it to keep things easy between them. But his thoughts about the armed woman who had raced down the deck toward him were anything but brotherly.

  He reached into his pack and pulled out a length of 9mm tactical line.

  Flipping a knot around the forward rail, he looked over and doublechecked the line that she’d set up. The knot looked good. Who knew competent women were so goddamn hot?

  “See you at the bottom,” she offered a cocky smile then climbed over the rail and slid out of sight.

  He just watched her go. He’d almost eaten the side of the pool by doing that. He’d been watching her slide down and had to yell “Let go!” to remind himself what he was supposed to be paying attention to.

  And still he was standing here.

  Duane grabbed the line and jumped over the rail. He slid down to land on the starboard side wing bridge, the tiny platform three stories down that stuck out the side of the ship’s control bridge so that the commander could look at exactly what was happening over the edge of his ship.

  No one there.

  Door to the bridge…locked. Bastards. It would never be locked in real life.

  He could see the bridge crew inside through the glass. A couple of SOG types with handguns still holstered and rifles slung over shoulders were looking forward, toward the helicopter that was now hovering a half mile ahead of the ship as a distraction.

  Well, he was about to piss off the cruise company.

  He yanked a small breaching charge out of his right thigh pocket, a detonator out of the left. Slapping the C-4 on the door and ramming in the detonator, he flicked the tip of it and moved as far away as he could. Not much space on the wing bridge.

  The blast hit him with a body blow about equal to being tossed to the dirt during hand-to-hand combat training. A sharp kick and the door was out of his way.

  He shot the first two “hostiles.”

  Then there was a hard bang from the far side of the bridge. Sofia had found the guts to use the breaching charge he’d given her while they were gearing up for the jump from the helo.

  Everyone turned from him to facing the other direction. He shot two more and watched two others come to a stop and look down at their chests in surprise.

  Sofia had shot them.

  “Seven,” he shouted to her as she came into view.

  “Mierda! Seis.” So he was finally one “hostile” casualty ahead of her.

  The bridge crew were staring at him in shock.

  “Captain,” Duane picked out a tall blon
d guy. “Hit your security lockdown, please.”

  When the man didn’t respond, Sofia walked up and nudged him in the ribs with the barrel of her rifle. “He did say please.”

  Shaking off his shock, the captain flipped up a cover and pushed down on a red button before turning back to them. “You blew up our doors.”

  “Blame them. They shouldn’t have locked the doors in the first place. Would you have locked them?”

  He ignored the captain as he grudgingly confirmed that the wing bridge doors would never be locked during standard operations. With his rifle, Duane waved all of the “dead” SOG agents toward an open spot between the navigation console and the helmsman’s station.

  “Have a seat, boys.” They might be technically dead, but they looked some kind of pissed and he wasn’t going to trust them for a second. Once they were on the floor, he stripped their weapons.

  “Do it, Sofia.”

  A bunch of the guys twisted in surprise to inspect her. Though how they could miss her gender despite the combat vest and helmet was beyond him—Sofia radiated woman like a bomb’s heat wave. Macho assholes being taken down by a “mere” woman…very not happy.

  The SOGs began muttering among themselves about what they’d like to do to Sofia.

  Duane was less than gentle as he disarmed them, slammed them face down onto the deck and Zip Tied them hard. They shut up fast enough.

  In the meantime, she’d been studying the control console with an intensity that drew her brows together. She reached for a control.

  One of the ship’s crew protested.

  Casually, almost as an afterthought, she pulled out her handgun and aimed it at the center of the officer’s chest without turning to face him.

  “You sure that you’re a desk agent?” Duane could only grin. It was a move worthy of a Unit operator.

  Sofia ignored him and hit the control she’d sought out.

  An alarm ripped through the bridge.

  “Wait,” the officer protested despite her unwavering weapon. “We’re at sea, you can’t open that door.”