Here’s a breaching charge in case they’ve locked the bridge wing doors. Trigger it like this and stand with your back to it when it blows so that it doesn’t mess with your night vision. The shaped charge shouldn’t have any blowback—no shrapnel—except the small pressure wave of the detonation.
He’d also treated her as if he simply assumed that she’d succeed which had made all of the difference in the world.
And then, when it had really mattered, the moment before the second attack on the group-enhanced machismo of the SOG in the elegant whisky bar, he’d given her permission to stand down on moral principles. Still no question of her capability.
His final comment before he’d descended the FAST rope to clean up a last-ditch altercation? A soft “Well done.”
Now she truly understood. It was The Unit’s highest form of praise. And that was all a Unit operator needed. They didn’t want publicity or bestselling tell-all books. They wanted to do the job and fade away.
Her answer? To slink away into the darkness and try to analyze what had just happened. Yep! That was definitely her. Analyze the shit out of everything, girl. Much like Carla’s “crazy bitch,” it had earned her a reputation as a cold bitch—an epithet that she’d embraced because it was true. Damn straight! became her standard reply. It had served as her only method of survival in her family and it had served her just fine so far in the military.
Duane, however, was not looking at her. Instead, he was still watching Fred Smith.
“So,” Duane toyed with a fried plantain patacone and managed to make it look like a steel martial arts throwing star that he might be embedding in Smith’s throat at the least temptation. “What’s the mission they wanted so badly that they’d risk so much to get it. And what dragged the colonel down to Panama?”
And Fred Smith, Mr. Unflappably Affable, suddenly looked grim for the first time since she’d met him.
“By the time we’re done, you may regret last night’s success,” Fred was inspecting his plate. He’d finally stopped eating like the complacent bastard he’d been making himself out to be.
Duane checked in with Gibson—absolutely no expression at all.
A glance at Sofia—he still couldn’t believe that she’d surfaced out of nowhere—revealed that she didn’t know either. That he found particularly unnerving. He’d watched her put seemingly random facts together so many times over the last two nights that he wondered if she was psychic. He’d given her the absolute minimum training for each action—because that’s all there’d been time for—and she’d picked up everything perfectly.
The one-two attack on the bridge had certainly saved his hide. He wouldn’t have even come up with the attack plan in the first place if she hadn’t pushed him.
And her backup at the skylight had been both perfect, and remorseless. She’d fired without hesitation, even when the men in the crosshairs had technically been friendlies.
Michael started to speak, but Fred held up a hand to stop him. Man liked living dangerously.
Fred looked up slowly, inspecting each person around the table carefully before speaking.
“Any of you know about Operation Prime Cause?”
Nothing Duane had ever heard of.
“More CIA hush-hush shit?” Chad tossed out then looked to him.
But Duane noticed Carla and Sofia both looked up quickly. Fred had their full attention, so he kept his mouth shut.
Fred nodded. “Ex-CIA field agents—”
“Special Operations Group?” Duane nearly spat on the table to clear the awful taste out of his mouth.
Fred’s shrug neither confirmed nor denied. “They’ve been joined by other ex-Special Ops personnel from several branches, not all of them US.”
“Another rogue contractor,” Chad didn’t sound any happier than Duane felt.
“Yeah, buddy,” this time he was completely in Chad’s court. “Why are we always cleaning up their shit?”
Yet, Sofia, his reality check across the table was having a different reaction that he couldn’t read. She certainly didn’t add the third line to their banter as she’d taken to doing.
“Quiet,” was all Gibson said and they all shut the hell up. Duane tried not to feel sick that he’d spoken at all—like his mother’s iced stare when he spoke out of turn at one of her dinner parties. It was no wonder he didn’t speak much, he’d been trained in shut-the-fuck-up since the cradle. It had probably been engraved on his silver baby rattle.
“Not contractors. Not mercenaries,” Fred Smith spoke into the void of silence. “They’re a strictly non-profit group. They make contact through the US Ambassador and receive full in-country cooperation from judicial and police—military if the others are too corrupt.”
“What’s their target?”
“Children.”
“What the hell?” Not what Duane had been expecting at all.
“OPC, Operation Prime Cause, is a team of ex-field operatives who rescue kids from human traffickers, prostitution-supply rings, and brothels. They get the kids out and into an aftercare program, and they get the traffickers’ asses on ice.”
“Kick ass!” Chad’s highest form of praise.
“Doesn’t sound like a Delta mission though,” Duane just couldn’t see what it had to do with them.
“It’s not,” Colonel Gibson agreed.
“So, you’re telling us this shit because…” Chad was watching the wrong person, which was weird because he always watched the hot women.
Duane could see the answer on Sofia’s face. Could see the hot anger beneath her Latina skin. But it wasn’t just anger. There was a hunger there. The kind of hunger that came from the sudden realization that having a real-world impact on something she felt passionate about was finally in her power.
She’d heard of OPC. Knew about them. Was—
Duane laughed aloud and everyone spun to stare at him.
“What?” Carla snapped.
Okay, maybe a laugh hadn’t been the right response, but he’d just had the tiniest flash of insight into what it must be like to be in Sofia Forteza’s brain. She worked for The Activity which meant she was one of the best intel analysts in the business. She was also trained in field tactics. Was brave as a Unit operator and performing above the profile of many of them.
Add to that, the powers-that-be choosing to embed her here. In their team. At this moment. It was the power and clarity—the pure certainty of the vision that had evoked his laugh. There was a far larger plan running in the background here and he could actually hear the gears meshing as they were all caught up in it.
Was that her mind was like? All the time? It sounded pretty damn busy to have all that going on constantly in her pretty head.
He thought back through his experiences of her and decided that the answer was an emphatic yes. He’d been trained by his mother, Carla, and Melissa to never judge a woman by her looks. Sofia Forteza was a stunning woman; one that blew him away. And that brain of hers that never stopped moving was equally, or maybe even more impressive.
Except perhaps for that sudden stillness of one soul-searing kiss. Then, there had been a deep silence as her eyelids had fluttered shut and for just that instant she’d given in to him.
He offered her the briefest nod of acknowledgement—that was one damn sharp lady sitting across the table—which only earned him a squint-eyed scowl.
“The reason,” the colonel spoke up when it was clear that Duane was going to be keeping his mouth shut, “that you may wish you had not succeeded so well last night is because a mission that OPC can’t handle is about to become yours.”
“Which is?” Kyle’s steady voice made sure no one else was going to interrupt. He’d done one of his leader things and suddenly the whole team, even Carla, had become an instrument for his command.
“The agents of OPC only go in with the full support of the government. They don’t take down the traffickers themselves—in fact they come in posing as buyers of services and are very careful
to be arrested right alongside the traffickers to protect their cover. Local law enforcement—or federal if the locals aren’t to be trusted—and national courts make the arrests and dispense the punishments.”
“Dead clean,” was Kyle’s assessment and no one argued. Not mercenaries. Good men with a serious cause.
“However, they do hear of situations that are outside their carefully circumscribed ROE. Situations with potentially national impact.”
Rules of Engagement for a standard military op had elements like: you may not fire until fired upon, no return fire if it will put civilians at risk, and so on. It sounded as if OPC’s ROE was dead sharp as well.
Whereas ROEs were always an interesting area for The Unit. The Unit’s standard ROE was much looser: do what’s necessary and don’t let anyone know you were ever there. Civilians were rarely at risk from Unit operations because Delta Force didn’t drop five hundred-pound bombs, they typically took out villains one sniper shot at a time.
“General Aguado,” Sofia stated flatly in one of her gestalt jumps that Duane realized was typical for her—and was exactly correct now that she’d said it. “Human trafficking. He’s been talking.”
“He has,” Fred Smith agreed. “OPC are the ones who tipped us to them in the first place.”
“No. I’ve been chasing him for six months. We…” and then she tapered off to a silence Duane didn’t understand before swearing lightly in Spanish.
“OPC tipped me. I met with your boss, and he suggested that it be assigned to your desk. Colonel Richards thinks very highly of you.”
“He doesn’t tell me this,” Sofia was inspecting her untouched meal intently. It was hard to tell in the shady palapa whether or not she was blushing.
Smith covered for her, which made Duane think a little more kindly of him. “We’re here in Panama for planning and training. The geopolitical problems of Venezuela are escalating and destabilizing the region. My department,” he was smart enough not to mention the failed CIA team directly, “and now—because of your victory last night—this team have been tasked with fixing that. The general was our first key in that lock.”
No one else was eating, but Duane felt more relaxed than he had all morning and grabbed another patacone then dredged it in the aji chombo sauce.
This was exactly why he’d signed up. Why he’d fought to get into Delta. This was what had driven him to survive the testing that culled over ninety-five percent of applicants.
He’d known from the first day that The Unit was home. But this? Taking on a foreign government who thought abusing its population, especially the women and children, somehow made sense. This fucking rocked!
He bit down on the patacone and gasped. He’d forgotten the lethal heat of the aji chombo sauce.
Chapter 10
“What has changed for you, Duane Jenkins?”
He leaned on the railing of the casa overlooking the Portobelo harbor, looking to her as if he was searching far beyond the horizon. A gigantic flock of pelicans flew in, skidding onto the water close by the building The Unit had taken over until the surface was dotted gray and white as much as it was turquoise water. Swallows soared above, feeding on the evening bugs in happy loops and swirls.
Sofia had seen the moment he’d shifted from curious to committed. Duane Jenkins was two people as surely as if he was twins who kept trading places before her eyes.
Duane One was the easy-going Delta shooter. Laughing with Chad, patient when giving her new techniques she hadn’t known, holding her close and showing her the detonator the moment before he blew the crap out of something—she would bet much money that he had thoroughly enjoyed that. A comfortable man, who had kissed her without permission. It had been a long time since a man had gotten past her defenses far enough that she didn’t break their nose or at least take a good shot at busting their balls for doing such a thing. Quite why she’d allowed that from Duane One still eluded her.
Duane Two she’d only met twice. Once above the skylight open to the whisky bar below. It had been a fierce and brutal warrior who had called in the second attack on the SOGs. In retrospect, Sofia wondered at the immense control he’d shown in not simply laying waste to them all.
The only other place she’d seen such fury was in her own mirror the night before she left home to join the military. The night her mother had slapped her—Sofia had been too shocked to defend herself—and wished that she’d never had such a useless bitch of a daughter.
The second time she’d seen Duane Two had been at the lunch table under the breezy palapa. Something had transformed him. Everyone had gone somber. She could feel the oppression suffered by the women. Had seen it on the faces in General Aguado’s compound. Had seen it…many places. She knew about OPC, donated money to them. Had read the stories about the children—
And suddenly Duane had started eating with a large appetite and glowing smile—an avaricious one. One she couldn’t make sense of and she postulated it was greed for vengeance. That, alarmingly, fit Duane Two well.
Tonight, she could see Duane One hauling his thoughts back from wherever he’d gone until, finally, he was standing beside her on the casa’s balcony, looking out over the bay.
The sun was dropping over the hills behind them. Sailboats, fishing trawlers, and an odd selection of luxury yachts were anchored out in the sleepy town’s harbor.
She’d asked about those because there were far more than such a small town would justify. It seemed that a lot of the yachts had belonged to over-extended travelers who had simply abandoned them here after they’d gone broke. Coastal cargo freighters were anchored when they couldn’t find another contract—left to float or sink. The wide bay floor was apparently littered with several thousand wrecks spanning the last four centuries. Luxury yachts were sometimes docked and a check arrived each year for their upkeep, but the boats were never retrieved. Eventually, when the checks stopped arriving, the boats began their long decay toward a final resting place at the bottom of the bay. Or a hurricane slammed ashore and took care of a large number of them all at once.
The old forts, burned by pirates four hundred years ago, were a UNESCO World Heritage site and dominated the waterfront with its old stone and rusted Spanish cannons. Once the great trading port for shipping Peruvian silver to Spain—and the most fortified town in the Americas when it had boasted ten separate forts—only UNESCO’s attention had saved it from abandonment and total ruin.
Duane looked breathtakingly powerful against the backdrop.
“What changed for you at the table?” She asked the question again. Asked it before she could do something she’d regret later, like reaching for him.
“How much do you know about me?”
Leave it to Duane to understand her role as an Activity analyst and that, of course, she’d have done her homework. “Nothing prior to you entering Delta Selection except your rank and a listed home city of Atlanta, Georgia.”
He nodded and leaned back on the rail, still facing away. They were on the casa’s middle floor, at one end of the long balcony.
“Dad works for a major company there.”
“Coca-Cola.”
“Atlanta isn’t just Coke. We have Delta (the airlines not The Unit), FedEx, UPS, Home Depot, AT&T Mobility… Bunch of others. They’re all bigger.”
“Okay,” that would teach her not to assume.
“But you’re right.”
She punched him on the arm hard enough to make him flinch. All he had the decency to do was laugh—it had been a good punch. Again she was overwhelmed by the solidness Duane represented.
“Dad’s way up. Mr. Third-generation Major Corporate. I was following in his footsteps, Mr. Goody-two-shoes Fourth-gen Junior Executive-in-training. Just about had my goddamn MBA. Wrote a thesis on Coke, one the whole board read—changing several long-term growth policies. They made my thesis professor sign a non-disclosure before the company would let him read it.”
He went back to brooding on whatever had brough
t him out here into the sunset.
“What made you walk away?”
Duane cricked his neck as if it was suddenly paining him. “Shit!” He turned and dropped into one of the creaky wicker chairs that faced the water. She sat in the one close beside him and waited.
Silence was one of the best tactics she’d ever learned for extracting information. Gregarious people couldn’t stand the void and felt a need to fill it with words. The more reticent ones, like Duane, needed to be left the space to gather their thoughts before they spoke. The sky darkened visibly before he spoke again.
“My Dad took me on a tour. International sales. Twenty cities in thirty days. Multiple meetings every damned day—showing me his job and also my introduction to the major players, country by country. You know how the poorest people often live by the airports?”
She nodded, not quite following the subject change.
“Mexico City, Panama City, Bogotá, Quito, Caracas was particularly horrid, Rio might have been even nastier, Joburg, Nairobi, Cairo, Mumbai…It was like some crazy rollercoaster ride of all the worst the world could hand out. I remember sitting in the back of our limo—sometimes our armored limo with a police escort because Coke is that important to their economy and Dad is that high up—and just watching out the window. I like a cold one as much as the next Georgia boy, but I kept thinking that there was no way in hell Sharing a Coke was going to fix any of that shit. I took to skipping the fancy dinners after all the meetings and walking through the cities instead. Only the “nice” neighborhoods at first, but it didn’t take me long to buy tattered jeans, tennies, and a poor-man’s t-shirt and start walking into the worst of them. What I saw out there still gives me nightmares.”
“So you joined the military.”
“I figured I could help more people that way. Actual, real-life help.”
But Duane’s reaction today had been stronger than that. “There was something different for you today.”
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 10
