Duane cursed again, but this time everyone just waited.
“That’s what they found? What OPC found?” Duane asked.
Smith nodded.
“So, the trafficking isn’t effectively government sanctioned. They found where it is run and operated by the government.”
“Fuck!” Chad was not happy. “I thought General Aguado was just a bad egg. Took everything I could do to not chuck the bastard overboard. I was hoping we were done with that place. Venezuela is coming apart and their president-dictator hates America.”
“He does,” Agent Smith stated. “The connection they found doesn’t necessarily lead to his office, but it definitely hits high in the government. Specifically in SEBIN, their secret police. SEBIN is also their CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and US Marshalls all rolled into one. With a level of nasty that even our own SOG doesn’t go near. What he hates even more than us are dissidents. If a person is imprisoned by SEBIN, they rarely are seen again. And their families, especially their wives and children, are believed to be trafficked into sex and labor by the government in retribution.”
“And what they must do to those women and children…” Duane couldn’t even finish the sentence. Everyone, even Chad—who’d definitely seen more awful shit than the rest of them combined—looked queasy.
He finally understood why the team’s women weren’t here at the bar with them.
It wasn’t because the idea was too gruesome. It was because the women would already be on board. It was the men that Smith had to be sure of.
Chapter 12
“What are we doing here again?”
Sofia was amazed that Richie didn’t have every detail about why they were flying back to the States.
Fred Smith opened his mouth and Sofia glared at him until he shut it. He’d taken the men away and told them something that had changed every one of them. The unflappable Kyle had turned grim. Richie—who was always a little clingy—was glued to Melissa’s side. Chad’s fierce silence made him appear truly dangerous despite his Iowa farm boy looks.
And Duane hadn’t met her eyes once since they’d been awoken at dawn and shoved onto this plane. The unmarked Gulfstream business jet was covering the ground from Panama to Washington State in a little over six hours and they were getting close.
“ECHELON,” Sofia explained, “was partly based here in central Washington—out in the Yakima Training Center at a location called the Yakima Research Station.”
She, of course knew about it from her time at the Activity.
“ECHELON was part of the Five Eyes agreement set up in 1941. Us, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada created a cooperative, intelligence-sharing service during World War II. Full access to shared intel, no matter who got what. It was run on our side by FBI, CIA, NSA, and a couple of others,” that she wasn’t authorized to mention because their identities hadn’t been made public by the thief-turned-traitor Snowden.
“Yakima? What did they do here?”
“Gathering signal intelligence from Soviet satellites mostly.”
“Let me guess,” Richie might be the one geeking out, but everyone was listening closely, even Duane who had sat a row back across the aisle by Chad rather than with her. “You’re speaking in past tense. That implies that it has been shut down because Soviet intel is no longer on the satellites, it’s all cyber and Dark Web games now.”
She nodded. That and they’d consolidated the intel gathering at a new, vastly more capable facility in Colorado at the Air Force Space Command. It was rapidly becoming the nation’s Number Two intelligence agency headquarters after Fort Belvoir, Virginia where The Activity was based among more than a dozen others.
“So what are we doing here?” Carla asked suddenly over-loudly as the engine roar eased down.
Sofia’s ears popped as the cabin pressure changed and they began their descent.
“Well!” Richie jumped in before Sofia could speak. Clearly he now had the missing pieces he’d needed. “They may have shut down the Yakima station for ECHELON—you all remember that scene in the second Jason Bourne movie when Landy calls for an ECHELON package to observe Bourn? So cool! Don’t know how I forgot that. And when—”
“Richie,” Melissa called on him to focus.
“Right,” then he plowed his way back to the topic at hand. “But the facilities are still there. Did you know that Venezuela has just two satellites in orbit? The new one is for land, agriculture, mapping—that sort of thing. Max resolution is over two meters and it’s in a fast and low orbit, so it’s no good for following people. But their first satellite, the Simón Bolívar, is up in geosynchronous orbit and totally belongs to SEBIN. It’s a hot signals intelligence gathering machine that the Chinese put up there for them. Supposed to be as secure as hell. This means that we’ve cracked it and can hear all of—”
“We didn’t crack it,” Sofia hated to burst Richie’s balloon.
And sure enough, he looked like a little kid holding an empty string.
She glanced at Melissa, who patted Richie’s arm in sympathy.
“Their codes are still secure,” Sofia repeated. “But Yakima is listening and it has also become the center for most of our intel on SEBIN.”
That appeared to placate him some.
Melissa was apparently attached to Richie’s sweetness—which would never work for her. Sofia wanted… She turned to Duane and caught him watching her. At least he had the decency to not look away immediately. But after a few seconds, he did turn toward the window and look out at the approaching landscape.
Sofia didn’t want…anything—though Duane had been working down the path to convince her that maybe she did.
And then Smith had done something to him.
All Duane could see every time he looked at Sofia was what happened to women in screwed up, ultra-macho, horridly repressive regimes like Venezuela. Smith had laid out for them just what horrors it took to be a Tier 3 human trafficking country. Then he’d started breaking down the known abuses by SEBIN.
Nothing about the mission.
Nothing about when the team was inserting, where or what their mission might be.
Way too much about what was happening to the civilians and protestors. At first it had seemed like he was laying it on too thick. Then Duane had started looking at the reports and wondered if Fred Smith wasn’t treating the guys just a little bit kindly.
Way too easy to imagine Sofia there. And how much value such a beautiful woman would have to a trafficker. He wanted to shoo her home, back to whatever safe, quiet corner of the country she never talked about—not drag her out into the field where—
It wouldn’t be right to lock Sofia away somewhere secure, even if she’d let him. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to try.
“Dude?” he whispered to Chad after Sofia had turned once more to face the front of the plane.
“Yeah, bro?”
“Any of this making sense to you?” There were pieces on the move here. Big ones. Ones the SOG had been willing to stage a battle on a cruise ship for. But none of them were fitting together.
“Shit. Why ask me? You need to ask Richie or your girlfriend—they’re the thinkers on this team. I’m like you, just along for the ride.”
That was one of the things about Chad.
He was always low-key, always had your back. Steadiest guy you’d ever met. And up until now Duane had been comfortable in that role himself. Just along for the ride. Glad to take down the bad guys and have a cold one at the end of the day. There was a reason that neither of them was a leader.
Kyle was the natural leader, keeping all of their rampant personalities focused on the same track. Carla was the driver—the force behind all their butts that shoved them ahead at full tilt. Richie and his girlfriend—
“Wait!” He nudged Chad who was pretending to sleep even as the airplane’s wheels squealed on the runway. “What did you call Sofia earlier? My what?”
“Fuck, you’re being slow. Not like you, br
o. Not like you at all.” Chad didn’t even bother to open his eyes.
Sofia had changed him. A couple goddamn kisses and his brain was warped somehow.
He watched her profile as she chatted with Melissa.
What had she done to him?
He’d been happy just being a Unit operator. And the team he’d landed on had some serious grit—so damn good he was always amazed that he was part of it.
But Sofia Forteza called up something deeper in him. Reminded him why he’d walked away from his life to join up in the first place. Made him want to know, understand, be involved at a new level.
Then he thought about what Smith had been telling them and he decided that maybe just being along for the ride wasn’t a bad thing.
Chapter 13
“I thought the Pacific Northwest was supposed to be so green,” Duane was looking down out of the Bell JetRanger helicopter she’d rented in Yakima. After days of complete immersion in Venezuelan intelligence gathering, Sofia had needed a break. And, gathering her courage, she’d invited Duane along to the family home.
At first it had been for support, something she hadn’t realized until after she’d asked, otherwise she never would have. She wanted to go see Nana, but really needed someone to bolster her courage to face the rest of her family. Sofia had never needed anyone, but this time she did.
But she’d also wanted him to see her home…except she hadn’t warned him. And still hadn’t as they flew west-southwest toward Dundee, Oregon.
“Yakima is in eastern Washington,” she explained. “There are big mountains up ahead, and the rain stays on the other side.” The low morning sunlight made everything look so fresh and alive. The higher hills were already dusted with reds and golds on the trees of early fall. The valleys were still lush with the end of summer. She loved watching the turn of the seasons.
Duane grunted an acknowledgement and continued to stare down at the landscape. And Sofia was now third-guessing her invitation.
She was so looking forward to some time off. The Venezuela team, buried in the heart of three hundred thousand acres of achingly dry scrublands that made up the Yakima Training Center, had been so excited by the team’s arrival. For once, instead of simply collecting and feeding data to some far off facility at Fort Meade, they had a real-life Delta team onsite. The team had been inundated by the enthusiastic researchers. They’d delivered briefings on everything from police vehicles to SEBIN’s dreaded La Tumba. The Tomb. A place political prisoners disappeared into and were rarely ever seen again.
There had been no chance to talk with Duane. They were all quartered together, trained together, and fed meals together. It was amazing they weren’t all showering and going to the bathroom in unison.
Sofia’s thoughts were awash in too much information and too many grim images.
Duane looked as tired as she felt.
But he wasn’t avoiding her. At first she’d thought that’s what it might be—morning after such an incredible kiss, as if they’d really had that one-night stand that she was sure she wouldn’t have regretted. But, more often than not, they sat next to each other for meals. He laughed at her jokes, though he rarely spoke above a one-line banter.
And when they’d been given time off, she’d decided to go home. Four hours by car without traffic—but it was only a ninety-minute flight.
She wasn’t sure what had possessed her when she’d asked Duane if he wanted to join her. Sofia had suggested it quietly, when they had a brief moment apart from the others so that she wouldn’t be too embarrassed when he turned her down.
He’d searched her eyes for a long moment, then simply nodded. “That would be great.”
Now that they were finally alone and flying around the mass of the Mount Hood, a mostly dormant volcanic peak, she didn’t know what to say.
Maybe she should change the plans. Timberline Lodge stood on the southern slope of the mountain. It was a grand, Depression-era timber lodge know for its skiing and hiking trails. But she’d wanted to go home. It had been too long since she’d seen her grandmother.
How could she be taking Duane there? He didn’t know about her family. He didn’t know about…so much. Like how she felt every time she came near to him.
“Duane—”
“Sofia—”
“You first.”
“No, you.”
She used her I’m-busy-being-the-pilot prerogative to wait him out.
“Why am I here?” He finally asked over the intercom that connected them.
“Don’t you want to be?”
“No. Yes. I do want to be with you. I haven’t been able to think about anything else. But I—”
“That’s fine then,” and they stumbled back into silence. It had never struck her as a strange disconnect before, but it was. In a five-seat helicopter, the two pilot seats placed them shoulder-close. Yet they spoke over the intercom headsets as if they were using cellphones across the country.
She concentrated on passing between Mt. Hood’s eleven thousand-foot peak and the four thousand feet of controlled airspace around Portland International Airport. Not hard really, there was thirty miles between the two.
“So you live near here?”
“Uh, yes, Oregon. Outside of a small town called Dundee.”
“Where they teach beautiful intel analysts to fly helicopters?”
“I have a nana who believes very definite things about a woman’s capabilities.”
“I’ve seen you shoot. That doesn’t just come from military training. Was that her, too?”
“Yes.” Monosyllabic responses. Next she’d be down to male grunts if she didn’t do something about it. “My family owns some vineyards on the other side of Portland.”
“Oregon grows wine?”
Sofia actually had to turn to look at him and see if he was joking. He didn’t appear to be. “Number Two region in the country after Napa Valley.”
“I’m more of a beer guy. Isn’t Oregon the place they thought up microbreweries?”
“I thought you were more of a Coca-Cola guy.”
He barked out a laugh, “Doesn’t my dad wish. He was so damned angry when I joined up, I’m surprised he didn’t disinherit me.”
“My grandmother named me the heir the day I joined.”
“The heir to what?”
Sofia wished she had flown more slowly or reached this point in the conversation sooner. But I-5 flashed by below them. She followed the Willamette River as it wound its way through some of the country’s lushest farmland. Leaving the valley at Dundee, she climbed them up over the deeply rolling, vine-covered hills. The autumn golds of the vines, border by the dark green conifers that carpeted so much of Oregon was like a soothing balm on her nerves and eyes. The brilliant blue sky was glorious and always an additionally cheering sight for any Oregonian, far to used to the fall, winter, and spring rains.
“This,” she nodded downward, “is the Dundee Hills AVA. That’s American Viticultural Area—a very prestigious designation. There are several internationally recognized, award-winning vineyards here. My family owns the top-rated Colina Soleada Wines as well as seven others. Though we don’t advertise that relationship to avoid any perception of diluting our brand.”
And now was when the change happened. When men found out who she was and their entire attitude about her changed. It was too late to unsay the words. Too late to turn back to the Yakima desert and pretend that—
“Colina Soleada? Spanish for Sunny Hill?”
“Not long after the war, when they were newly married, my nana and abuelito came over from Penedès wine region near Barcelona. It is one of the oldest and best grape regions of Europe and has been making wine for over twenty-seven hundred years. They settled here.”
“You grew up in a place called Sunny Hill?”
“Sí. Colina Soleada.”
“Huh,” Duane grunted thoughtfully as she flew one more lap above the golden vineyards she had grown up in.
They spread
in every direction. There were two hundred wineries in the rolling Dundee hills, ranging from tiny, twenty-acre dreams to major operations like their own. Beyond lay the wide flats of the Willamette River Valley stretching from the nearby pine-green Coast Range over to the snow-capped Cascade Mountains some forty-miles to the east. The sunset-colored vines. The blooms of rose bushes planted at the end of so many rows. Small patches of orchards thick with apples, pears, and hazelnuts. It was still the most beautiful place she’d ever been.
He remained silent as she circled down to the helipad behind the grand Spanish villa close by the vintner’s buildings. They were barely twenty feet up when he broke his silence.
“Sounds nice,” as if he’d never heard of their wine. “Hope you’re not upset, but I’m more of a beer man.”
Sofia almost bobbled the landing, but managed to get the helicopter’s skids settled onto the grassy helipad without looking too awkward. She didn’t know whether to be shocked or ecstatic. The vineyard was such a part of her life it was impossible to imagine someone not knowing it. It’s revelation had reshaped or destroyed every relationship she’d ever had.
But on the other hand, Duane would make no assumptions about who she was or who her family was. And coming from money himself, actually, having walked away from money to join the Army, meant that maybe her family’s wealth wouldn’t twist him either. That was a gift beyond imagining.
Colina Soleada? The heir? Then what the hell was she doing in the military?
Shit! It was one of Mama’s favorites at parties—“This darling little Oregon winery I discovered. They send me a case of their private reserve whenever I need one.” She didn’t entertain often, but when she did, it was one of her pat lines. But she meant it. Their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay had frequently graced the family’s dinner table as well.
But it didn’t take a genius to read Sofia’s body language. He’d felt it right through the helo as she spoke. She’d flown so smoothly until they began discussing her family, then she’d tightened up, almost as jerky as a beginner pilot. It screamed her unease with what she’d been telling him—a feeling he completely understood. He’d regretted telling her about his family, wishing he could take it back. The least he could do was not let her own revelation change anything for him.
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 14
