Heart Strike

by M. L. Buchman

  “Number One in every hike or march event from the first day of Delta Selection.”

  “That,” Kyle said and patted his wife’s knee to stop her before she could speak, “would be me.”

  “Except once,” Carla insisted.

  “Except once,” he agreed. Kyle was as amiable as she was prickly. Did that balance them out to make them one complete person, or were they always bro and bitch to the team?

  “I walked his ass into the ground on the forty-miler.”

  Melissa looked at her again.

  The forty-mile, rucksack hike.

  It was the final exercise of Delta Selection before the Commander’s Review Board. After thirty brutal days of endless hikes and orienteering, it all came down to that moment. An individual—with a bloody heavy pack—crossing forty miles of mountainous, trackless forest at night with a compass and a flashlight. After thirty days of tests and challenges thinning the class, that one hike had still cut the remaining quarter of her class in half again. And it had nearly killed her to hold her lead. Her strength wasn’t actually hiking under a heavy load; it was that all of her years of backcountry hiking had made her exceptional at orienteering. Add that to her ability to visualize a topo map like a museum exhibit laid out before her, and she never wasted a step.

  Carla was not that tall a woman and her legs weren’t long and sinewy. Below the hem of her dress, they looked like the legs of a workout queen, not someone who had walked everyone else into the ground on such a brutal hike. That meant a lot about what had driven her to succeed.

  Carla being a cast-iron bitch probably covered it.

  “That’s impressive,” Melissa finally offered, not knowing what else to say.

  “Warned you.” Carla tapped her own chest. “Total bitch.”

  “And mind reader,” Melissa agreed as pleasantly as she could.

  Richie snorted out a laugh.

  Melissa didn’t mind that Richie had shaved Chad off for the moment. He’d saved her from being truly rude to a new teammate. But Carla was really testing her resolve on that point.

  “Got a name?” Chad asked from where he’d returned to the dining table and was fooling around with the cards that Duane had managed a look at upon her arrival.

  “I already told you my name—Melissa.”

  She saw Richie repeat it a few times subvocally, as if memorizing it deep, like it was important.

  “Not that. What did they call you, honey?”

  She glared at Chad. “You try honey again and you’ll find you have trouble walking for a while.”

  “I could get to like her,” Melissa could hear Carla saying softly to her husband.

  But Melissa had something else she had to straighten out at the moment and didn’t dare look away from Chad.

  He was grinning in a wolfish way that he seemed to think was amiable and charming. He tried again. “So, what did they call you…sweetheart?”

  “The Cat. You won’t hear me coming, and I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  “Ooo, I’m so scared.” Chad pretended to cower.

  Duane rolled his eyes at his buddy. At least he could see how much Chad had misread his own charm.

  She was just about to move in for the kill—

  “But why ‘The Cat’? The name had to come before the description,” Richie asked her with simple curiosity, missing all of the dynamics of the moment.

  Melissa was ready to unleash The Cat on someone—Chad for being a jerk, Carla for being a bitch, or Kyle for being so content with the mayhem the other two were trying to unload on her. At this point, she’d even take a swipe at the silent Duane for not speaking up at all.

  But she couldn’t take it out on Richie; he’d actually been nice to her. She took a deep breath, looking for steady even if calm was long gone.

  “This guy in my OTC class named Jaffe had a cat with too many toes. I have too few.”

  “Cut them off during a pedi?” Carla tossed out, but it was more of a tease than a jibe, and Melissa let it pass.

  “Lost them during a winter hike just below the summit on Mount Rainier during an ice storm.”

  “Shit, man.” Duane spoke for the first time. “I’ve been up there. That’s harsh.”

  “Same storm I lost my brother.”

  It was finally too much; she hadn’t meant to say that. The anguish, so carefully suppressed, had built up inside her and her exhaustion and the stress of this unknown situation had caught up with her. She turned to face Carla Effing Anderson.

  “You happy now, bitch?”

  But Carla’s face had gone white despite her dark complexion. She swung her legs free of Kyle’s lap and leaned forward.

  After a long moment, Carla spoke in a whisper, “The worst pain in the world.” She didn’t make it a question; she knew.

  Melissa swallowed hard. Of all the stupid things to have in common with Carla Anderson: The Unit and a dead brother.

  All she could do was nod her agreement. It had changed her entire world. If not for that, right now she’d happily be working at the Royal BC Museum and playing auntie to her brother’s kids.

  * * *

  Richie looked down at his hands. He knew that this was exactly the sort of moment when he was supposed to know what to do with them—reach out and console the woman beside him. But how did you do that when she was a Unit operator?

  She wasn’t crying, which would have made it easy to offer a gentle pat like James always did with the wimpier Bond girls.

  Instead she looked…hard, like Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only. The pain was there, right on the surface for all to see, but she had it a hundred percent in control—he sat close enough to see that her eyes weren’t even tearing up. Melissa The Cat stared across at Carla with conflicting emotions crossing her face, like she was pissed and sad at the same time.

  “Uh…” Richie didn’t know what to do with the sound now that he’d made it.

  There was a sharp knock on the hotel door that shattered the tableau. Not a coded tap, but the sharp rap-tappa-tap-tap of “Shave and a Haircut.” Carla and Melissa both jerked like they’d been slapped.

  Chad and Duane were already on the move back into their rooms. They’d be out of sight with weapons drawn in case force was needed. Richie swept his radio gear and computer into a sack he’d kept handy and kicked it under the couch.

  He brushed his fingertips across Melissa’s shoulder, partly to get her attention and partly because he wanted to. There was a shock, like one of deep recognition. She felt…amazing, even from that light brush.

  She spun to face him in surprise—whether at the touch or if she felt the same thing, he couldn’t tell.

  “There are a pair of silenced Glock 23s behind the sofa cushion you’re leaning on,” he whispered. Then he stretched his arm along the back of the couch. It would look as if they were a couple, but it placed his hand ready to plunge down and grab a handgun if needed.

  Melissa studied him for just a second, shook her head more like a wet dog than a surprised cat, and nodded. In that instant, Richie was overwhelmed by the blueness of her eyes. There was a depth there normally reserved for dark-eyed women. Her eyes said, “I’ve seen some shit,” then they turned calm and cool as the operator clicked into place.

  As Kyle rose to his feet, checking the room with a single glance before heading to answer the door, Melissa did the strangest thing.

  She turned and leaned back against Richie’s chest as if they were indeed a couple.

  Strategically, it was a good move. First, it provided her with a natural reason to turn and fully face the entryway that had been off her left shoulder. Second, it would look casual to anyone who entered. And third, it placed her hand close beside his, just above the hidden guns, without inhibiting his own line of fire.

  And fourth, it totally overwhelmed him. If brushing h
is fingers along her shoulder had been a shock, having her lean back against his chest was a body blow. She was warm…hot…radiating, as if she was a part of his own bloodstream or nervous system or something. It felt as if she’d always been there, and if he were to place his arm around her waist instead of hovering it over a hidden Glock 23, they’d be just as they were meant to be.

  Her head rested back against his shoulder, brushing half of his face with her hair. It was soft and smelled of shampoo and plane flights—also of icy mountaintops and warm fires on a dark night. He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in.

  “Hey!” She tried to twist around to look at him and impacted his nose with her temple.

  “Ow! Crap!” His eyes crossed at the sudden flash of pain.

  “God damn it!” Carla was swiveling in their direction to see what was happening and had her own pistol drawn.

  That, in turn, had Melissa grabbing for her hidden weapon.

  Chad and Duane rolled into the room with the HK416 assault rifles raised to their shoulders and seeking a target.

  Richie heard the distinct snick of the HKs’ safeties coming off.

  Everyone was holding a weapon except for Richie, who was holding his nose.

  Kyle stepped back in from the short front hall and stopped. A tall thin man peeked over Kyle’s shoulder. He looked familiar, but Richie’s eyes were still watering and he couldn’t see clearly.

  The man surveyed the tense situation.

  “I don’t think they’re glad to see me.”

  * * *

  “You beast! I should shoot you!” Melissa sat bolt upright when she recognized the new arrival.

  Richie grunted when she rammed an elbow into his gut to leverage herself upright, but right then she was too angry to care.

  The man peeking over Kyle’s shoulder had changed to wearing a loose, white, button-down shirt, khaki shorts, and Birkenstock sandals, but it was the same tall frame, thin face, and reddish-blond hair. There was no mistaking him.

  Everyone in the hotel room turned to look at Melissa, and she decided that her next best step was to lose the weapon. She stuffed it back behind the sofa cushion.

  “Any particular reason?” Kyle asked carefully. The others were being slow to stow their own weapons.

  Brazen it out, girl. Besides, you’ve taken enough crap this morning.

  “This is the jerk who sold me this stupid ‘I (heart) Aruba’ T-shirt, insisting that I needed to wear it for you to find me.” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen through his ploy.

  “You look damned good in it too,” the man replied.

  “She does, doesn’t she?” Kyle was smiling, in clear cahoots with the stranger in some guy-ness mode that tempted her to pull the handgun back out from behind the cushion.

  Kyle apparently recognized the look. With a half-amused expression, he stepped aside as if to say, “Hey, go ahead and shoot him if you want to.”

  “I want my twenty dollars back is what I want”—though the weapon was still tempting. “I can’t believe you made me pay for it.”

  “No returns, Ms. Moore.”

  She growled to herself for all the good it would do her, “Maybe I’ll just take it out of your hide.”

  “You’d look great out of it too,” a whisper sounded from very close beside her ear; it tickled. Richie.

  She waited to see if he’d figure out what he’d just said.

  Carla was shaking her head. “He won’t get it unless we tell him.”

  “I won’t get what?”

  Melissa turned to really look at Richie, carefully so as not to smash his nose with her temple again.

  “What did I miss?” Then he got it. “I didn’t mean—” And he blushed scarlet. “I meant in any shirt. You have a sports bra on anyway. I can see it right through the thin cotton—Darn it! That’s even worse, isn’t it?” When the blush hit his ears, he mumbled, “Shutting up now,” and clamped down on his tongue.

  Melissa looked over at Carla. “How in heck did someone that sweet get into this outfit?”

  Carla’s laugh was bright and sparkling, completely belying the rash of attitude she’d been unloading on Melissa since the moment she’d walked through the door. “Beats the shit out of me. When you figure it out, let us know.”

  “Yeah, do that.” Chad was passing close behind the sofa. He leaned over to put Richie in a headlock and gave him a hard knuckle rub on top of his head, clearly unhappy about his own inability to target Melissa.

  She shot an elbow over the back of the couch, intentionally aiming just an inch or so to the side, but still Chad doubled partway over in surprise and clapped one of his hands protectively over his crotch.

  “You, however, Melissa The Cat,” Carla said, “have just proven that you totally belong. Now back the fuck off, Chad.”

  And just that fast, he did.

  Melissa reassessed. Kyle might be the group’s leader, but clearly no one messed with the Wild Woman.

  Then Carla turned to face the new arrival. “Hi, Fred. Haven’t seen you since the last time we started a drug war.”

  Melissa blinked. Started a drug war? Not fought the War on Drugs but—

  Richie leaned in again, narrating. “Cartel de los Soles in Venezuela and Sinaloa out of Mexico; we kinda set them up to hate each other, which wasn’t all that hard. We also deep-sixed thirty tons of cocaine that was on some submarines while we were at it.”

  “I heard about…” she tried to remember, “…the Navy intercepting a submarine, singular, with ten tons of cocaine aboard, not thirty.”

  He shrugged easily. “Duane destroyed and sunk the other two. It was fun; I’d never driven a submarine before. Spent two days running submerged before we gave that one to the BGBs—the Big Gray Boat boys.”

  “Stupid squids,” Chad grumbled. “Gave all the credit to DEVGRU.”

  “I told them we were Seal Team 6,” Duane admitted.

  “Really?” Richie sounded very pleased. “Cool, Duane. They got a bunch of press for it. All over the place.”

  “Feeding the frenzy, bro,” Duane agreed.

  Even Chad looked mollified that more press attention had been misdirected away from The Unit.

  Melissa’s briefings—there were many of them in OTC—had tracked a new and escalating drug war lighting up between the Venezuelan and Mexican cartels that had come out of nowhere six months ago and disrupted deliveries ever since. Street prices of cocaine were soaring because a quarter of the annual supply had been intercepted and the war had stopped another quarter of the shipments.

  “You guys did that?”

  “This team did.”

  “It was righteous,” Duane agreed in a tone befitting a southern preacher. Then he grinned. “It also totally rocked.”

  “Sure,” Kyle answered in a dry tone as he returned to sit beside Carla. “If you don’t mind dying.”

  That got him a laugh around the room from the team, though no one was explaining and Carla didn’t look very happy about it even though she’d joined in. Melissa guessed it had gotten ugly and everyone on the team had thought he’d died. But Fred, the new guy, also looked left out in the cold on the details, so Melissa didn’t mind as much.

  “Do you have a real name?” She decided it was time she started taking some control of her new situation. She’d already had enough of being the outsider.

  Also, she had to distract her own attention from how good it had felt to lean back against Richie, before she almost busted his nose. That it had been a long dry spell—the Unit’s Operator Training Course didn’t leave much spare time or energy—didn’t begin to account for how good he’d felt. He might look the nerd, he might be the nerd, but leaning back against his chest she’d been able to feel his strength and fitness. The only one to keep his cool and not reach for a gun had been pure Richie, seeing the whole sit
uation even though he couldn’t see. No matter what first impression he gave, he belonged.

  “Fred Smith. Honest.” The guy dropped into an armchair beyond Melissa’s end of their small sofa, but didn’t relax. “Case Officer Smith, not Agent Smith, you know. The Matrix came out the year I joined the agency. And as much as I wanted to be Neo, I really could have done without the whole Agent Smith thing. At least I have better hair than Hugo Weaving.” Smith’s hairline wasn’t receding. As a matter of fact, it was long enough that he could use a haircut.

  “The real problem?” Carla looked over at Melissa. “Agent Smith is a gregarious and pleasant CIA man, which shouldn’t be possible.”

  “Still owes me twenty dollars,” was the best retort Melissa could come up with.

  “We’ll corner him and beat it out of him later,” Carla offered.

  “Deal!” Melissa agreed and they nodded at each other in mutual alliance. Melissa felt as if maybe she’d just signed a deal with the devil she didn’t know, but it didn’t feel bad either.

  “So why are we all here, Fred?” Carla might be wearing a flirty sundress, but she was all business.

  Melissa liked that about her too. Crud! Another thing she and Carla Anderson had in common. And suddenly the whole scene made sense, like a museum exhibit where all of the pieces finally fit. The team had been on hold awaiting her arrival, with no idea of what was coming next. And if they weren’t working for the CIA, they were certainly about to be in a project with them. Now if only she knew what she was doing here. She was the one piece on display that belonged the way a Picasso painting fit in an exhibit about Etruscan art—not at all.

  “I suppose that’s the end of the pleasantries.” This time Fred leaned back and propped his Birkenstocked feet on the coffee table, suddenly at ease with a mission discussion. He’d been more tense pretending to be casual, which made her hate him a little bit less.

  “We wanted to know how you feel about flying.”

  * * *

  “Flying?” Carla shrugged. “What kind of dumb question is that?”

  And Richie blinked in surprise. It wasn’t a dumb question at all. Of course Delta operators flew in airplanes all the time, and jumped out of most of them.