Heart Strike

by M. L. Buchman

  Richie looked at the gauges and ran some rough calculations in his head and then tried to think of how to make Melissa laugh again.

  “Well.” He turned to Kyle and tried for his own best Humphrey Bogart voice. “I think it would be good if Ilsa here started praying for tailwinds.”

  * * *

  Richie just kept making her laugh. It was one of the things Melissa liked best about him. Somewhere over the last five years, she’d forgotten what laughing felt like. Her brother’s direct connection to her funny bone was another piece that had been cut out of her without her even noticing—until Sergeant Richie Goldman had found a way to tickle it.

  Up out of Cozumel, it seemed but moments before they were sidling up to a beach a handful of miles north of Cancún in the heart of Yum Balam Reserve. A wide sandy beach backed by the pitch black of a towering palm jungle.

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “Yeah,” Richie answered pleasantly but without quite the fervor she’d expected. At night it could easily have been Cat Island in the Bahamas. With a little perspective, the image of their arrest struck her as fairly amusing. Apparently not Richie.

  Melissa remembered how Richie’s hand had felt as it had traced ever so lightly between her bare breasts…the moment before they were arrested. She’d have preferred a little more enthusiasm on his part as she was having troubles with her emotions at the moment. Too little time for tenderness while afloat in the Bahamas. Interrupted need in the Maracaibo hotel. Shutting each other out for three days because Richie was dumb enough to listen to Chad.

  Okay, maybe she could have not reacted by totally shutting him out too. Bad decision.

  Cat Island had been a good memory. If she could choose a reset to any point in whatever this was between them, that would be it.

  “You promised me things at that resort.” She tried to make it funny, but it still didn’t come out right. She ran down the pre-landing checklist, almost none of which could be applied. No caution lights, control tower briefings, landing lights, or even a “fasten seat belt” sign. She couldn’t think how to fix this. There was nothing for her to say.

  Richie twisted them back and forth as he descended slowly. They were only fifty feet up according to the altimeter. The light of the moon off the waves looked about right for fifty feet. The descent was so slow it was almost painful.

  “I know that I owe you,” he spoke carefully. “I’ll have to fix that.”

  “I was just teasing you.”

  “Oh. I missed that.”

  This time she caught the tension in his voice. Richie was so unflappable that all of her internal alarms finally sounded off. “What?”

  “Sandbars,” he muttered just as the floats kissed the waves with a bright hiss.

  She swallowed hard and strained forward against her harness to see if she could see anything other than the dark water and moonlight reflected off low waves. She hadn’t thought about sandbars—there hadn’t been any near Clearwater, at least not that Vito Corello had used for training. If they caught a sandbar at night along this unknown shore while moving at landing speed, the plane would stop, nose over, and they would be in a one-plane accident at seventy miles an hour. She and Richie wore full harnesses, but the rest of the team only had lap belts. A hard crash would not end well for any of them.

  And she’d just been a self-centered bitch, whining because Richie wasn’t delivering on his sexual promises? Dumb! Maybe she and Carla were more alike than she’d considered—a very uncomfortable thought. Even if she was starting to like Carla, it didn’t mean that she wanted to be like the Wild Woman.

  Her attempt to whisper an apology didn’t make it past the choke point in her throat until they’d slid down to taxiing speed.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” Richie was also leaning forward to stare out the windshield, but he was looking toward the beach.

  “Us?” No. The mission. Stay focused, girl.

  “This delivery. A hundred kilos when we can carry a thousand.”

  “Another test?”

  “Maybe.”

  Melissa thought about it and decided that no matter what Richie might think of his instincts about people, he was Delta. Forcing herself to look away from the beach and her own attempts to see sandbars in the dark, she twisted to face Carla, who sat in the front-most seat of the passenger cabin. Melissa held out her right hand as if she held a pistol and then slapped at her right wrist with her left hand—the signal for “enemy.”

  * * *

  Richie eyed the beach as he taxied fifty feet offshore. Why was this giving him such an itch? Far worse than the barge.

  He wasn’t afraid of the U.S. authorities. If it was them, they would try to make an arrest, which would then be up to Fred Smith to straighten out. If it was the Mexican Federales, they were more inclined to shoot first and ask later, but his radar detector hadn’t picked up anything during their approach except for the Cancún airport.

  He wasn’t worried about their safety…particularly—not any more than was normal for a Delta mission.

  Richie was worried about…

  He raised a fist for the team in the cabin to see and held it there, signaling “freeze.”

  Melissa’s signal for “enemy” had been correct, but he was guessing that it wasn’t their enemy.

  There were two separate blinks of flashlights from under the verge of the trees, showing him where to beach—about two hundred meters apart along the shore. One was in the same pattern used by the drug runners along the Orinoco. The second one wasn’t.

  Richie tried not to smile as he turned the Tin Goose and idled through the light waves toward the first set of lights.

  Rather than beaching the plane as he’d originally planned, he turned parallel to the shore, close enough that the water was probably less than two feet deep. The waves were perhaps a foot high, so they started making a lazy side-to-side roll that would make everyone seasick soon. But he wasn’t going to be here that long.

  With the engines still running but the props feathered, he held his fist out with his forearm vertical and double-pumped for “hurry!”

  It went down exactly as he’d anticipated.

  Men rushed down the sand and into the shallow water as someone threw open the rear hatch on the plane. Six of them moving in a pack, rifles at the ready. A plastic five-gallon bucket was tossed in and moments later the two boxes of cocaine were handed out. They’d now been paid. And if the hundred thousand that Analie Sala had promised was the standard one-tenth share for their leg, there’d be a million dollars U.S. in that bucket.

  The drugs would quintuple in price as they made their journey from Cancún, across the U.S. border, and finally into the cities, but their leg of the smuggling operation was complete and paid for.

  The group that had flashed the correct signal was less than five steps back toward the beach when the firefight began.

  Richie had never let the plane come to a true stop nor slid the engines fully to idle.

  “Props now,” he shouted at Melissa and he reached up to the overhead power levers and eased them back up as fast as the engines would take it. Their hands brushed on the side-by-side controls, almost as if they were holding hands. A heady feeling considering what was going on up and down the beach.

  * * *

  Melissa had to admire how cool and steady Richie was being as mayhem lit up the night sky.

  She tried to look everywhere at once while Richie was getting them the hell away from it all.

  The second group—the ones with the wrong signal from two hundred meters down the beach—were firing wildly at the men who’d taken delivery of the drugs. Blinding muzzle flashes of heavy automatic fire must be heaving a lot of lead into the air. There were one or two reverberating Thunks! that sounded like they’d hit the Tin Goose’s wings.

  Like most thugs
, and most soldiers for that matter, there was a lot of shooting but less care for accurate aiming. It was one of the unique things about Delta, making every single shot count, even in combat situations. Even the general ranks of the U.S. Army fired over two hundred thousand rounds per kill in Afghanistan. Delta averaged under five, and three of those were planned on every one.

  In the rear cabin, the two guards from the Orinoco were crouched in the rear hatchway and now spraying fire at the ones racing down the beach to steal the delivery.

  One way or another, the drugs were going to go to market.

  “Richie?” He’d known that. So why had he delivered the—

  “Watch down the beach. If I’m right—”

  And she saw it. The dim flash of a heavily suppressed single shot. And a second later, one of the two men carrying the drugs ashore dropped into the surf. A moment later, the one carrying the other box was down. Others in the group that had taken the delivery were too busy returning fire up the beach at the gang that was trying to hijack the drugs to notice. Then one of the intended recipients did and plunged back into the surf.

  Each person who touched the drugs elicited another shot from the sniper down the beach. Far down the beach. This wasn’t the cover man for one of the two teams; this was a trained pro, dug in a kilometer away.

  “One of Fred’s people?”

  “What?” Richie had been wholly focused on getting them out of there. They were most of the way up to flight speed. “Was I right?”

  He was. He’d anticipated exactly how it would go down, readjusting the plan they’d discussed the moment he’d seen the second flashing signal. Maybe even before that.

  It was only now that Melissa understood what had happened.

  Richie had signaled Fred Smith of their expected time and place of delivery. Fred had filtered that information out to a rival gang who’d arrived to make a grab for the drugs. In the ensuing firefight, no one would notice that a trained American sniper would be the one who won final possession of the shipment. The Delta team had completed their assignment, delivering under harrowing conditions with the drug runners they had onboard as eyewitnesses.

  The gunsels!

  Melissa twisted around again and saw that the two gunsels were still firing toward the beach from the rear cargo hatch.

  “Carla!” Melissa shouted to get her teammate’s attention at the far end of the cabin. Then she drew a three-sided box in the air for “Door” and pumped out a “Hurry.” They couldn’t take off safely with the cargo doors open.

  By the time they were skipping off the wave tops, Melissa felt the heavy slam of the closing doors. Then they were up and headed back out to sea.

  The beach was on Melissa’s side.

  The few still standing from the group that had taken receipt of the shipment were retreating up the beach. By their bright muzzle flashes, she could see that none of them were carrying heavy boxes of drugs.

  The second group, the ones who were trying to hijack the drugs, were scattered and running themselves.

  It was hard to tell, but she thought she saw a shadow from the first group crossing the moonlit sands back toward the drugs. A bright flash down the beach and a second and a half later—the time it would take a 7.62mm sniper round to cross the kilometer-long distance—the shadow collapsed to the beach.

  Yep, the drugs were still in the surf. And Fred’s sniper would make sure they stayed there.

  “Neat solution,” Melissa observed once they were well clear.

  “Rather pleased with it myself,” Richie said lazily as if it was all in a day’s work.

  “But what do I tell Ms. Sala?” All they’d done was intercepted an infinitesimal percentage of the drug trade. A hundred kilos would never be missed except by the gang that had paid a million dollars for it.

  “Don’t worry about Analie Sala.”

  Melissa could hear that Richie already had it figured out. She raced to get there herself before he spoke again.

  “If the delivery never reached the next tier of distributors, that’s not our—”

  “Because,” she cut Richie off, “we’ve already been paid in full, as has Ms. Sala.” The Venezuelan cartel didn’t care if the drugs reached America; they only cared that they were paid. “Moore Aviation is about to be very popular with their Venezuelan contacts.”

  “It is.”

  “Now, Richie Goldman, you have something else to worry about.”

  “Oh?” And he did sound a little worried, because he clearly couldn’t think of what it might be. She enjoyed outsmarting his genius with something so simple.

  Melissa watched the darkness out the broad windshield. No longer carrying any contraband and finally heading south, they flew at a comfortable five hundred feet above the waves. She’d never flown that low in her life until last week, and now it felt like a luxuriously safe altitude.

  “What?” Richie was clearly churning trying to come up with something that he’d missed in all of his careful planning.

  She left him to stew awhile longer. Melissa let her mind wander. Richie was handsome, smart, and promised to be a fantastic lover. Watching him fly and solve the problems of the mission on the go had been electrifying.

  But there was a moment that had been more powerful than almost anything that had happened the whole week. More powerful than him punching out that asshole Chad.

  It was back in the Orinoco. She’d stepped way over the line of reasonable risk when she’d gunned down that thug. There had been an awful moment when she was certain she had just gotten the entire team killed. She imagined a top-secret report titled, “Recent OTC grad gets entire team eliminated in less than seven days.”

  The tension had ridden on a cusp, and then Richie had made the smallest sound, flipping the safety on his rifle into the firing position. It had said clearly, “I will die to defend this woman.”

  That tiny act had tipped the balance of the entire dynamic between The Unit’s team and the drug smugglers. But that wasn’t what had ultimately mattered to her.

  It was the statement he’d made that had been so special.

  Melissa knew it was stupid, insane, and totally ridiculous. She’d known Richie for one week. One week today as a matter of fact. The sun was just breaking the horizon over Cuba and they’d be arriving in Maracaibo at almost the same moment she had seven days ago.

  He was a geek, the ultimate tech, and a warrior on her own team.

  And as dumb as it was, her frozen heart hadn’t merely thawed in his presence; it had beat as if it had never been frozen in the first place.

  She wanted to bury her face in her hands. She wanted to get out of the plane and dance—if they weren’t in flight. She wanted…

  “Oh,” Richie finally put the pieces together. “My promise. Trust me, I’ll be taking care of that just as soon as we can find more than a dozen minutes of quiet.”

  And she knew he would because not living up to his promises simply wouldn’t compute for Richie—his integrity reigned absolute.

  Melissa had known for a hard and cold fact that it would never happen to her. But it had. She’d gone and fallen in love. And with Unit operator Richie Goldman. That was something she’d have to get over real soon.

  Chapter 14

  No customs official met them as they pulled up to the Maracaibo hangar, running mostly on fumes. He was probably happily counting a few-hundred-dollar payoff in some corner office.

  What did await them was Analie Sala and two more gunmen. She was all in black despite the midmorning heat that was already cooking Richie’s brain. He’d only been awake for…thirty hours. And flying for the last dozen of it.

  The team deplaned very carefully. Richie and Melissa held back at the cockpit doors. They wouldn’t have good flexibility if gunfire came their way, but they momentarily commanded the high ground. Looking down at the others, Richie
didn’t want to give that up.

  Ms. Sala stood calmly as the two teams of four gunmen each faced off. The differences were very distinct. The drug runners were edgy, hands shifting on weapons, feet never in optimal position as they constantly shifted. In contrast, each Delta operator was dead calm, unmoving, up on their toes, and ready to leap into action. It wouldn’t even be necessary to focus on faces or attire to know who to target if the need arose; their body language was target enough to a Delta-honed eye.

  It didn’t come to that. Ms. Sala waved for one of the men to open the bucket. When it was opened, she pulled out ten neat stacks of bills and handed them to Carla, then signaled for the bucket to be closed.

  A low rumble in the distance drew Richie’s attention to the head of the alleyway between the long row of rusting hangars. A fuel truck lumbered its way toward them. No one was hiding their rifles or sidearms. Carla had turned to slip the money into a small backpack so that it was out of sight.

  No one spoke while the plane was fueled. No one moved, except to stay out of the way of the fuel truck operator…who was very careful not to look at any of them. He was pumping much faster than those Sinaloa members on the barge off Cozumel.

  Richie signaled Melissa and they eased down, out of the front doors, to join the group after the fuel truck finished and was backing up the length of the alleyway.

  “I hear there were problems.” Ms. Sala was the first to finally break the silence.

  “A few.” Melissa stepped forward easily and Richie shifted into a support position that offered a clear range of fire. “Nothing we couldn’t manage.”

  The two women squared off: the slim, dark professional and the tall, white-blond wonder. By sheer contrast, Analie Sala’s sleek build and immaculate grooming should have made Melissa look large or overblown, but it didn’t. Melissa instead stood like a shining beacon of health and beauty and made the Mexican expediter look diminished. Richie tried to cast them, but it wasn’t working. Emma Frost versus Mystique from the X-Men didn’t work. Tasha Yar versus B’Elanna Torres, if he was willing to mix Star Trek series, didn’t cut it either. Even going to Kim Basinger as Batman’s Vicki Vale versus Halle Berry’s Catwoman didn’t get him there.