Kyle and Carla would wait one more minute, and then casually stroll toward Richie. Extract him if he needed help.
Melissa was running the other way, not because she’d remembered anything, but she’d watched Richie out of one of the DC-3 windows. All of the guards had been looking toward Analie Sala as she did her routine inspection of the BAe 146. But Richie had been looking in the opposite direction; he was looking toward the drug lab—not right at it, but she’d wager that’s where his attention was focused. He’d found his “itch,” and she was going to check it out.
She, Chad, and Duane had walked normally into the chow tent, as if hoping to scrounge a snack, and then gone straight out the back. There they’d almost been run over by Dayana’s ATV. Chad’s tap on Melissa’s shoulder for her to get down was the only thing that had saved her from being spotted.
Halfway from chow hall to drug lab, they all three squatted in a thick patch of young banana trees until Dayana was well clear. The ATV sounded like it was crossing the field.
The lab was quiet.
A glance through a gap in the leaves up the low hill.
Richie getting to his feet. He stood out among the guards because he was the only one not wearing a rifle. He had one hand clenched to the center of his chest. The other was in a fist, stretched out straight in front of him.
Chad tapped an “All Clear” and they were moving again.
* * *
Kyle and Carla were headed his way, holding hands and looking as if they were out for a pre-bedtime stroll. The guards were dispersing.
And if Melissa had seen Richie’s signal, she had ignored it and kept moving toward the lab.
He dismissed any thoughts of warning Marco to get his men out of here and into the jungle. Richie had enough problems, so he slapped Marco on the shoulder and headed down the hill to intercept Kyle and Carla.
Dayana and her ATV had moved on to the second Cessna and had stopped there again.
The old itch between the shoulder blades was turning into a sharp burn.
As Richie descended the hill, he glanced over at Analie Sala.
She too had frozen in place close beside her plane’s nose. She would be aware of every nuance of the operation…and she wasn’t watching Richie and the cluster of guards dispersing back to their patrols. Analie clearly knew something was wrong but she too wasn’t sure what.
Then she moved ever so casually up to the nose wheel of the big BAe 146. She kicked the wheel chock away from the front tire. The blocks of wood ahead of and behind the wheel kept the plane in place when it was parked. The only reason to move the chock was if you were planning to move the plane.
None of the guards headed in her direction; they actually made a wide sweep well clear around her and her plane. They were only too glad to avoid Analie Sala despite their libidinous talk just moments before.
When she slipped the small cover off the pitot tube—the tiny air intake that was necessary for many of a plane’s instruments to run properly—Richie’s internal alarms went on full loud.
He did his best to make it look completely casual, a mere chance meeting, as he hurried up to Kyle and Carla.
“Melissa is walking into a bomb rigged against the lab. And Dayana appears to be disabling the planes all down the row.”
“Nice greeting,” Kyle cursed.
He was on the verge of repeating himself when Carla rolled her eyes at him.
Oh.
“Friendliest I’ve got at the moment. Or should I tell you about the billion dollars of cocaine sitting in the hold of the BAe 146 that Analie Sala is preparing for flight.”
Neither one turned to look at Sala; they’d been too well trained for that.
“Time?”
Richie hadn’t particularly researched the BAe 146. He should have. He should have done it the moment he’d first seen it parked here on the jungle airstrip. But there was no Wi-Fi in the heart of the Colombian jungle. The only comm gear was inside the concrete bunker close to the lab. The trees had blocked satellite windows except once, which had opened briefly when an NSA bird had lined up from the DC-3 through the entry hole in the jungle canopy three days ago. So he made his best estimate.
“Three minutes, maybe four, cold start to takeoff.” He risked a glance. Analie Sala was nowhere in sight, but the wheel chocks had been pulled back from the main wheels as well. The front and rear ladders were closed.
“I have to go get Melissa.”
Kyle blocked him.
“I have—”
“No. You need to prep the plane. It’s our only way out. Hey, Miguel,” Kyle cut Richie off before he could protest and called amiably to one of the patrolling guards. “Got a question for you, amigo.” He headed over to join Miguel and in moments they were both crossing to the “town” side of the field.
Richie was going to chase, but Carla snagged a casual hand around his arm—and vised down on the deep radial nerve on the back of his forearm with a grasp of steel.
“Why don’t you walk with me, Richie? A woman hates to be left alone in a strange place.”
“Okay,” he managed to gasp through the hot fire burning up the length of his arm.
She eased off, enough that he could walk and think, but not enough that he’d be in any way tempted to make a break for it. She turned them toward the planes and he turned with her to avoid any further agony.
“Chad’s Dayana and Analie Sala are in cahoots with Pederson?” Carla mused. “And they seem to be shutting down the operation? I find that quite unexpected.”
“Something has Analie spooked. I could see it.”
“But if she isn’t the one shutting down the operation…” Carla eased off further and Richie risked a deep breath that he desperately needed. “…then who is?”
They cut around the back of the Gulfstream jet at the same moment that Dayana came down the line along the rear of the planes.
Carla waved a cheerful hello as a distraction.
Richie had a sudden idea of what was really happening.
He took Dayana off the ATV with a flying body tackle that had her pinned facedown in the dirt with one arm twisted up behind her back and the one holding a Glock 17 pinned under his knee.
* * *
Melissa eased up to the middle of the lab’s fuselage and leaned her back flat against the metal of the hull. It was green with a thin layer of moss and cool to the touch. The windows were all blocked, at least on this side—no way to see what was going on inside.
Chad and Duane moved in beside her, weapons raised and facing in either direction.
She could see the hill, but Richie and the guards were gone from it. She estimated angles. The last she’d seen of Richie he’d been standing up there, his clenched fist aimed…right toward where she was squatting.
Didn’t mean anything. It didn’t match any standard military hand sign.
Well, it was past time to do a little exploring.
But Melissa had seen Richie use that hand sign recently; she just couldn’t place where.
She raised a hand to signal Chad and Duane to move out; they’d start with the receiving cargo door at the rear of the fuselage.
Then the memory slammed in and she froze in place.
Chad and Duane were looking at her strangely. She clenched her hand into a fist as a hold signal.
Then closed her eyes so as not to lose the image.
Richie had been…
In imitation Melissa clenched one fist to her chest and inadvertently grabbed her four escudo gold doubloon medallion.
Not inadvertent. Richie did nothing by accident.
He’d been showing her the image as well as he could.
The doubloon.
The dive on Cat Island.
She and Richie. Side by side. Blue, red, white, yellow, gray. The colors vibrant…through that water of the reef.
In diving, a clenched fist was aimed at danger as a warning—on that dive it was a moray eel hiding in a hole in the reef. She’d spotted it first and held her fist toward the eel. Richie had made a fist of his own and aimed it at the same spot to confirm the sighting and warn the guide.
The military hand signal for danger was a slashing motion across the throat; not a gesture he could make while surrounded by a circle of Pederson’s guards.
Instead he’d clutched their shared doubloon and pointed his fist…right here.
Danger. The lab.
“We’re in trouble,” she whispered to Chad and Duane. “Find it.”
* * *
Richie leveraged the Glock 17 out of Dayana’s pinned hand.
“Who are—” he started to ask but was cut off.
“Let her up. Move nice and slow.” Marco. He had his Steyr AUG raised to his shoulder, safety off but finger outside the trigger guard. It was pointed at Richie’s head. Carla was close enough to Richie that she’d have no chance to act.
“Nice and slow, Marco,” Richie agreed pleasantly. He pushed off Dayana clumsily, as if nervous. Planted a knee in the small of her back which kept her in place.
He used the distraction of her grunt to swing up Dayana’s Glock 17 and shoot Marco twice in the face. He placed a third, a security shot, in his heart even though he was already keeling over backward.
* * *
Three gunshots shattered the late-morning silence of the jungle.
Melissa could see the guards at either end of the plane going on alert, leaving their posts to hurry toward the sound.
The jungle roared awake with shrieks and cries. Great flocks of birds swooped out of the trees, momentarily clustering in the great open airspace above the runway, then disappearing upward through the canopy.
A wild tapir grunted and raced through the undergrowth not five feet away. The weirdly shaped pig-like animal was panicked—she was sure Richie could provide her with chapter and verse on it. She just hoped that the five-hundred-pound beast didn’t run into them. It didn’t, disappearing from sight as quickly as it had appeared.
Chad and Duane were poised to race back the way they’d come, but Melissa knew they had to find what was going on here at the lab as well, and this was their one chance.
She surveyed the immediate area.
A set of ATV tracks was clear in the dirt, undisturbed except by their passage and the tapir’s.
A set of footprints that weren’t any of theirs.
That led to—
She tapped Duane’s shoulder and pointed.
It took him only a second or two to see it.
He squatted low and gently lifted a banana leaf that was resting against the drug lab’s hull. It hadn’t broken or been torn; it was cut.
* * *
“God damn it!” Dayana was cursing.
Richie kept her pinned in place and pressed the Glock back against the base of her skull.
She struggled briefly, but stopped when Carla placed her own weapon against the woman’s temple.
“Start explaining,” Richie would wager she was a rival drug-running gang.
“You just shot my ride out of here.”
“I’m heartbroken.”
The high whine of an APU finally broke through the noise of the panicked jungle animals. The BAe 146’s Auxiliary Power Unit was started first and would be used by Analie to start the four big jet engines as soon as it was supplying enough power.
“She’s leaving!” Dayana sounded livid with anger. “You can’t let her get away.”
Richie wished Melissa was here. Something wasn’t jiving and he wanted her to tell him what it was.
“We’ve got company arriving in twenty seconds,” Carla said mildly.
“I agree that Analie Sala can’t get away, but why are you saying it?”
Dayana stopped struggling and tried to look at him sideways from where her face was pressed in the dirt.
“Why?” Richie prompted her.
“You aren’t drug runners,” Dayana managed.
“Answer the question.”
“If you are, I’m dead anyway.” Dayana switched from liquid Spanish to British-accented English. “I’m NCA.”
* * *
Melissa looked over Duane’s shoulder and then wished she hadn’t. A large package was nestled against the hull. A timer was counting down in bright red numbers.
“What is this, a Mission Impossible movie?”
“No,” Duane offered cautiously. “That’s definitely a bomb. It’s going to shatter this lab in one minute-fifty.”
Melissa’s training had her setting a countdown timer on her watch even while her mind churned.
“Can you disable it?”
Duane studied it carefully for five achingly long seconds. “Probably not in time.”
“This was Richie’s danger signal.”
“What danger signal?” Chad and Duane asked in unison.
“Long story. Flashbangs.” She held out a hand.
Chad slapped one into her palm.
She made three chopping motions: right, middle, and left over the fuselage. Then, three fingers, two… She grabbed the pin, pulled it, and heaved hers over the top of the DC-6’s fuselage to land on the other side. Chad and Duane mimicked her actions, angling their throws toward either end of the plane.
With a harmless krump! loud enough to deafen anyone on that side and blinding bright flashes, it should scare any workers out of the lab. Hopefully driving them well clear of the coming explosion.
“Let’s move,” she called out. “Weapons free.”
At one minute-forty, they stayed low and started moving fast.
At one minute-thirty-nine, the flashbangs rocked the jungle.
Fifty feet later, they caught up with Kyle.
No explanation needed.
One look at them and he spun on his heel to fall in at point position.
* * *
“NCA?” Carla asked blankly.
“National Crime Agency,” Richie told her. “Britain’s version of the DEA and the ATF combined.” Then he had a sickening thought? “Was Marco—”
“Just what he said, Ecuadorian Army deserter. I hooked up with him to get in here and he was my way back out. Who the hell are you?” He’d give her spunk points for arguing from her current position of her face planted in the dirt.
“U.S. Special Forces” which wasn’t wholly accurate as they were Special Operations Forces, not Green Berets. But it was close enough. The Unit never revealed their presence, ever. He let her up carefully as Carla backed off enough to keep them covered.
“Ten seconds to company,” Carla reminded him.
Dayana moved carefully to a kneeling position, “Marco was an Ecuadoran Army pilot.” She waved a hand at one of the small Cessnas.
“Five,” Carla whispered.
Richie wondered if he could trust Dayana, or if he was about to get shot in the back. Chad had chosen her and Chad might enjoy women, but he wasn’t stupid about them.
He dropped the Glock into Dayana’s hand. “Both of you. Down in the dirt. Prone firing position, aimed into the jungle.”
They both spun and dropped the moment before the first guards rounded the low body of the Gulfstream jet. He’d swung his own rifle to his shoulder and was kneeling between them, one knee still on Dayana’s back just in case.
“Shooter! In the woods!” He had to shout to be heard over the loud whine of the BAe’s engines all cranking up the scale toward full heat. “They got Marco and I think they went west. Cutting around toward the lab. Rápido!”
The guards raced right by them, plunging into the jungle.
The moment they were clear, he looked back at Carla. “We have to get to the Twin Otter and stop Analie from taking off.”
; “No!” Dayana grabbed his arm. “You can’t.”
He stopped to stare at her. Glanced at the track of the ATV. She’d already visited the Twin Otter. She’d planted a bomb on the Tin Goose.
“Disarm it!” He demanded, but she was already shaking her head. Her expression said that she wasn’t arguing; she was saying it couldn’t be done. “How long?”
“Two minutes.”
* * *
Melissa hit the field with one minute to go. They were huddled close by the nose of the DC-3.
Kyle raised his fist for Hold Position. Chad and Duane dropped to kneel behind her. One would be watching her flank, another the rear. Kyle lay in the dirt two steps in front of her, peeking under the nose of the grounded DC-3 for a wider field of view.
The hundreds of residents of the jungle town had filtered out of the tents and their quarters among the shattered planes converted into private apartments.
She considered firing a long stream of bullets close in front of them to scare them back, farther from the lab that was about to go up. Chase them to safety. But a brief hail of gunfire wouldn’t do the job and it would attract all of the wrong kind of attention their way.
“Duane,” she called over her shoulder.
“Yo!”
“Blow the DC-3 on a fifteen-second timer.”
“Big or little?” He unslung the small bag he’d had over his shoulder since her first warning aboard the DC-3. She could feel him working close behind her.
“Muy grande!”
“Si, señorita. Ready in five.”
She counted five seconds, felt the slap on her shoulder, reached forward, and slapped Kyle’s heel in turn.
No neat two-by-two formation. The four of them lined up and sprinted across the open field toward the Tin Goose.
* * *
Richie reached the Tin Goose at the same instant Melissa did. He stole a moment long enough to squeeze her shoulder. The sense of connection that rushed through him and the smile that lit her face told him that she understo—
Across the field the DC-3 blew up in a towering column of fire and a cloud of smoke. He could see the civilians tumbled back by the force of the explosion.
Then the crowd broke and sprinted off down the length of the runway, racing away from the burning DC-3 and the lab as well.
Heart Strike Page 28
