“No other assets in the area,” Melissa explained quickly. “She’s on the ground in an hour and fifteen, then she’s gone. I was worried that she’d put the plane on autopilot and parachute out, but I don’t see her doing that with a billion dollars of cocaine in her plane’s cargo hold.”
Carla slapped Richie on the shoulder. “Get me close and I’ll shoot her down.”
“We can’t exactly open the door at six hundred miles an hour.”
That silenced Carla for all of about five seconds. “You’ll figure it out, Q. You always do.”
Richie grimaced. “Great! Thanks for the big help.”
* * *
Melissa held on to her seat as Analie Sala’s plane came into view. The Gulfstream was faster, but not much. It had been an agonizing forty-five-minute chase, with no one coming up with any brilliant ideas on how to avoid this. Both planes were at thirty thousand feet. The idea of shooting out a window and catastrophically depressurizing the plane had been the best they’d come up with.
Except for one. And now that they’d come to the moment, Melissa really didn’t like it, even though she was the one who’d thought it up.
“Richie. It was stupid. We’ve got to come up with something else.”
“My Ilsa doesn’t have stupid ideas. We’re approaching from her six. Just like Vito The Priest said, she’ll never think to look directly behind her until it’s too late.”
“Your confidence is charming. But this has got to be an exception. Six-hundred-mile-an-hour bumper cars?”
Richie shrugged. “I want her down as badly as you do. A third of the cocaine that reaches U.S. soil came through that camp. Pederson said they’d been in operation for seven years. She gets set up again, you know that she’ll be even harder to find.”
Melissa had tried flying the jet for a few minutes but didn’t like the feel of it. It felt as if they were constantly on the edge of tripping and tumbling out of the sky. If she was going to trust anyone, it would be Richie’s steady hand and sharp mind.
“Okay, Richie. Do it.”
“Wish I could kiss you first.”
“Later. Just as often as you want.”
“That’s a deal, sweetheart.” He put on his best Bogey for her. If he had any doubts, he wasn’t showing them to her.
She watched him take a deep breath, then another, and another as they drew closer and closer to Analie’s plane.
The risk of what they were about to do was insane. The chances of surviving it were… She’d rather not try to calculate that.
But there was a question that wanted asking. Needed asking. Something she needed to know just in case there wasn’t a “later.”
“Richie?”
He turned to look at her for a moment, but she wasn’t even sure he recognized her. He turned back to stare at the plane now just a few hundred yards off their nose.
She knew the look.
The warrior was in complete control.
Melissa’s question was going to have to wait.
Damn it!
* * *
Richie tapped the high tail of the airplane in front of him by flying right over it and then lowering the Gulfstream’s nose onto it as hard as he dared.
It didn’t turn out to be much of a tap but it must have shuddered up the length of Sala’s airframe.
She twisted her plane to the left and Richie followed. He had the feel of the Gulfstream now. Could stay like glue right on the tail of the bigger, less maneuverable jet.
As soon as it settled, he whacked it again, much more sharply this time.
Again. The pilot corrected hard and he hung close.
Time was ticking.
No sign of the shore yet, but it wouldn’t be far now.
He flew up alongside the big jet, so that he could see the pilot. He pointed down. As if to say, You land the plane where I want, or I will land it for you.
With a twist of the controls, the pilot sent her far larger jet sharply into his path.
A twist, a pull, right rudder. He dodged the maneuver.
Out of options, he circled behind once more.
This time he hammered his nose down on the other plane’s tail. A whole side of it bent sharply.
He heard a scream. Metal or human. It all sounded the same.
The big plane started a spiraling descent. One side of its tail section bent completely out of shape.
He followed it down. The pilot managed a partial recovery.
He drove in and bashed the other side of the tail control surface. Again the crunch and scream. The Gulfstream shuddered from the abuse.
Sala twisted and fought the controls, but the aircraft was now beyond help and going down hard.
He pulled up to watch her final descent.
Except the Gulfstream didn’t pull up. It struggled; it wallowed.
He glanced back. The wings looked intact. He couldn’t see the rear-mounted engines despite what someone had told him to do at another time in another world.
He tried the controls again. The problem wasn’t the plane; it was the controls. He’d crippled the nose of his own plane where all of the wires and everything ran from the cockpit back to the control surfaces. The plane could still fly, but he could only barely control it.
Sala’s big jet tumbled into the ocean, shattering against the hard waves. Huge chunks flailed off in different directions. Wing, engine, tail, a luxury couch, bales upon bales of cocaine.
Richie didn’t have a moment to howl in triumph.
He heard a Mayday. From the downed plane? Impossible. From his? Didn’t matter.
He pulled power. Extended flaps. Held up the nose and fought the twisting descent.
Pilot like he was in a floatplane. With a single pontoon made of a smooth fuselage. Low wings were bad. The ocean was rough.
Waves six feet. Maybe ten. More than the Twin Otter could handle.
Not in the Twin Otter. In a jet.
Didn’t matter. Same tactics.
He aimed down the furrow of the waves.
Land high on the slope of one wave, and glide down its face like a surfboard, riding it right into the trough. Bleeding speed.
Nose high.
A hundred feet.
Fifty.
Stall warning.
Time the wave.
Time it.
Now!
Chapter 22
With Chad’s help, Melissa dragged a dazed Richie into the raft. The Gulfstream had two rafts and the team had managed to deploy both. There were plenty of bangs and bruises, but they had all made it. Richie was the most battered and dazed of them all. Chad laid him along the bottom of the raft with his head in Melissa’s lap. Then he gave her a nod that she gathered was his final acceptance of her role on the team. She returned the silent acknowledgment.
She held Richie close against her; Carla and Duane were also in this raft. Chad clambered across to join Kyle, who had Dayana and Pederson in the other one. The Gulfstream G250 was slipping beneath the waves and shattered pieces of the bigger BAe 146 were scattered everywhere, sinking a piece at a time.
She could hear Kyle and Dayana debating who got Pederson. Melissa knew that the British frigate would be here in just a few hours—they were the closest when she radioed her Mayday—and that would answer that question.
Melissa couldn’t tell if Chad was more bummed that he wouldn’t be accompanying Dayana after the American ship caught up with the Brits or that he hadn’t found her out before the final escape. The two of them were talking about military exchange programs. Or their next leave. But Melissa would bet it was never going to happen. They’d had their fun and they were done with it, or soon would be.
Melissa didn’t want “a moment” or “some fun.”
Richie was coming around but didn’t speak. Instead, he hel
d on to her tighter and tighter until she could barely breathe. It was the best feeling of her life. She wanted to wake every day with this man in her arms.
They’d serve together and fight side by side. And someday they’d—
“You had a question?” Richie mumbled in her arms.
“Did I?” She was impressed that he remembered.
“You did.”
“Well, you did say I was supposed to do the thinking for you.”
Richie nodded. “I like giving that task to the smartest one in the relationship.” Not a chance that was her. Yet maybe it was in some ways. Carla had complimented her again on her clear and accurate perceptions of people. Richie might be the genius, but Melissa knew she was smart about people.
“Does that make you Ilsa and me Rick?” Melissa teased him.
“Anything you want.” Richie snuggled his face against her belly. “As long as I don’t have to put you on a plane for Lisbon. I like having you in Casablanca.”
Duane kept his silence. Carla was working the radio with the USCG frigate.
“Not going anywhere without you,” Melissa agreed.
There was a sharp spit of silenced gunfire which made her jump.
“What was that?” Richie struggled up, but then dropped back into her lap with a grunt. He was battered in a dozen spots and possibly concussed by the crash landing.
Melissa looked over at the other raft.
Chad and Kyle had brought over most of their weapons and ammo when they’d deplaned. They were taking turns shooting at the water.
She looked around. Floating all around them were one-kilo bags of cocaine from the shattered BAe 146. Each one they shot quickly flooded and sank.
Kyle noticed her attention. “Don’t want these floating ashore anywhere. Nothing else to do while we wait.”
Duane strapped a knife to one of the oars and began stabbing bags. Pederson groaned with each kilo of cocaine that sank out of sight. The guys started tallying their “kills” in hundred-thousand-dollar-per-kilo increments to rub it in.
“Any sign of Analie?”
Kyle nodded grimly and Melissa returned her attention to the beautiful man still lying in her lap.
“I think,” Richie mumbled against her belly, “that I’d better keep being Rick. I just don’t think wearing a dress is my style. Sure wouldn’t mind seeing you in one someday though.”
“We’ll see,” Melissa teased him. “But no more showing off my breasts to a bunch of drug-runner guards, okay?”
“I can work with that.”
“Bro,” Duane grumbled. “Way too much mush. Just kiss the woman and tell her.”
“Tell me what?” She looked at Duane.
He pointed for her to look at Richie.
She did. “Tell me what?”
Richie looked at Duane for a long moment, then back at her.
“Tell me what?” she demanded with about as much imagination as a one-track Amazonian parrot…but she knew what. It was what she’d wanted to say just before Richie crashed them into Sala’s jet.
“Ilsa.”
“Yes, Richie?” She brushed a hand over his face unable to believe how good it felt to do so.
“This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“What?” Melissa thumped the side of her fist down on his chest and he grunted when she nailed him on the medallion. “That’s what you have to say to—”
He laughed as he dragged her down to lie on him at the bottom of the raft and kissed her. Kissed her like a promise that no one had ever made to her, and he warmed her all of the way through to the very center of her heart. So completely that she’d never be cold again.
To a background of silenced gunfire slaughtering kilo bags of cocaine, Richie whispered in her ear.
“Love you, Ilsa.”
“Love you, Richie.”
“And I do love looking at you, kid…in or out of your clothes. I look forward to doing it for as long as we both shall live.”
She fisted his ribs hard enough to make him grunt, but not hard enough to interrupt the kiss he pulled her back into.
Like Top Gun and Maya Banks?
Then you’ll love Target Engaged by M.L. Buchman!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://www.mlbuchman.com/
Like Vertical Limit and Kat Martin?
Then you’ll love Hold Your Breath by Katie Ruggle!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://katieruggle.com/
Like Sons of Anarchy and Cindy Gerard?
Then you’ll love Hell on Wheels by Julie Ann Walker!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://julieannwalker.com/
Like Chicago P.D. and Lori Foster?
Then you’ll love Stop at Nothing by Kate SeRine!
For more info and updates about the series go to:
http://www.kateserine.com/
Keep reading for an excerpt from the explosive beginning to the Delta Force series, nominated for a RITA Award:
Target Engaged
Carla Anderson rolled up to the looming storm-fence gate on her brother’s midnight-blue Kawasaki Ninja 1000 motorcycle. The pounding of the engine against her sore butt emphasized every mile from Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colorado, home of the 4th Infantry and hopefully never again the home of Sergeant Carla Anderson. The bike was all she had left of Clay, other than a folded flag, and she was here to honor that.
If this was the correct “here.”
A small guard post stood by the gate into a broad, dusty compound. It looked deserted and she didn’t see even a camera.
This was Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She knew that much. Two hundred and fifty square miles of military installation, not counting the addition of the neighboring Pope Army Airfield.
She’d gotten her Airborne parachute training here and had never even known what was hidden in this remote corner. Bragg was exactly the sort of place where a tiny, elite unit of the U.S. military could disappear—in plain sight.
This back corner of the home of the 82nd Airborne was harder to find than it looked. What she could see of the compound through the fence definitely ranked “worst on base.”
The setup was totally whacked.
Standing outside the fence at the guard post she could see a large, squat building across the compound. The gray concrete building was incongruously cheerful with bright pink roses along the front walkway—the only landscaping visible anywhere. More recent buildings—in better condition only because they were newer—ranged off to the right. She could breach the old fence in a dozen different places just in the hundred-yard span she could see before it disappeared into a clump of scrub and low trees drooping in the June heat.
Wholly indefensible.
There was no way that this could be the headquarters of the top combat unit in any country’s military.
Unless this really was their home, in which case the indefensible fence—inde-fence-ible?—was a complete sham designed to fool a sucker. She’d stick with the main gate.
She peeled off her helmet and scrubbed at her long brown hair to get some air back into her scalp. Guys always went gaga over her hair, which was a useful distraction at times. She always wore it as long as her successive commanders allowed. Pushing the limits was one of her personal life policies.
She couldn’t help herself. When there was a limit, Carla always had to see just how far it could be nudged. Surprisingly far was usually the answer. Her hair had been at earlobe length in Basic. By the time she joined her first forward combat team, it brushed her jaw. Now it was down on her shoulders. It was actually something of a pain in the ass at this length—another couple inches before it could reliably ponytail—but she did like having the longest h
air in the entire unit.
Carla called out a loud “Hello!” at the empty compound shimmering in the heat haze.
No response.
Using her boot in case the tall chain-link fence was electrified, she gave it a hard shake, making it rattle loudly in the dead air. Not even any birdsong in the oppressive midday heat.
A rangy man in his late forties or early fifties, his hair half gone to gray, wandered around from behind a small shack as if he just happened to be there by chance. He was dressed like any off-duty soldier: worn khaki pants, a black T-shirt, and scuffed Army boots. He slouched to a stop and tipped his head to study her from behind his Ray-Bans. He needed a haircut and a shave. This was not a soldier out to make a good first impression.
“Don’t y’all get hot in that gear?” He nodded to indicate her riding leathers without raking his eyes down her frame, which was both unusual and appreciated.
“Only on warm days,” she answered him. It was June in North Carolina. The temperature had crossed ninety hours ago and the air was humid enough to swim in, but complaining never got you anywhere.
“What do you need?”
So much for the pleasantries. “Looking for Delta.”
“Never heard of it,” the man replied with a negligent shrug. But something about how he did it told her she was in the right place.
“Combat Applications Group?” Delta Force had many names, and they certainly lived to “apply combat” to a situation. No one on the planet did it better.
His next shrug was eloquent.
Delta Lesson Number One: Folks on the inside of the wire didn’t call it Delta Force. It was CAG or “The Unit.” She got it. Check. Still easier to think of it as Delta though.
She pulled out her orders and held them up. “Received a set of these. Says to show up here today.”
“Let me see that.”
“Let me through the gate and you can look at it as long as you want.”
“Sass!” He made it an accusation.
Heart Strike Page 30
