Destiny's Woman

Joe tipped his head toward her. “Texas sayin’. It means that the son is a sniffer-outer of the first degree.” He punched his index finger toward the photo. “I wouldn’t trust this guy at all. He’s a real predator. I see it in his eyes.”

Akiva agreed. “And he’s flying a helo. Weapons or not, it still makes him dangerous.”

“And,” Houston warned them darkly, “he’s got three other helos in his little ‘squadron.’ We don’t have any dope on him. The last person the Drug Enforcement Agency tried to put in the Rios camp was discovered. We never found his body. So we don’t know that much about Luis or his helicopters and pilots. That’s something you’ll be finding out as you go along. The Pentagon wants Luis’s movements charted. We need to know where he goes, where he sends these choppers along Mexico’s Gulf Coast and what kind of schedule he’s got worked up for them.”

“So he’s usin’ them to haul drugs out of the jungle,” Joe drawled, “and then off-loading them to fixed-wing aircraft sitting on dirt strips near the Gulf Coast on the eastern side of Mexico? He’s pretty sharp for a weasel.”

Grimly, Houston nodded. “Yes, he is, Joe. But a helo, if equipped for a larger fuel load, could fly into the Texas border area. And he may be doing that. You’re going to try and find this out.”

“A helo can dip in and out of a jungle pretty easily,” Akiva said. “Just chop trees in a fifty-foot radius and damn near any rotorcraft can drop down, pick up the cocaine and lift it out.”

“That’s what we think,” Morgan said, giving Akiva a look filled with approval. “And that’s part of your mission—find the holes chopped in the jungle. That means low-level reconnaissance.”

Maya stood up and went over to the two pilots. “You’re going to be given one Boeing Apache Longbow gunship and a Blackhawk. You’ll use the Apache for interdiction efforts. Use the Blackhawk to start mapping, snooping and finding out what you can around the southern part of Mexico. We expect you to update your maps weekly, via satellite encryption code. You can send them by Satcom to us here, at the main base. The information you begin to accrue will be sent to the Pentagon, as well. With your efforts, we’ll start building a picture of Rios’s drug trade in southern Mexico.”

“And every time he sends a shipment over the Gulf,” Morgan said, “you’ll be notified by an American submarine crew that’s sitting on the bottom of the Gulf, on station, that there is an unidentified flight in process. They will alert you on a special Satcom channel and give you the coordinates so you can intercept that bogey.”

Akiva’s brows raised. “Extreme, dude.”

“I thought you’d be impressed,” Morgan murmured with a grin.

“I didn’t know the U.S. Navy was involved like that,” Joe said, amazed.

“Yes, they are. More than you know,” Houston said. “The navy sub lies on the bottom for three months at a time. We’ve been doing this for a couple of years and have a pretty accurate picture of who, what, where and when on every drug-initiated flight. If an American submarine picks up radio traffic or Satcom info, they’ll notify you.”

“Is every flight a drug flight?” Akiva inquired.

“No,” Morgan answered. “There are legitimate civilian flights into and out of Mexico over the Gulf.”

“But they file flight plans with the Federal Aviation Agency,” Joe pointed out. “And druggies don’t.”

“Exactly,” Mike said with a smile. “Our submarine on station has an hourly updated FAA flight plan file on every aircraft coming out or going into that area of Mexico, so that when they make a call to you, you can be pretty damned sure it’s a drug flight.”

“What do we do?” Akiva asked. “Shoot ’em down?”

Chuckling, Morgan shook his head. “I wish, but no. First, you’re going to follow the same operating procedure you do here—you must identify the aircraft or rotorcraft by the numbers on the fuselage. Your Apache has been downloaded with all the fixed-wing aircraft numbers for Mexico, the U.S.A. and nearby Central and South American countries. If none of them match, then you can assume it’s a drug flight.”

“At that point,” Houston said, removing the picture of Luis Rios and putting in another photo that showed a single-engine aircraft dropping a load of what looked like plastic bags into the ocean hundreds of feet below, “you are going to scare the hell out of them and make them do one of a couple of things. First, most drug runners don’t want to fight. They’ll drop their drug shipment in the water and make a run back to Mexico if pressed. If that happens, a Coast Guard cruiser in the area will steam toward that area and pick up the evidence, if it hasn’t sunk to the bottom by that time. Secondly, if the plane won’t drop its drugs, then it’s your responsibility to persuade it to turn back toward Mexico. Do not allow that plane to hightail it across the Gulf toward U.S. waters.”

“And what do you specify as ‘persuasion,’ Mr. Houston?” Akiva stared at him.

“Your Apache is equipped with hellfire missiles, rockets and cannon fire. You persuade them to turn by firing in front of their nose.”

“Under no circumstance are you to shoot them down,” Maya warned. “Same SOP as we practice here, Akiva.”

“And if they fire back at us?”

Maya grinned. “Well, then, the game plan changes. If you’re fired upon, you are authorized to fire back.”

“Good,” Joe said with pleasure. “Just the kind of job I’ve always wanted—defensive countermeasures.”

“I hope to hell they fire back.”

Joe gave Akiva a knowing look. There was satisfaction in her husky voice when she spoke. He saw the predator’s glint in her eyes and knew it well. She was a hunter of the first order, and he found himself more than a little excited at the chance to be in her back seat on these missions. With her three years of combat experience, she could teach him a lot. She was a master at combat tactics.

“That might happen once or twice,” Morgan warned, “but they’ll get the message real quick and not fire. There are no parachutes in those civilian planes, and Rios won’t want to lose them and his pilots like that. No, they’ll learn real fast not to fire on you.”

“What we have to be careful of is Rios finding our base,” Joe said. “Once he sees us interdicting his shipments and turnin’ them back, he’s gonna be one pissed-off dude.”

“Yes,” Maya warned, “Rios is a man of action. In all likelihood, he’ll send his son, Luis, to do the dirty work. And with four helos, they can do a helluva job trying to locate your base. One thing in our favor is that they are civilian helos and don’t have the equipment or instruments to easily follow or find you. From the air, your base will be tough to find, which is why we chose it. There is an opening in the trees, but it’s about half a mile from your actual base, and you’ll have to fly low, under the canopy, to get in and out. Even if Luis spots that hole, all he’ll see from above is more jungle, not the base itself.”

“But,” Akiva said, “if it was an old drug-runner’s base, why wouldn’t he know about it?”

“Luis can’t know everything,” Mike said. “There are dirt airstrips all over southern Mexico, hundreds of ’em. Finding your base will be like trying to find the needle in the haystack.”

“Still,” Morgan cautioned, “you are going to have to stay alert. If Luis ever does find you, he’ll come in and kill everyone.”

“Worse,” Akiva said, “he’ll get his hands on the Apache. That could be disastrous.”

“Right,” Maya said. “So most of your flying is going to take place at night. Both helos are painted black, without insignias of any type. With the Blackhawk, you’ll perform daylight combat missions. Combat with the Apache will be night activity only. You fly when the drug runners fly—in the dead of night.

“You don’t want to fly near San Cristobel. You’ll want to stay out of sight as much as possible. I’ve worked up a number of vectors that you will fly to and from your secret base, so that no one can get a fix on you and follow you home.” Maya handed them each a manual. “Study it. Your lives, and the lives of your ground crew, depend upon it.”

Akiva settled the manual in her lap. She felt the thrum of excitement, like a mighty ceremonial drum of her people, beating within her. The more she heard of this mission, the more she knew she was exactly fitted for it. She was the eagle stooping to dive, a sky predator, and with her flawless steed, an Apache Longbow, she knew she could wreak hell on earth in Javier Rios’s neighborhood. She salivated at the opportunity. The only glitch in this mission was Joe Calhoun.

Risking a quick glance in the pilot’s direction, she noticed that he sat relaxed and at ease in his chair. She saw no predatory excitement in his face or his eyes. He wasn’t the kind of combat pilot Akiva wanted. No, she’d rather have had Wild Woman or Dallas or Snake; any of those women had the killer instincts that Akiva herself had honed to such a fine degree. And in their business, they stayed alive because of that steely combat readiness.

Joe Calhoun was an enigma to Akiva. He just couldn’t be labeled, didn’t easily fit anywhere in her world as she knew it. And yet he was going to be her back seat, the person she had to rely on to keep her safe on these missions. How was she going to trust an Anglo who looked more like he ought to be flying a cargo helicopter than a combat gunship?

Chapter 3

Joe felt like he’d stepped into a hill where rattlers lived, as far as Akiva was concerned. He’d seen the flash of irritation in her eyes when, after the two-hour briefing, Major Stevenson had ordered them to Akiva’s office to work out the details of the base operation. Primarily, they were to choose the personnel who would be going with them, three enlisted people who would provide support for them in all respects.

As he followed Akiva into her tiny office on the second floor of the H.Q., he realized it was the first time he’d been in it.

“Close the door,” she told him as she pushed several flight reports aside on her green metal desk, dropped her new manuals there and sat down. “Sit over there,” she said, pointing to a green metal chair in the corner that had at least a dozen files stacked on it.

Closing the door quietly, Joe walked over to the chair, picked up the files and set them on the floor. He moved the chair to the opposite side of the desk from where she was sitting. Joe sensed her brittleness and distrust toward him. He could tell by her abruptness that she was stressed. But more than anything, he wanted this liaison to work between them.

Joe had to keep himself from staring at her. Akiva could have been a model in some chic Paris show, wearing designer clothes. Her face was angular and classic, with high cheekbones, wide intelligent eyes and a soft, full mouth.

Giving her a lopsided smile, he sat down and said, “You’ve been here at Black Jaguar Base for three years. I’m sure you’ve got some ideas of the personnel you’d like to have come with us?” Even as he asked the question, Joe wondered why he’d been chosen to be Akiva’s X.O. She wasn’t easy to work with—except in the cockpit, where she was all business.

He saw her gold eyes narrow speculatively on him. “Yes, I do have a list of people I want.” Her nostrils flared as she waited for his reaction.

Joe sat there relaxed, his hands clasped on the desk in front of him. He was darkly tanned, the color emphasizing his large gray eyes. A lock of ebony hair dipped rebelliously across his wrinkled brow. She wished she could ignore him, but she’d promised Maya to try and make this work. “I’m new at this,” she muttered defiantly.

“What? Being a C.O. instead of a pilot taking orders?”