Heart Strike (23 page)

“Say what?”

Carla might not have heard it, but Melissa had, and it rooted her to the concrete as surely as Duane's grasp had trapped Richie's fist. No one had ever needed to “look out” for her since her brother. She'd never actually needed him to either; she'd always been the driven one in their family, but he'd liked saying it and she'd let him. Chad didn't get such a pass.

Melissa stepped around Kyle and Carla until she was right at the edge of Chad's personal space, close enough to be an easy target, far enough away that she'd have time to react if he attacked.

“You've given me all this shit to
protect
Richie?”

Chad nodded and then winced as if his head was really hurting. Wouldn't surprise her; Richie's punch had landed square and true.

“Did you ever think that just maybe Richie could protect himself?”

Chad rubbed his ear thoughtfully. “Think I found that out. Doesn't mean he was ready for your act. I'm just trying to protect the little shit.”

Melissa stared into Chad's bright blue eyes for the longest time, until she became aware of her own reflection there. Chad hadn't been pissed because of his failure to sweep her off her feet. He'd been doing what he thought was right to protect his teammate.

Then she heard Kyle grunt out an acknowledgment.

Melissa turned to him. “What?”

He side-glanced at Carla and then looked away quickly before his wife noticed. “Uh, Chad can be very demonstrative when his sense of loyalty is offended.” He swallowed hard as if at the memory of someone choking him. There was a story there that Melissa would bet Carla didn't know, and would never find out.

Chad might be dangerous, but he was also loyal—the self-proclaimed guardian of the team. Finally, his reactions to her made sense and, in that moment, became nonthreatening but also deeply disappointing. Far from being welcomed to the team, she was seen as a threat.

And now that she knew Richie, the team's reactions of surprise at Richie's animation and ease toward her made sense. Richie wasn't the sort to approach a woman on his own or speak out in her defense. And yet he had, repeatedly, surprising them all.

For her.

Melissa felt around inside. Her fear of Chad indeed was gone…as was any other feeling.

“I am not,” she addressed him matter-of-factly, “some
lobo,
some she-wolf, who must be guarded against.”

Then she turned to Richie.

“Nor am I some weak
femenino
who needs protecting. I'm a god damn Delta operator and have spent enough sweat and blood to prove it.”

Then she turned and walked to the hangar door.

Behind her, she could hear Kyle's start speaking, his tone was preemptory—the closest she'd heard to a tone of command since her arrival. His disapproval was thick in every word.

“Analie Sala has
invited
us to shift our base of operations. We leave in four hours. I expect the plane to be serviced and all of this mess to be cleaned up and packed aboard along with your personal gear.”

And Melissa stepped out into the late-morning sunshine and began walking off the field and toward the hotel.

Chad had been against her for all of the wrong reasons.

And Richie hadn't trusted his own feelings except to pound his teammate to protect the weak female. His apology, that she'd thought was sufficient at the time, wasn't. He was constantly overcompensating for the one thing that she knew was real—that she cared for him. That she… Melissa couldn't bring herself to even think it. It was better if Richie never knew.

She hadn't said what had been in her heart, partly because she didn't like the answer that was buried deep down inside her.
Did either of you ever think that maybe how I feel about Richie was as real as it gets?

No, she didn't like that question at all.

They worked in silence as they cleaned up the hangar. Richie caught sight of his reflection in one of the pickup truck's mirrors. Black and blue was already spreading along the side of his face and a deep ache had formed behind it. His left shoulder hurt like mad every time he twisted to that side.

Chad sported a black eye and a split lip. His distinct limp had worsened with the effort of cleaning up the hangar. Only Duane had stayed to help them. Kyle and Carla had taken the Forerunner to fetch their gear from the hotel.

When they finally finished reorganizing the tools and spares and had loaded them on the plane, they took the beater pickup to fetch their own gear. He and Chad took the front; Duane sat in the back of the crew cab. The pressure of the silence built even though it was a short drive. Finally Richie couldn't stand it anymore.

“Chad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“We okay?”

“Never weren't.”

That was a relief.

“You and Melissa?” Duane's question rumbled out of the back.

Chad's silence was long enough that they'd reached the hotel before he answered. He finally shrugged then cursed softly against some pain and rubbed his shoulder.

“Up to her now.”

Richie nodded. That was good.

“Doesn't strike me as the forgiving type though.”

Richie thought about her final comment as she was leaving. He'd been protecting her from unjust accusations, just like he would any other team member, hadn't he? Even as he thought it, he felt a pinch.

Nope.

Sure, he'd lay down his life for any one of his teammates. He'd rather take a bullet than see one of them take it. That was a given in a close-knit military unit—they'd even been lectured on it by Army psychologists at various stages of training. Being the guilty survivor sucked beyond imagining while your buddy lay there dying. He'd served more with the bridge-and-road crews of the 82nd's Eagle Battalion than the explosive ordnance disposal guys, so he'd only lost a couple buddies when he was in theater. The attrition rate on the EOD teams was horrific.

But with Melissa it was more than that. He'd lay down his life for her if she merely asked it of him.

What was that? It wasn't something that was in any of their training manuals.

They pulled up as Kyle and Carla were pulling out of the parking lot. They paused and rolled down facing windows.

“You seen Melissa?” Kyle's question struck fear into Richie's heart. What if she'd…gone?

He could only shake his head no.

Kyle looked worried. And beyond Kyle in the passenger seat, Carla's look was fulminating. If Melissa had left, his ass was grass. They drove off.

Richie raced inside to grab his gear and was about to rush back to the truck and the airport when he had an idea.

He didn't bother knocking this time but instead used his key—this place was too primitive for cards—to enter the room he and Melissa had originally taken together but never shared.

And then he froze.

The black hole of the barrel on Melissa's Colt M1911 was centered on his forehead.

“Should have knocked first.” Richie did his best not to move any muscles except those he needed to speak.

Melissa was slow on lowering the gun. Her gear was packed, a simple duffel at her feet. She wore the scuffed boots and camo pants that the whole team had adopted as their standard paramilitary look. Her other hand was clutched about the silly doubloon medallion that dangled over her black T-shirt. He couldn't tell if she was holding on to it or about to yank it off and throw it away.

Her eyes looked haunted.

He had the sudden feeling that she'd been sitting in exactly this position the whole time he'd been cleaning up the hangar and packing the plane. Was she waiting for something, or was she deciding whether or not to get on a flight to Fort Bragg for reassignment?

“You okay?” He couldn't read her expression at all.

“I should be asking you.” She stared at his face. “You're the one who took on The Reaper.”

Richie grimaced and then wished he hadn't because his jaw still stung. “I'll heal soon enough.”

She nodded a few times in acknowledgment. “You two okay? You and Chad?”

“Yeah, we're fine.”

Melissa dropped her hands into her lap and studied them.

Richie resisted the urge to kneel before them and grab hold. He didn't know if she was drifting away from him or already flown. He heard Chad down the hall telling Duane to hurry up his ass. Richie let the room door swing shut to buy them a few more moments.

Asking the next question would be horrible, but he evaluated it and decided that not knowing the answer was worse.

“Are we okay?” Richie managed.

“You're something really special, Richie Goldman.” Melissa rose to her feet, shouldering her duffel as she did so. In the small room, they were now standing just a foot apart.

“But…” he offered because he knew it was over. That he'd blown it with the most amazing woman he'd ever met. Is this what it felt like to be shot, to be the one who caught the round rather than the one who was left standing? The pain was far worse than anything Chad had handed out to him earlier.

She studied him with those infinitely blue eyes.

He could hear Chad and Duane coming down the hall, Chad calling out Richie's name.

“We never get time do we?” Melissa's tone was still unreadable.

He shook his head and ignored the twinges of the ill-considered too-fast motion.

A fist thumped on the door. “Ass in gear, buddy. Time to rock.”

Melissa didn't look away.

“Hang on,” Richie managed without turning, but it came out as a croak, his throat tight before the pending verdict. He managed a deep breath, seeking calm. And he found it in Melissa's soft scent of icy mountains and warm fires. Whatever other craziness was happening, she was still his Ilsa. Even if she wasn't anymore. Perhaps especially then as Bogey hadn't gotten his Ilsa either. He hadn't liked that ending to the movie.

“Please,” he whispered. “Say that we're okay.”

“Do something for me, Richie.”

“Anything!” That elicited a small smile.

She patted his cheek, the unbruised side, and smiled a bit sadly as she said, “Don't worry so much.”

That reference back to their first meeting warned him that their universe had just had its timeline reset all the way back to the beginning as surely as if they had a time machine.

But the soft kiss before she moved by him to open the door gave him reason to hope that this new future still stood a chance.

* * *

“The airfield is very unique for the approaching.” The pilot that Analie Sala had sent to meet them spoke nervously, as he had from the first moment he'd come aboard. He was in Melissa's seat and she hated that. Hated the loss of control.

She readjusted her headset and crouched between the two pilot seats so that she could see what Richie and Claude Mura—a small Japanese man with a distinct French accent—were seeing.

“You will be making the use of this unique approach and departure route every time you come to this place and you will stay very low for the last fifty miles.”

They'd been dodging the jungle's treetops for over twenty minutes.

“See? The river? How she bends there?”

Melissa tried to rise up to see where he was pointing and banged her head on the Twin Otter's low ceiling for the tenth time in this flight alone. They'd left the Orinoco behind five miles ago, flying up the Río Atabapo, which now took a hard turn to the east.

“Go southwest here.”

They made the turn, the last of the setting sun blasting into the cockpit. The horizon was a blaze of orange beneath an indigo-dark sky. Experience told her that in minutes it would be too dark to see where they were landing.

“If you go due west,” Claude continued hurriedly, “you will pass over Inírida.
Erreur grave, oui?
The military, they have many units there because of FARC.”

Melissa would bet they were flying for the FARC, which made it good advice. The Marxist guerillas of Colombia had been at war with the various national governments since the early 1960s. By the 1970s they were using kidnap and ransom, and illegal mining to finance their operations. Since the 1980s, the bulk of their income had shifted to the massive flow of cocaine out of the country. Whether an ideology existed at all anymore was an unknown.

“See, there.” Claude pointed excitedly and Melissa again banged her head on the plane's low ceiling.

A tap on her shoulder and she turned to see Chad was close behind her. He had a plastic bin of assorted parts that must weigh close to a hundred pounds though he moved it like it weighed ten. He waved her aside and he slid it into place close between the pilots' seats. He'd made a seat for her so that she could learn what she needed to in order to support the team.

He watched her steadily for a long moment.

At her careful nod, he returned the same in kind before moving back to his seat.

Maybe Richie hadn't been lying when he said that he and Chad were okay. She'd cautiously take this plastic bin seat as a peace offering…and see where the future led.

She was now sitting at about the same height as Richie and Claude and could easily pick out what Claude had been pointing out.

The jungle was a low roll in this region. Rather than brutal ridges and carved canyons, the contour of the treetops indicated that a pleasantly rolling set of hills lay somewhere under the green canopy. There were signs of water everywhere, crisscrossing rivers and streams that glinted through the lush foliage.

They had left the land of
tepui
—vertically-sided mesas with their amazing waterfalls—to the east. Here there was little above the roof of the jungle, except for the trio of abrupt, unforested hills straight ahead of them.

Out of seemingly nowhere, two great mounds of black stone rose five hundred meters above the roof of the jungle and soared up into the sky. Close beside them, a third rose to half again the height. The Río Inírida twisted around their base, reflecting their dark images on its smooth-flowing water. The jungle didn't climb the steep faces of the three peaks; rather it slammed into the sides and could go no farther.

“Those are seriously weird.”

“You must fly through the Cerros de Mavecure. Between Pajarito and Mono, the Little Bird and the Monkey. They are the tall one and the middle one. You must always do this at night. If you do it in the day, we would have already been shot down, even with the special permission of Analie Sala. Also, do not try to land if you are not expected. This is tonight's frequency.” He dialed it into the radio and transmitted just one word,
Ibis.
“Never leave without first finding that night's frequency and what bird is the password.”

They flew down into the saddle between the two hills that towered above them.

Melissa had never had the luxury of watching Richie fly without being observed herself. He had become so natural in the seat that it was hard to credit that a week ago neither of them had ever flown such a large or complex aircraft. His motions were assured and steady. He didn't even look as he reached up to tweak one of the prop controls.

He was the consummate professional trained to a level that few ever achieved. She knew that because it was a level she'd had to fight to achieve herself. She might feel a little less put out if he didn't make it look so easy right at this particular moment.

His face was awash in the ruddy glow of the last of the sunset, making him about the handsomest man she'd ever seen. And she knew that she was biased now, but she didn't care. He wasn't some museum exhibit that was all facade and little substance like most guys. The beautiful outer shell was only enhanced by the inner man.

“There.” Claude forced her attention back to the line of flight.

They had crossed over the saddle between the twin peaks and were once again facing the boundless jungle.

“See those lights?”

And she did. Of the oddest things to find in the middle of the Colombian jungle, airport glide slope VASI lights would have been high on her list. Visual approach slope indicators were paired lights that were designed so that when you were at the right descent angle you could see red lights shining above white lights. If you saw double white, you were too high. You saw red over red, you were about to fly into the ground and be dead. “Red is dead” had been repeated a thousand times by every pilot ever trained.

It was especially strange to find the lights here because—

“Where the heck is the runway?”

* * *

Richie wanted to know exactly the same thing. All he could see was the darkness of the forest canopy.

He spotted a second set of the lights fifty meters to the right, still lost in the darkness of the trees.

Even as he watched, they were shifting to white over white, they were too high.

“No!” Claude shouted. “There is no missed approach allowed on this field. Go down! Now!”

Richie hesitated just a moment, not trusting the man.

Then Melissa pinched the back of his arm sharply, forcing him to jerk his arm forward to get clear of the pain. That shoved the wheel forward and forced him to nose down.

Between Melissa's reinforcement and Claude's panicked tone, Richie started pulling power and setting flaps as if they were actually on final approach to a runway he couldn't see. He was only peripherally aware of Melissa reading down through the checklist for him as he did each task.

“Claude, there is nothing but trees.”

“Trust me,
mon ami.
It will be
aéroport
when you need it to be. Just stay between the lights and on the glide path no matter what. Our lives depends on it.”

So Richie continued his descent toward the dark jungle canopy.