Drake stared at the gate from a few hundred meters out.

“They’re going to kill us sooner than I thought.”

Nikita slid back into the front seat. He hadn’t seen her looking like this since the Philippines. Camo pants and jacket, boots, and enough magazines of ammo on her vest to stop a small army—perhaps even a mid-sized one as she also had her long Tac-50 sniper rifle out of its case and propped in the foot well.

“There’s the lady I fell for. Wondered where you’d gone.”

“I got tangled up in some idiot he-man’s idea of a wardrobe. Won’t happen again so I hope you enjoyed it.” He could easily hear her smile in the dark.

She shoved something in his lap.

“Here’s your jacket, unless you want to be an Armani-white target.”

A blast of dirt whipped against the side of the SUV, rattling it loudly, though the armored Toyota was too heavy to sway in the gust of wind. The storm was almost here.

He changed into the darker clothing as he continued to watch out the windshield.

Drake had doused the lights on the Land Cruiser the instant the glow of the main gate’s floodlights came into view. Now they were parked atop a small clear-cut rise, looking down at their welcoming committee. The security was outlined in a circle of light that had been punched into the jungle’s darkness.

The four guards all had their M16s off their shoulder straps and in their hands. He only saw one other up in the guard tower. They weren’t watching the gate. Instead, they were all facing into the compound, waiting for his arrival, not knowing he was already here—in range of their weapons but hidden by the darkness. A distant crack of lightning said that ploy wasn’t going to work much longer.

He turned on the windshield wipers as the first of the rain started to fall.

When someone knocked on the window, he nearly leapt out of his clothes. He risked turning on the dash lights. There was just enough glow to light Luke Altman’s smiling face.

Drake rolled down his window, the only one that still operated after armoring. The fresh smell of rain washed in. He could feel the red dust of the Honduran soil being knocked down. Soon it would be slick and muddy, but after most of a day and an evening in the jungle, it was a relief.

“Hey, Altman.”

“Hey yourself. Nikita, nice to see you in proper clothes again.”

“Asshole,” Nikita replied cheerfully.

“So, looks like they’re waiting for you.”

“Looks like,” Drake agreed.

“I might have an idea on that.”

Less than a minute later they were ready.

“Do it,” Altman slapped him on the shoulder.

But Drake hesitated. He wasn’t sure exactly why at first, but then he focused on what his instincts had seen before his thoughts did.

The every-twenty-minute patrol. He glanced at the dashboard clock.

If they were on schedule…

A minute later a black Toyota pickup was coming along the fence line, its lights refracting high off the raindrops before it fully came into view. The two guys in back were hunkered down in ponchos, not even pretending to look around them.

Drake waited, estimating the timing for both his SUV and their truck to arrive at the gate at the same time.

“Now!” He dropped the Land Cruiser into gear, checked one more time that the steering wheel was well tied off, then flicked on the headlights as he stepped clear. At just engine idle, it began rolling toward the gate.

He walked over to Luke and Nikita.

“Why are you lying down in the mud?”

“If you want to catch a stray round, that’s fine with me,” Altman said flat-voiced.

“Not with me,” Nikita complained. “Get your ass down, Roman. So much to teach you, it’s just sad.” She was watching the unfolding events through the scope on her rifle.

He got down fast. His instincts were too used to being wrapped in a helo’s armor.

“They’ve seen it. Raising their M-16s.”

The Land Cruiser continued to idle forward, slowly gaining speed. It wasn’t much of a slope, but it would be enough to make sure that it didn’t get stuck.

When it was half the distance down to them, the guards opened fire. Their muzzle flashes were brilliant yellow despite the big floodlights shining above. The rounds sparked off the armor and bulletproof glass. A few ricochets whistled by overhead and Drake was glad he was lying in the mud.

“Changing clips.”

They resumed burning rounds. The headlights finally went, but the SUV just kept rolling. The pickup pulled to a stop and the occupants piled out to add their firepower.

“Watch the tower,” Nikita announced.

A heavy machine gun began chugging away, its roar loud even at this distance.

“It’s just a Mark 48. Still marginal against this armor. Looks like he figured that out.”

“About time,” Altman grumbled.

A streak of white arced down from the tower and onto the SUV. The Pike missile hit the driver’s window and blew a massive hole in the side of the vehicle. As if that wasn’t enough, the tower gunner fired a second round through the hole.

Unable to contain the internal blast compression, the entire roof and window section of the SUV flailed upward. The heavy door armor on the other side was all that saved the two sets of guards on the ground, keeping the Pike’s shrapnel within the vehicle. But the force of the explosion was enough to bowl them all off their feet and send them tumbling.

The Land Cruiser veered off course slightly.

“Damn it!” The SUV was supposed to cripple the tower.

Instead of hitting the base of the tower as planned, it lodged in the storm fence between the empty Toyota pickup and the tower.

“That’s why I came early,” Altman pulled a small box from his hip pocket. He had taken supplies from the Little Bird this afternoon and floated downriver himself.

He dialed in a frequency and pressed a trigger. Two of the four legs on the tower blew out. In slow motion, the tower collapsed over the burning remains of the SUV, blocked the front gate, and the guard shack at the tower’s top shattered the parked black pickup. The tower gunner dove clear at the last moment, but just lay stunned in the mud.

“Let’s go!”

Together the three of them raced downslope through the battering rain. They arrived before any of the guards had shaken off the effects of the double explosion so close by. In moments they had them cuffed with zip ties hand and foot. There were only two Hondurans among them, the rest were US ex-military or worse.

A bright crack of lightning illuminated one of the Little Birds landing just in time to help finish the job. He, Nikita, and Altman all grabbed night-vision goggles, then Drake pointed upward without looking.

“Nikita, floodlights.”

In moments she’d shot them out.

He flicked on the power switch and his world went to the familiar thousand shades of green produced by NVGs.

He continued securing the downed and now blind guards.

Then the Tac-50 sounded again, a round hitting metal very close by with a sharp clang.

He turned in time to see Nikita’s second Tac-50 round hit the Mercedes sedan. Head on in the engine block. A hiss of steam rose from under the hood.

“I have an idea.”

“Hit me,” Drake replied.

So Nikita did. His surprised yelp was only partial payback for making her wear a dress to a gunfight.

Esly had been on the Little Bird and was now kneeling on the least happy of the guards, who was facedown in the mud. It was the bastard Nikita had disarmed earlier—she should have shot him while she still had the chance.

Nikita walked up to him and at her nod, Esly turned his head to face her. She flicked on a flashlight for his benefit, not hers.

“Were you the shooter of the environmentalists?”

His eyes went wide at her transformation.

She placed the business end of her Tac-50 an inch from his right eye. The sniper rifle could throw a half-inch round well over a mile. At an inch, the bore would look like a cannon.

“I suggest you answer her question,” Esly prompted him with a hard knee to the kidney. “She isn’t as patient as I am.”

Nikita clicked the safety off and braced as if she was about to fire.

“No! It was Hank. Not here! Not me!” His panicked accent placed him from New Jersey. “He’s back at the underground base. Hank pulled the trigger on both of them; he insisted it was his right as leader. We were just patrol. All we did was track and secure.”

Nikita kept the gun aimed at him.

“I swear. It wasn’t me.”

His right. Killing an innocent was—

Oddly, she didn’t feel a desire to pull the trigger on the downed guard. She wouldn’t have, he wasn’t a sick animal to be put down. But in the past she’d have thought he was. Now he wasn’t even worth her time.

She huddled back up with Altman and Drake as Esly finished tying everyone up. Ankles as well as wrists.

“We need to get this guy Hank out of his hole in the ground and have him come here.”

“Easy,” Altman shrugged. “But what do we do with him once we get him? And in order to flush him, we’re going to spook off the people we really want. I don’t have a plan for them.”

Nikita gave a sharp whistle to Esly, who came trotting over. She wore a holstered sidearm, an ammo vest with a half dozen clips, and carried a loaded M16.

“Well, you didn’t shoot us in the back,” Drake told her. “Guess that means you’re okay.”

Altman’s grunt made it clear that he’d been comfortable enough around her to not object to her arming herself.

Nikita ignored both the men. “Esly, how connected is Mercedez?”

“Are you joking with me? She is a woman who knows everybody and everything.”

“Do you have her phone number?”

Esly tapped her forehead and smiled.

Nikita pulled out Drake’s phone and handed it to her.

“What am I asking her about?”

She glanced at Drake and Altman, but they hadn’t put it together yet.

“Ask her how to reach the most corrupt military commander at the nearest military base. Call it a hunch.”

Drake smiled slowly as he caught on. “Gutierrez would definitely need the local protection of these guards, but he’d also have an ear inside the military. Let’s see if we can’t cut the whole head off this snake. And now that you mention it, I’d like to ask her a question myself after you’re done with her.”

Drake’s look could have covered anything from calling in a bomber to pulling her into the darkness for a quick tumble.

It was the moments when he was being most creative that she couldn’t read him.