“Ready?” Melissa asked.

“Absolutely not. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping me. Let’s do it.”

Melissa fired the launcher three times over the hotel roof’s low parapet.

Sofia had rigged a small camera on the edge of the parapet looking across at the roof of La Tumba—one of her expensive night-vision ones, one thing that Duane’s store-boughts couldn’t do was see in the dark.

In her glasses she watched Melissa’s three projectiles thunk down on the three corners of the roof and explode in puffs of gas. The snipers of the roving roof patrol barely had time to jump to their feet before the gas caught them and they collapsed where they stood.

“Nice shooting.”

“Thanks,” Melissa patted her launcher. “That will keep them down for an hour.”

Sofia checked her watch. “They’ll be missing their next radio check in less than a minute.”

“How’s your throwing arm?”

“Five-three win-loss record on the inter-winery softball team when I was playing first base. I could hit third every time—without a pitcher relay.” Well, after the first year where she’d embarrassingly missed a double-play at third three times in the same inning. She’d made sure she was much better practiced by the second season.

“Batter up,” Melissa tossed her a percussion grenade.

Sofia popped up over the parapet, sighted down eighteen stories and across a quiet boulevard, pulled the pin and threw it. Then dropped back out of sight.

“Here’s another.”

Sofia caught it and was shifting to kneel high enough to see again when Melissa grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back down on the roof.

“No! Never pop up in the same spot twice.”

Sofia could see in her glasses that the rooftop snipers were all still asleep, but she could feel the hot path that a bullet might have made right through her chest for such a beginner’s mistake.

She began crawling as the first grenade went off far below with a thump followed by the sound of shattering glass. They weren’t fragmentation grenades because they didn’t want to risk killing passing civilians. But they would definitely shake up the door guards and do some property damage.

She tapped the control on her glasses to the second camera’s feed, and earned herself a disorienting bout of vertigo as she was suddenly looking eighteen stories straight down.

The third-story windows of La Tumba had been blown in. The guards down on the street were staring upward in surprise.

Right! She’d arced the grenade high to get the distance across the boulevard, forgetting that there would be plenty of time for the grenade to cover the distance as it fell eighteen stories.

She winged the second one out and down and then ducked down to crawl back to Melissa.

This time the guards went down, though they should only be dazed. The first floor windows were undamaged, but several cars had lost their windows.

Sofia flipped back to the first camera just as a second sniper team burst onto the roof. She signaled Melissa who sent over three more gas canisters. One bounced off the far side of the roof, but it didn’t matter. The other two landed at the second team’s feet and they dropped where they stood.

La Tumba would be well convinced that they were the target of an attack.

Sofia triggered her radio, “Team Three. Go.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Melissa was staying low and hustling toward the roof door.

Sofia crouched and followed.

Duane didn’t have to wait long for the next stage of the attack.

Delta was transmitting in the clear, because opposition “rebels”—of which Caracas had more every day—wouldn’t have high-tech encrypted radios. They’d be lucky if they had walkie-talkies. So, for whoever was listening in on The Unit’s transmissions, they’d hear about team after team—even if Chad was the entirety of Team Three.

He didn’t bother answering over the radio, of course. Instead he answered with a South African M32 MGL—Multi-shot Grenade Launcher. It looked like an oversized revolver, right down to the six-slot rotating cylinder—big enough to launch fist-sized explosives over four hundred meters. He began lobbing rounds high into the air so that they’d drop from the sky, completely masking what direction they were coming from.

The first two forty-millimeter grenades destroyed the security checkpoint that crossed the road at the very base of El Helicoide. The next four landed on Levels One and Two.

Duane waited for Chad to reload the cylinder. This time he dropped two rounds on Level Two, three on Level Three, and one on Level Four. The attack would appear to be moving up the hill fast enough to scare the shit out of any SEBIN agents who had pulled the night shift. Most importantly, it would be seen as moving up, drawing attention away from the real action on Level Nine.

“Team One is a go,” he called his own intentions over the radio. “Team Four. Go.” That would tell Kyle, Carla, and Richie that they were now on their own.

Duane hit the first remote trigger. He’d wired three Mercedes Benzes, four BMWs and a Toyota SUV on Level Six while waiting for Team Four to get into position.

They blew with a very satisfying roar. Window glass for the entire southeast quarter of the level was blown into the offices. He’d spiked his charges into the gas tanks, so the explosions had been particularly violent and impressive. They roiled upward lighting the nearby barrio in an evil red glow and blowing flaming gasoline into the deserted offices. For a moment he was afraid he’d done too much which would spoil their game—but sprinklers came on and the flames were already quieting.

While he’d been waiting on Team Two of Sofia and Melissa, he’d ridden Richie’s street luge down to Level Five, managing not to kill himself in the process. Damn the thing was fast. Lying back with his feet on the T-bar and his hands white-knuckled on the brake handles, he’d practically flown down to the next level.

Now he understood why Richie had also given him knee and elbow pads. The pavement flashed by mere inches below his elbows. He’d bit his tongue almost hard enough to make it bleed out of near panic before he got the feel of it. His first parachute jump hadn’t felt this fast—of course then he’d only been falling through air then. Here the ground was a very immediate reminder of just how fast he was going. When he pulled the brake handles up, all they did was pivot the other end of the bar into the ground. The concrete had screamed as sparks shot behind him in a great twin rooster tail.

However, Richie had clearly forgotten to account for the fact that he had a large backpack of explosives, which forced him to sit partly up into the wind and did nasty things to his balance in corners. Still, it was the most fun he’d had since the time he and Veronica—a very limber airline stewardess—had bungee jumped at New Zealand’s Nevis Bungy, the world’s third highest. If he ever lived in a place like the Dundee Hills, instead of the ass-flat landscape of Atlanta or Fort Bragg, he was definitely going to get himself one of these.

The quality of cars had shifted with his descent—fewer Benzes, more Toyotas here on Level Five.

Now he scooted far enough around the road to be safe and hit his second trigger. In moments the southeast quadrant of Level Five was engulfed in flame.

The top levels of El Helicoide should be mostly empty already—top ranked SEBIN officials apparently were given the highest level offices and they weren’t the sort of people who pulled night shifts. Any techs who were working late would be Team Four’s problem.

The real challenge now was to buy enough time for Richie to get in, figure out their passwords, and hopefully find a way to intercept their microwave transmissions from La Tumba as well.

A peek over the side barricade revealed a line of explosions: the east park, a truck parked to the southeast, and four more on the front security gate. There were also a number of gaps blown in the fence to either side. Chad looked like he was a whole goddamn Army.

Duane lay down on the luge, picked up his feet, released the brakes, and raced down to wire some cars on Level Four.

“No! No! No! No!”

“Shh!”

“Don’t shh me!” Though Sofia did drop her voice to a whisper—a fierce whisper. At least that’s what she hoped it was sounded like, rather than the stark terror she was feeling.

They had raced the old SUV the seven kilometers to La Carlota Air Base. No problem! This late at night the roads were empty. Besides, all emergency equipment was racing in the other direction toward the “attack.”

They’d parked exactly where Duane and Richie’s diagram had said to park. Great!

They’d crawled through the precut hole in the perimeter fence. Perfect! Though how Duane had gotten his broad shoulders through the narrow gap she had no idea.

Then she and Melissa had scanned the field. Dozens of helicopters were parked close by the hangar. And the one right in front of them, the one marked with a big X on the diagram, wasn’t some nice little five-seat Bell JetRanger.

“Tell me I’m not losing my mind.”

Melissa giggled.

“I’m going to kill Duane.”

“Actually…” Melissa seemed to be having trouble controlling her laugh.

“If you weren’t a girl, I’d hit you,” she growled.

“Girls can hit girls, it’s boys who can’t hit girls.”

“Fine,” Sofia wanted to bury her face in the dirt. “I can’t hit you because I’m a girl. Happy?”

“Immensely,” but Melissa did get some control of her laugh. “This looks more like something Richie would do. Remind me to tell you about the time he stole a Gulfstream jet when he’d never flown anything faster than a Twin Otter seaplane before. I’ll bet he chose this just because he wants to know how it flies.”

“How about you? Do you fly?”

Melissa raised her hands palm out, “Only little planes. The Twin Otter is the biggest thing I’ve ever had to fly and that’s plenty. When it comes to rotorcraft, you’re the only one on this team with that skill.”

“I’m not on the team.”

“Yeah, right,” Melissa didn’t sound convinced.

“But…” Sofia could only wave her hand helplessly.

The helicopter was one of several dozen sitting on the tarmac. There were plenty of smaller ones. But no-o. None of those were marked on the diagram. The aircraft those idiots had selected was a Mil Mi-26—the largest production helicopter made anywhere in the world. It could pick up a twin-rotor Chinook or even a Marine Corps Sea Stallion—with the Marines still in it. It could carry a Boeing 737 in its harness sling. She wanted to scream. The little JetRanger had one engine and a two-blade rotor all of thirty-three feet long. It weighed one ton, not sixty. The Mi-26 had twin eleven-thousand horsepower engines to drive its hundred-foot across, eight-blade rotor.

“I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

“Duane said you’d say that.”

“I’m going to kill him,” this time she did bury her face in the dirt.

“He said to say he knows that he can count on you.”

“Dead man!” She told any passing earthworms, though they probably spoke Spanish here in Venezuela. “Hombre muerto!”

Melissa tugged on her arm.

“He said that?”

She looked up to see Melissa’s nod.

“Bastard! Next time he helps save my life, to hell with him. I’m just going to die to prove him wrong.”

“That’s the spirit.”

After scanning the field—everything here was still quiet—they raced to the helicopter at a professional-looking stroll. They entered the helicopter through one of the passenger doors on the side of the cargo bay. Inside was a cavern ten feet high and wide that stretched forty feet long.

“What are these?” Melissa shown a light on the mounded crates that filled most of the massive space. Stenciled clearly on the side in Russian: Igla SA-18.

“Mierda!” They swore in unison.

Sofia swallowed hard. “I saw a report that Venezuela had recently purchased five thousand surface-to-air missiles from the Russians.”

Melissa patted the side of the a box, “I’d say this is most of them right here. No wonder the boys chose this helicopter. I don’t want these in Venezuela either. How paranoid are these people?”

“Very,” Sofia began working her way forward along a narrow gap between the crate rows. “After you tell me about Richie and the jet, remind me to tell you about—” Her words dried up in her throat.

“What?” Melissa came up and looked over her shoulder. “Wow!”

There were five command seats spread comfortably in a cockpit bigger than an entire JetRanger. Each position was surrounded with more controls and readouts than the smaller helo had—total.

“I can’t wait to see how you pull this one off.”

Sofia decided she was out of options, so she punched Melissa.

But not very hard because she was going to need all the help she could get.

Level Four of El Helicoide had also blown spectacularly, but on Level Three, most of the cars were gone. Duane barely had enough vehicles to make an impressive show, which was just as well, he was running out of explosives.

He’d also been spiking the vehicle closest to each machine gun emplacement that showed up on the map projected inside his shooting glasses—the map Sofia had assembled from all of their observations last night and this morning. With Chad taking out the lower emplacements, they hadn’t been much of an issue. That and the shooters wouldn’t be able to find any identifiable targets. They were looking for an attacking army pouring out of the barrio, not for he and Chad with backpacks.

He paused to lean on the barricade awhile to watch the mayhem at the front gate.

Chad had pounded enough grenades onto the roof over the security checkpoint to collapse it onto the roadway. All it had taken was three cars abandoned in the exit lanes and that had put an end to anyone else driving off the complex. The clutter of vehicles behind them was a fast-growing snarl of dinged vehicles and men yelling at each other over the hoods.

Duane had counted up to seventy trapped vehicles, when Chad dropped a single grenade at the back of the packed traffic jam.

The panicked exodus was instantaneous. Everyone was running out the gate, across the road and into the barrio. He wondered how many of the fleeing SEBIN would survive the waiting colectivo. Sofia told him how she, Carla, and Melissa had spent their afternoon—damn but she just kept getting more amazing. No way was she getting away from him.

Duane spotted a man in rags coming across the Level Three roadway. His hands were empty, so Duane waited him out.

“Disculpame, por favor.”—Excuse me, please. The man’s voice was hoarse as if from lack of use. He was so thin that he didn’t even decently fill out the rags he wore. One of the hundreds of political prisoners incarcerated in El Helicoide.

“Sí?” Duane could see others in the distance watching them curiously.

“Is it safe?” The man continued in Spanish.

“To run?” Though Duane was surprised he could even walk in his present condition.

“Yes.”

“If you go quickly, yes. Free as many as you can and go.”

“Gracias! Gracias!” The man hobbled back to the group and in moments they were on the move. He heard glass shattering and more people joining them as they were freed. The lower levels of the massive shopping mall had been turned into a prison. He’d blown open doors where he could, but there’d been too much else to do to pay attention to the results.

Duane watched them awhile longer. He wondered if any of these prisoners had lost their wives to General Aguado’s jungle compound. He hoped so, he liked the idea of the two separate missions reuniting families. Liked it a lot.

Once they were out of sight down the road, he blew the shit out of the three vehicles left on Level Three.

He supposed that was good. It would look as if the attack was failing and leaving the top levels of El Helicoide untouched. Which was exactly what they were supposed to think.

He hopped on the luge, popped the brakes, and swooped down toward Level Two. He was getting good at flying.

Melissa was reading the checklist, which was thankfully in the same language as the labels on the helicopter—Spanish. That was a good thing because her technical Russian sucked.

“You look scared,” Melissa commented while they waited for the engine temperature to stabilize. “You’re white as a sheet.”

“Más blanco que poto de monja. Whiter than a nun’s butt,” one of Nana’s favorite expressions after she’d chewed out one of Sofia’s brothers. “And I’m not scared, I’m terrified.”

She was about to risk easing up on the collective to take off when the radio squawked to life scaring the daylights out of her.

“Mil 7432, this is Carlota tower. You don’t have clearance. What are you doing?”

Melissa shrugged when Sofia looked at her.

“Some help you are.” Sofia keyed the mic, “Tower, this is 7432. I have a request for immediate evac from El Helicoide. They’re under attack.”

“Whose orders?”

She didn’t have a good answer to that. “General Aguado,” then she cringed. What if they knew he supposedly had been killed during the fire at his jungle compound?

“7432, cleared to Helicoide. Tower out.”

Melissa merely raised her eyebrows before reading off the next item on the list.

Sofia eased up on the collective and the Mi-26 wallowed aloft.

Smooth, small motions. That’s what her flight instructor had told her. She just hoped that the Mi-26 knew about that rule.

Collective up, cyclic forward, and they eased aloft without too much amateur wobble.

“Which way?”

“Which way to what?”

“El Helicoide, Melissa! Which way?”

“Uh, try a bit more to the left. I wasn’t on the airport team so I didn’t pay attention to exactly where it is.”

“I’ll get you for this. Right after I put down the rabid dogs Duane and Richie.”

“As long as someone else doesn’t do it first,” Melissa sounded worried.

And Sofia shut up. She was merely trying to fly the hugest helicopter on the planet.

She’d climbed high enough that she could see El Helicoide less than ten miles away. It was easy to spot because of the leaping flames.

Even as she watched another explosion roared skyward.

“Have a good ride, bro?”

“I was…” Duane growled at Chad. “Really flying along until I planted my board in one of the holes you punched in the pavement on Level Two. Must have tumbled a couple hundred feet before I stopped. Hurts like hell.”

“Aww, poor little Duane. Has he got him some ow-ees?”

“Shithead.”

“Proud to be, bro.”

They had met at the south end of Level One and were leaning out to inspect their handiwork. The fire brigade couldn’t get in because of all of the cars abandoned inside the gate. Finally someone began using the heaviest engine like a battering ram, shoving luxury sedans, crumpling late-model SUVs, and battering light trucks aside.

“We should invest in a Caracas body shop, quick.”

Duane nodded. “But it’s only a short term investment. Besides. It’s SEBIN. They’d pay you only at the official exchange rate.”

“Man, you sure know how to take the joy out of a young boy’s dreams.”

They turned away from the mayhem at the gate and rounded the south end headed west, which quickly hid the flaming southeast corner of the structure except as an on-going reflection off the facing barrio.

The west side was dark and quiet. No traffic. No lights. No people.

Duane shown a light in a couple of the storefronts. The doors were each smashed open. Every cell door inside was standing open. The prisoners were gone, filtering out through any number of gaps Chad had blown in the perimeter fence. They’d disappear into the barrio and find a very different welcome than the SEBIN who’d made the mistake of going in there.

Maybe it was time to dream a few dreams himself.

They arrived at the very west side of the lowest roadway, just as a length of black 9mm tactical line snaked down from the level above. In moments Carla, Richie, and finally Kyle slid down to join them. With a yank Kyle recovered the doubled-over line. They’d rappelled down from Level Nine—a much faster and more discreet descent than following the miles of road, pieces of which were probably still on fire.

“Is it done?”

Kyle nodded, but Richie jumped in with both feet.

“Sure. The techs were all out at the railing watching the fireworks. The hardest part was I couldn’t decrypt their password. But they hadn’t locked their screens, so I did the same thing I did to Sofia, I created a new user. Only this time I hid it so that they won’t know it’s there to delete it.”

“What about the microwave feed?”

“Well they put an awful lot of comm channels aloft in that bird for such a small country. So, I picked an empty one and routed everything from the La Tumba feed over to an empty satellite channel.”

“Will that work?” Duane thought he understood that, sending the intelligence signal traffic from La Tumba, up to SEBIN’s own satellite, so that Yakima could hear it when it was echoed back down.

“Sure! I called Yakima, they’re fully online already.”

“My bro,” Chad crashed a fist down on Duane’s shoulder, “kicked a whole rack of political prisoners down the ramp. Gone now,” he nodded toward the barrio. “At least those poor bastards won’t get trafficked, or worse.”

“While I was in the system,” Richie waved by skyward, “I found a tracking list of trafficked families. Carla suggested I send it to the underground newspaper.”

“What?” Duane couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So much for hiding the fact that we were ever in their system. Well done, assholes!”

Carla simply gave him one of those looks that said maybe he was the one being an idiot.

“Okay,” might as well eat the bullet. “What am I missing?”

“Carla had me send it from the SEBIN commander’s e-mail account, with a copy to his assistant and his boss.”

Carla’s smile dared him to say it wasn’t slick as all hell. But it was, so he shut up.

“Whether they read it as a betrayal or a mistake, it’s not going to turn out well for him. Then we got out before the techs were back at their desks. Classic Delta, no one knows we were ever here.”

“Yeah,” Chad chimed in. “Except we are still here. Where’s your honey, bro?”

“She’ll make it. Sofia can do anything,” Duane knew that for a fact.

As if in answer, the heavy beat of a very large helicopter sounded overhead. That’s why they’d left the west side untouched and met here—it was where the designer had moved El Helicoide’s helipad to when they’d originally built the geodesic dome on the top.

“I can not fly this helicopter to a friendly country.”

“Why not?” Duane had sat in the copilot’s seat. He might not know anything about helicopters, but still Sofia found it comforting to have him there. Richie and Melissa were getting a handle on the engineering and navigation stations behind them. Outside the big windows, Caracas was petering out. She didn’t know how to read the radar and couldn’t spare time to find charts or the altimeter—to clear the mountains between the city and the coast. Instead, she flew above the highway. She just hoped that it was the one leading out to sea and not off into central Venezuela somewhere.

“Two reasons. Three. One, it’s everything I can do to fly it a few miles.” She was amazed that she hadn’t blown a blood vessel—or crashed. The landing next to El Helicoide had been ugly but not lethal, so she supposed it was okay. “Two, even if I could land us in some country, the Venezuelan government is bound to find out and know it was stolen, where and when. That is the end of your great plan to be invisible.”

“Yeah, that is a problem,” Duane didn’t sound worried.

“So glad you see that. Three—”

“There isn’t enough fuel,” Richie piped up from the engineer’s console. “We have about twenty minutes of air time. I can’t believe they don’t keep their helos fully fueled. I’m sorry. I should have thought to check that.”

“That wasn’t my Number Three. That makes mine Number Four,” Sofia sighed. “At some point they’re going to miss their helicopter and send a fighter jet out to turn us into much littler pieces of ourselves. So you had better think up something brilliant, Mr. Unit Operator.”

“Humph!”

She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Neither did anyone else. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got? Humph?”

“It’s better than ‘Oh god! Oh god! We’re all gonna die!’ isn’t it?”

“Not by enough to count.” She looked ahead, but there were no more lights. Was she about to run into something like an unlit mountainside? Oh. “Well, there’s the ocean.”

The gods or somebody were definitely laughing. She’d ridden out of the jungle on a stealth helicopter with Duane, jumped out of another into a cruise ship’s swimming pool beside him, filmed her brother busy at sabotaging yet a third one at the vineyard, and now she was flying the largest helicopter built—once more over the night-shrouded ocean.

“That’s it. Take her down,” Duane practically shouted.

“Down where?”

“Right over the marina,” Duane jumped out of his seat. “Everyone get ready to jump. We’re going to dump you in the marina. You swim to the boat. We’ll take the helo out to sea, ditch it, and you come fetch us.”

“But—” Richie protested.

“No time!” Duane yanked him from the engineer’s console and hauled him toward the door.

“Where—” Kyle started to ask.

“You’ll have to figure it out.”

“What about—” Melissa looked toward Sofia in the pilot’s seat.

“I’m staying with her. All the way.”

At that, Carla grabbed him by the shirt—hauling him down to her level—and kissed him hard, then moved away to stand by the door.

“On the flip side, bro,” Chad gave him a high-five.

“Now!” Sofia cried out. “I can’t hover this beast for long.”

Kyle opened the door and his five teammates streamed out, plunging down into the water as fast as bullets.

“Good to go!” he shouted and leaned out to make sure everyone surfaced as Sofia eased them away. Five heads, already striking out toward the moored GoldenEye.

He returned to the copilot’s seat.

“They’re all safe.”

“That’s nice. Any ideas how to do the same for us?”

“Got me. How do you ditch a helicopter?”

“No idea. They didn’t cover that in let’s-go-for-a-scenic-flight-over-the-vineyards school. All I remember on the topic is: don’t do it.”

Duane looked out the windshield. They were out over the Caribbean Sea by now. A couple miles farther and they could safely ditch it where it wasn’t likely to be noticed.

No help out there.

He began looking around inside the cockpit. Something caught his attention. It took him a moment to figure out what, but then he pinned it down again and he pointed at it so that it couldn’t slip away again.

“Piloto automático,” Duane read out.

“Do you know how to run an autopilot?”

“No idea. You?”

“No.”

“Wait! Melissa had a book of checklists somewhere. Let me see.”

“Hurry.”

“Okay.”

“No, really hurry!”

Duane turned to look where Sofia was focused. There was a red light blinking brightly in the darkened cockpit.

He could just make out the label: motor #1 combustible.

Fuel.

Then a second light blinked red: motor #2 combustible.

“How many engines do we have?” He’d bet that he wasn’t going to like the answer

“Two.”

“Helo-2, Delta-0, sports fans.” Nope. He didn’t like that answer one bit.

Sofia had told Duane he was crazy too many times. Some balance had tipped and now she was just going to trust him blindly and hope for the best.

He read fast, tapping at the autopilot’s keypad.

“Get us down near the water.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Duane didn’t pause in his programming.

“Because I don’t know where it is. And no, the altimeter isn’t calibrated, so it won’t help much. And if you can find a radar altimeter in all this, more power to you.” She had found the compass—holding northeast away from the coast—and the airspeed—slow so that they didn’t leave that coast too far behind for the GoldenEye to rescue them. She also didn’t like the idea of hitting the water at a hundred or so kilometers an hour. Everything else was a blur of dials and switches except for the two fuel indicators now blinking at a truly alarming rate.

“Uh, how about this?” Duane flicked a switch and she was blinded by the landing lights reflecting off the waves.

The ocean was so close she could almost touch it.

She jerked upward on the collective, and earned the harsh buzz of a stall warning for her troubles.

Sofia managed to ease back on the controls, but her arms were trembling with adrenaline and the effort.

A pilot holds the controls lightly. She added the flight instructor to her personal better-off-dead list. How was she supposed to ease her grip when she knew it was the only thing keeping her and the man she loved alive?

“There!” Duane declared as he punched a button and it began blinking green. “If I did it right, when I hit that, the helicopter will fly away without us.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Remember that ‘Oh god! Oh god! We’re all gonna die!’ part?”

“Oh is that all. When do we do this?”

One of the fuel gauges shifted from blinking red to solid red and a loud buzzer sounded. There was a sudden change in the sound of the engines—as if one was out of fuel and winding down.

“I think now would be a good time,” Duane reached over and released her seatbelt. “Are you ready, Sofia Forteza?”

“Always.”

“I love you so much, lady.”

“Tell me later,” though if that was the last thing she was going to hear before she died, it was a good way to go.

Duane punched the button. It turned solid green, and she could feel the controls move in her hands without her.

Before she could even fully unclench her fingers, Duane yanked her from the seat and dragged her to the side door. He grabbed a rubber raft and tossed it out.

“Get into the raft as fast as you can!” he yelled over the turbine noise flooding in through the open door. He kissed her on the forehead and shoved her out the door.

She fell ten feet.

Twenty.

Th—

The water slammed into her like a hammer.

She surfaced and looked up through the battering spray generated by the huge rotor’s punishing downdraft.

Duane was still standing in the door, fumbling with something as the helicopter moved away.

She screamed his name, but knew he couldn’t hear her.

Her next scream had her swallowing a faceful of seawater which sent her into choking spasms.

Just before she could recover enough to scream his name again, he finally jumped, plunging into the waves a hundred feet from her.

She began swimming toward him and plowed into something large.

The uninflated raft.

Sofia clung to it and kept kicking.

Duane came up to her, shouting, “No time! No time! Get in!”

He yanked the ripcord and the raft practically exploded open, dunking her underneath it.

A hand reached down, grabbed her, and dragged her to the surface. Continuing the motion, he bodily threw her into the raft as if she was weightless.

Then he joined her with a hard landing that knocked away what little air she’d managed to recover when his shoulder slammed into her gut.

“Look!” He pointed out into the night.

As she watched, the helicopter nosed down sharply and plunged into the waves just a few hundred yards away. The huge rotor beat the sea and shattered. She heard parts of it winging by to splash around them, but they weren’t hit.

It began sinking. “I’m not sorry to see it go. Don’t you ever do something like that to me again or I’ll—”

“Hang on!” Then Duane wrapped his arms around her, pinning her to the bottom of the raft. It reminded her of the moment in the Venezuelan jungle, when he wrapped his breathtakingly powerful arm around her waist the moment just before—

Duane felt the explosion slam into them. The massive compression-wave pulse through the water that would have killed them if they’d still been in the water. A towering fountain bloomed up in the night, lit from within by the last of his explosives that he’d set on a timer and thrown deep into the cargo bay.

The helicopter was fully underwater when the second pulse hit them. A new fountain was borne aloft as several thousand surface-to-air missiles created a cascading series of explosions. He’d worried about the debris, or the explosion drawing attention from shore, but programming the autopilot to descend rapidly after just two hundred yards, had the water masking the worst of it.

The surface waves hit next, almost flipping them out of the raft, but he managed to keep them both in it.

Soon there was no evidence on the surface but a vast patch of phosphorescent green stirred up by the air still bubbling upward from the sinking helo.

“Well,” Duane couldn’t quite catch his breath. “That. Was fun,” he helped Sofia sit up. “You okay?”

“Sure,” her voice sounded just like her, but he wished he could see to find out. The life raft didn’t have even a basic survival kit and his flashlight had been in his pack.

“Does anything hurt?”

“Only where you put shoulder into my belly.”

“I’ll try not to do that again.”

“Please don’t.” After a long pause, she spoke softly. “We’re alive.”

“We are. Which is a little surprising given the circumstances.” He’d had plenty of close calls, but this was a new level of extreme even by his standards.

“I think there were things that need to be said later,” Sofia prompted him.

“I love when you get that haughty tone with me.”

“Haughty?” Which she said even more archly.

“Actually I have a serious question. Maybe a couple of them.” He really wished that he could see her, but some things couldn’t be helped.

“So ask,” said the queen from her watery life raft throne.

Unable to stop, he pulled her against him until she was straddling his lap. No woman could ever feel better.

“I am waiting.”

“Does The Activity ever take Delta operators?”

Sofia was so happy to be alive. So happy to be with Duane, that the unexpected question stopped her for a long moment as she tried to make sense of it.

“They do,” she said it carefully.

“What do I have to do to apply?”

She put her hand on his chest, on his cheek. He felt…serious. As if he really meant it.

But it wasn’t right.

“No.”

“What do I have to know?”

“No, I mean N-O no, not the other kind of know. English is such a crazy language.” Even if it was her native tongue.

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

Sofia patted her hand against his chest again, unable to believe what was happening.

“Sofia, lovely lady, what do you mean ‘no’?” Duane said it as softly as a caress.

“You would leave your team for me?”

“I’d leave the military for you.”

She couldn’t imagine him doing that any more than she would. At least not for a long while. “There is something you should know.”

“What? Already married? I’ll kill the bastard. Secret baby hidden away somewhere? Fine, I’ll adopt it. As long as we get to make one or two of our own along the way.”

Sofia slapped a hand over his mouth to stop him. “How can a man who everyone says never talks, talk so much?”

She could feel his smile against her palm as he shrugged.

“Well, be quiet for a minute.”

He nodded, then she could feel one of his hands brush along her cheek.

She moved her hand, kissed him briefly, and then quickly recovered his mouth before he could speak.

“No, no, and yes. I am not a married-type person, yet. I have no hidden child. Yes I very much want to have a child with you—as long as,” she tapped the index finger of her free hand against the tip of his nose. “She is a rational person like me and not a crazy person like her father.”

His smile grew bigger. She wished she could see his lovely blue eyes.

“But there is one big no. Huge!”

His smile faded against her palm.

Over his shoulder she could see the light of the fast approaching GoldenEye.

Duane reached up to pull her hand aside, “What’s the huge no?”

“No. You may not leave your team. They are your family.”

“But—”

She covered his mouth again. “But I do not have a team that ties me so tightly to The Activity. Maybe, with some more training, Delta can become my family too.”

“More training? You mean than this?” He waved his hand back toward the mainland. His laugh of joy hit her square in the heart. “I know Carla and Melissa would induct you today. Hell, they all would. You’re completely incredible. We could train you in the field. It’s been done plenty of times before.”

She kissed him to shut him up.

By the time Richie pulled the boat alongside the raft, Duane Jenkins had made his own vote very clear in other ways as well.

They were all gathered on the swim deck to greet her. No, to welcome her.

But she hesitated halfway up the ladder with Duane close behind her. She leaned down to whisper in his ear.

“Remember—our child. She will be like her mother.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then he muttered softly, but she could just hear it over everyone’s greetings. “Two Forteza women. I’m gonna be in so much trouble.”