Chapter Fifteen

“What’s she doing here?” Loco gestured to a petite woman climbing out of a small dark green SUV.

“The contact said we have to play with the feds this time, like it or not. Ravini is ours, but the DEA wants their chance at any intel we might find,” Night answered, stuffing his supplies in the large black duffle bag.

Spoon snorted. “Just because we’re private, they no longer think we can carry off a computer or two?”

Night shrugged. “Who knows what they think. But for this one, she gets to tag along.”

They all surveyed the woman, dressed in black, which accented her bobbed light blonde hair.

“Mark my words. She’ll slow us down and only get in the way.” Spoon grumbled, zipping his pack shut.

A smile began to form on Night’s lips. During the negotiations, he’d learned of her extensive background and abilities. She could hold her own, he had no doubt. Otherwise, he would have vetoed the order she tag along, as he had done with a handful of others offered for the job.

Although dragging a female into battle prodded his moral code, he dared not question her skills, which damn near matched their own. Amazing for a woman, even in today’s open-minded military.

She marched up to them, a black bag slung over her shoulder. Her bright blue eyes met each of their gazes. “I’m Lark.”

“She looks like a cheerleader,” Loco mocked, his hard expression tightening all the more.

Instead of taking offense, she simply smiled. “West Point Cheerleading Squad. Captain my senior year—if you must know.”

Muttered oaths carried across the vacated lot.

“You’re fucking kidding me. We’re taking a cheerleader on a mission?” Loco growled, his irritation obvious.

She rounded on him like a mother hen protecting her chicks from a hungry fox. “Listen, soldier. I may be small, but I’m more than capable of kicking anyone’s ass. This isn’t my first black ops mission, nor will it be my last. Just because I’m DEA doesn’t mean I sit on my rear at a desk and punch a keyboard all day.”

“Marine.” Loco snapped in return but with less intensity than before.

Spoon snickered. “Anyone who wants to kick Marine butt at three am has my vote to stay.”

Night shook his head, only partially amazed with Lark’s defense of herself. She’d probably faced the same stereotypical male greeting for most of her military career, forcing her to either ignore it, let it eat on her, or get in a man’s face. The aggressive response would have earned her points for courage and guts in a community that valued such traits highly.

“If we’re all done with the posturing, can we move on?” She huffed, flicking her bright blue stare across each and every man as if seeking another challenge to her position.

Cale chuckled. “Gotta love that in a woman. All business and kick ass.”

“Gives me a hard-on.” Spoon winked at her.

Dillon chimed in. “I like her. In fact, I want all my daughters to be just like her.”

The men gaped at him as if he’d grown octopus tentacles from his neck.

She rolled her eyes before pinning Night. “How do you put up with them?”

He grinned widely. “I practice selective hearing.”

* * * *

Without further incident, they climbed into the large SUV, Lark voluntarily claiming the smaller back seat for herself. No sense in being crowded by oversized men with egos to match. Not that she expected anything different. For as long as she could remember, men had met her with a variety of reactions, seldom flattering, and most of the time abundantly challenging. Although more women than ever settled on careers in the military, it didn’t mean the stereotyping or discrimination had suddenly disappeared.

Came with the territory, she supposed. While most people would consider it a nuisance at best and a limitation at worst, she reveled in the opportunities her appearance afforded her. She could easily go undercover, dressing and acting the part of a scheming woman intent upon sinking her claws into a wealthy sugar daddy or play the dumb blonde act, completely deceiving those who underestimated the true woman underneath.

The Wind Warriors treated her better than most, apart from one cranky Marine. Most Marines she’d met tended to be like that, though. From what she’d gathered, these guys remained a close group, brothers in arms as well as in spirit. The bickering and bantering reminded her of her five older brothers. A male thing, her mother explained to her eons ago when she asked why the house remained in uproar from one day to the next. She finally understood as she grew a bit older and wiser. Tough men tended to avoid showing affection with physical hugs and touching as women did. Instead, they preferred to tease and taunt, not only trying to outman the other, but as a show of solidarity. Only they could abuse one another. If another party tried, the unit stood together as one, backing their friend to the end.

She could be working with a worse group.

“Where will Barbie be while we’re infiltrating the compound?” Loco asked with a snort.

“Right beside you, soldier. And what the hell? Barbie?” She laid into Loco in crisp proper German only to have him retort in a more guttural slang version, which left her face burning at the sheer vulgarities he spit. Not defeated, she barked out an insult, calling Loco a hairless prairie dog with diarrhea in Lakota.

Night not only chuckled, but commended her fluently in the tribal dialect.

She blinked in amazement. Every time she turned around, they threw another surprise her direction.

“Here. Memorize this.” Night called from his passenger seat, passing a folded paper to Cale, who handed it to her.

Opening the form, she scanned the contents, before she dropped her mouth open in astonishment. “What in the world? What language is this?”

“Navajo.” He answered, turning halfway in his seat to look at her. “It worked in World War II. It works well for us now, although in a lesser role.”

Dillon chimed in. “Don’t share that little tidbit. Boss here says if people start picking up on Navajo, we’ll have to learn Klingon next.”

The men groaned as a unit.

“Like Navajo wasn’t hard enough. Klingon will be downright brutal.” Dillon held his head as if it already hurt.

She blinked at the words, not sure her tongue and throat could even produce such sounds. “Wouldn’t another language work just as well?”

“How many people do you know that speak German or Spanish?”

“Tons.”

“Arabic?”

She thought about that for a beat. “A few.”

“Navajo?”

“Before today? None.”

“Exactly.”

Taking the point, she perused the form again, shaking her head at the phonetic version. “How long do I have to learn this?”

Night checked his watched. “Approximately six hours until we make contact with tango.”

Good grief. No pressure there.

“The job this spring, where we destroyed the drug refuge in Sisk, thanks to Loco doing his Superman thing again? That was another middle man to Ravini. There was nothing left to trail the big man, but our little kidnapper opted to tell me all kinds of things about his boss and the operation.” Night explained, glancing at several black and white photos.

The guys snickered. Lark refrained from rolling her eyes. She read between the lines all too well, not that she faulted the tall Native American for pressing the man who broke into his house, stole his woman, and terrorized his mother. Under the same circumstances, her brothers would’ve lined up behind their father, each taking a turn at the idiot. She would’ve brought up the end of the line, prying the final bits of information out of him to ensure nothing similar to that incident happened again.

He passed the photos back. “These are the best pictures of the layout we have. No blueprints exist that we can find. The cement walls appear sturdy enough to sustain and repel attacks. Mexican officials have been watching him but with huge corruption issues, money buys injustice, therefore the man runs free to pursue his drug career. The local officials are too understaffed and don’t have nearly enough power to go up against him and his hired mercenaries. Underground routes probably exist, leading in all directions as emergency escape passages. I don’t have to tell you how messy that might be if we have to go underground after them.

Spoon whistled low. “It’s like Alcatraz—minus the island feature.”

“As there are armed guards at all hours, how are we going to go over the walls without being seen?” Cale stared at a photo, turning it this way and that. “Can’t we just call in a favor and bomb the son of a bitch? Easier and more of a chance of us walking away.”

“Yes and no.” Night answered, glancing over his shoulder. “We have to assume they have radar and are able to pick up anything short of a stealth bomber or Black Hawk chopper flying too low to be picked up. Our contact doesn’t have the power to call in either.”

“Damn. Those things are so cool. It would be like sitting on the outskirts watching the Fourth of July after they dove in and out.” Dillon commented.

“So we do what we’ve always done, become the wind.” Spoon shrugged. “Although this will be tough.”

Lark fingered through papers in her backpack, finding the ones she needed. “Here.” After handing them around, she sat back and waited.

Night’s gaze flicked over them. “Where did you get these?”

“Classified.” She answered automatically. Her photos beat theirs in contrast and detail, giving them a much better view on which to base their infiltration plans. Sometimes working for the federal government had its perks. Pictures fell into the pro column. “If you notice, there’s a secret entrance on the west side, a hidden cave that leads to one of the underground areas. On the north there is another, but it will be harder to access due to the number of guards and lack of natural camouflage.”

The guys in the middle seat leaned forward, looking at the pictures Night held up.

“The cave entrance leads upward toward the main building. Just when you cross the foundation, there’s a ceiling vent. A person can climb through it and access the entire ventilation system from there.” She dug through her pack again before pulling out a small box, anticipating their next question.

“We have jammers. That person could place a jammer near the center of security, knocking out all their radars and alarms for a few minutes.” Night pointed out.

“I assume you have heat seeking equipment as well.” Sitting forward, she pointed out where her supervisors believed the command center to be. “By looking for the largest concentration of personnel, we might be able to fine tune the location of Ravini and the communication center.”

“Then what? Even if they are jammed, we’ll have to scurry in, fighting our way through multiple levels in order to track down Ravini. I suspect the bastard will race for an escape route as soon as he’s notified something is up. Those tunnels can be death traps for us.”

“I may have a solution for that.” She reached back, grabbed her box, and held it up for all to see. “Anesthesia gas. Not only can the jammer be set, but the gas can be released at the same time. It’s colorless and odorless. By the time they realize they’re sleepy, they’ll be out like a light. The drawback is that we have to wear gas masks and the effects only last ten to fifteen minutes.”

Loco stopped at a red light. “Who’s going into the vent system and doing all this?”

Lark plopped back down in her seat. “That would be me.”

All the men turned to stare at her as a collective group, their expressions ranged from shock to amazement to utter respect.

Undeterred, she supplied them with the big reason the scales tipped in her favor. “I’m the only one small enough to fit through the vent.”

More than one man sighed in defeat while Night’s jaw tensed. Finally, he abruptly nodded. “It’s our best shot.”

For the first time, she smiled. “That’s what my supervisors said.”