Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,69

a whole side of the Pentagon? Didn’t matter. That was now the past.

What action could she take in the moment? Do that. While everyone else was moaning or being enraged, she’d been calculating. She’d seen a fellow spirit in then-Colonel Jorge Jesus Martinez and made sure that she came to his notice. A choice she’d never regretted.

And she still didn’t. Even now, fifty kilometers from Mama Espinoza’s restaurant, she was still just as ready.

In a few hours they’d all be aloft on the final mission.

The only hesitation she felt were their unwilling passengers.

Mike and Jeremy were…easy together.

Civilians in a moment of quiet, enjoying each other’s company despite the strangeness all around them. They laughed at something, as if it was the most normal thing to do. Every time Mike laughed, he covered his impressive black eye and made “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!” sounds that always made Jeremy laugh harder. Perhaps he did it because Jeremy laughed each time.

Laughter hadn’t been part of her upbringing. Her life in Mexico had been hard. And she certainly hadn’t laughed since they left.

Papa had been a drug runner, a mule, who’d stolen the money from his own cartel for them to make the crossing. It had cost him his life.

Though Papa’s money was enough for the demanded price by a competing cartel’s cross-border trafficker, it hadn’t been enough for the coyote man guiding them. Almost to the border, he’d demanded a bonus payment of Taz’s eleven-year-old virginity. He’d collected it with his big hunting knife to Taz’s throat while her mother had looked on silently.

Mama hadn’t made a sound the whole time, not even as she helped Taz rinse her own blood off her legs. She’d only said two words about that moment—ever.

Once safely over the border, once they were clutching the identity papers of a recently deceased-but-unreported American mother and daughter—making her forever after Vicki Cruz—Mama had driven a hard knee into the coyote man’s crotch. As he’d lain writhing on the ground, she’d handed Taz the man’s big knife that she’d extracted from his sheath.

“He’s yours.”

Taz had cut off his dick, choked off his scream by ramming it down his throat, then slid the blade up into his heart. She’d held it there, twisting it deeper and deeper as his blood had streamed over her hands.

Mama had taken his share of their money back, and they’d disappeared into the morass that was Lincoln Park, San Diego.

Taz had taken his knife.

Mike’s “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!” and Jeremy’s laugh snapped her back to the present.

Three hours to sunset.

Four hours to first possible takeoff.

Taz was on her feet before she knew what she was doing. She walked up to Jeremy, cutting Mike off mid-sentence.

“Come with me.” When they both started to rise, she turned to Mike. “You stay.”

Mike opened his mouth to protest. He was Jeremy’s protector and took that role very seriously despite his being just a civilian.

“Don’t worry. Just stay.” She didn’t know why, but it seemed…important.

Mike eased back onto his seat on a medkit can carefully. He’d been into it for some aspirin and salve for his blackening eye. After a moment, he smiled as if he knew things she didn’t. He tucked something in Jeremy’s back pocket even as Jeremy started to follow. Then he winked at her—and winced. But he didn’t make any “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!” noises.

She led Jeremy away from the plane and the camouflage canopy. A quick climb up the face of the western slope, they arrived at a place she’d discovered when initially scouting the area for suitability. If they survived the first night, they’d return here and then fly additional sorties for as long as they lasted. No one, not even JJ, had spoken of it, but none of them expected there to be a second chance.

In the now.

Taz’s specialty.

Together, she and Jeremy stood on a shelf of rock notched into the cliff like a cave with no roof but the sky. It offered a sweeping view of this valley lost in the middle of Baja’s mountains. The peaks to the west shadowed them from the blaze of the late afternoon sun.

If she didn’t look too closely, the camo covering disappeared into the background. A step closer to the cliff and it was completely out of sight.

The easy roll of the desert floor stretched brown to the far hills. The river, dry in this season—in most seasons—was marked by a stripe of withered brush just waiting for its brief moment to flourish when the rare flash flood swept