Jet

The com line went silent for several seconds.

“Negative,” Jet said, and then a chorus of other voices, all male, repeated her statement.

She depressed the timer button on her watch and waited. This would be a relatively clean operation if things went well. If they executed properly, there was no chance that any of the bad guys would make it out alive. Still, the team liked backup. On a mission this big, they couldn’t afford anything going wrong.

At exactly the two-minute mark, a streak of flame shot from a building eighty yards away from Jet, where Fire and Lightning were concealed with a Kornet 9M133F-1 guided rocket armed with a thermobaric warhead.

The dining room of the villa exploded outwards in a shower of glass, steel and white-hot flame — a direct hit had gutted the room. Jet peered through the scope as the guards stood stunned, first gaping at the destruction, and then alternating between darting towards the burning villa and sprinting for their vehicles. She watched as three of the men huddled and one pointed at Fire and Lightning’s hiding place with a radio raised to his lips, then four men ran for a van toting assault rifles.

She tapped her earbud. “Alpha, you have heat headed your way. Repeat. You were spotted.”

“Roger. Lay down cover for as long as you can, then get the hell out of there.”

“Will do. Delta out.”

Jet squinted through her scope and fired at one of the three men, obviously the supervisor of the guard detail, and took him out. The rifle’s stock slammed her shoulder, but she ignored the recoil and targeted another man. Two more vehicles tore out of the compound towards them, motors revving over the screams and shouted commands from the villa walls. She fired again, and another man went down. Someone had seen her muzzle flash — within a few moments, bullets began peppering the side of the construction site. The likelihood of being hit was slim, but a stray round was just as lethal.

It was time to pack up.

“Alpha, hostiles are on their way in.”

“How many?”

“Three vehicles.”

“Can you disable any?”

“I’m trying, but you can expect company shortly. I’m taking fire.”

She sighted on the first van, aiming for the driver. Just as she squeezed the trigger, the van jolted against a pothole, and the shot went wide. A hole appeared in the windshield six inches to the left of the driver’s head, and he began taking evasive action. She fired again, but he was swerving and jerking the van around too much.

Ricochets from the lip of the building intensified as more fire was directed at her.

Sirens sounded in the distance. Her earbud crackled again.

“Delta, hostile helicopter inbound. The army must have had a bird in the air. Pull out. Repeat. Pull out now.”

“Roger that, Alpha. Good shooting, by the way. Expect to engage within sixty seconds. I spotted grenade launchers on their guns. Be careful.”

“You too, Delta. Clear out. This is over.”

“I’m on the move. Out.”

She scooped up the rifle and ran to the stairwell, taking the raw concrete steps two at a time. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted to the gloom so she was easily able to avoid the collected construction debris and trash. She hit the second floor running and risked a glance back at the complex. Lights from the approaching vehicles bounced towards her. Maybe thirty seconds now.

At the ground floor, she sprinted towards her car, the headlights of the trucks bouncing their beams on the street. She swung the driver’s door open, tossed the rifle onto the passenger seat, then cranked the engine.

The pursuit vehicles separated, two headed to Fire and Lightning’s building, and one came directly at her.

Fifteen seconds later, the van pulled to a stop fifty yards from Jet’s car, and four men with Kalashnikov assault rifles emptied out.

Jet’s Ford Festiva exploded in a fireball. Part of a door sailed through the air in a lazy arc and slammed down six yards from the nearest gunman. An oily black cloud of smoke belched from the carcass of the burning car, the flames licking hungrily at the frame as they fought for supremacy.

The CIA observer would later confirm one friendly casualty, and even though the Mossad remained silent, everyone involved knew that the team with no name had lost one of its key members. Fire and Lightning had also seen the blast, and the consensus was that there was no possibility anyone could have survived.

One week later, Jet’s code name was retired, never to be used again.

There was no memorial service.

Chapter 7

Present Day, Paria Peninsula, Venezuela

Jet walked along the beach, enjoying the feel of the morning sun on her skin as she approached the little fishing hamlet of Macuro, which had just begun its waking routine. She knew she looked like she’d been dragged behind a bus, and attempted to improve her appearance by tying her untamed mane into a ponytail. Hopefully, she would appear to be a slightly crazy backpacker — a visitor South America was more than familiar with, even in the most remote reaches. She’d check into a motel and clean up as soon as she was near civilization, but this clearly wasn’t the time or place.

A rooster crowed its eminence to the hens in its harem as Jet moved slowly past the scattering poultry and across the sand to where a shabby fleet of fishing skiffs was beached. She caught the eye of an old man with skin the color of chocolate, who was chatting with another fisherman, cackling at some observation his friend had made as they prepared to launch their boats. He stopped what he was doing as she hesitated a few yards away, eyeing his boat. She nodded to him — he doffed his straw hat in a flourish of respect, which elicited a sincere smile from Jet, who then inquired about his interest in taking her to the nearest larger town — in this case, the port of Guiria, roughly twenty-five miles west.

They negotiated back and forth, he discussing the weather and the sturdiness of his boat and the exceptional quality of the fishing that time of year, she bemoaning the life of a gypsy whose only possessions were the ragged clothes on her back. After a few minutes of expected haggling, they arrived at an agreement. Capitan Juan, as he liked to be called, would take her to Guiria for ten dollars — not a bad deal for the native of a country whose gasoline cost under twenty cents a gallon; his total expenditure might come to a dollar, round trip. She pointed out that he could still get in a half-day’s fishing if he made good time, but he waved her off good-naturedly. A decent day’s catch might bring him five dollars if was lucky. He grinned at her as they shook hands, and she noted that he was missing all of his front teeth.

He pushed the skiff into the surf with the help of his friend, and Jet deftly climbed into the bow. After a few energetic pulls on the starter cord, the outboard sputtered to life with a puff of smoke, and then the uneven roar settled into a steady drone. When Jet asked Capitan Juan how long the trip would take, he told her an hour, maybe less, maybe more, depending on the seas.

A trio of pelicans followed them for the first mile, as they cruised along the barren shore, before losing interest. Jet occupied herself by watching the rugged coastline glide past her. Most of the peninsula was sheer jungle dropping into the sea, no beaches — the water got deep very quickly only a few feet from land. Waves crashed against the jutting rocks as they moved by, steadily picking up speed, eventually settling into a comfortable pace at what she guessed to be twenty knots.

With nothing else to do, her mind roamed into her predicament — hunted by unknown adversaries out to do her harm, and now with no home, no friends, and no idea of how to next proceed other than to avoid getting killed. She’d thought this sort of life was behind her, but it was clearly not.

As the boat sliced through the azure sea’s undulations, she recalled the last time she’d died, when she’d staged the explosion in Algiers with the help of Ariel, her mentor…and lover. He’d initially balked at her demand to get out of the game, she remembered. She closed her eyes and, for a fleeting moment, could feel his strong, confident touch on her naked skin, as if they were still lying together after a languorous lovemaking session at a