LITMIR.BIZ

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she’d never look the same again. Then searing fire coursed through her mind.

      Chapter 1

      Puerto Isla

      Lucy Karmon, still clutching the remote detonator, stared through the special fiber-optic scope at the burning meth lab below her. Pieces of the structure mushroomed into a spectacular cinder cloud, two hundred feet of it, masking the night sky.

      On the ground, the rebels responsible for supplying Puerto Isla with everything from black tar heroin to Jamaican sinsemilla ran for their lives. Some men, their clothes aflame, dove into a stream at the bottom of a ravine.

      Mesmerized, she watched the symphony of destruction opening up before her. This is where she thrived, in the middle of uproar, mayhem, a world on the brink; a world she created and controlled. It touched a chord within her, an odd inner peace, a place that she desperately craved. Her mind settled into the calm and grew still. She observed the fallout, the wind shift, the added perk that she’d taken out the van and old Pontiac Bonneville parked near the building. Mission accomplished. Target annihilated. But what could she have done better? Less fallout, perhaps. That equaled less C-4. Maybe she should have used Danubit or Semtex explosive. But she’d been correct in avoiding TNT. Too volatile and subject to the high humidity on the island.

      She always questioned her work. Dissect, assess, moderate and estimate: DAME. She had perfected DAME at the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women, a highly specialized college prep school for young women. Lucy could still hear Mrs. Warren, her junior year demolitions instructor, saying, “Strive for excellence. Anyone can destroy with explosives, but can you raze the target without loss of life? Can you tear down the ant hill without harming the ants? Refinement of the art, ladies, that is the key. DAME will help you not only in demolitions but in any aspect of your life. Remember the old dame well and she will always come through for you.” Mrs. Warren’s voice would always be a ghost in Lucy’s head, one of many.

      A real voice piped into her ear. “Viper to Chaos, copy?”

      “Copy, Viper,” Lucy whispered into the bone mic resting against her chin.

      “Nice job, Chaos. It’s Fourth of July up here.” Tommy Jefferson, aka Viper, spoke over the sound of chopper blades. An ex-test pilot, he could fly anything with wings. He also owned a locksmith and security business, priding himself on being the world’s best safecracker. He chewed gum at the moment, his words clipped off by each chomp. “Ready for pickup in two, over.”

      “Roger that.” She heard the Mojave helicopter pass overhead as she stuffed the detonator into a pocket of her ghillie suit and began running toward a grove of coffee bushes. “Madonna, you copy?” she asked, watching a rabbit she’d flushed dart out in front of her, turn and run off into the night.

      “Copy, Chaos. Roger that. By the way, kick-ass job. Wish I had a burger to grill.” Betsy LaFave’s thick Georgia accent came through loud and clear.

      Betsy, a top-notch sniper and black belt, had taken up a position on a higher elevation of the mountain. Lucy wouldn’t want anyone else covering her back. Like her, Betsy was ex-army, special ops. They had both left at the same time for different reasons, Lucy’s much more tragic.

      Lucy ran as she spoke, her voice breathy as she called the last person in the team. “Chaos to Dragon, copy?”

      “Copy, Chaos.” Cao Sun Tzu, the fourth member of the team, answered her, his Chinese inflection sometimes hard to follow. He was a defector from the People’s Republic’s Central Security Regiment Unit. There wasn’t a computer Cao couldn’t mine, or a code he couldn’t scramble. That he was a master of disguise and dabbled in inventing new electronic devices didn’t hurt, either. “That burger might get a little burned, over.”

      “Not for me,” Betsy said. “I like my meat well done, over.”

      “Give me a big steak, baked potato and a Corona Light the size of a Jeep, over,” Lucy said, feeling the tension that always built in her gut with each assignment, still there, still writhing, even though all team members were present, breathing and accounted for. Now to leave the island with no casualties.

      “See you guys on the flip side, over and out.” Lucy stuffed the detonator into her backpack, along with twenty-five feet of detonating cord, four fuses and six two-inch hand grenades she’d made out of plumbing pipe. Traveling light on this mission, she thought, grinning.

      She zipped up the backpack, threw it over her shoulder and drew her Colt .45 from the shoulder holster. She ran along the edge of the coffee plantation, toward an open field, her eyes constantly scanning for uninvited drug dealers.

      Her backup weapon, a .45 Colt Commander, rested securely on the right side of her left combat boot in an ankle holster. One of her mottos: never go on a mission without at least one Colt. If the first one didn’t stop the enemy, the second one would.

      She reached the clearing just as Tommy lowered the chopper. Blade turbulence hit her full force, tearing at her ghillie suit, whipping her bright red hair from the tight knot at the back of her head, thrusting against the skin on her face and making it feel as if it would rip from her skull at any moment.

      Like well-oiled machine cogs, all three team members emerged into the clearing at the same time. They had worked as a team for two years and it showed. She crouched-ran beneath the whirling blades. Cao reached the chopper first. Betsy, point man—in this case woman—covered them with a Sokolovsky .45 automatic, while holding the case for Sugar, her .308-caliber Remington 700 bolt-action rifle. Custom-built. It shot five match-grade 168-grain boattail hollow-point bullets. Betsy had let Lucy shoot Sugar once. Only once, after much coercing and a gift certificate to Starbucks. No one touched Sugar but Betsy.

      When Lucy and Cao were on board, Betsy left her spot and Lucy covered her as she ran for the chopper. In one smooth movement, Lucy grabbed Betsy’s hand and helped her up into the cargo hold. At five foot eleven, Lucy was almost a head taller than Betsy and outweighed her by thirty pounds. She kept her body lean and prided herself on lifting as much as most men her size.

      “Goodies on board,” Lucy said, the loud throbbing of the blades forcing her to speak over the mic to Tommy, though she could see the cockpit and the back of his blond head from where she sat.

      “Roger that. Rock and roll.”

      Lucy felt the vibration of the motor deep within her chest as Tommy throttled up and the chopper lifted off. She shoved the Colt inside the holster, set down the backpack, then plopped down and pressed her back against the wall of the cargo hold. The adrenaline rush slowly left her, her heart slowing, the familiar pulsing of the chopper like a soothing glass of wine.

      Relax. Breathe. Another mission down. One they could be proud of, and one they’d be very well paid for by Puerto Isla’s new democratic government. The new president was intent upon cleaning up the drug trade on the island. The team had been more than happy to oblige. That’s what they did. International mercenaries for hire.

      Betsy moved past Lucy, clutching Sugar’s rifle case. Camouflage paint covered Betsy’s bronze skin and short bleached hair, but her beautiful Halle Berry face was still evident. Lucy wished she had such great skin and near perfect features. She had fair skin, freckles and brown eyes, gifts from her father. Chromosomes could be so cruel.

      Betsy saw Cao watching her. She ignored him, plopped down next to Lucy and dropped the rifle case next to her leg with an impulsive thump. Betsy seemed to realize she had set the case down too forcefully so she ran her hands over its aluminum exterior as if to make sure it was okay.

      Lucy pushed the strands of hair out of her face and saw Cao’s expression fall. She suspected Cao had a crush on Betsy. It seemed her instincts were on target. He was well above average in the male department, with his round face, dark intelligent eyes and straight black hair worn in a ponytail. Why didn’t he make a move? At least if Betsy wasn’t interested, he could stop with the calf eyes and the underlying tension that stirred between them. The romantic in Lucy decided to help them along.

      “So, what’ve you guys got planned

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