"Doranna Durgin - Heavy Metal Honey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

Heavy Metal Honey
By

Doranna Durgin


Chapter One
Kimmer Reed peered through her night-vision goggles into a green-hued desert.
"Got me some dust," she said into the tiny voice-activated mike at the side of her
face. "Ooh, these next gen goggles are sweet."
In her ear, ex-CIA operative Rio Carlsen responded, "Got dust here, too."
RioтАжshe'd met him on an assignment, cemented their relationship on an unofficial
op, and only a few weeks earlier he'd accepted the Hunter Agency's offer of
part-time work. And here they were on their first assignment together, scanning the
Arizona borderlands for one very specific smuggler.
Also sweeet.
"Move in?" Rio suggested.
"Move in," she confirmed. They wouldn't spook anyone with their motorbikes,
sleek little hydrogen-fueled machines not quite meant for the rugged terrain of the
Coronado National Forest. Even here at four thousand feet of elevation, the desert
foliage lent itself more to spines and prickles and low-lying brittle brush than actual
trees, and the footpaths spit out a powdery dust at the passage of anything on four
feet or two wheels.
She and Rio flanked the trail they'd hoped the smuggler would use, with nine
hundred meters of combined night vision range between them. More Hunter agents
flanked similar trails all along this section of the border тАФ the trails that led to
Bisbee, the unofficial drug corridor of the border. And now they had dust.
Kimmer said, "Could be the jackpot." And she grinned тАФ fiercely тАФ because
they were headed for action, and because there was nothing better than nabbing a
bad guy. Kimmer and her SIG, Rio and the Colt on which he'd recently settled.
Or to be more precise, Kimmer and her SIG and every other little weapon she had
stashed in her clothing. She also wore a light pack with camelback water supply,
restraints and the heavy lined pouch for the smuggler's contaminated dope тАФ their
ultimate goal.
 "Might not be our jackpot," Rio said. More laid back than she by far, he was
astonishing once he went into action. Which, since the blown operation that had
been the end of his CIA field career, wasn't as often as it had once been. Even now,
he still favored his bad side.
"Might be just your average illegal immigrant," Kimmer agreed. But she didn't
think so. The average illegal immigrant didn't have the means to buy a dirt bike, and
the dust they saw came from wheels, not feet тАФ this particular runner had been, at
least to some extent, financed. Kimmer eased her own bike forward through the
brush, glad for her knee and shin guards тАФ she brushed by a prickly pear without
taking damage, and then a cholla.
"What I don't get," she murmured to Rio, "is what's so important about this
particular smuggler. Let's get serious тАФ pretty much the whole agency is in on this
one, not to mention the border patrol and friends."
"Contaminated drugs," Rio said. "Meaner than your average bear if they get out
into distribution. They pulled us in because we could mobilize faster."
"We're not immobilized by red tape, you mean." Kimmer looked to the side,