CJ laughed at this remark. They wore roughly similar sizes, and she remembered sharing clothes in the academy days, even though she was a few inches taller than Emily. “What do you mean by suitable? Are we talking your usual black on black catsuit, or can I pick something to go with your new hairstyle, blondie?”
Emily laughed, and Zaki cringed at a topic that would soon depart his comfort zone. “I’ll need underwear and shoes, too. Something comfortable… and not too floral, please.”
The next day, there were tears – mainly CJ’s – and hugs at the security checkpoint of Charles de Gaulle airport. Even Zaki wanted to give their girl a squeeze. But once the goodbyes had been completed, Emily was on her own.
CJ had run interference from the nurses, who wished Emily wouldn’t leave so soon. She couldn’t possibly be fully recovered from those wounds. The doctor had only removed the stitches from the largest of them, the one under her collarbone, the day before… and the scar running down the center of her chest and belly was unnerving. But her patience for recovery care was limited, and it had run out a few days earlier, regardless of Yuki’s anxieties. She ought to know her daughter better than that.
Terminal One, built in the late ’60s, presented a spiraling knot of escalators and tentacle-like satellite gate structures. Emily was over an hour early, and since she had no luggage to speak of, little more than the shopping bag holding the clothes CJ arranged for her, she had plenty of time after checking in for her flight, and didn’t need to rush off to the gate.
Down one level to the second floor, she found an array of shops and restaurants, and settled in at a café looking over the escalators. This was an old habit, scanning the crowd for suspicious types, even though it would pass for an ordinary interest in the bustle of tourists with any casual observer. “Is this what my life will always be?” she mused. “Always camouflaged, on alert?” But what was her camouflage today? CJ had purchased a black on black outfit, but Emily opted to wear the pleated skirt and blouse. Was it because she preferred the matching shoes, or was this meant to make passing through security easier? Little did she know, her pixie blonde hair and fashion sunglasses would attract lots of attention, no matter what she wore.
Later, after having verified with the gate attendant that the flight would depart on time, she heard an unpleasantly familiar voice, attached to a dull tan suit. “Don’t these guys realize how much they look like they’re wearing a uniform?” she wondered.
“Can we have a word, Captain Tenno?” Nyquist said.
“Technically, it’s Major Tenno.”
Nyquist steered her toward a quiet seating area at an inactive gate. Not coincidentally, two more men waited nearby, each larger and more athletic looking than Nyquist, but also in various shades of tan.
“Fine,” Emily said, not bothering to conceal her impatience. “What do you want from me now.”
“It’s not what I want, Major, but what your country needs.” This formula, a standard for scoundrels about to propose a course of action that would serve their own ambitions much more than any national interest, made Emily’s stomach churn.
She said nothing – no point making the conversation easier for him – and turned to consider the other agents. He’d brought them along to intimidate her, one large and muscular, probably former spec-ops, the other one slightly smaller, but perhaps stronger in that sinewy, wiry way. The pattern of resistance presented itself to her mind: start by jamming three fingers into the base of Nyquist’s throat. The wiry agent would try to strike her from behind, and the large one would hold back. She’d pivot from the strike and bring a wheel kick through the back of the smaller man’s head. Her skirt would bell out in the spin, and the larger man would be unable to avoid glancing at the floral underwear CJ had gotten just to tease her. In that moment, she’d put him down with a sudden roundhouse kick to the side of his face. Could he recover from it? Perhaps, but not before she’d planted a knee in his back, and struck him with a sharp fist to the base of his neck.
Nyquist cleared his throat in the quiet, and continued. “We want you to come with us. We’ve arranged alternate transport.”
“And if I refuse?”
The two men took up flanking positions, and she considered again the question of what resisting would mean. Could she really prevail in a fight, in her present condition? Would the scars hold, now that the stitches had been removed? And even if she did prevail, there was no way she’d be allowed to board her flight. Other risks and consequences crowded in on her imagination, other lives that might be at risk if she fought it out now. Who else might suffer, if she allowed her body to be broken on the floor of Terminal One?
“I don’t know what to make of the rumors about you, and it’s hard to take some of them seriously. I’m not sure why we don’t just put you in a sack and haul you out of here.” One of Nyquist’s heavies shifted his feet, and the other flexed his neck and shoulder muscles.
“Has it occurred to you that if you could put me in a sack, your superiors probably wouldn’t be interested in me in the first place?”
Nyquist paused before responding, perhaps thrown by the clarity of her assessment of the situation. Perhaps she understood this particular chess match better than he did. “Okay, let me offer you one reason to cooperate. Lieutenant Commander Hankinson’s career will continue uninterrupted. A French medal and all that free publicity in the French media may have gotten him off the hook for now, but a year from now things might take a different turn.”
Though she’d prefer to exact a measure of punishment for his presumption… and she knew well enough the threat to his career was meant as a threat to Perry’s life. If only she was willing to risk his life. But his injury on leave had put him outside of military regs, and SECNAV had not previously shown himself to be a reliable supporter of her interests. There was nothing to be gained from arguing with him here and now, but she couldn’t resist a little sarcasm.
“Well, that certainly sounds like the offer of a patriot, threatening my friends in the name of flag and country.” Her eyes flashed, and she dearly wished to lash out physically. But she took a deep breath, before speaking. “Cooperate with whom, exactly?”
“Does it really matter?” Nyquist sneered as he dismissed her question.
“Fine… and where will my cooperation take place, and for how long?”
In the end, Emily saw no way out. She notified the gate attendant that her seat could be released for standby, and paused to call her mother on the last burner phone, to let her know about the change of plans. Nyquist would have liked to object, but here, in a public place, he couldn’t risk the appearances – three men bullying a pretty girl in a fashionable outfit would surely bring the security forces, and then she’d be allowed to make whatever calls she pleased. Once she’d reassured Yuki, to the extent this was possible, and left the first crumb in a trail she knew Michael would be able to follow, she went along quietly, accompanying Nyquist and his men to a van waiting outside the terminal.
The End
Also by Jacques Antoine
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Girl Fights Back
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Girl Pays A Debt
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About the Author
By day, Jacques Antoine is a professor at a small college in the southwest, by night he writes action-adventure stories. At first, he wrote "kung fu" tales just for his daughter, when she was a little ninja studying karate. As she grew up, the tales evolved into full-length novels focusing on the dilemmas
of young adults, but always set against the background of martial arts adventures. When he's not writing or teaching, he enjoys walking his dogs in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains outside Santa Fe.
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