CL Hart -From A Distance

by CL Hart

  "A private boat or something? You're kidding, right?" His sarcasm didn't require an answer. "With all of the resources you have at your disposal, I cannot fathom your response. You think... Maybe... Something. I would expect more from you, Colonel. Where exactly," he enunciated clearly and concisely, "is she now?" Palmer listened to the computer keys clicking distantly over the phone.

  "Latitude twenty-four point one three..."

  "If you know the location that precisely, Colonel," the senator interrupted, "why can't you get someone there? Or is there something additional you need to tell me?"

  "It's not that easy. According to these numbers, that puts her-"

  "Do I sound like I care, Manuck? Because I don't. And I don't need to remind you that this job needs to be done. There is no leeway here for mistakes, and believe me, she is a mistake, one that we can ill afford to have walking around. Maquinar is too important."

  "Too important, or too profitable, Senator?"

  The senator ignored the comment. "Get it done, and get it done right. Make the problem go away, Colonel."

  The Pichilingue left a broad wake on its sluggish journey through the Gulf of California to La Paz. Something woke Kenzie from her light slumber. She wouldn't sleep soundly until she felt safe, and right now, she didn't feel safe. However, she did feel the warm body next to her. Cori had inadvertently curled up to her in her sleep, her head resting comfortably against Kenzie's side. For a moment Kenzie felt a little envious of her soft snore. She wished she could sleep so easily, but there were too many things on her mind and too much blood on her hands.

  What happened? What went wrong? She reviewed Manuck's orders, point by point, but none of it made sense. Killing Cori did not make any sense. She was supposed to be protecting the innocent, not killing them, and Cori was innocent, she was sure of it. Innocent and gorgeous. Closing her eyes, Kenzie rested her head against the wall of the plywood box and took a deep breath. Another place and another time, sleeping with this woman would have been the first thing on her mind - Get your head on straight, girl. You're on the run, not on the make.

  The shooter in the desert hadn't carried any ID, but she knew one of her own when she saw one. The rifle he had was high powered and very expensive, which bothered her almost as much as the thought of how he had come to be there. And why had her extraction team not shown up?

  When she rummaged through his clothes, she had not been looking for ID. What she had been looking for was a contract or a photograph, something that told her who he'd been aiming at. There had been nothing - no note, no picture, not a scrap of paper telling her who he was working for. For a moment, she regretted not searching his car but there was no point in agonizing over it. The chance that there would have been anything there was now a moot point. Move on soldier - that brought her mind onto another subject. Colonel Manuck. Had he not trusted her to do the job? Then again, she hadn't done the job he had ordered her to do. She had gotten too close to her target, and fear and paranoia had begun to consume her. Maybe it was time to get out, finally have a life away from the military.

  She could feel the warmth of the sleeping woman beside her, and Kenzie knew she could never go back. But what could she move forward to? She was exactly what they had trained her to be - an assassin without connections. They had taken the emotion out of her, drilled her to become a killer without a conscience, with no moral guidelines other than loyalty to the people who gave her orders. She was a killing machine who did not feel like killing anymore.

  What could anyone do with someone who possessed her lethal skills, someone who had witnessed things that in the public's mind had never happened? Maybe it wasn't possible. She couldn't recall having heard of a retirement home for morally bankrupt assassins. Financially, the military had looked after most of her needs, so she had managed to save a small nest egg. She wasn't rich, but she could survive on what she had put away, at least for a while. Then what?

  Her moral compass was spinning out of control. She knew she was walking on the edge of a knife and if she didn't make a move soon the results could be lethal. She had never trusted anyone, and for very good reason. She was not willing to take a risk with anyone's life but her own. It was only then she fully understood that she had not killed Cori because it went against the very core of who she was. For reasons she could not comprehend, she was finding herself drawn to the woman. "Chatty Cathy" Cori was constantly on her mind and Kenzie knew that this time she was disobeying orders for entirely different reasons.

  Kenzie finally fell back to sleep, but she didn't sleep well. In the shadows of her mind, caught in the twilight of dreams, the war between right and wrong continued. Faces of those she had killed haunted her, whispering to her conscience. With vivid clarity, she recalled the locations she had visited, places where she had taken the lives of strangers without ever a question - in the heat and humidity of the jungles of South America, or the hot stinging sands of the Kuwait desert, or even the quiet of Paris' Luxembourg Park. The jobs were over, but they continued to play in her mind. There were so many, too many, and she wanted out.

  Voices in the distance woke Kenzie from her nightmares. Her first thought was for the woman who had been sleeping beside her. "Cori," she said in a whisper.

  "What's going on?"

  Kenzie could hear the fear in her voice and the rustling of hay as Cori moved about inside the box.

  "Shhh," Kenzie brought her finger to her lips and then reached into her bag. She felt amongst her belongings for her silencer. Finding the cold metal cylinder, she screwed it into place. "Stay here and stay quiet," she said as she pushed the plywood top off the box.

  Kenzie peered out from the protection of their camouflage box, but there was nothing for her to see except cows. Not wanting to spook the cattle, she slowly and carefully climbed from their hiding place. It took her a few moments to squeeze past the cows' beefy bellies, but finally she made it to the outer wall of the cattle trailer. She peered cautiously between the slats, looking for the source of the voices she could hear. Night had fallen and the deck of the ferry was dimly lit, making her task all that much harder.

  "What's going on?" Cori asked in a hushed whisper.

  Kenzie quickly turned and brought her finger to her lips, then tapped her ear.

  Moving away from the side of the cattle trailer, Kenzie leaned over the back of one of the cows. "I heard something."

  "I figured that," Cori said with a hint of sarcasm as Kenzie turned her attention back outside. Cori scrambled from the box. Pushing her way through the press of cows, she made her way to where Kenzie was standing.

  "Voices," Kenzie said, "but I don't know from where. What are you doing?" Kenzie whispered angrily.

  Cori was peering through the wooden slats. "The same thing you're doing - looking for whoever is talking." All she could see were the vehicles parked around them. A five-ton truck with a canvas tarp, a white panel van, and a red Freightliner...the line of trucks and trailers went on and on. A movement on the far side of the open ferry deck caught her eye. She rested her forehead against the wooden slat to get a better look. Before she could say anything, Kenzie tapped on Cori's shoulder and pointed in that direction. Cori nodded.

  The two women watched and waited, but there was no explanation for what they had heard or seen. Cori changed her position, looking through several different slats, but still could not see where the voices were coming from. Just as she stepped away from the trailer wall, Kenzie raised her hand and pointed to the rear of the trailer. Ducking and dodging, Cori did her best to see beyond the cattle, but was unsuccessful.

  Kenzie saw the look of frustration on her face. Holding up two fingers, she indicted to Cori that she had seen two men. Walking her fingers, she indicated that they had moved just beyond the rear of the cattle trailer.

  Moving up beside Kenzie, Cori finally saw the two men moving slowly in and out between the vehicles just beyond their trailer. One was dressed in dark blue work overalls, while the other was dressed more
casually in khaki pants and a white t-shirt. The men were speaking too softly for her to make out what they were saying. They appeared to be searching the vehicles - looking in windows and peering into the back of truck beds. Cori whispered to Kenzie, "They're looking for something."

  "Jose's uncle said it was against the law for anyone to be below on the car deck after we left port," Kenzie said as she chambered a round into her gun. "So the only thing they would be searching for is us."

  Cori watched the men - their movements, their body language - and didn't come to the same conclusion. "I don't think so. Looks to me like they work here."

  Kenzie brought her weapon up in search of her targets. This was what she knew, what she was trained to do, and her reflexes responded accordingly. Taking a deep breath, she slowly released it, relaxing her nerves and steadying her aim. Focusing only on the two men, Kenzie ignored the cows and the smell of the stale diesel fumes as she raised her gun and took aim.

  "What are you doing?"

  Kenzie heard the question but didn't think it was worthy of an answer.

  "Stop! What the hell are you doing?" Cori said in a harsh whisper. "You can't just shoot those men."

  Lowering her weapon, Kenzie turned and glared at her. "Why not? People have been shooting at us."

  "Well, so far, these guys haven't. Let's just wait."

  "Wait for what? For them to find us and shoot us? I don't think so.

  "Kenzie, let's just see what they're doing."

  "It doesn't matter what they're doing. They aren't even supposed to be down here," Kenzie said flatly, as she turned her focus to the two men.

  As she raised her weapon, Cori reached around and put her hand on the gun, pushing it downward. "No," she said, her features drawn in determination.

  They were only inches apart, both stubbornly sure of what they believed.

  "Shoot first and ask questions later, that's what I live by."

  "Make a mistake and you'll have to live with the consequences," Cori responded quickly. "Sooner or later you're going to have to stop shooting people." Cori stared deeply into the gold of Kenzie's eyes, "Just...wait."

  Kenzie broke the stare first, pulling her mind back from the desert of the Middle East. Rolling her tongue along her teeth, she glanced over Cori's shoulder, searching for the men. She located them standing next to a cargo van. One of them lifted the tarp that covered the back of a five-ton work truck, but the taller of the two men was not interested in its contents. He moved away from the work truck toward the cattle trailer.

  "And if you're wrong?" Kenzie said without taking her eyes off the man as he approached.

  "Then you can go ahead and shoot them," Cori whispered into Kenzie's ear from behind. "I won't say a word. Hell, I'll even help you dump the bodies."

  Kenzie didn't respond, mainly because she didn't know whether or not Cori was kidding. She watched the taller man getting closer and turned to Cori, pressing her finger to her lips. The man moved down the length of the trailer, and Kenzie was sure she heard a catch in Cori's breathing when he stopped almost directly in front of them. Without hesitation, Kenzie brought her weapon up level with the man's head just on the other side of the worn wooden slats.

  Neither of the women moved as they waited to see what he was going to do. The longer he stood outside the trailer, the more slack Kenzie squeezed out of the trigger. The shot would be silent, but the sound of the bullet tearing through the wood might alert his companion.

  A short whistle from beyond the trailer drew the man's attention and he turned away from his impending death. Cori let out the breath she had been holding as they watched him join his partner at the open railing of the ferry.

  "Can you see what they're doing?" Kenzie asked in a hushed voice as the two men huddled close together. They were speaking to each other, but the noises from the ferry mixed with the sounds of the ocean masked their words. They appeared to be warily surveying their surroundings, which made Kenzie uneasy until she saw the men turn their backs to the salty winds and place cigarettes in their mouths. As their swirls of smoke dissipated into the air, she relaxed and turned her back to the men.

  "It's just a couple of slackers stealing from cars and sneaking a smoke," she whispered in relief as she turned back to Cori.

  "And you were ready to blow them away," Cori whispered back.

  "I live by my instincts. I've survived this long because I don't trust anyone," Kenzie said as she slid her weapon into its holster.

  "Well, your instincts were wrong this time."

  "Were they?"

  "You almost shot two innocent men. I would say your instincts were wrong." Cori said as she made her way back to their hiding spot. "But I guess you don't really care, do you?"

  "They aren't exactly innocent. They're breaking a ton of laws by smoking on the car deck of a ferry transporting dangerous goods."

  "Oh yeah, I forgot..." Cori leaned back against the plywood wall of the box. "Smoking is punishable by death in Mexico."

  Kenzie glared at her but didn't respond as she took a seat. Reaching up, she slid the lid back over their box, but left it open enough to allow in some light and a slight breeze.

  Cori watched with interest as Kenzie pulled out her weapon and checked it over. Dropping the clip, she slid the mechanism back, ejecting the unspent shell into her hand. She fed the bullet back into the clip, shoved the clip back into the butt of the gun, and then returned it to her holster. She moved with precision, confident of herself and her surroundings. The muscles in Kenzie's forearm rippled, her hands and fingers were long and strong, and her eyes - Cori had never seen anyone with gold-colored eyes before. She was more than a little unnerved to realize that she was finding herself attracted to a woman who had such an affinity for killing.

  Kenzie reached for a bottle of water. As she glanced up, she noticed that Cori was watching her. Actually, watching was not the right word - more like - ogling.

  "How much longer before we reach the Baja?" Cori asked quickly, hoping to cover her embarrassment at being caught staring at Kenzie's body.

  Slightly amused at the situation, Kenzie slowly unscrewed the cap from the bottle. She took several long gulps of water, enjoying the attention from the obviously embarrassed young woman. When Kenzie finished, she looked at her watch. "I think we should be almost halfway."

  Unconsciously licking at her lips, Cori gave a brief nod. She suddenly didn't care how long the trip was going to take. Looking through one of the air holes in the box, she watched the smokers huddled in the distance as the bright moon lit up the car deck with a silvery glow. The sun had long since set, but it was still hot and humid inside the cattle trailer. The muscles in her arms and legs burned with fatigue, making them heavy and shaky. She tried her best to get comfortable in the straw. Beads of sweat rolled down her body, leaving her feeling damp and dirty. Uncomfortable as it was, the heat and conditions were not what was on her mind.

  Kenzie watched as Cori rolled first on one side and then the other. It was obvious that she was having difficulty falling back to sleep. As she continued to stare at the young woman, Cori opened her eyes. Kenzie didn't look away, instead she faced the fear and apprehension that clouded Cori features. She had gotten too close to her target, close enough to see into the reflection in her eyes, and she found herself in a new role - protector.

  Cori wanted to look away, but something in Kenzie's stare held her. An uneasy silence fell between them as they swayed with the rhythm of the ship, each looking to the other for something indefinable. Without a word, Kenzie looked away and Cori was sure she was going to roll over onto her side. Much to her surprise, Kenzie raised her arm, inviting her back to where she had fallen asleep before. Cori said nothing, but the desire for comfort was a strong pull for her tired body. She hesitated for a moment, and then crawled over to nestle against Kenzie's side. It was not long before she drifted off into an exhausted sleep.

  Leaning back against the straw, Kenzie enjoyed the warmth of the body next to
hers. It was the first time in a long time that something felt right in her world. After a while, Cori's steady breathing lulled Kenzie into her own slumber.

  The cattle were moving restlessly, rocking the trailer, shaking Cori awake. Looking around, she could tell that some time had passed since she had fallen asleep, but she had no idea how much. The moon was high and the stars were bright, adding natural light to the eerie yellow glow from the few working lights that hung over the car deck. Turning her head, she was not surprised to see Kenzie was also awake.

  "What's going on?" Cori asked over the noise of the anxious animals.

  "I'm not sure, but something's wrong." Kenzie got to her feet and cautiously opened the plywood lid all the way off their hidden hay-box.

  "I hear voices," Cori said with alarm.

  "So do I, but that's not my only concern. I smell smoke."

  "What?" Cori peered out over the edge of their hideaway. The smell of smoke resistered with Cori and the sudden sound of loud, panicked voices in the distance. A wave of anxiety heightened her senses as she heard the growing commotion. "Those voices are getting closer. Do you think they know we're here?" Cori's question was cut off as the trailer swayed abruptly with the sudden movement of the frightened cattle.

  Kenzie pulled her weapon from its holster. "I doubt it, but I'm not taking any chances." Kenzie's eyes narrowed and she wrinkled her nose as a stronger whiff of smoke reached her nostrils. The clamor of hurrying feet was growing louder.

  "They're coming this way," Cori said as she turned back to face Kenzie. The cattle were thrashing and crashing about, violently shifting the trailer back and forth. She reached out to brace herself and gripped Kenzie's bare bicep. The combination of softness and strength took her a little by surprise.

  Ignoring the hand on her arm, Kenzie looked at Cori with concern. "Something is definitely burning."

  With so many things going on, it took Cori a moment to focus on what Kenzie was saying. "What?"