Enemy Mine

by Lindsay McKenna

  Kathy shut the gate behind them and watched Kammie race along the long row of cabbages. Halfway down, the girl bent over, her butt in the air like that of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. There was a milkweed sticking up between the cabbage. Laughing to herself, Kathy followed, careful not to muddy her tennis shoes.

  “Oh! Here she is! Here’s the worm!” Kammie hunkered down on her knees in the mud. With her short, thin fingers she deftly curled back the milkweed leaf. “Look! What is it?”

  Kathy came and squatted down between the cabbages. She took delight at her sister’s joy and awe. Looking down between Kammie’s muddy fingers, she saw a fat black-white-and-yellow-striped caterpillar inching along. “Hmm, looks like a caterpillar to me, Kammie.” She smiled into her sister’s wide eyes. “If you keep it in a jar and let it eat some milkweed leaves, it will spin a cocoon sooner or later.”

  “Yeah? And then what? What will happen?” Kammie watched the caterpillar progress across the leaf, heading toward her fingers. As if to muster courage, the child sucked in her breath when the creature stopped and daintily tested her fingertip.

  “Magic will happen. It will turn from a worm into a beautiful Monarch butterfly, Kammie,” Kathy murmured, watching the wonder in her sister’s shining eyes as the caterpillar touched the girl’s fingers. It must have decided that they weren’t a tasty leaf, for it turned around and wriggled across the cabbage.

  “Oh, oh! She felt so soft, Kathy!” Kammie gasped, looking up at her sister. “She touched me! It didn’t hurt! That was cool!”

  “Most caterpillars don’t bite.” Kathy ruffled Kammie’s hair. “Do you want to keep it and watch it turn into a butterfly?”

  “Yeah! Oh, yeah!”

  “Then pull off several milkweed leaves—carefully—and bring it to the garage. I’ll find you a jar big enough for it to live in. All it will do is eat and eat and eat until it’s ready to spin its cocoon. You’ll have to poke holes in the lid so the caterpillar can breathe. It has to have air, Kammie, just like you and me. And you’ll have to feed it a fresh leaf every day until it spins its cocoon.”

  Kammie’s brows squeezed together as she leaned over and very carefully tore a leaf off the milkweed then held it steady until the caterpillar crawled onto it. With Kathy’s help, she got to her feet. “Wow, this is so cool! I’m going to name her Pretty! She’s so pretty!”

  Chuckling, Kathy steered Kamaria ahead of her, and together they walked back to the gate. “Let’s get to the garage. You can tell Mom that you’ve pulled a dastardly weed out of her garden.”

  “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?” Laura asked as she put the bowl of salad greens on the table.

  Morgan brought in the sourdough bread, which sat on a pine cutting board. “I never saw Kamaria. Kathy was here setting the table earlier.” He looked out the large picture window at the backyard and garden.

  “Kammie just got home from vacation Bible school a few minutes ago. She ran upstairs and changed and was supposed to be pulling her ten minutes’ worth of weeds a day out in the garden.”

  “Nobody in sight,” Morgan murmured. “They’re up to something. I can feel it.” He walked back to the kitchen with his wife, who frowned at him. After slicing the roast beef, he followed Laura back out to the dining room. She placed a bowl of gravy near the platter of meat.

  “Hmm, you’re right. Those two are up to something,” Laura said with a shake of her head. “I’ll get the veggies. Why don’t you go down to the garage? I got a feeling they’re in there.”

  “One of your hunches?” Morgan teased.

  “Yep. Hot fudge sundae says I’m right.”

  Grinning, Morgan held up his hands. “I learned a long time ago that your instincts are always right.”

  Giving him an I-told-you-so smile, Laura chuckled. “Darn, I just missed out on a hot fudge sundae. Just make sure Kamaria is not wearing muddy shoes or clothes at the dinner table, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  Morgan found them in the garage, giggling, their heads bent together over a jar. They were busy doing something. What, he wasn’t sure. The main door was open to allow in the breeze. Kathy was just handing Kamaria a gallonsize, wide-mouth glass jar when he arrived.

  “Okay, caught you red-handed,” Morgan called.

  “Daddy, look!” Kamaria ran across the concrete to where he stood. “It’s a butterfly! Well, it will be,” she said breathlessly, lifting the huge jar up for her father to see.

  Morgan took the container and saw the caterpillar happily munching on leaves. “My, my, Kammie. You’ve got a real nice caterpillar in there, and it’s a weed, I see.” He squatted down to Kammie’s eye level. He loved his adopted daughter fiercely. If anything, she had breathed new life into him.

  He glanced up and saw Kathy leaning against the wooden jigsaw bench, arms crossed and a grin hovering on her lips. Pain struck at Morgan. He’d never played with Kathy as he did with Kamaria. At that stage in his life, he had been an absentee parent. Unfortunately, Jason and Kathy had been his training-wheels children—the ones who bore the brunt of his mistakes. Pete and Kelly, their fraternal twins, had had it easier, and now smiling Kamaria, her blue-gray eyes bright with delight, would be blessed with all his experience. He wouldn’t hurt her as he’d hurt them.

  “She’s got a new friend,” Kathy said, easing away from the bench. “I think it’s a monarch caterpillar, but I can’t be sure.” For her, there was a painful synchronicity in Kammie’s finding the caterpillar. Kathy believed in symbolism and fate. Butterflies were significant to her because they meant transformation. The caterpillar would live for a while in a rigid cocoon, a prisoner within. Hadn’t she been a prisoner in this whole kidnapping tragedy? Guilt and revenge had been her lifelong cocoon. Like the butterfly, she was going to morph and change, fueled by the power of her desire to get even. Yes, this butterfly-to-be was just like her. Pretty soon, she was going to change from Kathy Trayhern into an impostor. She would go undercover and become something else—a beautiful, deadly butterfly who could extract her revenge and balance the scales so that her family could finally be free.

  Morgan gave his oldest daughter a look of pride. “By golly, I think you’re right, Pet.” She was a Marine Corps aviator, a Seahawk helicopter pilot and every inch a proud, confident woman in his eyes, but he still called her Pet. He always would. Kathy was the spitting image of Laura, his wife, except she was taller and larger boned. She had her mother’s blue eyes and was just as beautiful.

  “Daddy, can I keep Pretty? Kat says she has to stay in my room, out of the sunlight. I have to feed her a new milkweed leaf a day until she spins her cocoon.”

  Morgan carefully handed the jar back to his excited little daughter. “I don’t think Mommy is going to be real happy to hear you’re going to pull milkweeds from her garden.”

  “Aww, Daddy, it’s only one leaf.” Kammie tilted her head and pouted. She wrapped her arms around the jar and stood there, pleading silently.

  Chuckling, Kathy came over and patted Kammie’s small shoulders. “Let’s convince her over dinner, okay?”

  “First,” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow at his youngest, “I think you’d better head up to your room and change. Your knees and shoes are muddy. Mommy won’t be happy to see you arrive dirty at the dinner table. Okay?”

  “Oh.” Kamaria laughed after looking down and examining herself. “Okay! I’ll be right down!” She whirled around with her jar, ran across the garage and flew up the steps into the house.

  “Boy,” Morgan said, straightening up to his full height and brushing off his jeans, “I sure wish I had one-fourth of her energy.”

  “You did,” Kathy said, following him into the house, “when you were her age.”

  Morgan chuckled. Within minutes, everyone had sat down at the dinner table.

  “So, what’s this sudden black ops popping up on your radar screen, Pet?” Morgan asked a few minutes later, as he spooned gravy over the mashed potatoes on his plate. S
itting at the head of the oval table, with his daughters at his elbows and Laura at the other end, he gave Kathy an inquiring look. He saw her cheeks turn a faint pink as she pushed a piece of roast beef around on her plate. Otherwise she looked totally relaxed.

  “I can’t say much about it, Dad.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured.

  “You’re flying the Seahawk as part of an insert-extract mission?” Laura asked.

  Nodding, Kathy felt her stomach tense like a fist. She had to pull this off! One thing in her favor was that no matter how fearful she felt, how awkward or unsure, she never allowed any of these things to broadcast on her face or seep into her body language. No, she’d learned to hide her emotions when she was a very young child. Crying had become something she’d done alone, in her closet if her family was around, her hand over her mouth so no sound would escape.

  Her father, whom she’d idolized, wasn’t always there, and when he was, he’d been preoccupied with the mercenary teams he sent out around the world to do good for others. He hadn’t had time for his daughter or for his eldest son, Jason. Kathy couldn’t count the many times she’d ached for her dad to come and hold her, to say he loved her. After the kidnapping, he’d tried to be there for her, but by that time the damage had been done. Kathy had learned not to show emotions on her face or allow her body or voice to betray her real feelings. Now she was glad of that, because this time it was essential.

  “Yeah, I’ll be piloting my helo, Mom.”

  “South America?” Morgan asked.

  Kathy nodded. “That much I can say.”

  “The country?” Morgan pressed.

  “No, Dad. I can’t….” She held his narrowed gray eyes, which made her feel as if he could look into her mind and read the truth. Her heart beat hard in her chest. Kathy forced herself to take slow, deep breaths and chew her food, even though she didn’t taste a shred of it. Where she was going, the ability to play a part was paramount. It would keep her alive until…

  “Hmm,” Morgan said, slicing more of the beef. “I’m just surprised I haven’t been made aware of it, is all.”

  “It’s come up in a hurry, and it’s a changing mission ops, Dad, that’s why. It might be different by the time I arrive at the base.”

  Laura groaned and rolled her eyes. “One of them.”

  Kathy at least had her mother fooled. She wasn’t so sure about her dad. He still regarded her with a strange glint in his eyes, which alarmed her. Still, Kathy reminded herself, if she was scared of Morgan Trayhern finding her out, she’d better be far more worried about Carlos Garcia discovering who she was and why she was there.

  “Daddy, you said you wouldn’t talk job at the table,” Kammie reminded him, tapping him on the elbow.

  “Uh-oh, so I did, Kammie.”

  “That’s right,” Laura said apologetically. “And I’m just as guilty.”

  Kathy smiled across the table at her sister. “Why don’t you tell Mom about your butterfly in the making?” Anything to divert her parents’ focus from her. Kathy felt bad about using Kammie that way, but she had to do something to distract them.

  On other missions, she had been able to tell them more. Usually, what she couldn’t say, Morgan found out anyway, because he worked so closely with the Pentagon and other military and security networks. Crossing her fingers mentally, Kathy hoped that Commander Patrick O’Conner of her SEAL team would keep this mission compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis only.

  While forcing herself to slowly chew and swallow her food, she vaguely listened to Kammie’s exciting account of finding the caterpillar. If Kathy didn’t finish her meal, Morgan would know something was wrong, and that was the last thing she wanted. The food sat like a lead ball in her stomach.

  “You know, Kelly and Pete will be here tomorrow,” Laura said as they ate their dessert of freshly made apple pie and vanilla ice cream.

  Kathy lifted her head. “Yes, you said they’d be coming home.” She saw the joy shining in her mother’s eyes, as well as her father’s continued scrutiny, which set her nerves on edge yet again. Stomach clenching, Kathy had a feeling he wasn’t about to let go of the topic of her black ops mission. Damn! She’d have to call Patrick and make sure that it stayed under wraps. She decided to do so at the first opportunity.

  Giving the excuse that she’d eaten too much and was going to hike the wildflower trail behind their home, Kathy slipped away after dessert. Kammie was dragging their parents to her room to look at the captured caterpillar, so it was an opportune moment. Dressed in her hiking boots, a pair of jeans and a dark blue tank top, Kathy borrowed one of the many knapsacks from the garage, put a water bottle in it and took off for the woods.

  Hoping that her cell phone would work from the top of the ridge, Kathy stood facing the west, toward the setting sun. Above her, through the dark branches of the stately evergreens, the evening sky was turning an apricot color.

  “Commander O’Conner speaking.”

  “Hey, Pat, this is Kathy Trayhern.”

  “You’re coming in scratchy. Where you callin’ from, Kathy?”

  Turning slightly, Kathy waited. “How’s this? Can you hear me better now?”

  “Yeah, a little. What’s up? You’ve still got four days on your R and R.”

  Hearing his chuckle, Kathy smiled slightly and pressed the cell phone to her ear. “I’m counting them, trust me. Listen, I really need to give you a headsup on our mission. My father is giving me the fish eye, which means he intends to find out about what we’re doing.”

  “Don’t worry, Kathy, I’ve got that covered. There’s no way he can get to it. Relax, okay?”

  Relief sheeted through her. Kathy closed her eyes for a moment and felt her stomach begin to relax. “Good…good.”

  “Listen, the ops has changed. I was going to call you, so you musta been reading my mind.”

  “Oh?” Her heart pounded.

  “Yeah, we just got a KNR—a kidnapping and ransom call—from the State Department. Carlos Garcia just kidnapped Sophie, a little girl from an oil executive down in Lima, Peru. She’s an American citizen. The kid is only seven years old, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and was abducted from her parents’ apartment in the Mira Flores district, the wealthy area in that city. They probably kidnapped her for either political gain or for a ransom. This isn’t the first time Garcia has kidnapped. It’s part of his profile.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. So that doubles the ante on getting you in place, in Garcia’s good graces. You’re going to be looking for that little girl while you’re insinuating yourself into his command structure. She becomes our top priority now. And this lends credence to your mission. Before, we were standing on shaky ground, trying to snatch the child of a drug lord. Now, with this girl being kidnapped, we’re a bona fide mission.”

  Rubbing her brow, Kathy stared at the darkening woods surrounding her. “This complicates things, Pat.” She was counting on hurting the Garcias just as much as they’d hurt her family, by kidnapping Carlos’s only child, a little girl named Tiki Garcia, age six. If the American girl was there, the mission would involve two children, not one. That made it even more tricky to carry off. And Pat was telling her that if she had to make a choice between the children, Sophie, the American child, would have to be the one she spirited away. After all, the U.S. wasn’t in the kidnapping business—at least not officially—and Kathy knew her mission would put Patrick into a lot of hot water if it was discovered by higher-ups. For him, this mission had just gotten a blessing. For her, it had become more complex.

  “Yeah, it does complicate things. But you knew from the get-go that this ops was an evolving one, like a pissed-off snake twisting around, trying to bite.”

  Grimacing, Kathy nodded. “You’re right. Okay, no problem. Then the time frame is the same?”

  “Yeah, stay where you are. There’s no sense in changing the schedule. If you dropped in on Garcia early, he might suspect something. This way, it’ll be
at least four to five days after the KNR.”

  “Right.” That made sense. Patrick O’Conner was one of the oldest SEALs in the business, but one of the smartest and foxiest when it came to strat and tact—strategy and tactics. That’s why Kathy had gone to him in the first place. It would take a mastermind to draw up a mission that Carlos Garcia wouldn’t suspect. “Okay, then I’ll be there as scheduled.”

  “You bet, Kat. See you soon. Out.”

  Standing there, watching the apricot sky deepening to gold overhead, Kathy pushed the cell phone back into her pocket.

  Damn. Not one child to steal from beneath Garcia’s nose, but two. An innocent American child was now part of the mix. Already Kathy felt dread. She shook it off, and the thirst for revenge that had lived liked a good friend in her all these years resurfaced. She allowed her rage to burn off whatever doubts she had. Anger, if directed and focused properly, could become a powerful ally, and that was exactly what Kathy wanted.

  Hiking slowly back down the mountain, across pine needles brown and slick beneath her boots, she tried to clear her mind of the new twist on her mission. Far below she could see the two-story home bright with lights. With life. A terrible sadness cloaked Kathy as she continued her descent on the well-worn path. She knew her mother often came up this trail, which ran through a flower-filled meadow on the side of the mountain. Laura would trek the mile to gather wildflowers, arranging them in vases throughout the house—colorful reminders of nature, which she loved so much.

  Well, at least Kathy would get to see the twins tomorrow, as well as Jason, Annie and their new baby. A series of goodbyes, she reminded herself grimly, and felt new grief edging through the hatred and rage that the Garcias brought out in her. It was going to be a tough role to play. She wanted to cry, because she knew she was going to die. This would be the last time she’d ever see her brothers and sisters. Oh, God, help me pull off this charade. Please….

  CHAPTER THREE

  HOW WAS SHE GOING TO SAY goodbye to her family? Kathy lay in bed, the morning sunlight slanting across the familiar pink rose wallpaper. Her bed faced the window and she gazed out at the pines, hands behind her head, mulling over the situation.