“Oh, you’re a sore loser, are you? You cheated first, running up and diving off the bow.”
Brad lunged for Ranya’s hips and grabbed the sides of her bikini bottom, Ranya tried to pull away his wrists, but they were too thick and slippery in the water, so she reached across to tickle his sides instead. But he didn’t yank her swimsuit down, and the next thing Ranya knew their arms were around each other, they were laughing like children, grinning toothy smiles at one another, their wet noses touching, knees and legs and feet treading water and bumping together clumsily. Then they were kissing, submerging when they stopped treading water in their embrace, kicking their way back up, and all the while laughing, and kissing.
Wordlessly they found a slow rhythm of gently kicking with their legs that kept them at equilibrium, with just their chins above the water. They stopped laughing altogether as they kissed more deeply.
“Let’s go back to the boat,” she suggested softly into his ear.
They swam back together, touching, and at Guajira’s stern Brad pulled a rope handle and the boat’s hinged swim ladder flipped down into the water. He let her go up first, following closely behind her, the water streaming off her smooth skin in the warm sunshine as she climbed aboard and pulled off her goggles.
She sat back down on the cushioned cockpit seat, and Brad sat across from her, their knees and toes touching. They were still catching their breaths from their race, their eyes and noses and lips only bare inches apart. Brad’s eyes were so blue, it was like looking through to the sky. “You’re a pretty good kisser…” she said, brushing her nose over his.
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“What do you think we should…do about it?” she asked, leaning even closer to him, her hands on the blue seat cushion beside her hips, her bare knees demurely together, her face tilted upward toward his. A scarcely known feeling of animal passion was sweeping through her with waves of electric shivers. The only other times she had felt anything approaching this wild abandon she had been consciously forcing herself to hold back from the edge. Today she felt like she was running for the abyss with something like desperation. This time she was not going to stop.
Brad placed his hands gently on each side of her face, then slid his fingers behind her head and neck under her wet hair and drew her lips to his. Ranya’s eyes fluttered closed as her lips parted and met his, then his tongue found hers and this time they didn’t have to tread water, this time they didn’t need to come up for air.
She felt something entirely new taking over her will, she felt like a helpless but willing witness as this strange new Ranya pushed Brad onto his back on the long blue cockpit cushion, kissing his face and his neck, her knees astride him, grinding herself franticly against his sudden hardness, then he was pulling aside her red bikini top and kissing her right…there…
****
It never hurt her, not for even one second, it was pure sweet pleasure for Ranya from his first exquisite invasion to their all-too-swift first climax. She fell asleep in the sunshine, rising and falling on his chest, her face buried in his neck, breathing him in, capturing his scent forever.
****
The sun was much lower in the sky above the western bluffs when they finally disentangled. Brad hung the sun shower from the mainsail boom above the cockpit, and gently washed every inch of her salty-tasting tan skin and hair with coconut-scented shampoo, then he rinsed her with the warm fresh water, and she blissfully returned the favor.
After they dried each other off with the sun-baked towels, Brad led her more than willingly by her hand down below and forward to his triangle-shaped V-berth in the bow. He made love to her again, his face above hers this time, their eyes wide open, drinking in each trembling reaction, each breath interrupted by a new stab of pleasure.
Within the confines of his small forward compartment, with its oddly slanted hull-side walls and its low ceiling, Ranya discovered that she could place her feet and legs in countless positions. But when he began to move steadily and increasingly deeply, she could only clutch her arms and legs around his back and hold on for dear life as waves of ecstasy rolled and crashed through her again and again.
When they finished his face lay over her shoulder, his lips gently kissing her neck. She was looking up through the open foredeck hatch at wisps of high stratus clouds, which were painted in stripes across a sky which had never been so blue, because now it was the color of Brad’s eyes.
****
A while later she awakened, and a comforter was pulled over them. She was snuggled against his side with her leg over his, and her warm cheek pressed against his beating heart. Turning her head slightly, she could see the three bright stars of Orion’s belt and a million others, through the open deck hatch above them. The constellation was slowly wheeling first clockwise, and then back, as Guajira swung on its anchor.
So much had happened in one day. She wondered how it came to be that she had killed a man, and at long last she had made love to a man, and both on exactly the same day, and that she had killed first. And both inconceivable events had happened precisely one week to the day after the one other man that she had loved had been killed. Killed by agents of the man who she had then killed in return. How unlikely was that? How often do things like that happen?
Three stars on Orion’s belt: one for her father, one for Sanderson, one for Brad. Then falling in love with the man you met on the day you found your father…that terrible Saturday. And making love for the very first time with him, on the same day that you took another man’s life.
How can this not be fate? How could there not be some greater, hidden purpose being served? Or were the gods merely toying with her idly, for their amusement?
She thought of her father’s gifts, and of his hidden arms cache. The disassembled Tennyson Champion sniper pistol was still wrapped in her gray track suit and hidden back in the aft cabin. The Tennyson was now accompanied by her loaded .45 pistol, another gift from her father. A graduation gift…if he only knew. Or did he know? Could he know? Even after his death her father was playing a role in this drama, handing her the tools she needed to find justice.
She considered how easily she could slip out from Brad’s bed and give the Tennyson sniper pistol the deep-blue goodbye. She could just throw the pieces far out over the side, where they would drop through the water and sink into the soft river mud and disappear forever. She could be done with it, and put Sanderson’s murder safely behind her. After a minute’s deliberation she dismissed the idea, because she knew she was not yet finished with her mission.
Ranya wished that she could discuss all of her dark secrets with Brad, but she knew she could never tell him what she had done, at dawn across the water from the golf course. Telling him would draw him in as a conspirator, and it was already bad enough that she had left the murder scene and come to his boat with the killing weapon. She wondered what keeping the secret bottled inside of her would do to her soul, or if there even was such an ethereal entity within her. She had committed the very worst of all the sins, and she could never erase that black stain.
Looking up at the stars turning in the sky above the open deck hatch she thought, I’m sorry Mother; I didn’t wait until I was married…
But coming after the mortal sin of murder, that broken vow seemed much less important now.
She had not even told Brad that she was a virgin, and she had not told him that she was not on birth control, which must have been Brad’s reasonable assumption about a twenty-one-year-old college girl. Well, neither of them had been asking any questions earlier in the cockpit… And anyway, she had practically assaulted him…so whatever happened, it was her fault.
Staring up at the three bright stars of Orion’s belt, one star for each man, Ranya pondered the crushing realization that in one week she had become an orphan, a murderess, and a tramp.
26
Fifteen year old Danny Edmonds was sitting at his desk hunched over his computer keyboard typing furiously wh
en his father walked into his bedroom. “Danny, do you know what time it is?”
“Uh, hi Dad, let's see… zero one hundred hours.”
“Affirmative. Time for lights out son.”
“But Dad, it's Saturday night!”
“So what's the battle tonight?”
“Stalingrad.”
“Which side are you?”
“I'm Russian this time.”
“So what time zone is Field Marshall Von Paulus in? Maybe it’s not one AM in his command bunker.”
“Actually, his bio says he's an Army major at Fort Campbell, so it would be midnight his time. But I'm still kicking his butt clear back to the Ukraine.”
“An Army major huh? Well, one more hour then, until two AM, and that's it. Tell the Field Marshal that General Zhukov's father ordered him to go to bed by then.”
“Oh Dad, give me a break, he doesn't know I'm a kid.” Danny's voice cracked, halfway between boyhood and manliness.
“So you're whipping an active duty Army major in military tactics?”
“Strategy Dad, strategy. It's corps level warfare.”
“Right. Pardon me. And you still want to enlist in the Marines in three years?”
“Not three years Dad, two years.”
“You know I won't sign for you at seventeen, we’ve been through this... Three years and you'll be eighteen, and free to make your own mistakes.”
“Dad, I'll still become an officer eventually, but a mustang officer! The greatest Marine officers are mustangs, prior enlisted.”
It was an ongoing battle between them. Burgess Edmonds could get Danny an appointment to Annapolis or West Point with two or three phone calls, but at fifteen Danny was determined to enlist in the Marines, “ASAP” as he put it, and get into the action as a “mud Marine” in the ongoing war.
Danny's room told the story. Where other fifteen year old boys had posters on their walls depicting rock groups and basketball stars, Danny seemingly had every Marine Corps recruiting poster ever made. He wore tan suede USMC combat boots to school, he had a camouflage poncho liner for a bed spread, and sitting at his desk he was wearing bright red USMC sweats, with the gold "eagle, globe and anchor" on the front.
Danny was already fifteen, and Burgess had no complaints about him, not really. He was carrying a 3.7 GPA at Saint Paul's while lettering in wrestling and lacrosse, and he could have his choice of colleges. He just hoped that his son would come around and see the benefits of accepting an appointment to a service academy after high school, instead of enlisting straight away in the Marines.
Danny was afraid that the war would be over before he could get into it if he waited for four more years after he finished high school to join the military. Burgess Edmonds did not share his son’s belief that the war would be over any time soon, and after what he had been through in Vietnam, he had no wish for his son to experience combat. Still, he knew better than to push the issue with the headstrong and determined fifteen year old. Danny and twenty-one-year-old Valerie were his second family, and this time he was not going to blow it like he had the first time around. Maybe he’d mellowed, or maybe he’d just learned from bitter experience not to push them too hard.
“Okay Danny, whenever and however you do get your commission, you'll be the greatest officer the Marines ever had. Two AM, all right bud?”
“All right, Dad.”
Burgess Edmonds turned to the hallway before Danny could see the tears welling up in his eyes. Then he slipped down the hall to Valerie's room, Valerie who was spending the weekend down from college, his little girl Valerie who had so quickly grown up to become a woman. Her door was slightly ajar, so he looked in and watched her sleeping under her quilted comforter, her golden hair spilling across her face and pillow. Where had his little girl gone, the little girl he had tucked in among teddy bears what seemed like only last week?
He quietly went back downstairs. His wife, Glennis, his second wife, was already long asleep in their bedroom, at the other end of the second floor hallway from the kids’ rooms.
****
George Hammet was in the shotgun seat of the lead vehicle in the Special Training Unit raiding convoy, a black Chevy Suburban SUV with heavily tinted windows. It was parked on the shoulder of a dead-end county service road under a covering of oak trees a mile from the Edmonds’ driveway. Next to him in the driver’s seat was the Blue Team leader Tim Jaeger. Behind them in the back of the truck six more STU Team members were sitting on the carpeted cargo deck. Both the middle and rear bench seats had been removed for the operation to give them more room and allow faster exiting. Nearly all of them had prior service overseas with military specops units, and the stripped-out Suburban was just a “low flying helo” taking them to their latest battle zone, as far as they were concerned. They were all wearing black tactical gear, with black kevlar helmets, black balaclava face masks, black gloves, black boots, and even black Heckler and Koch MP-5 sub-machineguns.
Three more black Suburbans were lined up behind them. Tonight the STU Blue Team was the lead element and was taking down the house, and the Gold Team was providing the snipers, the recon team, and the perimeter security. STU Team on-site commander Bob Bullard, in the trailing Suburban, was not masked or helmeted and was remaining as the “blocker” at the bottom of the driveway. He would badge any local law enforcement which might arrive unexpectedly with his fake FBI credentials. Nothing about the STU Team tonight would connect them with ATF.
They all sat silent as death, watching the subdued lighting of the various screens in the front between the leaders, straining to hear their radio earphones which were turned down to a barely audible hiss. The snipers and the recon team had gone out hours before the raiding party had arrived at the forward staging area, dropped off by the STU's blue Dodge conversion van and the phony Virginia Power van, which was now hidden nearby serving as a commo relay and electronic support unit. Their bogus power company van was already monitoring the house’s telephones and electrical usage, and would cut off the Edmonds’ ADT alarm system connection just before the raid.
Cutting the complete electrical power to an up-scale home in advance of a raid came with a risk, because such homes typically had emergency backup lights and alarms which would activate and alert the residents if the power was cut. In this case the STU Team decided to leave the electrical power on, and rely on their speed to get themselves in before the Edmonds could react. Once inside, they would then be able to use the house lights to assist them in safely clearing it.
Unknown to the sleeping family, three of their cell phones had been covertly switched on, providing the STU with interior audio listening devices paid for and put in position by the Edmonds themselves. To the STU Team members, what civilians didn’t know about their own cell phones was simply mind boggling.
The two man sniper teams and the recon team carried advanced 3rd generation night vision rifle scopes, thermal imagers, electronic “big ears,” and electronic field detectors. If the Edmonds had infrared or microwave or other alarm systems on their property, then recon team Romeo would find and neutralize or bypass them before the raiding convoy arrived. The sniper teams with their night scopes and thermal imagers were in position to cover the flanks of the Edmonds’ hundred-acre property, as well as the rear of the house towards the bluffs and the river.
The radio crackled in Hammet's ear; all twenty-four STU Team operators heard the report at the same time. “Blue Leader, Romeo. All clear. Condition status: zebra zebra, hush puppy times two.”
“Zebra zebra” was a STU brevity code slang for “z’s,” meaning a sleeping house. The ATF and other federal law enforcement special response teams preferred to raid in the early hours when people were most deeply asleep. This was safest for everyone, providing the maximum shock for their “speed, surprise, and violence of action.” This caused people to quit before they even had the first idea of resisting.
“Hush puppy times two” meant that the recon team had taken care of the Edmond
ses’ two watch dogs, with sound-suppressed weapons.
Blue Team Leader Jaeger then checked the sniper teams, code named “Daniel Boone” and “Davy Crockett.”
“Delta Bravo, Blue leader: sit-rep.”
“Blue Leader, Delta Bravo ready.”
“Blue Leader, Delta Charlie ready.”
“Blue Two ready?”
“Ready” came from the Suburban behind Hammet and Jaeger. Gold Leader and Gold Two reported in immediately after.
Blue Leader Tim Jaeger flipped his helmet-mounted night vision goggles down over his eyes. All four vehicles’ engines were switched on. Jaeger punched the gas pedal and all four blacked-out vehicles ran up the service road to the county road in tight formation, fast but silent with their custom mufflers. They’d all studied aerial photos of the Edmonds estate taken earlier that day from Malvone’s borrowed helicopter. They knew exactly where the snipers and the recon team were hidden, they knew exactly where to park and the order in which they would jump out, they knew the locations of the doors and windows and who was assigned to each.
It was 2:45 AM, and the STU Team was conducting its first “real world” operation. They were primed, cocked, and coursing with adrenaline and testosterone. Payback for the Stadium Massacre, and the Reston Virginia ambush of the FBI team, and the assassination of Senator Randolph and Attorney General Sanderson was starting in one minute. They had all been briefed that Burgess Edmonds was the leader and financial kingpin of a shadowy right-wing terrorist organization loosely hidden behind the cover of a “hunting club” in southeastern Virginia, an organization which was primarily responsible for the past weeks’ acts of domestic terrorism. And they all believed it: all except for George Hammet in the lead Suburban, and Wally Malvone, the founder of the Special Training Unit, orbiting high above in the helicopter.
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