The Shack: Ladykiller

The M2, or "Ma Deuce," was first produced in 1933 and is still, with some minor changes, the primary heavy machine gun for NATO. Because sometimes things don't need to be changed.

A heavy hunting rifle, say a .30-06, will produce over 3000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, depending on variables. Powerful enough to bring down any large game in North America with a single shot in the hands of a skilled hunter.

The round for the M2, the .50 BMG, produces up to 15,000 foot-pounds. The average city block doesn't have anything on it that will do more than slow the round down a little.

The first burst from the M2 was long, too long, but that was to be expected; my Adrestria had probably only seen one a couple times since Basic Training, and probably only then for a short familiarization training session. After that first one, though, the M2 fired in controlled bursts, the .50 caliber rounds slamming into the mass of men almost surgically.

With no warning, at that angle, at that distance, she would have wreaked havoc with a simple light machine gun. With rounds that could travel through dozens of bodies before stopping, the effect was indescribable carnage.

She Who Cannot Be Escaped. Sister to Phobos and Deimos, Fear and Terror. She follows her Father, Ares, God of War, into Battle under the watchful Eye of Zeus.

Through the scope, I could see her face was calm, centered, as she did exactly what she had to do. A few frantically fired rounds glanced off the armored shield of the M2, but she didn't even blink. I couldn't stop watching her; she was beautiful, almost unbearably beautiful. Fear would never have a hold on her again; after all Fear was her Brother. Let lesser beings be afraid.

Once the panic set in and men began to try to retreat, it slowed them further as they tried to backtrack over bodies and rock slick with blood. More died, torn and rent, scythed down by the unceasing hammer blows of a newborn Goddess of War. The remnants, the survivors, fled, scrabbling back around the bend, though I doubted they would get far. A sound like a chorus of dull heartbeats slowly called from the sky. Helicopters. I could sense William near me, setting smoke to keep the metal dragons from mistaking us for the enemy.

He gave a slow whistle. "Is that who I think it is?"

"She's our Sister, William."

William looked at the bodies scattered and clustered near the bend and gave a slight smile. "She is indeed. And it would appear our Sister has a bit of a temper."

I glanced at William, stood up and slung my rifle.

By the time I picked my way down to the valley floor, a squad of men with a Sergeant Major watching over them was checking the killing ground for survivors. One of the men was the burly Specialist who'd sat at the table with her in the mess hall. He was stealing cautious looks up at her, wondering how he'd so badly misunderstood, how he'd not noticed the Reaper in their midst.

The Sergeant Major eyed my rifle and nodded to me as I walked past.

Even as she scanned for more enemy, she had watched me all the way down, never taking her eyes completely off of me. Despite the tear tracks in the grime on her face, she was absolutely serene. Adrestria. No longer "The Girl." Her lip quirked up in a half-smile. "I knew it was you."

"You just needed me to buy you some time." I pulled myself up onto the wreck and clasped her hand, a Warrior's greeting for a fellow Warrior. "You kept the flank from collapsing. You held it."

She paused, glancing to the sky, seeing the stars shining brightly despite the daylight. For her, now and forever, the stars would always be there. One hand rested easily on the grip of the Deuce. "You believed in me."

I nodded. Belief, after all, is what creates gods, even gods of war. I'd been blinded, but I really had; at the end, I'd really believed in her.

She looked over the shredded bodies of the guerrillas with no regret, no guilt, no horror. I saw the Specialist look away rather than make eye contact with her. "I did what I had to do."

"That's what people like us do, Jinxy." I pulled my shemagh off from around my neck and draped it around hers. "Something to remember it by." Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Sergeant Major nodding. The shemagh may not have been quite in uniform regulations, but for her, there would always be an exception.

She looked over the ridgelines for a moment, taking in the breathtaking beauty of it all. "It's going to be hard, isn't it? Going home, I mean." She really did understand.

"In some ways, you never will get completely home. It's what we are." I touched her hand. "People like us. Part of us is... made for this."

She nodded. "I didn't understand before, but now... It's... elegant. Clean in a way. Just us and them. No empty bank account, no overdue bills, no rent. No rude customers... nothing." Her smile twisted a little. "No zits and hat hair from working the French fry cooker." The ludicrous idea that McDonalds could even exist in our world made us both laugh softly.

William walked through chaos to us with a slight smile. "Jambo, little Sister."

Jinxy smiled back at him. "Sijambo, William."

William chuckled. "You are a fast learner." He looked back over the bloody ground. "A very fast learner."

She just smiled contentedly. I looked down the column of vehicles, watching the soldiers taking care of business. I looked down at the Sergeant Major. "You don't need us here. Our Sister here will watch over you."

He returned my grim smile with his own and nodded slowly. "Damn glad to have her." And I could tell he really was.

William glanced back as we walked away, studying her work, studying her. "Amos himself couldn't have done it any better."

The tone caught me off guard. "What are you thinking William?"

"Nothing, just reflecting a bit, that's all. A commo dog, right? Everybody needs commo."

"Amos eats sandwiches that weigh more than she does." I watched the soldiers dragging the dead to the side of the road as she kept watch. "But, yeah, you're right."

He shot one last look at her over his shoulder as we headed back up the ridge.

***

Afghanistan-Pakistan

We spent another five months bouncing around to different bases, conducting training, before the call finally came.

William and I had just about convinced ourselves that the target would be a no-show when he got the call on the satellite phone. "The target will be at a villa north of Peshawar. Good terrain for shooting, but exfiltration will be a problem."

We pulled out maps and went to work. He was right, it was good mountainous terrain with plenty of excellent positions, but once the shot was fired we'd be in trouble. With armed forces, both legitimate and tribal, looking for us, there'd be no easy way out, no population to hide in.

"We may have to waive this one, William."

He finished tracing another pointless path on the map with his pencil. "I don't do suicide missions."

A second message arrived and he read it silently, then grinned. "It's the target schedule. They are attending a wedding there."

"A wedding?"

"We can do this. On the Nikah."

"The actual wedding day?" I raised my eyebrow.

"It's the only real chance, and it's perfect."

We went over William's plan. It meant waiting in place for a full two days, but it really was perfect. I called Wendy's contact on the cell phone Brooks had given me.

One of Wendy's professionally incurious truck drivers took us across Jalalabad pass and ended up dropping us on a highway about 5 miles from the target. We walked in wearing locals' clothes, though even with my five-month beard, we hardly looked like locals. Despite our obviously foreign appearance, none of the locals paid us any attention; fanatical foreign fighters from all over the globe had transited the area often enough that they were actively disinterested in whatever the pair of us might be up to. The SVD stayed in its carry sack, and both us openly carried the AK-74s.

We ended up settling in about 700 yards from the villa and waited nearly two days for the wedding party to arrive for the Nikah, the formal wedding.

This was going to take patience. We could do patience; that has always been kind of our thing.

We prepared our hide and carefully broke the area at the front of the villa into sectors.

Dozens of cars arrived before William's phone went live.

He pulled his shemagh up to cover his head and most of the spotting scope while looking at the smartphone.

"It's a full color live feed of the villa. Maybe from a predator drone."

I rolled into position careful not to disrupt our camouflage. "Ready."

"Waiting."

A convoy of limousines arrived and began to unload, and William began. "They have pipped the target. Shooter, by eye, go to sector three."

"Contact"

"Go to left colonnade."

"Contact."

"From left colonnade go the three o'clock, approximately nine mils"

"Contact."

"Go to glass."

I began to pick my way through the mass of people at the cars. "I have target in white coat..." He could only see the tops of heads and colors of clothing through the feed.

"Negative. That is not your target."

"I have a target in a black tuxedo..."

"Negative. That is not your target."

He'd just eliminated most of the remaining possible. Disbelievingly, I continued. "I have a target in a blue sari and matching headscarf."

"That is your target. Hold fire. Identification confirmed."

"Actively tracking target."

She'd probably been beautiful beyond words three decades ago and she was still remarkably handsome in her early 70s. I watched her turn and walk into the villa courtyard, mixing graciously and elegantly with other guests. They treated her as if she was royalty.

Her face showed a strength of character, but then she would have to have that to gain real power in the patriarchal system here. There were no signs of evil in her, but there so rarely are. Unlike comic books, evil in real life rarely shows on the surface. Pol Pot looked like a cheerful farmer, Himmler like an accountant.

Nationalism, religious beliefs. Whatever her reasons for doing whatever she was doing were immaterial. Still, whatever it was, I doubted it was in any way for selfish reasons. She wasn't that weak.

The Nikah continued and I could make out the pain in the bride's face as the Imam did the usual rant about a "woman's place." My target looked more amused than put out by it, though. She did wince a couple times at what I assumed were the usual not-very-funny jokes that get made at weddings regardless of culture and religion.

As the ceremony finally wound down, William shifted back to position. "Are you on target?"

"Contact."

He sighed. "I hope they don't screw this up."

"It's Pakistan, William. You made the right call. It'll happen."

"I really don't want to have to E&E out of this mess."

A couple minutes later, a crowd began to assemble outside, all young men. I smiled to myself. "It's happening."

"Do you have the target?"

"Contact."

"Check parallax and mil."

".94"

"Check level. Holdover 3.5."

"Ready."

We waited. Then one after another, the men began pulling guns of various types out. I studied my target as she watched the men almost disdainfully. This kind of thing was beneath her. She hadn't even bothered to leave her chair in the courtyard.

Somebody shouted something, most likely "Allahu Akbar," though we certainly couldn't hear it from our distance, then the celebratory gunfire erupted into the sky. My target shook her head at the crass behavior.

"Left. Point 1.2." Wind call.

Unheard in the chaos of the gunfire outside the villa, the Dragunov fired once, and I watched our target slump in her seat.

"Center hit."

We quietly packed up, breaking down the Dragonuv and heading back to the highway ignoring the wailing and fury from the villa. They wouldn't look for us, there was no reason to, no reason to even think to look. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people die every year in Pakistan because of weddings, soccer games, New Year celebrations, and other holidays from celebratory gunfire. Even if they looked, the round was a typical Russian bullet and it'd draw little or no comment from anyone.

The exfil was unremarkable, requiring only an extra few dollars to the border guard to ease our passage back to Afghanistan.

William headed out, but I lingered for a week.

***

I watched her walk down the line of vehicles, eyeing each one critically, calling up to drivers and gunners, making sure all systems were green before they rolled out. She had her helmet tacked to her gear and had an M249 Para slung behind her. She moved like the weapon was part of her. She'd filled out, probably adding fifteen pounds of muscle since I'd seen her in the valley, and she walked with the almost lazy confidence of a true apex predator, hiding a wary vigilance. Her skin was burnished bronze and smooth, no trace of acne left. Her hair was pulled back neatly, burnt almost blonde by the sun. She had the shemagh loosely around her neck, pulled down so she could talk easier.

I waved to her. "Hey, Jinxy. How's it going?"

She grinned and strode over, eyeing me. "Hollywood! Damn, where the hell you been?"

"Out and about. Looking for trouble."

"You find any?" Her voice was just one taunting note away from a song.

"Not as much as I'd thought."

"Too bad. That's the fun part." She waved back at the line of vehicles. "We're taking some Fobbits down to Gardez." She glanced back at the vehicles in the center of the line then looked back at me and rolled her eyes. "They don't get it, they're all afraid to leave the wire. They just want to hide and hunker down in their fucking holes. Why the hell even come over here?"

"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, Jinxy." I waved at her weapon. "Where'd you get the piglet?"

She reached back and touched the light machine gun as if it were a holy icon. "Sergeant Major got her for me. She's a bitch to maintain, she hates the sand, and she'll rust in a heartbeat but she's a helluva lot lighter than a 240 Bravo." She shrugged. "I need something, I can't hit shit with a rifle. I'm a lot better at spray and pray."

I strongly suspected that anyone in her sights was probably the one who should be praying. I glanced at her uniform. "So it's 'Corporal Jinxy' now, huh?"

Her cat-like smile widened and she quirked her eyebrows up. "Crazy, isn't it? The Battalion even got me a waiver for time in service. No idea what the hell they were thinking."

"No accounting for crazy is there?"

"Nope." She looked back over the convoy. "I'd better get back to making sure these idiots know how to turn on their radios and know where the bang switches on their weapons are." She gave an exasperated sigh. Underneath it all, I could sense the stars outside the wire calling to her.

"You watch over them, Jinxy."

"That's what people like us do, isn't it?" She strode off, shaking her head and calling out a gunner. "Name tape defilade, dammit..."

I watched her with pride and I wasn't alone. The Sergeant Major came up on my left.

"She's got a Bronze Star with V device coming for that goat-fuck in the valley."

"She earned it. And more."

"I know. The valley isn't the only thing she's pulled off. She loves this, it's what she was born for. She can smell trouble and always heads right for it. She leads the sweeps on buildings, caves, anything that looks dangerous. The guys think she's the second coming of Joan of Arc. I'm not sure she isn't."

"There aren't many like her, are there?"

He shook his head slowly. "Christ. You know I almost pulled her off that convoy. Everybody was bitching that she couldn't do anything right." He grimaced, thinking about what the consequences of that would have been.

"You didn't know, nobody could."

"You did. I heard about it from her squad." He stared at the ground. "You know some Colonel named Duquesne?"

Goddammit. William must have called them. "Yeah, we've met."

"He wants to talk to her when we get back."

"He'll take her. She needs more rank and she's too damn young, but better she goes there than someone tries to force her to make French fries again."

He chuckled. "I get the feeling that'd be a really bad idea."

I watched her for a moment as she pulled herself one handed up onto a vehicle to explain to the gunner how to lower his seat further. William was right to make the call; I'd add my own to it as soon as I could. "Duquesne can give her a real home."

***

Dallas, Texas

The call to Colonel Duquesne was the easier of the two phone calls I made when I got back to my home. With my endorsement following William's, Jinxy's path would be forever changed, but for her that was the right thing to do. Duquesne still couldn't take women in as operators, but everybody needs commo, and he could cross train her on heavy weapons. She had to have a place where she could be what she truly was.

The second phone call was much harder, but it was successful, and it resulted in me knocking on the door of a nice split-level house outside Dallas a few days later.

The man that opened the door eyed me critically for a few seconds. "You must be Tony. I'm John. Come on in. Kathy will be down in a minute. We'll sit out on the back deck."

When she came out of the house, the resemblance to her sister was obvious. She looked me over warily. "So. What are you doing here?"

"Trying not to come off as too stalker-creepy."

"I think it's a bit late for that, but I'll give you a little leeway." Kathy frowned.

Her husband laughed. "Kathy has tried to set Anne up with guys for the last year, with no success at all."

Kathy gave him a warning glare, but he just smiled at her. Kathy looked back over at me. "The only thing she's done since Bob died is take care of Makenzie. I was trying to help."

"It was disaster after disaster." Her husband was trying not to laugh. "She must have had six different guys come over to Sunday dinners to meet Anne. She barely talked to any of them."

Kathy narrowed her eyes at him. "They were nice guys."

"I'm guessing she wasn't interested in a nice guy." His efforts to not laugh were starting to fail.

"That was obvious from the picture." Kathy shifted her glare to me.

I raised my hands. "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

"Here." Kathy cut me off firmly and pulled her phone out, flipping through pictures. She held it up to me.

It was Anne and I on my Harley at the parking lot of her hotel. She was wearing my shirt, unbuttoned a button or two more than her sister might have been comfortable with, especially since her braless condition was obvious. We were both leaning in for that last kiss, smiling. It was actually a great picture.

"One of Anne's squad is a police photographer in her normal job and had her camera with her. Jennifer Frost sent me the picture. So did Carmichael and Garcia."

I looked at it for a second. "It wasn't exactly staged, but Anne did kind of want to put a show on for her squad."

"She's putting on a show, alright. One more button and she could get arrested."

"Exhibitionism is apparently genetic, Hot Tub Girl." John leered playfully at her. There was definitely a story there, but I wasn't going to ask.

Kathy's glare turned up to inferno, but before she could say a word, another voice cut in. A much younger female voice.

"So you're Mom's booty call?"

I turned and found myself looking at an early teen clone of Anne. Mackenzie. She looked dead serious.

"I prefer 'hook-up,' it's a little more accurate. 'Booty call' would imply we already knew each other." Out of the corner my eye I could see Kathy turn a fascinating shade of angry red, but John put his hand on her arm.