Unconventional Beginnings

by KaLyn Cooper

  “Kat,” he said in a warm seductive voice, “when you get back to D.C., I need some time alone with you. We need to talk about us.”

  “Jack,” she said firmly as she tamped down her anger, “you are never to call me Kat. Do you understand? No one calls me by that nickname.” Well, no one these days. “You may address me as Ms. Callahan, Katlin, or my code name, Lady Hawk. That’s it. And there is no us, so there’s nothing to talk about. You’re my boss, which makes it inappropriate for us to be having this conversation.”

  “You were my wife—”

  “Pretend wife,” she interrupted, “during an operation.” An undercover op she’d regret the rest of her life.

  “Yes, during an op, but you felt the connection we made. We’re good together.” His voice became tender. “I understand you and what you need. We belong together.”

  No. None of that was true for her. “Well, obviously, if my acting abilities were good enough to fool you, it’s no wonder the bad guys fell for it.” She trailed her teammates around the next corner and down a mobbed street filled with cart-pushing vendors who called out to anyone passing their makeshift store.

  “Skip Miami and come home to D.C. so we can talk about this,” he asked, somewhere between a command and a plea.

  No fucking way.

  The last time they’d been alone together, he’d almost…No.

  She didn’t have time to think about that dreadful evening.

  Then a flash ran through her analytical brain. Was this a test? Was some Section 7 shrink listening in on this conversation, trying to determine if she could handle the personal pressure added onto the professional shit she was trying to accomplish? That would be just like them.

  Concentrate on getting the hell out of here.

  As the women broke though the crowded marketplace, Katlin scolded, “Jack, this is neither the time nor place to have this discussion.” That was professional, in case someone else was listening. “We’re still in a hostile situation and a mile from a safe base.” She took a deep breath and told Jack honestly, “Besides, it’s a family thing I have to do in Miami, and I’m looking forward to it.” She wasn’t going to explain that it was her goddaughter’s birthday and she’d missed too much of the little girl’s life already. He could use that personal information against her someday, and knowing him, he would.

  Lady Harrier grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard.

  What the hell? Women holding hands in this country was not unusual, actually, it was a highly acceptable practice, but her teammate holding her hand…in public…never.

  In an Iraqi dialect of Arabic, Lady Kite started talking loudly about babies and giving birth, as though she’d pushed out a few. Then Katlin saw the two local policemen moving closer to them. Machine-guns crossed their bodies, one hand rested on the grip, index finger extended down the action, only millimeters from the trigger. The men had taken a great deal of interest in her team.

  “Trouble. Lady Hawk out.” She disconnected the signal as much to end their on-going personal battle as to discontinue the current conversation.

  In the local language, Katlin added to the conversation. “Oh, when I had Bizhan, he was such a big baby. I was in labor for hours.” Saying those words hurt to her very soul because she would never know what it felt like to carry a child within her body.

  She kept her gaze cast downward, not only because eye contact with men was forbidden but she was afraid they might catch a glimmer of her blue eyes through the veil. The brown contacts had irritated in the desert dust so she’d removed them hours ago. That might have been a bad decision since the streets were filled with men and women hurrying to reach home before sunset.

  As they passed the uniformed officers, she watched the younger one scan her body as though he could see through her abaya. He couldn’t, but she slid her gloved hand into the side slit and rested it on her holstered Smith and Wesson Shield. She glanced around, planning an exit strategy in case they were stopped.

  “As your midwife, your delivery wasn’t bad,” Lady Harrier, the team medic, extolled, “but there was a lot more anionic fluid and blood than we expected. You really should have emptied your bowels when you first started your contractions. Feces is common during delivery, but you had more than normal.”

  Katlin watched the two men turn away with pinched faces. It took every ounce of waning strength she had to withhold the burst of laughter that tried to escape. Damn, she loved these women. Leave it to Lady Harrier to play on a man’s aversion to the maladies of womanhood.

  The five women slipped easily through the darkening streets to the U.S. Marine Corps camp. As they approached the outer guard post, Katlin spoke loudly in English when the young Marine brought an M4 rifle to his shoulder.

  “Captain Calloway and team returning,” she announced using her cover name for this op. She lowered her niqab so he could see her white face as she dug handfuls of hair from under the abaya and flipped thick golden strands over the traditional Iraqi outer dress. Her teammates followed her lead, exposing their faces and hair, an act local women would never dare. They would be killed for it.

  “Ma’am, may I see some ID, please?” He then spoke quietly into his communication system.

  “Certainly”—she looked to his rank then embroidered name over his pocket as she held her hands out where he could see them—“Lance Corporal Framer. I’m going to reach into my pocket and get it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She produced the ID created for that mission and held it out to him as he was joined by another Marine, whose gun also pointed at the women. She was fine with this. It was standard operating procedure for this war-torn area, one of the few Muslim countries that understood women could be as deadly as men, a hard-learned lesson for American troops.

  Two up-armored Hummers with remote weapon systems perched atop roared to the gate. Four Marines in full battle dress jumped out and took up defensive positions while a lieutenant colonel strode to the guards.

  “Quickly, inside ladies.” He jerked a thumb toward the vehicles. “And get out of those things.” He didn’t have to say it twice. All five women hurriedly flipped the black mantles over their heads and wrapped them into a ball. She knew her team had looked fat and moved awkwardly, but the packs they carried in front of their bodies made it difficult to maneuver with any amount of grace. The disguise had worked flawlessly.

  The men’s eyes widened as the women shrugged the packs off their chests. Desert camouflaged uniforms now revealed the curves of every member of her team. The women shook off the weight of all they’d carried for days.

  She rubbed her scalp with glee, lifting her heavy hair, allowing the slight breeze to cool her sweat-dampened head. Not for the first time, she considered getting her hair cut short, the way she’d worn it while in the Navy before being selected for the top-secret test group. She quickly rejected the idea. She spent weeks at a time Stateside and loved her long hair that fell below her bra strap in the back.

  The mid-forties man before her took a deep breath before he spoke. Katlin knew the effect her team had on men, especially those who hadn’t seen a woman this close in months. She checked out the nametag above his pocket then offered, “Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Rogers.” She gestured to her team, who moved in closer to her back. “We really appreciate your hospitality.”

  The senior officer nodded in acknowledgement. “Let’s get a move on. You’re on a tight schedule.” Katlin smiled inwardly at his roughened voice. A glance toward the other women confirmed that they too had noticed. Blending in on an all-male Marine base was impossible, but she was confident their cover would hold.

  The Ladies of Black Swan team had been created to stand out when necessary, or disappear in the shadows. None were movie-star beautiful, or truly ugly. They were chameleons, thanks to the makeup tricks taught at the C.I.A. From Katlin’s blonde hair and blue eyes, to Tori’s chocolate brown complexion and nearly-black eyes, at least one of them had the physical attributes to
morph into whatever was needed for the mission. Each woman could get a man alone in hours…and kill him within seconds.

  But LtCol Rogers wasn’t their target. That ISIS fucker had already been eliminated. This wonderful man beside them was their host in the next stage toward home. As ordered, Katlin jumped into the Hummer. They sped through the inner checkpoint and stopped in front of the mess tent.

  “Join me for supper,” LtCol Rogers ordered as he led the way in.

  Unrelenting Love - Chapter 2

  Food. American food. Just the smell of cooked meat made Katlin’s stomach growl with anticipation. They’d eaten MREs, the military’s packaged Meals Ready to Eat, for two weeks, and the thought of real food made her mouth water.

  The murmur of deep voices fell silent when the five women stepped in. All eyes fixed on them.

  “You see nothing.” The base commander’s booming voice left no room for questions. “Carry on.”

  When her team glanced at her, Katlin nodded toward the chow line, and Lady Kite picked up a tray. If it weren’t for the desert digital uniforms, the mess hall would look like any cafeteria found in an all-boys high school, down to the young male faces.

  Long tables stretched from one end to the other. Most enlisted men ate wherever there was an open seat, but ranks seldom mixed, especially in the Marine Corps. Katlin’s team was guided to a far corner where other officers sat speaking in low tones. When the men noticed the base CO approach with five women, they all started to stand. Women were few and far between in theater and even less common on the Marine Corps forward base.

  “Seats.” Katlin and their host spoke at once. He looked at her and smiled.

  “Not my first dance.” She shrugged and set her tray on the well-used table that gleamed with cleanliness. It certainly wasn’t her first meal at a table filled with Marine officers. Her father had reached the rank of major general in the Marines before he’d died suddenly behind his Pentagon desk. It had been a horrific end to the worst year of her life.

  When Katlin sat down, she immediately bowed her head and prayed for the meal to nourish her body. She added on a prayer for her team and all the men in the tent to safely reach home. She crossed herself before she looked up. The women ignored her ritual, but the men seemed relieved as she reached for her fork.

  “I take it, Capt. Calloway, that your mission was successful? I hope you got some good Intel for us. Anything you can share?” The man, about ten years older than she, sounded hopeful as he cut a piece of mystery meat smothered in brown gravy.

  Those who needed to know anything about their mission were told that the five women had infiltrated the local community and were tasked for HUMINT, human intelligence purposes. Their real mission had been the same as always, find and eliminate a designated man. In this case, he’d been miles away from the civilities found in a modern, albeit war-ravaged, city.

  “I’m sorry, but we really didn’t learn much.” It was the truth.

  “We heard a rumor that Nassar al-Jamil was killed, but he’s way up north near Mosul.” The major’s west Texas accent was undeniable.

  Damn, word has gotten there already. It probably hit the Internet before we’d escaped down the Tigris River. Katlin shuddered as she remembered the overland trek in the back of a rickety truck in the middle of the night. She wasn’t sure if she should damn the CIA for their lowlife contacts or bless them for getting her team safely to Fallujah in the wee hours of the morning.

  “He has ties to this area. Did you hear anything about it?” The handsome captain beside him sipped coffee and bit off chunks of a thin cake. “

  She walked a fine line here, but Katlin wanted to reassure the men that the small villages their Marines patrolled were safe now from that murderous ISIS leader.

  “We heard about that,” she admitted then hid her satisfied smile behind a long drink of water.

  Her teammates remained silent as they devoured the hot meal, concealing their own gratification for a job well done. They were all tired and hungry. This hot meal took care of half the problem. They’d sleep before they flew seven thousand miles to the U.S.A, hiding within the night sky over the Atlantic Ocean. They were headed home, unlike most of the young men in the canvas tent.

  “I’m sure the women were talking about him.” The captain glanced to each team member looking for an answer. “He’d taken a few lessons straight from the Taliban book of horrors and was trying to bring back fundamentalist views on women.”

  Actually, al-Jamil had written a few new chapters of his own, especially where it came to the role of women in the fundamentalist Muslim community. That might have been why Section 7 had targeted him. The reason didn’t matter to Katlin, although she knew how Iraqi women had fought their way back into politics and professional jobs since the war had begun over a decade before. She was proud of how fast and far the women in this country had come. With the elimination of this terrorist, hopefully they’d continue toward equality.

  For Katlin, this was her job, and she was obligated by sworn oath to follow orders and use her skills to accomplish the goals set by her superiors. Her profession was more specific than any of the Marine officers at the table, but at its core, it was the same. They all fought for the United States of America, and the friends of their country, to maintain freedom.

  Returning to the conversation, she told the anxious men, “Yes, we heard those same rumors.” They’d started a few of their own. Dis-information was as important as information. But she and her team knew it was more than wives’ tales.

  When they’d finished all the food on their plates, and even had seconds of cake, Katlin couldn’t stifle her yawn. She’d barely slept in the past week. “Sir, we need to sleep for a few hours.”

  “You can sleep with me,” the captain offered with a sultry smile. He was handsome in that Alpha Marine way, but there was no zing.

  She hadn’t felt the indefinable instant chemistry in years. The last man to charge her body with jolts of interest hadn’t been her husband, no matter how hard she’d tried. Katlin had loved Ty, but their relationship had been a cycle of his cheating and her forgiveness. It never had the constant flow of electricity. A lot of sex, yes, and it had been really good sex, especially make up sex of which there had been plenty. Their on-again, off-again relationship throughout college had allowed Katlin to date other men, and she’d experienced real zing.

  Alejandro Lobo was walking Zing with a capital Z.

  Maybe it was being on a Marine base again that brought the clear picture of her good friend in dress blues, rows of colorful ribbons filling the left side of his chest, his whiskey brown eyes with gold flecks that turned molten chocolate when he was aroused. Just the thought of him made tingles run from her heart to that special spot between her legs. Thinking about the long hours of making love with him in her college dorm made her smile.

  “You’re considering it,” the captain encouraged. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “That’s a sweet offer, but—” She started to let him down gently.

  “It would be very sweet, darling.” His smile was seductive.

  Maybe if it were some other time, and definitely some other place, she’d take him up on his offer. Who was she kidding? She’d never done a one-night stand in her life, and it’d been way too long since she’d allowed a man in her bed. Once back in the States, maybe she’d rescind her self-imposed celibacy. It was time.

  “Tempting, but we need to sleep.” She gestured to the other four women as they all rose from the table.

  As the tempting captain opened his mouth to speak again, the lieutenant colonel shot him a reproachful glance before turning his intense gaze to her. “I’ve made arrangements for your team to sleep until oh-two-hundred hours. Your plane will be fueled and ready to roll at oh-three-hundred.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Katlin was so grateful to be headed home. This mission had taken much longer than expected because Nassar al-Jamil rarely slept in the same place twice and always moved at n
ight, often into caves rather than homes.

  She and her team followed LtCol Rogers out of the testosterone-filled mess hall, and he walked them to their tent, pointing out the showers on the way. She’d get five good hours sleep before they left. Katlin could function well on that until they reached Miami, and then she’d crash for a few days.

  The other women entered the tent after thanking the senior officer. Katlin held back. “Private conversation, sir?”

  He nodded, and they walked to the end of the row of personnel tents.

  “What can I do for you, Captain Calloway?” By the look on his face, he was expecting a request that he’d have difficulty filling.

  “Sir, it’s what I can do for you.” Katlin smiled. “I can confirm that Nassar al-Jamil is dead.”

  “How the hell can you do that, Captain?” he sneered. She was accustomed to the way men doubted her abilities. Some believed women shouldn’t even be in the military. Even more doubted the sanity of those who placed women in combat, and almost all military men believed females should be never be in special operations. Her team was living proof they were all wrong.

  The Ladies of Black Swan had been part of a top-secret test program. They’d been trained exactly like Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and Marine Corps Special Operations. Once they’d successfully completed that training, they could never return to their respective services so they’d been assigned to Section 7 of Homeland Security.

  Katlin stared into the doubtful eyes of the man who’d seen years of war, heard thousands of hopeful lies, and probably thought she was a waste of good Marine Corps money that should have been spent on his men.

  “You can trust me on this fact.” She pulled a satellite phone from her side pocket and punched in a series of numbers. With a snick, the phone mechanically unfolded revealing a six inch square screen.