Behind Blue Eyes

We outlined Emma's situation and the tactical situation as best we could. We very carefully didn't explain just how I'd gotten involved.

I'm pretty sure Katie noticed, but I think the sheer amount of money Evie had dropped into her bank account went a long way toward stilling her.

"How do we reach you if anything happens?"

"I can't intercede, so it's information only. Use PGP, it will beat most non-government hacks. Pass it to Wendy and Pogo for the next month. Then just Pogo"

Kurt just gave a nod, Katie looked a little perplexed. "Wendy? As in The Wendy?"

"She's a travel agent now. Met an Aussie pilot we used out of Asia and decided that the Army wasn't for her anymore. They set up in the discrete travel business."

Katie knew what that meant. The wives learn, no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

"Seriously? All of us wives worried about her being around our guys, but she was so icy toward them we'd about decided she must be gay."

I looked at her. "Katie, I know your opinion of me, I always did. But I made it clear as hell to Wendy and the guys that none of that shit was happening in my unit. Ever."

She glanced over at Kurt. "I never heard that."

"Would you have believed him? Or me?"

She shook her head. "Probably not."

The conversation wound down after that.

As we stood up to leave, Katie smiled slightly at Evie. "The money is good, but don't think I don't know we should have red star by our name in that book too. Those first couple of years after we started the company, we were barely getting by. Somebody..." she paused, glancing in my direction "somebody recommended us for a bunch of small, short duration, high profit contracts that we could handle. Legal ones that required discretion, some protection, some training. That gave us the chance to really make a go of it and be something."

Kurt gave me a slightly guilty look. I didn't blame him though. Katie had to have known something was up, and sooner or later, she'd have figured it out it had to be me.

As we drifted outside, I noticed Katie eyeing the camper with a disbelieving, amused grin and giggling something to her husband.

They looked happy together.

Let them.

Just because I had no "happily ever after" didn't mean they couldn't live theirs.

***

We arrived at the Grand Canyon almost three weeks later. We'd wandered some, but the Canyon was an inevitability. It was a risk, what people in my business avoid - she'd been so dedicated to making sure we stopped at the canyon, I had to consider the possibility that she'd preplanned a meeting or check in of some kind. If so, she still didn't have anything useful to pass anyone. Kurt and Katie were legitimate if the FBI became interested, and heavily armed if it turned out to be anyone less official. If there was some plan in place, it was simply better to trigger it now.

We arrived just before sunset on Christmas Eve. We just stood on the rim alone, in the near silence, with just the sound of the cold breeze, watching the sky turn unreal colors.

I felt her hand reach over and hesitantly creep into mine.

"You won't need the revolver. Or the .45. There's nobody here. I just wanted to see it."

Softly, wistfully.

I didn't say anything. To be honest, I'd lost myself in the colors, in the darkening sky overhead.

She edged just a little closer. Maybe seeking some shelter from the wind.

Maybe.

I let go of her hand and put my arm around her to shield her from the wind.

Maybe.

She slid her arm around my waist to settle closer into the warmth and we watched until the hard-bright stars swarmed the western sky.

That night, in the gentle flickering light of our little tree, instead of facing away from me, she faced toward me.

"I'm tired of being lonely."

Affirmation. A desperate need for a human touch. Maybe even Stockholm Syndrome; although for which of us was unsure now.

There was certainly a sense of urgency, a sense of hunger and need to it.

But it was smooth, no fumbling, no clumsiness. Two people who'd grown to know each other, probably more than anyone had really known either of us in decades.

The next morning, instead of quietly moving apart, we just lay there. She was snuggled into my side with one leg wrapped through mine and her hand splayed on my chest while I ran fingers through her hair.

She sighed, almost soundless. "I may just stay like this all morning."

"I'm okay with that. Besides, it's cold and our clothes are somewhere on the floor."

I could feel her smile. Then felt it go away.

"Ken, I know this is... limited. And I'm about to ask for a lot. But can we just be an 'us' until we get... wherever we're going?"

"Just 'K and Libby' wandering around the country? Holding hands?"

"And chasing each other around the bed. Getting up late. Sitting next to each other and sharing dessert at restaurants."

"One bowl of ice cream, two spoons."

"I've never had that. This is already more real than my marriage."

It was a little unsettling. These were things I'd done with Tricia, but it didn't feel wrong, not really.

Just odd. The idea of turning her down seemed like it would be cruel for no end. And maybe I wanted it too.

I mussed her hair. A long-unused reflex made me kiss the top of her head.

"We can do that."

She trembled against me for a long moment - At first I thought she was cold, but I felt tears as she struggled not to cry out loud.

I really didn't have any idea what to do or how to act. It'd been so long. I just held her and said nothing.

It must have been the right thing. She eventually looked up at me with a weak smile and too-shiny red-rimmed eyes, sniffling a little.

"I'm sorry. I'm just being... I don't know. Stupid."

"No. Not stupid. We're away from everything. All the things you've been protecting, everything you've been watching over. It's all being watched by someone else now. You don't have to be tough for anyone right now."

She lowered her head back down and let out a long slow breath.

We just rested like that for hours.

Somewhere along the way, Evie had managed to purchase a couple bottles of wine and slip them into the camper.

We pretty much spent Christmas Day in bed. Mostly just being together.

***

The next weeks were the best I'd had in a very long time. We wandered almost randomly, stopping at odd little tourist attractions.

We toured endless wineries.

In some ways it was the same thing we'd been doing before Christmas.

But instead of pretending to be a couple, we just were one. We held hands all the time, teased each other. We also shared every dessert. One dish, two spoons.

Reality only intruded when we stopped in various places to coordinate with Wendy. Our pajamas ended up stuck in a drawer for the duration.

Eventually, though, our vacation had to end.

So on a desert back road in southern California overlooking a heat-lashed desert with odd patches of heavily watered farm field, we met my travel agent.

Two SUVs, seven men and one woman - Wendy.

I pulled off the road and parked.

Four of the men split off and began to advance toward the camper, submachine guns appearing from under jackets.

They looked like Vityaz-SNs, efficient little Russian pieces. I wasn't sure of the variant though.

Evie watched through them warily through the window.

"So what do we do now?"

I unloaded both hand guns and put them on the little table under the little Christmas tree; I was pretty certain nobody could compromise Wendy, but if they had, a couple of handguns wouldn't make a difference.

"We move very slowly."

We stepped out the door - hands slightly raised. Two of the men slipped past us into the camper, while two covered us. The rest watched outward.

We just stood patiently until they'd cleared the camper.

From the way the SUVs sat, they were heavily armored. Beefing up the suspension can only hide so much.

Wendy caught a signal from her men and waved us forward.

Evie reached out and took my hand as we crunched forward on the dusty road.

Wendy gave a lupine, off-kilter smile as we reached her.

"I don't normally do family vacations, Colonel. But for you we'll make it work."

I glanced at the Land Cruisers.

"Japanese SUVs, Russian guns? Nobody buys American these days."

"The guns are so heavily modded, they're probably half made in America. And I got the cruisers cheap from some of our old playmates in Iraq. The American government bought them in the first place. Shipping would normally kill you, but we were bringing back empty planes anyway."

I looked back at her security team.

"Wendy, what gives? This isn't discrete. Half a team, up-armor cars and your security is focused out."

The smile fell off her face.

"Somebody tried to knock off one of your principals. Didn't go well. Kurt sent me a package."

Evie's eyes shot open. "who..."

"The husband. I don't know much. Kurt said everyone is okay. There's another note from him to the Colonel here.

She handed me a sealed package as we loaded into one of the SUVs - it looked secure but I assumed Wendy had read it.

It's what I'd have done in her place. Business is business.

Evie was barely containing her rage; hands white with tension, nails biting into her own palms.

"That bastard. We've only been out of touch for three months."

I sorted through the package. Summary reports from Kurt. And an anonymous report just signed "M".

"M". Very James Bond. Obviously Maria.

"They tried to make it look like a road rage incident. Force him off the road with an SUV and use handguns. Big mistake."

Evie gave a grim smile "He was in his pickup truck?"

"Somebody paid big money for that." Her smile broadened further. I was almost sure I could see fangs. "Kurt says level IV plus armor. And all that extra weight made it a lot harder to push off the road than they thought."

"So what happened?"

"Kurt had a team in a car trailing him, but they didn't even have to engage. When they tried to force him, he ignored the shots and just bumped them head-on into an overpass support. No survivors, but Maria's people traced some of the money to a subsidiary of Reinhardt IG."

Emma's husband was with CUMULOUS GREEN; the Army part of the CUMULOUS program. Not real door kickers like mine, but they had a reputation as well-trained hard cases. They were also known for being utterly pragmatic. To use the old phrase, they believed scruples were money used in Russia, and morals were paintings on walls.

Wendy was trying to conceal a smirk. She obviously knew who Maria was.

She just couldn't contain herself. "Jesus what a mess. When we're on the same side as the Feebees, it's probably the apocalypse."

She tried to say it laconically, but couldn't quite pull it off. The idea of being pulled into something crazy still excited her. Even if it was bad for business.

"Your end is just getting us to Fiji off the books. But Maria might sniff around a bit, so don't carry any pharmaceuticals or anybody on their Most Wanted list for a while."

"Most of the guys on the Most Wanted list are already out of the country, the rest don't have the price of a ticket. I keep tabs. And we haven't carried 'pharmaceuticals' for a while, other than black market Viagra. You need any of that?" She eyed Evie with a raised eyebrow. "I'll consider it included in the price of a ticket."

Evie met her stare coolly. "I don't think so. We've been doing just fine on cheap wine and mutual Stockholm Syndrome."

"You kidnapped each other?"

"It's a long story."

"Well, I'm glad you're getting along so well. You'll be sharing a shipping container for about 40 hours."

Evie looked less than pleased. "A shipping container?"

"It's a very nice one - well lit, queen size bed, has its own bathroom. The whole nine yards."

Evie shot me a look that promised a complete lack of boredom for the next forty hours.

It really was a very pleasant shipping container, and it turned out to have a small wine cooler with sixteen bottles of very respectable wine.

****

We passed under the sign that said "WELCOME TO FIJI".

Once we'd reached Fiji, we slipped from the shipping terminal to the passenger terminal to pass through customs.

The objective wasn't to avoid customs - it'd been to avoid using our own names and dodge the ubiquitous airline security cameras that could be hacked for facial recognition.

Wendy's passports worked perfectly - a testament to her "ticket man" more than an indictment of the Fijian Customs and Immigration Department. Mr. Ellis Banks and Mrs. Candace Touhy had both died less than three months earlier. Whoever Wendy's inside man - or woman - was, they'd sidetracked the death notices for a few months.

Just long enough for Evie and I to get through Fiji, and the delay in processing still be explained by ordinary bureaucracy.

Evie shouldered her backpack with a cheerful smile as we exited customs. "So, 'Ellis', where to from here?"

"We have a bus to catch -It's a four hour ride to Suva."

"A bus? Like a real vehicle?"

"Air conditioned and everything."

"Really? I figured after our shipping crate adventure, we'd be going under a truckload of produce or chickens." A wicked glint lit her eye. "Not that I'm complaining about the shipping container. Best international flight I've ever taken. Didn't get bored at all."

The express bus was exactly on time and only about half full; we shared a bench seat and she rested against me while we rode.

Evie's vengeful mood seemed to have been put on pause by our flight to Fiji, although I could still sense her cold fury at Reinhardt. She even enjoyed the brief stop at Sigatoka market, buying a giant shopping basket of fresh fruit, then grabbing a big greasy paper bag of samosas.

She'd been to Fiji before, but she'd spent her time at private reports rather than touring the coast by bus, and she watched the small villages and coastline glide by with fascination, while crunching a samosa and handing one to me.

"Love these things. Kind of surprised to find them here."

I took the offering. "They make good ones out here. Indian workers came over to work sugar cane brought some of their culture with them."

"I must have missed that in History class."

I paused for second. "Not to be indelicate, but I doubt your schools were particularly interested in the history of indentured servants."

She gave me a slight scowl and edged away to the far side of our seat, but didn't say anything for a second. Then, "I'm not completely indifferent to other people, Ken."

Her voice was stiff but fragile.

I felt like an ass. She'd been trying hard - really trying and mostly succeeding, at being normal.

"I know you aren't. I'm not blaming you Evie; and to be perfectly fair, the public school system doesn't exactly dwell on it either."

We crunched our way through the rest of the samosas in silence. The seller had shorted her three, but we were full anyway.

By the time we got to our destination in Suva, she'd melted back against me. Slowly, as if weak gravity was pulling her.

Once we 'd collected our backpacks and giant basket of fruit, I started guiding her toward the harbor - it was a bit of a walk, but I'd rather walk than have a cab driver remember me. The early afternoon sun was casting shadows that seemed to be just a bit out of rhythm with us.

We'd only gotten few hundred feet when a soft voice drifted up from behind us. Female, but ragged, the voice of someone who had seen too much of the wreckage of an uncaring world. The kind of damage that leaves a mark forever, no matter what happens later.

"You're clear."

It was so oddly soft that Evie didn't even react at first. I reached over and took her hand before she could. "Eyes front and keep walking Evie." I carefully kept my voice even. "How long have you been on us?"

"Since you got through customs. And thanks for the samosas, I was starving."

Damn. Pogo was right. Spooky was unbelievably good.

Evie didn't look back "So are you our guardian angel?"

A soft, humorless laugh. "Howard doesn't know many angels, Princess. Only one that I know of. And I'm not her."

She'd put a bit of mocking growl into it when she said 'Princess'. Spooky's opinion of wealthy people falls somewhere between "first with their back against the wall when the revolution comes" and "emergency food supply". She'd spent most of her life in foster care even before her "white trailer trash drug addict parents had done the world a favor and burned themselves up". Her words, not mine.

Like I said, some things leave a mark.

Evie decided not to respond, perhaps realizing that stealing snacks almost literally out of her hand could easily be upgraded to something bladed.

A wise decision - Spooky had spent 14 years working for the darker side of the CUMULOUS program - RED. They recruited the debris - prostitutes, thugs, bookies, drug addicts. The unloved, the unwanted; disposable people doing the unpleasant things that everyone else shied away from. Honey Traps, Badger Games and much, much, worse.

Spooky had not only survived, she'd thrived.

"Where to, Spooky?"

"Royal Suva Yacht Club, Grease has the Sea Angel docked there."

The corner of Evie's mouth quirked up a hair. "Needles? Spooky? Grease? Don't any of your friends have real names?"

Before I could respond, Spooky cut in, her hissing voice edged in ice and razors. "Spooky is my real name, Princess."

That much was certainly true - I'd signed as witness on her marriage license. "Spooky No Last Name" had become "Spooky Godek". Spooky was the name Pogo had given her, and as far as she was concerned it was the only real one she had. The only one that mattered. Nobody in the Administration of the islands really gave a damn what her name was as long as the license fee was paid. She certainly had a number of passports under other names.

But none of them could ever be as real to her as "Spooky".

I knew how important it was to her - I'd given her away at the wedding, and been something of a surrogate father for her for the last couple years.

Evie started to bristle, so I decided to cut this off before it became a problem. "Evie, its tradition in my world. And tradition out where we're going because it used to be a smuggling port. Besides, it's safer. Can you imagine how useless most of what you've learned really is?"

She walked quietly for a moment, gripping my hand tightly. "I suppose all anyone could really prove is that I paid a small security firm to watch over my grandchildren."

"Exactly."

We walked on in silence for a while until Spooky slid up beside Evie. "Just head over to the fifth slip, Grease is there. Nobody will be watching the boat."

Evie looked pensively in the direction of the slip, probably sensing that we didn't have any room to maneuver if something went wrong now. "How do you know?"

Spooky nodded in the direction of an open air shop. Nearly everyone was staring at it. "Angel and Danni are shopping. In bikinis."

That would do it.

Spooky drifted away as we boarded the boat quietly and slipped below to the salon with a quiet nod to Grease, who barely acknowledged us. He was checking something inside an access panel with a flashlight and a look of intense concentration.

We slid onto a couch next to each other. Evie looked around. "A Viking?"

"I'm no expert on these, but I think Grease said she's a 68."

She touched the teak paneling lightly "Very nice."

"It's a charter fishing boat, for the high end crowd. Not quite your people, but they aspire to be."

She seemed about to say something, but a slender, very pretty, dark haired woman in a forest-green-and-plumeria-flower pattern bikini stepped in. She'd just had a baby a year ago, but like her father, she exercised relentlessly, giving her the lean build of a distance runner.