Jack Coughlin - Kill Zone

“ Kyle! My God, man!” Sir Jeff screamed in anguish. “ You broke a bloody two-thousand-dollar bottle of cognac!” He gathered the two remaining bottles, looking at Swanson with horror in his eyes.

“Sorry,” Kyle said. The whole thing had taken about ten seconds.

Tim walked to the stunned guests. Lady Pat and Shari were already standing and stepping over the bleeding debris on the stone slabs. “I think we had all best be leaving now,” said Gladden. “We will finish lunch aboard the Vagabond , all right?” He escorted them to the waiting small boat.

The owner of the taverna was standing in his doorway like a statue, with fresh bowls of salad in each hand. Kyle took one, gave him more than enough money to cover the damage, and walked away. The big guy, number one, stirred and looked up with his bloodied face as if he was determined to rise. Since the man was no longer a threat, Kyle felt there was no need for a lethal blow and settled for kicking him in the sternum to take away his air. The large man passed out, gasping for breath. Kyle thought the goat cheese was delicious. He wished he had not had to eat it with his fingers.

One of the Desperate Housewives looked back over her shoulder as she walked down the pier, her blue eyes wide in shock. She could not believe what she had just seen. “How did he do that? He was like a crazy man,” she asked Shari.

“It’s the way he is trained,” Shari replied. “He doesn’t think, just reacts on instinct. Believe me, those guys got off easy.”

“Do you mean he might have killed someone? There were four of them. Wasn’t he afraid?”

“This is what he does,” she said, stepping into the runabout. As she took a seat, she gave a tight smile to the woman, who lived in pretty places far from the dirt of the real world. “Kyle is not afraid of anyone… but me.”

Late that night, the Vagabond cruised through the narrow Strait of Messina. Since the dawn of written history, those waters had gobbled up ships, with the deadly whirlpool Charybdis at the edge of Sicily forcing captains to sail close to the very toe of the Italian boot, where the mythological monster Scylla prowled the rocks. Now the electronic eyes of radar and satellite navigation systems defeated the dangers of superstition.

Shari leaned against Kyle’s chest as they stood at the port rail, and he buried his nose in her silky hair. It carried the gentle scent of an English flower garden. He wrapped his arms around her and she covered his hands with hers as they watched the boiling bowl of the distant volcano, Stromboli, erupt in flashes of bright orange, with red flame illuminating the underside of passing clouds.

“I love this,” she said. “My favorite guy, a luxury yacht, a beautiful night, and an exploding volcano. What could be better?”

He squeezed gently and she turned her head enough to give him a kiss. They were alone on the deck at two o’clock in the morning and the churning fire on the distant island made it seem that they might be the only people left at the end of the world. “Being able to stay out here with you a while longer would be better.”

“Did Jeff offer you a job again?”

“Yup. Says we ought to get married and make a lot of money and beget him and Pat some godchildren they can spoil rotten.”

“Sounds like a plan. You turn him down again?”

“I told him it was all your fault, because you make that white uniform with all the gold stripes look so good and you like people to salute you.”

She sighed. “I make anything look good. Really, does he understand that we’re just not quite there yet?”

“He understands. Both he and Tim put the full-court press on me tonight and threw in the promise of a share of Excalibur sales.”

Shari turned in his arms, and the glow of the volcano reflecting off the water seemed like a halo around her. “Maybe we should reconsider, Kyle. I’ve had the strangest feeling that something bad is going to happen. And that I won’t see you again.”

Sixth sense, witchery, hunches, woman’s intuition, or whatever, she had it in spades. Her ability to not only connect the dots, but the spaces between the dots, was what made her such a great intelligence analyst. Shari’s brain dwelled in a place where one and one did not necessary always equal two, and Kyle always paid attention when she got one of her feelings. This time, he downplayed it. “Fat chance. I’m like a boomerang. I always come back to you.”

“Yes. But after that last mission, the cross-border incident, you caught a lot of flack and they tried to make you the scapegoat. A lot of people would just like for you to go away, Kyle. Who know what they may hand you next time? Maybe something where you’re not supposed to come back.”

“Never gonna happen, Shari. I know how to play their game too well.”

She kissed him, pulled away, and looked around. The deck was empty. “Then maybe I should give you even more reason to come home.” She slipped the straps of her black dress from her shoulders. “So look at me, I’m Sandra Dee!”

“Who the hell is Sandra Dee?”

“You know. Gidget ?”

“What’s a Gidget ?”

“Shut up before you ruin the moment,” she said, and slid the loose folds of her dress down to her waist. Her breasts gleamed gold in the volcano firelight. Kyle brought her close and lowered his lips to her nipples. Shari moaned softly, and he ran his hands over her soft skin. Then her hand moved along his leg.

“Unless you want to be screwed right here on this expensive teakwood deck, young lady, I suggest we retire in great haste to our suite,” he whispered. Kyle saw a familiar impish look come into those dark eyes.

“In a minute, Marine. In a minute.” Shari pushed him against the chill steel of the bulkhead and dropped to her knees, reaching for his zipper while Stromboli painted the night. In a few moments, Kyle thought that the volcano was not the only thing erupting that night. When he finished panting, they rushed off to wrestle between white silk sheets.

There was a loud pounding on the door, and Kyle heard Tim Gladden calling loudly from the passageway. “Kyle! Shari! Geoffrey wants you in the main cabin right away to see this incredible news report on television! A Marine general has been kidnapped!”

UNITED STATES SENATOR RUTHHazel Reed of California-called Ruth Hazel by her friends and Rambo by her enemies-would replace her very dear colleague, the late Senator Graham Thomas Miller of Kentucky, as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was an attractive woman with blond-going-gray hair that was as stylish as her tailored wardrobe. The slender body was kept under strict control through rigorous exercise three times a week and a delicious diet provided by her private chef.

“Congratulations, Madame Chairwoman,” said National Security Advisor Gerald Buchanan, lifting a glass of seventy-five-year-old scotch in a toast. They were standing before a warm fireplace at the mansion of Gordon Gates, deep in the fox country outside Culpeper, Virginia. The huge room had thick wooden ceiling beams. Old furniture, old staircases, old books, old money. Lots of it.

“A bit premature, Gerald, but thank you.” She clicked her glass against his. “The Senate president will make his decision in a few days.”

“Oh, that’s just a technicality. I’ve already told him that the White House will be pleased to work with you.” Buchanan had reviewed her file again before coming out here tonight for the meeting. So much depended on this woman! Was she really up to it?

She had graduated from Stanford and married a helicopter pilot who was killed in Vietnam. Ruth Hazel buried her grief along with her pilot, obtained her real estate license, and opened an agency in Del Mar just as the sunny coast of San Diego County became the hottest housing market in the nation. She made a fortune before turning her boundless ambition and energy to politics. A single term on the Del Mar City Council led to a big leap into the House of Representatives for two terms. Reed had been in the Senate for the past eleven years.