Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Life and Death - 7a/13

>>> Interlude Four
>>> Sicily
>>> Six years and one month ago

Now it was just the two of them. Only Lois and Carla were left.

The other female pair had been killed early in training. Two of the three male teams had died separately over the last six months, and Lois had learned not to react when Rodolfo shot a man or slit his throat or garroted him with a wire. By this time, she knew that they were being trailed to be assassins, not simply as common mercenaries, but she’d almost stopped caring. Just staying alive was all she could handle.

She’d refused to waste time wondering about Peter and Lester, the other surviving pair. One day they’d been there, the next day they hadn’t. She hadn’t seen them for almost a month, and no one had explained their fate to Lois or Carla. She’d never really liked Peter, who thought he was the ultimate lover and wished to share his alleged gifts with any female he saw. Lester’s South African dialect and manners and superior attitude had alienated both Lois and Carla very early on in the group’s training. It was one of the very few things the two women agreed on.

Lois and Carla were lounging in the rec room of the training camp in Sicily, waiting for Rodolfo to arrive with their final assignment. Despite having learned to depend on each other for their mutual survival, the two women still disliked each other. Carla, tall and powerful and self-sufficient, hated Lois’ ability to keep up with her in the physical portions of their exercises and resented the smaller woman’s quickness and speed during fight training. Carla was big and limber, and strong enough to take down most men in a face-to-face fight. Lois got similar results using guile, speed, technique, and deception, and she was repelled by Carla’s innate cruelty and obvious relish for fighting for the sake of fighting.

So, as usual, they weren’t making small talk with each other. Lois was re-reading the operations manual for her favorite rifle, the AK-74, the Kalashnikov assault rifle which used the smaller 5.45 millimeter round similar in size and performance to the .223 caliber round used in the American M-16. Carla was sitting across the room, sharpening her combat knife to a razor edge yet again. Lois liked the AK-74 because it was lighter than the original AK-47, had a longer effective range, fired with less recoil, and it could accept a 45-round magazine. Carla liked using the American .30 caliber M-14 on full automatic just because she was strong and could keep it on target – which Lois could not – and, beyond that, she didn’t need a real reason. Other than the scrape of Carla’s knife on the whetstone or paper crinkling as Lois turned a page of the manual she held, there was no sound in the room.

Suddenly Rodolfo burst in, almost laughing, followed by one of his nearly silent shadows carrying a twelve-gauge pump shotgun. “Well, my ladies, today is your graduation day! One more practice mission and you will be ready! Are you both prepared?”

Carla nodded and slowly slipped her knife into its scabbard. “We’re ready,” Lois replied.

“Good! That is very good. Now, each of you must go to your starting point and begin when you are told. For this final mission, you may either remain in town or venture out into the country. But you will be judged partly on the discretion you display. The more noise you make in town – or the more damage you do – the poorer will be your grade. And time is not of the essence. You may complete your tasks within five minutes or take a week to finish.”

“And what is this mission, Rodolfo?” grated Carla.

He grinned and pointed to both of them, one with each hand. “Each other.”

It took each woman a moment to process what he was saying. Lois almost asked him if he were joking, but Rodolfo never joked. He might laugh – usually just before he killed someone – but he never kidded them or made jokes to them.

Carla recovered first. She stood and drew her knife. “Just a moment, Rodolfo. I will not be long.”

The smaller man stepped out from behind the bulky Rodolfo and raised his shotgun. “No, my bloodthirsty Carla,” purred Rodolfo, “you may not begin yet. I have not completed my briefing.”

Despite the shotgun, Carla took a step toward Lois. “I am to kill her! What more need I know?”

“If you do not put away your knife, I will take it from you and cut both of your hamstrings with it. Then I will give the knife to Lois and she will attempt to kill you. I doubt she would have much difficulty.”

Carla stared at him for a long moment, then sheathed her knife and grunted. “Now, a few minutes, a few hours, no matter. I will kill her.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. We shall soon see. Now, there is one more thing I must tell you. Once you leave the town, assuming you do not choose to finish this here, neither of you will return until the other is dead. And I believe, Lois, that if you choose to extend mercy to Carla, she will not reciprocate.”

Lois nodded and tried to swallow. “Yeah. I kinda got that vibe from her too.”

“Good! Now that we all understand each other, you two will go to opposite ends of the main street and pick up whatever gear you think you will need. Know that the more you carry with you, the slower you will move and the sooner you will tire.”

“That is second week of class material, Rodolfo,” Carla snapped. “We know how to gear up.”

He nodded. “As you wish. Carla, you will go with Juan. He will escort you to the south end. Lois, I will escort you to the north end. Both rooms have identical equipment and weapons. You will have ten minutes to select what you wish to carry. You will exit your respective equipment rooms when I blow my whistle. If you do not exit immediately, I – or Juan – will kill you. You may not load any firearms you select until you leave the equipment room.” He smiled as if sharing a small joke. “Neither Juan nor I wishes to die prematurely.” Rodolfo waved his hands for the women to follow him. “We will go now.”

Once outside, Lois glanced over her shoulder to see Carla striding purposefully but cautiously in front of Juan, so she broke into a trot until she got to the building where she knew her defense lay. The door was, of course, locked, so she stepped back so Rodolfo could open it for her. She looked down the street to see Juan and Carla in a similar formation. Rodolfo gave a sharp blast on his whistle and unlocked Lois’ door.

She dove into the room and snapped on the light. It was a guerrilla’s dream armory, with everything from small utility knives to shoulder-fired RPGs. Below every firearm was a bin with ammunition and magazines if the weapon took them.

Lois grabbed a webbed pistol belt with a covered holster, a spare holster which she also threaded onto the belt, then a backpack and a shoulder bag. She snatched five days’ supply of emergency rations, a dozen energy bars, a plastic camelback water carrier, a bottle of water purification tablets, and a first aid kit, then jammed all but the water carrier in the shoulder bag and buckled on the pistol belt. She paused for a moment, then snatched a folded poncho and shoved it in on top of the first aid kit.

Eight minutes later, the holsters held two Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolvers, each with a six-inch barrel for better accuracy. The backpack contained two changes of underwear, a spare pair of boots, a spare jumpsuit, and two boxes of .38 Special ammunition at fifty rounds per box. They joined a two-hundred foot roll of nylon climber’s rope, a four-hundred foot roll of fishing line, a pair of survival knives, a small folded entrenching tool, and two 45-round AK-74 magazines. One hundred rounds of 5.45x39 millimeter ammo for her rifle topped it off quite well, leaving just enough room for one fragmentation grenade.

“How much time left?”

Rodolfo looked at his watch. “One minute, forty seconds.”

Lois nodded and began filling the water carrier. It would last her the rest of today and most of tomorrow, and she could purify water from any stream or well on the island when she refilled it. As soon as it was full, she strapped it onto her back, then covered it with the backpack and looped the shoulder bag to hang to her left. A third survival knife was sheathed on her left side, but close to the front where she could reach it quickly. Like Carla, Lois believed that knives were useful items and one could never have too many of them.

Unlike Carla, she didn’t use knives to kill slowly and messily.

Rodolfo smiled as she picked up her assault rifle and stood by the door. “Ready with fifteen seconds to spare,” he purred. “Very good. I only hope Carla has thought ahead as well as you have.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?” she snarled. She adjusted the rifle’s sling one more time. She’d hate to drop it now.

Rodolfo opened the door and stepped out, then lifted his whistle to his mouth. As soon as he exhaled, Lois burst out and broke for the light forest surrounding the camp. With her size and strength, Carla had the advantage at the moment, and Lois needed to put some distance between them and load her weapons before the bigger woman ran her down and cut her to pieces with that huge blade.

A quick glance over her shoulder showed Carla trotting in her wake, her M-14 looped over her shoulder by the strap and her hands busily loading a magazine. As Lois watched, Carla dropped a cartridge and ran on.

Careless and overconfident Carla. Lois hoped that was the truth. Then she’d have a better than even chance of surviving this hunt.

The last thing she heard before she put the camp behind her was Rodolfo shouting, “Good luck, Lois! I am cheering for you!”

Oh, great. That made her feel ever so much better.

*****

For the next five days, Lois and Carla played their lethal game of hide-and-seek in the woods around the town. Twice Carla caught Lois away from cover and shot at her with her M-14, once late on the first day and again on the morning of the third day. The second time, Lois was hit as a round burned across the back of her upper left thigh. The wound wasn’t serious, but finding a safe place to dress it was difficult, as was applying the bandage. She only hoped that Carla would believe her more seriously injured than she was, given the awkward fall that she’d taken, and that Carla would not be as careful as she should be.

And Lois had gotten in her licks, too. Early on the first day, Carla had been arrogant enough to walk over the crest of a small hill standing up. Lois had reminded her not to do that with a series of long-range single shots from her rifle, and Carla had appeared to catch at least one round low on one side. On the third day, as Carla had hunted for her prey, Lois had hidden in a brush pile and fired at her with one of her pistols. That was when she discovered that Carla had chosen to wear a Kevlar vest despite its weight. Three of Lois’ shots had struck Carla in the middle of her body and stunned her, but the vest had saved her life. And Lois hadn’t been able to close in quickly enough before Carla had recovered and started blasting away in Lois’ general direction, which was when she’d been hit in the leg. She’d felt lucky to slip away without any additional holes in her skin.

On the fifth day, Lois refilled her water carrier from a small stream and dropped in the necessary purification tablets. She also checked her supplies and decided that she had to be in better shape than Carla. The bigger woman had run out of .30-caliber ammo and had smashed her M-14 against a tree so Lois couldn’t use it. It also appeared that Carla hadn’t figured on a long game of hide and seek, since Lois hadn’t found any discarded meal trays since the end of the third day. According to their training, their trash should have been buried to hide their trail, so Carla’s sloppiness indicated that Carla was either still overconfident or had been hurt worse than Lois thought.

Or maybe Lois was putting more pressure on Carla than she knew.

Still, Lois was almost exhausted from the lack of sleep and the constant stress of watching for her opponent all the time. She was lucky that Carla, who moved like a ghost inside a city, wasn’t quite as good in the woods as she was. Three times she’d escaped night sneak attacks, and twice Carla had escaped hers. Lois couldn’t go on much longer.

The fishing line had been useful more than once. She’d strung it around her camp and tangled leaves and small branches in it, and when Carla’s heavy step hadn’t awakened her, the noise made by the line snagging on Carla’s boots had. And using one of her survival knives in a tension trap had alerted Lois to Carla’s sneakiest approach just before dawn on the next-to-last day. Three rounds from each of Lois’ pistols had ended that stalk.

Late that night – or early the next morning, Lois couldn’t tell – she was awakened by a snapping twig and a scrape of fishing line against a pile of leaves. She’d grabbed her revolvers and emptied them in the general direction of the sound and was rewarded with what she thought was a grunt of pain and the sound of a body falling. But going after Carla on a cloudy night was suicidal, even with Lois’ advantages in the woods. So she’d reloaded the pistols and waited for morning.

At first light, she ate her last energy bar and checked the area as best she could. All she found was a spattering of dried blood on some of the leaves around her hiding place. She’d hit Carla at least once the previous night, but the big Frenchwoman had gotten too close for safety.

It was time to end this hunt.

Lois checked her rifle and her pistols once again, drank deeply from the camelback, ate one of her remaining cold meals, and set out to find her opponent.

It didn’t take long. Despite her Kevlar vest, Carla had been hit harder than Lois had thought. The woman’s gasps of pain were audible several yards from the small depression where she was resting. Lois’ French was not as good as her German or Spanish, but she still understood Carla’s muttered imprecations. As soon as she’d finished dressing her wounds, she planned to hunt down Lois and decapitate her. Slowly and with great relish. And without killing her first.

Lois refused to allow that to happen.

Silently, she slipped out the grenade she’d been saving, pulled the pin, released the spoon, and silently counted. On “Three!” she tossed the grenade into the depression and dropped to the ground with her arms covering her head.

She heard one frantic cry – “Mon Dieu! Non!” – before the grenade exploded.

When the smoke and debris cleared, she lifted her rifle and slowly peeked over the edge of the depression. The grenade had apparently bounced or rolled or been shoved further away from Carla than she’d expected, although within ten yards of the blast it didn’t make much difference how close you were. The big Frenchwoman lay unmoving on her right side, facing away from the blast area, almost touching the near incline.

Then she took a shuddering breath. “Lois?” she whispered. “Are you – close now?”

Lois slid down the incline and stood perhaps six feet from the injured woman’s head, her rifle held at the ready. “I’m here.”

Carla tried to laugh. “It – was a good contest – was it not?”

“I’m still alive. That’s all I care about.”

Carla moved two fingers of her left hand. “Please – come closer. I would – I would see you – once more.”

Lois edged sideways so she could see Carla’s face clearly. “This is as close as I get. You still have that nasty pig-sticker.”

Carla’s right hand slid out from under her head, the big knife in her palm. She smiled and tried to chuckle but only coughed up blood. “You are – right – to be – careful. But I – I am dying now. I – I cannot – hurt you.”

Frozen fury welled up in Lois’ heart. The woman had done her very best to kill Lois for almost a week. Lois was worn out, sleep deprived, hungry, filthy, footsore, sunburned, dehydrated, running a fever, bitten all over by insects, and her bullet wound throbbed. It was probably infected. She was already hurt, and her rage boiled over.

“You can’t hurt me, huh? Mind if I make sure of that?”

Before Carla could speak, Lois lifted her rifle and squeezed off three quick shots.

Carla’s head exploded onto the scarred ground. Her legs straightened with a jerk, then went limp.

Now Lois was sure.

She inched closer and reached down to take a trophy to prove to Rodolfo that Carla was dead. Carla would have brought in Lois’ ears or nose or even her scalp, but that wasn’t Lois’ style. Carla’s knife – the knife with which she’d planned to mutilate Lois’ face and separate her head from the rest of her body, the knife she’d used to kill even before she’d been recruited, the knife she kept closer to her than any human being – would have to do.

Lois picked up the knife and stepped back. Then her knees turned to jelly and she fell to the forest floor and puked out her guts.

*****

She was lightheaded and short of breath and her vision kept going fuzzy but she didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, not until she’d given Carla’s knife to Rodolfo. She had to prove to him that despite his cruelty, despite his deliberate attempts to end her life, despite his making her a target for a psychotic French Amazon, she was still alive. It would be the ultimate revenge on him.

Short of killing him, of course.

She paused at what she thought was the bottom of the last hill and leaned against a tree. A few deep breaths helped her to think clearly again, and she realized she was still carrying all of her equipment and weapons. She didn’t need them now. Her training told her to leave behind whatever she had to in order to survive, so she pulled out the drinking tube from the water carrier and took in as much as she could comfortably hold.

After a few moments she felt better. Her vision cleared and she saw the town entrance. Surely Rodolfo knew she was there.

A quick inventory later, she dropped her shoulder bag, backpack, and water carrier. She unloaded her rifle and slipped the magazine into the backpack, then stood the weapon up against the tree she where she’d paused. She pulled off the pistol belt and took one of the revolvers out, then slipped it into her pocket. It was a another lesson learned long ago – don’t get caught totally unarmed.

With Carla’s knife in her hand and all that weight off her back, she was able to struggle up the hill to the entrance of the town. Sure enough, Rodolfo was waiting beside the nearest building, a huge smile on his face and the little runt Juan standing behind him, still holding the shotgun.

Rodolfo spread his hands out to her. “Lois! I had hoped it would be you. I congratulate you on your resourcefulness and skill. You will have three days to rest and recuperate.” He paused and tilted his head. “I assume you have proof of your victory?”

She stopped about eight feet from him and took two deep breaths. “Here’s her knife. You know the only way she’d give it up would be if she were dead.”

She tossed it into the dirt at his feet. He frowned and said, “You do not wish to keep it as a souvenir?”

“No. I just want to take a shower and see the doctor and sleep for a couple of days.”

“Mmm, perhaps the doctor first, then the shower.”

“Fine. Where is he?”

*****

The doctor dressed her physical wounds in silence and gave her a shot of antibiotics, then another containing a vitamin cocktail. Lois then spent almost twice the normal amount of time carefully scrubbing under a hot shower. No sense in opening her wounds again.

She was concerned that she’d have trouble going to sleep, but she didn’t. Being clean and horizontal was enough for her to drop off almost immediately. She didn’t bother with bedclothes and barely remembered to throw her wet towel on the floor.

She awoke fourteen hours later, stiff and sore but refreshed and alert. She took her time getting dressed and brushing out her short, tangled hair. And despite her fear to the contrary, she could look at herself in the mirror and not see Carla’s face staring back at her.

When she left her room and entered the common area, she wasn’t surprised to see Rodolfo. “Greetings, Lois. Once again I offer my congratulations for your success.”

Unconsciously, her hand slipped to her pocket before she could stop it. Rodolfo saw the movement and chuckled. “My dear Lois, I have been doing this for quite some time. I took the liberty of removing the revolver from beneath your pillow while you slept. Surely you checked for it before leaving your room.”

“A reflex.” She took a deep breath to calm her suddenly racing heart. “Thanks for all the trust in me.”

“It is not a question of trust but a question of good sense.” He stood. “I will leave this folder with you. You still have almost two days to recover from your ordeal, so there is no urgency, but three days from today I will review your mission with you.”

The folder slapped on the table and he stepped back. “Have you ever been to Greece?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Then you should enjoy this journey. You will see many ancient and wonderful things.”

The words slipped out before she could stop them. “Who am I going to kill?”

*****

Four weeks later Lois was back in Sicily.

The mission had gone off without a hitch. She’d established herself as something of an airheaded blonde American who spoke only English and who apparently believed that she could make herself understood by those who did not understand English by talking in a loud, slow, almost Brooklyn accent. The more native Greeks she irritated – or even offended – the less likely it would be for anyone to suspect that she was there to kill a man. To the locals, her only redeeming quality was that she tipped very well.

She started off where most American tourists would, in Athens. She toured the Parthenon, the Athens Zoo, the Acropolis Museum, and the Temple of Hephaestus. She also sampled the fish, the various fruit and vegetable dishes and medleys, and even visited a Russian-themed restaurant. Twice in the first sixteen days of her visit she feigned a severe stomach upset and refused to allow anyone in her hotel room. She spent those days reviewing the upcoming Greek Labor Day parade, which would be led by various officials in different parts of the country, depending on various political factors.

Her target would lead the parade in Tripolis on the lower peninsula, one hundred fifty-eight kilometers from Athens. If Rodolfo’s preparations were complete, she could get there on a small motorbike in less than two hours, make the shot, and get back to her hotel in Athens in another two. One of the maids would be paid very well to open the side emergency exit to admit a plump redhead – the plumpness enhanced by strategic padding – wearing cheap, ripped clothing and far too much makeup. Another of Rodolfo’s operatives, one who Lois would never see and who would never see her, would dispose of the bike when she returned. Her fake papers would pass muster in Greece if she were stopped anywhere during her mission, although they probably would not pass muster in New York, which was where they said she was from.

The day of the mission dawned clear and warm with no hint of death in the air. She spent it in the room with another “attack” of digestive troubles.

In Tripolis, she found her pre-set sniper’s perch in an empty third-floor apartment with ease and checked her American-made M1903 Springfield bolt-action rifle, complete with a laser spotter and a six-power telescopic sight. With thirty minutes before the parade began, she slipped on her latex surgical gloves, loaded her rifle, and settled into her perch, then waited inside the darkened room and ate an energy bar while watching for anything out of the ordinary.

But nothing unusual happened. The lights in the streets flickered on and the parade participants began assembling. Her target would stand in the back of a modified Cadillac limousine, surrounded by armed security walking beside him over the parade route. He would be accompanied by a bevy of beautiful young women wearing the skimpiest beachwear they could get away with.

Lois guessed that the man had angered some powerful father in the area, perhaps the father of one of the swimsuit models who surrounded him, but she had no real idea as to why this man had to die or who had paid for it to happen. All she had to do was to put a bullet in the middle of his chest, preferably just to the left of his breastbone. She was set up two hundred sixty-five yards from the limousine, and the rifle was supposed to be sighted in at two hundred seventy-five yards. It meant that she’d need almost no correction in her sight picture, that the bullet would strike her target mere millimeters from the crosshairs.

Then, of course, she had to get out alive.

The brass marching band behind the man’s limo began tuning up for the final time. Lois nodded to herself as they found common melodic and harmonic ground. They might not have been professional musicians, but they weren’t drunks yanked out of the neighborhood saloons, either.

Rodolfo had told her that the client didn’t care when the target took the bullet, but he had suggested taking him out at the very beginning of the parade, as the band hit their first loud notes and while everyone behind them was still milling around and trying to find where they were supposed to be. Confusion would be the best cover for Lois’ getaway, and her master wanted her to come back in one piece. Rodolfo would sponsor no suicide missions.

She readied the rifle in her hands and slowly slid the bolt home. She had five rounds in the rifle, but if she had to shoot more than once, it would seriously impair her chances of escaping. So she determined that her first shot would be perfect.

A man with a walkie-talkie ran to the driver’s door of the car and held up one finger. Through the scope she could see the driver nod and start the car. As soon as he revved the engine, the band members came to attention and the bandleader lifted his baton. Her target was already standing and waving at the crowd.

The bandleader waved his baton and counted one-two-three-four.

Lois’ shot rang out at the same moment all the cymbal players crashed their metal disks together. Her target’s arms dropped to his side, his head lolled onto his chest, and he toppled forward. The girls around him laughed at what they apparently thought was the man playing a game – all but the brunette behind him who had been waving at someone in the band. The bullet had passed through the target and struck her in the middle of the back, and she twisted and slowly fell to the floor, blood pouring out of her wound. As the other girls realized that their friend had been shot, they began screaming and trying to jump out of the car. The area quickly became a madhouse and the confusion spread rapidly outward.

That was good enough.

Lois opened the bolt to flip out the empty brass, worked it to remove the four remaining cartridges, and slipped in a special thermite round. It wouldn’t propel anything down the barrel, but five seconds after she pulled the trigger again, it would melt the rifle into slag. She took one more look through her scope at the car and saw the security people pulling their pistols and searching for the source of the shot. The bikini-clad girls were crying and screaming their heads off, and the members of the band rushed up to try to help but only contributed to the general confusion and got in everyone else’s way.

It was time for Lois to go.

She laid the four live cartridges on her perch and rested the rifle on top of them, then pulled the trigger. If things worked as she hoped, the heat from the thermite round would set off at least one of the rounds below it and draw attention away from her.

She pulled a .32-caliber revolver from her vest pocket and held it down beside her leg as she bolted out of the apartment. She turned left and headed toward the back stairs, listening and watching for anyone who might poke a head out to see what was happening.

And one elderly woman did.

The woman jumped and fell against the door jamb as Lois lifted her pistol. The woman slammed the door and Lois fired two rounds through the top of the door to keep the woman down on the floor and away from the phone. One shove through the exit door and down three flights without seeing anyone else and Lois jumped on her motorbike.

She shoved the pistol inside her vest, then jammed on the helmet and kicked the starter, which caught immediately. She pointed her bike toward highway 7 and puttered across town at a slow speed. There was no sense in attracting attention by racing away. Her best bet was to put distance between herself and her target without attracting police attention.

Less than two hours later, the fiftyish maid answered her knock and opened the door. Lois glared at her until the woman dropped her gaze and turned away. Without a word, Lois climbed the inside stairs to her room.

Inside, she stripped. The ripped jeans and vest went in a bag which she would drop in a dumpster several blocks from the hotel. Her pistol, bathed in cheap perfume to hide the scent of gunpowder, went into the hidden panel in the bottom of her suitcase. As soon as she could, she showered, then dressed in her regular clothes

A call to room service was answered by a weeping concierge who told her of the tragic murder of “the very good man from Tripolis.” Between sobs, the young woman promised to send up soup and sandwiches to “the lovely American lady” who thankfully seemed to be feeling better.

Lois turned on the room’s TV. The newscaster said that the man had died before receiving medical treatment. The woman who had been hit in the back by the spent bullet was expected to survive and make a full recovery. The cowardly assassin had not yet been found, nor did police have any information they could release to the news media.

Lois waited four more days to see if she’d been identified or if she were under suspicion, but other than a routine police visit to question her about her whereabouts at the time of the shooting, there was nothing. The killer had apparently vanished into the ether from which he’d come. A sympathetic smile aimed at the officer with whom Lois spoke gained her the information that the assassin’s rifle had been melted to scrap and gave the police no clues.

When she passed through customs to board the commuter plane which would take her to Reggio Calabria in Italy, just a short ferry ride from Messina, Sicily, she was stopped and questioned again, but one of the customs officers muttered to his buddy that she didn’t fit the physical description of the woman who’d been spotted brandishing a pistol at the scene. Lois pretended not to understand them, and even made a couple of insensitive comments about how sorry she was that someone got killed in Greece just like President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas. She was waved through to her plane with no more difficulty.

As the plane took off and puttered across the Ionian Sea between Greece and southern Italy, she relaxed and thought about what she’d done and tried to feel something about it. She didn’t even flinch when she recognized Juan in a seat a few rows up and across the aisle. She should have been angry, or afraid, or offended that he’d been there watching over her, making sure she didn’t run or chicken out at the last minute. But all she could muster was relief that her first mission had gone off without a hitch and that she’d survived. At that moment, nothing else mattered to her.

Rodolfo would have someone waiting for her in Messina, or perhaps she’d catch a ride with Juan. She’d travel across the rocky country of Sicily and sleep in her own bed tonight. Tomorrow she’d be debriefed and paid and she’d stay in one of the camps for a week to ten days, then have permission to go somewhere else for a bit. Rodolfo had told her that he preferred that his associates – what an innocuous word – not stray too far right after a mission. It reduced the chances that they’d either be recognized or make a foolish mistake.

Lois didn’t care. She’d done what she was supposed to do. And she’d survived. As far as she was aware, no one was looking for the ditzy American blonde she no longer was in connection with her target’s death. She was as safe as she could be, under the circumstances.

And she was a little closer to the day when she’d kill Rodolfo.