Agatha watches the women cook. The kitchen is a pleasant place. Not like the cozy one back at the home place, but intimate. People lived and laughed and ate here once upon a time. Now there's only the blonde woman and the brunette. The blonde is a tiny, slim thing. A Malibu beach bunny or a vapid LA party girl, the kind that made Agatha feel ugly and awkward during her few trips into LA on liberty. Yet there's humour in those hazel eyes. Sadness, a bit. Shadows of pain if you look hard enough. Her movements take Agatha's breath away: precise, powerful, shattering the very air as she moves. Her companion has an easier grace. A ripe body and sultry features promising the sin the radio preachers warned about. But the pink dress she wears gives her an innocence--care worn, but there--that lends warmth to her throaty laugh.
"Whatcha doin'?" Agatha asks.
"Baking cookies." The blonde tips the dough out of the mixing bowl.
"Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, all fall down." The dark-haired siren rolls the dough flat. "Falling up now."
Thunk. Thunk. The blonde stamps out rows with a cookie-cutter. Women. Dozens, hundreds, Agatha can't count.
"Can I have one?" Agatha reaches out.
"Hey!" The blonde swats the errant hand away with a wooden spoon. "You already had a taste of the bowl."
"Here's you." The brunette shows Agatha a cookie-girl. Cinnamon for hair, red sprinkles for freckles. White and blue and red icing for dress blues. "And into the oven you'll go."
"When will I be done?" Agatha asks. "What kind of cookie will I be?"
The two women lean against one another. It is not sexual like lovers. It is not quite sisterly. It is a stance Agatha has seen before. She has shared it herself, exultant with her squadmates, coming through the march at the end of the Crucible that signals one has been accepted into the Corps, holding each other up with arms around their shoulders. They have been through the wars together, these two.
The blonde leans close to whisper into Agatha's ear. The brunette follows suit. Their words chase Agatha's consciousness down through sleep and into the hinterlands of awareness.
"You have no idea of what you will become."
Agatha and Powell stood close together in a corner of the motor pool with arms entwined. At 0630, the garage was deserted. Each had their outside hands on each other's elbows, and their inside hands on the other's wrist. Agatha focused on Powell's black eyes, cold as a gunbarrel's muzzle. He stared impassively into her own bright blues. Pressure. Agatha fought down the urge to push back. Instead, she directed away the energy with a slight movement of the hand on his wrist. She redirected the energy into her own "attack". The power provided by Powell's maneuver flowed back through her into him. She guided it through her center rather than tightening her body to hit directly. The gunnery sergeant reacted with a subtle move that threatened to put her off balance. Parries and strikes--mere touches each--carried them through a slow ballet.
Both were huffing when they broke stance. Bowing to each other, they about-faced to go through solo forms to cool down. Agatha quietly performed the intricate motions of Wu-style taijiquan. The gentle rhythm balanced the aggressive energies that had built up during the sparring. Finishing, she picked up the M4 resting by her deuce gear. She quelled the nervousness. It would just be another month's pay, after all. Snick, snick. Agatha field-stripped her rifle with deft precision. Fingers that lately had crushed tabletops in the mess and left dents in the door to her hooch dismantled the complex mechanism of the rifle. She cleaned the small bits of dirt and sand that blew into even a covered action in this land. Just as efficiently, she put the disassembled rifle back together. Powell inspected it closely.
"Outstanding," he rumbled. He handed the M4 back to his student. "Here you go. Had the armorer sign this out for you. This should suit you better than the '16 you were toting before."
"Right handier," she observed, adjusting the collapsible stock. "Whew, never did anything that intense before, at least standing up--er."
"Ha!" Powell first drank from, then poured over his head the contents of a canteen. "Lighten up, we're on teacher time, not gunny and his obedient servant time. Recon discipline is a little less high-strung, anyway, when the brass aren't around."
"Hey, we're supposed to uphold the honor of the Corps at all times." Agatha wiggled her fingers. "Do you think I have this beat? I haven't busted anything in the past couple of days."
"You're five by five, kid." Powell rubbed a shoulder. "Damn, the energy coming off you was off the scale. Thought I was holding back a tsunami. And your forms are perfect. Never seen anyone progress that fast in a week."
"Got the proper motivation, gunny." Agatha shouldered her new weapon. "Just flowed natural, I guess. You said this could be used for fighting?"
"Stick to the Corps Martial Arts Program." He tapped the black rigger's belt at his waist, two red stripes by the buckle denoting a second degree black belt. "Taijiquan can be effective, but that's advanced training. Mick-slap's easier to learn and more suited to busting heads and kicking ass in the real world. I'll be happy to train you for your brown belt quals."
"That's okay gunny." Agatha worried her lower lip with her front teeth. "Afraid to say, I've had enough learning how to kill as I can stomach. Know it's cowardly."
"I don't teach cowards," Powell replied sharply. "Putnam, I once went through recon indoc. That's forty-eight hours of pure hell, where a man has to decide to stand up or fold. And I didn't have to face off in a knife fight to get through it. When the big moments come--and they do--it's what you do with what you got that matters. You made your decision in that moment like I did. All I'm offering is a few new tools to go in your kit."
"In a little while, maybe." Agatha smirked. "'Sides, things the way they are now, I wouldn't want a court-martial for breaking my favorite gunny in half."
"You wish." He clapped her on the back. "Scoot, lance-coolie. Get that M4 sighted in."
The firing range was a flat area at the far end of the base. A berm on a natural rise seventy five meters from the firing line provided a backstop. Several people were there already practicing on the human-silhouette targets set at varying distances. As she went to the far end of the line, she saluted the recon platoon commander. Captain Barrow paused in his pistol practice to return her salute. He had become familiar with her by sight given the amount of time she had spent in Powell's company. "Gunny's pet", the recon platoon called her Taking the prone position, Agatha set the sights to their proper zero. She couldn't boresight it in properly. An M4 was usually used within a hundred yards, so that kind of precision wasn't needed. She racked the charging handle and aimed at a target twenty five meters away.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. Agatha fired a five shot group into the silhouette's chest. Damn. Off a bit to the left and high. She adjusted the windage a couple of clicks. The carbine barked another five times. Much better, center of mass with one flyer. Pity she never shot better than Marksman in the yearly rifle qualifications. She switched to a kneeling position, one knee down and supporting herself on her right foot. A girl in the mountains of eastern Tennessee learned to shoot as a matter of course. Agatha had shot a cousin's BB gun or plinked cans off a fence with a .22 from time to time. Her momma disliked guns, though, so having one of her own wasn't in the cards. She was much better with a bow. Her dad had passed down his bowhunting hobby. Almost every day she was out loosing arrows at haybales with her youth-model fiberglass recurve. Nothing like the tension of hand and arm and bow. Nothing better except the solid slap of an arrowhead hitting a target in the bullseye. That one fall in her sixteenth year, he had handed her his compound bow for the first time. Taking that buck, skinning and butchering it with her dad--never had been so close to the man before--
"Goodbye stakes, hello flying fatality!"
Almost without thinking she shifted aim to a target fifty meters out. Time slowed as the cheerful voice echoed in the recesses in her mind.
CRACK. CRACK
The trigger was so sensitive. It must have been the exercise with the gunny. She could feel the opposing forces of pressure and tension in its mechanism.
CRACK. CRACK.
Always hit the heart. Never miss. Her sights rested on the seventy five meter target.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK
"Cease fire!"
Shaking off the reverie, Agatha safed her weapon. Around her was a cluster of men--Rangers, the SF medic Dawson, and Captain Barrow. They looked at her with the strangest expressions. She panicked. Damn, did I bust my weapon again? Then she saw the range office carrying back the targets. Numb, she looked upon them. In each of the ten rings, both in the chest and in the head, was a single circle where her five-round groups had punched a single ragged hole. A Ranger whistled low in admiration. His thumb easily covered the tears in each target. As the chorus of whoops and congratulatory back slapping began, she could only think one thing:
What in hell am I?
"You're an angel of mercy," Agatha groaned, shoving her swollen hand into the bowl of ice.
"This is what you suffer for firing weapons all day," Dixie admonished. "Is there not a saying in your language, 'just say no'?"
"That's drugs, not shooting, and when a captain gives you an order, you jump." Ice cubes rattled. "M-16, M4, M240, M14--running out of M's I shot with. Barrow even gave me one of those fancy Colt .45's his people use. Never shot a pistol in my life before that, and I dinged that paper haji's bell after a couple of mags."
"Capelli told me this was awful shooting--no," Dixie corrected herself. "'Awesome'. Also about winning and cake, which I do not understand, but then Capelli would bring up cake in any conversation."
"Well, I didn't do as well as that first time." Agatha jerked a thumb at the three targets tacked above her rack. "Gunny Powell said that next time on the KD range, I'd score high Sharpshooter. Expert, even, by a couple points."
"Ah, the gunnery-sergeant." Dixie smiled dreamily. "I have seen your sessions with him. So...intense."
"Minx." Agatha tossed an ice cube at her friend's head. "Lured away by the gunny's biceps. Poor Dawson. Well, you know what they say, 'if ya go black--'"
"I am not being unfaithful to Sergeant Dawson's impressive muscular structure!" Dixie exclaimed. "I am just, how you say, 'playing the field'.
"Just remember the rules on fraternizing."
"Yet, the rules do not forbid close yet very personal physical examinations," Dixie said. A hopeful note entered her voice. "You said he was rubbing his shoulder? It may be cancer. I must see him to be...sure. It could be serious."
Agatha dumped the most of the contents of the bowl down the front of Dixie's shirt. Well, she had promised to cool the girl down. Her hand went back in among the remnants of the ice cubes as her friend whooped and flailed. The swelling was visibly going down. A mercy at least. She traced the outline of one shot grouping. It amazed her how well the shooting had gone. Every weapon she had held snapped in instantly, despite it being months since training on the less-used weapons like the M240 machine gun. That .45 of Barrow's fit in her hand like it was custom-made. She'd "killed" the tickets of dozens of fake terrorists. The firing range had assumed the air of a county fair; half the base had gathered to watch her do her stuff. Agatha secretly exulted at her new nickname: "Annie", as in Oakley.
Maybe I should ask Gunny for those--
A wave of horror engulfed her. Distracted, Dixie missed Agatha bolting upright. Teeth bared, she crushed the frame of her rack. Wrong, wrong. Something's in the wire, something bad. Forget ice cubes, her skin crawled with dozens of chilly spiders running up and down the surface. In a trice the Ka-bar was out of her footlocker and her M4 was set to her shoulder. Agatha charged into the night. A dust storm had once again stormed out of the mountains. In her T-shirt and skivvies, she slowly tracked her carbine in a two-seventy degree arc. The wind was deafening. Yet underneath it she heard a noise. Barely perceptible to even her ears, yet there. A shuffle to her left. A hiss. Her trigger finger itched to take the first pressure. She couldn't though. Not until she had a clear sight picture. Frustrated, she stalked the unseen presence through the storm half-blind. The terrible sensation intensified as she closed...and then faded.
Whatever it was, it was gone.
Agatha mumbled a sheepish apology to Dixie about panic attacks and hearing things. The medic did not seem to be convinced, though she talked about stress and the odd things one heard at night. Flopping on her bunk, Agatha cleaned her M4 of grit. The damn things did collect dirt in the action if you weren't careful. The Kalashnikovs the Taliban fielded could shoot after bathing in mud, though she wouldn't try to hit the broad side of a LAV with one. The ritual of scrubbing out the chamber and bolt with brushes and CLP dispelled the worst of the episode. Likely really was the last bit of worries about staying on. Nothing to get antsy about. Some sleep--the four or five she managed these nights, which still kept her bouncy in the days--would help.
The next morning, they found the two dead Rangers.