(This time I shall apologize preemptively for any typographical errors, contradictions or omissions on my part.)

Part Two – Canaan Don't Surf

There was a dull whap-whap as the bullets impacted. The intruding guard stumbled backwards, crashed against the wall and slumped into an undignified heap. Duquesne stood frozen, utterly slack-jawed, until the third shot hit him above the ear.

Then a klaxon sounded, dogs started barking, and spotlights began powering up all over the island.

"Great," Berdan sighed. "Oy, Boxer!"

"It'll be ready in a minute."

"Never mind the freakin' coffee," the skipper snapped. "We've got a problem!"

"Hm?" Boxer's head appeared in the hatchway. "Oh dear."

"No kidding." Berdan went to the helm as gunshots rolled across the water. "Get on the windlass and bring the anchor up. We're going in!"

"Yes, yes..."

The engine turned over, coughed a couple of times and caught with a rattling roar. "And Boxer – "

"What?"

"Gimme the duct tape."

We've been compromised. That much was obvious to Canaan as she fitted rubber protective caps over the lenses of her night sight and traded the ten-round magazine for a twenty-round box. Someone had tipped off the island's owners, and she'd walked straight into their trap. Now she had to find an escape route – an escape route for two, no less.

Alphard was on the move already, kicking off her high heels and tearing open the side of her dress from the hem right up to the swell of her hip. Mobility maximized, she vaulted over the veranda handrail and descended the slope below it. Canaan could still track her, but hopefully the foliage would hide her from less sophisticated seekers. Well, the pale-haired woman amended, acutely aware of unchained German Shepherds afoot in the vicinity, human seekers, anyway.

The option of simply leaving Alphard behind never occurred to her.

"Berdan..."

"What?"

Boxer pointed at the boom box under her companion's seat. "Why Arabic?"

"We're rescuing the sultan's daughter and her harem of one, ain't we?"

The second henchwoman frowned. "You know our employer prefers – "

"Yeah, and I'd prefer that my old man wasn't a hoser. Can't have it all." A line of miniature geysers erupted alongside the watercraft. Berdan cranked the wheel one way, then the other. "Shit, they're on to us!"

"May I suggest – " Ponkponkponkponkponk!

"I was right about not using fiberglass," the captain noted. "Sorry, you were saying?"

"I was saying – " Boxer broke off once more, this time to brace herself as the zigzagging vessel lurched. " – that you should play something with a little more weight to it."

"Sure," Berdan replied flippantly, steering to cut off a larger yacht also motoring towards the target dock. "If you drive."

"Very well." Boxer ducked briefly while the idiot with the machine gun chewed up the superstructure of the large boat astern, then took over the controls.

The idyllic ambiance track cut out, soon replaced by a frenzied thrashing of drums and guitars with equally intense vocals: "Mah milkshake brings all thah boys tah thah yahd, an' they're like, 'it's bettah than yahs' – damn right, it's bettah than yahs! Ah could teach yah, but Ah'd have tah chahge!"

"Boo-yah!" Berdan picked up her FAMAS. "Infinity Ward's got nothin' on this!"

"Alphard..!"

"Good shooting back there," the one-armed woman remarked casually. "Can you find a path?"

"Yes," Canaan replied "We should go... that way."

She started towards the shore, aiming to cut across to the dock where the guards were fewest. Alphard matched her step for step, breathtakingly nimble on bare feet. "So," the dark one prompted, "is this Natsume's revenge?"

"How would I know?" The synesthete gritted her teeth. "They're using dogs to fill the gaps... Go left!" She changed direction. "There's just one guard – straight ahead, on the edge of the road!"

"He's mine." Alphard put on an extra burst of speed, passing Canaan as the pair burst out of the undergrowth and onto a low, unpaved track. The man turned around, caught unprepared and wide open to his foe's assault. The lady of lethality slapped his rifle aside with indifference born of long experience and brought her knee up into his groin, hard enough to lift his boots off the ground and hammer his call for help down to an agonized grunt. She finished by efficiently smashing her hand into his throat.

Canaan slung the silent rifle across her back and picked up the fallen man's weapon, identifying it mainly by touch as an Enfield L1A1. Its selector switch had been filed down to permit fully automatic operation: it would roar and it would kick, but she'd run out of ammo fast if she kept relying on the Vintorez. She slung the L1's magazine pack over her shoulder, extracted a pistol from the holster on the corpse's hip and handed it to her accessory in adventure. "Take this," she ordered tersely. "Let's go."

Alphard nodded, a finger resting feather-light above the Glock's plastic trigger. "As you command, my lady."

Now is not the time for that. Canaan redoubled her pace as gunfire reached her ears from the northeast. Checking the 6 o'clock vector, she saw that the dogs had caught their scent. "Run!"

It hardly needed saying, since she and Alphard both were at flank speed already. The home stretch flew by in just a few seconds, and then they were sprinting down the open road with the finish line straight ahead. There was a large yacht lying helpless beside the main dock, tangled up in its mooring lines and listing to port. Berdan's boat was sitting just off the end of the narrow wooden pier immediately to the south – a recent construction, according to the assassin's background investigation – with a pair of thin ropes holding it fast. Most of the lights in the area had been knocked out and the air was thick with the stench from the burning 4x4 at the end of the road. In the distance, surviving spotlights slashed the night fruitlessly. Canaan's sensory blend revealed to her that the ground was littered with corpses, yet she and Alphard were not alone.

"Boss?" Berdan cautiously peeked around the corner of a large packing case near the landward end of the pier. "Shrimp? That you?"

"It's us," Canaan confirmed, rolling into cover beside the skipper. "What's the situation here?"

"You have great timing," Berdan remarked. "I just ran outta mags... Uh, situation's okay. Had a short firefight, but we're still floating. Some asshole lit us up with a five-fifty-six and a big ammo can. He's been silent for a couple minutes – don't know if we got him or he just overheated." The redhead looked back over her shoulder as a roar of vehicle engines overlapped with the ferocious baying of the hounds. "Can we go now?"

"With all haste," Alphard assured. "We've accomplished our goal." She took point as they hustled down the pier, Canaan close behind her while Berdan brought up the rearguard. They'd covered maybe two thirds of its length when the machine gunner interdicted from their left flank.

The first burst passed behind Canaan. She dimly registered a muffled yelp followed by a loud splash, and then another cluster of projectiles whizzed across the path to freedom ahead. One unlucky round pierced Alphard's extended leg, tearing through the muscles a palm's width below her left knee. For one agonizing second she teetered, seeming certain to plunge into the water, before her erstwhile rival's hand snapped out and hooked around the inside of her elbow. "Ugh!" Canaan grunted, throwing herself down and taking Alphard with her. "Boxer..!"

"On it," was the terse reply, followed by a strobing white muzzle flash and a brisk ratatat from the boat's after deck. It was enough: the next copper-jacketed hailstorm dashed futilely against the vessel's steel, brass and bulletproof glass fittings instead of shredding the vulnerable bodies of the young women.

Canaan scrunched up and wriggled around until she could sight in on the landward attacker. "Clench," she hissed, fitting the Enfield's stock against her shoulder. Siam had ensured that she would never be ignorant of opportunities for improvisation, but even he would probably raise an eyebrow at the sight of his star pupil using Alphard's firm butt as a rifle rest.

Boom-boom-boom! ...Boomboomboomboomboomboomboom!

She'd likely hit her mark by the second or third round, but she wasn't taking chances. "Come on," the petite fighter coughed, rising once more. "We're almost there!"

Alphard stumbled, trying to support herself as vehicle engines roared behind their backs. Canaan half-dragged, half-carried her the rest of the way to the yacht, where Boxer helped them climb aboard. "Berdan fell in," the henchwoman reported. "Should I – down!"

The target Canaan had engaged wasn't the only guard packing a Minimi tonight, and the guy riding shotgun in the first Land Rover had better trigger discipline. He kept the three women completely pinned in the cockpit as eight of his cohorts advanced up the pier. Canaan failed to deter the men by firing her battle rifle over the gunwale, but she managed to counter-pin them by spraying an entire magazine's worth of Stechkin ammo in the brief window of opportunity created by the gunner's reload break. "Boxer!" she yelled, slapping a second magazine into the Soviet machine pistol. "I need a diversion!"

"I shall do my utmost." Schick... Shachak! "On your mark."

Canaan planted a sneaker on the portside cockpit cushion, taking a deep breath. "Three... Two... Whuh?"

Someone was firing a pistol in front of her, cranking the trigger rapidly with scant care for accurate placement. Pulling her head back down, Canaan marshaled her interlinked inputs and drew the swirling kaleidoscope back into focus. She'd been seeing the color blue a lot tonight: that aura flared in Alphard when she struck down Duquesne, flickered among the trees as the island's security pursued the interlopers, and shone faintly in Boxer throughout. All of those paled before the intensity of the glow washing over her at this moment, however, as if the killing intent of an entire infantry platoon had been crammed into one body. At that moment she understood exactly why Alphard was so tolerant of Berdan's bad moods.

"Now!"

Canaan's cry rang high and clear as she flipped the APB's fire control switch to the semi-auto position and leaped over the port handrail. She landed among men already dead, shot from below as they lay prone on thin wood planks. The Minimi gunner ducked behind the open door of the SUV in a frantic maneuver of self-preservation, leaving only his lower legs exposed. Canaan mercilessly put a bullet through each one, and the man fell on blood-soaked gravel. He was quickly put out of his misery.

"Got him? Good." Berdan climbed out of the water and pulled herself onto the pier with a grunt. Her right hand had a bone-crusher grasp on an empty handgun. "And I'm fine, thanks for asking." She followed Canaan back to the boat, pausing just long enough to cast off the lines before leaping aboard as the vessel began to drift away. "Shrimp, take out those headlights! Boxer, how's the boss?"

"It's not serious." Boxer headed for the cabin while Canaan locked and loaded, leaving Alphard huddled at the rear of the cockpit. "I'm fetching the medical kit."

"You do that." Berdan ejected her depleted magazine into the vacant ashtray under the compass binnacle and dropped the dripping USP beside it. Rough hands grabbed the wheel and put it hard over, swinging the bow around until it pointed to open waters. "Any particular heading you want, boss, or do I steer from the gut?"

"Take us down along Shroud and Hawksbill," Alphard barked over the din of Canaan's intermittent gunfire, "then cut west across the banks. Let's see if they try to follow us."

"Warp five, Mister Sulu!" Berdan rammed the throttle all the way forwards. "Prreeeooooowwwwwww!"

Canaan came to with a start. She couldn't hear any shooting – which was reassuring – and she was still clothed – which was also reassuring – but she couldn't clearly remember how she'd wound up here, except for a vague recollection of a sudden heaviness in her limbs. The texture under her hands and the breeze across her face told her that she was lying on a cockpit cushion. Somewhere in the belly of the beast, a diesel engine thrummed confidently.

"You're awake." The voice and the accompanying hand caressing Canaan's hair filled in the remaining blanks. Opening her eyes, she found Alphard's face gazing down at her from among the stars. "Had a little too much excitement, hm?"

"Nnngh." Canaan tried to sit up but was beaten down by a wave of dizziness. "We're safe?" she mumbled, her head sinking back onto Alphard's lap.

"For the time being." Alphard leaned forwards a little, emphasizing the absence of her ruined dress and the equally provocative style of the flimsy articles she wore under it. "Are you comfortable?"

"Mm." When did Alphard learn to be so... disarming? The synesthete turned her face to the side, pulling her gaze away from the distracting under-view of the other woman's cleavage. Boxer was sitting on the opposite side of the boat, placidly rinsing the salt out of Berdan's clothes and weapons. Berdan herself was still on station at the helm, though she had turned steering duty over to the autopilot. "Alphard..."

"Yes?"

"Berdan... Is she – "

"Am I special?" The redhead's audible sarcasm content was slightly above average. "Was Franklin Dixon one of the most prolific youth authors of the twentieth century?"

"...Yes?"

"No – but his first ghostwriter was from my hometown."

Canaan didn't get it. "But earlier you were..."

"I was doing my thing. I was pulling my weight." Berdan shrugged. "Hard to figure that out when you're always playing with the cheat codes on, eh?"

The light-haired woman ignored the verbal jab. "Where did you learn to fight?"

"LFC boot camp, then four years in the shit."

"Four years..?"

"ISAF, Kandahar." The skipper was probably rolling her eyes by now, but she kept her back turned. "You wanna know my cup size while you're at it?"

Alphard interceded. "Don't bully her, Berdan," she admonished, stroking Canaan's forehead. "Innocents are rare and precious in our world."

"Yeah, yeah..."

Canaan turned her questioning eyes to Boxer. "My personal history is rather sordid," the better-mannered underling said candidly, "but it is also quite banal, so I will not bore you with it. Is there anything you would like, Miss Canaan?"

"Um, not now... Alphard, I need to call Natsume."

"As you wish." The elegant mastermind had already seen to it that her guest's bag was within reach. From it she took a Nokia-branded satellite phone, the model of which would remain nominally exclusive to the Finnish market for another eight months. "Be careful what you say to her."

"I know." Canaan dialed the number with her thumb and waited warily for her handler to pick up.

"Are you all right?"

That wasn't quite how she expected this to start. "Yes..."

"Good. I know you got Duquesne... and you probably know that we have a leak."

"A leak?"

"Somewhere on my end, so don't tell me where you are or where you're going. Is Alphard still with you?"

"..."

"I know you've been putting off your other assignment, and just this once I'm glad you did... The situation has changed: Alphard al-Shu'ara absolutely must not die."

Canaan blinked. "What?"

"They're after her, not you. I don't have the details, but it involves her family somehow. I may need you to go to Amman... I'll call you again when I have more information. Until then, stay with her and keep out of trouble."

Natsume hung up without another word, leaving a very nonplussed Canaan in her wake. "Well," said Alphard, having listened in on the whole exchange, "this complicates things."

Her voice was casual, but there was a thread of stress in it that hadn't been there before. "Do you know what she meant?"

"I think so." Alphard offered her trademark smile of infuriation. "But now is not the time to speak of it... You know, Paris is quite tolerable at this time of year."

Canaan's delayed comprehension was perhaps justified, as her state of mind bore a striking resemblance to a roulette wheel. "Paris is..?"

"There's a little Chinese restaurant by the Seine that I'd like to take you – "

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Berdan cut in. "You mean the place with that hyperactive brat who wore her hair in big loops?"

Boxer also seemed to be familiar with the establishment in question. "Wasn't she the one who stuffed her shirt with dumplings?"

"Yeah, she did that too. I still have nightmares about the soup tureen..."

Canaan listened to the conversation with growing incredulity. What kind of absurd coincidence..?

"How about it?" Alphard pressed. "We can eat out, tour the museums, stroll in the parks, find a quiet spot and make love in the grass..."

"You won't take 'no' for an answer, will you?"

The smile grew. "Only if it is the majority opinion."

"I have no objections," said Boxer, demurely indicating which side her croissant was buttered on.

"It's fine with me," Berdan chimed in, "as long as I don't have to interpret French, dress like a maid or frog blast the vent core."

There was a resigned sigh. "Paris it is."

"Excellent." Alphard gently raised Canaan to a sitting position. "If you're feeling better, let us retire."

"Are you going to bed already, ma'am?" Boxer stood up. "I haven't changed the sheets or – "

"It won't be necessary," her mistress replied mildly, licking her lips. "Come along, my dear. We still haven't tried the strap-on..."

Canaan's cheeks flushed, the change in shade strong enough to be visible in the dim cockpit lights, but she allowed herself to be led below. Berdan and Boxer were left topside to carry on their work as the boat motored towards an untouchable horizon.

"Berdan," said Boxer after several minutes, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine," the other henchwoman replied quizzically. "Why?"

"You've been standing there with an odd look on your face."

"Oh." Berdan's answer was a sheepish one. "I was just trying to figure out, uh... which one of them would, you know, wear that thing."