The Jefferson Allegiance

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

 

Lily, aka the Surgeon, removed her heavy, armored cloak, draping it over a chair.  The khaki pants were serviceable and fashionable, and fit her compact five-foot-four frame.  The black turtleneck accommodated her shapely upper body.  Her short blonde hair framed a face more befitting a nun’s habit than an armor-cloaked killer.

She removed the wakizashi from its sheath and carefully placed it on the desk, next to the half empty bottle of cognac and the three roses the Chair had carried.  She found disinfectant, poured it into a towel, and thoroughly cleaned the blade with it.  She let it sit for a few minutes, then took a silk cloth and carefully wiped the blade dry.  Turning it under the desk light, she checked the edge for damage.  There was none, not that she expected any given the quality of the blade and the weakness of flesh, muscle and bone against steel that had been folded so many times by hands skilled in the perfection of such weapons.

She pulled back her left sleeve to the elbow.  The skin on the inside of the forearm was marred with six scars, each about two inches long.  The scars were poorly healed, red raised ridges marching down her arm, an incongruity for someone who held an MD and a harsh contradiction to the unblemished beauty of her flesh.

She grabbed the handle of the short sword with her right hand.  Slowly and precisely, she drew the sword across the skin, just below the last cut.  Skin parted easily to the razor-sharp blade and blood flowed.  The hand holding the sword was steady as a rock.  Done, she sheathed the still bloody sword and rolled her black sleeve down.

Lily was from a long line of military veterans, but was the first female in the line of service.  While her friends received dolls and clothes for their birthdays, she’d received knives and guns.  Her father had rigged an old sea bag in the back yard as a punching bag for her and her brother.  Instead of the mall, her father had taken her to military surplus stores.  For her 15th birthday her father had given her the Special Forces Medical Handbook and the Special Air Service Tracking Guide.  She’d never realized she was different from other girls.  Now she was so far out of the bell curve it wouldn’t occur to her to realize there was different reality.

Her four years at the Air Force Academy had honed the harsh discipline of her childhood into a martial zeal bettered by none of her peers.  Still, being a woman in a male-dominated institution, the brutal hazing of the first year, coupled with the sexual harassment inherent at the Academy, had appeared to present more obstacles than even that discipline could overcome. 

Early one Sunday morning, when her room-mate was away on a team trip, someone snuck into her room.  Feeling hands groping her, she’d reacted, smashing his head against the metal frame of her bed, then dashing for the rack where her rifle and bayonet were displayed.  Cursing, the upperclassman had come after her.

She’d drawn the bayonet and held it in front of her.  In the darkness, and dazed from the head slam, the upperclassman never saw it, running right onto it.  His screams as the blade penetrated into his bowels woke the entire floor.

The Academy, reeling under Congressional scrutiny from numerous sexual harassment complaints, listed the event as a training accident.  The upperclassman graduated after a stint in the hospital and Lily was told to forget about it and be happy no charges were brought against her for assault with a deadly weapon.