zero hour

flash back

FADE IN:

Close up on a record player. A woman with fiery red hair, nude, places a new record on the turn-table, sets the needle down, and walks away.. Music starts playing - ['Bobby McGee' By Janis Joplin] The woman walks out the sliding glass door, just to the right of the hi-fi system and the mini-bar.

Dusk. Rolling clouds. The soothing sounds of waves on a beach contrast with the sudden thunder rumbling in the far off distance. Curtains billowing into a messy bedroom, clothes and bedsheets strewn about all over the place, in a cabana with a large veranda and an impossibly beautiful view in the tropics.

Reclining in a double-wide beach chair, another woman. Brunette, dark skinned, strong. The audience might, quite reasonably conclude that the women are the same two women in the previous scene... They would be half right.

Mack:[flirtatiously] I put this on, just for you.

The brunette, her face half hidden by her dark hair, rolls over as though to continue her nap, and casually flashes Macknally the middle finger as she rolls over onto her tummy.

McGee: [lovingly] Fuck you! You know I hate this song.

The sex between them had been indescribably, mind-blowingly, real. Hot. Passionate. Intimate. Frighteningly close to Bliss. For one moment, one perfect impossible moment... she (Mack) had felt as if she might almost melt away at the peak of it all... She laid down next to her lover, and joined her in the delight of a mid afternoon nap in perfect isolation in what might as well have been paradise.

They fell asleep, post coitus, in the very lawn chair they had made love on. Joplin's record played itself out. They napped peacefully at southernmost corner of the expansive veranda that wrapped around the entirety of the otherwise modestly sized bungalow by the sea. This corner was the very furthest point away from the bedroom, which explains why they never heard the intruder enter... But the wind carried every sound of their love making back towards the bedroom, so the intruder had heard every moan, every gasp, every orgasm.

The only thing that the intruder could not have heard, was the inner monologues of either the two women:

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

McGee: I am not like this.

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

McGee: I should never have done this with her!

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

McGee: What have I become??? I'm going to get fired for this!

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

McGee: We work together! Should never let it go this far!!!

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

McGee: Everyone at the office will find out eventually!

Mack: Oh My God, Oh My God, oh My God!!!

Agent McGee had this litany of fear and guilt running on loop in her head the whole time. The more she tried to ignore it, the louder it got in her mind. It was only her lover's passion that finally forced the loop to stall-out and stop.

As if by McGee just thinking back on the moment somehow magically aroused Macknally, she stirred in her sleep, brushed her wild fiery hair away from her sleepy eyes and just stared at McGee. The sparkling gemstone green of her flashing eyes silencing the chatter swirling around in McGee's mind once more. McGee pondered silently to herself: "How has this stunning woman ended up in my life?" After an unbearable moment of those eyes just looking back at her, she asked herself the question again.

McGee: [quietly] Go back to sleep if you want, Mack.

Mack: [sleepily, but with snark] I've told you... don't call me that...

McGee: But we're not in public!

They kiss, slow, deep, passionate.

Mack: What have you done to me, little miss Bobby McGee?

McGee: [laughing with earnest surprise & humor] You better never call me that in public!

Mack: [laughing, as she stands and slowly walks toward the door to the bedroom] But we're not in public! [she pauses at the threshold, looks back at Agent McGee who seems lost in thought as she stares off towards the shore] Hey...

McGee: Yeah?

Mack: I... [the sound of the record on the turntable skipping at the end of the final track becomes prominent as Mack flounders] ...I... We... [The sound of the needle skipping curiously stops, catching Mack's attention for a moment, but she then looks back at McGee] I am really glad we did this "M" I'm glad we're here... and not stuck apart on assignment on opposite sides of the planet. That's all...

McGee: I know, I'm glad we are here too, "M"

Mack: [turning to enter the room] I'll put something different on... [she grabs two albums, and steps back out onto the veranda, studying the album covers - Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band & Vivaldi's Four Seasons ] ... what kind of mood are you in? The Beetles? Or... [she looks up, but McGee is gone] "M"? [Mack sets the records down on the little table by the door and walks towards the beach chair] "M"?

Agent McGee was no-where to be found.

The scent of their sex still lingering in the heavy, humid, pre-storm air... in the distance, thunder. Massive clouds hang in the middle distance, stagnant, no breeze to carry them off to sea. Silence smothered her as much as the musk in the still and stifling air. Agent Macknally stood there, stunned, nude, her skin shimmering with sweat, hear ears straining to hear the tiniest shuffle, the softest pad of bare feet on the veranda.

Behind her, the record player came to life as the needle settled itself back down on Joplin's "Booby McGee" eerily. Mack bolted for the door, in hopes to catch her naked lover at the turn-table with a sheepish, guilty, "you caught me" look on her face.

All she found was an empty bungalow filled with Joplin's soulful voice and a strange, lingering, foreign feeling energy that seemed to be the only evidence that someone had been in their space and they had not noticed it.

Agent Macknally, usually quite composed under fire, freaked the fuck out. She totally lost her shit. She scrambled to the bedroom and threw herself in the walk-in closet, stumbling on a pair of heels. Falling to the floor cleared her mind. She stopped panicking and faced her options with a new cold focus- give in to fear and lock herself in the closet to wait for McGee to return... But deep down, Macknally knew that McGee was not coming back anytime soon.

So, her only real option was to give chase. They must be within walking distance still, there had been no sound of approaching or departing vehicles.

VO[Agent McGee's Vioce]: "MOVE!"

Hearing her lover's sexy tough "Drill Sergeant" voice scream in her mind to stop wasting time and move jump-started her body and kicked in her training. In less than a minute she was out the door, locked and loaded and in pursuit.