James wasn’t waking up. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” I muttered as I filled a bucket up with the icy cold water from the garden hose. Damon must have picked up on what I was about to do, because he steered well clear of James’s room as I came up the stairs. “Last chance, James. Wake up now or forever hold your peace.” With no more options, I stood up, backed up about four feet, picked up the bucket, and dumped the contents of said bucket onto James’s face. “GAAHHH!” he shouted as he woke up. “What the bloody hell was that for Carmen?” I plastered an innocent-ish look on my face and said “You overslept. It’s time to go for the twenty-mile run, remember?”
The run took about three hours, then we stopped to do circut training (an hour), and after that we did a five mile swim down the Atlantic coast. When we got back, we were thoroughly starving. I got home, raced upstairs to shower and change, raced downstairs to start breakfast, and realized we were flat out of food. I got out a thousand dollars, gave James a two hundred to take everyone else out to Denny’s, and went to the supermarket to buy enough food for a militia. Three hours later, I had six shopping carts worth of food loaded in the back of the spare truck (a 4x4 with an extended bed), and I was on the verge of collapsing from hunger. I knew I was running out of options, so I pulled into McDonalds. I know that that place is the bane of every health nut’s existance, but you gotta do what you gotta do to stay conscious. I cracked a smile, thinking of the fits that Smitty and Malcolm would have when I told them. Then I caught a glimpse of wolf fur as I was driving down the interstate. I yelled for Damon in my mind. ‘Yes, inmia mea, I am here. What’s happening?’ ‘I need you to ask James if he sent wolves to patrol the interstate.’ I couldn’t completely hide the nerves in my voice, but dammit if i didn’t try. ‘He says no. How many are you facing inmia mea?’ ‘No less than three, no more than six. I can’t tell for sure if they were wolves or dingos, though. Tell James not to send anyone. I think I can handle it. in fact, tell him nothing’s happening and I’ll meet you guys at home in ten minutes. If I don’t show up by then, look for me by the interstate. I have a GPS tracking chip embedded in my skin, left over from when I was a kid. If that dosen’t work, there are backup chips in my purse, replacement tooth, the pen in my pocket, and my jacket. The decodifying devices are in a secret drawer in the kitchen. It’s hidden directly below the sliverware drawer. the tracker is in a secret compartment above my bedroom door. The code is hidden INside of the painting of the Spanish Armada. It’s the one from 1797. the codex is in the one labeled 1703. Don’t tell anyone else what I’v just told you.’ While I was having this very mentally engaging conversation, I was trying to avoid getting run off the road or pulled over by cops. I mean, seriously, wouldn’t that just top off my week? Then a large quadruped animal (still not positive it was a wolf) jumped out in front of my truck. It was still a hundred yards in front, so I decided that I would make this a game. Of chicken. I floored the gas pedal and aimed so if the Wolf (for now I was sure that it was in fact a wolf) didn’t move, he would become roadkill. I was closing fast. Twenty... Ten yards... Five yards... Impact. It was a good thing I had triple plated missile proof glass in all the windows and six thousand pounds of body armor with reinforced bumpers, and I could do zero to a hundred and ten in less than sixty seconds. Like I said- roadkill. He passed over my car like nothing happened. I took a sharp left off the interstate and a hard right at the intersection of St.Paul and Main st. I narrowly missed two others. I had at least one tailing me in a truck. I took the route I had mapped out for losing tails. It had worked before, and it worked again this time. about a minute and a half later I heard Damon’s voice in my head, asking if I wanted him to come out after me. ‘Just make sure no one follows me home. That you on my tail?’ ‘Yep. nobody’s gonna get past me.’ ‘Thanks Damon. I owe you one.’ ‘No problem.’ I pulled down the driveway, pulled in to the garage, put the car in park, got out, and slid to the ground. I was overstressed. I covered my face with my hands. I ran my fingertips through my hair and pushed to my feet just as Damon came through the door. He walked up to me and put his arms around me. I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder. I felt his chin resting against the top of my head. We just stood like that for a few minutes. Then I pulled myself together. My moment of weakness was so over. I was tougher than this. I grabbed an armload of groceries and walked into the kitchen. Damon did the same, and James dashed down the stairs to help, closley followed by everyone else. We had the groceries taken care of in record time. of course, with seven people putting in effort, that should come as no suprise. Then I got the phone call. It was the Secretary of Defense. He wanted me back. “If you want me to come back willingly after that disgrace, you had better re-hire all of those who left when I did. All of them.” “No. Just you.” Fine, you wanna play harball? Lets play. “If they aren’t allowed to come back immedeately, then I will never come back to you willingly.” “I could force you too.” “You so DON’T wanna go down that road with ME, Mr. Secretary Sir.” I added the “Sir” while being a little heavy on the sarcasm. “Fine Carmen, you’ve all been re hired, re instated, and promoted. Just report back to base.” I hung up then high fived the others. “Guys, I just got us all re-hired and promoted.” They were amazed. James confirmed it when he said “You’re a miracle worker, sis, ya know that? a freaking miracle worker.” “Not really. I just drive a hard bargain.” A few minutes later, I got text messages from the others. They had just gotten the good news. I sent out a mass text telling them to get their skinny little depraved Navy SEAL asses back to Oceana for a debreifing. James, Damon, and I hopped into the 4x4, called out apologies to Vasile and the others for having to ditch them for work, and roared down the road. It was a forty minute drive and James had the wheel, so I slipped a CD into the player. I was mortified when, instead of the AC/DC I had hoped for, the Barney theme song came blasting out at full volume. I lunged for the button, but it was already way too late for that. James and Damon were dying of laughter. Then I saw it. James had taken his eyes off the road for an instant when one of THEM stepped into the road. I jerked the wheel, slid into James’s lap and said “Keep your foot on the fucking pedal James, and keep your eyes on the road.” It felt like we hit a speed bump. I slid back into my seat and re-buckeled myself into the seat. I yanked the Barney disk out before anyone else dared to comment on my musical performance. ‘Damon, don’t freaking comment.’ I sent the thought out to Damon, who replied ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ then we pulled into Oceana, were hustled past security, and debreifed. “Cortez, Cortez, and O’Malley (Damon (sounds Irish, right?)), It is my duty as the secretary of Defense of these United States of America to inform you that the President and First Family have been kidnapped.” Dread filled my stomache. “Do we have information on their wherabouts?” “Yes, one of the First Daughters has managed to send a text to us. They are being taken to Alaska by brushplane. They seem to be headed for Norm.” “Wait. As in, THE Norm? Norm where Balto completed the race from Anchorage?” “Yes, that Norm. We need you to take a team in to clean up this mess before it goes world wide. We’d be in a state of complete Anarchy.” “How many kidnappers are we dealing with? Any known affiliations to terrorist groups? “Yes. It was a cell of at least twenty Al-Quaeda terrorists.” “Great. You screw-ups gave the First Family to an anti-American terrorist group. Anything else I need to know? Where will they be incoming from, how far out are they, and how heavily armed are they?” “They left straight from DC. They’re still less than an hour out, and we believe they may well have RPG’s, at least one A-4, and several automatic/ semi-automatic machine guns.” “This will be a job for sniper teams then. I won’t have the guys from SWCC put in danger’s way any more than necessary. I want that airport cordoned off to everyone but them.” I looked to James. “I want snipers on all of the nearby roof tops, ground teams of two in every building for a block around, and also I will be stationed on the roof of the Air Tower Control Center. Any questions?” no one piped up. “Good. Lets get this done boys.” We got suited up, I grabbed a sniper rifle and extra mag, and all of the Special Forces teams were ready to roll out. We took one of the fastest planes out there, and once on the road I gave out the team assignments. We arrived an hour before the Al-quaeda insergents would be arriving with the precious cargo. I climbed the stairs to the control tower with all of my sniper gear. I had just set the gun up so it was slightly hidden but not imapired by the satelite on the top when my teammates raidoed that they were all in place. I climbed down into the control room, put on a headset, and waited to see if the kidnappers would radio in for landing permission. Thanks to my prior dealings with hijackers, I knew how I needed to sound. I needed to sound normal, not suspicious, not up to anything at all. Then a voice came over the headset. “This is flight number 686 out of Washington international. We are requesting permission to land, over.” “Roger that flight 686 of Washinton international. Circle in from the west, permission granted. Take the far left runway, please. over.” “roger that. landing on the far left runway.” and so they landed unsuspectingly. Thats when I caught a flash of light in my peripheral vision. I flashed a thought to Damon. ‘Hold off on the attack! set up in a cover location! they’ve got at least two RPG launchers on them. Let me and the sniper boys handle this one. tell the boys you got a text message or something inaudible like that, ok?’ ‘Got it. at least two RPG’s, text message.’ I clambered up onto the roof. I made it so my target was the person closest to the president. then I saw one guy pushing and shoving the presidents daughters, so I focused in on him. He was much more likley to turn agressive. I radioed in my target, the others sighted the rest, and I gave the signal. Twenty snipers fired at once, and all twenty hit their mark. I re-focused and mowed down the last guy in a semi-automatic burst. After that, I went down to the Tarmac to check the first family for major injuries. They were A-okay, and we called the SOD and flew home.
