Flashpoint

Puerto Isla Lucy Karmon, still clutching the remote detonator, stared through the special fiber-optic scope at the burning meth lab below her. Pieces of the structure mushroomed into a spectacular cinder cloud, two hundred feet of it, masking the night sky. On the ground, the rebels responsible for supplying Puerto Isla with everything from black tar heroin to Jamaican sinsemilla ran for their lives. Some men, their clothes aflame, dove into a stream at the bottom of a ravine. Mesmerized, she watched the symphony of destruction opening up before her. This is where she thrived, in the middle of uproar, mayhem, a world on the brink; a world she created and controlled. It touched a chord within her, an odd inner peace, a place that she desperately craved. Her mind settled into the calm and grew still. She observed the fallout, the wind shift, the added perk that she'd taken out the van and old Pontiac Bonneville parked near the building. Mission accomplished. Target annihilated. But what could she have done better? Less fallout, perhaps. That equaled less C-4. Maybe she should have used Danubit or Semtex explosive. But she'd been correct in avoiding TNT. Too volatile and subject to the high humidity on the island. She always questioned her work. Dissect, assess, moderate and estimate: DAME. She had perfected DAME at the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women, a highly specialized college prep school for young women. Lucy could still hear Mrs. Warren, her junior year demolitions instructor, saying, "Strive for excellence. Anyone can destroy with explosives, but can you raze the target without loss of life? Can you tear down the ant hill without harming the ants? Refinement of the art, ladies, that is the key. DAME will help you not only in demolitions but in any aspect of your life. Remember the old dame well and she will always come through for you." Mrs. Warren's voice would always be a ghost in Lucy's head, one of many. A real voice piped into her ear. "Viper to Chaos, copy?" "Copy, Viper," Lucy whispered into the bone mic resting against her chin. "Nice job, Chaos. It's Fourth of July up here." Tommy Jefferson, aka Viper, spoke over the sound of chopper blades. An ex-test pilot, he could fly anything with wings. He also owned a locksmith and security business, priding himself on being the world's best safecracker. He chewed gum at the moment, his words clipped off by each chomp. "Ready for pickup in two, over." "Roger that." She heard the Mojave helicopter pass overhead as she stuffed the detonator into a pocket of her ghillie suit and began running toward a grove of coffee bushes. "Madonna, you copy?" she asked, watching a rabbit she'd flushed dart out in front of her, turn and run off into the night. "Copy, Chaos. Roger that. By the way, kick-ass job. Wish I had a burger to grill." Betsy LaFave's thick Georgia accent came through loud and clear. Betsy, a top-notch sniper and black belt, had taken up a position on a higher elevation of the mountain. Lucy wouldn't want anyone else covering her back. Like her, Betsy was ex-army, special ops. They had both left at the same time for different reasons, Lucy's much more tragic. Lucy ran as she spoke, her voice breathy as she called the last person in the team. "Chaos to Dragon, copy?" "Copy, Chaos." Cao Sun Tzu, the fourth member of the team, answered her, his Chinese inflection sometimes hard to follow. He was a defector from the People's Republic's Central Security Regiment Unit. There wasn't a computer Cao couldn't mine, or a code he couldn't scramble. That he was a master of disguise and dabbled in inventing new electronic devices didn't hurt, either. "That burger might get a little burned, over." "Not for me," Betsy said. "I like my meat well done, over." "Give me a big steak, baked potato and a Corona Light the size of a Jeep, over," Lucy said, feeling the tension that always built in her gut with each assignment, still there, stHall, Connie is the author of 'Flashpoint', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373389803 and ISBN 0373389809.