2
Waves broke in the night. The cool predawn wind flagged the motel's curtains. Listening to the surf and the distant sounds of the Pacific Coast Highway, Carl Lyons held Flor Trujillo.
For a few minutes of peace, Lyons floated in the soft darkness of ecstasy, without thought, without memory, without horror or rage. Conscious only of sensation, he heard his breathing and Flor's breathing and the waves breaking on Malibu Beach in one sound, as if the darkness outside of him and the darkness within breathed in one rhythm.
The sensation flowered and became a mosaic of perceptions: the warmth of Flor's thigh against his face, the throb of her femoral artery, the caress of her hand on his leg. He felt the breeze on his sweat.
Sensations without thought. Sensations defining the form of his body, where his body touched Flor, where his body touched the wadded and tangled sheets of the bed, where the night wind touched him. For minutes, he existed only as a form defined by sensations.
Then he remembered their pleasure. The sweat-slick flesh of Flor's thighs, his fingers clawing into her flesh, her muscles snapping taut like steel cables as she spasmed in ecstasy, her cries and gasps, his breathing locked with hers. The rhythm and tempo had intoxicated them, her arms gripping him, pulling him against her as if urging him to plunge deeper into her, to thrust deep into the center of her self, her hands jerking him against her, and then his climax.
Her tongue touched him again, the spin of her tongue stopping his memories. He groaned and moved in the bed. "Oh… no. Can't."
" Let's make it number five."
"Five?"
"Four so far."
"Impossible…"
"What?"
"This is amazing."
"We're just decharging. It's two months since that time in Washington."
Lyons thought back. Washington. Flor had flown into Dulles and called him at Stony Man. They had an evening and most of the night before his pager buzzed with a call from Stony Man. He flew to Guatemala, she flew to Colombia. He traveled as a soldier, she as a courier. They both fought. He felt his identity returning, the fears and hatreds and horrible, shuddering memories rushing into the pleasure-drained void of his mind, like a flight of bats crowding through the eye sockets of a skull.
"Please don't talk."
"Who wants to talk?" Her legs circled him. She locked her ankles behind him. He smelled the fragrance of her hair. The bed began to squeak and rock. Once again he started to slam into her.
Laughing, she responded to his violence with slow, sensuous writhing of her hips. But after a minute of his body slamming her, she whispered, "Easy. Easy. Slow down. Easy."
He continued slamming her. She told him, "Stop it. Slow down, you're hurting me."
Grabbing her hips in his hands, he continued, not seeking to give or gain but only desperately wanting unconsciousness.
Flor defended herself. Grasping his head in both hands, she pressed her sharp thumbnails against his closed eyes. She put only slight pressure against the eyelids as she warned him, "Stop now!"
Lyons threw himself aside, twisting his face away from the knives of her thumbnails, reflexively straightarming Flor away to a safe distance. His breath came in gasps as he leaned against the headboard.
A siren screamed from the highway, the sound rising and falling, coming closer. The years of service with the LAPD left him with the habit of listening for the identity of the vehicle. Only an ambulance, surely, taking an accident casualty to the hospital?
Or maybe a sheriff's black-and-white racing to the rescue of a fellow officer? Did an officer at this moment, at this precise moment, hold his guts with one hand while he radioed for help? If Lyons had a scanner he would know. Maybe he could help somehow...
"What's wrong? What's going on with you?" Flor said. "One minute you're a lover and the next, you're… you're berserk."
"Nothing. I just got too rough. I'm sorry."
"No, Carl. I don't mean just now. I mean all night. This afternoon. You're here, then you're not. You're someplace else. You see things. Your face goes hard, like you're ready to attack something. Someone."
"Me? Do that?" He forced a laugh.
"Sometimes you are a scary guy."
Lyons laughed at the understatement. His Able Team partners — Rosario Blancanales and Gadgets Schwarz — also thought of him as a scary guy. "You are five different kinds of scary, scary dude" to quote both Gadgets and the founder of Able Team, Mack Bolan.
"I am," he finally told her, laughing as if he joked. "I am a very scary guy. I even scare myself."
"You may be, but you're a decent man first. A good man. You're easy to like. I liked you before I even really met you. I ever tell you that?"
"What? You don't know anything about me. Not what I do, not who I am or was..."
"Yes, I do. That time in Bolivia. When the Justice Department wanted me to help create an identity for your team. I read your file. And your partners' files. And I wouldn't have you three anywhere near me until I knew everything I could. Simple little things like information and common sense keep me alive. I read and reread your file. In fact, I knew all about you before you even saw me."
"Is that why you came on to me on the yacht? I mean, that was out of the blue."
"Why? I thought you'd be a good risk for an affair. And it worked out."
Lyons laughed. "I feel like a mail-order bride. Dude by dossier. You must have good recommendations. Why'd they let you in on all that information?"
"Why not? I needed to judge your character. Your commander recognized that."
"What about the rest of it?"
"What?"
"The operations. The missions. What did you think?"
"I didn't get that. I only got your personal files. Nothing about..."
"Oh. Then you don't know."
"I can guess. Don't forget the time in Miami with your Colonel Phoenix and that Cuban Romeo."
"I heard about it," Lyons nodded. "All you did was drive the car..."
"What? They said that? I just drove the car? I had to kill two men in Miami, before we even went to the camp. So I just drove the car? That's like saying the kamikaze just flew the plane."
"I'm joking." Lyons rolled in the bed and held her. "They told me all about it. Very extreme."
"Was it?"
"You tell me. You were there. I only heard the stories."
"I mean, was that mission extreme? Or is that what you do all the time?"
Lyons sat up again. He reached out for one of the beers beside the bed. He twisted off the cap and gulped. Foam ran down his face and into his chest hair.
Flor's hand massaged the cold foam over his chest and shoulder. Her fingers traced the rope-like scar where a 7.62 NATO slug had touched his side, breaking ribs and making him cough blood for weeks. Her fingers found other scars where fire or knives or shrapnel had marked his body.
"You don't get scars like these working in an office."
"I used to be a cop. They'd dispatch us to break up a family fight, and the family would call a truce long enough to beat us half to death."
"This scar on your arm is new." She touched his left arm where the scabs and discoloration had finally disappeared after months of healing. A crescent-moon scar remained from a wound caused, absurd as it seemed, by a rearview mirror thrown by the impact of a machine-gun slug. The mirror had almost broken his arm.
She traced the new-moon welt with a finger. "Where'd you get it?"