In Search of the Perfect French Kiss - a Sniper's Dream

Another coming of justice commenced eighteen month's ago.

In their midnight, Paris hotel rendezvous and early morning denouement, he and she had shared a universal life experience. An initial understanding of bilateral synergy had been reached. For a moment in Paris, France, they had seen International Peace through Love's eyes.

Yet, achieving a measure of international diplomacy had called for their personal separation: he to CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, she to deep field ops in Bangkok, Thailand. Reengaging the world's tyrants had demanded their complete attention and focus.

Both knew their call of the Paris wilds would not, could not go unheeded forever. Their love call to one another, for a continuing dialogue in their language of Love, would be answered, again.

And now, eighteen month's later, that time for sure, pure Love's answering was here.

***

Bryson squeezed himself up tight inside, barricading his gut to the blunt and dull cold stealing in all around him. The vapid mist roiling across the river continued to stream over him in slowly spiraling currents and into the grove behind. Diamond-edged frosts and ices crystallized on the leaves over his position and on the trunks of sand pines to his left and right.

A persistent prick of tension probed along his scalp and up and down the back of his neck, searching for an exit. His shoulders and back were stiff, numb from hours of prone immobility. Yet, Bryson's heart, spirit, and skills were easy, relaxed, and ready.

Inside his camouflage helmet, under his wool skullcap, and behind his night vision goggles, Bryson's training and instincts fused in focused anticipation. His purpose, the mission's climax, were coming to meet him: nurturing, guiding, and preparing his lethal being for release.

A tight smile warmed his lips. On the other side of the river, a slight aberration of color, a flesh and blood deviance in motion, alerted him to the arrival of his target. Wait. There were more fluctuations and movement. Three, four, six, ten. Which one?

Bryson slid the scope on his M25 .308 to his left eye in a fluid, silent glide as he shouldered his weapon. Bright, animal reds and oranges with white halos popped out of the flat, gray-green montage of vegetation. There!

Right-center, a little behind the others... Crouching, head bent forward, field phone to her left ear, pawing through a small knapsack or map case...

He looked away, shining an infrared pen light on the photograph he had impaled on his bayonet in the sand in front of him. He looked back: photograph - river ghost - photograph. It was her!

Controlling the raw surge of adrenaline, Bryson refocused: an analytical killing machine. Have to work fast.

The first three in the party already were knee-deep into the river, coming unsuspectingly straight toward him. A second group of four was at the water's edge. Numbers eight and nine had moved to her rear flanks. He'd take them out, first.

Sight, lock, hold your breath a half count, fire. Swing, sight, lock, hold, fire. Nine flew backwards in an impossible, twisting arc and disappeared. Eight somersaulted back into the murky foliage.

She continued on the radio.

Oblivious, the first group now struggled at mid-river, water nudging their chins, weapons held above their heads. Three of the second group had entered the river. The fourth lagged, squatting at the water's edge fiddling with his boot. He would be seven.

Sight, lock, hold, fire. Next.

She looked up when number seven crumpled over sideways and toppled into the muddy sand on the riverbank. She took one step forward, then another, searching the far riverbank and the dense undergrowth above.

Assessing and evaluating the evolving scene, Bryson elected to take out the far group next since they still held their weapons in threat positions. Then, he would take out the near group as they slogged up the riverbank in front of him.

The second group of three sank mindlessly into the river's depths with unspectacular splashes. Only number four seemed to realize his place in this life-and-death shooting gallery a nanosecond before his brains sprayed out, mixing with the green mist and sewage-brown river water.

Numbers three, two, and one sloshed through the last few inches of river to begin the climb they'd never finish. With three iterations of swingsightlockholdfire, the last group was gone: head shot, head shot, through the heart.

Across the river, she had remained frozen. Now, she dropped the radio, slipped the strap of the map case over her head, cinched it firmly against her breasts, and ran, full out - like a wild pony, into the river and began to swim across. With rapid, sure strokes, she was coming for him.

Bryson scanned the far bank and its dense undergrowth seventy-five yards in either direction. Nothing. No reds. No oranges. No halos.

She reached the near bank. Rising in front of him, dripping wet, her familiar scent filled his head and her perfect silhouette shimmered in his sights, just beyond his reach.

He would take her hand-to-hand. Bryson threw off his concealment, released his weapon, and sprang forward.

Speed stripping to thermals, their bodies collided and they fell together, she supine, into the moist sand. She didn't struggle, but wrapped her arms and legs around him. Their heartbeats joined and raced into each other as their heavy breathing and rhythmic murmurings rocked in concert with the deferent, gentle lapping of the water on the bank.

"I didn't know at all... (euh) if you would... understand... my message... (euh) about the... crossing," she panted.

"Your deep cover... for eighteen months... hasn't extinguished... (mmm...) the fire... of my understanding... from your first... (mmm...) morning message in Paris... that still... burns... in... (mmmm...) my soul - "

"How... could... I... miss... this... one? mmmmMMMM!"

"Oh... baby, chéri, chéri... Oui! Oui!... Oooeeeeeeeeee!"

Her release was in sync with his, even as her shrill acknowledgement was muffled by their tongues syncopated ballet.

Complete, again.

Slowing breath - both...slower, slow... 360 degree scans - clear...

An opportunity, a moment, an instant of personal sanity stolen from the harsh clutches of a global madness, and then she was slipping back into the river and he was turning toward the landing zone.

Up and down, up and down, Bryson silently crossed two low ridges to the whirring shadow on the sand flat. He climbed aboard and tossed his gear to the gunner. He pulled his M25 close, curled up against the bulkhead, and locked his arms around her map case, intended for the Israeli Hel Avir, holding present day schematics of the Natanz's centrifuges.

Mentally prepping for an 0:dark:30 debriefing, Bryson tried to power down a little and get some sleep. He closed his eyes to the squirming red and orange blobs. He closed his ears to the whump whump-whump whump of his Apache taxi ride. He ran the systems-check in his head: close down the programs, one by one...easy...easy...sliding toward sleep...

But, in Bryson's dreams, one program continued running like the universe - infinite, awesome, compelling: Elise. Where was she now, when would they have another moment in time, together, again?

Their personal mantra rewound and played loud in his head:
True international diplomacy is not the purview of flaccid, limp rhetoric and dry, impenetrable bureaucracies. Indeed, the way to international understanding is one-on-one engagement in the universal life experience.

Bryson embraced the phallic simplicity of it all - yet, without her, even his top gun was a useless artifact in a wet dream, turned drowning nightmare. With her vision smiling into his momentary melancholy, he reaffirmed that Love, as true International Peace, can only come through reciprocal symmetry.

Without Freedom, there can be no International Peace, no Love.

Tyrants require justice and their suffering Peoples are waiting.

Bryson knew the time for the righteous, terminal enlightenment of America's enemies was coming. And he knew, too, he and she would be fiery elements in the consuming, redeeming conflagration of Justice's retribution.

Reassured, Bryson was strong again and looked to the final future with Elise, together.

When Life gives you the shot, take it.

_______________

Copyright Michael K. Miller of Millennium Suites, LLC 2008