The target was solitary yet shadowed by the setting sun. So long as he didn't move toward the building, I would have a clear shot. He was talking with two others and it didn't look as though their conversation, as heated at it was, was going to end any time soon.

I took a long, slow breath and gently put pressure on the trigger of my rifle as I lined up the cross-hairs of the scope on the space just between the man's eyes. My heart thudded loudly in my chest. I didn't like my job very much at this moment. Killing in war, or in self-defense was one thing, but hiding on a roof top like some sneaky hit man was close to being criminal.

I swallowed hard. I didn't want to do this, even if the target was the leader of a wasteland terrorist group. I felt like a coward and that didn't sit too well with me. Never in my life had I been a coward. Sure, I was afraid of a lot of things, but I never backed down and I didn't hide from my enemies.

"Abort . . . I repeat . . . abort the mission."

The voice in my ear I recognized as belonging to my mission commander, Captain Judge Linden. I blew out a long breath, and just as I did an involuntary flinch hit my shoulder. No one heard the shot but everyone saw the man drop.

____________________________________________________

The bar was smokey, crowded, and loud. I could barely hear the music through the drum of voices that surrounded me. But, it was better than being on the top of a roof all by myself. Here, at least, no one really cared about my past or any mistakes I'd made in my life. Here, I could forget a little easier.

After I took a swallow of my drink, I picked up my cigarette and took a long draw. Reflection sucked. I hated remembering that I screwed up. And, today, of all days, I didn't really have much of a choice but to remember. I remembered that although I wasn't penalized for killing a man, I was stripped of my rank, my medals, and of my career. I was turned into an example for all the others that would come after me. "Don't pull a Kincaid. If you have to itch, scratch it after the mission."

They thought I had flinched because of an itch. As many times as I went over what happened in my head, I don't ever remember itching. If anything, the flinch was caused from spending so much time in one position.

But, why should I sit here and hit myself over the head with it? It was over and done with. The past was gone. There was nothing I could do to change it, if I wanted to. I couldn't get it out of my head because my career was the one thing in life I had actually cherished. I had very few choices when I was growing up. Live and possibly die on the streets, or join the military. Well, gee, maybe I picked the wrong one. Yea, and hell is a tropical island.

Neither of my choices were what I had really wanted out of life. Truth be told, if I had my life to do over, with more resources, I probably would have chosen to fall in love, get married, and have babies. But, that option wasn't open for me. Not only was I lacking in suitors, I didn't count myself as one of the beautiful people. I was also picky. I didn't want just any old guy that happened my way. The man had to be good-looking, successful, and a hard worker. Money was a plus, but that was pushing more into fantasy than reality. Well, if dreams were real, they wouldn't happen when we were sleeping. And I never would have become a criminal apprehension specialist for the military.

Although, I had been kicked out of the military, I was still on active status for the next three years. What that meant was that if they had a particularly nasty job that they didn't want their "real" soldiers dirtying their hand with, they called me, or one of the others that shared my type of training. Normally, they wouldn't even have called me in to do the job. I was a female. Even though that didn't mean much if you were still in the service, it meant a hell of a lot if you were like me, kicked out for screwing up. The "peacemaker" system wasn't too keen on letting women go into the wasteland to do a job. They felt that if a woman screwed up badly enough to get booted out of the military, it meant that they would only screw up on the outside.

I didn't know why I got the call to meet with the "peacemaker" leader at the bar. If they were going to send me on a job, they didn't tell me anything about what it was I was going to be doing. Just a brief, one-sided, conversation telling me where to go, what time to be there, and not to be late. More than likely, I was going to be doing a little spy work on the inside of a wasteland gang, or something along that line. Boring work. Over the course of the last six months, I had pulled two other jobs just like it. Not my idea of a picnic at all, but it paid the bills and kept me busy.

I shook my head slightly as a chuckle popped out of my throat. I didn't even know who I was supposed to be meeting here. If the "peacemakers" had a photo of me from my military days, they would not be looking for the person I was now. I changed a lot during the last six months. Where I used to have shoulder length, light brown hair, I now sported something close to a buzz-cut hair style and it was bleached nearly white. And, I didn't dress as military-straight as I used to. Nowadays, I pretty much wore baggy, dirt-stained jeans, T-shirts, and my sturdy, calf-high, work boots. Over that, I usually wore a grungy trench coat. No, they would be looking for the wrong person, indeed.

"You're late, Kincaid, and you're in the wrong booth."

I was surprised. I looked up and saw a man that probably came from the land of giants. He was at least six and a half feet tall, with shoulders so wide that he probably had trouble getting through doorways, wide doorways at that. And muscles that were built from hard work, and lots of it. Shoulder length, dark brown hair framed a face that could, and probably did, cause any heterosexual female to drop everything just to look at him. He was wearing clothing that would fit in just about any wasteland town, black leather pants, black biker boots, a skin tight T-shirt, and a long, black leather trench coat. If he wasn't the man of my childhood dreams, than I didn't know who was.

I smashed out my cigarette and blew the smoke toward him nonchalantly. I didn't want him to get the impression that I was one of those love struck fools that he was probably used to following him around. I waved him toward the seat across from me.

"It's hard to get a seat in here," I said, "All you have to do is have a look around to see that. Your booth was already taken by a bunch of bruisers, which I really didn't care to mess with tonight. And, I am not late. I've been here for an hour already. You're the one who is late. Who are you, by the way?"

Looking like he would rather be somewhere other than here, he sat down and gave me the quick once-over look. "You're a hard person to track down," he said, seeming to avoid my question. "Your photo isn't up to date and you change address' like most people change clothes."

"I'm in the system," I said, "All you have to do is check. I just put in my new address last week. Are you going to tell me who you are, or am I going to have to assume you're just some stranger who happens to know my name? If that's the case, then you can leave right now. I'm not in the habit of talking to strangers."

The man's face was stone, devoid of expression. Even with all his good looks, I didn't believe that he had smiled much in his life. He reached into his pocked and pulled out a small piece of paper. As he held it toward me, he said, "Meet me at this location at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I will give you the details then. And do me a favor, while you're at it. Drop the attitude. It doesn't work with me, and it won't work where you are going."

I grabbed the paper, noticing that it was a rough sketch of a map as I shoved it into my coat pocket. I gave him a lazy look and said, "I don't do favors for strangers, either. At least tell me your name."

"Anthony Montrose." Then he got up and walked away.

_________________________________________________

After packing my gear, which consisted of a few changes of clothes, two 9mm hand guns, and three razor-sharp knives, I got into my black jeep and drove to where I was supposed to meet Anthony Montrose. While I was driving, I had on a smile that would make anyone curious about what devious thoughts were running through my head. Deliberately planning to give Montrose a bad impression, I made sure that I was a good forty-five minutes late.

As planned, he was furious. Parked in an abandoned warehouse, a good distance from town, Montrose leaned up against the hood of his pick-up truck. His face was still stone, but a bit of color creeping up his neck, toward his cheeks, gave his emotions away. I pulled up along the side of his truck and got out.

"Do you always make a habit of being late, Kincaid?" He stood up to his full height and faced me. "Fear is a good thing," I thought, as I took one step back from Montrose' intimidating presence.

"I forgot to set my alarm," I replied, "You can always just fire me. So, what's the mission?"

Montrose spent the next hour going over details that would curl the hair on any hard core military man. I felt like the man was trying to make a movie than give me an overview of a wasteland mission. The only thing I really got out of it was that the job I was going on wasn't going to be my typical run of the mill spy mission. I was actually going to be going deep undercover to expose a black market/drug ring operation and apprehend the leaders when there was sufficient proof that their products were being shipped to the governed sectors. I would be living among some of the most vile criminals the wasteland had and I would be there for at least six months. According to Montrose, I would not only be collecting data, I would have to actually become one of them. I wouldn't have to necessarily do drugs or any of that, but if a situation called for me to have to kill or to have sex with someone, I was obligated to do it for the success of the mission. No one, except for Montrose, would know who I was. And, although I would be by his side most of the time, there would come times where I would have to behave above and beyond the call of duty, so to speak.

"I'm not going to fuck anybody just to pretend that I am one of them, Montrose," I said, "I can do that just fine without it. Killing someone, well that kind of goes along with the work, don't you think?"

I could see that it was easy getting a rise out of Montrose. With a loud growl, he said, "Don't you think that it would look a little strange if you are the only chick there that isn't getting laid? I'm not saying you have to, Kincaid, all I am saying is that the situation may come up, and if it does, you should take advantage of it. And as far as killing someone goes, you just might end up having to kill one of our own men. Where we are going, there are only two rules to life, kill or be killed. You got it?"

Yea, I got it. I rolled my eyes and let out a huff. "What about names?" I asked. "Anything special I need to memorize before we get there?"

"Keep your own name," he said. "My people, the criminal type mind you, think that I am picking up a friend from my past. They already know your name. Speaking of which, your past is going to be pretty sketchy. What they think is that you and I were in the military together and that you wanted to stake your own little piece of the action, which I am providing for you. Basically, I am going to be training you on what goes on with the business. Most of them will be wary of you until after you have been there a while and prove that you're not the law. If anything goes wrong, I won't be there to protect you. I can't let you ruin my cover."

"And they will be expecting me to prove that I'm not the law?" I asked. "How am I supposed to do that?"

Montrose shrugged. "That is up to you to decide," he said. "I've been working the ring for almost two years now. Just to get the trust from the head man, Jack Vance, I probably bashed in about a hundred heads and even then it took a lot of time. Don't worry. Despite the reason you were kicked out of the service, you have an outstanding record. I'm confident that you can pull it off. Look at what you've done in such a short time already. I hardly recognized you from your photo. You do not look as though you were a criminal apprehension specialist just six months ago."

I was shocked. Praise from a man who, just yesterday, warned me to keep my attitude in check. I couldn't tell if he liked me, judging by the compliment, or if he hated me, judging by the hard-as-stone look on his face.

__________________________________________________

I followed Montrose, in my vehicle, for the two-day drive into the wasteland. Eventually we came upon a city that looked as though it had seen its fair share of the wars. I didn't think I could see a building that had not been shattered and ruined by bullets and artillery. Although there weren't a lot of people around, those that I did see looked dangerous. I knew I couldn't back out of the job now, but for a moment, that was all I wanted to do. I definitely wasn't ready to put the next year of my life into the hands of men that would kill me just for the hell of it.

Keeping close to Montrose, I followed him into what was probably an old warehouse. We parked next to each other and then we both got out of our vehicles at the same time. I walked up to him, my duffle bag slung over one shoulder, and said, "If I die here, Montrose, I promise that I will be coming back to haunt you for the rest of your life."

Montrose gave me a light chuckle. "I'll worry about that when it happens. For now, you just stick by me and let everything fall into place."

"Do me a favor," I said, nervously, "If I get hurt, too hurt to defend myself, put a bullet in my brain. I do not want any of these people thinking that they can do whatever they want with me. You got it?"

"When the time comes for you to prove yourself, you won't have to worry about anybody hurting you," he said, "Just do what you were trained to do, Kincaid, kick ass."

I walked with Montrose across the warehouse. As we reached a set of doors, they were thrown open and a half a dozen armed men walked through, weapons aimed at our heads. My heart lodged itself into my throat as my stomach twisted painfully in my gut. Here it is, I thought, time to die.

"Vance has been waiting for you, Montrose," one guy with a goatee said, "He said that you were supposed to be back in town yesterday. He's pissed off. Is this the friend you said would be coming back with you?"

Mr. Goatee had a bald head and stood about two inches shorter than my 5'10" height. Stocky and short as he was, I knew that he wasn't one of those that took any kind of shit.

"Jojo, this is Raine Kincaid," Montrose said, "Kincaid, this is my right-hand man, Jojo Montoya."

Jojo gave me some sort of nod and then he held his hand out for me to shake. "Montrose didn't tell us you would be so damn tall."

I decided to play the strong, silent type. I gave Jojo's hand a look of contempt and then let out a huff. "I don't touch people I don't know," I said with a mild tone.