Silk Assassin: Femme Fatale Series, #1

PROLOGUE

Lieutenant Colonel J.R. Elliot, sat at her desk with the screen of her laptop open. She'd used every dirty, underhanded tactic that she had in her little bag of tricks to get to where she could finally reach her goals, and it had taken her nearly twenty years to get to here. Red tape and bureaucratic bullshit had kept her hands tied every step of the way. It was all just pissing competitions and politics.

After a lot of persistence and bloody hard work, she now owned some of the biggest brass kahunas in the military world. Including Major Jason Wilcox, one of the lead training coordinators of the Australian Commandos testing program.

J.R was privy to top secret information, thanks to her current station within the Australian Defence Force, and to a couple of career breaking mistakes on the major’s behalf. Now he owed her. Big time. She smiled to herself as the possible twenty-five female trainees fronted up along with the one hundred and seventy-five male candidates. She’d be watching closely on her laptop, as the crème de la crème were being put through the stringent testing regime.

God, she was so sick of all the higher ranks being filled with overzealous pussies. Men crying out that if women were put on the front lines in combat, it would only result in more casualties for the male officers. What a crock of shit! she thought. As far as she was concerned, a uniform didn't have a gender, and neither did a weapon and if the men couldn’t keep their mind on the job instead of their dicks, especially when in combat, it was them that shouldn’t be there. Someone else had once gotten into an argument with her about this very issue. He'd bitten off more than he could chew, expressing his beliefs to her. His stance on it was that women couldn't have relations without getting emotionally involved. J.R put forth a comment that rocked his world, never underestimate a woman on a mission. In her experience, women were much like the praying mantis, they could disassociate from their emotions long enough to have a moment of shared intimacy right before they dealt the fatal blow, tearing their lovers heads clean off their sanctimonious shoulders. Once the mission is over, they could quite easily go home and feed the kids as if it was just another day at the office. The thing is that women were actually better at it than most men. Therefore they didn't get caught near as often. Just because there are less female serial killers locked up in prison cells, doesn't necessarily mean there are less of them out in the community. It merely indicates they're smart enough not to get caught.

As it turned out, that same man later discovered that his own wife had been having an affair, and it had been going on for several years and he never for one moment suspected her infidelity.

It was that same tactic she used to disassociate from the drama, shut off all emotions and that’s what made her far more dangerous than any of her male counterparts. The only thing that could be more deadly would be a mother protecting her young.

She was still in peak condition for her age and vigorously maintained her fitness to the extent that she'd passed the Special Forces testing twice in the last twenty years. JR had foregone marriage and having any children for the sake of her career.

Her father had served twenty-one years in the army. He'd done Borneo as well as two tours in Vietnam. He'd made a point of trying to deter her from enlisting, but it was his attitude towards women in the forces which were old-school biased bullshit that made her even more determined to enlist and prove her father wrong. Two of her uncles had been in the SAS, one of them died before she was even born and the other had retired with his readymade family in South Australia. One of his fellow soldiers had made him promise to take care of his wife and kids if anything were to ever happen to him. After a commissioned assignment went bad, he returned to keep his promise to his friend. Two years later they’d fallen in love, gotten married and had a child of their own.

J. R had disconnected from all of her family the day she’d enlisted, all except for her mother. She wasn't sure if it was because of her father’s beliefs and stance on the subject, or the prospects that she may tarnish his good name, but she knew she could always count on her mother being on her side, and she was, right up until the day she died.

With a sigh, J.R checked her watch. The recruits were six hours into their testing, and three percent of the candidates had already dropped out. There was a glint in her eyes as she watched the small group of women, still keeping pace with the men. She understood their drive it was one born from being exactly where those select few were right now - hurting. At this stage it would even be a bother to breathe, muscles would be aching and begging them to surrender and quit. The lactic acid in their body’s tempting them to relinquish.

She had two stacks of files in front of her, the small pile on the right, however, were the ones that she was particularly interested in seeing succeed. There was a good conglomerate of skills amongst them, but generally, they were all-rounders, flexible. Although they did each, have their own little specialties.

Her eyes fell to the file labeled ‘Officer Lisa Marie Welch,’ a Spitfire who enjoyed the art of blowing things up. Explosives were her weakness. To her, the 'Boom-Boom' was an adrenalin rush like no other. It got her blood pumping and put the twinkle in her eyes. Not unlike a diamond ring would for your average debutant attending her first dance. She sat the file to the side and opened the next. If this candidate made it through the course successfully, she would be snapped up immediately for the ‘Silks’ project.

Her office phone rang, and out of habit, she answered it on the second ring. It had come through on her direct line as it was after hours and the rest of her staff had already left for the day.

Lieutenant Colonel Elliot speaking.

Codename: GATEKEEPER. Are you alone?

She listened intently then answered, Yes General, however, I don’t know if this line is secure.

Again the voice of the General sounded through the line, Did you receive the information I sent you?

Yes General, I'm processing the data as we speak. Nobody needed to know about the extra measures she'd taken to ensure her selections were unquestionable.

Are you sure you can be mission ready within six weeks?

Yes General. I believe I will have the selection completed by the end of next week.

She shuffled through the left stack and removed the file third down. The young woman whose name matched the file had just fainted and was now being attended to by medical staff. Her records were pushed to the failed pile.

This is my career and reputation on the line, failure is not an option.

Yes General I understand, and I don’t plan to. I’ll keep you up to date with their progress. At this stage, they appear to be handling things just as well as any of the men are. Goodnight Ma’am. She hung up and resumed her scrutiny of the information contained in the service records for each of the female candidates.

Major Wilcox was turning out to be quite skilled at being in the right position at the right time for her to better observe them as they ran the course. The camera discreetly pinned to his jacket was currently facing another one of her ‘silks.’ Her own fondness for rifles drawing her attention to Hawkeye, knowing the extreme control required to be an A-Grade sniper.

J.R shifted closer to the screen holding her breath. She was unsure whether it was because she was watching such an elite group of women or the sense of knowing the accomplishment of successfully completing the course. Bulls-eye. She whispered to herself after Hawkeye fired her weapon.

With a sigh, she removed another file from her desk and tossed it into the failed pile when another female dropped to her knee from exhaustion. She watched as the medics help the woman to stand and one of them made a slicing motion across his throat, she shoved herself away from their hold and staggered off. Refusing any help to leave the field.

J.R. resumed watching ‘Razor,’ Wendy Howard as she lifted her rifle to her shoulder and fired off several rounds, every one of them hitting her target before dropping to her stomach to commando crawl under and through the barbwire trenches. When Razor reached the other end, she pulled herself out and retrieved her target. J.R could tell that she was a smartass, just by the smiley face she’d shot into the silhouette. Without pausing to admire her handiwork, she folded it up and thrust it into one of her pockets, then moved onto the next obstacle in the course. She was about to enter the rescue component.

All candidates were required to enter a secured location and liberate a dummy body, with the dead weight of an unconscious person. Every dummy was loaded with a hundred and eighty pounds. By this stage her entire system was screaming ‘Fuck Off.’ It was generally the segment that eliminated a high percentage of the male applicants. Usually culling the candidates back to less than half in numbers, but Razor was not about to give up now. She had a point to make, and that’s exactly what she planned to do.

CHAPTER 1

Lisa-Marie (Spitfire) Welch, chalked up the end of her pool cue, then sauntered around the table to make the break. Two balls sank into the bottom corner pockets, the thirteen and the eleven.

Snap! I like big balls, and I cannot lie. She sang and high-fived Wendy (Razor) Howard.

They studied the layout as they shot pool with a couple of ugly ass men. Razor gagged a little in the back of her throat, knowing that both of the men were intently watching Lisa’s ass as she bent over to line up the nine ball with the center pocket. One by one she sank all of her seven, then poised to drop the eight ball. Wendy winked at Lisa from the other side of the table, letting her know that it was time for them to leave. They had all the Intel they needed. The corner of Lisa’s lip curled into a smirk as the white ball gently kissed the black, and it rolled along the cushion to disappear into the top right-hand pocket. She handed her stick over to the angry looking men, blew them a kiss, caught it in her hand and slapped her ass in a derogatory manner.

Why you little bitch. Handlebars snarled.

Lisa raised an eyebrow at the gringo with the El Chapo mustache. You have no idea la Cucaracha.

Don’t do it, man. She ain’t worth it. Baldy put a hand on his partner’s chest, shaking his head.

Wendy glanced around the room to ascertain if there were any other eyes trained on them. The bartender lowered his stare to the glass he was cleaning. Obviously, he wasn’t interested in getting involved. Lisa put one hand