Alexa - Legionnaire : Training an Assassin: Prequel to Alexa - The Series (9 page)

It had been another excruciating session. Men were falling like targets on the shooting range. Natalie had been spraying herself clean with a garden hose, trying to get rid of the caked mud on her boots and uniform. She was three months into her training, another month to go before being accepted as a Legionnaire, and it felt like the physical torture was intensifying on a daily basis. As she turned to leave, she noticed Pascoe standing against the fence, leering at her, scratching his balls.
 

“Hey, mademoiselle, I love dirty women.”
 

He was a short, tattooed Italian with shifty eyes topped with a unibrow. People said he joined the Legion to get away from the cops. He had apparently murdered his fiancée.
 

“I don’t have time for this, Pascoe. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.” She turned around, planning to ignore the loathsome dick. “Leave me alone.”

Pascoe ambled closer and put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her around to face him. “I’m only saying, if you want a good time, you only need to ask.” He cupped his sack. “Pascoe has been known to cause many a lady to die of pleasure.”
 

Natalie turned her back on him again. “Only dictators and schizophrenics talk about themselves in third person.”
 

He grabbed her neck from behind. His other hand fondled her breasts. He was quick.

“Don’t get smart with me, mademoiselle. You might end up in a—what do you say?—a compromising situation.”
 

“Let . . . go . . . of me,” Natalie hissed through clenched teeth, trying to pry his arm loose. He stank of onions and sweat.

“Oh, but I can think of so many nice things to do with you, mademoiselle. No one will care.” He breathed into her ear, touching it with his lips. “You shouldn’t be here, you little whore. You’re out of your depth, bad for morale.” Pascoe slid his hand down her stomach and undid her belt. “Everyone will thank me for breaking your scrawny little neck, dispatching the little temptress to the choir in the sky.”

She gasped as he tightened his grip around her neck.
 

She swallowed hard, stomping her heel down in the general direction of his foot, connecting on her third try. His grip slackened as he yelled out in pain, which gave her enough leverage to smack her head back into his nose. He let her go and clutched his bleeding face as she spun around to face him.
 

She finished him off with a kick to the groin. He crumbled into a pitiful, moaning heap.
 

She left him convulsing in pain. She was a big girl and she had expected this to happen sooner or later.

“You watch your back, bitch,” Pascoe shouted as she marched away.

CHAPTER THREE

Becky22, Zach’s scouting program had lost all traces of his daughter. Total communications blackout. Natalie Bryden, AKA Rebecca Cohen, had disappeared.

It hadn’t stopped searching though. The botnet was more than three million computers strong, and analyzing vast amounts of data took a fraction of a second to process. After four months it found a positive match. A voice message to a certain General Alain Laiveaux, division head of the French Foreign Legion, Geneva. It said:

“Hi, General, this is Dessetaux from Home Affairs. Natalie Bryden’s identity has been discontinued. French citizenship is confirmed, her new persona is Alexa Guerra. I’ll mail you the background. Has she sworn the oath yet?” The voice went silent and papers shuffled in the background. “OK, I’ll need the paperwork from your side please. I’ll mail you the passport; it should arrive in two weeks or so. Good luck, and we’ll talk soon.”

A day before her fourth month in the Legion, Natalie was summoned to Laiveaux’s office. She stood briefly in front of his office door, checking her uniform and composing herself. She rapped her knuckles on the door.
 

“In,” Laiveaux commanded in his gravelly voice.
 

She stepped inside, stood straight, then saluted. He looked up at her, smiling, gesturing towards a chair.

“General?” she asked when seated.

The tall man studied her with his piercing grey eyes. “Bruce sends his regards. I’ve been updating him with your progress, and I must say, we are impressed. You are making us proud, my girl. Your dad would have been proud as well.”

Immense relief surged through Natalie. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. “Thank you, General,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

The man nodded then stood up. He paced the room, his crop stuck into his armpit and his hands behind his back. “Tomorrow you will be receiving your white Kepi and will be officially introduced as a member of the French Foreign Legion.” He turned to her, studying her face with those intense grey eyes. He made her nervous.

“Thank you, General. Thank you so much,” she stammered. Had it been four months? She couldn’t recall. The past couple of months were a blur.

Laiveaux strode to a metal filing cabinet, pulled open a drawer, and removed a sheet of paper. He placed it on the desk and pushed it towards Natalie. It looked like a certificate of some kind.
 

“Your new identity,” Laiveaux said.

She held the certificate, scanning the contents. It was a temporary traveling permit. It afforded the bearer—Alexa Guerra—the protection of the French government as a permanent citizen of the Republic of France. Her photo was affixed to the top right-hand corner.

“Your passport will arrive in two weeks' time,” Laiveaux said.

Natalie blinked her eyes. She looked at Laiveaux then back at the certificate and sobbed as all the pent-up emotion drained from her body. Shut up, control yourself. She had been working toward this for months, and now she held the reward in her hands.
 

Laiveaux held out his arms. She jumped up and ran towards him and was comforted by a fatherly hug, crying against his chest.

“Well done, my girl, well done. You’ve made it,” he whispered, patting her back.

He held her shoulders at arms-length in front of him. “But that’s not all.”

She looked up at him, confused, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Excuse me, General?”

Laiveaux removed an epaulet from his top pocket and stuck out his hand.
 

“Congratulations, Lieutenant,” he said and handed her the badge. She took it from him and shook his hand, overawed.

“You deserve it. We all agree.”

Natalie stared at the rank. She couldn’t take her eyes off of it.

“Report for the graduation ceremony at 0700, sharp. You are dismissed, Lieutenant.”
 

Natalie looked at Laiveaux and back at the epaulet, shaking her head. She beamed at Laiveaux and saluted smartly. “General,” she said and turned on her heel and exited his office.
 

Once she closed the door, she shimmied a jig and silently screamed in jubilation.

Alexa bolted upright in bed as someone rapped on the door. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and fumbled for her watch. The luminous dials indicated close to two in the morning.
 

“What’s going on?” she shouted.

The drill sergeant opened the door and stuck his head inside the room. “We urgently need you on the parade ground, Lieutenant,” he said and softly closed the door.

Alexa jumped out of bed, pulled on her pants, and hurried outside, grabbing her jacket and Kepi from the back of a chair as she went.

The entire division had assembled on the parade ground. Bright lights shone from the encampment walls, casting eerie shadows around the troops. Steamy breaths hung above the bodies like a fog. Alexa rubbed her arms and fell in with her platoon.

The drill sergeant nodded at Laiveaux, who was standing in front of the soldiers on a low platform. Laiveaux lifted a voice amplifier to his mouth and spoke.

“A Legionnaire has been found dead tonight, beaten to death on the obstacle course.” He kept quiet and scanned their faces. “If anyone has any information regarding his murder, please step forward.”

A murmur swept through the assembled troops. Someone lifted his hand in a fist.

“Yes, Montpellier?” Laiveaux asked.

“Who was it, General?” the soldier asked, standing to attention.

“Pascoe. Benedict Pascoe.”
 

The murmur grew louder. A troop sniggered behind her.

“Anyone?” Laiveaux asked again.
 

The men settled down and became silent.

“In that case, your session will begin three hours early.” Laiveaux turned around with a wave of his hand and tossed the amplifier to the drill sergeant.

“Attention,” the sergeant shouted. In unison, the troops snapped to attention, bringing their heels down with a thud.

“The first one who throws up misses two meals,” the sergeant growled. “Five miles and then on to course six.”

Alexa sighed as she trundled to the obstacle course. She had a long day ahead of her.

French Foreign League Headquarters

Aubagne, France

Alexa marched around the parade ground with the remaining thirty-eight troops who had completed the training with her. They stopped in front of Laiveaux, thudded their right boots down in unison, then saluted.

He saluted back. “At ease, lady and gentlemen,” he said, winking at Alexa. She smiled back.

He called them forward one by one, handing them their braided epaulets and white Kepis. Alexa’s name was called last. She marched forward and saluted. Laiveaux simply stood there, smiling. He took her shoulders and kissed her, once on each cheek, then handed her the epaulet and Kepi. “I never thought I would see this day, Miss Guerra.”
 

She smiled. “Didn’t think I had it in me, General?”

He pursed his lips, intense grey eyes assessing her. “You are an astonishing young lady.”
 

“What happens next, General?” she stammered, unable to think of anything else to say.

He gazed at her for a moment longer then smiled. “I’m going to fast-track your career, Lieutenant.”

“General?”

“I’ll be sending you to Greece, parabatallions. You’re going to learn how to jump out of planes, my girl.”

Alexa’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t know what to say; her heart was beating in her throat. She had always wanted to skydive. And it was damn near impossible being selected for this elite unit. “Thanks, thank you so much, General.” Control yourself, dammit. He is a normal man, not a god.

He saluted. “Just be careful, my girl.”

She nodded then saluted smartly. “I’ll try, General.”

She turned towards the amazed faces of her fellow troops. Screw protocol, she thought as she fist-pumped the air.

Gibraltar, Spain

Nine Months Later

Alexa glanced up as Reg Voelkner greeted her. “Mind if I sit?” he asked, holding onto Alexa’s chair as he tried to steady himself against the rocking motion of the train.
 

“Sure,” she said folding the newspaper and pushing her dishes aside.

“You excited?” he asked.

She nodded. The eight months at the parabatallion unit felt like they were over in the blink of an eye. She had used every opportunity she could to get into the sky, completing more than three hundred jumps, and had graduated top of her class. She was sorry to go, but Laiveaux had decided he wanted her to learn to dive. He was truly putting her career on fast forward.
 

“Wish I could have done another couple of jumps, though.”

“You’d never jump out of another plane in your life if it depended on the general,” Voelkner said with a chuckle.

She laughed. She stretched her arms then massaged her leg muscles. The fitness regime had intensified. If she thought they would let off on the physical training, she was sorely mistaken. The Legion liked to keep their troops trained and battle-ready. They believed a bored troop would get into trouble, so they kept them in a permanent state of fatigue.
 

She smiled and popped a piece of toast in her mouth. “Enough about me, are you excited to join the French Marine Commandos?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

She frowned. “What do you mean, it’s an honor to be chosen—“

“I didn’t exactly volunteer, Lieutenant.”

“What?”

“Laiveaux commanded me to go.”

“Laiveaux, why?”

He sighed. “He said I needed to keep an eye on you. He was afraid you may get hurt or something.”

“Hurt? How?”

Voelkner chuckled. “You have developed the reputation of being quite the daredevil, Lieutenant Guerra.”

She waved a hand. “Bah, that’s rubbish. I’m going to end up babysitting you, Voelkner.”

He chuckled, glancing at her shyly. “That better be a promise, Lieutenant.”

French Naval Base