Back on the highway, Tasìa was most pleased with the performance of her Virago. It hugged the road just as she remembered.

Annebél had taken good care of the motorcycle.

"I take it out for a beer and smokes run every other week just to keep it in good condition," Annebél explained. "I take it by Rizzoli's for a tune-up come the change of each season. You met him. Older guy. Was with me last night over there."

Annebél was pointing to the main office building as she spoke.

They stood in her kitchen after Annebél invited her in for some iced yerba tea. Annebél's brother sat at the kitchen table as he ate spoonfuls of an oat cereal with milk from an oversized bowl. He swayed back and forth, and he seemed catatonic.

As she watched him, Annebél frowned and she bent her wrists backward as if to hide them. Tasìa could tell she was in no mood to talk about it. The oddness of her brother would have to be a story for another day.

Another Premie Harvest casualty.

As Tasìa drove in a route to circle back to her home, she caught sight of a black helicopter sweeping across a nearby field. She regarded its sleek body. It was built for a firefight. The gas tanks and other vulnerable areas were hidden under bullet-proofed hardened surfaces. Of which, she could only guess the materials.

Even the .9mm Browning HP, of which she had only a few rounds on her, would not do her much good against it.

Tasìa turned her attention back to the highway ahead of her. A turnpike she wanted to switch off on was just up ahead by forty-odd seconds at her current speed.

Tasìa made a calculated risk the previous night just after she surveyed the back valley. She left a message for León, in which she wrote out the coordinates of the park forty miles from Villa Marrón. With the coordinates she left a warning:

This is not the final destination. I need you to land here at approximately 1700 hrs for verification before I send those last coordinates to you.

Please understand, I can only guarantee your safety and that of your pilot. Anyone else who attempts to crash that meeting should first get their effects in order and make peace with their maker before doing so.

The copter swept past to the other side of the highway one hundred and twenty yards behind her. She fought the dual temptations to either look back or to speed up.

She would not do anything to reveal to them that their presence alarmed her.

Given the helmet she wore conveniently kept her face covered inside a shaded guard, the only thing that should pique their curiosity would be her small physique.

One that was not so uncommon though, as many women shared her general profile. They had nothing to go by to justify singling her out in her travel.

The helicopter's rotors grew louder as the thrust of their sound came towards her from the right side. They had turned around and now the helicopter faced her.

In her mirror, she spotted a double set of .50 caliber gun ports. One quick burst would split her apart.

Her countermeasures were severely limited in comparison. In fact, the most effective thing for her to do might be what she had planned all along.

If she made the turnpike, she would be going in the direction away from the park. If they were sweeping the highways nearby the park, it would be in search of someone driving towards it, not away from it.

Tasìa slowed down before she reached the turnpike and she flipped on her turn signal. When she cornered the turnpike, it led to a two-lane highway going North.

The helicopter began to climb in the air. It sped off towards Villa Marrón. Her ploy had worked, at least for now.

Tasìa pulled off to the side of the road. She retrieved the neoPalm with which she wrote out a quick message.

León, do you have access to a civilian grade copter? If you do, please send me a picture of it.

Tasìa got back on the road. It occurred to her there was a good chance the black helicopter would sweep back around if nothing else caught the spotter's attention or matched their profile as well as she did.

Tasìa slowed down and she soon found a thick copse of trees to hide her bike and cover with leaves. She rested her back against a nearby slate rock beneath the limbs beside it.

The neoPalm buzzed.

León had his answer. Affirmative.

She clicked on a picture of a red and white striped Sikorsky S-92 civilian transport copter.

Cute. Tasìa replied. It is perfect as well for the landing area I have in mind. That is the only helicopter that I will accept in my airspace.

Lieutenant Colonel Sol has been running black copters out of the park all morning.

You must understand, I acquired a lot of crazy toys from the Esconda Vida. I could have taken one of his ships out of the air just a few minutes ago.

Shooting it down conflicted with my desire to stay on the down-low. Once things get set in motion, I won't give two shits about that. The black copters will be eliminated with all due prejudice.

Then, Álvaro will have to explain to his commanders in the TLFU Army how he lost a fleet of copters chasing down a four-foot-eleven sized woman with no military training.

Tasìa had little doubt that her communications with León were monitored. She took a gamble with her assumption that there had been more than one copter in the search. If she was right, then she also put the idea in their heads she was nearby the park witnessing the search first hand.

Instead of forty miles to the South on a country highway.

It was not long before Tasìa heard the air whipping in the distance just as she caught sight of the copter. She hid in the thick leaves of a bush beside her bike.

The neoPalm buzzed on her leg. She checked the message.

Leon. LT Sol has a code name for you. Chestnut Moxie.

Tasìa thought that to be a curious name. She texted back.

Moxie, I get. Chestnut?

The copter hovered seventy feet over a nearby field. The body of it rotated left to right. Did they suspect that she was nearby? How? Did they manage to bypass the superspook gear in her neoPalm and locate her?

Tasìa peeked down at León's reply.

Chestnut, because the LT thinks you have pretty skin.

While keeping an eye out for the copter, Tasìa answered back.

That is so very adorable of the man. It's a shame I have to kill him as I so vowed to do when I witnessed him murdering Rea Castro in cold blood.

That wasn't her actual vow at the time of the horrific deed, Tasìa had to remind herself. She had vowed never to let herself ever again be put in a position of vulnerability.

The claim to vengeance was meant to get under Sol's skin.

It was important to separate out her own core motivations from the games she played on others, Tasìa told herself.

Else they could become covered over by all of the bullshit she was shoveling.

As she watched the copter, Tasìa concluded something peculiar was going on inside of the gunship. Though the green-tinted glass limited her sight, Tasìa could still see that something inside the cabin whipped around at a frightening speed.

She could only catch odd glimpses of the thing. Odd as well that she did not catch sight of the people inside the cabin.

With a tense grip, Tasìa grabbed her pistol scope and trained it on the copter. It took some adjustments on the magnification, but she finally made out the shapes of the pilot and co-pilot. Merely the silhouette of their shapes as they shifted in a constantly moving outline.

Oh, shit, she gasped. That's weird.

She trained the scope on the body of the plane. The slick black surface was slowly becoming dull and a strange, weathered gray as if shadow was engulfing it.

However, there were no clouds above that could explain away the eirie phenomenon.

Tasìa used the camera on the neoPalm to take a picture of the copter. She forwarded it to León with a text message.

Does LC Sol's fleet of copters have light misdirection based cloaking capabilities?

León answered back, I am not in a position to be specific about that, but what the hell is happening there?

I'll take that as a yes, Tasìa answered, it appears the cloak is malfunctioning and its light manipulation properties are inverting. That's my best guess.

At that moment, the rotors stopped their motion. The tail rotors wrenched and broke in two. The helicopter dropped straight down onto the field of tall grass below it.

It bounced up with the major rotary wings thrown a hundred and more feet forward. When the copter landed again, the cabin split apart.

Eight men began to crawl out from the debris.

Amazed they didn't appear to have sustained any major injuries, Tasìa grabbed the scope to get a better view of them.

Well, I am so fucked, Tasìa thought.

Though they maneuvered like soldiers, and they possessed the demeanor of soldiers, they appeared not at all like men of this earth.