Enemy of Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

got a handful before I landed a perfect uppercut. He was bent slightly at the waist, his chin forward. I felt his jaw slam shut as his head snapped straight back. He collapsed onto the deck, unconscious.
    I spun around and faced the group, Jennifer’s tussle to my back.
    “Anyone else want a piece of us?”
    The women just stared slack-jawed, but I could tell the men realized they had tangled with more than they had bargained for. Even in their drunken state. They were all looking for something interesting on the ground or in the trees. Anywhere but at me.
    I caught flashing lights in my peripheral vision. The bridesmaid must have called the police.
Out of time.
    I slapped Jennifer’s hands, shouting, “Time to go!”
    She released his arm and I jerked her to her feet, saying, “Can’t go out the front door.”
    Jennifer looked at the ten-foot brick wall at the back of the patio and started sprinting.
    Great…acting like a monkey to evade the law. No damn dignity whatsoever.
    I sprinted after her and we hit the wall at the same time, me coming off a table and her running straight up it in a toe-kip. We landed in the parking lot behind it and kept going, Jennifer laughing like we had just thrown water balloons at a car.
    Driving back over the Ravenel Bridge to Mt. Pleasant, I said, “You talk about me losing control, what the hell was that back there?”
    She looked a little embarrassed, then indignant. “Enough was enough. I didn’t try to hurt him. I was just subduing him. If it had been you he’d be in the hospital.”
    She tried to show how serious she was, but a grin leaked out.
    “Well, what were you going to do after you subdued him?” I said. “With all those other guys around?”
    She didn’t respond, because we both knew the answer.
I
was going to step in.
    “Look, I’m good with it. Those assholes deserved it, but if there’s a learning point here it’s that you can’t go around doing that sort of stuff.”
    “
What?
That’s what I’m always telling
you
.”
    “No, no, I don’t mean because I think it’s wrong. I mean because you’re a woman. I can run around kicking ass all day and it won’t raise an eyebrow.”
    She started to wind up and I rushed out, “It may be chauvinistic, but that’s just the truth. Word’s going to get out about that little scuffle, and people are going to wonder how a pencil-neck anthropologist managed to kick someone’s ass that was twice her size. You have the skills now, and you need to protect them. Protect what we really do. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”
    I expected her to blow up, but instead I saw her reflecting on what I had said. I decided to drop it.
    “Hey, in the end I’m just glad you’ll only take so much shit before you blow your top. I was beginning to wonder if you had to have a gun at your head before you’d defend yourself.”
    She grinned again, and I knew we were beyond it, lesson learned.
    “You never finished about Knuckles. Is he coming with us, or not?”
    “Not. Apparently he has his hands full doing something else.”

5
    K nuckles felt the heat radiating off the black pavement like an open oven, the sweat rolling down his face in a perpetual drivel, forcing him to wipe his nose every few seconds to keep the salty liquid from hitting the screen in his lap. For the first time, he began to wonder if the sensitive equipment could withstand the punishment. After all, almost all of it was specially constructed—without the military specifications that made the equipment look, well, military.
    Taskforce spends bazillions on kit and I’m in a van with no AC. Blending in is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Johnny’s going to pay.
    Johnny was the team leader of the Taskforce element that Knuckles was replacing, and as such, he was the one who’d coordinated all of the in-country assets. Not that Knuckles couldn’t have done so in his sleep. He’d been to Tunisia chasing Crusty on and off for damn near eight years,