Halo Two - Five Ch. 01

This time she stood in front of me. The two sunglasses inched their hands closer to their jackets, and then thought better of it.

"You helped me once, Halo, and looked after me until you could get me out of there. I need you to look after me again."

As much as I wanted to do something, I simply couldn't. Now that I was away from the action, for at least a little while, my attention had to be on my own children. It was odd having this crossover in my life, since I had spent so long keeping both parts away from each other. Kitten did need help: that was clear to see. But, other than keeping her alive, I simply wasn't equipped to help her. Hell, I was a grunt on the ground, just like her - not a head doctor.

*******

It was on the news that the Secretary of State was on a week's visit. The Prime Minister was having a party at some posh hotel in London for her and her staff. An envelope dropped through my door, hand delivered no less. I read the contents and placed the invitation back into its envelope, and I had to smile when I thought how much I would get for this if I put it on eBay.

Not that I would go of course, mostly because it was Tessa's sixth birthday on the day of the bash in London. McDonald's with her friends from school was what she wanted, and who was I to refuse her? I even had two of the mothers helping me. It was Tessa who looked up and spotted the motorcycle first, the blue lights a giveaway. A second came around the corner, followed by a stretch limo. I smiled and instantly thought that there was no way that was going through the drive through.

Then a darker thought occurred to me. "NO!" I screamed to myself. Not even she would do this to me. The guy getting out of the passenger side of the limo made me realize, yes - she would. He was one of those from our meeting at Chequers. As he leant towards the rear door I excused myself from the party and went outside. Kitten was stunning in some ball gown that would have sent every head spinning for miles around.

The smile fell quickly from her face as I got in first before she could speak. "Turn this cavalcade around and get the hell out of here! I want you gone by the time I get back to my daughter's birthday party."

Sunglasses moved to get between us; I looked at him, but he just kept coming.

"You people have already fucked with my life, so I have very little to lose. This will be quick, easy and very one-sided if you take another step towards me."

Even he paused when he understood I meant it. Kitten put her hand out to stop him.

"I'm sorry."

"Then be sorry back in London. I've told you I can't help you."

"At least let me make this up to you."

She tried to say more, but I interrupted her. "How are you going to do that? Both my daughters have now seen all this from the window. This is a birthday party, not a posh ball. Do you even want to take a guess at how many people are videoing all this ready to share with friends? Leave NOW."

I spun on my heels and went inside. The limo was gone by the time I got back to the daughters and mothers.

It took my eldest to ask what the mothers wanted to. "Who was that, daddy?"

"The lady was lost, honey. I gave her directions."

There would have been little point in looking at the mothers; they hadn't bought it, even though I hoped Tessa had. I waited for an hour after they went to bed before I phoned my boss.

"You have got to get that woman off my back."

I went on to explain what had happened and he had the nerve to laugh.

"I've had the tech boys dealing with the video fallout, and the local Police already have the security tape from McDonald's. She still has diplomatic immunity, Rick. Added to that, mommy is in town with the Secretary of State, and I know for a fact that Daddy is booked to be here in two days' time."

He heard me swear, and laughed again.

"Oh, trust me: I have only just started. God's brother wants you at Chequers tomorrow at five for a one on one. You may have little choice, Rick."

In my anger I lashed out. "I always have a choice! I could resign."

"And I'm sure it will be accepted, two days after you help Kitten. He won't accept it before then, so live with it."

*******

Her mother was more on the subtle side; she was waiting for me at Chequers. If it was true what they said about looking to the mother to see what the daughter was going to be like later in life, then it was certain that Kitten was going to be a stone fox.

"Let me guess: the Prime Minister couldn't make it and, since you just happened to be in the neighborhood, you came instead?"

Even her smile gave me a hard-on.

"My daughter can be headstrong, Mr. Chalmers." She pointed to the chair in front of her. "Please sit. I have come to beg, Mr. Chalmers, and it's ground I haven't trodden in some years so I'm a little rusty at it."

As hard as I tried not to, I did actually like this woman. For the next ten minutes I got a mother's version of what happened to Kitten when they got her home. The terrifying screams that broke a mother's heart as she held onto her daughter, and the demons that stole her daughter from her when night time came.

"In the long term she will be in therapy for some years to come, but it's the short term that scares me. Each evening she takes longer to get to sleep because she knows what awaits her when she does."

"I've told Kitten, and I can only repeat it to you. I CAN'T HELP HER."

She smiled when I called her daughter by her code name. I didn't know her real name, and wasn't interested in finding out. She was Kitten.

"She seems to think you can, Mr. Chalmers. I have tapes of the conversations she has had with her therapist. Purely illegal, I know, but I have to protect my daughter. She always goes back to one sentence when the therapist thinks he's making progress. She tells him that he wasn't there, and there was only ever one person there for her."

Even looking at this woman I knew the pressure bearing down on her shoulders. With the comms system on I effectively lived in Kitten's head. I killed anyone that came close to her, and finally I was the dark figure that took her to safety.

"For two months she believed you were dead. It was only when she overheard my brother talking to my husband that she knew you were alive. She tells me she is broken, Mr. Chalmers. PLEASE - as a mother, I'm begging you. Please fix my daughter."

For some time we stared at each other. It wasn't a contest; I just looked at her and noticed the sadness in her eyes.

"I'm no shrink. I could do more harm than good."

A smile came to her in a wave of relief as I'm sure she felt my resolve weakening.

"You're more man than many, Mr. Chalmers. I've read and heard everything there is to know about what happened that day and evening. You protected my daughter even before God's brother gave the order to do so."

I winced. What we called the Prime Minister wasn't a closely guarded secret, but it wasn't too well known to our cousins across the pond - until now, that is. She just smiled right back as though she had found a secret she was willing to share with us.

"From what I know of you, Mr. Chalmers, you're a proud man, but please don't look on what I have to say next as anything but a mother's thanks for at least trying to help her daughter."

This time she leaned forward; her eye contact was total.

"My husband will be here tomorrow. Take Brooke back with you on our jet. We have a ranch in the Virginia countryside just outside Washington DC. Security will keep people out, and there are only two staff at the house, a chef and a maid. The whole place is yours until you feel you can help her no more."

"Brooke?"

She laughed, slapping her thigh as if in triumph.

"I knew it by the way you kept calling her Kitten. You don't know her name, do you? My daughter is Brooke Madison Armstrong."

Even I was confused and I think she knew what was coming next.

"Then why did her jacket say Macalister?"

This time the smile came close to splitting her face.

"Because Macalister is my maiden name and of course General Shithead's last name."

I held my forehead in my hand as she giggled, and I groaned. "You've listened in to everything, haven't you?"

She laughed so hard I thought she was heading for a heart attack. We talked logistics for a while. I did say I needed time to get Max and Beth on board. She countered by offering to intercede and maybe twist an arm or two so that my two girls and their grandparents could go to Disney World for three weeks.

*******

She was standing by the steps to the private jet, watching me walk over. It looked a little small for my taste, but then again I was more used to cattle class on a Jumbo. Her hands were on her hips, so I knew she was going to bug me about something even before we got on the plane.

"So how come mother managed to get you to come with me and I couldn't?"

"She has bigger tits than you do."

I walked past her while she was still in the early stages of hyperventilating; by the time she got it together I was already sitting down and buckling myself in. She lasted until the wheels slid into the body of the plane before she tried again.

"You had better make sure Daddy doesn't hear you say something like that about Mommy."

"Why? He's a guy. Do you think he hasn't noticed that his wife has bigger tits than his daughter?" Her face went straight to crimson, and stayed there for almost an hour. Even the flight attendant didn't want to go anywhere near her while she looked like that.

I woke after my senses told me to wake and be quick about it, and didn't even have to scan the plane to find out why. The problem was right in front of me. Kitten was asleep in her seat, but her legs were under her, her blouse was bathed in sweat and her forehead glistened.

My hand reached for her forehead and ran down both her cheeks. I pushed the service button and the attendant appeared. She quickly came to a stop when she noticed why I had called her.

"You must have blankets on this plane; please get them. All of them."

She still stood frozen to the spot, so I had to let go of Kitten and reach for the attendant. It still took me gently shaking her for a moment for her to even notice I was doing it.

"Please, get me as many blankets as you can find."

This time she nodded her head and left.

Being gentle wasn't on my list of things to do, so I pulled Kitten off her seat and laid her on the floor. Other than shuddering occasionally, not much changed. The flight attendant came back with two blankets, and told me she would be back with four more when she could get one of the pilots to help her in the storage compartment.

After thanking her I pulled one of the blankets open and wrapped Kitten in it. She was still shaking so I added the other. It took ten minutes for the pilot and flight attendant to come back with the last four blankets. The pilot left, and the attendant and I were still sitting either side of Kitten forty minutes later when she woke up. The attendant just smiled, more from relief I suspect, and got up off the floor so that I could get Kitten up and back into her seat.

When the blankets fell away from her, she pulled her blouse away from her body and had one of those "yuck" looks on her face as she did. The attendant appeared from nowhere with a shirt in her hand. Since our cases were in the hold, one of the pilots had donated one of his shirts to her. Kitten brightened up at that and thanked her. She asked the attendant if she would give her ten minutes and ask the pilot to come out so she could thank him personally.

I watched all this in silent amusement. I even got a look at her tits, albeit still in her bra, as she changed in front of me.

"What? You know there's not enough room to do this in the toilet!" The knowing smirk she wore as she said this let me know that it wasn't the only reason. The pilot got a hug and a "thank you" for being so thoughtful. Judging by his age and the ring on his finger, I assumed that he had a daughter around the same age, and that his paternal instincts had kicked in pretty easily.

*******

A limo was waiting for us as we landed. I think the driver doubled up as security, because he wouldn't have looked out of place as a linebacker in any football team. The privacy glass was already on the way up as the car moved forward. I was curious as to just how far Kitten would open up in her conversations, now that we were safely on the ground and in territory that was familiar to her. Once she had woken up on the plane she would only speak about general things, avoiding anything to do with the place that had given her the nightmares.

By the time we had pulled up in front of the ranch house she barely had anything to say at all. She was scared; Brooke had wanted my help and, now it was all happening, she was scared. Her mother was right about security round the place. Every second guy had a guard dog attached to his arm; those that didn't looked like they didn't need one.

"I'm going to bed to rest for an hour. Maria will show you to your room."

Kitten wouldn't look at me, and I knew why: she was afraid of what came next. I had to get her to face her demons, and I had a good idea of how to start. What I needed I got from Maria; her face showed her confusion but she wasn't going to ask questions. When Kitten came downstairs I was waiting for her. Maria came into the day room and asked us both if we needed anything and, after she got a drink for Kitten, she left us alone.

For her part Kitten spotted the dog collar on the coffee table next to me, but said nothing until we were alone again.

"What's with the collar?"

"It's for you." I reached for it and held it out towards her. "Take your clothes off and put this on; from now on you're my slave. As such, I can and will do what I wish with you. Oh, and I like pierced nipples on my slaves, so tomorrow we're going to look at getting them done for you."

Her face was a picture of shock and disgust as I continued my speech on how I had looked into branding but I might leave that for a month or two yet. I had also checked out some of the sites on the internet before we left and found two places in the Washington area where Masters and slaves meet and share. In all the time I was saying this I still held out the dog collar and all she did was look at it and then me.

The stable got a mention as well when I told her that I would need to borrow a couple of riding crops to warm her backside for now until I could establish a play room. Finally, and to my relief because I was running out of things to say that I was going to do to her, she just snapped. She stood up and screamed at me, even bending down towards me slightly to add to the effect.

"I'm NOT your fucking slave, and never will be!"

Putting the collar back on the table, I looked once again at Kitten. She hadn't moved; her chest was moving back and forth at an increased rate showing me that she was still struggling to keep her own emotions in check.

"But you're a slave to your demons, Brooke, and that has to stop. It's you who controls your life: not them."

So much flashed across her face all at once. She knew I had forced her to stand up for herself, and the dog collar was just a prop to get her there. Her lips quivered as something else dawned on her.

In a voice barely above a whisper she said, "I'm not Brooke, I'm Kitten."

I shot out of my seat as I noticed her arms about to wrap themselves around herself and, as I hugged her, she burst into tears. As her knees gave way, I held her up and carried her to the couch, laying her on it as I sat on the floor next to her head, her hand in mine. She looked terrible; crying had made her eyes swollen and red, snot ran down her cheek to be wiped away when she realized it was there, and her cheeks had a healthy red tinge to them.

"YOUR NAME IS BROOKE! Kitten was a code name assigned to you by me, because we use codes on the radio - not names."

"Even when the Marines came for me they called me Kitten! I have Macalister on my jacket, but no one called me that."

"You were still in an operational zone, and they were given Kitten as your designation. You could have had Mahatma Gandhi on your jacket for all they cared, but they still wouldn't have called you that."

Her eyes gave her away: she was drifting from one thought to another. It was time to get her back into motion.

"Get showered and come down in something comfortable to walk in. We're going outside for a couple of hours."

I got up off the floor and then helped her off the couch. When she came down again an hour later I was holding the collar in my hand. She looked at it and then me, an eyebrow raised in mute inquiry.

"I figured I may as well return this to the security guys on our walk, since you don't want to wear it."

This time I got a punch on the arm for my troubles. Brooke gave me the ten cent tour of the grounds, but we weren't alone - the security people were never more than a few feet away.

"When do you return to unit?" I asked.

Her step faltered, and I watched the conflict cross her face. "Officially I have another three months' leave."

It took an effort to remember why we were here. "You're worried that you will still be broken when you go back?"

She nodded her head.

"This isn't like catching a cold or having a bout of the flu, Brooke. You don't have it and get over it."

It was the contrast that struck me. The estate was so beautiful, but we were talking about something that happened thousands of miles away in a featureless town with a barren desert landscape in the background. I could only suppose that, in her eyes, this beauty was now tainted. She had a classic case of survivor's guilt: while I watched them all die from a distance through a scope, she was beside them. She was a medic, yet couldn't save any of them.

Hell, I was there as support and, no matter how quickly I killed one insurgent, another took his place. That's just how outnumbered her team were that day.

*******

Since we were all in the same time zone I would phone my girls daily. This was new for them, since they had come to accept that, when daddy went away, they didn't get to see or talk to him until he came back. The girls fell over themselves in telling me the things they saw that day and the food in the hotel. I always talked to Max and Beth last, getting the feeling that this holiday had taken a few years off. There's a saying about seeing things through your grandchildren's eyes. They always seemed to finish our conversations by telling me to look after myself.

Brooke came down one morning and watched as I got out of one of the security guy's vehicles. She leant on the post as I shook the driver's hand and walked back to the house. I did say "morning" as I passed her, but I guess that wasn't enough. Mind you, she did leave it until we sat for breakfast.

"Want to tell me what you're up to?"

"You and I are on a collision course with the chef's cooking."

Just to emphasize my point I slapped my stomach. In her rush towards confusion her mind just kept going instead of stopping to think.

"Are you calling me fat?"

Now that amused the heck out of me. "We're in a country that has it in its Constitution the right to bear arms. Not only that, I've seen up close how handy you are with a knife, so do you honestly think I'm stupid enough to suggest that?"

Brooke had the decency to look just a little sheepish.

"I did seem to remember some days back mentioning that I was on leave."

"Yep, I heard that."

I did get the impression she took the fat comment to heart, mostly reinforced when she said she wanted to stay close to home today and came down after breakfast in a bikini that left little to the imagination. I sure made myself scarce when she wandered around the pool with sunscreen lotion in her hand. I bluffed a little when she saw me with my cell in my hand, and pretended to talk to my daughters.