Terry goes through the gears on his stick shift as he outs runs the cops chasing him. Haven’t they learned yet they can’t catch him. He checks to make sure the jammer was still working as he gives his car more gas and takes a tight turn. He had one delivery to make tonight and he wasn’t going to be late delivering the package. He cuts his lights off and switch to the night vision cameras as he comes a to stretch of road that had no streetlights or houses.

He steps down more on the gas pedal and hits 150mph as he heads towards his turn off. The cops were distance lights in his rear-view cameras. He takes the turn with ease as he lets up off the gas as he drifts around the turn. He begins to slow down as he comes to the drop off spot for the delivery. The person he was delivering this package for said to be at these GPS coordinates at the appointed time. He makes there with ten minutes to spare. The meeting place was out in the middle of nowhere. He sits there waiting for his contact to show-up.

After ten minutes past the time he was supposed to drop his package. A van shows up and pulls up on the other side. He watches as the van turns around so that the passenger side door and the sliding side door was on his side facing him.

“Gives us the package.” Four guys had gotten out and had their guns pointed at him.

The guys were carrying AK47’s and pointing them at him and his car. He smiles beneath his helmet. Let them be dumb enough to fire their guns at him.

“Money first. You don’t get your package till I get the money.” Terry had his foot on the gas pedal just in case these guys don’t play ball.

“Give us the package or we’ll take it from you.” All four guys had their guns pointed towards the tires and window.

“Go ahead. You’ll kill yourself before you get into this car.” He revs the engine and gets ready to slam the shifter down.

They start shooting at the car. Bullets ricochet off the armor skin of the car and the tires. Terry slams the car into gear and takes off down the road, but before he leaves he fires two miniature rockets towards the van. No one fires at his car and gets away with it. The van explodes as the rockets hit it.

Terry speeds down the road and follows the GPS system to a side road he can take to get back to his garage to hide his car. He made sure to turn the jammer off so the police and military couldn’t lock onto it. He pulls the car into a hidden garage and parks it for the night. As he climbs out he takes his helmet off and lay it down on the driver seat and closes the driver door. He looks at the paint job he was going to have to do tomorrow to his car from all the Ak’s bullets that hit his car.

He wonders what is so important that they didn’t want to pay him. He pulls the package out and looks at it. It was some sort of military issue satellite descrambler and decoder device. He knew enough about satellite technology that they could hook this to any satellite system and pirate their signal or send one of their own, including military.

He takes it and locks the device in his vault where he kept his special design miniature rockets and missiles for his car. He reloads the launcher he unloaded tonight and turn the lights off and locks the door that leads to the garage. He walks through the actual garage towards a stairway that leads up to the second floor above the garage and into his small apartment. As Terry closes the door he walks into his kitchen and grabs a cold-water bottle and then into his bedroom to strips out of his racing jumpsuit.

As the suit comes off, it reveals the body of a flat chested woman underneath it. She has short black hair and a scar that runs down the left-hand side of her body starting up on her shoulder and goes all the way down her arm, hip and leg to her ankle. Her left hand had scars on it and her forearm. There are crisscrossing scars on her back and buttocks where someone used a whip or something on her body.
She walks over towards her bed and sit down on it. Terry stares at the pictures of her family and friends she has sitting on her dresser. There was one of a happy black hair little girl wearing a baby blue dress laughing as her father pushed her on a swing. Then there was another picture of that same girl all grown up with all her friends from MIT receiving an award from the President for a contest. Then there was another picture of that same girl in an Army Military uniform. The next one showed her with her unit over in Pakistan standing in front of a motor pool. Then one showing her driving a tank. There was another of her wrapped up like a mummy with tubes and IV’s attached to her.

Terry rubs her left shoulder and falls backwards on her bed. She didn’t want to relive the torture she endured by the Taliban when they captured and tortured her. She knew it was going to be another bad night. She never forgets anything. She remembers everything with one hundred percent clarity. She gets up and head into the bath to soak and pops a few sleeping pills as she slips her night shirt on and crawls into bed. It doesn’t take long for the sleeping pills to kick in as she slips into a deep sleep. She’ll have to call the shipper tomorrow to inform him that the receiver failed to take possession of the delivery. He still owes her the money for the failed delivery or she was going to keep the package.

Terry sleeps throughout the night without having nightmares for once. Her alarm clock goes off at seven in the morning. She slaps the snooze button and buries her head under the pillow. She didn’t feel like getting up right now. She sleeps for another nine minutes before the alarm clock goes off again. She reaches over and shuts the clock off and gets up out of bed and heads towards the toilet to do her morning business. The Taliban men that raped her while she was captured, paid for their crime with her cutting their penises off and shoving them down their throats.The man who mutilated and cut her breast off. She shoved a hand grenade up his ass and pulled the pin from the grenade.

She looks down on her legs and they had scars all over them. She doesn’t go swimming anymore because of those scars. There are a lot of things she no longer does because of how she was treated as a prisoner. She finishes her business and starts getting ready for work today.

She owns part of the garage she is living at currently. It builds custom vehicles for clients and for show. Most of the vehicles were high dollar builds and brought in a lot of money. The garage was working on a new build for a client that brought in a new Ford truck and wanted a lift systems, AWD drive and a few other modifications that weren’t standard on cars you brought at the dealership. They had another that was being outfitted to fly. Someone wanted a James Bond style car that could turn into a submarine. They had enough work to keep them busy for months, while flipping a few ordinary cars for profit.

Terry slips on a pair of jeans and her work boots and a t-shirt with the company logo on it. She heads downstairs, where she notices both her brothers have arrived and brought breakfast with them.

“Hey sis, how did you sleep last night?” Edward was concern about his little sister.

He has notice a big change in her when she got out of the hospital and military. She refuses to wear dresses, skirts, any type of swimsuit and she doesn’t do any of the things she uses to do, except race cars down on the track or quarter mile races.

She won’t wear any type of girly shoes or let her hair grow out long any more. The last time his wife gave her a pair of nice shoes, she returned them for money and sneaked the money into his pocket. She always keeps her hair cut short like she has it now. She threw out all her old stuff and the only thing she wears now are t-shirts, polo shirts or men’s dress shirt. She won’t wear any make-up or jewelry. She donated all her jewelry to the Goodwill. She doesn’t date and only attend family functions when she is forced to.

“I slept alright Eddie.” She walks over and grabs a coffee and a bear claw to eat.

“When are you going to go back to wearing dresses and skirts, sis?” Robert her next older brother looks at her. They used to be close, but she has withdrawn from him.

“Never.” She walks into the office and starts going over the books and orders for specialized parts they needed and order them from their suppliers.

She takes a sip of her coffee and takes another bite of her bear claw. She looks up and notice her brothers watching her.

“What?” She ah a puzzled look on her face.

“Sis, were worried about you. I know you went through a lot as a prisoner of the Taliban. Your whole personality has done a whole 180 from what it uses to be.” Robert was looking at his sister. They used to be close, but now she keeps people at arm’s length.

“Look Robert and Eddie. I went through hell as a prisoner to the Taliban. I was repeatedly raped, tortured and I lost everything that makes me a woman. They burned my breast off and made it so I can never have children. I watched them torture some boys that had helped us and shot two survivors from my unit. How would you feel after surviving that? I have marks on my body I will never be able to remove and I remember every fucking thing they did to me as if I was going through it again. All I want to do now is get on with my life and try to forget what was done to me.”

Terry goes back to the books and order forms. She doesn’t let her brothers see the tears as they fall from her eyes. She’ll never be the woman she uses to be and she’ll never be able to be a guy either. The question is, what is she?