11, Dropped

“I like ’em big. The bigger, the better.” Sergeant Schuman was mumbling to herself. “Big, juicy, luscious, meaty, salty and hard, I love ’em hard.” She shook her head side to side violently while grinning, like an addict who knew that a hit was about to happen. “I want the hard ones, god dammit,” she said with total anticipation.

Special agent Dale O’Connor knew the severity of their situation, but as usual he was drunk on Irish whiskey and couldn’t help it. “How hard do you like it, Sarge?”

“You have no idea, Doc.”

The moment for inappropriate dick jokes had passed and a moment of clarity set in. “No, apparently I don’t, but listen to me. You need to duck out from this god damned ring and we have to get our guns from the other room, now, or we will die here. They’re armed, we’re not.”

Schuman’s smile vanished. She was in her corner of a boxing ring wearing no gloves, and she’d been grinning at her next male opponent who was tall, lean and ripped. Now, she was angry. She turned to face her friend. With a calm violent intensity, she spoke. “That man over there is hard as fuck. I need this, Doc. You go get your fucking guns, but don’t shoot anyone ”til I drop this fucker, or I promise I’ll rip your dick off and feed it to you as you beg for forgiveness from whatever god you pray to.”

O’Connor was twice Schuman’s size, but he was half the fighter she was. He knew she meant it. “See you in hell, sister,” he muttered. With that, he dropped down from the ropes and dove back into the crowd as the bell rang to start the fight.

The two secret agents were in downtown Bogota, Colombia, in the basement of a high end night club owned by a dangerous drug dealer named Tiberon. Upstairs, patrons drank and danced while secret bare knuckles boxing matches raged five stories below.

Moments earlier O’Connor had watched six men armed with hand guns enter from the far side of the room. Sergeant Schuman was fighting in the ring and she was on a roll, having dropped three male fighters each within less than a minute of fight time. This next fighter knew what he was up against, and he was cautious. The two opponents squared off.

O’Connor tried to make his way back to the entry room where he’d stashed his coat which was full of explosives and weapons. He determinedly pushed his way through the rowdy crowd but tried to be inconspicuous. He’d counted six men holding powerful hand guns who had entered through the far door in the room, and he knew there were undoubtedly more who would be armed in the crowd. How could he be so stupid to come in here unarmed?

Ten feet from the door, he broke free from the rowdy onlookers. One of the fighters in the ring had landed a punch because the cheering was immense, but O’Connor didn’t look back to see the action. He stopped in his tracks to see two men, probably trained by the Colombian military, pointing hand guns right at his chest. He froze, lifted his hands and hiccuped.

Without warning, both men dropped to the ground as their hand guns tumbled across the floor. The crowd behind O’Connor roared loudly again as special agent Bradley McVandalay became visible behind the fallen bad guys. He yelled, “I got your text. Holy shit.”

“There are at least four more with hand guns prowling, and good luck getting sarge out of that boxing ring,” said O’Connor as he picked up their hand guns and pocketed them. “I’m gonna grab my trench coat.”

“Negative, brother,” answered McVandalay. “A dude stole it and walked out the front door of the club. Blacktide is tailing him, and he’s probably just a petty thief, but we’re hoping he leads us to more drug dealing scum bags.”

“Dammit, I like that fucking trench coat. I hope Blacktide doesn’t shoot it full of holes.”

“Doc, for fucks sake, it’s Blacktide we’re talking about. If you get it back at all, of course there’ll be blood on it, duh.”

McVandalay surveyed the scene. The room was remarkably big for being so far underground. There were at least two hundred loud, latino men standing around a raised boxing ring in the middle of the room. All of them were oblivious to the two white Americans. Their eyes were on the white woman fighting, and currently, she was getting punched hard repeatedly, but she never went down. The crowd was deafeningly loud.

In the flash of an eye, McVandalay dropped down and ripped a shoe off of one of the men whom he’d knocked out. He hurled the shoe at the crowd at the exact instant a bad guy popped out. The shoe hit the gun he was holding and knocked it out of his hand. O’Connor instinctively took a step at the man and hit him in the jaw with tremendous force. “OUCH!” he yelled as the man collapsed to the floor. He held his right hand and hunched over in pain. “How in the fuck does sarge think punching people is fun?”

Schuman got a few solid punches in on her opponent but the man took the beating. The two fighters traded blows, expertly dodging each other while counter punching, but neither fighter budged when the other connected a punch. The crowd was berserk as the bell rang loudly to end the round.

McVandalay had disappeared into the crowd while O’Connor grabbed the hat off of the fallen bad guy. He scanned for more armed men as his heart beat wildly. The bad guys knew what they were looking for, but O’Connor didn’t. He pulled the hat down low and tried to cover his face, but he was a white man surrounded by latinos. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He made eye contact with a bad guy and realized that he was in a straight line of fire. He ducked into the crowd as the bad guy lost track of him.

Round two began with insane cheers from the crowd. Schuman had a black eye and a bloody nose but looked as happy as if she were a princess sipping tea on a yacht sailing the Caribbean through calm waters. Her opponent was also bloody but smiling and he looked at her with slight arousal. The two psychos had met their match. They again squared off in the middle of the ring and continued their savage ballet.

O’Connor knew he was in trouble. His fist hurt and he was disoriented by the insane cheering of the crowd. Another bad guy saw him and started at him, gun drawn. A few of the spectators saw the hand gun and backed away quickly with fear, leaving a large opening for the bad guy to lift his gun.

O’Connor didn’t have time to grab the hand gun in his pocket. The bad guy pulled the trigger at the exact same time as a huge eruption of cheering came up from the crowd. The bullet hit O’Connor in the chest by his underarm. The secret agent went down hard as the white woman went down in the ring. The sound was deafening.

The bad guy didn’t get a chance to fire a second shot. He dropped lifelessly with a broken neck where he stood. McVandalay stood over the dead man and cursed at himself. He couldn’t run to his fallen friend because he knew there were still more bad guys on the loose. “Get up!” he yelled desperately at O’Connor, but the crowd now was starting to see the violent scene around them as well and panic was setting in. People started running for the exits.

The white woman got up and the fight in the ring continued as the mayhem erupted around them. McVandalay pulled out his own hand gun and was able to see two more men making their way towards him with guns drawn. Instinct took over as his arm seemed to operate under the control of some automatic programming. His aim was true and two more bad men lay dead.

There were three exits to this room, one of which was on the far side. McVandalay saw a man in a tan silk shirt exit the room and gasped. “Tiberon!” He scanned the madness and didn’t see any more thugs coming at him. He looked in the ring to see the two boxers still going at it, completely transfixed with fighting each other. Neither combatant noticed the mayhem in the room around them. All that existed was the fight. Schuman went down hard again after a left hook, and this time she stayed down. “FUCK,” McVandalay yelled.

O’Connor had gotten to his knees. His voice was weak and barely audible. “Jesus, that hurts. I need a drink.” There was a hole in his shirt where the bullet had ripped through it. He was soaked in whiskey, but there was no blood. He pulled the neck of his shirt down in an attempt to pull out a flask that he had stashed in a shoulder holster. He pulled it out and saw that the bullet had ripped a large hole into it, but hadn’t penetrated his flesh. “Fuck, me, running,” he grunted. “My chest hurts like a mother fucker and I’m out of hooch,” he complained.

McVandalay shook his head in disbelief. “I never thought your alcohol problem would save your life, Doc. What the fuck.” He was mad but helped his friend to his feet. “Why in the fuck did you bring a flask in that holster instead of a gun?!? You fucking idiot!” For the first time in a long time, McVandalay realized he was afraid. He didn’t want to lose one of his best friends.

O’Connor was weak but waved his friend off. “Get Schuman,” he ordered. “She joked when she got me this flask that it was bulletproof.” He coughed up a little blood and spit it out. He looked disappointingly at the flask as the last few drops of his whiskey slipped out of the bullet hole. “Bulletproof my ass.” He pocketed it and limped to the boxing ring.

Schuman’s opponent had realized there was pandemonium around him and had exited the ring to run out with people he knew. Schuman was alone, sitting on the mat and leaning up against the ropes. McVandalay reached under the lowest rope and dragged the woman out.

“That was the best sex of my life,” muttered Schuman. She had two black eyes, a broken nose, her lips were swollen and McVandalay couldn’t tell if she’d had a tooth knocked out.

“You weren’t getting laid, sarge, you were fighting. We gotta get outta here, now.”

“I want to marry that man,” she continued. She slurred her words as if she were drunk. “I found my one true love…”

McVandalay threw his shoulder under the exhausted woman and threw his arm around her to help her walk. They headed for the door that lead to the kitchen exit. “Knowing you, you’ll see him again,” he answered. The three agents hit the entry room and began the long trek up the stairs to the dark kitchen.

In the close distance, an army truck full of soldiers screeched to a halt at the front door of the high end night club as two dozen soldiers with automatic rifles came pouring out of the back and headed into the building.