13, Shocked

“Any moment, my team is gonna bust in here and fuck you harder than I fucked your mom last week…. OWWWW!!!”

An electric shock went blasting through special agent Trent Murdock’s body. He had his hands tied behind his back and was hanging upside down by his ankles, naked. Jumper cables were hooked up to his bleeding nipples.

“That one hurt!” yelled Murdock. He meant it.

“You will die today, mister bullshit conquistador,” muttered a drug dealer named Tiberon. “Or, you can live. Just tell us who employs you, and we will let you live in paradise, sipping vinos from heaven herself.” Tiberon’s Colombian accent was perfect, and he sold the lie with a seductive latino charisma that made Murdock appreciate the game he was playing.

Murdock grinned. “Last night, I coughed myself to sleep, and it wasn’t from the amazing cuban cigar I smoked. No sir, it was from choking on your sisters bush, asshole!… OWWWWW!”

Tiberon had no idea what that meant, but he knew he’d been insulted. He turned the dial from three to four on his torture thingie machine. “Who pays your bills, Mr. secret agent man?” He pushed a button. A shock of electrons danced painfully along Murdock’s nervous system.

The sound of Murdock panting was all that could be heard in the large, empty warehouse. “You call this torture, amigo?” Murdock gasped and mumbled, “this is every Tuesday for me…” He inhaled a few deep breaths. “…because Tuesdays are when I finger bang your mom and stroke her mustache…. OWWWWWWWW!”

Tiberon turned the knob from four to five. He was just getting started.

So was Murdock.

On the opposite side of Bogota, special agent Alexi Blacktide found herself sweating from the mid day sun beating down on her. She looked at her watch. “It’s been half an hour, let’s get on with it.”

“If I had a nickel for every woman who’s told me that, I’d be rich.” Dirt laughed at his joke as if he were the most hilarious dude in the world. He stood up barefoot from the Lotus position. “Actually, my therapist says I shouldn’t try to make jokes about being a latin lover. She just assumes I’m bad in bed cuz I’m white.”

“Stereotypes suck, especially for middle aged white men,” joked Blacktide.

“Unless they’re true! Then they’re just funny!” Dirt’s shoulders bounced as he let out more easy laughter. Blacktide ignored the potential racist remark as Dirt continued. “I’ve paid that lady so much money over the years that she actually called me a dumb bitch the last time I saw her. And she’s right, of course.”

Blacktide grinned without laughing. “Maybe it takes one to know one.”

Dirt stopped laughing and crinkled his forehead. “Damn, I wish I could’ve thought of that.”

“Yeah, well not everyone is qualified to be a bitter, sarcastic soldier who’s seen and done too much to be shocked. Sorry if I my sarcasm gets too thick for you.”

Dirt smiled a deep and genuine grin like they were close friends. “You’re funny, lady. Oh, and thanks. My morning meditations are the only thing keeping me from going crazy these days, I swear.” He put on his socks followed by his perfectly clean, white leather shoes. They started walking up the street.

“Yeah, it’s a been a weird night, but the fact that you actually meditated was even weirder.” Dirt started to look defensive but Blacktide quickly added, “You did get me out of of a precarious position last night, so the least I could do is show you some grace.” Blacktide had been out manned and out gunned in a shootout when Dirt had yelled at her to jump into his boat. They were able to escape because of the pitch black night.

After riding in the boat from 2am ’til sunrise, they’d docked and walked. After an hour, Dirt made his strange request to stop and meditate by a pretty part of the river. Blacktide had messaged her team at sunrise and they’d messaged back that they were coming to pick her up. She tried to be patient and accommodate this very weird request to burn a half an hour for Dirt to meditate, but her impatience had gotten the best of her.

The two of them were now walking down a dusty boulevard in a ramshackle neighborhood. It was almost mid day and it was bright out. It felt like the sun was right on top of them from the high elevation.

“Bogota has been a bitch to me since I got here ten years ago. My therapist is the only shining light I’ve found in this hell hole. That, and rum.”

“I can get on board with the rum really easily, but therapy? Not for me.”

Dirt shrugged and motioned for Blacktide to follow him into a cantina. “They’re one and the same for me, lady. I need to hydrate.”

He was the opposite of a gentleman as he walked in without holding the swinging doors for Blacktide. She impatiently reached out and pushed her way through to follow. The room was small with concrete walls and a dusty floor, but it had a really cool ethnic charm to it. Blacktide took note that Dirt walked carefully, as to not kick up dust on his perfect shoes.

“I thought you said we were gonna hydrate?”

Dirt laughed. “One of the ingredients in beer is water.” There were tables and chairs that were scratched and tattered. There was high energy latin music blaring at a reasonable volume from a low fi speaker in a corner, as if it were on a forty year old AM radio. The place smelled of cooking taco meat and regret. They walked up to the bar.

“You look like sheeet,” said the lady bartender in a thick Spanish accent. She was unscrewing the top of a beer as she added, “Take a shower before you come to my church of cervesa, cavron.”

“I love you too, Maria,” Dirt answered. He sat down on a rickety stool at the bar and motioned for Blacktide to join him. “This is my amiga, Bonita. Bonita, this is my therapist, Maria.” Blacktide noted that “bonita” meant “pretty” in Spanish, but didn’t know if Dirt was talking in code to this woman or attempting to be charming after not getting the door for her.

“Pleased to meet you, Maria.” Without asking, Maria simply set a beer in front of her. Blacktide hadn’t ordered anything, but she didn’t complain or protest. She nodded and took a sip. It was lukewarm and bubbly. In any other setting, she’d have set the beer down and walked away. In this heat, in this place, it was the greatest beer Blacktide had ever tasted.

“Pretty early to be in here, Dirt. I don’t usually see you ”til after siesta. Que pasa?” Maria was grabbing ingredients for a mixed cocktail but never broke eye contact with him. She looked half curious, half concerned.

Dirt didn’t change his tone or accent, but he started talking comfortably with Maria as if they were truly a therapist and a patient. “I was watching the bad hombres I normally watch at the dock last night when Bonita here showed up. The bad hombres tried to hurt her, but she jumped on my boat and we took off.”

“You boated here? From the hombres dock? What the hell?” asked Maria? “Oh, got it.” Blacktide could tell that Maria’s brain was connecting the dots. Maria examined Blacktide and said, “military woman. You were running. Dirt was hiding. He helped you out, and now you’re in my cantina.” She nodded. “Continue.”

“Well as you know, it’s a long boat ride to this part of town, so we haven’t slept yet, but I got my meditation in.”

“Good!” blurted Maria, but she was angry like she was scolding a young boy. She looked at Blacktide. “He’s an asshole if he doesn’t meditate, trust me.” Her Spanish accent was convincing and comical at the same time.

Dirt laughed. “So here we are, about to get day drunk. But before I spend too much of my hard earned American money in here…”

“Ha!” Maria snorted, as if to scoff at the remark, but Dirt continued.

“I need a favor. Bonita has a some buddies in town that lost track of a big gringo last night. That gringo ended up being taken by the bad hombres. Don’t worry, the gringo has some gadgets that can track him down, but Bonita’s friends are the type to go in shooting first and asking questions later. If you can make a few phone calls to our friends on the inside, I’m asking you to make sure that they’re conveniently not around the gringo when the bullets fly.”

Dirt turned to Blacktide. “We don’t need our sources getting shot up by you or your pals, darlin.”

Blacktide nodded. “You’ve got me and my team pegged to a T.”

“I used to belong to a team like yours, ’til it all went to hell.” Dirt looked off into the distance and took a big swig of his warm beer. He turned back to Blacktide. “We’ll get a phone call to our people. When you go to get your friend, they won’t be around.”

Blacktide turned to Maria and added, “wherever my gringo friend is, it’s gonna get really, really messy when we go get him. Like, really messy. Make damn good and sure that your sources know, my team leaves a mess.”

Maria grinned. “Word has it that some gringos tried to get to Tiberon last night and shot up his night club. I’m guessing you were with them, no?”

Blacktide didn’t give any thought to hiding her identity at this point. “Word gets around, apparently, but it wasn’t us doing the shooting.”

Maria had been pleasant so far, but her smile disappeared. “Don’t worry about me, Bonita! A lot of us don’t like the owner of that night club,” she spat. “Some of us would like to see him disappear, but he’s a hard man to make go away.”

“I promise, we want him to go away as much as you do. Then we have a few more people to find and eliminate while we’re down here that are just like him.”

Maria nodded without smiling. “Sí Bonita, sí.” She finished whatever cocktail she was making and poured them into three glasses. She dropped a straw into each glass and said, “Salud.” Maria raised her glass to her lips and took a long sip. She smiled widely.

Dirt raised his new cocktail up and nodded to Blacktide. “Therapy and rum.”

Blacktide raised hers and joked, “and now I see why you say they’re one and the same in your world.”

“Drinking on the job, eh?” General Rice had just walked into the bar and saw Blacktide swigging on a mixed drink. She smiled widely. “Maybe I’d better join you.”

“Don’t forget little ol’ me,” said Bradley McVandalay as all six feet of his broad shouldered frame walked in behind Rice.

“I’m in,” added Miller, and like a gentlemen, he held the door for his girlfriend Lorenz.

“Ooo, are we getting day drunk, honey?” asked Lorenz as she entered.

“Day drunk, afternoon drunk, does it matter? If it has booze, count me in,” said special agent Dale O’Connor as he held the swinging doors for his friend, special agent Death.

“Then you’d better pour me one too, dammit!” Death said with her typical toothy smile.

Sergeant Schuman walked in and looked like shit. She had two black eyes and her upper lip was swollen to hell. Despite this, she was as happy as she’d ever been. She saw her friend sitting at the bar. “Blacktide! I met the man I’m going to marry!”

“Here we go,” muttered Death under her breath. She looked up to Blacktide. “Make it a double for me, please!”

Special agent Emerald Blitz walked in. “I’m driving, so I’ll stick to beer.”

The bartender hadn’t even asked anyone what they were drinking. She just started pulling the tops off of random beers and setting them on the bar for her new patrons. Without asking, each of the agents grabbed beers and passed them around.

“Gang, this is Dirt. Dirt, this is the gang. And everyone, this is Maria.”

The crew raised their beers to the bartender as she raised hers. “Salud,” Maria said. They all answered in unison and started partying. Maria knew, this was going to be an all nighter.

Meanwhile their friend and coworker special agent Trent Murdock was still being tortured by a ruthless drug dealer. Murdock was weak but not broken. Tiberon pushed the button and shocked his captive with evil glee. “You’re going to die for your employers? Are they worth it?”

Murdock was still naked, still upside-down, still hanging from a rope tied around his ankles. It had been six hours of brutal electrocution. He was sweating and bleeding from every pore of his body. He spit blood and it barely left his face. He could barely speak between breaths. “it was worth…” he struggled for breath, “the five dollars…” he choked on some blood, “that it cost me…” he exhaled loudly, “to fuck your mother… OWWWWWWW!!!”

Tiberon was actually tired of torturing Murdock, but he was determined to not lose face to his captive. He’d literally torture this defiant gringo to death which he felt had to be soon. How was this man’s heart still beating?

Murdock was indignant. “Any moment now… my team will break in here… and end your pathetic life… Any moment!!! Then I’ll… I’ll… I’ll fuck your whore sister… OWWWWWW!!! Any moment… OWWWWW!!!! They’ll bust in here… OWWWWW!!!!”

In the distance, a rowdy bar full of gringos did their tenth shot of hard liquor as another round of beers was passed out, all while a band spontaneously showed up and played high energy latin music as locals danced on tables and women moved their beautiful physiques to the melodic groove.