18, Closet

“I swear to you Mickey, if you cock block me on this one, there will be nothing left of your physical body for your family to grieve!”  Von Stryker was whispering violently.  The malice in her tone was powerful.

“You aren’t supposed to be in here!” Mikayla Doniak whispered passionately back.  The women were standing in an empty walk in closet.

Von Stryker’s whisper was on the verge of being a yell.  “I’d say the same of you!  You fucking said you were gonna go back to the safe house and take a cold shower cuz your sweaty boobs were driving you bonkers.  I fucking told you I was gonna stay behind and get laid!  Dammit Mickey, I need this but you’re gonna fuck it up!”

“Boss, for fucks sake!”  Doniak saw a fire in Von Stryker that she’d never seen in the year they’d been working together.  Von Stryker was acting irrationally, like an addict that was jonesing for a hit.  Doniak tried to be reasonable.  “I won’t fuck this up for you, I promise!  Just take your shirt off and make him shower with you or something.  I’ll sneak out once you have him in there!”

“No!” snapped Von Stryker.   She was clearly irrational.  “You may NOT have a three some with us!”

“What, wait, no, Christ No!  I fucking want out of here!”

The two women had attended a party earlier that evening at the Colombian Prime Minister’s Villa in Bogota.  The gathering was held in a large ball room that had poor air circulation, and Mikayla Doniak was done being sweaty.  After the party, Doniak had taken a wrong turn on her way out and found a hallway that was very cool and refreshing with powerful air conditioning.  It lead her to a series of guest rooms, one of which had the door open.  Natural curiosity took over, but only a minute or two into snooping around, she heard voices that made her take cover in a closet.

“Why are you even in here!?”  Von Stryker was calming down, but only a little.

Doniak tried to think of something clever to say, like that she was scoping the place out, or planting a bug, but she had nothing.  “The air conditioning called me in a like a moth to a flame, then I started snooping.  It was dumb, I admit it.  I’m really sorry.”

The door was cracked open slightly which illuminated the mostly empty closet space.  In the other room, a toilet flushed.  The Russian admiral that Von Stryker was trying to hook up with would be exiting the bathroom shortly.  Doniak had no clean escape route.   The Russian security team that was stationed on that floor of the prime ministers villa would have both women arrested if she was caught.

“I never thought I’d say I miss Russia, but fuck Colombia,” Von Stryker commented.  She shook her head and took a deep breath, then spat fire at her friend.  “Don’t fuck this up for me, and don’t get busted, Mickey.  From this moment on, I’m forgetting that you’re even in this suite.”  With that, she left the closet and closed it behind her leaving Doniak in the dark.

“Fuck.”  Mikayla Doniak hated waiting, and this was gonna be a miserable all nighter.

As the next five minutes passed in darkness, Doniak listened to the muffled voices from the other side of the suite.  She could hear that Von Stryker was flirting with the admiral and she had him giggling.  The giggling stopped and was replaced by the sound of bodies getting tossed up against walls and onto floors.  She made a mental note that most couples just embrace each other on a wall and make out for awhile, but it sounded like the two of them were making it a point to slam onto every wall in the room, as if for sport.  

Doniak crawled to the back of the closet and sat in a corner with her arms around her legs.  She buried her face into her knees.  “Why in the fuck did I think it would be a good idea to snoop around?  I’m so sweaty, I’m so tired, I’m so dumb.”  She didn’t see the light rush in when the closet door opened for a quick second, nor did she hear any sound.

“Hey Mickey!”  The whispered voice of master thief Owens penetrated the darkness.

Mikayla Doniak about jumped out of her skin, but she didn’t scream.  She took a deep breath and whispered, “Owens?!”

“I’m looking for shit to steal!”  Owens’ whisper was barely audible, but he was in a good mood and sounded like he was having a glorious time.  The tone of his whispering changed.  “Can I ask, are you good?”

Doniak was startled, confused, and angry but she kept her whisper quiet.  “How in the fuck did you get in here!?”

“The door.  Literally, just now.”  Owens wasn’t known for long stories.

“No, not here in the closet… I mean, the room, Von Stryker, uh, the admiral…” Doniak dropped her head in confusion. “You know what, never mind.”

“Oh, cool, so you know that Von Stryker is in the other room with that Russian guy she’s had a crush on?   I’m pretty sure she’s gonna bang him.”

“Do ya think!?”  Doniak was flabbergasted but she knew her friend well enough to know that he wouldn’t have any clue of the actual danger that they were in.  “Honestly, I don’t care about our bosses love life.  I could give two shits.”

As she said that, the door to the closet emitted a loud THUD! as the sound of two bodies slammed up against it from the outside.  Doniak could hear Von Stryker and the admiral making out and moaning.  He was rough with Von Stryker and clearly the sounds she was making showed that she was enjoying herself immensely.

“If they come in here,” Owens hurriedly whispered, “shimmy up that far wall and hide on the ceiling.”

The sound of the bodies outside in the suite could be heard rolling away from the closet door.  A table got knocked over and made a loud racket as Doniak hissed in a barely audible voice, “god dammit Owens!  We’re not all fucking Spiderman like you!”  

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that.”  Owens had super natural abilities that the other agents didn’t have but he didn’t think of himself as special.  He just kind of lived in his own mind and randomly interacted with the real world when he was needed for a mission.  “Well, I wanna steal some shit.  See you at the safe house!  Good luck doing whatever it is that you’re doing in here!”

Doniak was about to speak up but Owens opened the door ever so slightly and slipped out, then shut it, all in the space of about a second, all without making any sound whatsoever.  Doniak was back in the dark, by herself, wondering what had just happened.  A chair fell over and Von Strykers’ giggles echoed through the suite.  How in the fuck could Owens just come and go undetected?

At that moment, Doniak’s wrist watch communicator lit up with a one word text from General Rice: “REPORT.”

“You gotta be shitting me,” she muttered to herself.  Doniak was terrible at texting on that watch, but she did her best to scribble.  “Party ended, I snooped around, now stuck in a closet.”  That simple text took several minutes to complete.  She hit send.  

The lights went out in the other room.  Doniak assumed she’d have to endure hearing her friend get laid, then have to sneak out under the cover of darkness in the wee hours of the morning.  She was kicking herself for not leaving the party when it ended.

“Hey Mickey!”

The whispering voice of Owens in the pitch dark startled her yet again.  “Owens!  What in the fuck?!?”

“Oh yeah, sorry to scare you.  In the last five minutes since we spoke, I stole a key in the room four doors down from here.  It looks like its to a safe box at a train station.  Wanna go check it out with me?”

Doniak shook her head in disbelief.  In that moment, she gave up all control.  “Owens, yes, if you get me out of here, I’ll go to a train station with you.  Fuck it.”

Owens laughed in a whisper that sounded a tad bit like a dog panting.  He composed himself.  “Yeah, sorry about that, I meant to say, the key looks like it’s from a train station in Toronto.  So unless there’s another Toronto in the world that I don’t know about, then we’re going to Canada.”

The thought of being in cold ass Canada sounded like heaven compared to humid Colombia.  “Well there’s that, then.  So, will you please just do what you do and help me get out of here?”

Doniak felt Owens grab her hand.  “Follow me, and try not to make any noise.  They made a fucking mess out there since I left.”  Owens guided Doniak perfectly out the closet door and around the land mines of the suite.  Von Stryker and the Russian admiral were now in the bathroom smashing into things and making a lot of noise, so it was an easy escape.

Owens lead Doniak into a moonlit office.  He closed the office door with zero sound behind them, then went to the window and opened it with no sound.  He talked a quiet voice instead of a whisper. “This fire escape has a stairwell that goes all the way to the parking garage.”  He pulled his watch to face and typed fast.  Ten seconds later, he hit send.

Doniak crinkled her brow.  “Did you just text Rice?”

“Oh, no, that was to Porter.  I told her that you and I were sneaking out of a fourth story guest room at the prime ministers villa on the north east side by the pool and that we need a ride.   I said, we have options where we can meet.  We can meet in the south parking garage, out in the large parking lot to the north, over by the river walk, or we’re happy to go anywhere else that’s convenient for her.  I also told her that I stole a key to a lock box and asked if she was free in the morning to fly to Toronto, or if she knew of any other cities in the world named Toronto that might have a train station with lock boxes.”

Doniak’s chin dropped and she gaped in disbelief.  “You did not just text all that to her, did you?”

Owens watch lit up.  He smiled and answered, “yeah, I did, and she’s replied that she’ll have a getaway car running and waiting for us under the northernmost parking lot light in five minutes, and that she’s wide open to fly in the morning and would love to take us to Toronto, but she asked if we could stop in Missouri for donuts.”  Owens looked at his friend.  “I’m down for donuts.  You?”

Doniak let out a big sigh and closed her eyes in exhaustion.  “Yes.  Missouri donuts.  Why the fuck not?”

“Sweet.”  Owens texted for about five seconds and hit send.  “I told her that we’ll be ready in the parking lot upon her arrival and that donuts sound delightful.  I then said that after working with you for this past year and getting to know you as I have, you’ll probably choose something with bacon and maple, but I could also see you enjoying a simple chocolate glazed donut too. I remember there was one morning in Russia where you had a bagel with blueberry cream cheese and you really liked it so maybe you might want a more adventurous donut.  I then asked her if there was any good bbq places she knew of along the way cuz I’m seriously craving brisket.”

His phone lit up and he narrated Porters reply.  “The donut place has everything and hopefully Mickey will love it.  Regarding bacon, Mickey is my kind of girl for sure.  Regarding bbq, there’s a place that I love over in Banff, Alberta.  It’s seriously out of the way, but there’s a ski instructor there that I’d like to say hi to, so if you two don’t mind eating barbecue alone, I’ll just enjoy some sugar from him while you two hit the steak house, then I’ll get you to Toronto by sundown.”  He lifted his face from his watch and asked, “sounds fun to me. You?”

Doniak was done with this day.  “Lead the way, Owens.”

In the distance, a woman who was quite possibly the best pilot in the world drove a stolen sports car at top speed through the midnight streets of Bogota, heading to pick up two tired American secret agents in a humid ass parking lot.