31, Aftermath
“The mansion looked like a toilet at a frat house after a Cinco De Mayo rager. Totally wrecked.” Special agent Dale O’Connor spoke matter of factly and showed no emotion. He grabbed a few ice cubes and dropped them in a rocks glass as the clinking sound awkwardly added to the tension of the conversation. “I’m talking, torn up like everyone in the frat house wolfed down multiple servings of home made bean dip and extra margarita’s.” He paused, then added, “I’m talking about shit everywhere. I mean, everywhere.”
“Ok! I get it!” CIA director Mulroony was grossed out and stressed out. He exhaled audibly in frustration. “Why in the fuck is is it that wherever Sarge goes, a possible war might spring up as a result?”
“Her attention to detail is second to none.” O’Connor poured himself a double whiskey and smiled for the first time in the video call. “You worry too much, boss. There’s no way they’ll pin this to American military.”
“I don’t share your confidence, Doc.”
The video screen froze and the video frame of Mulroony’s face looked pained. O’Connor pushed on. “After Sarge cleaned the place out, I blew it all up with vodka and gasoline molotov cocktails. It looks like a hit from young, angry Russian thugs from an arguing crime family.”
Mulroony wasn’t having it. “Russian thugs. In the middle of the woods. One road in, one road out, well guarded.” He sighed. “I hate my job.”
A glorious sip of heaven warmed O’Connors belly and the whiskey made his breath sweet. “Russian mafia jobs have been way more violent than this.”
“Yeah, but mafia hits aren’t as efficient as the carnage you two left.” Mulroony had good reason to be nervous.
O’Connor didn’t have to ponder long as he replied, “If we have to kill every mafioso in this god forsaken country, we will.”
“I’m in direct contact with our embassy and they’re in the dark. All they know is that there was a massive shootout two hours outside of Moscow and now there’s twenty four people dead, a couple of whom were local politicians.”
“Crooked politicians in bed with drug syndicates. Gotta love Russia.”
“It’s the same in our country, Doc, but instead it’s elected officials and pharmaceutical companies.”
O’Connor sipped his beverage as his phone lit up with a notification. “Oh hey, I just got a text from Von Stryker. Her contacts say that the cops believe that the hit was the work of a rival drug gang, and all the crime families are on high alert.” He paused, then added, “She ended the text by saying, and I quote, ‘Tell Mulroony if he dies of a heart attack that I call dibs on his edible panty collection.”
The CIA Director was too stressed to laugh. “Text Von back and tell her to spread as much misinformation as possible.”
“Boss, the woman lives for mischief.”
The two men ended their video chat with assurances that either would reach out as new info came in. The political climate between the US State Department and the Russian government had always been tense, but it felt especially volatile lately. Drug use among the Russian people was soaring and the mafia gladly provided the chemicals for a voracious chemical craving populace. Local governments were seeing more and more overdoses and hospitalizations. The situation was dire. Violence and destruction didn’t help.
An hour later, O’Connor found himself sitting shotgun in a small Russian car while Von Stryker expertly weaved through traffic. She spoke casually, as if she was on vacation and didn’t have a care in the world. “Sadly, because of that shit show that you, McVandalay and Sarge pulled, all social events in the underground have been canceled.”
“Oh gee, I guess that means I don’t have to get my suit dry cleaned right away then.” O’Connor’s sarcasm was dry.
“Dammit Doc, you don’t get it. We’re talking, there’s no underground boxing matches coming up because they’re all canceled.”
“Shit.”
The unassuming Sergeant Schuman stood five foot six, weighed a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet with change in her pockets, but despite her small frame she could punch like a freight train. She never lost in fights except for once. The man who beat her was nicknamed The Bean Pole. She fell madly in love with the idea of him but a gun fight in the boxing arena between some agents and cartel thugs sent everyone panicking for the exits. As a result of that chaos, she’d never gotten to know Bean Pole. He was now in Russia being backed by mafia money to become a champion.
Sarge was on a mission to find the man. She was a silly little girl in love, but she was also a naturally born fighter with world class military combat training. (Decades into the future upon her death, posthumously doctors would discover that her bone density was exceptionally stronger than normal and that her skeletal muscle had unique fast twitch fibers twice as fast and powerful as other humans.)
O’Connor humbly asked, “Any word on Bean Pole?”
“Not specifically, but I got word that that there are a dozen boxers from South America training over in the old industrial part of town. He’s gotta be in that group. Has to be.”
O’Connor showed intrigue and excitement for the first time in the day, but he was really starting to become depressed. He took note of the absolutely bland architecture of the old Soviet era. Big buildings lacking any character jutted out of the landscape like ugly warts, begging to be knocked down and replaced by anything other than flat, soulless cinderblock wall after wall. The lack of beauty made O’Connor feel gross inside. “A dozen flippin’ boxers? What gives? That seems like a lot of foreigners for some simple underground fights.”
The car came to a screeching stop as the breaks locked up. An old homeless man holding a paper bag with a bottle of booze was staggering his way across the street and damn near got clipped by the rig. Neither agent even commented on the homeless man, but kept talking as if nothing had happened. “You gotta understand, the guys at the top are so rich that it’s nothing to them to throw a cool million at any whim that grabs their fancy. They like gambling, and dropping big bets on bare knuckles boxing is their latest hobby.”
The homeless man finally was out of the way and Von Stryker stomped on the gas. The Moscow morning was crisp and clear. The engine noise reverberated off the ugly ass buildings as the old rusty car roared through the city.
O’Connor was still putting the pieces together. “So the fighters are all training to represent a specific crime family?”
Von Stryker cut off another car as it honked loudly and flipped her the bird. She didn’t even take notice as she floored the car hastily down a side street. “Not exactly. They all got hired by a boxing promoter named Kol. He goes out and sets the fights up with his bookies, and the fighters all get a healthy healthy paycheck. It’s pennies compared to the bets that exchange hands of course, but it’s ten times more money than they can make back home.”
“How in the hell do you recruit bare knuckles boxers from South America to come to this fucking place? That’s what I wanna know.”
“Money talks, Doc. A few months back I did a mission with Mickey and Owens in Bogota at the governors chateau. I told you about hooking up with that admiral.” O’Connor nodded approvingly as Von Stryker smiled unapologetically. “There were some Russian businessmen who were there to recruit underground boxers. The underground fight scene run by the mafia is operating more efficiently than the normal above board boxing associations.”
With half a yawn, he asked, “I assume you have an address for that warehouse?”
“Sadly, no.” Von Stryker stomped on the gas and illegally passed an old farm truck. A few seconds later, a cop car pulled out of nowhere and flipped on its lights. Von Stryker looked in the mirror to sum up their situation. “Well this annoys me. Hold on.”
Not needing to be told twice, O’Connor grabbed onto the door handle for support. Von Stryker started manually rolling down the window with her left hand as she yanked the wheel hard with the other. The car spun around a hundred and eighty degrees. The cop swerved at the last second to miss a head on collision. It missed the agents old shitty car by inches.
Von Stryker reached into her hair and pulled out a pin, then threw it towards the ground out the window. Somehow, someway, the pin poked into the police car’s tire. The sound made by the blowout boomed like a bomb down the street way of ugly buildings. The agents relaxed and continued chatting as if nothing had happened. “That unapproved job that you and McVandalay were gonna do obviously got messy when Sarge dropped in, and the wreckage left has the crime honchos nervous as hell.”
“God it felt good to burn that fucking place down. I needed that.”
“Yeah, well Sarge shot her own foot if she wants to find Bean Pole. I have no clue where they’re training. I’ve got all of my contacts asking questions on the street but it’s been pretty quiet.
“Well that’s something. You’d think these mafia types would wanna brag. You think they’d be more interested in showing off to each other than having secret boxers in their ranks. Weird.”
“I don’t know this for sure, Doc, but I’m guessing we’ll find out that a particular businessman or a specific group is behind the secrecy. These fuckers are always trying to one up each other. Rich people do really weird shit.”
“Poor people do weird shit too, they just usually don’t fuck with people like the rich do.”
The car pulled up to the safe house and the agents headed in to see the crew. Mickey and Murdock were drinking in the living room while McVandalay read a book and Porter clicked buttons on a hand held video game. She was the first to greet them. “Hey Doc! Good to see you, Von! What’s up?”
“Mulroony’s nervous, underground fights are canceled, and all the crime families are on high alert. You know, the usual.” Von Stryker hung her jacked by the door and added, “oh, and Murdock, I’m still trying to find who killed those drug runners. No word back yet, but I always get what I want.”
O’Connor and Von Stryker didn’t talk about getting booze, but he went for the whiskey as she went for the glasses and ice. A few moments later, they were sitting with their friends. O’Connor spoke. “Von thinks she’s got a lead on where we might track down Bean Pole.”
McVandalay’s eyes perked up. “Nice! But a lead isn’t real intel, and after blowing up that mansion yesterday, we know we all have to lay low for a few months.”
Von Stryker appreciated her first sip of whiskey, then asked, “where’s Sarge now?”
“Disappeared after the wreckage and hasn’t answered her comms,” McVandalay answered. “You should’ve seen her at the shootout. That high tech robot suit she was wearing is unreal.”
Mickey spoke up. “She told me she was gonna borrow some sort of hight tech body suit from agent Death but I never saw it.”
O’Connor started laughing. “Oh yeah! That thing belongs to Death! Forgot about that.”
Murdock chimed in. “There was one time in North Korea where she jumped right into a fire fight and landed on a tank. She ripped the top cover off the thing and dropped a grenade into the control center. I can’t make that up.”
O’Connor added, “She saved our bacon that day.”
Von Stryker got to business. “Robot suit or not, this isn’t some cheesy sci fi movie. This our lives we’re talking about here, and Sarge is gonna destabilize the god damned global economy. We need to find Bean Pole and get her to him or there will literally never be world peace ever again.”
The room was silent because all the agents knew that she was right.
In the distance, a woman in the US Army with the rank of master sergeant was starting to lose her grip on reality as she vigorously polished a borrowed state of the art robot war suit with a rag and some cleaner while crazily muttering to herself, “I’ll find you my sweet skinny little bean pole, I’ll find you.”
