39, Consistent

“No trap can hold me, Bradley.  I’m a ghost.”  The evening air was crisp and a light chill fell over special agent Trent Murdock.  He was a little buzzed and very confident.  He shivered as he said, “I pity any fool who tries to cross me tonight.”

“You’re having delusions of grandeur again, Murdock. You’re not Owens, bud, hate to break it to ya.” Bradley McVandalay pulled out a piece of gum and pocketed the wrapper for its later disposal.

“I’m a mongoose, bro. Nimble and uncatchable.”

“Says the man who only two months ago was naked and dangling upside down by his ankles in Bogota.”  McVandalay blew a bubble with his gum and it popped. “Or the time in the walk in…”

“Fridge, yeah yeah,” Murdock interrupted.  “I got locked in a fucking walk in fridge one friggin time.  One time!”  He pleaded,  “She was hot!  I didn’t know it was coming.”

“Or Halloween four years ago in Budapest.”

Trent Murdock smiled an uneasy smile.  “Oh, dude, that wasn’t my fault!”  McVandalay made stern eye contact with him and instantly Murdock backed off a little.  “Ok, maybe it was a little.”

“No one else in the entire history of the American military is more easily snared in a trap than you.  Just add any kind of female energy as bait, and boom, we don’t know whether to rescue your or have your funeral.”  McVandalay crinkled his brow.  “I seriously question why we ever let you join this team.”

Murdock was feeling chilly, partly from the cool Moscow evening, but partly because he was being called out for his bullshit.  “Bradley.  Budapest was different.”  McVandalay started to protest but Murdock cut him off.  “Dude, she was fire.  Pure fire.  You’d have done the same thing.”

“I was there Murdock, and no, I didn’t do the same thing.  I did a different thing.  I completed the mission without being seen, only to have to rescue you a day later cuz your dumbass got captured.”

“Stop it with this professionalism bullshit.  You’d have tried to bang her, don’t lie.”

McVadnalay had to admit, the double agent in Budapest was indeed a beauty, but he didn’t constantly want to fuck every female that made eye contact with him, unlike Murdock.  It wasn’t worth the argument for that particular instance, so he moved on.  “And don’t forget Cleveland.”

“Fuck that!  That was just bad luck!”

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.  You’re simply ill prepared for the adult world, Murdock.  We’re still amazed you didn’t die in Bogota.”

Murdock recalled being drugged by a woman at a bar, then taken prisoner by a violent drug lord.  The team didn’t come rescue him right away, so he’d been tortured for almost two days.  “Yeah.  Bogota.  That sucked.”

“You’re a disaster, brother, but I’ll give you one thing, you’re consistent.”

Murdock smiled widely!  “Ah, see!  I’m consistent!”

“That you are.  Consistently thinking with your god damned pencil dick which puts us all at risk.  So don’t say that you can’t be trapped or whatever it is that you’re blabbing about.  You are literally the only person I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that will be a liability to any mission, every time, every location.”

Trent Murdock felt sheepish for the first time in his life.  He wondered to himself, “is my love for pussy a liability?”  He shook his head, as if to convince himself he wasn’t the problem.

McVandalay’s phone lit up.  His eyes got big as his excitement went haywire.  “It’s Owens!  A month ago he said he’d score the two of us some Bears tickets for the end of the regular season.  I gotta answer this!”  McVandalay tapped the screen of his phone and greeted his old friend while pointing to an old railroad station that looked like it’d been abandoned for twenty years.  There was one working light fixture above the entrance, and people in pairs or small groups were enthusiastically entering the building.  McVandalay gestured that the railroad station was their destination and quickly said, “I’ll meet you in there in a few.  Text me if you see anything suspicious.”

“Tell Owens hey for me.”  Murdock ditched his friend and walked the last few blocks ’til he reached the doorway he needed.  The entry led to a small room that was barely lit with ambient light, but when he walked around the corner he found a well lit walkway leading to the old main terminal.  There were hundreds of Russian men smoking cigarettes and cigars around a well lit boxing ring, complete with ringside tables for announcers.  The place smelled like tobacco, booze, and violence.  “I love Russia,” he said lovingly to himself.

“You.  You are American.  I know this by how dumb you dress.”  A beautiful five foot six inch blond bombshell weighing no more than a hundred twenty pounds was talking to him.  She had a beautiful face and even sexier body with that typical Russian bluntness he’d grown to actually enjoy.  She crinkled her brow.  “Who are you with watching fights?” she asked in a thick Russian accent.

Trent Murdock’s heart pounded.  He loved women.  He turned up a fake Texas accent.  “Well there, darlin, I sure am American, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to watch the fights with you.  That is, if your husband doesn’t mind?”

The woman snorted.  “No husbands.  Too much work.  You can watch fights with me.  I like this.  But you no drink American beer.  Disgusting.  You drink Russian beer.”  The woman pulled a 500ml bottle of imperial Russian oatmeal stout out of her hand bag and handed it to Murdock, then grabbed herself one.  “Now you drink real beer.  You meet my friends and we watch fighting.  Come.”  

She popped the top off of her beer and took a huge swig.  Murdock struggled with the pop top for a few seconds, trying not to look like a wuss in front of this firecracker.  He took a sniff and gladly tossed back a massive gulp.  The delicious stout rolled down his throat like joyful angel songs radiating through the heavens.  She smiled widely and he matched her smile.  “Dang, that’s good beer, miss.”

“Yes.  Good beer.  You are in Russia.”  She was flirting, but in a very blunt Russian way.  Murdock soaked in the attention.

She grabbed Murdock’s open hand with hers and forcefully pulled him towards a group of folks across the room that all had the same hard Russian scowl.  They were all drinking and one of them was smoking a cigarette.  Murdock made eye contact with them and he had a very strange feeling that he’d met two of the four of them before.  He didn’t say so as he simply nodded and said in his fake Texas accent, “hi y’all, my name’s Bill Walker.”

One of the angry Russian men looked at the small blond and asked in Russian, “who in the fuck is this American?”  Murdock was shitty at foreign languages but he could get the picture.  This dude was big and ugly but the girl was very beautiful.  He had to tread lightly.

The blond woman answered in Russian.  “This man is American.  He is big and dumb.  He drank half the bottle in one gulp.”  She smiled and nodded to his beer bottle.  

Murdock felt less awkward as the Russian man smiled and laughed a hearty laugh.  He spoke to the fake Texas man in English with a very thick accent.  “Ah, you drink Russian beer.  Good man.”  He raised his own beer and Murdock lifted his in return.  Both men swigged from their bottles and Murdock’s was finished by the time he lowered it from his lips.  “The next round is on me, miss.  Is there a bar here?”

The blond smiled and swept Murdock off his feet with her thick accent.  “You will buy me beer different day.  Today, one beer only.  I fight in couple minutes.”

“You?  You’re gonna bare knuckle box tonight, miss?”  Murdock couldn’t believe his ears.

“Yes.  And you will be sleeping, sleepy boy.”  

She took a drink of her beer and as she lowered her bottle, Murdock processed what he’d just heard.  “Sleepy boy?”  Even as he was repeating the words, his head felt heavy.  Instantly he knew, he’d been drugged.  “Fuck,” he muttered.  “Bradley will never let me hear the end of this.”  Then he smiled.  “At least I’m consistent…”  he barely got the words out as his body started to collapse from weakness.

“My name is Shumakov, and you are under arrest.  See you in Siberia, Texas boy.”  She squeezed his cheeks with her hands. He tried to swipe her pinching away but the drugs had hit him so hard that he couldn’t feel her touch, let alone move his arms.

“See you in hell, miss,” Murdock slurred with a Texas accent.  Even though he knew he was fucked, his defiant American spirit would never cease.  

As if moving at the speed of light, two random Russian dudes stepped in and caught him right before he went limp.  Two more men stepped up and grabbed his legs and the four of them removed the American from the scene. 

“American lightweight, can’t drink with Russians,” the men joked as other people got out of their way.  “He’ll be fine,” they lied.

Bradley McVandalay walked into the building in amazing spirits knowing he was gonna see a Chicago Bears game in a month with his friend, master thief Owens.  He caught the view of a group of men carrying an unconscious body out of the room.  It was definitely a bigger man they were carrying because the men struggled to get the large body through the door.  As if by instinct, he already knew it was Murdock.  “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”  

“You, you are American,” a different beautiful woman said to McVandalay as he walked through the doorway.  “Your American clothes are dumb.”

“I’m gay, leave me alone,” McVandalay lied as he pushed past her to try and get to the doorway where Murdock had been taken.  She tried to grab his arm but his reflexes were crazy fast.  In the space of less than a second, McVandalay had grabbed her own arm, flipped the woman around, knocked her out with a hit to the back of the head with his elbow, and he set her down gently as if they did this little dance all of the time.  “This is no fucking good,” he muttered.

He didn’t even have time to call his friends when they walked in behind him.  “McV!” said Sargeant Schuman.  “I didn’t know you were gonna be here?  Where’s Doc or Murdock?”

“Doc is on a bender at some bar and I’m pretty sure Murdock just got abducted by four men and taken through that door.”  He didn’t wait to hear Schuman’s response as he hammered his way straight to the opposite side of the room.  

“Fucking Murdock,” Schuman gritted.  “If he fucks up tonight for me, I’ll kill that fucker.”  She was jonesing for a bare knuckles fight, but also really hoping to bump into the love of her life, a fighter from Colombia named Bean Pole.  “I’m not fucking around here, guys.”

Pilot Porter had been a mess for four straight days.  She’d won a race against a Russian driver, but something snapped in her brain during the race.  She got a glimpse of her opponent for a brief moment and it had been love at first sight.  Porter had never been in love, nor had she ever been in an exclusive relationship.  She had chew toys in every small, random air strip all over the world, and she liked it that way.  She tried to assure her friend that everything would work out.  “Murdock does what he does, you do what you do, Sarge.  Go get ’em.”

“Thanks Porter.  I needed that.”  Schuman smiled widely and walked off to find the promoter.   

Meanwhile, Bradley McVandalay had made his way all the way to the door where Murdock had been carried through.  A few Russian bouncers stepped in front of the door to block it.  “Niet!” one of them said denying him entry.

“Oh, hi fellas!” McVandalay said in a friendly tone as his fist hit the man hard in the solar plexus.  The second Russian man tried to lunge for the American but he was on the ground just as quickly from a hard hook connected to his temple.  It caused a scene and people started talking loudly and pointing to him.  “Dammit, this is so not good.”  As he stepped over the two men, several people started moving towards him quickly and aggressively to confront him.  McVandalay reached out to grab the door knob, but as he touched it an electric shock jolted through his body.  He crumpled to the floor in more pain than he’d ever experienced.

The commotion from the altercation was the perfect cover as agents Von Stryker and Mikayla Doniak walked into the building.  They made eye contact with Porter and nodded.  The three women could see the situation with McVandalay’s crumpled up body on the ground unfolding.  The door opened and a thug walked out holding an injection gun.  He knelt down and blasted McVandalay in the neck which made the American grown and wince in pain.  The thug pocketed the tool, and three other men helped pick up the large, strong American, then carried him through the door. 

Porter said to her two friends, “I’ll grab wheels and be a block away waiting.  Text me.”  She stepped out of the building and took off running to get back to their apartment twenty blocks away, knowing they would need a getaway car.  

The other two women started scowling and lit up cigarettes to look more like Russian ladies.  They separated and blended into the crowd with their eyes and ears wide open.

From across the room, Schuman was oblivious.  She’d met the promoter straight away and he’d put her in the first fight on the night against another woman.  Schuman’s heart was pounding in anticipation.  She hadn’t fought in a bare knuckles match since her loss in Bogota two months previously.  It was the longest she’d ever gone without a fight, and she was losing her mind.  

Schuman’s friends knew it was pointless to discuss anything until after she’d boxed.  They texted O’Connor to let him know what was going on.  A minute later, O’Connor texted back, “we’ll break them out or bury them in a few days, whichever needs to be done.  I still have fourteen gallons of whiskey to finish.”

Von Stryker couldn’t help but smile.  “I won’t lie Mickey, that fucking idiot is one of my favorite people I’ve ever met,” she said of O’Connor.  “Doc knows who he is and doesn’t give a fuck.”

Doniak grinned.  “He’s a drunken fuckin mess is what he is.”  She muttered to herself, “but god dammit, we could use him tonight.”  

The ladies tried to keep a low profile and get as much info as they could.  They overheard drunk Russians talking about Siberia and laughing.  “Fuck,” Von Stryker said.  “They know we’re here.  They just don’t know who we are.”  Von Stryker knew, Siberia was code for, “the government wants them gone without international diplomacy.”  No one went to Siberian prisons and came back to tell about it.

“If the guys would just listen to us and dress like we tell them…” Doniak’s words trailed off.  She was in denial and bargaining in her mind.  She was self aware and had to tell herself, “get to acceptance, Mickey.”  She knew that being grounded in reality was all that mattered in that moment.  

Suddenly, the lights in the room went dim as the lights on the ring became blinding.  Russian rock n roll started blaring from some speakers and an announcer excitedly welcomed all the fans for the evening.  The place became instantly electric as people were ready for the fights.  Von Stryker and Doniak sent a wild text to Owens.  “Murdock and McVandalay are captured and being taken to Siberian prisons.  Might need your skills to break them out.”  

Not even ten seconds later, Owens replied, “I’ll be to Moscow in twenty four hours to meet up.  Brief me at the safe house, and bring jerky.  I’m craving dried meat.”

Von Stryker asked to no one in particular, “How in the fuck does that asshole text so quickly?”

“We’ll need Blacktide, Blitz, Miller and Lorenz for this one too,” Doniak mentioned.

“Last I heard, Miller and Lorenz were still in South America while Blacktide and Blitz are on safari in Africa.  I’ll text them anyways.”  Von Stryker sent the same text to all of them but got no instant replies.  “Text is sent,” she told Doniak.

With that, a bell rang to invite the first fighters into the ring.  American special agent Angelica Schuman cracked her neck from side to side.  She saw her opponent step into the ring and gasped.  Somehow, she knew it was the Russian military version of herself.  This would be a fight for the ages.  She smiled widely with pure fire in her soul.  Quietly, she said a prayer of gratitude to a god she didn’t believe in. Then, she centered her mind and soaked it in that she was in her happy place.  “Oh, sweetie,” she giggled.  “You’re a dead woman.” 

In the distance, two demolitions experts were finishing a four day bender, having consumed enough alcohol to kill a large blue whale deader than Hank Williams Sr.