46, Revenge
“No, not all snot is the same. All boogers are not created equal, think about it.” Agent Alexi Blacktide stepped over an unconscious man and held his keys loosely. She ran one finger down the handlebars of his beautiful motorcycle and licked her lips. “When I get done with wood working for a day, the sawdust in my nostrils might as well be Elmers glue. But when I have a cold, my boogers are as loose as maple syrup.”
“Um, like, I just met you an hour ago, so I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.” A woman known simply as Grimm crinkled her brow. “We’re talking about a confederate flag handkerchief, are we not?”
“Well yeah, but who wants it soaked with snot if your snot is runny?” Blacktide tried to defend her ego as she mounted the bike.
“Jesus, Blacktide, way to overanalyze a part of the story that didn’t need to be analyzed.” Agent Death hit the button to open the man’s garage door. None of the women worried about the noise waking the other man in the house. “My point was that it’s an act of political defiance to blow your boogers into a piece of cloth that might piss people off, like a fucking flag, then fold it up and put it back in your pocket.”
“I’ve never cared about handkerchiefs, or flags now that I think about it.” Blacktide used her heel to disengage the kickstand. The heavy bike teetered but she handled it well enough to not let it fall over. “The confederate flag doesn’t mean shit to me one way or another.”
“That’s cuz you’re white,” Grimm quipped. She jumped on a smaller motorcycle and followed Blacktide’s lead.
“You are too.” The words were factual, not accusatory. “What does that have to do with it or not?”
“Well for starters,” Grimm paused, “let’s take slavery as an example.”
“That’s fair,” Blacktide instantly conceded. “Fuck it. Let the boogers fly, runny or not.”
“A minute late and a dollar short,” Death snickered.
“Well it didn’t sound like you were telling a joke. I just thought we were discussing nasal mucus as something to pass the time, that’s all.” Blacktide used her legs to push backwards on the bike and it started rolling. The slight decline of the driveway started pulling the heavy machine backwards towards the road and tested her core strength as it glided at a snail’s pace. “I wish you would’ve told me it was a joke.”
“Well shame on me for thinking that talking about boogers might make you laugh, for fuck’s sake. If you weren’t such a killer, I’d advise Mulroony to put you in analytics.” Death leaned down and checked the biker. He started snoring. “Damn Lex, how much did you slip this guy?”
“Four drops.” Death’s eyes got big but Alexi Blacktide’s mischievous grin added levity to the situation. She shrugged. “The skinny guy in the other room got three. They’ll be fine, you know they will.”
“Yeah,” Death joked, “the fuckers are gonna sleep ’til noon tomorrow and not know what hit them. Two drops is enough to knock out an elephant.”
“It’s not fatal, and they deserve it. They torched your Honda, remember?”
Grimm backed the second skinnier bike out of the garage and down the short driveway. The house was in a part of Austin that was surrounded by trees and had no neighbors. These bikers didn’t like having neighbors. Death hit the garage button and exited the garage as she stepped over the infrared safety light, then jumped on the back of Blacktide’s new motorcycle. “Don’t kill us, Lex,” she joked.
“Trust me, Death, I’ve had bigger things with way more power between my legs.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
With that, the two bikes fired up and drove off into the midnight air with the none of the three women wearing helmets.
Across town, Master Thief Owens lifted his com watch to his face and hit a button. “Ana, report!”
Fellow Master Thief Anastasia Boothausen’s voice came through his ear piece in a whisper. “They’re still fucking sitting on the park bench right in front of the bike! I thought senior citizens were supposed to go to bed early, like at five in the afternoon or some shit!”
Boothausen had drugged a biker who’d been drinking in the biker bar that was in a fairly empty part of town. The man exited the bar stumbling. She’d snuck in behind him and caught him under the arm pits without anyone seeing her. She struggled to drag the man to an alley and dumped him behind the first dumpster she found. She stole the keys to his motorcycle and walked around the corner to steal his bike.
Fate was messing with Boothausen. Even though it was eleven o’clock at night, two eighty year old women took a seat on a well lit street bench that was directly in front of the bike. They seemed to be in no hurry, nor did they look around like they were waiting for anyone. She spoke to Owens with impatience. “Why in the fuck are Texans so god damned weird?”
Owens ignored her question and spoke plainly. “Any way you can scare them or incapacitate them without raising suspicion? Perhaps a stink bomb might get them moving?”
“Well, that could probably work but I don’t have one!”
“I have a few extra. I’ll meet you in five minutes.”
Boothausen snuck up around the corner behind where the women were seated to hear what they were discussing, and why it was so important to have their conversation here and now in the middle of the night. Her disbelief and impatience was pissing her off.
One of the old women was talking very politely to the other with a crack to her voice that could only come from decades of hard living. “Harold was about to go down on me, and I tell you Gladys, I wanted it bad. Real bad. But I knew it was gonna be a rough one, cuz I made us some taco soup for dinner, and taco soup always gave me awful gas. I was just too horny that night and I let him go down on me.”
The old woman named Gladys was enthusiastically chatting, almost with glee. “Geez, Iris, did you warn him?”
Iris waved her hand to dismiss the question as if she were swatting away a fly. “Oh, I wanted to, but I couldn’t help myself when he got down there. I was so worked up and I really needed an orgasm, you know?”
“You betcha, Iris, I know.” Gladys smiled big. “Oh boy, oh boy, do I know!”
“Well, Harold was always so good at oral sex, rest his soul, and he got my engine running hot right away. Right as I finished, I let the biggest taco fart out and it embarrassed me more than I’ve ever been embarrassed.”
Gladys gasped with embarrassment for her friend. “Wow, Iris! What did he do?”
“He laughed, then got up and opened a window. I remember he turned on a fan,” she paused for dramatic effect, “then he proceeded to fuck me harder than I’d ever been fucked up to that point in my life. I farted over and over as he fucked my brains out. We fucked hard like that all through the seventies, you know! Well, without the farting. That was just one night cuz I never made that mistake again.”
Boothausen didn’t believe her ears. It was now midnight, and two women were talking about a subject that she didn’t care to ever hear discussed by anyone at any time, let alone two eighty year old women.
She didn’t think about it long because she was distracted by a tap on her shoulder. Boothausen’s instincts instantly processed the information. She’d heard and seen no one so she instinctively knew it was Owens. Without looking, she reached out her open palm behind her back, then closed it around a small canister that was the size of a pack of gum. She quickly hit the spritzer and sent a shot of odor in the direction of the two elderly women, then silently slipped away into the bushes.
“Geez, Gladys, did you just fart?”
“No, Iris! It smells like you did!”
“Is that a skunk?” Iris got up and grabbed her purse. “It’s worse than my taco farts used to be!”
The smell was awful, and its intended purpose worked. The two women scurried away.
Owens said behind her, “nice work. How long were they sitting there?”
Boothausen was trying to forget their conversation. “The better part of an hour. It was driving me crazy. Thanks for the bailout. Let’s get that bike and get out.”
“Is the biker still inside drinking? I can drug him if you need me to.” Owens spoke matter of factly.
“Already taken care of, all good.” Boothausen nodded at Owens and added, “once I have this one, we only have six more bikes and we’ll have them all.
At the moment, two motorcycles went ripping by and the Thieves recognized their friends, along with their new friend, Grimm. Owens smiled. “Looks like we only have four more to get. Nice! I’m off to get the bike from the tall guy on 6th avenue. I’ll check in before the bars close.” With that, Owens took off. His footsteps made no sounds as he sprinted away.
Boothausen mounted the motorcycle and fired up the bike, backed it up into the street and headed to the rendezvous point. When she’d arrived at the empty, dark parking lot two blocks from the biker bar, she powered down the bike, then filled in Blacktide and Death. “I would’ve had this thing here an hour ago but I had to drive away two old ladies who would’ve witnessed me ride away. I’m guessing you two weren’t seen?”
Blacktide and Death dismounted the huge motorcycle but left the keys in the ignition. “Nope,” Death said. “Blacktide here drugged them so hard that they’ll be asleep for a week.”
“You only need a drop of that stuff to knock someone out for half a day, Blacktide,” Boothausen said sternly.
“I know, but I just got a bad vibe from them, so I slipped them four drops a piece.”
“Dang,” Boothausen muttered. “Yeah, they’ll be groggy for days.” She showed no concern and turned to talk with agent Death. “Fuck ’em. They torched your car.”
Death shrugged and smiled. “This is fun.” She looked at her watch and looked back up. “Owens is getting the bike on sixth avenue and says we should get the two that are up in the hemlock hills subdivision. That leaves the one over in the Capital neighborhood.”
Boothausen nodded. “On it.” She didn’t wait for anyone to say anything and took off running.
“Kick ass, Ana!” Death exclaimed. “Grimm, you still wanna tag along for these last two?”
Grimm was five feet ten inches tall with short blond hair that was pulled back by an American flag bandana. “This is more fun than my prom night.” The three secret agents looked at her with curiosity. “Me and ten friends drank a case of rum and shared an Altoids tin full of molly. Don’t judge me, we were young and stupid.”
Death smiled. “And now we’re older and still stupid. Let’s go finish this job and drink rum, but maybe not a whole case.” She shrugged. “Sorry, none of us do molly. Just sauce for us.”
Three hours went by and all four of the remaining bikes had been collected for a total of eighteen. It was four in the morning and the time to torch the bikes was getting close.
Owens spoke up. “I have some industrial grade burn fluid. It gets hot enough to oxidize stainless steel. It’ll be a gruesome sight for the newspapers to take pictures of at sunrise. These bikes will be puddles of melted metal and charred dreams.”
Blacktide laughed out loud. “Charred Dreams is a good name for a punk band.”
“Maybe if they’re a high school punk band,” Grimm joked. She mounted the first bike and said, “Get ’em as close to each other as possible. It’ll be easier for the fire fighters to put them out and hopefully won’t burn down the surrounding businesses.” The bike roared to life and she grinned, then took off.
“I like your friend,” Blacktide said to Death. “She’s fucking nuts.”
Death blurted a laugh out loud and replied, “Says the woman who just broke into a known biker gang leader’s house and fearlessly stole the keys to his motorcycle without waking him up.”
Blacktide considered her words as she brought a bike back to life. The biker bar was on a desolate side street that had buildings boarded up and had been neglected for decades. No one was around to witness the four women and one man pile the bikes up tightly to each other.
After they’d been parked, Owens removed the gas caps of each bike and used a siphon tool to remove the gasoline, but he didn’t store it. Rather, he just covered each bike with gas and let the rest fall to the ground. “I’ll bet this will burn hot enough to melt asphalt.” He giggled. “This is gonna be fun.”
It took twenty more minutes but soon all eighteen bikes were aligned, drained of fuel and ready to torch. Owens pulled out a bottle that looked like lighter fluid and meticulously covered them all with lines of high octane burn fuel. “Death, they torched your Honda. Wanna do the honors?”
Death smiled. “Guys, this is a weird moment, but a happy one too.” She pulled out a zippo lighter and a small branch. She lit it.
“Wait,” Grimm said, “do you just travel around with a piece of tree in your pocket?” She looked at Boothausen and Owens. “Isn’t that weird?”
Death shrugged. “I found it in a park earlier and figured it might come in handy if we pulled this off. Well, we pulled it off. I love you fuckers.” She tossed the burning wood onto the closest motorcycle and watched it go up in flames quickly. Bike after bike ignited as combusting fuel seared the metal and the fire burned hot. The agents had to take dozens of steps backwards to escape the heat. They watched, hypnotized by the metal burning.
Owens pulled out a burner phone and made an anonymous call to the fire department, then tossed the cell into the flames. The agents snapped a few photos for memorabilia sake, then departed the scene to consume large amounts of rum and tell stories and lies of past conquests.
In the distance, two senior citizen ladies hopped up on pharmaceutical medications who hadn’t slept for a week pointed fingers accusingly at each other and argued vehemently about which one farted hours earlier.
