50, Revive

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a violent killer and you’re gonna kill Dirt by choking him to death with his own mustache.  We fucking get it.”  American military demolitions expert Dale O’Connor was sober for the first time in a long time.  The long flight from Tokyo to Moscow had no alcohol on the plane and remarkably O’Connor hadn’t complained once.

“Choke him to death with his own mustache?  I never said that, but I gotta admit, that’s good idea.”  Agent Death paused, then added, “Fuck face,” for good measure.   She tried not to laugh because she was kind of pissed, but she couldn’t pass on a war of wits with O’Connor.

“I’m only half listening to this murderous mumbo jumbo you’re blabbing on about.”  O’Connor normally didn’t mind his friends mindlessly bitching and moaning about dumb shit, but he was also normally half drunk.  “The guy got all four of us here within forty eight hours of contacting him and he didn’t owe us shit.  He literally did it because he likes us and simply wanted to help.  Be grateful.  Fuck.”

“I am grateful, fucker, and again, I like the idea of choking him with his own mustache,” Death conceded cheerfully.

“I appreciate it when people recognize my greatness,” O’Connor said with a small bow.

“Suck one, Doc.”

“Only if I’m paid really well.”  His joke got no smiles.

“You know what, I’m gonna eviscerate the mother fucker with a salad fork.”  Agent Death was remarkably refreshed from a very long nap.  Her friend Dirt had given her a chocolate that was heavily infused with a powerful strain of slow release cannabis but he’d neglected to inform her.  She was pissed at the omission of this very important info but kind of happy about it too.  She’d been stoned as fuck for almost two days.

“Salad fork evisceration.  That sounds like a good name for a punk band.”  Agent Mikayla Doniak enjoyed the uneventful commercial flight, but traveling had worn her out and she was now day dreaming about going to bed.

“I’ll feed his entrails to the local rats,” Death muttered.

“Rats, shmats, pipe down your bullshit, lady.”  O’Connor was playing a grumpy character that wasn’t getting the response he’d hoped for.  “You’re not gonna kill him.  Hell, you’ll probably bang him at some point.”  Agent Death’s death rants usually entertained him, but again, he wasn’t usually sober.  He decided to go aggressive on her.  “I’m sick of your ungrateful shit, you entitled white bitch.”  His eyes got big as he lifted a finger and pointed it in Death’s face.  “You eat your edibles like a good girl and don’t make me call you a Karen.”

Normally Death would kill whomever spoke to her like this in a very painful fashion and she’d have no regrets about it.  O’Connor was one of her best friends, and now the bullshit competition had begun between them.  “Rats would dine on his guts, Doc.  Then I’ll build a shrine to those rats and carve it into stone, Here Lies Dirt, We Think He Was Gay.”  

“Right?”  Special agent Alexi Blacktide had also unknowingly eaten a cannabis chocolate forty eight hours earlier, but she wasn’t mad about it.  She was cannabis naive, so it blew her away that two days had disappeared while she laughed and napped.  Ever since meeting their friend Dirt, she was constantly contemplating his sexual orientation.  “He raves about how much he loves salsa music.  Straight men don’t like salsa music, do they?”

Mikayla Doniak had to add her two cents to the bullshit olympics.  “Why don’t one of you just make a move on the old man, Lex?  Tell him you wanna bang his brains out.  You’ll find out if he’s gay.”  Doniak thought of Dirt’s perfectly clean, blindingly white shoes.  “Or at least if he’s bi.”

O’Connor chimed in with homoerotic humor.  “What if I make a pass at him instead of Death?”

Death grinned, “We’ve always known you were gay, Doc, but Dirt is still up in the air.”

O’Connor grunted without a smile.  “Good one.”  He wouldn’t budge an inch.

Death looked offended.  “I call you gay and you don’t even fight back?  What gives, sober boy?”

“If it shuts you up about wanting to kill him for the egregious offense of getting you high while you flew all over the fucking Pacific on his dime, then getting my brains banged out by him would be worth it.”  His homoerotic humor was falling flat so he went for a Hail Mary.  “I’d take that pounding gladly,” then he added, “Fuck!” with exasperation.

The four agents had been waiting curbside for a taxi to pull up at the Moscow airport on a chilly afternoon.  As Doniak flagged down an old mini-van taxi, she joked, “You don’t use that expression all the time, do you?”

“Whaddya mean?”  O’Connor was confused.  “Mickey, every other word out of my mouth is ‘fuck.’ “

“No, dipshit.  I mean when you said, you’d take that pounding gladly.”

O’Connor finally cracked a smile.  All three ladies grinned back, acknowledging that Doniak had won this round of wise ass uselessness by throwing O’Connor’s bullshit right back at him.  He looked away to hide his growing smile.  “No, those words only come out of my mouth if the guy I’m referring to is paying me really well, remember?”  He looked back at his friends as the taxi pulled up to them.  “Hey, twenty bucks is twenty bucks!”

“If that’s being paid well, I’d hate to see what you’re willing to do on the cheap,” Doniak said.  The other three broke character and laughed.  Doniak was the unofficial bullshit queen for that round.

The four American military special agents loaded into the taxi with their carry on duffle bags.  Doniak spoke excellent Russian as she gave the address to the hotel they needed while the other three agents stayed silent.  The taxi driver had no clue that they weren’t locals.  The drive took less than five minutes and the agents poured out as Doniak settled up with the driver.  

They walked into the hotel since Porter had already texted them her room number.  O’Connor broke the silence.  “Did that taxi smell like vodka, or am I just manifesting a drink in my imagination?”

“Nope, it wasn’t your imagination,” Death reassured.

“I think I fell in love with that guy, “ Blacktide joked.  “I mean, we drink on the job a lot of the time too.”  She looked at O’Connor.  “Or in your case, all of the time.”

“I resemble that remark, thank you very much.  Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about trying to arrange a meeting between Porter and that Russian pilot.  I think it’s a good idea.”

Death and Blacktide stopped walking and looked at O’Connor like he was crazy.  Doniak raised her hands to the ladies as if to stop them from slapping him.  “I’ll take this one ladies.”

O’Connor stood in the middle of the hotel lobby, completely clueless as to why they’d all stopped walking.  As if defending himself, he said with complete sincerity, “What in the fuck is going on right now?”

Doniak took a deep breath with her eyes closed as if she were summoning an inner strength needed to discipline a child.  “Doc, you’re a man, so we don’t blame you for being an idiot.  You’re not gonna introduce Porter to anyone.  She’s fine.  She’s just going through what every woman goes through.”

Still completely confused, O’Connor pleadingly asked, “Which is, what, exactly?”

Death and Blacktide stepped in towards O’Connor as if to box him into a trap.  Doniak was stern as she said, “She’s heartbroken because she has an imaginary crush on someone that she’ll never get to be with.”

A month earlier, Team Whiskey had discovered that the Russian military had a special unit with members who were eerily similar to each of them.  The American team had affectionately named them Team Vodka.  O’Connor had met their demolitions expert named Connorvich in a bar.  The two men became epic drinking buddies and kept randomly bumping into each other in bars without ever planning to meet.  It was as if fate put them together.  

Porter had raced the Russian pilot from Team Vodka on the highway randomly one night and she’d won.  Then she cried the rest of that night because she’d thought she was in love with the man.  She’d been acting out of character ever since.

O’Connor was still crazy confused.  “Whaddya mean?  I could hang out at the bar and eventually bump into Connorvich, then he’d set it up so we could all go meet for drinks!  Porter and their pilot will surely hit it off!  She’s sexy, she’s smart, and she’s a pilot geek like the other guy.  What am I missing here?”

Doniak reached out to stop Death from slapping her male friend.  “I told you, I’ve got this,” she said to Death.  “Doc, listen to me, this is a girl thing.  You’ll never understand.  Porter needs to cry with the two of us for a few days while eating a shit load of chocolate.  Ultimately she’s gotta get back in the air so she can fly us missions or she’ll lose years of her life in depression instead of a few weeks.  She’ll be completely fine in six months if you just let us do this our way.”

O’Connor’s male brain couldn’t handle the thought of not fixing the situation.  “But she could seriously fall in love for real with the guy!  The real guy!”

Doniak was getting impatient.  “Look!  For the next two days, your only mission is to get us high quality ice cream and the best fucking chocolate you can find.  Do you understand me?”

O’Connor really thought he was being helpful as he said, “Mickey, for real, Porter says she’s in love and I can literally arrange an introduction for her.”  His male brain was trying to solve a problem while the female brains around him were trying to explain a uniquely female experience to him. 

Doniak looked at Death.  “Fuck it, pop him.”

Death cold cocked O’Connor in the jaw with a powerful open hand slap.  The noise reverberated throughout the hotel lobby.  People and employees all stopped to see what had happened.  Doniak looked around at the people staring and pointed to Death and O’Connor as she lied in Russian, “He forgot their anniversary because he went out drinking last night.”  All the Russians instantly seemed to think that this was an acceptable answer and went right about their business while several of the men shook their heads in mutual commiseration with the guy.

O’Connor could take a punch like a pro boxer.  He hadn’t said anything or made any sounds during the hit, but his face hurt like a mother fucker because Death could hit like a wrecking ball.  He nodded at Death as if to say, “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot,” which fit Doniak’s story perfectly without him knowing it.  

Doniak whispered, “Let’s get to Porter, stat.”

The four agents found themselves in the hallway in front of her room in short order.  A quick knock was followed by Porter opening the door.  Her face was white and gaunt and she had big bags under her eyes.  She hadn’t eaten, her sleep had been terrible, and she looked very unhealthy.  She was very morose as she said, “Hey gang, it’s really good to see you all.”  

They stepped into the room one by one and gave her a big hug, then Death looked at O’Connor and said, “If you’re not back here in one hour with ice cream and chocolate, I swear on everything holy that I’ll end your life in the most painful ways you can imagine.”

O’Connor got the hint.  “As long as you don’t eviscerate me with a salad fork.”

Doniak couldn’t get the thought out of her head.  “I’m telling you, Salad Fork Evisceration is a great name for a punk band.”  The comment made Porter laugh and the tension eased quickly in the room.

Death said one final thing as O’Connor was leaving.  “Rocky road, mother fucker.”

“We’re in Moscow, Miss America,” O’Connor snapped.  “You get whatcha get, Karen.”

“Oh, you didn’t!” but Death’s words were drowned out by the sound of the door latching shut.

Forty five minutes later, O’Connor let himself back into the room with a grocery bag full of sad girl supplies along with a bottle of Jameson whiskey.  Death said, “Thank you,” then open slapped the fuck out of him on the other cheek.  “You deserve that,” she interjected before he could protest, “don’t deny that.  And the next time you call me Karen, I’ll rip your balls off.”

O’Connor smiled as his face went numb from Death’s powerful slap.  “If I ever want my testicles removed without going to the doctor, I’ll know who to contact.”  He pulled out random wrapped Russian ice cream cones and tossed them to each lady.  His friends were smiling and seemed to be in much better spirits than they were earlier that afternoon.  “What’re we talking about?”

Alexi Blacktide didn’t miss a beat as she ripped the paper packaging off of a waffle cone filled with chocolate ice cream.  “We’re discussing all the dick we’ve taken in our lives.  You’ll fit right in.”

“Hardy har har, Lex.”  He laughed but didn’t expect the homoeroticism so the violation of expectation genuinely caught him off guard.  “I was actually thinking about hitting the bar for a few before cracking this bottle open.  Any of you wanna join me?”

“Nah, we’re good now that you brought us ice cream.”  Death was opening her own sweet treat as she said, “Thanks Doc.  Now get the fuck out of here and don’t come back until you find us some good chocolate.  None of that cheap German shit that they sell in the convenience stores.”

O’Connor nodded as he walked backwards.  “I’ll find the good stuff, then I’ll be in the bar if you need me.”

The ice cream disappeared as the women chatted and laughed.  Their camaraderie was recharging all of their batteries.  Porter cried a few times and the women joined in, but the vibe was getting better.  The discussion turned to getting Porter back into the air.  She truly felt alive when she flew, especially when she was helping her team.  Her melancholy the past week had made her momentarily forget how much she loved to fly.

Death’s curiosity got the best of her.  “Porter, when you stole that jet during the jail break, how did you know how to read all of the instruments in Russian?”

“I didn’t!” Porter admitted.  “I literally flew it by instinct and experience.  I couldn’t read a thing!”  Her chipper tone was starting to return.

Blacktide’s jaw dropped.  “Wait, hold on, so you’re telling me you didn’t actually know how to fly that jet?  You just…” 

“Faked it!” Porter finished.  The conversation was revitalizing her soul.  “Honestly, I wasn’t worried.  Jets and men are the same all over the world.”  She giggled at her own joke, then dropped the comparison.  “Once I got used to how the controls felt, that was it.  I’m a good enough pilot that I can fly anything.  I really believe that.”

Doniak had only known Porter a short time, but the other two women had worked with Porter for over ten years.  They knew that she was a freak of nature when it came to flying any kind of plane or helicopter.  Porter was the best.  

“Have you heard any news from your contacts about when you brought the jet back to the airstrip?” Doniak asked.

“No, actually.  I came here and checked in, and when I got to my room, the overwhelming sadness took over.”  Doniak, Blacktide and Death all nodded in perfect empathy.  “I’ve been crying since that night.  I literally called the front desk and asked them to extend my stay for two weeks and they didn’t ask any questions.  The only other call I made was to you, Alexi.  It’s been rough.”  She licked some melting ice cream and enjoyed the sugar buzz it gave her taste buds.  “Thanks for coming to help me out, guys.”

Death smiled.  “We’ve got you covered, Porter.  Now that we’re here, we’ll get you back on your feet.”

Blacktide leaned over to Doniak and spoke under her breath so Porter couldn’t hear.  “This is going great.  We’ll have Porter back to her normal self in no time.”

In the distance, an American demolitions expert randomly bumped into a Russian demolitions expert at a bar located next to a Russian chocolatier shop and the two drinking buddies started boozing hard while making plans to introduce their pilots to each other.