57, Decaf

“Drinking decaf is like jerking off with a condom.  What’s the point?”  Master Thief Owens enjoyed the view overlooking a quiet portion of the Green River.  Kentucky was calm in the spring and the birds were chirping peacefully.  “There’s no fucking way I could drink that decaf shit.  There are two things that keep me from going insane.  Fishing and coffee.  Fishing is my wife, but caffeine is my mistress.”

Master Thief Anastasia Boothausen sipped her cup of decaf and contemplated what she’d just heard.  “You’ve said some dumb shit in our time together, but that’s gotta be the dumbest.”

Owens couldn’t help but giggle.  “Dumb shit?  Me?”  He shrugged.  “Truer words have not been spoken, sister.  You pegged me to a T.”  He took a sip from his own regular coffee and enjoyed the warm beverage as it danced joyfully on his tastebuds.  “If I had to choose, I think I like fishing more than I like coffee.”

The sunrise gave a warm glow to the slow moving water.  Boothausen couldn’t help but crinkle her brow.  “Ok, so you gotta know that those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, right?”  She shot from the hip without thinking.  “That’s like saying you gotta choose between wood working or ketchup.”  She paused for dramatic effect.  “It makes no fucking sense.”

As another glorious sip of coffee went down smoothly, Owens appreciated the analogy.  “Yeah, you’re right.  I didn’t think that one through.  I do wanna fish that river, though.”

“God damn you’re A.D.D. as fuck, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Boothausen surveyed the tranquil scene and enjoyed the crisp morning air.  “That joke about jerking off with a condom was funny, I’ll give you that.”

“I should’ve been a comedian,” Owens joked.

“Oh my god, no.”  Boothausen was deadpan and made eye contact with her friend.  Owens looked butt hurt momentarily, but then both of them started laughing.  “You’d get booed off stage within a minute, and the loudest booing would be from me.”

“Well hell, thanks for the vote of confidence, Ana.” Owens joked.

“You’re fucking damn good at what you do.”  The compliment made Owens feel good amongst the insults, especially coming from a Master Thief as good as Boothausen.  “Don’t quit your day job for the night life.”

Their giggles were interrupted by a quiet beeping alarm.  A car was driving towards their cabin location down the quarter mile long gravel driveway.  Owens asked, “Did you invite anyone out here, or is this uninvited company?”

“Shoot, I forgot to tell you.  Blacktide has new intel for us.”

Owens nodded in understanding.  “This explains why you brewed the full pot of decaf.”

Five minutes later, they were hugging their fellow secret agent friend Alexi Blacktide.  She obviously hadn’t been in the sun much as her alabaster skin glowed bright white in the mid-morning light.  She stood six feet tall with a strong feminine muscular frame and short black hair that she kept tucked behind her ears.  Her smile was warm and she was happy to see her friends.

Another woman got out of shotgun and walked around to Blacktide’s side.  She had shoulder length blonde hair and even though she stood five foot nine, she looked small compared to Blacktide’s tall persona.  Her smile was also bright and warm as she looked down at Owens who only stood five foot eight.  Meanwhile Boothausen felt like a shrimp standing five foot one.

Blacktide was jovial as she introduced her traveling companion.  “Friends, this is Yen Roar.  She’s a security expert and she’s gonna help us break out those peeps from that prison.”

Pleasantries were passed around and the four of them went inside.  Owens went to the kitchen to pour Blacktide some decaf while pouring a regular cup of joe for Roar.  When he returned, he heard Boothausen ask, “What kind of ethnicity is the name Roar?”

Yen seemed comfortable with the question as if she’d answered it a hundred times.  “My parents were immigrants from Lithuania and named me after my great grandmother.  Just think of Jen, but with a Y.”

“Well, it’s a bad ass name,” Boothausen said.

“So is Boothausen, if you ask me,” Roar replied.

Owens handed the coffees to grateful drinkers and shook his head as he watched Blacktide sip her decaf.  She was normally all business and very dry with her humor, but currently she was in a silly mood.  “This coffee tastes like a Swiss ski vacation.  Pure heaven pouring down from the mountains over my weary taste buds.”

Owens couldn’t resist repeating his joke.  “Decaf is like jerking off while wearing a condom.”

Roar, chimed in.  “Half the sensation and zero clean up?”

Boothausen knew she liked Roar in that exact moment and had to add her own joke to the mix.  “It leaves a rug burn for everyone involved if you wear it too long?”

Blacktide tried not to grin but couldn’t help it.  “I think he means that it keeps his imaginary girlfriends from getting pregnant.”

Owens pretended to be insulted.  “Come on now, Lex!  My imaginary girlfriends are independent women who don’t want to be mothers yet!”

“Well that makes you the imaginary playboy of the year,” Roar joked.

Owens couldn’t let the ladies get the last laugh.  “I mean, decaf.  What’s the point?  Why drink decaf?  It’s basically just flavored water.”

Blacktide returned to her normal dry humor demeanor.  “Without the shakes or migraines.”

Boothausen interjected a spur of the moment thought.  “Aren’t all beverages just flavored water to some extent?”

“Not REAL coffee!” Owens exclaimed.  “The real stuff isn’t flavored water at all.  It’s a kiss from the gods.”

Blacktide was answering the question literally.  “Even pressed fruit is mostly water with all the fruit sugars caught in suspension.”

Bootausen considered this statement.  “Soda is just water with chemicals and corn syrup.”

Blacktide was still dry with her humor.  “Even if you drink blood, it’s mostly composed of water.”

Roar didn’t flinch.  She knew why she was here, and her skill set was extraordinary like each of theirs, but deep down she was just as much of a chucklehead as the other three.  She felt right at home.  “Sorry ladies, I’m with Owens on this one.  I’ve always thought sipping coffee all morning is like a slow orgasm from Aphrodite herself.”

“You need to have better sex, sister,” Boothausen joked.  She hadn’t given any thought to her statement and hoped she hadn’t offended the woman she’d just met.

“You have no idea how right you are,” Roar joked.  “Six months ago I was at a cyber-security conference in Reno and the head of the whole thing was a real macho guy who went on and on about having good safeguards for your phone and computers, yada yada yada.  At the hotel bar that night, he put the moves on me.  I gave in hoping he’d be a good time in bed but was sorely disappointed.”  A mischievous grin spread over her face.  “I hacked his phone from the bathroom and stole a few of his bitcoins and donated them to a local animal shelter.  That was half a year ago and I’d wager that idiot still has no idea that he’s missing those two bitcoins.  Safeguards my ass.”

Blacktide smiled in approval.  “That’s some cold shit for a good cause.  You’ll fit in well with Team Whiskey.”

“I’ll be honest, I should’ve stolen more but I didn’t feel too vindictive.  I regret being merciful.”

“That’s my girl,” Blacktide said with pride.

Owens asked, “Roar, what is your background with cyber security?”

Roar shrugged.  “Like most kids, I got a computer in middle school.  I hung out with the geek boys who liked programming and found out quickly that I could code better than any of them.  I hacked into a national bank in high school and then into international banks in college.  I never got caught, but there were nights that I couldn’t sleep because I thought for sure they had me.”

Boothausen was liking what she was hearing.  “So you’ve never been pinched?”

“Not yet, and I intend to keep it that way.”

Owens asked, “Did you get your degree in computer programming?”

“No, I actually got a bachelors in graphic design.”  The three agents looked confusedly at her as she explained, “I worked with a lot of bands and made t-shirts and band posters.  I’m a live music junkie.  Don’t judge me.”

“Me too.  No judgement here,” Boothausen said honestly.

“I hack into networks for a living now, but if you ever have a band gig, I’ll design you a sick poster.”  The joke got a laugh.  Roar was open and honest.  “Blacktide and I actually met at a Tom Petty concert and got ragingly drunk together.  She was honest about what she did, so I got honest about what I did.  We traded contact info and we’ve helped each other out with small things in the past, but when she called and asked if I could give her insight on this ahead of us, I knew I wanted to help.”

Owens and Boothausen were a part of Team Whiskey, but also members of an elite group of humans known as Master Thieves.  They had borderline super natural abilities of body movement, hearing, sight, smell, and most of all, they each had a sixth sense of when they were being watched or detected.  

Several years earlier, eight other Master Thieves were apprehended in separate arrests known as The Great Round Up.  The skills and histories of Anastasia Boothausen and Tundra Owens were unknown to Interpol and the FBI or they may have been arrested too.  Upon working for the CIA, the two agents always operated on the edge of the law to help Team Whiskey put bad people in the ground or behind bars.  

Boothausen had the daydream of breaking out some or all of the Master Thieves from max security prisons.  The first two thieves she wanted to free were locked up in Lexington, Kentucky.  Anastasia Boothausen was a government employee of the military who would be willingly breaking the law and risking being imprisoned herself if caught.  

“Why do you care about the Great Round Up, Yen?” Boothausen asked Roar.

“The what?”  Roar was genuinely confused and the other agents could see it.  “Come again?”

Blacktide told the thieves the truth.  “I would be blown away if Yen here has any clue what The Great Round Up was.  She’s in this for a different reason.”

Owens was intrigued and way too enthusiastic.  “Is it because you wanna get back at the prison warden for wronging you in some way?  Cuz Blacktide is a hell of a shot, lemme tell you.”

“What?  Are you kidding me?  God no.”  Roar wasn’t emotional, but all business.  “I wanna help because these two people you’re trying to break out of prison are both good people.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Blacktide said to Owens and Boothausen.

“And the real reason I want to help you break them out is,” Roar added, “I kind of know the two of them.”

“For real?!”  Now it was Boothausen’s turn to be excited.  “How do you know them?”

“I’ve technically never met them but they hired me anonymously over the internet to write a program to hack into the security system of a big international bank.  I did some research on what they were trying to steal and found out that it was a lock box filled with printed documents that could be used as evidence to put some cocaine cartels behind bars.”

Owens was disappointed.  “Damn. I was hoping for more drama.”

Roar laughed.  “I do my best to avoid drama but for whatever reason, the shit finds me anyways!  Writing programs and reading code makes logical sense to me.  Humans don’t.  Especially men.”

Boothausen laughed.  “Like I said, no judgement!  But I gotta know, did you write the program for them?”

Roar’s face got serious.  “I did, but I put in a backdoor that allowed me to watch them on all of the bank security cameras while they did their job.  They walked in, went right to the lock boxes and stole the exact one they told me they were gonna steal, then left.  That simple.  They didn’t steal anything else, and didn’t even look around the bank.  That’s how I knew I wasn’t being used.”

“Impressive stuff, Roar,” Owens complimented.

“Thanks.  It’s what I do.  A week after I did that job there were some huge arrests made in Chicago that led to the conviction of half a dozen bad guys to go to jail for life.  One of those bad guys killed my grandfather.”

“Ah, there it is.  The drama,” Owens said plainly.

With no emotion, Blacktide said, “Owens, you are a real piece of work.”

“I have my motivations, just like you all have yours,” he said calmly in defense.

Roar exhaled and asked, “And what exactly are your motivations, Owens?”

He crinkled his brow in thought.  “Well at first I didn’t want to do this job because it was Ana’s idea and I didn’t see how it benefited us or the population at large.”

Anastasia Boothausen wasn’t defensive, but she spoke sternly.  “I feel that the Great Round Up was politically motivated to scare people of our skill ability to simply be compliant with the corrupt leadership of world governments, and that these individuals who got arrested didn’t deserve it.”

Owens nodded and continued.  “I agree, and since I think Ana here is the greatest Master Thief I’ve ever met, I just want to help her follow her heart.  Plus, I’ll be honest, I like that we can do what other people can’t do.  Maybe it’s ego, maybe it’s adrenaline, but whatever it is, I like it.  Now that you’ve told me all of this, Yen, my motivations are deeper.”

Blacktide finished her decaf and set the cup down on the pine wood coffee table.  “I was skeptical at first, but Yen has helped me arrest a couple of street thugs in the past by doing some hacking.  When I found out that her grandfathers killer was behind bars because of these two thieves, I knew I had to help.”

Boothausen was even more convinced that this course of action was necessary.  “It’s the right thing to do, for sure.”

“So, Blacktide, it appears you have a plan.  What do you say?” Owens asked.

“First and foremost, never say that stupid joke about decaf being like jerking off with a condom, ever again.  It’s embarrassing.”

Owens wanted to explain the joke punchline, “there’s no point!” but realized his humor was too different to be appreciated by this audience.  He conceded with a laugh.  “Fair enough!”

“Next up, we get McVandalay and Blitz to Lexington.  We’ll need their finesse.  Hell, we’ll need all of us firing on all cylinders, and we’ll need you two not to get caught,” Blacktide said directly to the Master Thieves.

“Piece of cake,” Owens said confidently.

“I know you normally do your sneak around thing in ninja outfits and stuff, but Owens, you’re gonna need to wear high heels if my plan works.”

“Whoah, wait, what?  Lex, did you say, high heels?”

Somewhere in the distance, two imprisoned master thieves locked up inside of a maximum security prison sat in separate cells but simultaneously got a gut feeling that something very, very good was going to go down very soon.