58, Goosefoot
“Loving the Cubs is like loving a hooker. The sex might be amazing, but you know in the end that your heart will be broken and you’ll have a rash that you don’t wanna talk about.” Special agent Bradley McVandalay took a sip of lemonade and enjoyed its sour bite.
“I feel that way about spinach.” Master Thief Owens was poking at a small plate of salad. He toyed with a crouton and debated crunching on it.
“Are you allergic to spinach, Owens? Cuz that makes no sense,” said special agent Emerald Blitz with a mouth full of hamburger. “McV is saying the Cubs break his heart. He’s talking about spiritual angst from the constant shortcoming of expectations for a sports team and you’re comparing that to a leaf crop from the goosefoot family?”
Owens decided to not crunch the crouton. “I have no fucking clue what any of that means. Sports, or goose butts, or whatever.”
“Goosefoot,” Blitz reiterated. “I forget the latin name for that whole family of greens, but spinach is in the same one as beets and chard.”
Special agent Blacktide paused cutting a piece of chicken for a moment and set her forearms on the dining table. “Em, did you just say beets and shart?”
The joke got no giggles. “Chard. It’s a leafy green that my parents used to grow in the community garden at their fucked up church. They were crazy religious about their faith and twice as fundamental about their god damn garden.” Emerald Blitz unapologetically took another bite from her burger and mumbled, “Chard is an old French word for lettuce that tastes like dog shit, in my humble opinion.”
Her joke got a round of laughs from the crew. Blacktide quipped back, “I eat meat and leave the greens for the rabbits.”
McVandalay, Blitz, Owens and Blacktide sat together in the back dining area of a sports bar and enjoyed a good old fashioned American lunch. Muted televisions were positioned so patrons could see them at every angle. They broadcast the previous days highlights, MMA fights and sports broadcaster talk shows.
“Does anyone else think that talk shows about sports are useless?” Blacktide asked changing the subject.
“They’re as useless as my love for the Cubs,” McVandalay joked. “I seriously gotta quit putting any emotional energy into that fucking team. It’s gonna get me killed, I swear.” He paused for dramatic affect. “It’s only a matter of time before that rash I’m joking about becomes real.”
Owens shrugged as he finally decided to gnaw on the crusty, crunchy square of bread atop of his plate of leafy greens. “I don’t know shit about rashes or goosefoot greens, but loving the Cubs doesn’t seem so bad.” McVandalay rolled his eyes and Owens couldn’t help but grin. “That bad?”
McVandalay put his lemonade down and sighed. “Actually, yes. Three years ago when we had that mission to extract those foreign diplomats being held hostage in Guatemala, I was following a Cubs game on my phone. We gave up a home run in the bottom of the ninth to lose the damn game and I yelled FUCK out of nowhere at the top of my lungs from pure frustration. The guards came running into the room where we were breaking in and the shootout began. Our element of surprise went to shit because I had a tantrum over my stupid team.”
Blitz’s eyes bugged out as she asked, “Was that the same mission where Murdock got locked in that walk in freezer?”
“One of the times, yeah. He’s done that on several occasions now. On that mission, O’Connor was locked in there too. But that wasn’t cuz of my yelling. That’s their own damn fault.”
Blacktide hadn’t heard the story. “I gotta hear about this!”
McVandalay started to describe his mission. “There were some diplomats from Japan and South Korea visiting the Guatemalan state department and they’d been kidnapped by some street thugs who wanted to hold them for ransom…”
Blacktide cut him off. “No, no, no, fuck the politicians and bureaucrats, I’m talking about Doc ’n Murdock. They got locked in a walk in freezer? For real?”
“Oh,” McVandalay noted, “got it. It kind of all goes together because the hostages were being held in a fancy mansion that had a commercial kitchen, complete with a walk in fridge and a separate walk in freezer. I was sneaking through the window with Death while Miller and Lorenz came through the front door. Doc ’n’ Murdock came through the kitchen entrance and heard voices, so they dove into the first place they could hide, which turned out to be the walk in freezer.”
Owens shook his head as he nibbled on his salad. “How in the hell did they get locked in?”
Blitz knew the story and interjected her enthusiasm as she dumped hot sauce on some french fries. “Oh snap, you’re gonna love this.”
McVandalay smiled as he recounted the memory. “There were only a handful of bad guys and they weren’t military. We had them all extinguished within a few minutes and had the diplomats to a transport chopper a quarter mile away a few minutes after that. Porter got them all to safety but we couldn’t find Doc or Murdock. So I went looking for them.”
Blacktide was confused. “They didn’t text?”
“Oh, they did, but when I asked where they were, they replied that they were eating ice cream, locked in a freezer. I found a padlock on the freezer door. Apparently, one of the bad guys actually worked in that kitchen and was closing up their operation for the night, and they locked up everything every night in that place. Typical Murdock, the lads were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Blacktide went back to eating her perfectly cooked chicken. “Did they get hypothermia or anything?”
“God no! If you think Chicago is hot in the summer, girl, you haven’t been to the tropics in July. It was so miserably hot out that those two literally didn’t want to leave the freezer after Miller picked the lock. To be honest, he and I both joined them in there for half an hour and ate ice cream with them. It was so fucking hot out. I’m talking, miserable hot.”
The story was entertaining Owens but his machismo got the best of him. “I’d be pissed if I missed all the action like that.”
“Well those two dickweeds didn’t give two fucks. They’re useless in the heat. Straight up useless.”
McVandalay’s wristwatch communicator rang. It was master thief special agent Anastasia Boothausen on the other line. “Ana, what’s up?”
“Hey Bradley, we’ve got an update. Roar broke into their computer system and found that the two peeps we’re trying to break out are gonna be transferred to another prison in upstate New York. They’re being transferred tomorrow morning.”
The whole group heard the chat. McVandalay and Blitz hadn’t yet met the computer expert Yen Roar, but they’d heard about her from Blacktide and Owens. Team Whiskey used every asset in their portfolio to get the job done, but this mission was personal, not government official. If CIA director Mulroony found out that they were doing what they were doing, they’d all be arrested and thrown in jail. So all of them knew that they had to be very careful and precise.
McVandalay responded, “What do you suggest?”
Boothausen was all business. “One option is to break them out tonight, and the other option is to snag them tomorrow while they’re being transported.”
Owens put his fork down and mentally kicked himself for ordering a fucking salad. “Ana, I say we go with option one. If we can get to them, they’re good enough to get themselves out. We just gotta get them out of that damn cell.”
McVandalay asked, “How’d you break us out of that prison in Siberia two months ago?”
Pure enthusiasm and pride crossed Owens face. “Ana found you and opened the cells, then Von Stryker used the Black Out button. It’s a good thing you and I can see in the dark or that wouldn’t have amounted to much of a breakout.”
“Ana, how’d you open those cell doors?” McVandalay asked with genuine curiosity.
“A combination of diarrhea inducing compounds and my broken understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet. Russian is hard as fuck for me to decipher,” Boothausen said, “but Owens can fill you in when I hang up. We might use some of the same tactics tonight, but if Blacktide is there, she has a pretty good plan. Ask if she thinks her plan can still work.”
Blacktide was listening and spoke up. “Ana, I think that operation High Heels would work even better on the night staff, especially if there’s some power disruptions. Don’t you?”
A contagious laugh blew though the small wrist watch speaker that made the four of them smile. “If you say so. Let’s all meet up at seventeen hundred hours at the apartment. Ana out.” She terminated the call.
The four agents looked at each other and all nodded silently. Without saying it, it was settled. They were going to break into a maximum security prison and bust out two master thieves who weren’t exactly innocent, but certainly weren’t guilty enough to be locked up in a max pen.
Five o’clock rolled around and the four agents sat around a large dining room table joined by Boothausen and their new friend Yen Roar. Roar spoke with authority. “I cannot believe how easy it was to break into their systems. Usually I have to use a zero day exploit to crack in but their system was pathetic.”
“What is a zero day exploit, exactly?” Owens asked innocently.
“It means that when the coder finds it, the owners have zero days to respond. We break in immediately.” Owens look confused so Roar spoke as plainly as possible. “It means that I’m in control of their computer system from my laptop and this burner phone and they have no idea.”
“I’ve heard of back doors in computer code. Is that how you got into their system?” Owens was genuinely curious and impressed.
Blacktide couldn’t resist. “All your talk about back doors makes me wonder if you’re secretly gay, Owens.”
Self deprecation always made the master thief laugh. “Secretly? Hell, if a fella buys me a drink, I have no morals. Me and Em bang all the sweet talkers.”
Emerald Blitz didn’t bite on the bait. “Murdock always jokes that tequila makes him play hide and seek with his morals, but I don’t think he actually has any to begin with.”
Roar wanted to jump in with the jokes but she got back to business. “They didn’t just have backdoors in their code, they had front doors and side doors and windows and they even left the garage door wide open. Their cyber security firm should be fired, like, yesterday.”
“So what now?” Blacktide asked.
“I’ve been recording footage from their security cameras. When it’s go time and you send me the signal, I’m going to switch the live footage to the recorded footage. This prison is linked to the CIA and even at Langley. We’ll be broadcasting recorded video instead of live video so they’ll never see you go in our out. Once you’re free, click, it’ll go back to live footage and no one will be the wiser.” The crew was learning, Roar was a gangster when it came to computer geek stuff.
Blacktide was back to business. “Do we have their location?”
“Block C, cell twenty seven, and block E, cell eleven.”
Owens and Boothausen nodded silently at Roar and again at each other. The crew understood that they’d split up once inside.
McVandalay asked, “Next up, Blacktide, how do we get inside?”
“This is the fun part.” Blacktide reached into a large hockey bag under her chair and pulled out a pair of high heels. “If I had to wager, these will fit you perfectly, Owens.”
“How in the fuck would you know my shoe size?”
“Because I have big ass feet and yours are tiny for a man.” She tossed them over and got no disagreement. As she said, the high heels fit perfectly. “Told you so.”
“Dammit guys, I think you all might right about me not being straight. These fit great.”
Blacktide pulled out wigs and more high heels. “Blitz, Boothausen, Owens and I are going in as female journalists trying to interview some inmates on death row. McVandalay will be our cameraman, but in reality he’ll have some toys that do fun things, in case we need to get out of there unplanned.”
“These are American prison guards we’re talking about here,” Bradley McVandalay said with concern. “No one gets hurt or we don’t do this.”
“Got you covered, brother,” Blacktide said. “Roar, tell the man I’m not lying.”
“She’s not lying, Bradley, I promise. The first toy sends out a signal that turns every employee’s cell phone into a music player, playing random songs at top volume. It locks the cell phone, so the user can’t turn it off or power it down.”
“Oooo,” McVandalay cooed, “I like that.”
“Then you’ll love that the second toy is an ultrasonic emitter that can open doors that are electronically shut, even in a power outage. If it’s just a physical lock, you’ll need to pick it or just break it open. If worse comes to worse, Blacktide has another black out button if we need it.” She grinned at Blacktide and gave a cheesy ‘thumbs up’ in her direction.
Blacktide returned the thumbs up. “Roar has already emailed the warden so the over night penitentiary manager tonight is expecting us to arrive in thirty minutes. We’re supposed to be there for a one hour interview and out by eighteen hundred hours. They’ll stick us in a conference room and Roar will then plug in stock footage on their security cameras of us just sitting and waiting.”
Blitz had been taking all of this info in. “Obviously this isn’t a shootout, so why did you guys call me?”
With no emotion, McVandalay and Owens answered, “Cuz you’re hot as fuck.”
“We need you to be a sexual distraction, Em,” Blacktide said. “We’re using you for your body.”
“Well at least buy a girl a drink first, wouldja?”
Owens laughed. “Afterwards, you bet.”
“Not so gay after all, it appears,” Blitz flirted back.
Roar was soft spoken but she got heatedly excited. “I’ve been wanting to try a new program I wrote where artificial intelligence emails cell phones and has text conversations with random guards. The main topic is gonna be about you, Emerald. Each guard will be getting texts that sound personal but they won’t know who it’s from. It’ll obviously be a huge distraction so Owens and Ana can go do what they do and work their magic. I’ve got the number of every guard, janitor, all of them, and especially the guys in the security room. They’ll have their heads in their phones so much that they won’t look up and notice what we’re up to, that is, as long as you are showing your ass and cleavage to the security cameras.”
Blitz looked at her D cup breasts and shook her head. “These fucking things get in the way of everything I try to do, and now they’re the only reason you fools need me for this insane mission.” She roughed up her boobs from the sides and made them try to look perky. “Well girls, we got work to do,” she said fondly to her chest.
“God bless corn fed American titties and our fucking phones,” Blacktide said sarcastically as she instinctively readjusted her own bra.
“We have a tiny window to get to these two people busted out, but it’ll work,” Roar said as she absentmindedly did the same adjustment to her own bra as well.
Owens stood up from the table. “I have make up to put on and sure could use some help from one of y’all.”
“I got you covered,” Boothausen said as she walked off to collect her makeup kit.
Owens put on the sexy high heels and said, “Black is definitely my color. Call me goosefoot.”
“I’ll call you fucker, fucker,” Blacktide said plainly.
In the distance, the day crew of a maximum security penitentiary left their shifts as the evening crew checked in, all of them unaware that a peaceful bust out was going to happen right in front of their eyes.
