65, Fans
“If this career doesn’t work out for me, I’m kind of fucked.” Demolitions expert Dale O’Connor expertly drove a jeep down a washed out gravel road in the hills outside of a Mexican resort town. Occasional bullets whizzed over his head as pursuers shot wildly in his direction. “I mean maybe I could start a Fans Only page but I don’t think I have the stamina.”
Without emotion, special agent Emerald Blitz snapped a new clip into her automatic rifle as she replied, “You’d make bank, Doc. I personally would pay damn good money to see you sexually disappoint women over and over.” The jeep took a hard turn and she braced herself against the door. As the vehicle straightened itself out, she popped up from the passenger seat and flipped around so she was facing the vehicle gaining on them. Blitz aimed the rifle at their pursuers but had to wait for a clearer shot.
“I’d have to shave my nether regions. It’s a god damned forest down there.” O’Connor steered with his left hand while perfectly balancing a rocks glass half full of ice cubes and whiskey in the other. With each bump and turn, he’d balance the drink so that none of it would spill.
Blitz had a split second where their pursuers were in perfect alignment and pulled the trigger. The rifle wasn’t as loud as the gravel being thrown everywhere by the tires, but the mini sonic booms of bullets flying faster than sound made her ears ring momentarily. She spoke loudly but had no emotion. “You don’t have to shave bald, you know. That’s creepy as shit.”
“I thought that’s what all the college kids did these days.” The glass of whiskey gracefully lifted to O’Connors lips and he took a large sip. He exhaled it’s fiery sting with pursed lips and nodded in agreement. “You’re right. A good trim with the right camera angles and lighting would be my ticket to the big bucks.”
“You’ve clearly given this a bit of thought,” Blitz said as she squinted, trying to get a clear shot.
“Nope, never considered it. I just don’t have a plan B. Dammit Em, I need this secret agent stuff to work out for me.”
A few more bullets flew from Emerald Blitz’s rifle. She twisted her body back to face forward and ejected the clip from her rifle to check how many more rounds of ammo she had. Both Blitz and O’Connor winced a little as the jeep behind them exploded, but the moment of unease passed quickly. Blitz snapped the clip back into the weapon and said, “I don’t think Only Fans is for you. No offense, of course.”
“None taken. I’m not built for it anyway.”
“Well let’s be real, Doc. I just assume you get whiskey dick at all times since I’ve never seen you without whiskey.”
The bumpy road gave O’Connor a bit of a challenge as he lifted his arm up and down in perfect balancing synchronicity with the jeep’s bouncing, but not a drop was spilled. “My sex life is like whiskey, Blitz.”
Ever the sarcastic bitch, Emerald Blitz didn’t hesitate. “So you’re saying you’re cheap and that you only get laid on St. Patrick’s Day. Got it.”
“I refuse to go to Ireland in March, even for missions.” The dirt road started to flatten out and the tree cover became more sparse.
A small shadow the size of a bird seemed to cover the jeep from above. Blitz didn’t seem surprised as she joked, “Let me guess, you pissed off a red headed lady leprechaun when you couldn’t please her.” She chuckled to herself as she flipped back around in her seat.
“Her name was Erin, and she wasn’t a leprechaun. At least, I don’t think she was.” O’Connor took the last swig of his drink and set the empty glass in a cup holder. The ice rattled with each bump in the gravel road. “She was a nympho. I was exhausted and it cut into my drinking time.”
The road in front of the jeep flattened out to shoddy pavement. O’Connor had the pedal to the floor the whole time, but now the jeep tires were able to find purchase. The vehicle sped up and Blitz had to use most of her abdominal strength to balance herself. She pointed the rifle to the sky, then lowered it. “I don’t remember hearing about this Erin of whom you speak.”
“She’s the only girl I ever drugged, and it was to get out of having sex with her as opposed to the other way around.”
Bursting into laughter, Blitz cackled, “You poor man, having to beat the women off of you!”
“Just one, and don’t fuck with me, Blitz. It was insane.” O’Connor shuddered from the memory as the shadow in the sky following them got bigger. “Porter had to fly me out of the country under the cover of darkness.”
“Love ’em and leave ’em. That’s your style, Doc.” Blitz was keeping an eye on the chopper following them and noticed it descending quickly.
“I was more scared of that woman finding me than being captured in any deep undercover mission we’ve ever been on.” Instinctively, O’Connor picked up the rocks glass from the cup holder and tossed in one of the half melted ice cubes. Through crunching sounds he grumbled, “She was a crazy bitch.”
“Well aren’t you a knight in shining armor.” Blitz again raised her rifle to the helicopter and made the mental calculations of when it might be in range.
O’Connor lifted the rocks glass to his lips and started gnawing on the last of the half melted ice cubes. “I’ve never once lied to get laid. I did lie to a priest once in Italy for a mission, though. I didn’t even feel badly about it. We filmed him smuggling meth, so he sort of lost his job that day.”
The small helicopter that had been following them pulled up seventy yards away from them on the drivers side of the jeep. A sliding door on the chopper popped open to reveal a shooter with an automatic rifle pointed straight at them. Without hesitation, Blitz had stood up in the passenger seat of the roofless jeep and opened fire on the shooter. Her bullets were angled perfectly to fly through the air and hit the shooter at the correct angle as both the jeep and the chopper were screaming at high velocity. The shooter fell out of the two man chopper as Blitz unloaded the rest of her clip at the same angle. “Got him.”
As Blitz sat back down in the passenger seat, the helicopter veered off into the distance and crash landed in a heap. O’Connor looked in his rear view mirror and saw the smoke rising from the wreckage. “What do you think you’d do if you weren’t a secret agent, Em?”
Without hesitating she answered, “I think I’d make a good hit man but I’d only kill bad guys.”
“Well come on now, that doesn’t count. You’re saying if this job doesn’t work out, you know, the one where you kill bad guys, you’d go off and kill bad guys somewhere else?”
Blitz crinkled her brow in confusion. “No, you idiot. Like, I’d be a hit man, but I’d dress up like a high class call girl. You know, a high dollar hooker. And then I’d kill bad guys.”
“Ah, that clears up everything.” O’Connor was now returning some of her sarcasm back to her. “So you’re saying you’d pretend to be someone you’re not to get you in the right scenarios where you could kill bad guys.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, dummy,” Blitz said dryly.
“So basically you’re saying you’d go undercover, which is different from you being an undercover agent, how?” O’Connor glanced over at his friend as she mentally processed this information.
“Shit.” Blitz looked for the right words to say and settled on, “Fuck you, Doc.”
For the first time in the chat, O’Connor let his emotions flow. “Now, now, Blitz! Don’t get me wrong! You’re a damn good friend to me and I think very highly of you. Like back at that stake out, you killed those four guards with three bullets. Not everyone can do that sort of thing!”
Blitz tried to turn her face to hide the blushing, but she was still a little bit pissed off that O’Connor had pointed out the flaws in her logic just a second earlier. As if she was trying to be humble, she muttered, “If two men are lined up in sync with one another, it only takes one heavy grain bullet flying out of a chamber at four thousand feet per second to kill them both, Doc. Everyone knows that.”
“I stand corrected,” O’Connor said with the trademark sarcasm that had radiated throughout their chat. He looked at his friend and gave her a big smile. “You’re fucking good at what you do. Admit it, you’re fucked if you had to pick a different career.”
As if she were fighting back the thought of having to give up her life as a secret agent, she shook her head in a short, violent burst. “Yeah, I don’t want to think about changing jobs.”
An hour later, the two of them were off the road and at a safe house. They sat on the back porch under a shaded canopy of trees and sipped on cold beers as two other members of Team Whiskey sat with them. Special agent Alexi Blacktide wanted all the details. “So you saw the narco give Gosavich a suitcase full of money?”
Emerald Blitz appreciated the feeling of a light alcohol buzz from cold beer on a hot Mexican evening. “It was like it was straight out of a bad Hollywood movie. Out in the open, the money changed hands, and the Russian guy counted it right there in front of a handful of guards and thugs. Gosavich stood up and shook hands with the narco, then walked back to the landing pad and flew off in their private chopper.”
“Which,” O’Connor added, “was pretty fucking heavily armored and undoubtedly armed. Porter would’ve orgasmed for an hour straight at the thought of flying that thing.”
“She’s not necessarily a combat pilot but I’d hate to piss her off if she was locked and loaded.” Blitz concluded, “The Russian bird was way nicer than the little narco thugs chopper that chased us.” Under her breath, Blitz muttered, “Dumb shits thought they could take us out with a single shooter. Fucking idiots.”
Special agent Bradley McVandalay was listening to the chat but he was looking at his phone. “The Cubs just had an error on a double play and gave up a run. Fucking idiots is right.”
Blacktide snapped lightly at him, “Dammit, Bradley. This information is what we’ve needed to start making our arrests. We now have the proof that the narcos and the general are in bed with the oil men.”
Looking up from his phone, McVandalay shrugged. “We all know that this whole scenario is bullshit. We’re gonna make arrests, the media forces owned by the narcos will stir up a shit storm of controversy and the Mexican courts will let everyone go because of political peer pressure. Nothing changes and the possibility of destabilization doesn’t go away.”
O’Connor finished the last gulp off of his crisp, glorious beer and asked, “Then what, dear brother, would you do if you were in charge of all of this?”
McVandalay looked back at his phone and shook his head in disgust. “The first thing I’d do is get rid of our short stop as soon as possible. He’s pissed too many plays down his leg to be worth the twenty million a year we pay him.”
Nodding approvingly, O’Connor asked, “And after you shook things up with the Cubs roster, which is clearly what needs to happen of course, what in the fuck do you propose we do about this whole Mexican corruption and possible revolution situation that we’re sitting on? We love your professional baseball management solutions, but by chance would you have any mother fucking suggestions about the global affairs that we’re actually supposed to be taking care of, oh wise one?”
“Well for one, I appreciate that you recognize the coaching greatness that sits in your presence,” McVandalay joked.
“I have to piss. Anyone want another beer?” O’Connor got up and grabbed a few empty bottles as he headed inside to hit the restroom.
McVandalay lifted his finger to signal that he’d take a cold one, then said, “You’re leaving now, right before I give my grandiose plan to remedy our Mexican revolution situation?”
“Nature calls, dear brother.” Looking at Blitz and Blacktide, he asked, “Another round, ladies?”
Both women nodded as Blitz said, “I’m curious as to what you’d do, Bradley, cuz I think you’re right about all of these corrupt fuckers not getting prosecuted. They’ll walk.”
“Unless we do something brilliant,” McVandalay grinned.
O’Connor sauntered into the kitchen and set the empty beer bottles on the counter. He used the restroom and relieved himself, grateful for the miracle of modern plumbing. He made a mental note that all of the water from every Mexican tap was always warm, and he longed for good, American cold tap water. Upon walking back into the kitchen, he grabbed a whole six pack of beer and a bag of chips. O’Connor was looking forward to sitting outside and being lazy with his friends as the sun set, but when he walked through the sliding door he saw all three of his friends standing up. They seemed excited about something. “What the fuck? I leave for three minutes and y’all look like you’re gonna go dancing at a night club?” He smelled his arm pit and asked, “Do I stink?”
Alexi Blacktide was grinning ear to ear. She ignored O’Connor. “You’re a genius, Bradley. I’ll call Rice and we’ll get rolling on this.”
Emerald Blitz was also excited and ignored the demolitions expert. “I guarantee you that Miller and Lorenz will be up for this.”
“Don’t call Murdock,” McVandalay instructed. “Rice gave him a private mission that involves gambling away a million dollars of stolen narco money in a resort casino. If he knows what we’re about to do, he’ll fuck it all up.”
O’Connor felt slighted and was incredulous as he asked, “Knows about what, Bradley?”
All three of O’Connor’s friends looked at him with huge smiles and electric eyes. “The plan!” they answered. They walked past him quickly and into the house, leaving O’Connor holding a six pack in one hand and a bag of chips in the other.
“What fucking plan?!” O’Connor turned around but his friends had already enthusiastically disappeared into the house. “Is anyone gonna tell me what the fucking plan is?!?!” No answer came from his plea. “Fuck this job.” He moseyed off to drink beer by himself as he grumbled, “I need to get a pubes trimmer if I’m gonna do this Fans Only stuff…”
In the distance, corrupt Mexican military officials and greedy Russian oilmen smoked expensive cigars together thinking that their coup of the democratically elected government would go smoothly, never expecting that a handful of misfit undercover agents from north of the border would fuck it up royally for all of them.
