69, Hummingbird
“This situation is greasier than an overweight Greek guy covered in liquid lard.” Special agent Emerald Blitz zeroed in her high powered video binoculars and waited a few seconds for the focus to reestablish itself. The Mexican sun seemed especially unforgiving as she wished for some shade. Sweat poured from her forehead and got onto the ocular lens which made her finger slip on the diopter adjustment ring, again sending the image out of focus. “Fresh bacon deep fried in peanut oil. Fuckin greasy.”
“I don’t know if that’s racist, but I’ll accuse you of it anyways,” said demolitions expert Dale O’Connor in her ear piece. He was driving a sports car that zinged in and out of traffic on the Mexican riviera highway while Bradley McVandalay sat in shotgun watching a live text play by play broadcast of a Cubs game back in the States. “Em, I’m offended and demand you apologize,” he said without emotion.
Dry as a bone, Emerald Blitz’s voice didn’t flinch in his ear piece. “You’re not Greek, asshole.”
“No, but I love bacon, and I feel you’re offending pigs with your mean words, saying they’re as greasy as Greek men.”
O’Connor stomped on the gas and Blitz could hear his engine moan with its increased combustion. She went on the offensive. “Are you telling me that you’ve dated pigs in the past, Doc? Are you offended for them?”
“I eat pigs darlin. No apologies to the haters.”
“Ah, I see. So you’re telling me you’ve dated Greek men, then.” Blitz clicked “record” on her binoculars and tried to see into the window of a run down house.
Homoerotic jokes were always a hit with all the men in Team Whiskey. “Oh, you know me too well, me and all of my boy toys.” O’Connor laughed and said, “Oh wait, you’re the one with the disposable boy toys! I got you and me mixed up there for a minute.”
Without skipping a beat, Blitz’s voice quipped back in his ear pice with her usual dry sarcasm, “Yeah, cuz I smell like a combination of Jameson and disappointment. Oh wait, I got you and me confused there for a minute.”
“Jameson, yes, and disappointment only to my mother.”
Blitz couldn’t help it. “And to any lover you’ve ever had.”
“I thought that went without saying, Em. Your words cut deep.” Their dry conversation was devoid of emotion in the hot Mexican afternoon sun. O’Connor looked at his GPS and noticed that he was approaching Blitz’s location. “We’re two clicks out.”
Emerald Blitz removed the binoculars from her eyes and wiped the dripping sweat from her forehead, then went right back to looking as she spoke into her wrist watch communicator. “How kind of you to give a girl a heads up that you’re getting close.”
“Common courtesy, Em. I’m a gentlemen.”
“I’ll take you for your word on that one.” Blitz’s wrist watch communicator alerted her that pilot Porter was calling. “Gonna ditch you, Doc. Porter’s calling.”
“Tell her I haven’t forgotten that I owe her barbecue. Over and out.” O’Connor terminated their call.
Blitz answered the incoming call. “Porter, I’ve got eyes on the house currently. What’s your six?”
Pilot Porter was always chipper and today she was in an exceptionally good mood. “I left about twenty minutes after Doc departed in a car that’s not as fast, so since you know how I drive, I’m only a few minutes behind him now!” When it came to operating transportation vehicles, Porter drove or flew it like she’d stolen it.
“Doc says he’s close.”
Porter also picked up on the sexual pun. “How considerate of him to give you a warning!” Her jovial tone was the exact opposite of Blitz’s dull emotionless tone.
With her typical dryness, Blitz said, “I told him the same thing. He should be pulling up anytime.”
Without skipping a beat, Porter joked, “As long as he pulls out at the right time, things should be fine.”
Throwing the sexual joke back at her pilot friend, Blitz muttered, “There’s no pulling out with this pill popping girl.”
The joke went right over Porter’s head as she started to explain the dangers of unprotected sex. “You know the pill isn’t always effective in holding off pregnancy, right?”
Blitz ended the recording on her binoculars and put them down. She exhaled and spoke firmly into her wrist watch. “I’ll take a load if I want to take a load, thank you. Now get here. There’s literally been zero activity since I watched them walk in.”
Porter didn’t press the birth control issue further. “Affirmative. Over and out!”
Blitz rubbed her eyes and muttered to a higher power that she didn’t believe in, “Kill me now, God.” She didn’t mind being hot if she was on a beach, soaking up the sun. When she was working, the heat was miserable. Currently she was sitting behind a small adobe retaining wall that was holding up part of a hillside in a scrappy neighborhood of houses that were in various states of disrepair.
Half an hour earlier, some Mexican thugs had gunned down a crooked Mexican general and his crooked cronies outside of a posh seaside resort. A corrupt Russian oilman named Gosavich ended up abruptly killing two of the four thugs by simply shoving his hand into the wind in their general direction, sending the men flying backwards and smashing the insides of their van as if setting off an explosion inside of it.
After the gunfire ceased at the seaside resort, a random car parked a few blocks away sped off on the coastal highway. Blitz had been parked in the perfect position to pursue the car. She expertly had followed it without it detecting her, and when it pulled into the garage of a large house up a hillside a half hour away, Blitz had parked her own car a few blocks away, then approached the house on foot. She was now waiting for back up.
The general consensus on Team Whiskey was the car that sped away was somehow affiliated with the murderous thugs who were killed by Gosavich. As she contemplated how much she hated the heat, the cavalry arrived. Dale O’Connor and Bradley McVandalay pulled up a block away, parked their car and jumped out. As they approached, Blitz felt her gratitude grow, but she couldn’t find the right words to say. “Well look what the fuckin cat dragged in,” is all she could think of to say.
O’Connor was always one for encouraging words. “It’s hot as fuck. This sucks.”
“No shit, cowboy. Try being the whitest girl in Mexico in this sun,” Blitz complained.
McVandalay smiled at Blitz, then put his head back down and gazed at his phone as he spoke. “You’re a legend, Blitz. I’m glad it was you tailing those guys and not O’Connor here. He drives like a drunk.”
“Hey, I resemble that remark,” O’Connor joked back. He looked at Blitz and said, “I’m guessing no one has come or gone since we’ve chatted last.”
“Nothing to report,” Blitz replied. “What’s the status on Gosavich and the rest of the Russians?”
O’Connor felt a chill go up his spine at the name. The demolitions expert was afraid that Gosavich was a dark wizard. O’Connor’s superstition often got the best of him. “He’s fucking magic. He killed two men with the push of his hand and he blew up the inside of their van like a frat boy with diarrhea after an all night bender. We’re fucked.”
McVandalay cursed under his breath. “God damn Cubs just gave up a two run homer in the eighth. Fuck!” He clicked his cell phone and put it away. “Fuck the Cubs.”
O’Connor hadn’t given up his train of thought. “We’re all gonna be slaves to Gosavich who’ll make us call him the grand dictator in his dystopian future world. We’ll spend all day every day growing the spice that keeps us all high and compliant and if we complain, he’ll kill us with his magic. We don’t stand a chance.”
“Jesus, Doc,” McVandalay said with exasperation. “Where in the fuck do you get these ideas? You’d make a great author with that imagination of yours, you know.”
“I’ll fight until I can’t fight, Bradley, but I know we’re all fucked. Resistance is futile,” O’Connor said defeatedly.
“Nice Star Trek quote, bro,” McVandalay said approvingly.
Blitz was hot, sweaty, and getting cranky. “Doc, do us both a favor and shut the fuck up.” She looked at McVandalay and asked, “What’s your take, Bradley?”
“Gosavich clearly had a pretty powerful magpulser, and it’s fully functional at twenty yards. It’s the first time I’ve seen one in action, and it is deadly.”
“Of course those Russian fucks would get to it first,” Blitz said disapprovingly of her government’s failure to be first to use a new weapon.
“Doc has no clue what we’re talking about, Em. He hasn’t seen any of the prototype weapons coming out of Belarus lately and he thinks he’s seeing magic.”
“Fuck Belarus and fuck you, Bradley. I know magic when I see it.”
The conversation got cut short as a car came flying around the corner and headed straight towards them. It was dead silent as it roared down the street. A moment later, the rig came to a very abrupt stop without screeching it’s brakes. It parked and Porter jumped out looking chipper. Even hauling ass, she could operate a vehicle as quiet as a church mouse. Porter had an old school lunch box under her arm. All she needed was a hard hat and she’d be ready for a shift on a construction site. “Hi gang! I brought a toy!”
Porter’s chipper smile added to the warmth from the burning Mexican sun and lightened Blitz’s spirits. “Porter, that toy had better have air conditioning or I’m gonna kill somebody.”
“Well don’t kill one of us!” Porters glee at her joke was contagious and made the other three agents smile. She dropped to one knee and set the lunch box on the ground, then opened it up. Porter pulled out a device that was the size of a small cell phone. “It’s the quietest drone ever invented! I’ve used it twice and it’s as smooth as a prom queen’s freshly shaved legs!”
Porter reached back into the lunchbox and pulled out a video game controller, then gave the cell phone device to Blitz and said, “Hold this on your open palm!” Blitz followed her instructions and Porter clicked a button on the device. A few red lights beeped to life. “The control unit is really intuitive too. I love this thing.” Four small arms seemed to pop out of the cell phone from nowhere that snapped together to look like bird wings. The unforeseen motion spooked the three agents slightly, but then all of a sudden, the drone lifted off from Blitz’s hand and hovered in mid air like a hummingbird, almost completely silent. Blitz shook her head in disbelief as she said, “That’s the craziest shit I think I’ve ever seen.”
Porter’s enthusiasm was higher than usual. “It’s called The Hummingbird! Watch this!” She clicked a few buttons from her controller and a few random pieces popped up from the body of the flying drone. It indeed looked somewhat like a bird. If a person was staring at it, they’d see that it wasn’t quite biological, but if it was far enough away, it would for sure be passed off as a bird. “It’s from the latest tech show in Belarus!”
“Magic, huh Doc?” McVandalay sneered to his friend.
“I repeat, fuck Belarus and fuck you, Bradley,” O’Connor candidly replied.
Porter was too enthralled with her new toy to worry about the petty squabble between her two friends. “It’s resistant to microwave attack, and the signals it sends and receives are double encrypted, so it’s all but impossible to jam or hack. Obviously it’s pretty light so it’s rough to get it to respond in high wind, but I’ve used it in a few windy situations that were pretty turbulent and I think I’ve got it figured out. It can’t carry any kind of payload, but for espionage on a fairly calm day like today, it gets the job done!” The drone flew eerily silent above the four agents as Porter exclaimed with glee, “I am so horny right now!”
O’Connor pulled out a flask from his back jeans pocket and took a swig. He looked at Blitz and McVandalay, then shrugged. “If you can’t get fucked, get fucked up. That’s what I always say.”
Porter chimed in with her usual chipper energy, “You do say that a lot!” She pulled out another device from her lunchbox that looked like a cell phone and said, “This is the receiver.” She handed it to McVandalay, told him the code, then put all of her concentration into flying The Hummingbird. She made it do a few aerial acrobatics that made her call out in glee, then looked at her friends. “Where am I sending this little bird, Em?”
Emerald Blitz realized her jaw was dropped, so she stopped gaping by snapping her mouth shut, then pointed out the house that she’d been scoping out. “Let’s see what you can do with that thing, Porter.”
The pilot squealed with glee. “This is the first time I’ve been able to use it in the field! I’m so excited!”
The drone followed Porter’s commands as smoothly as if she were flying it by telepathy. It flew straight up, then over two blocks. The video it transmitted was crystal clear and the high definition display screen that McVandalay held rivaled that of an Imax movie theater. The drone swooped down and found an open window. As it approached, Porter zoomed in the camera and got a look at two men. They were dressed in soldiers uniforms and each had an automatic rifle strapped over their shoulder. They were yelling and pointing accusingly at one another, clearly upset. A third voice from somewhere else inside the room started yelling. The Hummingbird had an incredibly sensitive focused microphone that picked up and transmitted every word the men were saying.
Dale O’Connor was an aloof drunk, but his skill with the Spanish language was impressive. He translated. “They’re fighting over whether they should’ve finished the job, because they’re afraid someone is going to find them and kill them.” He crinkled his brow. “I think they’re scared of their boss, whoever that is.” He listened some more and the yelling stopped. “They’ve agreed that they’re gonna make a phone call to the guy they’re scared of and ask what to do next. These guys are really on edge, I’m telling you.”
McVandalay was in awe of the drone. “This set up is as slick as butter, Porter.”
“I know!” she replied with pure excitement. “It flies like a dream too. I wonder if they can scale this technology to make a future air craft that flies like a hummingbird. I mean, the physics get wonky once you start adding a lot of weight to a frame so I have no idea how it could be done, but it’s my dying wish to be in an aircraft that flies as easily as this thing does.”
Porter maneuvered the drone closer to the open window and then set it down on a ledge just outside of the sill. The camera couldn’t see inside, and the microphone was pointed at the wall. “Guys, this will blow your mind! Check it out!” She clicked a few buttons and all of a sudden, the camera angle looked as if it was from the view point of a snake slithering across the sill. “It has an extendable mic and camera! I’ll see if I can get a better look.”
A second later, the mic was picking up the chatter inside the house again. Only one man was talking, and he was constantly apologizing. O’Connor translated and gave his thoughts on what he was hearing. “He’s definitely talking to his boss. He keeps calling him El Padre.”
“Do you think he’s talking to a Catholic priest?” Blitz asked.
“Not a real one,” O’Connor answered. “This guy is afraid.”
After a minute, the phone call was over and the chatter between the three men resumed, but this time it was in quiet voices. McVandalay commented, “No more yelling or finger pointing. Interesting.”
One of the men walked back into the room with the open window and muttered something. O’Connor translated. “He just said, we’re dead.” The video footage showed the man looking very sad and clearly afraid for his life. “Well well well,” O’Connor said, “it appears that El Padre is the guy behind the assassination at the resort today, and he’s pissed that these three dudes didn’t complete their job. They’re pretty sure he’s gonna have them killed. El Padre sounds like a real piece of work, eh?”
McVandalay said, “Whoever in the fuck he is.”
“He sounds like somebody I’d love to kill,” Blitz said as she wiped the hot sweat away from her brow. She’d stopped trying to hide her crankiness.
O’Connor tried to be the voice of reason as he took another sip of warm whiskey from his flask. “He clearly wanted the Mexican general and his henchmen dead, and obviously he wanted the Russians dead too but their magic was just too powerful.”
Blitz rolled her eyes and ignored O’Connor. “Just when we think we’ve got one situation that’s fucked, another situation even more fucked pops up. Fuck my life.” She’d had enough. “I’m gonna go sit in the air conditioning in my car. I can’t take this fucking sunshine anymore.” She didn’t wait for her friends to protest.
“I’m cooked too,” McVandalay said. O’Connor looked disapprovingly at his friend. “What?” asked McVandalay, “I’m a white guy from the midwest! This is miserable, don’t pretend you’re fine!”
“I am fine, Bradley. I’m drunk.” O’Connor lifted the flask of whiskey to his lips and enjoyed another big sip. It was warm and tasted like goat piss with the foam farted off, but he didn’t care. “Saludos, fucker. And you’re wrong about Gosavich. He’s magic.”
“You are such a fucking idiot,” McVandalay replied.
All of a sudden, a helicopter seemed to fly in from nowhere. It was a civilian chopper that looked like it was from a cheesy 1970’s cop movie. The paint was faded and it was long and slender, but it flew quite nicely. “That’s a pretty good pilot right there,” Porter said. “I mean, not as good as me, but you guys already know that.” Porter wasn’t being cocky. She was being honest.
The chopper flew low over their heads and headed straight to the house where the three bad guys were hiding. It dropped down low and turned sideways. The main cabin door opened up to reveal two men who were also wearing Mexican soldier camouflage outfits. They were armed with abnormally large automatic rifles and in less than a second, they opened fire on the house, filling it full of lead.
The camera from The Hummingbird showed rounds piercing through walls and creating pure devastation inside. The men were screaming, and it was obvious that one or more of them had been hit. The shooting went on for ten seconds, then the shooters reloaded their massive rifles and sent a new batch of bullets into the edifice. Porter had instinctually recoiled the camera and mic from the drone and had sent it off in a direction away from the shooting. She positioned the drone to fly around the chopper in a low circle out of the view from the shooters. It doubled back on the helicopter, then moved in on it.
Porter’s face became twisted with concentration and her fingers flew over the controller making all sorts of clicks and clacks. She looked like a determined teenage boy trying to outwit a video game. “This drone does have one very handy feature that I forgot to tell you all about.” The Hummingbird couldn’t compete with the furious wind that was generated from the helicopter’s powerful blades, but somehow Porter was able to maneuver the drone directly below the chopper. “There,” she said. The video footage showed the drone fly straight down to the ground and almost crash, then somehow it escaped the wind pressure created by the large chopper blades. Within fifteen seconds, Porter had brought it back home. “I placed it on the belly of the bird. They’ll never know it’s there.”
O’Connor and McVandalay knew Porter was a crazy bitch and normally didn’t ask her to clarify any of her gibberish, but curiosity got the best of McVandalay. He politely asked, “What in the fuck are you talking about, Porter?”
“Oh, sorry! Yeah, The Hummingbird has a tracking device that’s magnetic and mobile. We can track where that helicopter goes now!” As per usual, her chipper enthusiasm brought merriment to the chaotic shootout scene they’d just witnessed.
“Well that’s good,” O’Connor nodded. “I wanna know who in the fuck El Padre is and why he seems to be killing his own men.”
McVandalay had opened his phone and cursed as it fired up. “The god damned Cubs lost. Fuck I hate them!”
Knowing that it was pointless to discuss their current situation with his friend, O’Connor simply said, “We don’t know who this El Padre fellow is, and we don’t know why you put so much emotional energy into a team that breaks your heart more than if you fell in love with a meth addicted hooker in Paris. Mysteries are everywhere, I guess.”
In the distance, a lunatic psychopath known as El Padre contemplated how he could kill a batch of corrupt Russian oilmen while smoking a very expensive Cuban cigar by his private mansion pool surrounded by beautiful Mexican supermodels as his cell phone lit up to inform him that his helicopter friends had completely destroyed the house where the three men who’d failed him lay dead.
