80, Gambling
“My expectations of you are so low of you that if you literally tripped and fell on your face as you walk into this place, I wouldn’t be shocked,” Sergeant Schuman said to her wrist watch. The secret ear piece she was wearing was uncomfortable, so she tried to adjust it without bringing any attention to herself as she shifted in her chair while playing video slots.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sarge,” special agent Trent Murdock replied with an upbeat tone in her ear piece. “How could I make it through a day without your positivity and sunny outlook on life?” he asked sarcastically as he approached the casino on foot from a few blocks away.
“Don’t fuck this up,” she replied coldly as her machine made dinging sounds.
Murdock was always entertained when Schuman was cranky with him. “I love your dirty talk.”
Speical agent Laura Lorenz was standing by a large decorative column by a gift shop area that had a good view of the casino floor. Her voice filled both of their ear pieces with an annoyed tone. “No one’s talking dirty or fucking anything up, so cut the shit.” She ignored Schuman and Murdock and asked, “Doc, you ready?”
Dale O’Connor adjusted his ear piece as well while standing just outside of the very large poker room area. “Yup,” he answered casually to his wrist watch. “The booze selection here is impressive,” he added as he sipped a delicious expensive bourbon.
Schuman’s voice popped in O’Connor’s ears too. “Doc, don’t you dare detonate one of those stink bombs until we are all cleared from this place or I’ll kill you too.”
“I’ll take what I can off of these whales before y’all create the ruckus you’re gonna create,” O’Connor hiccuped. He was a master poker player and tonight, he was supposed to add a distraction from this part of the casino if needed.
“I’m serious about killing you if I smell any of those putrid things,” Schuman reiterated.
O’Connor had been threatened by Schuman so many times in their friendship that he’d lost track, as if it were a game to rank her death threats. “Remember, Miller and McV both have the baby stinkers.” He was referring to very small canister stink bombs.
Having none of it, Schuman added, “If I smell theirs, I blame you and you die, Doc. Don’t fuck with me today.”
Murdock’s voice was on the verge of laughing in all of their ear pieces. “Jesus, Schuman, you’re in quite the murderous rage! You know that you’re gonna get to bare knuckles fight tonight, even though your opponents will be wearing suits and uniforms, right?”
The thought of a bare knuckles fight brightened Schuman’s mood. “The sooner the better, god dammit.” She realized she was pent up more than she’d been in a long, long time.
“You’ll get your share of bad guy blood on you, Sarge, I promise,” Murdock answered cheerfully. “Keep sharp.”
“Dude, where yat?” O’Connor asked Murdock as he pretended to scratch his nose, hiding that he was talking to his wrist.
“Thirty seconds until I walk in,” Murdock answered confidently.
“Roger. I’m off to massacre these fools until y’all start the shit show.” With that, O’Connor sauntered into the poker room with the swagger of a drunken card playing mastermind.
“Go get ‘em, Doc,” Murdock said enthusiastically. “Owens, what’s your status?” he asked to his wrist watch.
Master Thief Owens was typically insanely chipper, but his voice was barely a whisper in their ear pieces. “I found a vent shaft to a room that I can’t access. The carpenters who built this actually put steel bars in the vents to block it off and it’s pissing me off!” The team could hear him grunting and struggling with something. “Boothausen,” he asked, “when we were here last time, did you explore the ventilation shafts in the north central part of the third floor?”
The voice of special agent Anastasia Boothausen didn’t answer right away, then the sound of flushing water could be heard in all of their ear pieces. “Sorry gang, I had to piss,” she said. “Owens, I never did explore that area cuz once we found Murdock locked up last time, it changed our game plan.”
“Locked up, schmocked up. I had everything under control!” Murdock jokingly complained. He looked like a crazy man talking to the back of his hand and it frightened some people walking the opposite direction as they gave him wide birth on the sidewalk. He was seconds away from walking into the casino.
The cranky voice of sergeant Schuman came back in their ears. “Murdock, I’m gonna break some jaws tonight. Don’t let one of them be yours.” Her machine lit up like it was Christmas and made crazy sounds. Schuman wasn’t in the mood to be an actress, but she knew the mission depended on everyone doing their part. She forced herself to think about the fighting to come and it filled her heart with the joy she needed to pretend she was happy about the winnings. “Yay!” she exclaimed as she jumped out of her seat, smiling ear to ear.
“Sounds like Sarge is buying the next time we go out,” Murdock replied with a grin as he walked through a revolving door into the main lobby of the posh Mexican casino.
Lorenz’s voice sighed in all of their ears. “Sweet Jesus help us all,” she muttered.
Team Whiskey was after a Mexican drug czar named El Padre. He owned this particular casino, and a few months earlier Murdock had won over a million dollars from the place. Security had detained him in a back room and roughed him up. Owens had helped him break out, and ever since that day, El Padre’s men had been looking up and down the Gulf of Mexico coastal towns looking for him.
Today, Murdock was walking back into the lions den, but he wasn’t alone. The whole of Team Whiskey was in the casino, ready to find the bad guys and fuck them up while sending a clear message to El Padre, “We are coming for you.”
Bradley McVandalay was sitting at a craps table that was closest to a security door entrance on the eastern most wall of the casino while special agent and super sniper Jack Miller sat at the table next to him. Normally O’Connor would be the agent to pretend to be drunk, but since he was a master at poker, it was Miller’s role to be the drunk.
“Dang! I crapped out again!” Miller yelled to the ceiling. He was loving drinking heavily, but before entering the casino, he’d taken a medication that sped up the metabolic breakdown of alcohol so he could drink even more than O’Connor while still operating a high functioning level. “Well, let’s try again!” Miller said as he threw more chips down on the table. He made eye contact with McVandalay and gave a big smile.
“Looks like this table is hotter than that one,” McVandalay commented calmly to the American tourists who were gambling next to him. He’d been playing craps for an hour and a few very beautiful women had gathered around him. He played the role perfectly, and although he was completely focused on the mission, he was enjoying the female attention from winning.
“Game time, gang!” Yen Roar was sitting in front of a huge computer screen layout with General Rice in a penthouse suite in the casino hotel. Boothausen had broken into the casino server room and plugged in a state of the art hacker transmitter that Roar had given her. The security feed was perfect and Roar was in complete control of their system without them even knowing she was there. Roar surveyed the screens of the casino floor as she watched Murdock head towards the bar. She gave him directions. “Murdock, the suits haven’t shown any notice of you. No rush.”
Special agent Trent Murdock had a huge shit eating grin on his face and walked with swagger. He looked around, almost taunting the actual building to try and fight him. His confidence was bordering on cocky, and he liked the feeling. Shit was gonna go down, and he loved the action.
Schuman’s voice popped in their ears. “I’m up four grand right now. Let’s see if I can’t cash this out and cause a scene somewhere,” she said mischievously.
General Rice had learned years ago that it was pointless to try and direct any operation as it was in motion, so all she could say was, “Sarge, don’t punch anyone until the fireworks, please.”
The sergeant answered to her wrist with a giggle, “No promises, boss.” Schuman hit the “cash out” option on her machine and it printed out a receipt while making hypnotic beeping sounds. She took the piece of paper and headed straight to get paid.
Murdock reached the bar and leaned up to order. Nodding to the bartender to get his attention, he looked down the bar and saw an incredibly beautiful Latina woman that took his breath away. She was wearing a long, black evening gown and clearly was dressed for some sort of event that was happening in the casino. The bartender walked up to Murdock but he didn’t notice. He was drooling over the beauty at the end of the bar.
The bartender’s voice brought him back to reality. “Sir! Would you like a drink?” he asked with a clear but thick understandable Mexican accent.
Schuman’s voice was back in Murdock’s ears. “Pull your shit together, Murdock, and quit drooling over pussy!” From the cashiers station, she had a perfect view of Murdock. He glanced at her and saw her glare.
“Ah, yes please!” Murdock answered the bartender as he snapped back into the moment. He ordered a Mexican beer with a lime and nodded gratefully as the bartender took off to fill the order. He turned his attention back to the sexy woman. She took no notice of him as she finished sipping a martini. She set the empty glass down and picked up her very small hand purse from the bar, then walked off towards the center of the gaming floor. He watched her depart and again lost track of reality as he opined over her perfect feminine form.
“Sixteen dollars, por favor,” the bartender said.
“Keep the change,” Murdock said as he tossed an American twenty dollar bill on the bar. He grabbed the bottle and followed the woman while grinning.
“We’ve got movement, gang!” Roar said. “The bartender must’ve recognized Murdock. He’s talking on the bar phone and he looks frantic.”
“I see Murdock,” Miller said to his wrist watch while wiping his nose to hide that he was talking to his wrist. Miller had been losing a lot of money at the craps table while consuming drink after drink, so the craps dealer assumed he was wildly drunk. He gathered up the remainder of his chips and said to the table, “I think I’m gonna find something to drink at the bar!” With that, he walked off while giving McVandalay at the table next to him one last little nod.
“Looks like two mafia thugs are headed your way to investigate,” Rice added in their ears. “They’re hauling ass from the east wall by the security entrance. Both of them are wearing dark blue suits.”
Murdock glanced in that direction and saw the thugs as well as the exact door that he’d been taken through only two months earlier. “Ah yes, I recognize the tall guy. He’s the one who punched me in the nose!” Murdock muttered to himself, “Paybacks are a bitch, fucker.” Even though Murdock really wanted to go find the hot Latina woman in the dress, his desire to punch the security guard in retaliation from being punched months earlier became overwhelming. He realized how much he loved to fight and silently said a prayer to a god he didn’t believe in, thanking it for giving him his amazing job.
“We’re going Oz on them in five seconds, gang. Hold tight,” Roar said into her headset as she typed furiously. Going Oz meant that she was about to make the man behind the curtain go blind on what was going on, or rather, she was taking over the security camera feeds and pumping in pre recorded footage. The men in the security office would have no idea that they were blind while Roar would have actual live feed to give her team real time intel.
The two Mexican mafia looking thugs wearing suits had reached the gaming floor and connected with other thugs wearing security outfits, as if they were fake cops. Rice’s voice filled the agents ears. “Remember, the casino has undercover security guards that are dressed as normal gamblers too. Keep an eye out, gang!” She always got nervous before conflict, but her nerves were calm and steady today. Somehow her instincts told her, today was gonna be a blood bath for the bad guys. They had no idea what was coming.
With her mic off, Roar said to Rice in their hotel room control center, “We’ll find El Padre, boss, and you know the carnage is gonna be messy.” Roar shuddered at the thought of McVandalay or Murdock punching people. Then she remembered seeing footage of Schuman fighting men twice her size in bare knuckles boxing and watching them all crumble to her iron fists. The idea of broken faces made her queazy, but she also felt amazing. This was her first mission where violence was the goal, and she discovered that she internally loved the anticipation.
“On your left, Murdock, thirty paces!” Schuman said into his ear piece. She’d collected her winnings in cash and had it stuffed into a very large purse that looked ridiculous on her small hundred and thirty pound frame. Her heart was also pounding with excitement.
“I’m tailing them,” Miller said in their ears. He’d stopped stumbling and was walking with a purpose.
Yen Roar clicked more buttons on her keyboard, then lifted her finger above the return key and exhaled deeply to calm her nerves. As she dropped her finger to press the button, she said, “Boom! Oz is blind behind the curtain!” Her heart was pounding hard. The casino security center was now watching recycled video footage and had zero idea that they’d been hacked.
Anastasia Boothausen’s voice was pleasant. “I’ve got eyes on their control center, and they just lost Murdock on their screens. They’re clearly confused! Good work, Roar!” she said from behind an air vent as she hid in the ventilation system.
Murdock took a few steps and walked quickly down a row of slot machines that was completely empty. Even though the casino floor was huge and open, this particular part was somewhat private. The two thugs dressed in three piece suits had turned the corner into the deserted area to see Murdock sipping on his beer. The American acted like he was ignoring the incoming suits until they were only a few feet from him.
“Hey!” one of the guards said as he watched Murdock set his beer down.
It was over before the guards knew it was started. In one motion, Murdock had set down his beer calmly as if he didn’t know they were there. In a split second, he lunged at the tall guy to cut their distance as he balled his fist up. Murdock blasted the unaware tall man in the jaw with the force of a hundred drunken rhinos in a drug fueled fuck fest. The thug went down before he knew he’d even been hit. The second thug realized what was happening and tried to lift his fists to protect his face but he was too late. The cracking sound of his jaw breaking reverberated thought the casino as beeps and dings from the slot machines covered up the brutal sound of breaking bone.
“Good to see you again, boys,” Murdock said sarcastically as he unclenched his fists. A wave of satisfaction swept over him to get revenge on the thug who’d roughed him up only eight weeks earlier.
“Holy shit!” Roar exclaimed while watching the action. The whole scene had lasted less than two seconds and ended with two crumpled security guards piled on the floor. Her heart was pounding with pure adrenaline as she clicked the mic button to the “on” position. “That was awesome!” she said to Murdock.
“I call dibs on the next ones!” Schuman said into their ears, half angrily, half excitedly.
“Well you won’t have to wait long, Sarge!” Roar said. “I’ve got four bogeys coming in from the west wall, and if I had to guess, there are two undercover security peeps with them with Hawaiian shirts on wearing shoes, not flip flops!”
“Fuck yes,” Schuman muttered under her breath.
Murdock had quickly picked up his beer and stepped around the corner to the next row of slot machines in a very casual manner. The beer tasted like teenage hope and regret all rolled into one skunky, shitty tasting beer with lime, but he didn’t care. He enjoyed a big gulp and moved to another area that was mostly deserted.
Roar spoke into their ears. “Oh fuck, team! I’m counting fifteen… no wait, twenty, maybe more! Shit! They’re sending in their entire security force to get you, Murdock!”
Special agent Trent Murdock found himself nodding involuntarily at the excitement of taking on a whole gang. He couldn’t stop smiling. Schuman was at the opposite end of the slot machine row from him and he noticed that she too was smiling and shaking with excitement. She flung her purse onto a big, comfy casino chair and cracked her neck side to side. Murdock turned to see Miller at the row next to them. He was chatting with a patron and clearly giving her more than a thousand dollars worth of chips, telling her to get lost. The patrons eyes got big with happiness and she popped up from her chair, shook Millers hand and then walked off excitedly.
The three Team Whiskey agents were as alone as they could be in the busy casino slot machine area. Over a dozen security guards converged on the area and were walking quickly, not even trying to act casually around the other gamblers or patrons. People were taking notice and nudging each other as if asking, “what’s going on?”
“Bradley, your friends could use you right now!” Roar said in his ears.
Two of the three attractive women that were hanging off of Bradley McVandalay put their arms up in celebration as he won another big payout. He didn’t even try to hide that he was talking to his watch. “Sarge has this handled, just watch. I doubt Miller or Murdock will even get a punch in.”
Roar saw another wave of security guards exit a few different entrances and enter the casino floor. For the first time, Roar felt her stomach drop and her nerves go crazy. “Guys! More guards are on their way! Like, lots more!”
“The more the merrier!” Schuman said. She was salivating and her heart was pounding. The sergeant lived for hand to hand combat.
Roar looked at all of her screens. O’Connor hadn’t been playing poker for more than a few minutes and already he had a massive stack of chips in front of him. Roar looked at another screen and saw that the security control room was now completely empty. They’d all left to go detain Murdock. She then watched Boothuasen slip the air vent cover off from where she was hiding and as stealthy as a spider slipping down a silk thread, she dropped into the room gently. Boothausen barred the door with a chair, then started snooping around. “Guys!” Roar said, “There are so many of them!”
“Don’t stress, Yen,” McVandalay said again from his craps table as he scooped up the dice. “You should feel sorry for the thugs, not us.” The dealer didn’t seem to notice that the American was talking to his watch, and the gold digging whores who were hanging on McVandalay didn’t seem to care either.
The whole time, agents Death, Emerald Blitz and Alexi Blacktide hadn’t said anything. They had been playing side by side in the slot machine area, and they saw a very large contingent of heavily muscled security guys in three piece suits walking quickly towards Murdock’s location. Blitz simply nodded at Blacktide and grinned as Blacktide smiled and nodded back. Death glanced at the thugs and grinned. They were ready to play their part.
“I don’t like this, guys!” Roar said. “There are so many of them!” she said nervously as she looked from screen to screen, losing track of how many security guards there actually were.
Blitz finally spoke up in their ears. “Let us know when you want fireworks, Murdock.”
At that moment, a dozen thugs rounded the corner of the slot machines and saw Murdock standing confidently, sipping his bottle of shitty beer. All of them started jogging towards him with menacing looks on their faces, completely ignoring Miller on one end of the row and Schuman on the other.
Murdock lifted his wrist watch to his mouth and muttered to Blitz, “Light ’em up, Em.”
In the distance, the sounds of M80 firecrackers started their machine gun like rat a tat tat popping noises as tourists and gamblers all started screaming while security guards who were determined to hurt and detain “el gringo malo” (the bad white guy, aka-Murdock) all took pause to figure out if there was actual gunfire in the casino, not understanding that it was a huge distraction for Team Whiskey to be able to get the drop on their adversaries in what would very shortly become the biggest casino brawl ever in the history of the world.
