89, Hospital

“Doc looks like he’s been mob fucked by a pack of chili eating chihuahuas.”  Sergeant Schuman put a tightly rolled Colombian cigar in her mouth and chewed it gingerly.  Her mouth watered and she really wanted to light it but refrained because she knew that it would be bad mojo to smoke in a hospital room.  

American special agent Trent Murdock joked, “Chili eating Mexican Weiner dogs for the win!” as he nodded approvingly at Schuman’s perfect insult.

The sergeant pointed at O’Connor lying comatose in a hospital bed and said, “When I saw him two months ago at headquarters, I didn’t think he could look any worse.  I was wrong.  Good god.”

Murdock looked at his best friend Dale O’Connor lying on the hospital bed.  O’Connor had intravenous drip going into his heavily bandaged left arm.  His breathing was shallow and his vitals were weak.  He hadn’t moved for two days.  Murdock looked at Schuman and remembered, “Oh yeah!  Sarge, we all saw you last at headquarters when Lex & Doc had their week long sex bender.”  He crinkled his eyebrows in memory.  “He really did look like shit at that meeting, didn’t he.”

Special agent Alexi Blacktide gasped and turned bright red as Murdock pointed out her love life, despite that it was only her, Schuman, Murdock, and Mikayla Doniak from Team Whiskey in the hospital room with her.  Schuman nodded and answered, “Doc looked like a fucking skeleton, but compared to this?  He was a picture of health and vitality.”

“I missed that meeting cuz I was with Von Stryker in Russia,” special agent Mikayla Doniak said as she sat in a corner, flipping through a magazine.  She looked up at Blacktide.  “Rice filled us in that you two were a thing, but she failed to mention that Doc looked bad at the meeting.”

Schuman snorted.  “They both looked like a walrus had given them several donkey punches.”

Murdock laughed and added, “Consensual donkey punches, of course.”

“Of course,” Schuman grinned.

Blacktide bellowed, “For fucks sake, you two!  Can you show some compassion?!”  She was worried sick about O’Connor.  They’d only been dating two months but she had fallen for him completely, even though she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.

Doniak looked over at O’Connor and said, “Well from everything I’ve learned about Doc, he’s the cockroach of the crew.  You can’t kill the fucker with bullets, fire or chemicals.”  She pointed the magazine at O’Connor in his bed.  “You’ll have to go nuclear on this fucker to take him out, I’d wager.”

Murdock yawned.  “He always said he wanted to die in a Japanese honor duel.”

“Sounds like something stupid that Doc would want!”  Schuman laughed and added, “He’s probably still tripping balls from those shrooms.”

Neither agent showed the slightest concern for O’Connor and it pissed Blacktide off.  “He’s hanging on by a thread and he could use a little love, assholes!”

“He could use a fucking sandwich,” Schuman joked.  “Doc’s always been lean, but you’ve been fucking the meat right off of him, Lex,” she said with a grin to Blacktide.

“God dammit, Sarge!” Blacktide blurted loudly with embarrassment.  “He’s your friend too, you know!”

Schuman nodded and said, “Ah Lex, he won’t die.  I lost a bet to him and owe him a drink, so trust me, he’ll live just so he can collect.”  She looked down at O’Connor.  He looked like he was moments from dying at any point. She looked back up at Blacktide and said, “You’ll get that stiff dick stuffed back in you in no time, Lex, don’t you worry.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Blacktide yelled as she threw her hands in the air, mortified.

“Damn, Sarge, stiff dick?  That was a bit over the top, don’tcha think?” Murdock mockingly said as he pretended to scold Schuman.

“You two are such pussies,” Schuman said plainly with a smile.  “I’m gonna go outside and smoke this thing.” She held up the cigar to the open window to examine it further.  “I’ve never had Colombian tobacco before.”

“Enjoy that long, round monster on your lips!” Murdock said approvingly, adding to the sergeant’s erection joke from seconds earlier.

“You know I like ’em big, Murdock,” Sarge joked back as she exited the room.  She stopped briefly in the doorway to add, “It’s why I’ll never hook up with you,” then disappeared into the hallway.

“Touché!” Murdock guffawed.

“Fuhhhhck!” Blacktide said in frustration.  She grimaced and headed towards the hospital room door to leave, clearly no longer in the mood to talk with anyone.  As she exited, a bald headed white man with a grey mustache was about to walk into the room.  He smiled at Blacktide.  She didn’t smile back as she said, “Dirt, I give you full permission to kill Murdock and Sarge if they piss you off.”

“Good to see you too, Alexi!” Dirt said enthusiastically as she stormed angrily down the hallway.  The room brightened up from Dirt’s perfectly clean, bright white shoes.

Blacktide didn’t turn around as she stomped away.  “And I’m still going to kill you for not telling me about those edibles six months ago!”

Dirt leaned back in the doorway to holler down the hallway, “I deserve that!”  As he stepped into the room, he said, “So Blacktide’s a ball of sunshine today, eh?  What gives?”

Mikayla Doniak looked up from her magazine to address her new friend.  “O’Connor hasn’t responded for forty eight hours to anything, Murdock’s being a dimwit and Sarge is an asshole.  You know, the usual.”  Doniak smiled.  “However, unlike Lex, I for one am still grateful you got us into Moscow to save Porter six months ago.  She was a wreck.”

“Oh yeah!  How’d that all turn out?” Dirt asked.

Doniak grinned and shook her head.  “Well, Porter ended up in a game of helicopter cat and mouse against a heavily armed oppontent, but of course she grounded the other guy by using turbulence or some shit, but then ended up running out of gas and landing in the woods outside of Moscow at the exact place where two gangs of drug running Russian assholes decided they wanted to have a shootout which started a huge forest fire that almost burned them to pieces, but then Doc came to their rescue with a stolen military fuel tanker to gas them back up and get them the fuck out of the woods.”

Dirt shook his head, half in confusion, half in entertainment.  “Jesus, Mickey.  Where were you during all of this?”

“Hooking up with a friend of Porter’s who’s a Russian air traffic controller.”  She smiled.  “I was stressed until Porter got her bird back in the air, so I drank heavily with that cute boy to calm my nerves and ended up making questionable decisions,” she paused, then finished, “but in the end he got done what he needed to get done.”

“All in the name of international diplomacy!” Dirt joked.  He looked back and forth from Murdock to Doniak and grinned, “Fuck me running, I love Team Whiskey.  You fuckers are my kind of crazy.”  He smiled and asked, “Is Blacktide coming back?”

“Lex is nervous because she’s scared that we’ll lose numb nuts here,” Doniak said as she nodded at O’Connor in his hospital bed, “And I’m just drooling over good looking Latin men in this magazine.”

“They’re the sexiest, aren’t they?” Dirt said casually as his smile grew wider.

“I wouldn’t kick them out of bed for eating cookies,” Doniak said as she got up from her seat and handed the open magazine to Dirt.

Dirt laughed an easy laugh and his mustache twitched.  “You’d let them get crumbs everywhere, eh?”

Mickey grinned right back at him and pointed to one underwear model in particular.  “Well I certainly don’t want cookie crumbs up my butt crack, but all bets are off if I ever get to bang this guy.”

Dirt looked at the picture and pursed his lips.  “Oooo!  You weren’t joking about sexy, Mickey!”

Murdock perked up and paid attention.  The crew had always thought Dirt might be gay but they had no definitive proof.  Mickey, on the other hand, didn’t care.  She stretched, yawned and said, “that magazine is painfully reminding me that I’ve been single for far too long.”  She cracked her neck from side to side and said, “I’m gonna go hunt down some coffee.  Either of you want a cup?”

“I loves me some Colombian grown,” Dirt said without taking his eyes off of the male underwear models in the magazine.  

Mickey hadn’t seen him looking at the magazine so she figured he was talking about coffee.  “Gotcha.  Murdock?”

“I’m good, Mickey, thanks,” Murdock answered politely as he pondered Dirts’ sexual orientation while looking at his dazzlingly white shoes.  

“See you fuckers in a few,” Doniak said as she exited the hospital room.

Dirt looked up from the magazine and smiled at Murdock.  “I fried my nerves with too much Ritalin and rum in Panama back in the 80’s.  Coffee is the only thing that mellows me.”  

Murdock found the info confusing as fuck.  “Coffee mellows your fried nerves?  It doesn’t make you jittery?”

“Not me, amigo.  I’m a lucky dude that way, I guess.”  He saw Murdock’s confused face and added, “I know, you’d think with all the pills I did way back when that I’d have to avoid coffee like a fat kid has to avoid bread.  I mean, basically, me and my army buddies were hopped up on legal speed for our entire two year deployment.”

“Pills scare me worse than being covered in honey and thrown into a pit full of feminists who haven’t eaten for days.”  

Acknowledging the useless analogy, Dirt nodded, “Good one.”

“I only ever drank.”  Keeping the subject on intoxicating substances, Murdock asked, “How’d the ceremony go for you two?”

Dirt set the magazine down on a bedside table and smiled.  “Not sure how Doc’s trip was, but mine was divine.”

Murdock sat down where Mickey had been seated and crossed his legs.  “Do tell.”

A huge smile crept across Dirt’s face as he regaled his experience.  “I became one with the universe, then was transported to a dimension across time and space where I danced naked in a mango room for eterntity.  I didn’t see Jimmy Hendrix this time which kind of sucked.  He’s a cool dude.”

“You’ve seen Jimmy Hendrix on the other side?” Murdock asked with genuine curiosity.

“Yeah, and he’s unreal at cooking.”  Dirt crinkled his brow.  “He talks with a very distinguished English accent, which I thought was really strange, but oh well.”  Dirt exhaled through his lips.  “Hell of a chef, that guy.”

Having heard stories of dragons and strange creatures while people tripped balls, Murdock couldn’t help but ask, “Have you met any alien entities while you’re tripping balls?”

Dirt’s brow crinkled up in thought, then his face lit up.  “I met The Spice Girls on the other side once.  They were like, half woman, half fish, or something.  The details escape me.”  Dirt shrugged as Murdock looked suspiciously at him.  “They didn’t sing, but it was them.”

“The Spice Girls are all still alive, you know,” Murdock said matter of factly.

“Yeah, so they clearly travel back and forth, which explains why they write hit after hit.”  Dirt smiled and nodded as if this answer was completely satisfactory and didn’t need further detail.

Murdock again couldn’t help but wonder if Dirt was gay since he clearly seemed to like the Spice Girls.  Changing the subject, Murdock asked, “Who do you think did this to Doc?” as he pointed to O’Connor’s bandaged arm.

Dirt had information and perked up to share it.  “Blacktide and I found three dead white guys after we got O’Connor’s arm wrapped and his vitals stabilized.  No I.D., but they all had old school Soviet made hand guns.”

“Russians?” Murdock asked as he processed the information.  “In Colombia?  What the fuck?”

“My sentiments exactly,” Dirt said agreeably.  “I just chatted with the front desk gal who’s a friend of mine and she says that there was another gun shot wound victim who came in a day ago in the middle of the night, the exact night of our shootout.  He was a white guy speaking very broken Spanish.”

Murdock perked up.  “Russian,” he said as the mental puzzle piece fell into place.  “Is the fucker still in this hospital?”

“Ooooo!  Good question!” Dirt answered.  “Let’s find out!”

At that moment, there was a loud crashing sound in the room next door that reverberated through the wall.  “Was that breaking glass?” Murdock asked as he jumped to his feet.  He instinctively grabbed his hand gun from his waist band that he had hidden under his shirt.

“You check the hallway, I’ll check the window,” Dirt said, taking command of the situation as he also pulled out a hand gun from his own waistline hidden under a shirt.  Murdock couldn’t help but notice that it was a tiny pink 7.65mm gun, and the femininity of the hand gun again made him wonder if Dirt might be gay.  The thought left his head quickly as Dirt yelled while looking out the window, “Shit!  It’s a white guy and he’s running away!”

A ruckus broke out in the hallway.  The sound of two men yelling in Spanish, “Get him!” reverberated into O’Connor’s room.  Murdock popped his head out cautiously and saw two men disappear out a door at the end of the hallway.

Murdock reported, “Two men just left the hallway and if I had to guess…”

Dirt was looking out the window and finished Murdock’s sentence for him, “They’re chasing the white guy.  He’s got his arm bandaged and he’s running like he’s pretty injured.”  Dirt crinkled his neck to see if he could see the parking lot with a better angle and then said, “And he’s gone.  What the fuck?”

“I’m gonna chase those two guys,” Murdock said.  As he ran out the door, he yelled, “We need answers.”

Watching out the window, Dirt saw the two men exit the hospital and run twenty feet into the parking lot, then stop and look around confusedly about where the white man had possibly run.  They were visibly angry and yelled at each other.  Finally, they split up and ran in random directions, but Dirt knew that neither man would find their target.

A minute later, Blacktide came running into the hospital room with her own hand gun drawn.  She pointed it instinctually at Dirt, then lowered it.  “What the fuck is going on, Dirt?!” she asked forcefully.

Dirt filled her in about the white guy jumping out of the window and the two latino dudes chasing him.  He had no answers to her questions.

A few moments later, Doniak came back into the room holding two coffees.  She saw her friends looking frazzled with their guns drawn and pointed to the ground.  “Whoa!  What’d I miss?”  She set the coffees down and drew her own hand gun, then poked her head into the deserted hallway.  “Is someone trying to get to O’Connor?” she asked intensely.

“Not that we know of,” Dirt said.  He explained how the last two minutes had gone to Doniak, but as he spoke, his brain started connecting the dots.  “If I had a thousand pesos to gamble, I’d bet that white guy was our surviving Russian from the shootout who jumped out of the window next door to us, and the dudes chasing him were some men working for El Daga.”

“Wait, what?  Who’s El Daga?” Doniak asked.

“He’s the kingpin of a smaller cartel.  His name means The Dagger, but I haven’t heard shit about him, really.  He’s got the potential to be the next major bad guy in Colombia, for sure.  Bogota has a huge vacuum in the cocaine world since you guys took out Tiberon.”

Just then, O’Connor started gasping for air.  The hospital was rural and second tier at best, so they did not have heart rate monitors or oxygen masks.  Blacktide stuck her gun back in her waist line and was at O’Connor’s bedside immediately.  “Somebody do something!”

It had been fifteen minutes since anyone had heard from Sergeant Schuman, but in that moment, her voice was clear.  “Get the fuck out of the way, Lex, or I’ll throw you out in the hallway.”  Alexi Blacktide turned around to see Schuman storm past her with something in her hand.  “This’ll work, boys,” she said to Doniak and Dirt.

Doniak saw what she was holding and shrugged.  “Worth a try,” she said to Schuman.

“Are you fucking crazy?!” Dirt exclaimed, seeing what Schuman was about to do.

Blacktide felt her head beating out of control and fear consumed her.  “What in the fuck are you about to do, Sarge!?” she demanded.  She couldn’t see shit because the sergeant violently shoved her out of the way.

“I’m about to save this fucking dick lickers life,” Schuman answered.

Blacktide tried to see what Schuman was doing but couldn’t get a view.  As she finally moved to O’Connor’s feet, she could see that Schuman had a very small bottle of Jameson and was pouring a very small amount into O’Connor’s gaping, gasping mouth.  “What the fuck!?” Blacktide yelled.

Schuman instantly snapped, “Back off, Lex!”

Even though the sergeant was only a hundred thirty pounds at five foot six, she intimidated the hundred and seventy pound six foot tall Blacktide into cowering back.  The fear only lasted a few seconds as Blacktide watched Schuman return to pouring a small amount of whiskey into O’Connors gasping mouth.  “God dammit, Sarge!  Are you trying to kill him?”

The liquid hit the demolitions experts lips and trickled into the back of his throat.  O’Connor’s stopped gasping as his eyes shot open.  He choked for a moment, then coughed, followed by a swallow.  His eyes got big for several seconds as no one said anything, then his eye lids relaxed and they resumed their normal size.  O’Connor didn’t try and see his surroundings.  All he saw was Schuman holding the small bottle of Jameson over his mouth.  “Hey, Sarge,” O’Connor said with a weak voice.  He smiled at her and said, “Call Porter for me, would you?  I’m gonna need a ride to Moscow.”  He closed his eyes and added, “Oh, and don’t forget you owe me a drink.  Pay up.”

Schuman turned her head to look at the three stunned agents and gave them an arrogant shit eating grin.  “Told ya.”

In the distance, a Russian thug named Gosavich stole a car, drove to a remote Colombian farm that was a Russian safe house with its own airstrip where he hunkered down for two weeks, healed, then flew back to Moscow, only to be confronted by a group of special agents lead by two demolitions experts, one Russian and one American, both of whom had their own reasons for hunting him down.