9, Nightlife

“Fighting, fucking, like the fellas from Sublime said, it really is all the same, at least in my book. If there’s no pain involved, I’m not interested.” Sergeant Schuman pulled her short black hair behind her ears and removed her trench coat filled with weapons. “I’ll only marry a man if he can punch me hard enough to make me smile and fuck me hard enough to make me cry.”

“So you’ll die unmarried, it happens to the best of us.” Special agent Dale O’Connor knew that it was pointless to try and talk his friend out of what she was about to do.

“I’m not talking about a few tears of sweet love, Doc. I’m talking, I wanna ball my eyes out crying. If a man can fuck me that hard, I’ll let him put a ring on it.”

“Your sense of romance is staggering.” O’Connor surveyed the scene. There was a groaning man underneath a door that had just been kicked down on one side of the room, and on the other, there was a doorway leading to a boxing ring set up in the middle of a large underground warehouse. There were about two hundred spectators waving money in the air and yelling curse words in Spanish as they gambled.

“I hope some of these assholes are on steroids and can at least put up a fight. I get so tired of knocking men out with one punch.”

“Well, no girl likes a one pump chump.” O’Connor felt anxious. They were three stories below ground in a high end dance club in Bogota, Colombia. They were separated from their team, and chances were good that their wrist watch communicators didn’t work this deep below ground. He hated being a hypocrite, but his pessimism took over. “You’ve got an addiction that would make a heroin addict seem cleaner than a nun’s nether regions.”

“The sound of human bones breaking gives me a rush better than any drug I’ve tried.”

“I’d hate to be your boyfriend, let alone your enemy.”

“My boyfriend would have to take the punishment over and over, unlike an enemy who takes it once.” Schuman squinted and looked into the room beyond. She held back the glee in her heart and tried to stay calm. “I’ve done everything a person can do to get a buzz. Pills, powders, smoke, dried cat spit, you name it. Nothing beats an old fashioned fist fight. Nothing.”

“Dried cat spit, that’s a new one. What’ll the kids think of next?”

Agent Death was three stories above them, dancing to good music in a high end night club. She appeared to have her eyes closed, but she had them opened barely enough to see that several bouncers were watching her. The largest one headed towards her.

The music was loud and the floor was packed with beautiful young men and women. Death moved to the beat perfectly and was able to position herself behind a young couple who were grinding on the dance floor. When the bouncer moved left to get around them, Death danced in perfect parallel to the man so he couldn’t quite reach her. If he changed direction, she countered perfectly in natural dance movement, never letting on that she knew she was about to be grabbed. His frustration was becoming apparent.

Suddenly, one of the bouncers in the far corner of the club collapsed to the ground. Special agent Bradley McVandaly easily picked up the huge man and put him in an empty booth. The music was loud, the lights were low, and nobody saw the deed go down.

McVandalay moved quickly like a ghost to incapacitate the next one. He’d worked his way around the room in a manner to where he could pick them off one by one without any of the other bouncers keeping track of each other. The club was loud, the patrons were drinking heavily, and within a few minutes there were only three bouncers still conscious.

The dance between Death and her captor had gone on for several minutes. The bouncer was still navigating the crowd by edging through, leading with his shoulder and walking sideways. Agent Death was half his size and somehow kept migrating around people magically while the large bouncer was struggling. Then, a space opened up and he took several fast steps towards her.

During that particular part of the techno song, the lights started flickering as the music got even louder. Agent Death was able to drop to her knees in a split second and kick hard at the bouncers ankle. She connected with bone crushing force. She’d popped up as quickly as she’d dropped down while the bouncer fell like a stack of bricks. The people dancing began to notice the man curled up on the floor as agent Death blended into the crowd and disappeared.

Back downstairs, Schuman was getting impatient with giddiness. “You let me do my thing and go find Tiberon. My fighting will be the perfect distraction.”

“Yeah, a five foot six white girl beating up a bunch of huge Columbian thugs will be the perfect distraction for the six foot tall white guy wearing a trench coat filled with explosives. Fuck.” O’Connor’s sarcasm was thick, but he knew Schuman would knock him out if he tried to stop her. He had to at least try to salvage the situation. He sent a quick text message to the team from his watch, hoping that it would get to all of them.

Schuman had removed her wristwatch communicator and handed it to O’Connor for safe keeping. It did not light up, so he knew his message hadn’t gone through on the team channel. “See you in hell, brother,” she said confidently. With that, she slipped into the other room.

Outside, Lorenz and Miller were perched on a roof, debating important topics through their ear piece communicators with their friends Blacktide and Blitz who were positioned in two different getaway cars.

“That dress looked so much better on him than it did on her!” Alexi Blacktide was indignant.

“She’s at least a woman! Dresses aren’t meant for men, and don’t tell me that he was sexier cuz he’s ripped and works out.” Laura Lorenz was trying to be level headed.

“That has everything to do with this, Lorenz! She hadn’t been working out for months, she should’ve never dyed her hair black, and she seriously looked strung out on pills or something.” Blacktide made her case with passion. “She should’ve never been allowed on that awards show to begin with. He wore it better, no question.”

“You’re a mess, Lex!”

Blacktide was rolling hot. “He looked great in that dress! So what if it’s normally an expression of femininity in our culture. Fuck normal. I’m so sick of sensitive people getting triggered by dumb things. I’m telling you he looked way more fuckable than she did!”

The four agents had been chatting casually until agent Lorenz had commented on the media story of an unknown male comedian who wore a dress to an awards show as a joke. A burned out actress wore the same dress, and although she gave a stirring speech about global warming, she did nothing in her personal life with her time or wealth to combat the problem. The agents were supposed to be watching the exits to the night club while waiting for their team to give any updates, but instead they were arguing passionately about actors whom they didn’t even know existed before the awards show.

Blitz’s voice had no emotion as her voice filled their ear pieces. “That bitch really did look strung out on pills.”

“Pills scare me,” said agent Miller.

“I say if you wannabe wasted, stick to good weed,” replied Blitz.

“Unless you’re in Florida. I hear you get ten months for cannabis possession down there,” added agent Miller.

Blacktide forgot about her rant about cross dressing comedians going for shock value. “Wrong. You get ten years, not months. The pharmaceutical industry loves their never ending pain pill income from seniors.” With that, the conversation switched to drug talk.

Back inside, McVandalay had knocked out the remaining three bouncers with incredible efficiency and stealth. Death was still unapologetically dancing while McVandalay had disappeared into the hard partying crowd. The two of them were waiting for anything to happen, but nothing did. People danced, booze flowed and the music played.

Agent Murdock was still upright for the time being, standing at the bar and hitting on a beautiful woman who was swaying back and forth from intoxication. She was clearly intent on getting him just as drunk. He was oblivious to everything, locked in deep flirting conversation with the pretty muchacha.

Downstairs, the loud yelling from the spectators was deafening. A couple of fighters duked it out for a few minutes until the larger of the two landed a solid jaw punch. The smaller man went down hard with a thud as some people cheered while others groaned. Schuman surveyed the scene until she found the fight director. She walked up to him and was about to speak when she was interrupted by a man behind her.

“Amigo!” O’Connor had shed his trench coat and left it behind. He spoke perfect Spanish and was very lively. “My friend here looks like a dainty woman, but I assure you, she’s the best boxer in Colombia! Are your fighters afraid of getting punched by a girl?”

Schuman was amazed at what she was seeing. O’Connor was always an aloof drunk, and his English was barely understandable most of the time, but here he was, animated and communicating perfectly with the guy in charge.

The director raised his eyebrows in curiosity, but he was clearly sedated on some sort of drug. He shrugged. “It’s two hundred bucks to buy into the fight, no refunds.” He looked Schuman up and down, clearly disapproving of her appearance as a fighter. “She’s gotta win four fights to get her money back. Every fight after that is a fifty dollar payout for the winner.”

Without batting an eye, O’Connor produced the money and said, “we accept your terms! Your crowd tonight will be well pleased with her fighting skills. This one is a killer!”

The director grunted as if to shrug it off and waved Schuman over to the ringside attendant. He took her to a corner of the ring to wait for her turn to fight.

The big man in the ring had won yet another fight and was on a roll. He was massive. Schuman stepped into the ring to fight the man. He was twice her size and a foot taller. He laughed at the smaller white woman, shrugged, and took the stance to box. Schuman grinned.

“Poor fucker has no clue what’s about to hit him,” O’Connor mumbled to himself in drunk English.

The bell rang. Schuman wasted no time. The big man had his fists low, assuming that this fight would be over quickly. Before he’d even thought to raise his fists to guard his jaw, he was knocked unconscious with one left jab from Schuman. She stepped back into her corner of the ring as the room went berserk. Her heart pounded hot as hate filled blood pumped through her veins. She was a fighter, and this was where she belonged.

O’Connor had snuck to the back of the crowd, scanning back and forth, hoping to get a glimpse of Tiberon. Instead, he saw two men, not smiling or cheering. They were standing on either side of a doorway in the far part of the room. They looked like secret service agents, but O’Connor could tell they were body guards. He slipped through the crowd and made his way back into the entry room, only to find that his trench coat was missing. Someone had confiscated it, along with all of the explosives it contained.

He turned around in time to see Schuman knock out her second opponent. As the crowd of rowdy spectators went wild, O’Connor could see the two body guards step away from the door they were guarding. It opened up and half a dozen men came barreling out with hand guns. “This is no bueno,” he mumbled to himself.

In the distance, four Americans stopped arguing about the pharmaceutical industry as they took note of a thief who had stepped outside wearing a heavily weighted down bullet proof trench coat which contained stolen wrist watch communicators that finally could connect to cellular towers and send a text message delivered thirty minutes late that simply said, “bare knuckles in basement, send help asap -Doc.”