92, Gossip

“He’ll fuck it up worse than a nervous frat boy getting wasted at homecoming and missing out on the greatest threesome of his life.”  Special agent Trent Murdock didn’t even try to talk quietly in the disgusting single wide trailer.  “I’ve known the man my whole life.  Romance is not his forte!”

“I admit I’ve only seen the guy hook up with foreign intelligence agents and European super models in Monaco, but he’s romantic.  He’s gotta be.”  Special agent Jack Miller had kicked in the front door to the trailer moments earlier.  He’d gunned down two bad guys as they’d reached for their hand guns and was now carefully stepping over their dead bodies.  He stayed low with his hand gun pointed forward as he crept down the hallway towards the bedrooms in the trailer.

“That drunk bastard doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body,” Murdock said while shaking his head in disagreement.  Murdock tried to turn a door knob to open a bedroom door.  The metal made a huge squeaking sound.  He instinctively side stepped down the hallway and threw his hands over his ears as a shotgun blast blew a hole through the thin wooden door.  With his ears ringing, he yelled, “Trust me, Doc will fuck it up!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be his best friend?”  Miller stood on the other side of the door and removed his own hands from his ears.  In less than a second he’d pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it into the open hole through the door.  “Like, shouldn’t you have his back?”

The two agents put their hands over their ears a second time and crouched as low as they could as a very loud explosion rocked the single wide trailer.  The door to the bedroom blew off of its hinges and crashed into the wall as smoke billowed out into the hallway.

Trent Murdock stood up and his huge chest and shouldered silhouette looked like he was a Norwegian thunder god in the dust and smoke.  “I don’t know much in life, but I know Doc.  He’ll fuck it up.”  Murdock pointed his hand gun forward as he crashed through the destroyed door frame.

Jack Miller kept his ears covered.  The gunfire was brief, then he saw Murdock reappear in the hallway.  He was holding a cell phone that didn’t belong to him.  Grinning, Murdock said, “Got it.  Let’s get out of here.”

“Nice work,” Miller said approvingly.  “One down, two to go.  I wonder if we got ours before the others got theirs.  Hmmm….”  He followed Murdock out of the trailer and got back into the conversation.  “Oh, and hey, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that Doc asks her in some romantic way.”

As the two agents stepped down the shoddy steps from the smoking single wide, Murdock put his lips to the sky and whistled.  “A fool and his money are soon to part!”  As they got into their car, Murdock said, “You’re on.”

Miller grinned as he closed the door to the drivers seat.  “You underestimate our drunk friend, bro.  You’re fucked.”

Murdock laughed.  “Shake on it, fuck face!”

The two men shook hands on their bet over the center console, then Miller put the rig into drive and sped off into the Mexican evening.

Meanwhile on the complete opposite side of the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico, special agent Death was removing the screw top to a bottle of 180 proof moonshine.  She laughed and asked, “Do you think Lex will say yes?”  She pulled out a bandana from her pocket and crunched it up, then stuffed one side of it into the opening of the bottle.  “Like, is she just banging him cuz he’s convenient cock or does she actually love that drunk ass idiot?”

“Convenient cock.  Never heard that one before.”  Special agent Emerald Blitz looked through her infrared binoculars and tried to spot their target.  

“It gets us girls into trouble, you gotta admit.  We’ll choose a convenient lay over the right guy.”  Death shook her head as if she were shaking off a bad memory.  “Lex is just comfortable with him, right?  No way she wants to actually marry him.”

“She won’t openly admit it to me, but I’ve known that bitch since basic.”

“You two met in basic training?” Death said as she twisted the rag tightly into the bottle.  

“She’s head over heals for the guy.”  Blitz lowered her binoculars and tried to adjust a few settings.  “Lex says over and over that he’s an energizer bunny in bed.”  

“It’s hard to imagine Doc being anything other than a sarcastic idiot who loves conspiracy theories,” Death joked as she turned the bottle upside down.  The bandana rag easily absorbed the high octane hooch but didn’t spill a drop.

“Just cuz you personally don’t wanna bang him doesn’t mean he doesn’t have stamina.”  Blitz clicked a few buttons and brought the binoculars back up to her eyes.  “Apparently the drunk fuck exercises like he’s gonna be in the Olympics.”

“Doc!?” Death replied with huge eyes.

“Makes sense, I guess.  He’s freakishly strong as fuck for being so scrawny.”

Nodding, Death replied, “That’s fucked.  I’ve never seen him exercise, like, ever.”

“Yeah, I don’t see what she sees in him, but they have their thing.”  Blitz adjusted the focal point and found what she was looking for.  “She’ll say yes.”

“Dang.”  After a few more seconds of processing the thought, Death added genuinely, “That’s cool.  Good for them.”

Blitz lowered the binoculars again and said, “I always though Lorenz and Miller would tie the knot before any of the rest of us, but those two seem to be content to just work together and bang.  For whatever dumb fuck reason, Doc seems hell bent on asking Lex to marry him.”  Blitz resumed her scanning through the binoculars and pointed at a group of windows on shitty double wide trailer.  “They’re in that room there.”

“Perfect,” Death replied.  She pulled her wrist watch to her face and contacted the other agents they were working with.  “Bradley, Lorenz, heads up.  Blitz located the two perps.  We’re about to flush them out.  Are you two ready?”

The voice of Bradley McVandalay answered her from her wrist watch.  “Lorenz has the side window and I’ve got the back door covered.”

Lorenz’s voice chimed in, “You love to cover back doors, don’t you, Bradley.”

Laughing, McVandalay said, “I know I don’t get many dates, Lorenz, but I’m not gay, you know.”

“Jesus you two!  We’re here to kill some bad guys and get a god damned phone!” Death snapped.  “We are going live in a few seconds.  Stay sharp!”

Emerald Blitz pulled out a jet lighter and clicked the button.  A solid stream of flame came shooting out of the device as agent Death hung the loose part of the bandana over the fire.  As it ignited, Death ginned and sarcastically spoke like a fancy bartender, “Did someone order a Molotov cocktail?”  With that, she jumped up from behind an old rusted out car and ran up to the window of the bedroom where the bad guys were located in the double wide trailer.  In one heave she threw the bottle through the window, then turned to head back for cover.

Flames erupted instantly from the double wide bedroom and visible sounds of bad guys screaming rang through the area.  Several seconds later, Death and Blitz heard two gunshots in quick succession from out back.  Death looked at Blitz.  “How do you think Doc will propose?”

Shrugging, Blitz said, “I don’t get the vibe that he’s very romantic, you know?”  Blitz threw her rifle over her shoulder and said, “I’ll bet he asks her at a bar.”

Death chuckled and said, “Give the guy a little credit, wouldja?  He may be a fucking dipshit, but he’s clever!  I’ll bet he asks Porter to fly them somewhere tropical.”

The voice of Lorenz spoke to them out of their watches.  “Bradley shot them both.  He’s retrieving their cell phones now.”

Raising her wrist watch to her face, Death answered, “Sweet. We’ll meet you at the van.”  She lowered her watch and addressed Blitz, “I wonder how Schuman and Owens are doing?”

At a different location in Juarez, Mexico, Sergeant Schuman and master thief Owens were peeping through binoculars at a one story abandoned store front that was boarded up and had “KEEP OUT” spray painted in both English and Spanish all over the walls.

Owens yawned, then said, “I bet the dummy asks her at a distillery.”

“It would be lame if it was anything but the Jameson distillery, of course.”  Schuman snapped a few photos from her high resolution binoculars.

“Shit, good point.  That’d be dope, actually.”

Schuman lowered her binoculars and rubbed her eyes.  “Or maybe he’s actually gotten to know her and he’ll ask her at some restaurant that she likes.”

“I’ve never heard Lex talk about eating out, ever.  Does she even have a favorite place to eat?”

“Damn good question,” Schuman laughed.  “The only time I see Lex enjoy food is when Porter hits a food truck and brings us burritos or curry.”

The two agents paused for a second, then made eye contact and spoke at the same time.  “Cookies!”

“I watched her eat two whole rows of Oreos once!” Owens said enthusiastically.

“That bitch loves her sugar.  I forgot about that.”  Schuman raised the binoculars to her eyes and added, “There was this human trafficker who was eating a piece of cake in his hotel room once in Rome.  Lex walked in the front door, smoked the fucker, but then instead of just leaving, the fucking crazy bitch saw the cake and ate it before walking out.  She crammed it down her pie hole and didn’t even wash the chocolate frosting off of her fingers.  Just licked them as she strolled out of there.”

Owens couldn’t help himself.  “Is it sad that this story kind of turns me on?”

“The cake or the dead bad guy?” Schuman asked jokingly.

“Well played.”  Owens cracked his neck from side to side as if he were getting ready for a gymnastics meet.  “Lex is nuts.”

“Yeah, sometimes I think that bitch belongs in a padded cell.”

“Or on Team Whiskey,” Owens added innocently.

“Well played,” Schuman said as he fired his words back at him.  She fiddled with some knobs on her viewing apparatus and added, “I shouldn’t judge.  I wanna blow up that building over there and tell the brass that we couldn’t retrieve their cell phones.  Maybe I’m the one that should be in a cell.”

Owens shrugged innocently.  “I’d break you out, Sarge.  Fuck the haters.”

“You’re a weird dude, Owens.”

“Guilty as charged!” he replied enthusiastically as he pulled out some deer jerky from a ziplock bag he’d had in his pocket.  “Want some?”

“Jesus, Owens, why do you always have meat?” Schuman asked as she declined the offer by waving the bag away.

“It’s what I do.”  The thief put the meat back in his pocket.  “Why do you want to punch people with your bare fists?”

“Touché, fucker.  Touché.”  Schuman got pensive.  “Every time I think about our team, I wonder if I made any actual good choices in my life.”  She smiled her toothy grin and added, “Oh, and we should call Doc and tell him to propose at a dessert shoppe.”  Schuman adjusted her settings and snapped a few more pics.  “Porter could fly them to Paris.”  She then changed the subject to their task at hand.  “By the way, if these assholes see you, I call dibs on killing them both.”

The Master Thief gasped as if he was an insulted white woman at a Democratic convention having to hear about Republican views on politics.  “How dare you!”  His eyes were huge and he had a smile from ear to ear.  “You know for a fact that they’ll never see me!  Why would you insult me like that?”  Owens looked a little butt hurt, but he knew her real motivation.

“I might kill them even if they don’t see you, just so you know.”  She sighed a deep sigh.  “I just wanna shoot this fucking thing so badly.”  Her five foot six, hundred and thirty pound frame raised and dropped with each breath as if she were carrying a heavy load on her shoulders.  She exhaled through pursed lips as she stroked a long, black case that contained a very powerful rocket launcher, then brought the binoculars up to her eyes and searched the building for the perfect place to aim her toy if the time was right.

“Well you know these fuckers aren’t going to see me, so just do me a favor and wait ’til I get back with the damn cell phones, please!”  Owens was behind Schuman and he decided he’d make his move.  He took off as silently as an owl taking flight from a branch.

Schuman didn’t see him since she had the binoculars to her eyes.  “I promise I won’t kill you, Owens.  At least not today.  I reserve the right to kill you in the future, of course.”  Schuman turned around in hopes of catching Owens smiling but he wasn’t there.  “Owens?” she said as she looked around.  Instantly, she got grumpy.  “I hate it when his does his Houdini disappearing act.”  She clenched her jaw and dropped her fist on her leg.  “Fucker.”

Owens scaled up the side of the adobe wall like he was Spiderman and was on the roof in no time.  His feet flew at break neck speed across the roof and within a few seconds he’d snuck into a vent.  Once inside, he twisted and contorted his body to perfectly snake through the vent system, and even though it was old and creaky, he made no sound as he slithered through.  When he’d come to the first room with a vent, he collapsed his skull like flattening and sandwich and popped his head through.  His shoulders folded up like a piece of pizza, followed by his perfectly bendable hips, and without effort, he was out of the vent system and on his feet.’

“I hear them a few rooms away,” Owens said to his wrist watch.  “Gimme a few minutes.  I’ll have both their phones before you even have that thing charged up.”

He could hear Schuman fiddling with the rocket launcher case.  “Hurry,” was all she replied.

Owens instinctively knew where to walk to avoid any creaking in the floor boards, and despite the fact that the interior of the building was pitch black, he navigated himself around as easily as if it were perfectly lit.  At one point he could hear footsteps walking towards a doorway that would lead right to where he was walking, so he flattened his body out to just wider than a pack of gum and slipped into an open room that was pitch black.  He could see that it was a bathroom that had three stalls and a few urinals.  The footsteps were walking towards his location and he saw that the person walking had a flashlight.  As quietly as a mouse, Owens dropped to the ground and slithered under a bathroom stall without making a sound.

The bathroom door was already open but creaked loudly as a large men came barreling in.  Owens could hear how his breath reverberated over his mustache and noted that the man was clearly out of cardiovascular shape.  The man walked to a urinal in the dark with his flashlight and zipped down his pants.  Owens silently slipped back out form underneath the door of the stall and snuck behind the man.  Expertly, Owens picked his pocket and took his cell phone, then exited the bathroom as quiet as a ghost.

He heard the urinal flush from down the hall and wondered, “How does this place have plumbing but no electricity?  Hmmm….”  Within a minute, he’d located where the other guy was hanging out.  He was in a room that had boarded up exterior windows, but enough light got in through cracks and slits that normal people could make their way around.  The second man was sitting on a crate, surfing on his cell phone.

A grin crossed Owens face.  He loved fucking with people.  He looked around and found a small piece of wood that was roughly the size of a cell phone.  He walked up behind the second man and tapped him forcefully on the left shoulder.  As the spooked man looked left, Owens darted to the right and slipped the mans cell phone out of his hand while instantly slipping the wood into its place, all in less than the span of a millionth of a second.  By the time the man snapped to the right, Owens had already jumped up to the ceiling and clung on like a spider, flattening his body out in perfect camouflage that kept him hid.

The man was freaked out and stood up violently as his bathroom break friend walked into the room.  “Did you just tap me?!” he asked frantically in Spanish.

“No!  What the fuck are you talking about?” the mustached man replied in Spanish.  Owens waited until the perfect moment, then walked along the ceiling as if he were a gecko.  As the two men started arguing, the first man realized that he was holding a piece of wood instead of his cell phone.  He looked down to the ground assuming he’d dropped it.  The man with the mustache also looked down as Owens snuck the fuck out of the room.

A minute later, Owens had slipped out the bolted front door and was running full speed towards Schuman.  He lifted his wrist watch to his face.  “Light it up!”

“With pleasure!” Schuman answered.  A few seconds later, the building exploded as a high velocity projectile came smashing from a very over powered rocket launcher.  The flames went straight up and it was a pretty sight of death and destruction.

As Owens pulled the two cell phones out and showed them Schuman, he said, “Doc would be proud of your demolitions work here, Sarge!”

Schuman gasped.  “That’s it!  Doc!”

Owens was confused as fuck.  “I have no clue what is going on right now.”

“No!  Doc!  That’s how he should pop the question!  He should blow something up and get down on one knee, you know!?  It’s literally what he fucking does best!”

As the thought processed through Owen’s brain, he grinned.  “Yup.  Fuck restaurants and all of that garbage.  Doc needs to blow some shit up.”  He pulled a bag of dried deer meat back out of his pocket and retrieved a few pieces to nibble on.  He absentmindedly offered the bag to Schuman again before recoiling, remembering that meat wasn’t her jam.  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly as he pocketed it.  He noticed Schuman hadn’t stopped smiling since blowing up the building.  “Sarge, which is a better high?  Using that rocket launcher, or getting in a bare knuckles fight?”

Schuman contemplated the question, then quickly answered, “Fighting.  There’s nothing like it.”

Owens smiled and nodded in agreement.  “We gotta get you in a fight soon then, dammit.  Let’s meet up with Porter and get back to the States.”

In the distance, a lady pilot waited in sweet anticipation to fly a very fast aircraft from Juarez, Mexico to Washington D.C. with eight members of Team Whisky who’d had a great day of killing bad guys, stealing cell phones, and incorrectly predicting how their fellow teammate special agent Dale O’Connor would pop the question to his girlfriend.