by Michael Todd
“How do you feel?” he asked after she demolished her first stack and he served her a second.
“Don’t even ask,” she protested. “I’m not even sure how you managed that, but you did. I might be ruined for life.”
“You might want to see a doctor about that,” Sal said and looked genuinely concerned.
“Not physically, dumbass.” Madigan laughed. “Well, maybe a little bit, although it’s nothing that shouldn’t be rectified in a couple of days. Hopefully. I will see a doctor if it doesn’t.”
“How do you mean, then?” he asked and his face twisted with disgust when he sipped his coffee.
She smirked. “Well, unless guys who can marathon like that have been in hiding all my life, I don’t think I’ll find any other guy who can do it like you can. The guys I’ve been with before couldn’t, and that includes you. Not that our sex before wasn’t fun and enjoyable, but never…that fun and enjoyable.”
He smiled and nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment and look to improving my performance for next time. That’s…assuming that there’ll be a next time?”
“Provided that the both of us haven’t died before then, you can bet your nail-marked ass there’ll be a next time,” Madigan said and grinned.
He smirked. “Well, I am happy to hear that. Although I need time for recovery, and I’m sure you do too.”
“Hey, my recuperation skills might not be as impressive as yours, but I don’t think it’ll be too long before your bones get jumped once more,” she said and winked.
Sal looked like he might actually be blushing when he looked down. If she were that kind of woman, he was the kind of guy she could have eating out of her hand. He was still young, energetic, and passionate about things. She wasn’t like that, though. Even though he’d probably ruined her for other guys, she didn’t want to be the kind of woman who ruined other women for him.
She took another sip of the coffee and coughed. “Fuck, is there any cream around here? This stuff is atrocious.”
“There’s some milk in the fridge.” Sal pointed at the mini refrigerator behind him. She nodded in thanks and poured a hefty amount into her mug.
“They’ve transferred the money that the commandant promised us into the company account,” he said once the pancakes were gone. “Even the stuff that they said was for Courtney. I already pushed that into her personal account. I know I should have checked with my partner first. I’m sorry about that. It only occurred to me after the transfer was made.”
“So long as you don’t touch the money I help make without my consent, it’s all good,” Madigan responded with a smile. Even with milk, the coffee tasted like it had been harvested a decade before. “You’re the senior partner, so I trust you to do the right thing. For now, anyway.”
Sal nodded. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”
She finally put the mug of coffee down with a snort of disgust. “I swear to God, I need to make this stuff Irish or something.”
“I don’t think that the whiskey will be any good around here,” he said. “Do you call it Russian coffee if you mix it with vodka?”
“Isn’t that a black Russian?” Madigan asked.
“Nah, that’s with Kahlua, I think.” He’d had some group projects with students who worked part-time as bartenders. Of course, he had only been a teenager at the time, so he had to go on what he’d heard them discuss. It really wasn’t that much to work with, but still, when you had a bear trap for a brain, things stuck around.
Madigan didn’t seem to know any better, though, and she merely shrugged and scowled sourly at her coffee mug. “The vodka here is pretty good, though.”
He nodded, still prepared to take her word on that. “You know, if it’s good and cheap, we might be able to get some money on the side if we used what we got here to buy a couple of crates of it and flipped it to the bar.”
“That way, we might even get to drink some of it too.” She paused when she noticed that Sal looked at her with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said and looked away quickly. “I thought you would think that it was a stupid idea.”
“I know how much money there is in alcohol here,” she said with a chuckle. “Believe me. I’d say that I know better than most.”
“Considering that you constitute about half the money that goes into the bar, I most definitely believe you,” Sal said with a grin which persisted even through the venomous glare that she threw his way.
“Well, with breakfast out of the way, why don’t we go ahead and do it now?” Madigan asked.
“What time is it?”
Madigan checked her watch. “Half past ten.”
“The commandant communicated that the convoy to the Staging Area that we’ll hitch a ride with will leave at sixteen hundred, so we have some time to kill,” he said with a nod. “Let me get the dishes and we’ll go.”
“Why bother?” she asked and pushed out of her seat. She still had trouble keeping her balance. “It’s not like we’ll make any more food here anyway.”
“Because it’s the nice thing to do,” he said, and his jaw jutted stubbornly.
She rolled her eyes.
“What do you think?”
Sal winced as he tasted the vodka. It was strong, that much was obvious. He could feel the vapor burn his nostrils as he swallowed, and the sensation continued all the way down his esophagus.
The man who made the sale tilted his head at his reaction. He quickly shook his head.
“I’m not that used to vodka,” Sal explained as he still tried to process the burn in his mouth and throat. He coughed gently. “I don’t actually drink that much. If you want a professional opinion, ask her.”
The liquor rep, a pot-bellied man with a look that suggested he’d been in the military some decades before, looked at Kennedy. She regarded the glass with an impressed look on her face.
“This is some good shit, Vlad,” she said with a chuckle. “Nice and smooth. How much of it do you have?”
“We are still small operation,” he said with a thick accent. “We are all former soldiers and mostly sell to former soldiers, so while our product is good, it is still made in the small scale.”
“How much do you have to sell in bulk to us now?” Sal asked.
“Twenty crates.” He grinned. “Twenty bottles each.”
“How much for each crate?” Kennedy asked.
“I sell bottles at fifty dollars each,” the man said. “If you buy crates, the price is reduced to thirty dollars each bottle.”
“How much is that?” Kennedy asked.
“Six hundred bucks a crate,” Sal interjected before the Russian could say anything. “Twelve grand for all twenty.”
“That’s not even that hard,” Kennedy snarked at his math skills and rolled her eyes before she shifted her focus to Vlad. “That’s a really reasonable price. What’s up with that?”
“Production costs are lower,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, it’s not a big brand, so we have to keep prices low for sales.”
Sal nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Although,” Kennedy cut in, “there will be problems if we find out that you filled half the bottles with wood alcohol of the break-your-bones variety.”
Vlad started to chuckle but cut it off quickly when she gave him an icy look.
“It’s fair,” he said quickly. “We are here on legal contract, so any complaints from customers, especially from outside of Russian compound, is huge problem and it compromises our sales.”
She nodded. “That’s a good point. Besides, if this stuff sells well, we’ll probably come back for a return visit. You can’t ever have…too much pocket change.”
“We can’t take it out of the company funds, though,” Sal said. “We’ll have to buy it with our own personal accounts.”
Kennedy nodded. “So we split the costs of…shall we say, ten cases?”
Sal nodded.
“Excellent!” Vlad said with a big g
rin.
“What are the transportation costs?” Sal asked quickly.
“What are you talking about?” Kennedy asked.
“Small operations like this always charge transport costs,” Sal said and looked at Vlad. “Look, we leave at sixteen hundred hours, so how much will it be to have the cases dropped off at the convoy?”
“Shall we say fifty dollars?” Vlad asked.
“Sounds good,” Sal replied. “We will need an invoice, of course.”
“Of course, I print up right now. Drink to seal deal?”
“Better than any handshake,” Kennedy said as the Russian grinned and poured another three shot glasses full.
“Cheers!” she lifted her glass, and they all clinked and swallowed the contents quickly. She glanced at Sal as he set his glass down. Normally, after two shots in such short succession, he would have been flushed and grinning like an idiot, but there was no sign of drunkenness now. Interesting, she thought and tilted her head to regard him curiously.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She shook her head as Vlad headed back into his office to print their invoice.
“How much do you think we can flip these cases for in the Staging Area?” Sal asked.
Kennedy shrugged. “I have no idea. If anything, I’ll pay you for some of them and use them to drown my sorrows.”
He nodded. Usually, he would have cracked something funny about what kind of sorrows she might have after last night, but he stopped himself. He still needed to maintain some level of professionalism when they weren’t in private.
She smiled and winked at him, having apparently come to the same conclusion.
Chapter Thirty
Sal and Kennedy were among the first to arrive at the area where the convoy prepared to leave. He wasn’t sure why the Russian base would send a convoy to the Staging Area since they had only recently set up, but it was rather fortuitous timing.
“I heard that they offered helicopter rides for people yesterday,” Kennedy informed him. “One of the officers headed to the Staging Area to check up on our friend Gregor and apparently, they try to save as much money as possible with these things so when someone goes, it’s a tentatively open invitation to virtually anyone who needs to get over there. However, since there weren’t that many people who had business on the other side of the Zoo, the chopper was almost empty.”
“Well, we’ll have to settle for ground-based travel with the rest of the non-VIPs,” he quipped with a small grin. Since the convoy wouldn’t actually pass through the Zoo and the vehicles themselves were all equipped with armor and weapons, they hadn’t needed to suit up. That was a relief since Sal wanted to have the suits inspected before they went back into the jungle with them. With an efficiency that surprised him a little although he wasn’t sure why, the suits were already delivered and placed beside the crates of vodka when they arrived fifteen minutes before the convoy was due to start out.
So, barring a bounty hunter raiding party or—and Sal really hoped that this wouldn’t become a thing—the animals came out of the Zoo and attacked the roads, they would be relatively safe. Even so, he opened the crate that he’d packed his suit into, pulled out the sidearm that had come with it, and tucked it into the belt of his pants. Kennedy did the same.
“Can’t be too careful, right?” he said when a couple of the crew members sent them questioning looks. The men chuckled and spouted a couple of words in Russian that Sal hadn’t heard before. Considering his time spent on international multiplayer forums, he had picked up little more than a smattering of the language.
“They think that we’re being smart,” Sal said when Kennedy looked confused. “Or something.”
“Oh, well, color me reassured,” she retorted and made sure the weapon tucked into the back of her pants was covered by her shirt.
It was thirty minutes past four before the teams that were supposed to head out trickled in, and an hour after that before everyone was finally ready to go.
“It looks like these guys are worse at punctuality than we are,” Kennedy commented as they settled in.
Sal nodded. “Do you regret where you put your gun?”
Kennedy nodded. “Oh yeah.”
He grinned as they got underway. It was a good thing that she wasn’t bothered about what they’d done the night before. While he did like teasing her about it, there was also a need to be professional, and that would be difficult when all it took to get his mind in the gutter was to see how she walked. He was usually so good about stuff like that.
His scientific mind reminded him that his “usually” had slipped considerably and protested the reality that he’d been impractical and had not run more tests. He reassured himself that he would have plenty of time for that later if all went well and neither of them died. Now was not the time to draw conclusions about what he was or wasn’t good at.
It wasn’t that long a drive. The Zoo took considerably longer to cross because it was difficult to get vehicles through—and actually impossible in the roughest terrain—and moving on foot was even slower. Sal still wasn’t sure how the Russians had managed to get their vehicles in and out so quickly to evacuate him, his team, and the Russian-merc squad, but he would definitely look into it. From what he’d heard, all their own attempts had ended when the Hammerheads broke down and more had to be sent in to get them all out again.
As things stood, the drive around the Zoo took them the rest of the day, all night, and halfway into the morning of the next day before he caught sight of the expansive complex that comprised the Staging Area. With the jungle spreading as quickly as it was, they had begun to put up walls and defensive perimeters around the complex. These emulated the concept of the walls that they tried to build around the Zoo itself but in reverse.
A few hours later, the vehicle with their belongings finally managed to pull up at Kennedy’s apartment.
“I can store the booze at my place and we can look for a buyer together,” she said with a grin that almost dared Sal to make a joke about it.
He liked to think that he was unpredictable and decided to prove it by ignoring the opportunity. Her quick look of surprise was satisfying. “I’ll get the suits to Boulos and have him do what’s needed. We should be able to move back into the Zoo by tomorrow if he doesn’t try to pull anything.”
Madigan still looked mildly disappointed but nodded. He grinned because he so easily read her mind, but he gripped her by the shoulder before she turned to unload the crates. “Stop by my place later. I have something I want to show you.”
She tilted her head in sudden interest. “Well, I think I can make it over later today if that works for you.”
“That works. I’ll see you then.”
He didn’t have the rapport with Boulos that Kennedy did, and he certainly lacked the kind of intimidating look that normally kept the armorer in line. Even so, the man seemed to associate Sal with Kennedy and so gave him less trouble over the pricing for the repairs than usual. It was a relief. He had been cramped in a tight, bumpy vehicle for hours on end and the entire trip hadn’t been conducive to real rest or sleep. Added to the strenuous activity of the night before that, he was exhausted, even though it was barely an hour after noon by the time he actually returned his place after picking the key card up at the commandant’s office.
Surprisingly, Kennedy stood outside, waiting for him.
“What…what are you doing here?” Sal asked.
“You said you wanted to talk to me about something,” she replied with an easy grin. “You almost never want to talk to me about something that’s not important.”
“Well, yes, it is,” he admitted as he opened the front door to his little apartment. “But I didn’t think you would take it seriously, especially since there are two hundred bottles of supposedly prime vodka stacked in your house.”
“Please,” Kennedy snorted as he took her hand and dragged her inside. “I have some self-control. I also have functioning muscles capable of
carrying my sexy ass all the way over here, so I don’t think I need you to hold my hand, Sal.”
He smirked and released it. “Sorry. I’m just excited.”
“Look, I can give you a blowjob, but I think that’s it for me now,” she said pointedly as they moved into his bedroom. “I still need a couple of days for recovery.”
“What?” he asked and moved past the bed toward the closet where his safe was. “No, that’s not what I was talking about. I need to show you something.”
He gestured for her to sit on the bed as he tapped his long, complicated passcode sequence into the safe’s keypad. They waited in silence for the couple of seconds for it to unlock before he retrieved a cubic container. It was slightly rectangular and tall, but it wasn’t heavy. Sal put it down on the bedside table for Kennedy to see. He removed the film that was supposed to keep the contents of the glass container hidden.
“Holy shit,” she murmured as she leaned in closer and narrowed her eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Well, if what you think it is happens to be a fully formed and blossoming Pita plant…” Sal paused for dramatic effect but couldn’t restrain his grin. "Then yes, that’s exactly what it is.”
“Fuck.” She stared at it in obvious disbelief. It still wasn’t fully grown. Most of the plants were bush-sized, at least a meter tall, and spread evenly and thickly over the ground. It seemed that the lack of natural light—the downside of keeping it in a safe—had affected the growth pattern.
“Do you know what the standing price for one of these is?” she asked when she managed to drag her gaze from it and the four blooming flowers. “There are a couple of companies that offer upwards of seven million, and there’s talk of ten.”
“Well, yeah, I do know,” Sal said with a small smile. “I call her Madie.”
“How do you know that it’s a girl?” Kennedy asked, and then her eyes widened. “Oh, ‘Madie!’ That explains so much.”
“Okay?” Sal said and narrowed his eyes. He decided it was safer to ignore all that might imply. “Moving right past what her name explains, the flowers of the Pita plants have both stamens and carpels, which means that, like most flowering plants, it’s hermaphroditic. That’s not…not really important, but yes, she’s a she, and she’s called Madie. Named after you.”