by Michael Todd
“Of course I remember,” she said irritably. “And make sure we’re not interrupted.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“Andressa Covington,” came a deep voice with a vaguely Mediterranean accent. “I’ve been told by serious people that you’re someone to take seriously. How can I help you?”
“Rodrigo, I presume?” She smiled but without real mirth. “My guess is that there won’t be a last name with that.”
“You guess correctly, on both counts,” he replied. “A mutual friend tells me that you have need of my assistance. It is out of courtesy to him that I make this call and assign you only friends and family price packages.”
“Of course.” She tried not to roll her eyes. “There’s someone I need handled. The woman herself is in the US and in such a position that I can’t have her disappear just yet. But she has friends in the Zoo that I’d like handled as quickly as possible. A freelancing team called Heavy Metal.”
“I’m familiar with the name,” the man said smoothly. “And you should know that I’ve been put on their case already, with less than pristine results. Of course, I had to act indirectly at the time. I could be convinced to act directly, but it would cost a substantial amount more than my usual fee.”
She rolled her eyes this time. While she’d known that this was coming, she hadn’t particularly looked forward to it.
“What’s your fee on this?”
“Fifteen million euros, paid in the usual manner,” Rodrigo replied after a few seconds spent in calculation.
“You are fucking with me right now.” Her eyebrows raised in shock at the figure. “Are you high? That’s the cost to kill a sitting senator.”
“I have never touched drugs in my life,” her contact said, and she could hear a smile in his voice. “What I do know is that you tried to have a member of Heavy Metal killed using local talent, and they mostly died in the attempt. She was the scientist of the group, and from what I’ve seen and heard, by far the inferior member of the Heavy Metal team when it comes to combat. These friends you want me to kill are much more competent and able to defend themselves against attack. Fifteen million euros, non-negotiable.”
“Fine.” Andressa sighed and shook her head. “But you won’t get a fucking dime until I have one or both heads. And yes, there’s more money in it for you if you send me both.”
“Perfect. I’ll send you the bill when the job is done. Do you have any preference for how it should be carried out?”
“I honestly couldn’t care less,” Andressa snapped. “I merely want their heads shipped to me on ice, do you understand?”
“Understood.” There was a short pause before he said crisply, “I’ll call you again.”
The line went dead and she replaced the phone in the cradle and stared at the gold-inlaid mother of pearl for a few long seconds. She didn’t even remember where she’d gotten the damn thing. A garage sale somewhere in Pensacola or something like that, where old people had sold their family treasures for peanuts. She assumed that she’d bought it with her first real paycheck when she was sixteen, but she had been so wasted at the time she didn’t remember. Despite that, she still kept it around. Weird.
She looked at the screen of her dead laptop which reflected her own face back at her.
“You’ll get that IP,” she declared unequivocally. “You killed the father and now, you’ll kill the daughter and take what’s owed to you.”
With that, she pushed from her chair. Business for the day was concluded, so she might as well take an early lunch. She could still bill the company for it.
Madigan stepped out of the Hammerhead and blinked as the glare of the sun on the sand reflected back at her. Irritated, she recalled that she’d forgotten her sunglasses on Sal’s bedside table. The memory of the night was still a little fuzzy, but she did remember that it’d been fun.
That wouldn’t happen tonight, though, she mused as she slammed the door shut and locked it. He had stayed behind to run inventory on all the upgrades they’d made to the compound security. Unfortunately, there had been some issues with their supplies for the week, and she needed to come to the base and shout it out with the people in charge of supply management.
Normally, she wouldn’t have bothered, but Heavy Metal paid these fuckers a lot of money every month to keep their place stocked with food, ammo, and all the other things that were needed for long-term living in a compound out in the middle of the desert. At least they didn’t have to rely on diesel generators. Solar and wind energy were enough to run virtually everything and have some left over besides to sell to the base. It had been some clever thinking on the part of the people who had built the place.
That said, the delivery of coffee had short-supplied, and that shit could not be allowed to stand. Every single member of the group ran on a combination of coffee and sleep, and if the former ran out, blood would definitely flow. Madigan would not be responsible for her actions.
And she wouldn’t have to be, after all. She straightened the situation out, collected the check from the commandant’s office for helping the squad to escape the Zoo, and suddenly realized that she had nothing else to do for the afternoon. If she returned to the compound, she would simply be roped into doing more work. Amanda still tried to figure out how to tie a security system with guns on it to an AI and, for some reason, continued to dig the whole place up in an attempt to make it work.
Madigan wanted nothing to do with that. Give the AI a gun and soon, it would wonder why it followed a puny human’s orders anyway. And that was how it would all start and end.
Maybe Sal was right, she realized as she pushed the doors of the bar open and sighed contentedly when she was greeted by the pleasant air-conditioned darkness of the place. Watching the Terminator movies that young had fucked her thought process the hell up, at least when it came to robots. It didn’t mean that she was wrong to fear them, though. She would take some plain old human error over the creepy Hailey-1000 in there.
As she dropped into one of the few unused booths, she realized that there was a commotion at the bar. She scowled. That meant it would be a while before she could expect one of the waitresses to reach her. She’d come here to drink, dammit, not wait around while some dumbasses played a drinking game.
She stood, strode to the bar, and eased through the crowd until she saw three rows of shot glasses spread across the bar top. Two of the bartenders took their time to fill each one carefully with crystal clear vodka.
A quick count confirmed that there were twenty-one glasses in each of the rows. That seemed like an oddly specific number and actually sounded familiar when she considered it.
“Okay,” the bartender said when the glasses were full, “the rules of the game are, you have to at least tie the bar record. There’s no throwing in the towel, no eating, and no more than a minute between shots. You walk away, you lose. The last man standing doesn’t have to pay the bill. Got it?”
Three men—large, powerful-looking soldiers Madigan didn’t recognize—nodded firmly. They looked as if they’d prepared themselves for exactly this event. In all probability, they’d stocked up on carbs all day.
It was an idiotic thing to think of but at least, with people guzzling down this much vodka, she didn’t have to worry about the demand for the stuff they brought in from the Russian base drying up. It had been something of a hit among the various patrons, and while it wasn’t their main moneymaker these days, it was at least nice to have some pocket cash from this. The real bonus, however, was that it solidified their connection with the people in the Staging Area even after they’d moved out.
She smiled and leaned on the bar as she watched the three men take their first glasses, and with a roar of confidence, down them in a single gulp.
Their assurance had noticeably flagged by the time they were about halfway down the line and all of them struggled to stay on their feet. She could stand against virtually anyone in a drinking contest and had been known to drink men almost twic
e her size under the table in her day. But she’d tried to get a grip on her drinking over the past couple of months. She had more responsibilities now as a founding member of a surprisingly successful freelancing start-up. The days were long gone when she could spend her days nursing a bottle.
Back on topic, though, she’d seen Sal this hammered, but by then, he’d reached twenty-one. As the idiots plowed on with real determination, they reached levels of intoxication that would have them sent home in a cab from any bar in the States. But this was the Zoo, where people intentionally put their lives on the line for money. So long as they coughed the money up, the bartenders simply continued to pour.
The first man caved to the inevitable at twelve. He didn’t actually drink that one as he dropped the glass onto the floor. Amidst shouts of encouragement, he bent to pick it up again and simply didn’t come up.
“Lightweight!” Various bar patrons jeered and the other two contestants stared vaguely at one another as they swayed in place. They obviously had a hard time even with such simple concepts as gravity by this point. Still, they persevered with little apparent concern for the damage they did to their livers. The shots left by the first man were handed out free to whichever patrons snatched them first and would still be charged to the losers of the bet. That was merely how these things played out.
By the time the diehards reached seventeen, Madigan actually felt rather impressed. These men were some solid drinkers, and she doubted that she could match them. Thankfully, hers wasn’t the record to beat. She still wasn’t sure how taking daily doses of some blue goop from a flower helped someone drink more without getting drunk. Admittedly, Sal had explained it to her. It had something to do with improving the liver’s ability to metabolize the alcohol, which simply meant that it constantly filtered the stuff out, even while you continued to drink it.
There were limits, of course. Sal had gotten drunk himself that night and woken up as hungover as the rest of them. Still, it was impressive. People had died of alcohol poisoning after drinking twenty-one shots. All he’d faced was dehydration and a headache.
Seventeen shots were downed, and the two men teetered and swayed alarmingly. One fumbled to grab a glass and raised it for everyone to see.
“Ain’t…nothing but a…peesh of…pie…” he declared in an odd, disjointed toast, but his eyes rolled to the back of his head as he toppled backward and spilled the shot on the dusty floor to more jeers from the crowd.
“Middleweight!” they called, delighted, as the bartender turned to the last man standing.
“It’s up to you now, Hardy,” he said. “Will you let some scientist geek outdrink you?”
“Hell…naw,” Hardy replied and quickly tossed his eighteenth down the hatch. He made to follow with number nineteen too, although his movements were slow and disjointed, but as he raised it to his mouth, his grip slipped. Most of the vodka sloshed down his chest and neck before it even reached his mouth and he ended up with less than a quarter of the shot left to drink.
“Well, I’m sad to say, that doesn’t count as a shot,” the bartender said with a grin. He clearly enjoyed the entire spectacle. “And since it’s been more than a minute since your last one, I’m afraid I’ll have to call it here, folks. Eighteen and a half is very impressive but unfortunately, no cigar.”
“You have cigars?” the man asked and stared at the bartender with a dumb expression on his face.
“Get yourself home, Hardy. You’ve done a man’s work in here today,” the other man said and slapped Hardy on the back.
He nodded and shuffled away from the bar. He was the last man standing and the bill would be paid out of the pockets of the two men who currently slept it off on the floor. Kennedy smirked and shook her head as she moved away and managed to easily avoid the drunk as he missed the door a couple of times. The rest of the patrons had already gone back to their drinks, disappointed that nobody could break Sal’s record.
Hardy missed the door yet again and instead, crashed into the wall. A big fellow, he made enough of an impact to knock some of the pictures off, one of which landed on him. He didn’t seem to feel it, though, as he’d already passed out to sleep it off like his defeated comrades.
The bartender chuckled and turned to the remaining shot glasses that were passed around to the rest of the patrons. He saw Madigan and joined her as she took one of the offered glasses.
“Well, your boy toy holds the record around here for another day,” he said with a wide grin. “I still can’t believe that a guy like him holds anything like that in a bar that is so heavily frequented by soldiers. I mean, you’d think one or two of them would have enough of a habit to be able to beat that, right?”
“I don’t know, James,” she responded and paused to snatch another of the leftover shot glasses and down it expertly. Damn, if that wasn’t some fine vodka. “Sal has all kinds of ways to surprise us.”
“No questions about that,” he replied with a laugh. “So, what can I get you? It’s been a while since you’ve frequented our little establishment.”
“Sorry, James.” She stood with a smirk. “I’ve just realized that I need to satisfy another urge—one that has less to do with drinking myself into an early grave. I’ll see you around.”
Two shots weren’t enough to get her drunk and Amanda would be proud of the fact that she kept the Hammerhead at a reasonable speed all the way back to the Heavy Metal compound. It meant extending the length of the trip by about an hour and a half, but it wasn’t really something that she would complain about. She wasn’t a fan of delaying gratification, but it wasn’t a bad thing either.
By the time she got back, the place was deserted as everyone had already turned in for the night. Well, except Anja who cursed softly in Russian, still hard at work in the server room. The woman was dedicated, Madigan had to give her that, and any other night, she might have gone to see if she needed some company. Not tonight, though.
She made her way to Sal’s rooms and slipped inside without a sound. The guy made it a point to trust his people and left his door unlocked, even when he was sleeping. It wasn’t as stupid as one might think, considering that everything important, including his laptop, was locked away in an airtight safe every night.
He was trusting, not stupid.
Madigan eased out of her shirt and pants to leave only her panties and bra on before she slid into bed with him. He’d gone to sleep immediately after his shower, as evidenced by the fact that he wore nothing but a towel as he lay on his bed. She took a moment to enjoy the sight of him. He had put on an impressive amount of muscle during his stay in the Zoo and was on the verge of becoming something of a beefcake. It was a lean kind of muscle but she didn’t much care for body-builder types—something else she could lay at the feet of a certain Austrian android.
She nudged him gently in the shoulder, and when he failed to wake up, she gripped the same shoulder and shook him until he spluttered. His eyes opened and he looked around to find the source of his discomfort until his gaze settled on her.
“Madigan,” he murmured and rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Half past nine, you old fart,” she said with a giggle and leaned in to press a kiss to his chest. “Why are you in bed so early anyway?”
“It was a long day, what with helping Amanda dig the fucking place up,” Sal replied. He smiled as he moved his hands to run through her hair. “What are you doing in my bed so early?”
“I need those five Os you promised me,” she said and slid over him to straddle his waist. “Do you feel up for it? Pun intended.”
“I think I do.” The drowsiness of the newly awoken began to fade as his hands settled on her waist and her hips ground over him. “It looks like morning wood has come earlier than expected tonight.”
“I’ll make sure to treat it well,” she promised, her tone a little husky. “Does it take milk and cookies, like Santa?”
“That’s a weird topic to bring up when you’re trying to talk a sleepy
man into sex,” he said with a mock-serious expression. “But I’ll allow it.”
She grinned, undid her bra, and let it fall onto his stomach as she leaned over him to enjoy the simple pleasure of having someone whom she trusted and liked this close to her. He hummed appreciatively when she pressed a firm, delicious kiss to his lips.
Chapter Ten
Anderson rubbed his temples and dragged himself out of the miserable cot that he’d called a bed for the past few months. He shuffled to the bathroom and his jaw felt like it would split as a massive yawn overtook him. It had been a long time since he’d woken up with a hangover. There had been times, especially early in his boot camp days, where he’d ended up drinking more than enough to make anyone think about their problematic life choices. At this point in his life, however, he did that anyway. He might as well add alcohol to the mix to help dull everything for a few hours.
Was it worth feeling and looking like shit? It was a thought that greeted him abruptly as he stood in front of the mirror and filled a small plastic cup with water. He hated his job, so there wasn’t much to worry about regarding his looks. That aside, he already had enough problems to deal with and drinking would only make them worse.
“Never…again,” Anderson promised himself as he opened the mirror door, withdrew a couple of pill bottles from inside, and popped them open. His hand shook a little as he tipped out one of each on his hand before he closed the containers and replaced them in the cabinet. He leaned his head back, tossed both into his mouth, and washed them down with the water.
It occurred to him that he didn’t believe the affirmation he’d spoken. They said that recovering addicts needed a support structure if they were to make it through recovery, and he had nothing like that out in the middle of the fucking Sahara Desert. He would get back on track with his goals when he got home. Perhaps he could find a sponsor and a therapist and see about adding vigor to his treatment, maybe take some time off work to focus solely on getting better.