Yang shakes my hand. “Don’t mention it. You and your team…”
Yang nods at Boom Boom, Krystal and Grenade.
“… are honorable people. Much more honorable, unfortunately, than most of our crew.”
It’s the first time Yang has spoken out against her teammates. Perhaps she is now seeing Pitbull as he truly is: a cold-hearted mercenary only out for himself.
Marco shakes my hand as well. “We need to find Klaxton soon. Pitbull is losing his mind down here. All the power President LeBeau granted him has gone to his head. Yang and I are afraid he’s going to massacre every indigenous person in the Amazon before it’s all said and done.”
Yang walks over to River’s cell and says, “If I were you, I’d seriously considering cooperating with us. My cousin and I won’t be able to save you again.”
Yang and Marco head upstairs.
Once the ninjas are out of ear-shot, Krystal says, “I hope that crazy bitch don’t think we’re all friends now. I still remember how she tried to hack us to pieces when we were chasing after Rasputin.”
“We’ll take friends where we can get them, Krystal,” Boom Boom says. “We can’t exactly afford to be picky. Most of the people we could trust are now dead.”
“I’m gonna start calling you Debbie Downer,” Krystal says.
I turn to find River glaring at us from behind her iron bars. Her battered face is partially cloaked in shadow, giving her an eerie appearance.
Boom Boom gently punches me in the arm. “So what’s the plan? I know you have something up your sleeve.”
Grenade grins and rubs his hands together. “About time we went rogue. Don’t be shy, Lance, tell us what crazy plot you cooked up.”
Krystal sighs and crosses her arms. “I hate it when we go rogue. We always almost die when we do that shit.”
“What do you mean go rogue?” Alex asks. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”
I’m glad Alex said something. I almost forgot he was down here with us. I was on the verge of rattling off my brazen idea before he spoke up. Unlike Boom Boom, I don’t trust the asshole. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just as slimy and rotten as Pitbull and the rest of his lackeys.
“Um, no plan, guys. I just wanted to give River more time to figure out whether she wants to cooperate with us or… well, you know, die.”
River scowls and disappears into the shadowy recesses of her cell. I instantly feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
Alex stares at me for a few seconds, as though he doesn’t believe me. He finally turns toward Boom Boom and says, “Your friends are quite strange. So anyway, how about we head upstairs and get something to eat?”
“Sounds good,” Boom Boom says, following him up the stairwell. Krystal, Grenade and I bring up the rear.
On the way up I pull down my visor and telepathically send a message to Boom Boom, Grenade, and Krystal. As we gather in the dining room to eat more canned crap, Krystal and Boom Boom pull down their glowing visors to read the message. Grenade, of course, simply reads what flashes across the retina of his glowing bionic eyeballs.
The message reads as follows: This is getting out of control. Tonight at 4am let’s sneak River out of here and hunt down Klaxton on our own.
Grenade grins and flashes me a discreet thumbs up. This is the happiest I’ve seen him since we arrived.
Krystal reads her message, gives me an approving look, then storms over to scream obscenities at Ax and Lesnar for pointing a gun at her head.
Boom Boom lifts her visor and nods. Looks like everyone’s in.
We all eat some food and engage in mindless small talk so Pitbull and his crew don’t wise up to our pending act of betrayal. We also watch the news on the massive holographic TV. The news is just as dreary, depressing, and terrifying as it’s been for the past several months. China continues to beat the drums for a new world war. A new video of Empress Xing beheading yet another kidnapped American soldier was apparently uploaded to the internet about two hours ago, and of course the news station plays the damn thing in its entirety. (News stations will broadcast anything for ratings nowadays.) This video is even more graphic than the one from the other day. Empress Xing seems to take her time beheading this poor soldier. He screams in excruciating agony as the Empress slowly saws through his neck with a blunt-looking sword. The soldier tries to get away, but his hands and feet are shackled together. I’ve seen a ton of brutality during my years as a bounty hunter, but this is too much even for me. I look away until the video ends.
“Well that was disturbing,” Alex mumbles, looking green in the face.
“It almost makes you miss Klaxton,” Pitbull says while chugging down a beer. “She would never put up with this shit.”
Pitbull is absolutely correct. If Klaxton were still president, she would follow up Xing’s sadistic beheading of one of our boys with ten beheadings of Chinese soldiers. But that’s not President LeBeau’s style. LeBeau prefers to crawl into a ball and whimper. And that’s basically what she’s been doing the past few days. She hasn’t even been on TV to condemn the beheadings. She’s still hiding in her underground bunker underneath the White House, praying that her multitude of calamities go away. But they’re not going away. The freefalling economy, all the rioting in the streets, the proxy war with China… if anything, it’s all going to get a helluva lot worse. The only thing we can hope for is that Klaxton’s apprehension will slow China’s inexorable march toward full-scale invasion. And we won’t get a chance to see if that works unless we find her. Once again the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and this time it might just crush us.
We all head off to our bedrooms a few hours later. To continue the illusion that a massive swerve isn’t underway, I go to bed with Jesse. She wants to fool around again, but I’m not in the mood. (Although when she strips naked right in front of me, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly aroused.) But my newfound knowledge of just how vicious Jesse truly is prevents me from giving in to my sexual desires. Jesse grows irate when I reject her advances and calls me a little bitch. She then shoots up next to me in bed and dozes off a short while later. For the first time in many nights, I have no desire to inject poison into my veins.
I lay in bed next to Jesse for the next several hours, making sure I don’t fall asleep. It’s really not all that hard, seeing as how I’m completely wide awake. We’re about to perpetrate an act of treachery that will unequivocally infuriate Pitbull and his cadre of psychotic lunatics. We need to pull off this clandestine operation in the dead of night, while everyone is asleep, without making so much as a single peep. There’s absolutely no room for error. If Pitbull wakes up and catches us sneaking off, we’re as good as dead. He will delve into a blood lust that will only be quenched with our torturous, drawn-out deaths.
I stare at the flashing holographic clock located on the bottom left-hand side of my visor. 2:00am… 2:15am… 3:00am… 3:30am… 3:45am… 3:55am…. The closer it gets to 4:00am, the faster my heart beats.
At 3:58am, Jesse turns over and mumbles, “What are you doing? Put it down…. No, stop….”
This, of course, freaks me out quite a bit. I’m just about to wrap my hands around her neck so I can choke her out when she rolls over and starts snoring again. I breathe a sigh of relief as I slowly climb out of bed. Crisis averted.
I grab my utility belt off of the nightstand and wrap it around my waist. I then head toward the door, which slides open when I step in front of it. I glance at Jesse one last time to ensure she’s not about to wake up before tip-toeing out into the hallway. I cringe when the bedroom door slides shut, creating a whooshing sound in the process. To my ears it sounds extraordinarily loud, but that’s probably because I’m on pins and needles.
Grenade and Boom Boom exit their rooms about a minute later. I glance around and mouth, “Where’s Krystal?”
Boom Boom shrugs while Grenade merely scowls, his shimmering red eyes illuminating the darkened hallway.
; We wait several tense minutes. Finally, just when I’m on the verge of freaking the fuck out, the door to Krystal’s bedroom slides open and she lumbers out, stretching and yawning much more audibly than I would have liked.
“Shhhh,” Boom Boom says, putting her finger to her nose.
Krystal opens her mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and gives Boom Boom the finger instead. She can flick us off all she wants as long as she keeps her big mouth shut.
Now that we’re all together, we stealthily make our way down to the dungeon. Once we reach the bottom of the stairs, we finally feel comfortable enough to talk (albeit in hushed voices).
“This better work out for us, Lance,” Krystal says, putting her hands on her husky hips and jutting out her bottom lip. “You’re making me miss my beauty sleep. That’s how I stay so sexy, you know.”
Krystal starts gyrating her hips.
Grenade puts his hands up and grunts, “Please make it stop. You’re giving me morning sickness.”
“Okay guys, calm down,” I say with a backward glance at the top of the stairs. “You can insult each other to your heart’s content once we’re on the plane. Right now we need to focus on the task at hand: freeing River and finding Klaxton.”
“I was thrilled to death when I read your message,” Boom Boom says in the middle of a stifled yawn. “We need to get the fuck away from those crazy people. They make Grenade seem like a holier-than-thou nun in comparison.”
“I fucking hate nuns,” Grenade growls. “They act like they’re better than everyone.”
“That’s because they are better than everyone,” I point out. “They’re pure and innocent, with no sins.”
“Not true,” Grenade retorts. “I once knew a nun who stabbed a guy with a crucifix.”
“Did he deserve it?”
“She stabbed the preacher. For making her work on Sundays.”
I have no idea how to respond to that, so I don’t.
Krystal starts fanning herself with her hand and blurts out, “I just wanna get the hell out of this godforsaken jungle. The heat and humidity is making my pits and vagina sweat like crazy.”
That’s an image I’ll never get out of my head.
We make our way over to River, who is slumped over in the back of her jail cell. Her face still has some swelling, and the bruises around her eyes have grown. A small puddle of blood seeps out from beneath her. What freaks me out the most, though, is the fact that she’s not moving… at all.
“My god, you don’t think she…?” Boom Boom starts to say.
“She’s alive,” Grenade says gruffly. “She still has a vivid heat signature. She’s just unconscious. That actually makes our job all the more easier. I’d much rather us talk to her once we’re in the air, away from Pitbull and his merry gang of marauders, than down here where she might be inclined to scream bloody murder and screw up our master plan.”
Boom Boom pulls me off to the side (Grenade and Krystal follow so they can hear us) and whispers, “How are we doing to convince River to take us to Klaxton? Unlike the rest of the world, the Chiquito love her. They would never willingly betray her.”
I whisper back, “We’ll just tell her that we’re Klaxton’s friends… that we want to go into hiding, too.”
Boom Boom gives me a skeptical look. “You honestly think she’ll believe that?”
“She will once we help her escape from this hellhole and fly her back to her village.”
“But what will we do once we land? Assuming Klaxton is even there, the second she sees us she’s going to have us killed. Hell, she’ll probably do it herself. In case you’ve forgotten, we are the ones who brought down her presidency.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, Firecracker. If worse comes to worse, we’ll have a little shootout with the natives and get the hell out of dodge. We have a bunch of tear gas canisters and smoke bombs on the plane, along with some gas masks. We can gas the village, use our night vision goggles to find Klaxton, knock the bitch out, and fly back to America. Piece of cake! It’ll be nothing compared to the night we went after Blackbird on his crazy flying airship.”
“Hopefully we’ll kill far less people in the process,” Boom Boom says gloomily.
“Okay Debbie Downer,” Krystal says.
“Quick fucking calling me that,” Boom Boom snaps.
Grenade gives an aggravated sigh and growls, “Let’s get a move on, you idiots.”
I grab the keys off the back wall where Pitbull left them and hurry back over to River’s cell. I unlock the door, make my way to the back of the cell, and lean down to pick River up. This turns out to be an idiotic move. River jumps up and punches me in my nose, sending me crashing into the wall. She then sprints out of the cell door.
“Shit, she’s getting away!” Krystal hollers. “The bitch was playing motherfucking opossum!”
I groan and clutch my bleeding nose as I stagger out of the cell and stumble after her. River starts to dash up the stairs, but she doesn’t get far. Krystal fires her taser, hitting the ‘jungle princess’ square in the back. River cries out and collapses face-first onto the stairs, busting her already battered face. Grenade and Boom Boom rush up the stairs to grab her.
Grenade grabs River’s neck with his bionic hand and growls into her ear, “You so much as clear your throat and I’ll snap your spine. You hear me?”
River gives the tiniest nod of her restrained head.
Grenade drops River to the ground. Krystal yanks the electric probes and taser wires out of her back and tosses them to the ground. She then pops another taser cartridge into her gun and points it directly at River’s forehead. That, along with Grenade’s threat about snapping her neck, seems to sap all the fight out of her.
I kneel down next to River and raise my hands. She glances at my computerized glove before glaring directly into my eyes.
“What do you want with me?” she hisses, in almost perfect English.
Speaking as quietly and calmly as I can, I say, “I know you won’t believe me… at least, not initially… but we mean you no harm.”
River scoffs and tilts her head toward Krystal and Grenade. “Your actions do not match your words.”
“You gave us no choice. We couldn’t very well have you dashing upstairs and waking everyone up. The people up there…”
I point up at the ceiling.
“… they want you dead. But the four of us, we want to get you out of here alive.”
“Why?” she asks bluntly. “Why on Earth would you help me?”
“Well you see… we… well, we know you’re hiding Angela Klaxton.”
River’s bruised face turns pale.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, averting her gaze.
“Don’t play dumb with us, girl,” Grenade growls, flexing his bionic arm. “My friends here want to handle you with kid gloves. I, on the other hand, have no problem getting a little rough.”
“Grenade, let Lance handle this,” Boom Boom says sternly. “He knows what he’s doing.”
I flash Boom Boom a grateful smile before focusing on the task at hand: winning River’s trust.
“We’re friends of Klaxton,” I say, doing my best to sound convincing. “We want to… er…”
“We want to help her retake her presidency,” Grenade interjects. “Help her reclaim her rightful spot on the American throne.”
Grenade sounds so convincing that you’d almost think he was dead-serious about wanting to help Klaxton regain power. He would make an awesome actor. Or politician.
“What makes you think she’s with us?” River asks quietly.
“We just told you, we’re friends of hers,” Grenade says. “She told us if she ever had to go into hiding, this would be where she’d go. But we don’t know the exact coordinates of your village. That’s why we had to pretend to work with those jackasses upstairs. You know that scary cyborg jerk who almost murdered you last night?”
River’s
face darkens.
“Yeah, he’s a dick,” Grenade says. “And in just a few short hours he’s going to come down here and throttle you. That is, unless you agree to help us. If you promise to take us to Klaxton, we will get you out of here.”
Grenade kneels beside River and continues weaving his web of lies. “Just think, if we can get Klaxton back to Washington, she can put an end to the proliferation of loggers and poachers who have encroached upon your territory. She’ll also kick Pitbull and his crew out of the jungle. You and your tribe will no longer be under assault. You can go back to your peaceful life in the jungle, far removed from the uncivilized outside world.”
I can tell River is growing increasing receptive to Grenade’s words. He’s saying all the right things. He truly is a master at this stuff. No wonder the U.S. government paid him big bucks to be a black-ops agent all those years ago.
World War Forever (Highway To Armageddon Book 2) Page 29