My Ride is a Bitch

by Michael Anderle

  Who the hell did Terry invite to this party, anyway?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Chapter 15

  QBS ArchAngel

  Sitting at their meeting table, Tabitha bit into an apple and studied her laptop. The suite’s main door opened and Barnabas walked in.

  “Hello Big B,” she said, pushing the piece of apple around in her mouth to speak before swallowing.

  “Hello Two,” he said and sat down at the table, “Tell me about your latest success.”

  Tabitha looked at him through slanted eyes, but he didn’t seem to be giving her any grief about her less than elegant escape effort. “I have eighteen clients in the past two months. Sixteen I’ve confirmed had nothing to do with my case, and I’ve ignored them. One is probably the bad guys and one other I’ve set aside for special consideration.”

  Barnabas raised an eyebrow, so she added, “I’m not happy with the project on the second one, so if I have time, the guys and I are going to go visit the client,” she shrugged, and Barnabas didn’t follow up any further.

  “The problem,” she continued, “is the data leads to a dead end electronically speaking. It’s a cut-out company, and I can’t get anything in or out of there, nor can ADAM. So, another prick-ass group who has a clue about digital security.”

  “It offends you?”

  “I’m lazy,” Tabitha answered, “I’d rather just break into their company using computers and be done with it. But, whoever this group is, they aren’t stupid. Well, let me qualify that. They aren’t ignorant about hiding their tracks so they are probably well connected and have been doing this a while.”

  “Are you trying to make the people fit the facts?” Barnabas asked.

  “Perhaps, but my hacking experience says that it’s usually the older people, the ones who worked before computers were so pervasive that don’t have a problem figuring out ways to function without them. Those of us who grew up with them are hampered by our inability to understand what you do without computers in your life.”

  Barnabas considered her comment for a moment, ‘You surprise me Two, I hadn’t expected that much insight from…”

  Tabitha grinned, “a package as delicious as this?” She smiled and flipped her hair.

  Barnabas closed his eyes and shook his head a couple of times, “just when I think it is safe to compliment you.”

  “You find out it is ALWAYS safe to compliment a woman. We eat it up. Try it around other ladies and let me know what you find,” she told him as she took another bite of the apple.

  Barnabas pursed his lips and nodded his head.

  She swallowed the apple, “Except when it isn’t,” she added, thoughtfully. “Like, right after you do something she is mad at you for, then it just feels like you are trying to butter us up.”

  Barnabas put up a hand, “This isn’t a discussion on how to have a male-female relationship number Two, so let’s not go there.”

  “Fine, but one of these days you will get back on that horse, and you will be happy I’ve been dropping these little tidbits of wisdom.”

  “I’m sure I will,” he replied, drily. “What is the next step?”

  “Visit the den of iniquity and find out what information I can find from the inside,” she shrugged.

  “No third story windows?” He asked, smiling.

  “No,” she glanced at Barnabas, a frown on her face, “no three story buildings. However, the latest video updates from ArchAngel show it to have lots of men with guns and dogs and shit. So, I’m taking in the Tonto’s.”

  “You don’t think that is overkill?” He asked.

  “Hell no! The Tonto’s laughed their asses off at the video ArchAngel had of my last successful data acquisition efforts, so I decided they needed their own opportunity to get out in the field,” she said, “the lazy bastards.”

  Barnabas stood up, “Well, remember we want to track down the truth, not cause another war,” he admonished and walked out of the room.

  Tabitha murmured, “Mmmhmmm,” then, a few moments after Barnabas left she looked up at the closed door as her eyes drew together, “War?”

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  Robert was watching through the light amplification goggles a few hours later when he heard a couple of clicks on the Ace channel. Or, at least that’s what he was calling the channel Richard and Samual were using to communicate with his team.

  During daytime this was a pretty safe zone, and so far, they were only missing one person out of everyone who had left the ship. One of the cooks had family in town, and she hadn’t come back, but that wasn’t totally unexpected.

  Now, he turned his glasses up and down the dark docks, punctuated from time to time with weak lights, trying to figure out what the Aces were trying to communicate to him and his team.

  Moments later, the bridge door opened, and Terry, hair messed up and tucking a shirt in, asked, “What do we have?”

  “No idea, yet,” Robert admitted and pulled the goggles away from his face, “but those two left the ship and I’ll be damned if I can ever see them. Are they even warm-blooded?” Robert chuckled, “It’s as if they disappear in the night or something.” He put the goggles back to his face and continued looking when a voice came in on his own team's line.

  “Contact, south avenue, two vehicles, one sedan, one old Toyota filled to the brim with trouble-makers.”

  Terry pulled up his own light amplification binoculars and turned in the direction Robert was looking, “Well, get the guys ready to repel boarders, permission granted for live ammo.”

  “I wonder what our aces are going to do?” Robert asked as he relayed Terry’s commands.

  —

  Samual, south side. Richard sent to his friend.

  Moments later, a figure dressed in black jumped to Richard’s roof from across the street and jogged over, his feet crunching on the rock roof. “Do we have something to do?” Samual asked as he came up beside him and looked over the side of the building.

  “Yes, I think this time this is something we should probably take care of ourselves. The ship team is breaking out live ammunition, so I don’t want to be down range when they unleash. That shit hurts.”

  “Well, the idiots are coming up this street, it isn’t like we couldn’t take out those two street lights and have some fun.” Samual agreed.

  “You know, I’m just still pissed,” Richard admitted, “I don’t have much fun in me at the moment.”

  “Oh, really?” Samual asked, “So, Auran is still at the surface?”

  Richard nodded.

  “Well then, it’s all going to be fun,” Samual agreed, his eyes going red, his voice a little deeper, “just a different type of fun old friend.”

  Richard turned to his friend, his eyes blazing red, “Yes, there are no victims tonight,” he agreed as he reached down to grab some pebbles from the roof top.

  —

  “Shit!” Robert exclaimed. The two lights on the street blew out, and he would swear he saw two figures drop from the top of the two-story tall buildings next to the road.

  That’s when the chaos started.

  “We have fire, we have fire!” Victor called out over the radio. Gunshots and screams began to reach the ears of the men on the boat. Terry and Robert both stepped out of the bridge to hear what they could, and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Fuck…me.” Terry breathed, “Did you see a Toyota get thrown into a building?”

  “See it, yes.” Robert agreed, eyes glued to his binoculars, “Believe it? No.”

  —

  Richard tossed two small pebbles, breaking both lights on the street, dropping the road into darkness except for the headlights of the small Toyota truck and old brown Ford sedan in front of it. He stepped off the building right behind Samual, flexing his legs to drop almost silently to the street.

  He saw Samual walking at an angle to the first car and casually kick out, his foot slamming into the left driver’s quarter panel which caused the car to turn violently
and ram into the building to their left. The Toyota in the back then caught Samual in their headlights and slammed on the breaks.

  Richard walked quickly up to the Toyota and smiled maliciously.

  —

  Santiago was driving Mateo’s beat up old Toyota. Since Mateo was stuck in jail after the latest police crackdown, he wouldn’t be using it tonight. He and his group needed money to get weapons again after the last raid by the cops, and this looked like it was going to be an easy hit.

  None of the guys were wearing any clothes or gang symbols that would point back to them, as the cops were getting smart with video’s and images and even hiding in the slums wasn’t working as it did years before.

  “Dammit!” he elbowed George, “keep your elbows to yourself, I got to drive.”

  “Like that is so hard?” George grunted, “following Miguel and shit,” he moved his elbow anyway.

  Both street lights sparked then shattered. A second later the car’s tail lights in front of them jerked violently to the right. It skidded into a building and then Santiago slammed on the breaks as a figure appeared in his headlights.

  “What the fuck?” Santiago heard from a couple of guys holding on in the back and a couple of pistol shots from the car in front before the screaming started. Then, they saw another figure walk into their headlights, his eyes glowing red and teeth, vampire teeth, prominent in his smile.

  “Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost,” George said as the man grabbed the front of the small Toyota and Santiago could hear those in the back stumbling and jumping out of the back of the truck. Time seemed to go in slow motion as the man twisted and the truck was instantly flipping on its side, the street turning round and round and then a massive concussive slam as they hit a building’s wall, quiet reigning for a moment as they got their wits about them.

  “Santiago,” George rasped as he looked over to his friend, only to see that half of his body was lost under the truck, laying on its side. “Oh…God!” He mumbled when the screech of the other door being torn off assailed his ears.

  —

  “Sir, what the fuck is going on?” Robert heard from Craig over the line.

  Robert clicked the mic, “Our protective detail has intervened, everyone stays frosty,” Robert replied.

  Thomas jumped on the channel, “I thought we were the protective detail?”

  “Apparently,” Robert said, “Terry’s ace-in-the-hole decided to save us the effort of shooting a lot of people.”

  Screams shattered the night, the occasional gunshot punctuating the cries of the wounded.

  “Sir,” Victor called in, “Did you have an itch?”

  Robert clicked the button, “Affirmative guys.”

  Another voice jumped on the channel. “Well, we are fucked,” Victor said and then added, “again,” to a lot of chuckling on the line.

  Terry, still watching to see what he could see through his binoculars smirked, “Well, at least they still have their sense of humor.”

  —

  The strobe lights from the police and medical vehicles flashed around the walls as the cop Inspector Gutierrez had sent to the ship walked back and reported in. “Sorry, sir. They say they were all on the ship when they heard and saw the headlights. Then, all hell broke loose with screams and pistol shots and lights going every which direction.” He held up a small USB drive, “They gave us the video take that was aimed in this direction.”

  “Anything special on it?” Inspector Gutierrez asked.

  “Only one thing they didn’t mention, sir.” The cop said, “I can hear those in the fight are screaming a name when it all goes down.”

  “Well?” the Inspector asked as he accepted the USB drive.

  “They are screaming ‘El Diablo,' sir,” the cop answered, as he looked around at all of the dead.

  —

  Richard watched and listened to the police from three buildings away, Samual was watching from the building on the other side of the street. Richard spoke softly but loud enough for Samual, “El Diablo?” He chuckled, “If only Gabrielle would give us a few weeks in the slums, I’d give them El Diablo.”

  “It was fun,” Samual admitted, “Perhaps we were growing too sedentary in Australia.”

  “Did you heal yet?” Richard asked, “Bad luck taking that last shot.”

  “The little prick was playing dead and shot me when I turned him over,” Samual bitched, “I can’t believe I fell for that trick. Promise me you won’t tell Gabrielle?”

  “I’m not telling her anything. Especially not that I saw you drop the little prick’s body off the pier after you took payment for shooting you.”

  “Oh,” Samual answered, “I thought I was sneaky with that effort.”

  “Samual, I’ve been with you hundreds of years, I don’t believe that you can be sneaky around me.”

  “Bah,” he replied, “I’ll have you know I have fooled you plenty of times.”

  “Like when,” Richard asked, watching those from the medical group pick up a couple of arms and drop them on the body they belonged to. Richard wondered if they would find the head. He remembered kicking it off, but not where it went.

  “I can’t tell you, or you will figure out how I accomplished it,” Samual said to Richard’s chuckles.

  “El Diablo,” Richard laughed again. “God, that’s priceless.”

  —

  Robert’s team, except for Frederick who was up top keeping watch on the police, joined Terry and him in the team’s meeting room. Everyone on the ship had seen what was going on, but most of them thought it was some gang on gang violence, that happened to have been close.

  Terry looked around the table to all of the men, “I’m going to ask, but not require, you stay as mum about this as you can.”

  When you hire a bunch of guys who get assigned to agencies with acronyms, you take your chances, Terry thought.

  “Two guys are with us, their names are Richard and Samual, and they were the two guys who had a field day out there,” he nodded in the general direction of the docks with his head. “They are on loan here because we are getting more attention than we should be getting.”

  “I’ll say this again,” Thomas said, “not that I’m complaining as it might have been a pain to go through the police discussions with us shooting everyone, but I thought we were the protection detail?”

  “You are, or should be,” Terry amended. “After the dock incident, I reached out to the same group that helped us in the Sandpit to see if they had anything they might be able to provide.”

  “Oh…goody,” Craig said.

  “Hey, just be glad they are on our side,” Robert interjected.

  “Hey,” Craig said, putting up his hand, “I got nothing against them. We would all be six feet under without their help with ISIS, so I’m good there. It just means that we are probably on to something and anything we find is going to get lost in transit.”

  “No,” Terry told them, “All that stuff was returned, eventually.” He qualified. “Melissa says it got back to her after a week.”

  “So, they probably went through it and made sure nothing was relevant and gave it back,” Craig finished.

  “Might have been the price for saving our lives,” Terry shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve heard screams before,” Victor said, “those men saw monsters out there.”

  “The police officer,” Robert spoke, “says not one person was left alive. Most had been torn apart or had major slashes across their bodies and bled out. Like something a monster would do.” He looked around his group, “just remember these monsters are OUR monsters and be polite.”

  “Fuck yeah be polite,” Charlie laughed, “because I don’t care what anyone else says. Every time I’m involved with TQB those mother-fuckers get scarier and scarier.”

  Every man sitting knocked twice on the table, affirming their agreement with Charlie’s comment.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Chapter 16

  TarH
unt Protection Services, Kentucky, USA

  “Section one, move to channel Alpha Alpha Seven and report,” Night Watch Leader Ryan Burrow called into his microphone as he punched in the new channel for his second set of speakers.

  “Terri here, clear outside building three, base,” a feminine voice came over the speaker.