by Michael Todd
Billie balled her fist. “Dammit! Why couldn’t she be a careless evil person? I don’t need a professional bad guy here.”
He chuckled. “I’ll send you her home address and layout. It’ll pop up on your palm viewer.”
Hickok raised her palm, pressed her wrist, and a 3D screen rose from her fingerless gloves. The address and map displayed almost instantly. She chuckled and deactivated the device as she headed toward the door. “This technology shit is fucking sweet. I do not miss the old days of compasses and maps, that’s for damn sure.”
Conscious of the time, Hickok swung by her check point and picked up her bag before she slid into an alley to change. She peeled the waterproof suit off and wiggled into her other skin-tight armored one. Working quickly, she extracted her helmet from her bag and snapped it in place before she stashed the bag behind a dumpster for pick-up later.
Finding the house without delay, she made do with spur of the moment ops. Billie climbed the tree to the right of the house and shinnied out onto a branch. The estate was huge and sprawled across a large piece of land surrounded by a tall stone wall. She clicked on the camera in her helmet and snapped a few pictures of it for Marcus.
That done, she observed the beautiful hedges, large fountains, and most importantly, guards everywhere. “Momma is rich. This isn’t new money, Marcus.”
He sent through some background information. “True. Her father was a political powerhouse for over forty years. We know it doesn’t pay to be in civil service, but he found himself attached to several lobbyists and a whole lot of American oil money.”
Hickok eased along the branch and dropped to the ground. She scurried across the yard and edged down the side of the house to peek around the corner. Two guards stood at the back door. “Soft and silent, or loud and proud?”
Marcus laughed. “You know me, I prefer the silent version. You prefer the kill-them-all tactic.”
Billie rolled her eyes. “That’s because I don’t flinch.”
“Or you are the devil incarnate,” he scoffed.
“That’s definitely a possibility,” she replied with a shrug, even though he wouldn’t see it.
Before he could respond, she made her move. The first guard rounded the corner and she lunged instantly to wrap her arm around his throat from behind. She gripped tightly, yanked a syringe from her pocket, and thrust it firmly into the side of his neck. It only took a second for the serum to take effect and she lowered him slowly to the ground. Quietly, she grabbed his legs and pulled him into the bushes, then made sure he wasn’t visible to anyone passing by.
Billie nodded, satisfied. “Going for the second one the same way. I guess I’m folding to your humanity.”
She peered around the corner and as the guard turned his back to her, she rushed forward and dealt with him as efficiently as she had done with his colleague. This time, however, they were poised at the top of a set of stairs to the basement beside the entry door. When the guard went down, she couldn’t hold him and winced as he tumbled unconscious to the bottom. It was dark, and he couldn’t be seen from the top.
Marcus sighed. “Sloppy.”
She raised both eyebrows. “Completed. That’s all that matters. And those sedatives will keep them out for hours.”
The lights in the house all flipped on, including the ones at the rear. Billie’s suit hummed slightly and the voice from the comms echoed in her ear. “Light refraction activated. You have thirty-two seconds.”
She grabbed the door handle. “Well, let’s get a move on then.”
Mentally counting the seconds, she slipped quickly into the house and walked as fast as she could without disturbing the air around her. Her suit had, thankfully, been improved and she was able to move through the premises without detection. She turned and moved toward the office using the layout and map her HUD provided for her. Two guards stood in the hallway and she flattened her body against the wall and slid gingerly past them.
Billie restrained a chuckle. “This shit is awesome,” she sub vocalized.
“Your awesome will run out and expose you if you don’t hurry your ass up,” Marcus grumbled.
She rolled her eyes and slipped through the open office door. Her feet made absolutely no sound as she moved past the woman, who sat in her office chair on the phone with her back to Hickok. She slipped into the closet, squatted, and pulled the door closed slowly. In the same instant, her refraction ended and she was visible again. She looked at her hands and twisted them back and forth with satisfaction. “This suit is wild. I gotta give you kudos.”
Marcus was busy on the computer. “In approximately twenty seconds from my go point, the lights and the power will go out. I’ll jam all signals. There will be no ability to call for help or send for any more guards. That is the moment you need to move and fast.”
Billie ran her hands down her suit to make sure she had everything she needed. “And then I break out a can of whoop ass on this bitch?”
He groaned. “I would probably get the information first. Then you can do as you please. This one, though, is total termination. Discreet and with no trace that anyone else was involved. Do you get it?”
“I’ve done this long enough to know what that means. The bitch will kill herself tonight. So sad. A life snuffed out by the violence of her own hand.”
Marcus snorted while he worked on the security. “You really need to learn something like empathy. You are the least PC person I have ever met.”
Billie smirked. “I don’t think you’ve ever said anything so sweet to me. I am not being rude. I am merely repeating what everyone will tweet tomorrow or whatever the fuck they do. No one will remember all the fucked-up shit she did while she was alive. That’s what I hate about death. When I die, I want everyone to remember how fucked up it was when I punched that Russian thirteen-year-old right in the nose.”
Before he could respond, the lights went out and Marcus lowered his voice. “Go.”
She pushed the door open and moved quickly through the shadows in the darkened room. The woman stood at the window now, looked out, and gripped her phone. “I pay all this fucking money and I lose all signal and power in my house. How the fuck am I supposed to get things done around here?”
Billie put her hand on the woman’s shoulder and she turned, surprised. “How about a little game of truth?”
Before the target could speak, she plunged a syringe into her neck and released a different type of serum than what she had used on the guards. She didn’t want her to sleep; she wanted her to confess. Hickok withdrew the needle, recapped it, and replaced it in the pack on her arm. The woman’s head bobbed back and forth and she lowered her into her office chair.
The drugged woman giggled and flicked her finger down Hickok’s suit. “What are you…a Power Ranger?”
Billie grabbed her hand and put it in her lap. “No grabby, grabby. Now, there are some pictures, some information you have withheld from the Parliament. Where are they?”
The woman looked wasted and she smirked as she put her fingers to her lips. “Oops, the cat’s out of the bag.”
Hickok faked a laugh. “It sure is. Now, where are they?”
Her captive waved her hand casually at the safe on the wall. Billie rolled her eyes and grabbed the woman by her shoulders. “Combination, please.”
She stared at her for a moment, wobbled back and forth, and finally spoke. “36-45-96-234.”
Hickok smiled and patted her on the head. “Very good.”
As she walked to the safe and began to open it, she laughed. “What the fuck was in that syringe?”
Marcus laughed quietly. “Something concocted from the Zoo. It’s fantastic and even more so, you can use it on someone you aren’t terminating and they won’t remember a thing about what happened while under the influence.”
Billie opened the safe and cringed. “It sounds like a date rape drug.”
“Yeah, well…we won’t introduce it beyond the operatives.” He cleared his throat.
>
She pulled out an envelope and snorted. “Yeah, because we can be trusted. Most of us are so good at our jobs because we have no fucking morals.”
Hickok dragged in a deep breath and located the records that she needed. Below the sensitive data, she saw a large brown envelope and, curious, she opened it to look inside. She gasped and walked to the woman who now lolled in the chair. “You fucking ho!” She studied one of the images and even turned it sideways. “Damn, that’s some size there. Talk about sleeping your way to the top.” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you put your leg there? Fuck, you should be the ruler of the universe by this point.”
She shook her head, drew a small pistol, and selected one of the photos from the file before she stuck the rest in the pocket of her suit with the Zoo data on her right side. Once they were secure, she slammed the picture down in front of the woman, held the gun out to her, and snapped her fingers. “I know you can hear me, so let’s play a game. I’ll leave some of this blackmail info right here on your desk. The rest, I’ll take with me.”
The woman didn’t resist when she wrapped her hand around the gun. Instead, she giggled and looked at the gun with something that might have been fascination. “Now, take this hard cock in your hands. Do whatever you like, but you must insert the head into your mouth. Whenever you want this hot stud to explode, you press with your thumb.”
The woman giggled once more and nodded. Billie turned and walked to the door. As her hand touched the handle, the gun went off. She hunched her shoulders and cringed. “Wow, it looks like someone was ready for a hot load. She didn’t want to wait.”
Marcus chuckled. “Get out of there. Your suit has recharged a little but you only have five seconds of refraction left.”
Billie nodded and hurried down the hall once she’d confirmed that no guards waited there for her. “More than enough for a quick run into the woods.” The men she’d seen in the corridor must have wandered off somewhere, but she could hear shouts and footsteps pounding somewhere behind her. It was time to get out of there before all hell broke loose.
He sighed through the comms. “Perfect. See you back at base.”
A click in her helmet signified the comms shutting off as she opened the back door and looked around. No one was anywhere in sight.
Chapter Two
“Did you eat today?” Paula asked JB, who stood in his apartment, and fixed him with a demanding look,.
He groaned. “Yes, Mother. I ate what you had the kitchen guy bring up for me. It was very good, thank you.”
Paula nodded. “Good. You need to keep up as much strength as you can. Your body needs that food. At the same time, you also need to continue to rest.”
JB pulled up his pant leg. “I am feeling better. And the stripes are receding.”
She rolled her eyes. “We went over this already. The serum that Holly has given you will help but it is not a cure. In order for the effects to last as long as possible, you need to stay off your feet and rest. Just because you feel better doesn’t mean that you are.”
He leaned against his dresser and glared at her. “I feel like there is no arguing with you.”
Paula smirked. “Damn straight. I already told you I would tie you to that chair, and not in a hot and sexy way either. The way that makes you feel like you’ve been abducted by the Chinese.”
JB chuckled. “How is Holly doing down there?”
She drew in a deep breath. “She is a wizard bartender. Right now, she’s not here, though. She is in a training session.”
He nodded although he hated the idea of Holly going into the Zoo. “I wish there was someone else we could send in there.”
Paula collected the dirty dishes. “Yeah, but there’s not. She will be okay. While she may seem fragile, I think she is tougher than everyone gives her credit for.”
JB smiled. “Oh, I know she definitely is. I knew that from the first time she walked into the bar. The problem is, the Zoo is stronger than everyone.”
“You have to move faster than that,” Trigger said as he circled Holly.
She groaned. “I don’t know if my feet can move faster than that.”
He was the leader of one of the more successful merc groups in the thick of things. He and his team had gone to FUBAR for years. After Holly realized she had to go into the Zoo herself, she set out to find people to train her. She made sure they didn’t know the real reason she needed to go in, but none of them really cared that much. They liked the idea of training the mysterious tanned girl from the bar. The one who had captured JB’s attention and even filled in for him while he fought what everyone assumed was a bad case of the flu.
Trigger swiped his leg without warning and knocked hers out from under her. “It is important to know that even when you think you can’t possibly go on any longer, you force yourself to do exactly that. You can be in pain and agony for a small amount of time or die a gruesome and excruciating death, never to be seen again.”
Holly wrinkled her nose. “Right. Small time period of pain. Got it. But I have a hard time believing that I will fight some animal that can ankle-swipe me.”
Trigger shrugged and moved toward the team who had watched her train. “There are creatures in that jungle that can do far more than swipe your ankles. These animals are not human, they are alien, descendants of whatever species launched a fucking missile at us. For all we know, they can bend space and time itself.”
Alvin, one of the guys on the team, groaned loudly. “Here he goes again with the space conspiracy theory. Next, he’ll tell you that we are actually in one of those rifts or worm holes but we simply don’t know it yet.”
Trigger held his hands out. “Hey, it’s possible, fuck face.”
Holly chuckled, stood, and brushed her pants off. “Honestly, I don’t care if they are descendants of Jesus himself. I want to survive and get what I need.”
Her trainer patted her on the back. “Then it’s weapons time.”
She was nervous about this part. Which seemed stupid given that she had been around weapons all her life, especially with the places she had traveled, and she owned her own too. These weapons, though, were mostly larger and way more powerful than anything she had touched before.
Trigger handed her a 9mm. “Okay, let’s start small. Flip the safety off, aim, and fire at the target.”
Holly rolled her shoulders and gripped the pistol. It felt much like the one she had so she was instantly comfortable with it. They were at a training facility in the town which had a shooting range set up right there. Convenient and beyond her normal experience. The sights, sounds, and sand everywhere made it more realistic.
She aimed the gun and fired six rounds. When she lowered it, Trigger nodded and the two walked out to the target. He studied it silently with his head cocked to the side. The other four teammates walked up behind him. Holly took a deep breath. “How did I do?”
He turned toward her with his hand on his chin. “Well, you hit the target three times out of six, and mostly in the upper right-hand corner. So, if it were a beastie, it wouldn’t have a shoulder.”
Holly wrinkled her nose. “I can do this. What do you guys use as weapons?”
The merc turned to his team. “Well, Alvin mostly uses his M-16.”
Alvin nodded and stood tall and straight. “Marine for fifteen years. I am kind of glued to it. I shot a handgun growing up in Maine but love the M-16.”
Trigger smiled and nodded at a tall, thin, Japanese man in his mid-thirties. “Akinari—or Aki as we all call him—grew up in Japan with swords. I have never seen him pick up a gun.”
Holly smiled at him and he bowed slightly at her. She turned to the next man, tall and dark-skinned with a cut-off shirt. Trigger patted him hard on the back. “Adisa here goes all out. Short sword in one hand, machine gun in the other. He’s the only motherfucker I’ve ever seen who can shoot a machine gun with one hand and not break bones or lose accuracy.”
“I spent six years in the militias. I learned to b
e the best.” Adisa cracked a kind smile.
She giggled. “I can see that. And how about you?”
The woman on the end had long blonde hair that hung to her waist. She was short and stocky with bright blue eyes and spoke with a Russian accent. “I work with daggers. I use guns sometimes. But daggers are my thing.”
Trigger shook his head. “Best knife work in all of Russia.”
She stood proudly. “Seven years of championships.”
Holly was impressed. “Okay then, I simply need to work harder. Find my niche.”
Alvin scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “No offense, but you don’t seem like a warrior. Not that it’s a bad thing. Most aren’t. I’m only concerned that if you are the soft marshmallow type, you should be protected by the team. You know, the way the scientists for the government are protected by the gunners.”
Holly bit the inside of her cheek. “And while you’re probably right about that, I want to be able to carry my weight. I need to be able to shoot stuff without worrying about hitting one of you guys. I am a team player and I always have been. I want you to feel as secure with me behind you as I will feel with you. Otherwise, I’ll spend the whole time terrified of my own shadow.”
The team exchanged glances and Misha cleared her throat. “She may not look like a warrior on outside, but the Zoo will change that for her. Why don’t you work with each one of us on the weapons we use? Then you decide what you are best with. Perfect that.”
Holly looked hopefully at Trigger. He nodded. “That’s a wise move. I personally stick with guns. I don’t care what type, as long as it fires bullets.”
Holly chuckled and slapped her hands on her legs. “Okay, where do you want me to start?”
Trigger looked at the Russian. “Start with Misha since it was her idea.”
She followed the woman to the knife area, where they went through each type of dagger they had. To Holly, they all seemed the same at first, but once she held them and tested their balance, she began to understand the different feel and weight of each one. She practiced holding and throwing each one a few times, surprised at how well she actually did with it. It seemed she hit the target nine out of ten times, and usually very close to where she had aimed. She tried the crossbow after that but as bitch-bad as she felt with it, she almost sent a bolt behind her, much to everyone’s amusement.
