by H L Stephens
Rather than fight the EPA or defend the company's interests in court, Butimen Ash declared bankruptcy, and ceased production in all six states they were doing business in. They changed their name and moved production of their poisons overseas. The Butimen Ash land holdings had lain fallow ever since. The Brotherhood had obviously taken advantage of the unclaimed lands and were using the facility for their own unsavory purposes.
The acrid smell of chemicals lay heavy in the air, indicating the plant, or at least part of it, was in some level of operation. When the limo stopped and the doors were opened, the smell made me choke.
"You will get used to the smell in time," Kovalski said as he reached over and removed my blindfold. "Come kitten. Let me show you to your new home."
The choice of words made me more than a little nervous and had me wondering if he suspected I was not what I appeared to be. I laughed however in spite of my fear and acted as if all was as it should be.
"My home you say."
Kovalski smiled as he helped me out of the limo.
"It is a figure of speech," he said. "Here, let me get your bag for you." He reached into the limo and grabbed my clutch before I could say a word. "It is heavy for such a small bag."
"The beads are hand blown Venetian glass," I replied. "Very expensive to make and heavy to carry, but I don't mind."
Kovalski made as if he would look inside.
"May I?" he asked.
"If you like," I replied and acted as if his interest mattered little to me.
I looked at our surroundings, surveying my escape route if the need arose. I kept Kovalski in my periphery, however. If I had learned nothing else, never take your eye off a rabid dog least it strike when your back was turned.
"What is this fragrance?" Kovalski asked, pulling out the bottle of reagent from my purse.
"Lilac," I said in as nonchalant a manner as I could. I walked over and took the bottle from his hand, spraying my neck with it before another word could be said. "Do you like?"
Kovalski leaned in and smelled my neck like a scent hound searching for a lost trail.
"Like my mother's garden," he replied and handed me my purse. "Come."
Kovalski offered me his hand and led me towards the building where the others had congregated.
"Nicely played," Dorthia whispered.
I smiled and followed my dreaded companion as best I could in high heels on gravel. Once inside, I began depositing every so often the little bugs and sensors that had been integrated into my dress, hoping no one would notice a missing scale here or an ever shrinking bit of flame there. I hoped my ready charm and Jameson's knockout drug would make it all a mute point in just a short while.
We walked up a flight of metal stairs into what soon became a lavish set of apartments. Though the bones of the industrial complex occasional poked through the opulence around us, it was easy to forget where we had been taken. A great deal of effort and money had been put into creating the extravagant living quarters that were Kovalski's home away from home. Our presence here became even more of a mystery to me the deeper into the complex we walked.
The crew was buzzing in my ear with chatter as they processed the images that were being sent back to them from my dress. Some of it was unintelligible, but I overheard Avery comment that business was better than they had first believed. Oz said it would soon be ground to a halt, and the two men got into an argument over the best way to make such a thing happen.
I did my best to absorb everything about my surroundings; from the artwork on the walls to the size and potential weight of the vases and lamps. Everything could be used as a weapon, and I fully intended on taking stock of my arsenal just in case.
We were escorted past all the fineries into a room that was fairly Spartan and bare of any vestige of luxury. It had maintained its raw industrial coldness. Something about the sudden turn from silks and softness to steel and concrete made my stomach do loop-the-loops. I nearly tossed my cookies in the metal bin we passed on the way in.
Kovalski had all of the girls lined up on the far wall underneath a row of high-set windows. I heard Avery say, "I don't like this," followed by the sound of clips slamming into place. At no point was I going to argue with his assessment for I was just as uncomfortable with the situation as he was. More so since I was the one standing in the lineup as Kovalski and his goons assessed me and the other girls.
"Before we start our fun," Kovalski said, "we need to take care of one very unfortunate bit of business. One of you little minxes is not what she seems." He looked at me and smiled. "I don't like surprises, and I don't like spies."
He reached behind the back of one of his associates and pulled out a gun. He leveled it right at me. My blood ran cold as I stared down the barrel of what was to be my judge, jury, and executioner. A million thoughts raced through my head in those final moments.
Some were silly.
Had I put on clean underwear before I left?
Some were not so silly.
I would die in this horrid place alone and never have the chance to say goodbye to my parents. They would never know what really happened to me.
I wondered as I stared down the barrel of cold, unfeeling steel if the crew would send my folks my body or if they would just bury me without ceremony in some unmarked grave, assuming they could recover my body before Kovalski could make me a permanent feature in some concrete slab. The odd things you ruminate as you face what you believe to be your final moments in life.
The thing was, as I contemplated my last moments, I failed to notice that Kovalski had pivoted the gun away from me and aimed it at another girl who was two bodies to my left. It wasn't until the gun went off, and I was still standing that I realized the monster hadn't been talking about me at all. Another imposter had walked within our midst, and Kovalski had just shot her.
I dropped to the ground with the other girls, but as I covered my head, I hazarded a look in the fallen girl's direction. She was still alive. She had been shot in the shoulder and was doing her darnedest to crawl away. Kovalski's men grabbed her and dragged her to her feet.
Kovalski walked up to her as she dangled between his men and grabbed her face.
"Find out who she is and who she works for," he barked. "Then kill her and leave her on their doorstep."
I felt a white hot rage ignite inside of me. I whispered to the crew, "The charade ends now."
Whether the crew understood what I meant by that statement was irrelevant. That girl was going to die if I didn't do something. I may not have been an army, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve, and the element of surprise was on my side. I planned to take full advantage of both as quickly as I could. She didn't have a whole lot of time left.
I may not have been much in the way of a cavalry, but I was all she had. Considering the alternative, I think I was starting to look better and better with every heartbeat. I set my jaw, and put my mental plan in place. Kovalski would soon discover the little Asian flower he had plucked for himself from the forbidden garden had nasty little thorns that were dripping with poison.
Mayhem and Maydays
Kovalski wiped his blood smeared hand on a handkerchief and threw it onto the concrete floor. He walked up to me as though nothing had happened and offered the same blood contaminated hand to me where I was huddled on the floor.
"Sorry you had to witness that kitten," he said. "A bit of nasty business to attend to, but it is done. Now the fun can begin."
This confident Russian numbskull had no idea what he was getting himself into as I accepted his assistance. I smiled at the thought. Kovalski would soon be one big mushy pile of blubber on the floor once I had tranquilized him. If I happened to get a few good kicks in for good measure while he was down and defenseless, so much the better.
Kovalski ushered me from the barren concrete shooting room into a room that stank of his cologne and hubris. It was like walking into a he-man whore house. I was half expecting to see one of those coin-fed vibrating bed
s you find at chintzy motels wrapped in satin sheets and velvet blankets. He was that kind of trashy. The coin machine was conspicuously absent, but I was not to be denied the satin and velvet. It was hideous.
"It's just you and me now kitten," he said as he closed the door behind us.
I didn't wait for the touch of Kovalski's hand upon my skin or the invasion of his person upon any part of my body. I already had the lotus hairpin down, cocked and ready with its first dose of Jameson's tranquilizer. I made my move while my target was pouring us a drink from a well-stocked wet bar at the foot of the bed.
"This will help loosen things up a bit," Kovalski said as large chunks of ice clinked in the glasses.
The smug little smile dissolved from his face when I stabbed the needle into the back of his neck and depressed the flower. I was uncertain how long it would take for the magic mixture to work, but I prepared myself with my pearly white gun just in case I had to put him out of my misery. He managed to get out the first part of, "You bit...." before he hit the elaborately carved footboard of his trashy little love bed and crashed to the floor. I kicked him a few times in the face for good measure just to make sure he wasn't faking. It was a bad move on my part because it reminded me of one fatal flaw when it came to white shoes. They always take a stain.
"Cheddar head is down for the count," I said to Marcus through the earbud. "I am going after the girl they shot. There are at least six henchmen lurking about that I know of, and two of them are with her.”
Now was the big moment for the crew to come collect the package of tranquilized Russian meat. I peppered Kovalski's body with tracking sensor's from my dress just so they could find him. The complex was a maze of corridors, and it was easy to get turned around. I had no intention of losing the main reason for my evening's torment, even if he was fecal matter worthy of flushing down the nearest commode.
I heard the comforting sound of Marcus hacking up one of his mucus-filled lungs.
"The Three Little Pigs are on their way," Marcus said when he was able to catch his breath. He was using the codenames he had given Dorthia, Oz, and Avery. They hated being called that, but Marcus defended the moniker on account of how brave the pigs were when they stood up to the big bad wolf. "They are bringing the Fixer with them to help with the girl if you find her, assuming she is still alive."
"Let's hope," I said, as I quickened my pace.
I went back the way Kovalski and I had come, hoping to stumble across the girl and the bad guys who had her, saving the day in a nice, clean swoop. The thing is, clean endings only happen in the movies. Real life is never so pristine.
I found every single Bratva henchman I wasn't looking for, but neither of the two I was. I tried to tranquilize the men I bumped into. I really did, but they made it impossible. It is incredibly difficult to inject a fine needle into a man's neck and press a plunger when your opponent is beating the crap out of you. I almost tranquilized myself before I gave up on the whole idea of putting them to sleep and began improvising with items around me.
One guy was knocked out with a Ming vase. I was hoping it was a fake, but something told me Kovalski relished the genuine article in everything he collected. Another guy went down with a Tiffany lamp. The third guy I took down with a broom closet. I am talking the whole darned closet. I just about emptied the tiny room of its contents before the vicious jackanape would go down. I tried brooms, dusters, buckets, half empty bottles of cleaners - basically whatever I could get my hands on. It was an old fashioned, heavy oak-handled mop that finally did the trick. I broke the darned thing over his head, and then I stabbed him with the lotus hairpin serum just for good measure because I sure as heck didn't want to see him again. David may have beaten his giant with a single stone's throw to the head, but this Goliath didn't seem inclined to follow the same rules.
To my great relief, I heard the distant pop, pop, pop of my backup as they tore their way through the barrier of miscreant Bratva that stood between them and me. The crew was following the tracking beacons I deposited from my dress when I first entered the complex. The cavalry was coming so I kept moving in search of the girl.
I finally made it to the room where the girl was shot, but it was empty of everything but her blood stain. I followed her blood trail through a side door, down a flight of stairs, and through a corridor that ended at the threshold of a closed door. I could see light streaming from beneath the doorway and from time to time a shadow drifted past.
I had no idea who was inside with the girl or what the layout of the room was. For all I knew, she was already dead, but at that moment, I had a burning need to find out one way or another. My heart was racing. Images of my family flashed through my head; their mutilated bodies lying on the floor. I had heard their screams and been impotent to do anything to stop it. I wasn't so impotent now.
If there had been any doubt as to what course of action I should take, the blood curdling scream of agony that came from behind the door eliminated all doubt from my mind. I took a deep breath, turned the knob, and sent two demons back to the hell they deserved. Okay, so I didn't actually kill the two guys in the room. I shot them in very painful but non-lethal places that incapacitated them and caused copious amounts of moaning and writhing. Following my own recommended protocol, however, I also shot out their kneecaps and hands just in case they rallied the way beefy bad guys sometimes do in the movies. I didn't want them following us when we left the room.
The girl was semiconscious, bound and slumped over in a chair. The two goons had already started working her over. She was a bloody pulp and hardly recognizable under all the swelling. Her pulse was weak, but at least there was one. I looked around for anything I could use for first aid. The room was pretty bare, but I found some of her personal effects.
"Hey Marcus," I said, "What's the Fixer's position?"
"He's a ways out, I'm afraid," Marcus replied. "He and the others are pinned down in a fire fight and haven't been able to make much headway. You are going to have to move the girl yourself if you can. And you better make it quick. Cheese head is starting to move."
"Oh crap," I said.
Some of Kovalski's men must have discovered his unconscious body. We couldn't afford losing him now after everything we had gone through to tranquilize him. I needed to get to him before his men could remove him from the facility and take him out of our reach.
I was scanning the girl's things when my eyes skimmed over a very disturbing item - an open wallet with an ID and badge.
"Double crap."
"What is it?" Marcus asked.
"The girl," I said looking over at her slumped body. "She's DEA."
I gathered her stuff together, tied the bag to her body, and untethered her from the chair.
"I am here to help," I said as I lifted her over my shoulder. She moaned from the movement but offered no resistance.
"Sorry," I whispered.
My guts wrenched inside me at the thought of hurting her further, but we had to move quickly. I needed a more defendable position closer to our backup.
Thanks to Oz's unrelenting training I was strong enough to carry the girl and myself back up the flight of stairs. Of course, I had no other choice but to carry my shoes in my hands, but I managed. Stilettos and stairs just don't play well together; not when you are hauling a hundred plus pounds of dead weight girl over your shoulder.
My plan was to stash the girl in the room and recover Kovalski. I had just re-entered the room where the DEA agent was shot and was preparing to place her down when I got the shock of my life. Kovalski was standing in the other doorway, blocking my only way out. He looked hopping mad.
"What the hell?" was all I could muster at first. Then in a harsh whisper I said, "Marcus, I thought that serum was supposed to knock these guys out for a couple of hours."
"It is," Marcus said. I could hear the confusion in his voice.
"Well, Cheese head got a massive dose, and he is up stumbling around," I said. "In fact, I am looking at him
right now, and he is really pissed off."
"That's not good," Marcus said.
"Tell me about it. I'm the one who waved the red flag in front of this bull's face, remember?"
At first I thought Kovalski was fine as a frog's hair; unaffected by the drug. He stood there in the doorway like an enraged gorilla, cursing me with his every breath. But as my panic settled inside me, I realized he wasn't quite so steady on his feet. His pupils were dilated, and he had to steady himself every so often against the doorjamb as he glared at me. His incapacitation didn't make him any less dangerous to me and my charge. In fact because of her, I was at a distinct disadvantage. I had an armful of agent and two handfuls of shoes. Like a newbie, I had re-holstered my gun safely between my thighs and out of my reach.
I was without any means of defending myself in my current state unless I wanted to take the route of throwing my shoes at him. The DEA agent was destined for a hard drop to the floor once again if either one of us stood a chance of getting out of this situation alive. Kovalski may have been a bit wonky from the lotus flower drug, but he was like a wounded wild animal. Deadly and unpredictable.
I saw Kovalski's muscles bunch like a cheetah's right before it pounces. Putting all delicacy aside, I dropped the agent like sack of potatoes and made my move. My great handicap was that I couldn't outright kill Kovalski. I couldn't even mortally wound him. We needed him alive and well, and somehow, the arrogant gorilla knew it. I couldn't shoot him with my gun without risking just such a fatal injury, but I thought beating the crap out of him was well within my right.
I let my blows rain down upon him with impunity, but it was like hitting a brick wall and expecting it to feel some level of pain. The man had endured years of urine-laced prison tattoos applied by some knurly guy with a razorblade and a lighter melting the rubber off his shoes.
My feeble blows, no matter how well placed, were having little impact on him. My one advantage was the fact that Kovalski was still partially under the influence of Jameson's drug. His response time was sluggish, but I didn't know how long that was going to last. When Kovalski managed to land a painful punch to my right kidney, I realized my advantage and my patience was running out.
