My Ride is a Bitch Read online

  “That’s probably the point,” Robert replied, “Someone doesn’t want you to go in the first place. So, bust up some stuff, run off some of the people and at least slow the project down if they can’t cause enough problems to stop it totally from happening.”

  “Alright. Ask the porters to grab something and go into the ship and fail to come back out, like they are taking a break for a few minutes. Let’s leave them out of this situation. You need me to come down there?”

  “No, you’re paying the bills, boss. You get to stay up there and let us hired hands to enjoy ourselves for a few minutes.”

  “Ok, but I want it noted that I offered,” Terry told him.

  “So noted,” Robert replied and dropped the connection.

  Less than a minute later, Melissa came into the room Terry was using, “I understand we are being attacked?”

  Terry kept one eye on the monitors showing different parts of the ship and the docks. He kept the two which gave him a good view of the loading area and the inside where the deck hands had started grabbing weapons. “How in the hell did you get that information so quickly?” He asked, not sparing a glance to see she was breathing hard.

  “I was in the inside loading dock checking on some equipment when the first loaders came in with the message from Robert,” she replied. “You aren’t going over there, are you?”

  “Huh?” Terry replied, not looking at her, “No. Robert says to stay out of this one since I’m paying for their help. They want the exercise.”

  “Good,” she murmured.

  Terry didn’t hear her comment, “The lucky bastards,” he mumbled.

  She noticed that the toughs had come into the view screen he was watching. Her eyes narrowed at Terry, and she turned and left the room.

  Terry was watching the screens and failed to see when she left.

  —

  “I don’t think you guys have the proper clearance to work in this area,” Robert spoke. The lead tough was a big man. No hair, broken nose and tattoo on his neck. He had three guys to his left, and two to his right.

  “We don’t need clearance, American,” His voice was rough, like too many cigarettes had been smoked. “Just earning some drinking money, boys, aren’t we?” He looked to his guys, all of them fairly well built. Robert noticed the herky-jerky thinner guy on the right.

  “Thomas?” Robert asked and hand signaled the man he was concerned with.

  “Got him, boss,” Thomas replied and moved a few feet over to give himself a good view in case the guy pulled a knife.

  “Do you guys have a favorite hospital?” Robert asked, “I mean, we aren’t planning on taking you, but I’m sure we can ask dock security if you can go there. If they don’t just dump your broken bodies into the water.”

  “You speak big, little American,” Broken nose grinned.

  Well shit. Broken nose and missing two teeth.

  “Hell, I’m just waiting for you guys to ask us to dance,” Robert said, looking at the six to five odds, “We haven’t had anyone to test out our new dance moves with since…Well, ISIL right guys?” his team all agreed that was right.

  Broken nose spat to the side, “I’m not sure why you would be here if you had been fighting over there, but we have some drinking to do, and we can’t do it until we finish our job.”

  “About damned time,” Craig Goulding spoke from Roberts left. “My dinner's getting cold, Frenchie.”

  “Awww, Fuck!” Robert spat. Craig’s cut-down spurred the men to start the fight. Robert had been working on figuring out a way to diffuse the situation, not inciting the men and Craig just had to add that little bit of fuel to the flame.

  Ducking, Robert had allowed his annoyance to get in the way of paying attention to Broken Nose’s first punch. Robert turned his duck to a back leg sweep, but he didn’t have the momentum to do more than barely bend the guy’s leg. He twisted and rolled away to come back up ready for an attack this time.

  “Almost had you, little boy!” he grinned, “you should tell your friend we like to explain the difference between fighting us and fighting the French!”

  Robert used both forearms to block a wickedly powerful right hand swing and then used his right elbow to smash his assailant's nose, blood spurt out. It caused his opponent to back up a couple of steps, but the pain didn’t substantially slow him down.

  “Oh, fancy moves is it, then?” Broken Nose asked. Robert looked around, and his quick glance told him that his group had it under control. They practiced fast and deadly takedowns, so beating someone soundly without using killing moves took a while longer.

  “Well, I don’t think I’m going to just stand toe to toe with you and slug you,” Robert answered, “By the look on your face you don’t care, and the ladies love how I look already.”

  “That’s because your ladies like pretty-boys, American!” Broken Nose grinned, “While mine like virility.”

  “Look, Jacko, it’s the money you’re paying them. They will tell you anything for a few euro,” Robert answered, and sure enough, after a few moments of thinking, Jacko yelled something ugly in German and came forward to grab him, arms outstretched.

  The end, when it came, was almost anti-climactic.

  Jacko Broken Nose got a swift snap kick to his groin as Robert’s upper arms blocked and pushed Jacko to keep from being grabbed. Jacko’s head took a dive as he folded around his abused family jewels. Robert grabbed it and pulled hard so that his rising knee intercepted Jacko’s face inciting a bone crunching sound.

  By the time Broken Nose finally hit the dirt, four others of his group were down, and one had his hands up, as all of Robert’s team eyed him like he was the one hamburger in front of a bunch of starving men.

  “Robert,” Terry’s voice came across the small headphones.

  Robert grabbed his ear bud and stuck it back in his ear, “Yes?”

  “Dock security are on their way, probably just a couple of minutes if you need to hide anything.”

  Robert looked around, “No, this was just a fisticuffs episode, you got anything to show our side of the fight to security?”

  “Yes, I’ve already shot over the beginning few seconds, so you should be ok. If not, I’ll pull some more.”

  “We should be good, but they are going to need a forklift for broken nose here.” Robert poked the man with his toe, but he didn’t even groan.

  “Yeah, ok. Well, shit.” Terry replied.

  “What?”

  “Just noticed Melissa is gone. Well, I’m sure I’ve fucked up somehow, and I’ll learn about it as soon as I make sure you guys are covered.”

  “Nah, go find her now. Tell her you went searching as soon as you figured she wasn’t with you. You will be out here in a few.”

  “That’s not right,” Terry started, but Robert interrupted him.

  “First round on you if within sixty seconds of finding her, you find she sends you out here,” Robert said.

  “Deal, but I’ll head out there immediately if she isn’t in her berth,” Terry said.

  “Ok,” Robert replied and then dropped the call to make sure his men were good.

  Two minutes later the Dock Security rolled up, and within another sixty seconds, Terry came out of the ship.

  Robert was watching his men help the security group move the thugs. They had all been woken up with smelling salts and were being loaded into a van. He looked over at his friend. “She was pissed you went and checked on her, right?”

  “Yeah, what the hell is that?” Terry asked while he watched the toughs getting added to the van.

  “You can’t win, but you tried so that gives you some points. You won’t know you get any points, but her time to cool down just dropped thirty-three percent or more. Plus, she feels good that she told you to go do your job, which is probably what you were doing that got you in trouble in the first place,” Robert explained.

  “If you know so much about women, why don’t you have a wife?” Terry asked exhaling loudly.
/>   “Because that is the culmination of four serious relationships and a little therapy trying to figure out why I failed four times in a row,” Robert answered. “Ok, looks like it’s our turn to talk again.”

  “Fantastic, something I can understand,” Terry said as he stepped forward and held out his hand to the Security Lead.

  South America

  Michael’s house pyre had gone well. The flames had climbed high into the sky by the time the team had to jump into the waiting pods and leave before the local emergency teams came to put the flames out.

  When the fire trucks arrived, it was too late to do anything but contain the fire.

  The teams dropped their critical equipment off on the QBS ArchAngel and grabbed a set of rooms. The chosen rooms were similar to the Queen’s Bitches setup with a general living room, meeting room in the middle. Tabitha’s team, however, preferred to keep the lighting down and use indirect lighting up the walls for minor decoration. Tabitha liked the effect and the zen feeling, so she just used a couple of lamps by the table area for when she wanted more light.

  With her own enhancements, that wasn’t often unless someone human or not very modified came in.

  It had taken Tabitha and her team a couple of days to track their first lead after talking with Mason and Sheila. There was a small warehouse that also housed a business office on the outskirts of Bielefeld, Germany. After researching the city, they found the Bielefeld Conspiracy where those on the Internet persuaded others the city did not exist, and the team laughed how gullible people were.

  Tabitha got down to business.

  She thought it interesting that the people she sought would be located in the same small area as the Praetoria Mercenary Group, a company most German’s would refute existed if they were told about it. War, to Germans, is often a four-letter word.

  Still, the three-story building seemed to be fairly well set up. It was on a few acres of grassy land and had no trees or shrubs blocking their field of view for a hundred meters in any direction before they allowed local shrubs and trees to grow.

  She had already tried to hack computers, but there wasn’t anything there for her to get. No databases, no servers, nothing.

  It’s like these people didn’t trust computers or something. What a pain in the ass.

  Now, she, Haritoshi and Ryu were dropping down in one of the new four seater Pods. The two guys were up front while she reviewed the buildings layout.

  “We are going to see what kind of security they have and then do a little B and E guys,” she spoke from the back seat area.

  “Break and Enter?” Ryu asked.

  “Yeah, you watching more American police shows now?”

  “Yes, I particularly like the older stuff on Netflix,” Ryu admitted, “I can just watch right through with no commercials.”

  “I wonder if Netflix would be surprised to find out ADAM is ripping everything they have and storing it on the ArchAngel’s servers?” she wondered aloud.

  “Does the Queen know he is doing this?” Hirotoshi asked.

  “Probably not. When she finds out, I figure she will find a way to pay them for it,” Tabitha shrugged, “They say you can watch as much as you can for free, just because ADAM can watch, and understand it, at inhuman speed kind of gets around the rules.”

  “I don’t think the Queen would buy that argument,” Hirotoshi admonished.

  “No, me either. If it were me, I’d just … well… never mind,” she finished, lamely. No reason to let these guys know what she would do. She needed to uphold the impression she was working for justice, not actively figuring out ways to steal movies.

  The three rode down in silence for the next few minutes. Tabitha was watching her tablet scroll information as they got closer to the building’s location. The nearest neighbor was over a three kilometers away nestled in the hills.

  “We have four walking the grounds,” Ryu said from up front, looking down at the information displayed on the windshield. “Also, it appears that there are multiple devices radiating something all over the landscape.”

  “Yeah, probably motion detection,” she agreed. “They don’t have anything up on the roof for some reason, let’s see why not.” Tabitha started subvocalizing instructions to the AI ArchAngel had supplied her for this operation. “Ha!” She announced, “The idiots actually do have something going on the roof, but it looks like they have it on their own loop. Now, why the hell would they do that?”

  Hirotoshi kept them above the trees over a half kilometer away, silent and practically invisible in the night.

  “Wow, these Germans really know how to do the bunny together.” She finally said.

  Ryu turned in his seat to see Tabitha holding her tablet up, twisting it sideways and muttering, “Hell, I might sign up for that…” She dropped the tablet to see Ryu looking at her, “Ah, there was some footage.”

  She paused, then added, “Apparently, the guards are made up of both genders, and a couple was getting freaky up on the roof a week and a half ago, and never changed the security back.” Ryu noticed her blush, just a little. “Is it me, or is it getting hot in here?” She asked, fanning her face with her tablet, smiling.

  Ryu snorted and turned back around. It was rare for Tabitha to ever be embarrassed about anything sexual.

  Made him wonder just what was in that video she found.

  Tabitha slid two Jean Duke’s pistols into her holsters and tied her hair back, grabbing a full face mask from her bag. “Ok, here’s the plan. Find when all of the guards are walking away from the building and drop me down. I’ll jump out, get into the building and find the stuff. I’ll exit the building, and you guys pick me back up.”

  Ryu turned back around, and she looked back at him, “What?” She asked, “Easy-peasy.”

  Ryu caught Hirotoshi’s eyes rolling and carefully schooled his face to not give anything away.

  “We go down in twelve seconds, Kimosabe,” Hirotoshi said.

  Ryu turned back to see Tabitha messing with her holsters and her breasts, muttering. “Dammit, these ta-ta’s weren’t made for clandestine efforts. I need some titty-tape. I can’t get my holsters to lay correctly around these big bazoongas.” A pause, some more pushing followed by, “shit, that hurt the nips,” and then more muttering.

  Ryu turned back around and faced the front, trying to keep his own blushing to a minimum.

  Seconds later, Tabitha cracked open her door and dropped the ten feet to the building’s roof, rolling and coming up quickly to move in the dark towards a door as Hirotoshi and Ryu quickly went back up into the night.

  “Do you think she will make it in and out quietly?” Ryu asked.

  It took Hirotoshi only a second to respond, “No.”

  The two men chuckled.

  —

  Tabitha stopped by the door and pulled out her smaller tablet, the screen set to minimum intensity. She subvocalized, “Check for alarms in proximity.”

  “Alarm active on the door,” came back a reply in her ear.

  “Can you disable?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So, disable it!” Tabitha said, exasperated.

  “Done.”

  Tabitha reached up and listened carefully, turning the knob and when no alarms sounded, and nothing seemed to be amiss from either outside or inside, she slipped in and closed the door. She turned her small tablet around and allowed the dim light to give her enough to see the stairs as she went down, ending up at a normal door. According to her schematics, this opened into one of the major halls.

  Time to go looking for information the old fashioned way.

  —

  Kamilla heard the noise from the floor above her but ignored it. Jürgen must be walking his third-floor shift.

  She continued looking through the new potential recruits. Their team in America had never called back in, which was going to be a problem. Since the house they had been casing blew up, they figured something bad must have happened to them, and every
thing had been done to erase any trail from the guys back to their organization.

  A few minutes later, she heard Jürgen come into the outer office and get a cup of coffee. After another couple of minutes, he rapped on her door, and Kamilla looked up to see him smiling with not one, but two cups.

  “Java?” he smiled.

  “Gladly, thank you,” Kamilla agreed and accepted the cup as Jürgen sat down. “How was your third-floor walk?” She asked.