in here and make a fuss. They got the whole rapid response team on alert up there. Armed to the teeth. So open that door.” A brief scuffle ensued, during which the door did open, allowing Jane and her posse to breeze in.
“Ladeez,” Officer Horndog came forward smiling.
“Look out, they’ve got guns,” his partner shrieked, reaching for the phone and his sidearm. “I told you, I fucking told you.”
“No no no – no no no.” Jane rushed to reassure them. “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re here for the model shoot – Pentagon Playgirls calendar. Isn’t that right, Mr. Dreck?” Jane wheeled to appeal to Dreck, who was crouched down beside a shiny black waste can. Behind him, the elevator door opened and then shut again, like a mechanical mouth balked of its prey.
“Hmmmmm?” Dreck stood up awkwardly and straightened his tie. His face was red again, but he came forward willingly enough.
“It’s part of your ‘Support the Troops’ initiative.”
“Uh. Oh. Is that today?”
One of the posse was watching the elevator read-out to see where John and company got off.
“Top floor,” she reported.
“We’re on a tight schedule.” Dreck was lost somewhere between her cleavage and her legs, revealed to the upper thigh. She had to bend sideways to catch his eye. “Hope you don’t mind. We’re going to start upstairs in the,” she checked the directory, “Darkwater conference room.”
“Mind? God no. I mean, it’s all for a good cause, right? Allow me,” he waved them toward the elevator. “You have to press the button,” he explained, demonstrating with a flourish.
It was a pretty tight fit in there, with six tall, drop-dead gorgeous Snow Whites and one intellectual dwarf. Dreck saw nothing wrong with the picture. He was too busy having a ball.
“It’s a calendar? But there are only –“ he counted under his breath, “six of you.”
“Well, you see,” Jane explained, “We’re going to do six shots in costume –“
“- and six without,” Whitney, Wallis, and Willa chorused.
“Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘Dirty Dozen,” Jane did her best Mae West impression. Behind her, the girls pulled on night vision goggles.
“Hey!” Dreck yelled, as someone slipped a black silk hood over his head.
“Shhhh,” Jane cautioned, as the girls hid on either side of the door. “It’s sort of a surprise.”
“Ah!” Dreck nodded as the door opened onto the posh reception area of the Darkwater offices. “I see.”
33 Never Say Die
John found himself in a tidy little torture chamber, furnished with a restraint-equipped tilt-table, a tiger cage, a metal chair, racks of knives and other sharp implements, floor and ceiling bolts and chains – everything your state-sponsored enhanced interrogation professional could desire. James watched as John was situated in the chair, earning a fat lip and a black eye in the process.
“Aren’t you forgetting the German Shepherd?” John bent double as a guard sucker punched him.
“We actually have one around here somewhere, but I don’t have time for stupid pet tricks. I’m late for a really big show. So you have exactly five minutes to spill your guts – or have them spilled for you. After which I will of course turn my full attention to the lovely and recently widowed Mrs. Doe.”
“You think?” John smiled. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ filled the small room. James’s phone was ringing, but he chose to ignore it. He had seen John’s smile.
“The real mystery is what you think. What the hell do you imagine you’re doing? This is not about a few bad apples, you know. This is a system. A system of interlocking systems. You can’t beat it. So the question is not – gasp – can we get away with it. We already have. The question is – why fight it?”
John shrugged as his shirt was ripped open and electrodes attached. “Guess it’s just the way I’m wired.”
“Ha ha,” James laughed mirthlessly. His phone rang again. “Pockets!” He snapped his fingers and pointed, indicating that he wanted John to be searched and his possessions confiscated. He pulled his phone out, checked the number, and examined the contents of John’s pockets – wallet, phone, keys. He zeroed in on the keys. “Hello. Who are you I wonder?” He detached and examined the Jolly Roger thumb drive.
“Then again,” John said hastily, “it could be that this is a triple-reverse sting, meaning your Legion of Doom is busted and you are all going down.”
“Right. And the marines will be breaking down that door any minute now. Except they won’t. Because we own them too. I’m listening,” James said into the phone, which had not ceased its Wagnerian refrain. He was silent a moment, then swiveled slowly to face John. “I hear you. No, the chopper. It’s a parking lot out there. Right.”
John smiled cherubically. “You were saying?”
34 Bad Girlfriend
In the elevator, Whitney inserted a shiny silver key in the Fire Service lock and turned the switch to ‘Manual.’ When the door opened on the twentieth floor, she pressed the ‘Hold’ button, taking the elevator out of service for the other floors. The reception area was deserted except for a couple of salesmen with sample cases and an Ernest Borgnine type manning a glass-encased control center. In the elevator, Wallis started a boombox and the girls all shouted, “Surprise!” and came shimmying out of the elevator, leading the hooded Glenn Dreck by an extension cord. Dancing all the while, they flirtatiously secured the hands of the salesmen with plastic cuffs, then unbuckled their belts and dropped their pants around their ankles. Turning to the control center, they gestured like Homer’s treacherous sirens for Ernie to come join them. And he came, earning the reward of a wee dram from an airplane bottle of Grey Goose vodka. Getting into the spirit of things, he willingly accepted his handcuffs and a black hood like Dreck’s. Willa stood guard over all the ‘prisoners’ while the other five began a room-to-room search.
Several of the rooms were unlit and unoccupied. However, the fourth door opened on an ugly scene. One man seated in an ordinary office chair, two men standing. The seated man looked like a mummy getting a shave, his head forced back and smothered by a towel. One of the standing men was doing the head forcing, the other poured water from a carafe in a steady stream onto the sodden towel.
“Free lap dances in the break room! Last one there is a monkey’s football!”
“Man, is this place the shit or what?” Carafe Guy held out his wrists with alacrity.
“At the Bureau we’re lucky if they order pizza,” Towel Guy acknowledged, as Wallis herded them out of the room. They left without a backward glance or second thought for their hapless victim. Whitney immediately jerked the towel off the mummy. Who turned out to be our good friend Vinnie. The wet towel removed, he gasped for breath and bent forward, expelling water from his mouth and nose, coughing and choking.
“Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle,” he fell back and gabbled in a whisper. “Ma, ma! I shot my eye out.” He recovered enough to recognize Jane. “Oh no. Am I dead?”
“Love you too,” she snapped. “Where’s John?”
Vinnie pointed at Whitney, “She had him last. You know this probably isn’t the time or the place, but a feather boa would go great with that.”
Whitney handed him a small packet of plastique, timers, wires, and detonators. “Go make yourself useful. Booby-trap something or other. And tell Wallis to pump up the volume.”
The music got so loud the walls began to vibrate. Distracted by the noise, feeling pressured by a situation over which he no longer had total control, and faced with the realization that John was not going to play ball, James vented his irritation: “Jesus. They let the psy-ops guys out again.” He went to open the door and was immediately forced backward. The Jolly Roger thumb drive went flying. “What the fuck?”
Jane and Whitney came in low, to the left and right, guns
at the ready, followed by Wanda and Wendy. “Freeze! I said FREEZE. On the floor. Everybody down. Especially you, asshole. No faces. I don’t want to see any faces.” Whitney and the two other women quickly disarmed and restrained the three men. Jane frisked James where he lay and did not come up empty handed.
“Nothing back here. Turn over. Hello.” she grazed his belt buckle. “Is that a gun or are you just happy to see me?” she said, holding up a Glock 27.
“This is the side of you I always find so unattractive,” James complained, struggling to reach a sitting position.
“The side that can whip your ass? Yeah, I can see where that might be a problem.” She went to John and tenderly removed the ball gag from his mouth. He smiled gamely.
“Of all the torture chambers in all the towns in all the world…”
“Your beautiful face,” Jane said, touching his swollen eye.
“Eh,” John said. “I’ve been hurt worse. By girls. You for instance.”
“Maybe. But I’m still officially pissed.” She bent to unbuckle his wrists and ankles.
John stripped off the electrodes swiftly and methodically. “Now Jane honey,” he began, standing up and testing his jaw to make sure it was not dislocated. “Remember what the therapist said. Anger isn’t always a bad thing. It has a purpose in our lives.”
The music changed. From ‘Bad Girlfriend’ to ‘Time to Run.’ The other women looked