Copyright © 2019 James Russell Stoakes. All rights reserved.
http://JamesStoakes.com
There were only a few people in first class on the way to Houston. Linda didn’t think it would matter, so she and the others chatted freely in Sumerian while in flight. Evidently, the unidentifiable language had made several passengers nervous, and they had reported the four women to airport security.
The sky marshal was seated near Linda for the second leg of their flight. Linda knew immediately that he was there to watch them. They continued their conversations unconcerned by his presence.
“Ignore him,” Linda said and laughed. “There is zero chance he can understand a word of what we are saying.”
“Even if he understood, he couldn’t stop us,” Elsi said with an ear to ear grin.
“I still think that the bloodiest war would happen if we target the Los Zetas and make them think one of the others are at fault,” Alex said.
Linda got a pained look on her face. She thought that the plan was settled. “The territory controlled by each cartel changes almost daily,” Linda said. “I think we have to assess the situation once we are on the ground. Why do you think the Los Zetas would make a good target?”
“They are well-armed, military-trained, and have a disregard for life,” Alex reasoned. “They should be easy to incite with a maximum amount of firepower.”
“That may be what happens,” Linda replied. “We need to know who currently holds Mexico City and make plans from there.”
Air Marshal Smith had been listening intently and decided to speak. “Excuse me,” he said to Linda, “What language is that? I can’t place the dialect.”
Linda gave a cold stare. “Aren’t you an inquisitive little man,” she said and grinned. She made a shooing motion with her hand.
“Little man?” he thought, shocked. He was at least twice her weight and almost a foot taller. He took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry if you think I am rude. I was just curious,” he said and sat back in his seat to continue observing. Inside he was churning, he wanted so badly to retaliate.
“Look how angry he is,” Linda said gleefully.
“Let it go,” Bethany said. “As much fun as it would be to provoke him to violence, we are on a plane and have a mission to accomplish, and it would delay us.”
“You’re right, of course,” Linda agreed. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat. “It would be fun, though.”
The four women exited the plane with Air Marshal Smith right behind them. They made their way through immigration, and Smith signaled to his Mexican counterpart on the ground as they passed. He would follow them from here while Smith went to the security office to fill out his report.
Rafael nodded to the American agent after the four women had passed him. He was surprised at how “fit” they were. He expected to be following four fat Americans but was pleasantly surprised and happy to follow behind these four. They were of interest to officials for a few reasons. They arrived on one-way tickets, they only brought carry-on bags, and they spoke a strange language, when near others, that no one could understand. He watched from a distance as they tried to flag down a taxi.
Several taxies flew buy without slowing. The other taxies were informed in advance to not pick up a group of American women arriving at this time. They were instructed to ignore them and let one of his men, in their “government taxi,” pick the women up.
The driver, once his official tasks were complete, would report their location to Rafael. He, in turn, would fill out his official report and then contact his less official, slightly more nefarious colleagues. He was sure that they would be very interested in this group, and he hoped that it would clear his debt to them.
Linda had to smile. Two cabs flew by without a second glance at their group before a third pulled up slowly and stopped for them. The driver waited for them to get in, he didn’t even try to exit his vehicle. Linda sat in the front seat of the impeccably clean car. Chatter, in Spanish, came through on the radio. She looked back at Elsie.
“Another cop,” Elsi said in Sumerian.
“Where do you ladies want to go?” the driver asked with only the slightest accent.
“The Hyatt Regency,” Linda answered with a big smile.
The driver set the meter, put the car in gear, and picked up the microphone on his radio as he drove, “Car nineteen leaving the airport on route to the Hyatt Regency,” he said in Spanish.
“Confirmed, car nineteen,” came back the response.
“What brings you to Mexico City?” the driver inquired casually of the occupants. The silence dragged on for a few minutes as no one answered him. “Don’t feel like talking? Okay,” he finished and continued to drive.
“All this mundane activity is getting to me. When are we going to have some fun?” Elsie asked the group. They had completed checking in and had dropped their “luggage” in their room. The bellhop had been taking every opportunity to eyeball the four women when he thought they were not looking, and he was clearly disappointed when they sent him on his way. “You could have at least invited the boy in,” she said with a grin.
“You would have killed the poor thing,” Lind said with certainty. “We have to minimize killing that goes against the master’s quota.”
“Let’s go hunting then!” Elsie said and bounced off of the bed. “I’m ready.”
“As a pack or alone?” Bethany asked.
“Alone,” Linda replied. “Hunt, but collect as much information as you can while hunting. We’ll meet back here at midnight.
Linda was the first to leave the hotel. It was warm, very warm, so she continued to wear the short skirt and sleeveless blouse she had worn earlier in the day despite the darkening sky. Her method of hunting was more like fishing, and when fishing, you have to present and wiggle the bait correctly to catch the big ones. The more she wiggled, the more her form was appreciated by the local men.
An older man exiting a store stared at her a little too long. “Why are you looking at that whore?” his jealous woman screamed at him and hit him with her bag. She spit in Linda’s general direction and hit him again.
Linda laughed and kept moving. She was only a few blocks from the hotel, and there was already one promising fish following her, and she didn’t want to lose him. His aura was evil. That was all she needed to know to reel him in for the kill. He followed carefully at a distance as he talked to someone on a cell phone. She ambled along the sidewalk while keeping an eye out for someplace she could duck into and take him out without being seen.
On the next block, before she could eliminate the man behind her, she noticed a small group of men was approaching her from the other direction. People scattered when they saw the group and got out of their way. The one in front smiled and put his cell phone away. Laughing, Linda went inside the small pawnshop she was passing by. There were three men inside and the owner behind the counter.
They stopped talking and looked her over when she entered, but they moved quickly when the group from the sidewalk opened the door and came in behind her. They lowered their eyes and exited meekly after skirting around them.
Linda walked up to the counter, “I find myself in need of a knife,” she said casually in Spanish while looking into the glass case between her and the proprietor. “That one looks promising,” she said, pointing at an eight-inch knife with a red leather handle.
The click of a spring assisted knife sounded loud in the quiet room as it extended out of her sight. The man behind the counter stepped back with a look of fear. “How does this one look?” the man who had been following her asked as he leaned into her backside and waved it in front of her face. She could feel the bulge in his pants settling into the crack of her butt through their clothes.
“It seems a little small,” she said, pushing back a little bit and grinding on him just a little.
“Bitch,” he snarled. He liked what she was doing to him, but insulting him in front of his men was going to cost her. “You’re going to feel all of it, soon enough,” he said and pressed the knife against her throat.
“You see this, right?” Linda asked the shopkeeper.
Her assailant laughed, “He doesn’t see anything ‘cause he knows what’s good for him,” he said as he began lifting her skirt. The others in the group smiled and leered. One man turned the open sign over to closed and locked the door.
“Make her pay, Carlos,” the sign flipper said.
“Nine against one hardly seems fair,” she said, and several of them laughed at her.
“Life isn’t fair,” Carlos said. With sudden realization, he exclaimed, “She’s not even wearing any underwear!” He let her skirt fall and began fumbling with his zipper with his one available hand.
While Carlos was distracted by his attempt to remove the clothing impeding his progress, Linda reached up and grabbed his wrist. She squeezed hard and moved his knife away from her throat. “As long as you are okay with an unfair fight, I won’t hold back,” she said. “I was going to ask you to invite more friends to make it fair.” Carlos stopped playing with his zipper when he realized she had easily taken control of his knife-hand.
Carlos could not help releasing a slight cry of anguish as she squeezed harder. His wrist was locked in Linda’s vice-like grip, and she turned to face him as she continued to squeeze harder and pressure built. He let out a scream as the bones in his wrist fractured, and the knife dropped from his hand. Linda caught it in her free hand. The other men in the room watched in fascination, unable to comprehend what was happening before their eyes as this petite woman manhandled their boss.
Linda released his hand and held the knife against her tongue and smiled broadly. “It’s a shitty blade, but I’ll kill you with it anyway,” she said to the group.
Linda’s former assailant cradled his wrist. “The Sinaloa Cartel will use your body to pleasure their men for months to come. You will wish you were dead long before you die,” Carlos spat. “Take her!” he commanded the men around him.
“Don’t promise me a good time and fail,” Linda said, grinning as they began to surge forward. She was anxious to get to work and began slicing them down.
Two of the men that had attacked her were not evil enough to kill, but you would be surprised what you could live through. Neither would ever walk again; she severed their spinal cords just above the hip with the tip of the knife and whispered in their ear, “Zetas forever!”
Their leader was still alive but unconscious when she was done fighting. She looked up to the shop owner. He had not moved at all during the struggle, and he cringed a little when she approached the counter. “So how much for that knife?” she asked.
Shocked by her question, he slowly reached in the case and placed it on top. “Take it, you will need it,” he said.
Linda noticed her reflection in one of the nearby mirrors and laughed. “I need a towel, too!” she exclaimed. “I like the look, but it will be hard to walk around in public like this. Oh, I need a large gym bag too,” she added.
The shopkeeper cautiously pointed to a nearby shelf, “Towels there, bags maybe over there,” he said, pointing to a second location. Linda helped herself to a decent second-hand towel and found a bag near some sports equipment that might work. The strap was worn, but it should hold.
Linda opened the bag and set it down next to the unconscious leader. She picked him up like he was light as a feather and stuffed him into the bag. Once it was zipped shut, she took the knife and tucked it into her waistband before hefting the bag. “How will you explain all this?” Linda asked, her curiosity was piqued.
“I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Who would believe me anyway?” he added and smiled for the first time since she had entered the shop.
“True,” she considered, “You do know what’s good for you,” she said and exited the shop. It was time to question this one back at the hotel.
Four men in black searched through the bags that had been left behind at the hotel while they waited for the women to return. Their van waited in the basement of the hotel. This was supposed to be a quick job, a simple abduction of four small American women, but they were not here when Juan and his men arrived.
The ding of the elevator alerted them of someone arriving on the floor, and women laughing could be heard as the door of the elevator opened.
“I only got six,” Bethany said, “but I dragged their deaths out and enjoyed them. There was no one around to hear their screams but me!”
“Lucky!” Elsie said. “I killed eight but it had to be quick and quiet, or the rest of their crew would have come after me. I would have had to kill against the quota if that had happened, so I was careful. I feel better though after letting off some steam.”
Alex pointed to the room. “I only managed to kill seven, but it looks like the night is not over, we have company,” she said. The door to their hotel room was open, and they walked in without concern to face the four evil men inside.
Juan could not believe how calmly the three women walked into the room and confronted them. He also could not believe how much blood was dried onto them, and it didn’t look like any of it was theirs.