Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (17 page)

No one spoke.

“Then don’t sneak into my fucking house in the middle of the night and put your hands on my people,” I said pointing at Bubu.

Without much of a buildup, I reached over and grabbed the guy that had restrained Bubu, grasping him by the heavy coat’s collar, and lifted him in the air.

“Can you fly?”

The man groaned, the strain of the clothes pressing against his body.

“Probably not. Well, you put your hands on my friend again, and I’ll throw you off a cliff,” I said, bringing the man closer to me. He had a heavy beard, with the stench of beer and menthol cigarettes. He also had the bluest eyes I had ever seen.

The woman translated and the man shook his head, no.

“She cooks,” I told the young woman. “What do they do?”

“Hunt,” she said.

I nodded and put the man down.

“Hunt me something for lunch,” I said to the two men.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I do,” the girl said.

“I know what you’re good for,” I said, turning away and headed to the stairs. “Have breakfast ready for me by the time I get down.”

Bubu caught up with me in my room, as I was throwing on briefs.

“Bro, you’re kidding me right,” he said. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

I sat on the rumpled bed and threw a leg into my jeans.

“We need people to clean up,” I said, waving my arms about. “Or are you going to clean the toilets once a week?”

He recoiled, as if I had shot him in the chest. “That’s not what I mean,” he said after gathering himself. “These are Roma. Gypsies. They’re bad news, man. Dirty thieves, they’ll steal all your shit.”

“I don’t care about that,” I said. “I don’t care about you and your mark ups either.”

Bubu turned defensive, “Bro I give you prices that-“

“I told you I don’t care,” I said buttoning my pants and throwing on a shirt.

“If you need girls to fuck, bro, I can find you girls. And not old and skinny like that one.”

“She’ll do,” I said.

“She has a funny hook nose,” he said. “And no tits.” I looked at him, but said nothing. His frustration was brimming as I threw on my boots without bothering to lace them up, and headed for the stairs. “They’re shit people,” he said. “Cast-offs. Reject shit from society that no one wants around.”

I stopped, halfway to the stairs.

“They’re just like me,” I said, looking back at him so he understood. After a moment’s pause, he gave me a small nod and I went downstairs to eat.

*              *              *              *

Onas was the old guy whose gun I had turned to scrap, Vandilo was the younger guy, whom I had Vadered for effect. The older woman was Vertina. Her cousin had rented us the house, which is how they knew we were here. The younger woman was Lala, and it was clear that despite her youth, she was in charge, though Onas thought different.

He and Vandilo were there, picking at the massive feast Vertina and Lala had laid out at the table. They nodded at me and left, snagging a few rolls of bread on the way out. Bubu came downstairs a moment later, taking the steps as slowly as he could.

I took a seat at the head of the table, and Vertina put a napkin around my neck as Lala placed a plate before me, and brought over a tray of scrambled eggs. She served me as Bubu took off his coat, placing it on the back of his chair as he sat across from me. I didn’t miss the deadly glare Lala shot him as she used a spatula to shovel a mountain of eggs onto my plate, and placed the tray back in its place on the table, without offering any to Bubu.

“Ask them how much they want a week,” I said.

Bubu laughed at the gypsy woman’s slight, mumbling something in Romanian as he reached for the food. Whatever he said made Vertina gasp in shock and Lala respond super-fast in Romanian. He slammed his fist on the table and rose from his seat, arguing back, but both were talking at the same time, and even the older woman joined the chorus with a low grumble.

I let it go, digging into the eggs and reaching for a handful of sausages. I chomped on one when Bubu took it too far, using the word “putana”. It wasn’t too hard figure out what it meant, from the women’s shocked expressions, and Lala’s ashen face.

“Well,” I said, still chewing. “I’m glad we got that out of our systems.”

They all looked at me, perturbed. I ripped a handful of bread from a fresh-made loaf and stuffed it in my mouth.

“Let’s not do it again, okay?”

“He called me a whore,” Lala said, her face wracked with a murderous rage.

“Bubu?”

“Bro, she thinks-“

“Bubu,” I said, this time with a little more fire in my voice. “Don’t call her that.”

He was about to argue, but instead filled his plate to the brim with food and ate in silence.

“Lala,” I said. “Bubu is in charge. You and your people can stay, but he runs the show. If you don’t like it, leave now.”

The rest of breakfast was much quieter.

*              *              *              *

With a full stomach, Bubu assisting, and Lala bringing us coffee and snacks at regular intervals, I finished the extruder head in just under two hours. The trick to this machine was being able to inject multiple types of materials at the same time, drawing from the varied reservoirs, in order to make the drone maker machines in one shot. The second-generation makers would work to make the swarm, spitting out smaller drones every hour or two. With ten running full time, I’d have the castle up in a few weeks.

I could have gotten fancy, Mr. Haha-style, manufacturing the metals and plastics from the trees, rock, and dirt gathered from the surrounding countryside, but it was easier to buy the raw materials from Bubu’s contacts. Romania was full of surprises, and Bubu knew just about everyone. He didn’t even flinched when I told him we needed spooled plastic for the 3d printers. Lala dropped off a plate of biscuits, trading nasty looks with Bubu as she left. I grabbed one and bit down, munching on floury dough, happy for the carbs, but Bubu took one and tore it in half, steam billowing from within. I gave him a look and he said, “Checking for razor blades, bro.”

I rolled my eyes and shrugged, grabbing another biscuit and downing it in one mouthful. I knew I couldn’t make him comfortable around them, and watching his paranoia was kind of funny considering the real danger looming just over the horizon.

“They could steal all of our shit in one night,” he said. “We’ll wake up and they stole our dicks.”

He continued to vent, but was well behaved when the men came back a few hours later, a deer draped over Vandilo’s shoulder. They each carried a rifle, but left them by the door, and presented the deer – already cut open and cleared of the innards. I nodded and they took the carcass out back to butcher it for dinner.

As they went outside, I put the finishing touches on the machine. The extruder head done, I went over the electrical system, making sure everything was ready. Once it was set, I fired up the heaters in the metal reservoirs and dropped a bar of aluminum into one, and a bar of steel into the other. Once they started melting, I put a bar of polystyrene into the plastic reservoir, and ran through the schematics saved on my laptop, looking for something to create. I decided on something simple to start.

“Is it ready,” Bubu said, taking a peek at the laptop from over my shoulder.

“Almost,” I said, throwing more materials into the reservoirs. They could hold quite a bit, but I wanted to start slowly.

I cracked Seven open and checked the nozzle carriage, making sure it was screwed on tight. Then I slammed it shut and went back to the laptop.

“Let’s do it.”

*              *              *              *

It was slower than I had envisioned, taking almost three hours to build the riser handle of a recurve bow. It was still hot when I pulled it off the base plate. The plastic was hard, interlaid with the heavier metals in 4-micron layers. I tossed it to Bubu, who brought it in close for inspection, then holding an end in each hand, tried to bend it. Despite still being hot, the handle didn’t snap, flexing generously under pressure.

“Very nice,” he said. “What about the rest of it?”

I went to the laptop and set it to work, making the next item.

“We’ll make it next time,” I said. “That was just a test.”

“Why not finish the bow?”

I reached over for my cup of coffee and drained it. “This big machine is going to make smaller machines,” I said, lifting the cup in thanks once he was done pouring. “That’s why the raw materials it uses are so simple; plastic and metal. The next ones will use all kinds of interesting stuff, including some fancy polymers we’re going to hand-craft.”

He nodded, looking at the laptop’s screen.

“We’ll finish the bow later,” I said, choosing one of the designs I had worked on for days, and set the machine to run. Based on how long a simple part had taken, we were in for a few days wait. I dropped a few bars of polymer into the reservoir and left the lab.

“Let’s go for a drive,” I said, heading outside. “I want to see the site again.”

As we stepped outside, six SUV’s raced towards the townhouse, tires chewing the road as they came to a halt. Each one held at least four guys, all in track suits with hard faces as they formed a loose perimeter around us. In the middle, lighting a cigarette for maximum effect was the general. He whispered with Dorin who stood close behind him, never looking away from us, not waiting for Dorin’s nod before walking towards the townhouse.

“Bubu, go inside,” I said. None of the men looked armed, which meant they were all armed. Then again, twenty to one seemed like good odds for dealing with a shit head American.

“Stay Bubu,” the general said, as if he were speaking to a dog, and a few of the guys behind him smiled.

“You’re not in charge here, Mihai,” I said, feeling a hot edge scraping at my patience. The printer was working, the castle would be up in a week, maybe less. I did not have time for this.

The general chuckled as he walked towards me, the smoke blowing into the wind like this was some crap eighties action movie. He looked over his shoulder, then back at me and grunted in dismissal. He turned to Bubu and shook his head grimly, his eyes were two chips of steel.

“You have something to say,” I said. “You say it to me. Bubu’s got nothing to do with it.”

The general shook his head, without losing eye contact with Bubu. “He brought you to me. If something is wrong, it’s his problem. He knows this when he brings you to me.”

Bubu started speaking to them in Romanian, his tone hard to pin, but halfway through the general started shaking his head. He waved Bubu to silence, the cigarette leaving a smoky trail as it danced in his hand. “Bubu knows the price,” the general said, his tone stony. “If he cannot pay, maybe his pretty wife has something we can use.”

I took a step into the general’s airspace, looming over him. “I thought we agreed that his family was off-limits.”

The general took a step back, the cigarette tumbling to the pavement. The gathered thugs closed in a step, some of them hesitating. They didn’t know how to react unless ordered. All I had to do was beat the general and he was half finished. I cowed him in front of his men, and he knew it. His confident mask cracked for a heartbeat, but he recovered before they could see.

Dorin was at the general’s shoulder a moment later, but was waved off with such ferocity, I thought the old man might turn and slug him. There was a subtler game going on here, one where Dorin had just won a little something at the general’s expense.

The general stood and barked an order and there were guns everywhere. Semi-automatic pistols, UZIs and AKs, one of the idiots even had an RPG, and they were all pointed in our direction. I stepped in front of Bubu who moved closer to the open door.

I heard a clack from behind me and though I saw neither man, rifle muzzles jutted inches out of the upstairs windows. I saw them pan the width of the window frame, while some of the general’s men took aim at them. Bubu said, “Bro, get inside,” and followed his own advice, running into house. Mihai screamed something and the gunfire started. The first shot hit me center mass, and I saw it flatten against my sternum, sticking to my skin through the hole in my shirt. A barrage followed, and while they succeeded in destroying my clothes, none of the rounds penetrated my thick skin. The guy with the RPG let it fly and I didn’t even move, letting my skin tank the awful explosion.

When the smoke cleared, I was mostly naked, but my skin was pristine.

“You know, I’ve really been trying,” I said strolling forward, as the men reloaded. “I just wanted to lay low and do my thing.” The gunfire started again, less aggressively as I had created crossfire with my casual walk into their kill box. “I even found a way to stomach you skeevy fuckers.” One of the thugs shooting at me fell over from a wound that transected his chest, blood gushing onto the dirty road as the man quivered then was still. “But a man has his limits,” I said, reaching Mihai, who had fallen back to the SUV’s, a Desert Eagle held in a solid, two-handed grip. He shot me twice in the face, both rounds caroming off my thick skull. I grabbed a double handful of his track suit, the supple fabric stretching between my fingers. “And I told you not to threaten his family again.” Twisting at the hips, I heaved, putting the energy I would need to move a tank into hurling the dumpy old man. There was no resistance, he was there and then he wasn’t. I followed his track as he flew in a soaring parabolic arc until I lost him, a pinprick against the dusky sky. Everything stopped; the echoes of gunfire swallowed by the early evening. Mihai’s men were looking skyward, as if waiting for him to fall back to earth. Chances were he got enough altitude that a crosswind hooked him. There was no way to tell where he would settle. That’s a lie, I could do the math, I just didn’t care.