Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (25 page)

"I thought I was in charge,” I said, sitting at a small table set up in the kitchen. I put my hands on it and though it looked like varnished wood, it felt plastic. It weighed almost nothing. One of the older women put a plate with fork, knife, and napkin piled on it.

"Do you speak any language they speak? Like Russian?"

They set a coffee mug in front of me with some biscuits I plopped in my mouth.

"You make a good point. Consider yourself the new owner of Castle Badass."

"That's a pretty crappy name."

I drank back the hot coffee, feeling the warmth returning to my body.

"Talk to the marketing department," I said. "We engineers aren't paid for creative naming."

"Well, can I ask what the point of this whole thing is? I mean, you can't expect to remain here for long. You are kind of wanted."

"I can't talk about it here," I said, looking around the kitchen.

"Let me guess," she said, a sarcastic tone staining her voice. "Upstairs in your room."

"I've seen you naked, Madelyne Hughes. Don't think I need trickery to get you in your birthday suit."

She grinned, trying to hide it behind her coffee. "I was trying to use my wiles against a known villain."

I studied her breasts, "Is that what you call them? Wiles?"

"You are a foul man."

"I try," I said. "And the castle isn't for ego gratification. I've got a plan to deal with our unpleasant mechanical friend."

"I see."

I nodded, saluting her with the coffee. "Best left unsaid the better."

"I'll have you know," she said. "Our mutual friend Jeff is on the case. If it could have been done, he would have found a way."

"Your friend, Apogee. Don't talk to me about that guy."

She leaned forward and put her hand on my arm, "Don't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because-"

"The guy turned me in."

Apogee squeezed my wrist. "The only one of us that has a reason to be upset with Superdynamic is me, Dale. The sonofabitch conveniently sends me on a fool’s errand the same day he does what he did."

"That's what I mean," I said.

She glanced around the kitchen, noting that the gypsies were staring at us and lowered her voice. “You forgave me.”

"It's not the same thing. It’s-“

Madelyne shook her head ever so slightly, enough to pause me. “He did what he had to, Dale. He’s responsible for the well-being of thousands and he couldn’t risk that for-“

“I know what he’s responsible for, goddammit,” I seethed, knowing what she was asking me. If I could forgive her, then letting go of my anger for Superdynamic should be an easy thing. He had saved my life, after all.

“You have to understand he didn't have a choice. Protecting you would have destroyed everything he’s built.”

I laughed, “Then let me burst his bubble, and yours. Things are bad right now. There are a dozen guys like Brutal out there, and hundreds of others as tough as any of us. Now’s not the time to get picky with your friends.”

"Dale, dammit!" she said and punched the table.

"I would have never done that to either of you. Or to Moe...Hell, to anyone."

Apogee looked down at the table, her finger tapping a hollow beat. “You don't understand," she said, exhaling in defeat.

"Oh, I do. The almost dad in law got to you," I said, banging the table and shuffling up the stairs. She raced after me and grabbed my arm.

"Stop, dammit."

"Or what?"

"Please don't do this..."

Madelyne looked so fragile, her face so tender. It was disarming to see her near tears again. If Haha were here, he would tell me of a scientific study that said women's tears had some sort of chemical that inhibited men's testosterone production temporarily, or start talking about her and my fecundity. The science of it be damned because having her this close, smelling the fragrance of her hair, feeling her breath against my chest, I couldn't be angry with her. I understood it all.

"I don't want to," I said, moving in and taking her in my arms. She let me, her hands resting gently on my biceps, her breasts pressing against my chest.

"Then don't," she said her eyes dancing from mine to my lips.

I crossed the gap between us and kissed her, and her hands raced to my face, caressing my cheek as we probed each other, writhed against each other. She became intense, pressing hard against me, rubbing her hips against my crotch, her hands rubbing my neck and shoulders.

"Easy," I said. “I’m injured, remember?" But she was breathless, attacking, almost angry, leading me back up the stairs toward the room.

"I'll try not to break you too much," she said, her hands were clawing and digging, her midsection hunting for me. I wanted to let myself go, but at this pace, we were never going to make it to the room. She grabbed my shirt hard and I could hear the material straining and popping as she bit my lip and dug her tongue into my mouth.

I tried to double over and pick her up but Madelyne was rabid, pressing me back, overwhelming my senses as we shuffled up the final flight of stairs to the top landing, my door just a few paces away. She ripped my shirt off once and for all and kissed my shoulder and deltoid, then leaned back and took off her jacket and started on the buttons of her shirt, discarding it as well.

I turned and opened the door as I went into the room and she closed it behind her, stripping off her bra and unbuttoning her pants with a fiendish look on her face.

"Get on the bed," she said, and I stumbled back at her command, taking off my pants and sitting on the edge.

Apogee slipped her skinny jeans and pushed me back, cradling me and rubbing on me through her panties. I tried to sit up, but she leaned forward and put her hands on my shoulders, and without warning, she paused, her eyes on my chest.

"What is that?" she asked, her attention on a nasty scar that crossed my left pectoral. I leaned up to see before answering.

“Zundergrub. He left me these beauties as well," I said, pointing out the deep, jagged gash on my forearm and the slash on my face.

She kneaded my midsection, her fingers strong and supple, moving with methodical grace and passion as she worked her way to the newer wounds. “That was Blackjack 2.0,” I said. She looked at me questioningly, and I added, “That’s what I was calling him.” I ran a couple of fingers across the generous shiner that was still swelling and said, “This one too.”

She leaned back, her flawless beauty on full display, and touched three scars on her belly. I knew those well, gifts from Zundergrub, given with the same dagger that he had used on me. I laid a finger on one, the skin dimpling under my touch. I caressed them in small circles until she took my hand and laid it on her breast, cupping it as she let go, then reached over and did the same with my other hand.

"We're bound together, you and I," she whispered, I saw her hand disappear, and with a quick tug, my boxers were gone, their shredded remains fluttering to the floor as she guided me inside her. Madelyne descended slowly as I filled her, bending down to kiss me, then as her hips settled flush onto mine she arched back, her eyes meeting mine.

"What?" I said.

"Shut up," she said, closing her eyes. "I'm trying to imagine you with eyebrows."

Castle Blackjack was a 90% size replica of Castle Peles, a neo-Renaissance palatial alpine villa built by King Carol I in the early 1800s. Their effort had taken 300 craftsmen over thirty years at a cost of near $120 million and it still stood to this day in the Transylvanian/Wallachian border of the Carpathians. My copy took about two million dollars and a thousand drones about ten hours to build, including piping for water - which we were stealing from the local supply and electricity throughout.

The drones worked in unison, with different materials, including soft-fiber plastics to replicate the rugs and tapestries, and color dyes to differentiate some material appearances, like the interior courtyard facades, hand-painted murals and ornate fachwerk. The interior decorations were influenced by Baroque styles, with detailed carved woods and exquisite fabrics.

My only regret was not being here to see the thing go up.

The private areas were the only place where I allowed some flair, copying the Penthouse of the Pierre Hotel in New York City as best as my 3D skills allowed. There were plenty of programs online that allowed me to extrude a 3D model from the 2d images I was able to find, and I did my best populating the space with decorations and furniture to match. As it was we had a large receiving room with wooden floors, high arched ceilings and glass windows on all sides, with a series of couches atop a large Persian rug – made of soft, malleable plastic, of course – a full sized pool table splitting the room and a conference area on the far side, just before the entrance to the actual room, which was a 10,000 square foot monstrosity with a private sitting area, a wooden table for four and a bed large enough for a 6’5” man to lose himself in.

It took me a second to see that Apogee had woken and was looking at me. She turned on her back and looked around the room. “You don’t do anything half way.”

“Nope,” I said. “Villain needs a proper castle.”

“That shit isn’t funny, Dale,” she said, propping up on an elbow to catch my eye. “This is why people don’t trust you. You do things because you think it’s a good idea, without considering the consequences.”

The street in Amsterdam flashed into my head, the pain still raw and fresh. A well-dressed dead man stared at nothing. I hadn’t even taken a second to close his eyes before I stole his phone and tore off into the sky. “That’s not true.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Why else would you build this thing? And the drones? Those things are dangerous.”

“I built the castle to trap Haha,” I said in a low voice, trying not to argue. “The whole place is a complex server. I was going to use it to sever his connection to the botnets.”

She was quiet a long time, then said, “Will it work?”

“I won’t know until I try,” I said with a shrug. “But it doesn’t matter anyways, I’m going to take it all down.”

“Why,” she said. “Why bother to build it and not even try?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I dealt with my doppelganger, and Haha is nothing compared to Brutal.”

“I’ve been getting the reports,” she said. “My charitable foundations are funneling resources to Amsterdam. None of that is your concern Dale, or your fault.”

“Not entirely my fault, Maddie, but I had a part in it. And you didn’t see him at work. Brutal. It was awful.”

“Well now he’ll have the world to deal with. Battle, Epic and his new team, they’re going to catch him and bury him deep.”

I was shaking my head as she spoke, “No, Maddie, you don’t get it. He’s too powerful. He killed all those people in a heartbeat, at the same time, from miles away. I got a taste of it and it was painful, but it didn’t kill me. Maybe I can get close to him, finish him off before he can kill anyone else.”

“Haha is your responsibility,” she said. “You fuel his lunacy, and he’s out there killing people trying to prove you wrong.”

“I know, but this thing with Brutal is important.”

“I’m not arguing with you on that, but it’s not your job to handle it. Haha is just as dangerous and you have a plan. Spring it and catch the bastard.”

“It won’t work,” I said. “Bubu’s idiot IT guys used the wrong model. This place is a palace, and I needed a fortress. It’s not defensible enough.”

“That might be true if you were alone, but now I’m here.”

“I don’t want you hurt,” I said.

She looked down her nose at me, her eyes hard and implacable, “Think hard before you say another word.”

Seeing all roads leading to the same answer, I held my hand up in defeat. “We do it together.”

“Exactly,” she said, leaning in and kissing me. Pushing me down on the bed, she swung a leg around again and I surrendered to bliss.

Afterward, I lay awake, watching her sleep. I wanted to ask her about Senator Ashbourne; about what pressure he had put on her the first time around. I had killed his only son, and he was the man who was most responsible for the propagation of heroes, and the harsh incarceration of villains. Utopia had been his idea, brought to life, and as far as he was concerned, I deserved nothing better. It made me think of Brutal’s anger, his inability to wreak vengeance upon the man who hurt him.

Ashbourne could bring formidable resources to bear. He was beloved and respected, both in the hero community and the federal government. A man in that position never lacked favors or agenda, and his influence was near limitless. I couldn’t just punch him and be done with it. He was king of the mountain and, if the analogy was applied, I was a peon to be tossed aside.

And I had killed his son.

Apogee rolled over, her eyes fluttering and smiled when she saw me leaning up against the pillows. “It still hurts?” she murmured, her hand stroking my injured and re-wrapped ribcage.

I leaned over, groaning from the gesture and rubbed her back.

“A little,” I said. “Sorry I’m not myself.”

She smiled, “Bad sex is better than no sex.”

“Really?” I said, a bit stung by the comment, but I knew I wasn’t worth much at the moment.

She rolled back, “No eyebrows? I mean, thankfully the stubble is coming back but…you’re asking a lot of me.”

“You didn’t seem to mind,” I said, realizing she was joking.

“A girl gets horny,” she whispered and let herself slip back to sleep.

I kissed her shoulder and eased off the bed, hearing the click clacking of pool balls from the antechamber. I dressed and came out of the room, watching Bubu play. His skill evident by the way he held the stick, how he moved around the table searching for the next shot. He took his time lining up the shot, and hit the cue ball only hard enough to set up his next shot.

He was working the tip of his cue with a small chalk cube when he saw me. “You are a god among men, my friend,” he said, pausing long enough to salute me with the stick.

“I can barely walk,” I said, though my ankle was benefiting from a warm bed and plenty of food.

“It doesn’t affect you in bed,” Bubu said dropping the nine-ball and finishing the game. He lay the stick down and started emptying the pockets. “And what a woman. I salute you.”

“Thanks, I guess. Want to play one?”

He looked up at me, an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

“You play,” he said as he bent over and threw the balls into nine-ball configuration with ease that comes from repetition.

“A little.” I took a stick from the wall and chalked the tip.

“Want the break,” he offered.

I shrugged, “All yours.”

“You sure?”

“Go ahead,” I said, leaning against the back of a couch.

“You still mad at me?” he said, preparing the break.

A heavyset young girl came up and asked Bubu if we wanted drinks and he told her to prepare some whiskeys for us. She bowed her head and went to the bar on the far side of the room and went to work.

“Not, not any more,” I said. “We’ll make it work.”

The girl placed a pair of tumblers on a small high top table. They looked like glass, and only when I picked it up and heard the ice clink against the sides did I believe it was made of synthetics. “Where is Lala anyway,” I said as he threw his shoulder forward and struck the cue ball into the set in a violent break. The balls bounced around the green felt, dropping the two and the eight to start the game.

“Nice shot,” I said.

Bubu chuckled to himself as he chalked the stick and moved across the table from me, “I gave you a chance at the break, bro. Anyway, Lala is watching the house in the village. The 3D printers are back there, still working. I got a bunch of materials and the boys keep feeding the machines.”

“And your IT guys?”

“They’re staying at the house, in your old room. They’re watching stuff to make sure it doesn’t fuck up. We’re connected up there with a closed network. No internet yet.”

He sank the one ball on an easy cross shot and setup nicely for an angle at a corner shot for the three ball.

“Okay,” I said. “But why is she there?”

Bubu pointed into the bedroom.

“Apogee?”

He nodded, “She got one look at Lala and sent her off. She knows you well, bro.”

I scratched the stubble forming atop my head.

“Too pretty, huh?”

Bubu laughed, “Made her put on a bra too. I thought Lala was going to fight her, but your girl is too tough. She took charge in one minute.”

“And everyone else?”

He dropped the three ball, the cue ball kissing off the wall, coming to a rest in position for a hard, but makeable shot on the four.

“Damn,” he said, complaining at his bad setup. “I told you they’re like cockroaches, bro. But it’s like in the old days. They’d show up and do the shit the master didn’t want.”

Bubu had to sit on the table and bring the stick around his back for the shot but he drilled the four and dropped it. The six also went in on an impossible angle in the side pocket, and he was left with a straight shot at the five in the corner.

“Wow, lucky,” he said. “Anyway the boys didn’t realize things were gonna go so fast. The drones don’t stop bro.”

“That’s why I thought of them. Is there a way to contact Sebas and the boys?”

He pulled out his phone.

“Not now,” I said, waving him off and he put the phone on the rails, taking a long time to line up the easy three shot. “When we finish the game, I want you to call them, and we need to evacuate the place. All the staff has to go.”

With a hard hit, low on the cue ball, he sunk the three ball and reverse spun the white ball back for an easy hit on the nine, sitting close to the opposite side pocket, ending the game.

“Jesus, what a shot.”

“Told you to break,” he said, spreading chalk on the tip of his stick. “So what do I tell the guys to do?”

I smiled, “Time to weaponize the drones.”

*              *              *              *

I figured we’d have Haha on site within an hour of connecting our system to the web. He had tracked me to Amsterdam, and he would track me here, bringing the full fury of his team when he did.

It was a simple process, to attach one of several weapon modules onto the builder drones. The only problem was the added weight making each one of the little guys somewhat unstable. But even with an erratic flight platform, there were so many drones that it wouldn’t much matter. I had implemented basic facial recognition software that would interface with Interpol’s database of super villains, an added benefit that wouldn’t be available to me until I put the whole system online. The drones were ubiquitous, working all over the property, so much so that after a while, you forgot about them; and soon they would be a lethal force. Combined with the trap rooms, I hoped they would equalize the playing field.

On my word, Sebas initiated the command to weaponize the larger drones and they scattered, stopping their tasks to queue up for the weapon module attachment process. One by one, they would be upgraded with one of several weapons systems, including a short-range 100,000 volt Taser, a longer range .50 caliber single shot gun system, and an explosive kamikaze charge with the explosive force of a tenth of a stick of dynamite. A slight charge to say the least, but one hundred of those converging on a single target would cause serious damage. I also had a master command drone; a backup would never be more than a dozen yards from me. It would relay all my wishes to the rest of the drone army.

The armed drones should be able to handle a couple of the weaker members of Haha’s team. The traps built into the castle would split the rest of them up and Apogee and I would deal with them. I had suggested we split up and deal with them individually, an idea she had scoffed at, lecturing about the value of teamwork like a rookie. I wasn’t prepared to argue with a pro like her. We would do it together.

Of course, the whole thing was window dressing, an opening act meant to entice the main event. A lot was riding on Haha snatching the honey pot, and the strength of my code but I was confident it would work.

I had no choice.

Bubu and I took a brief tour of the entryway – a gorgeous multistory foyer dubbed “The Hall of Honor” in the real Castle Peles. Haha’s team would come in through the main entrance and I would meet them there, several stories up, looking down on them like a good villain should. The next step would be to parlay, to threaten each other, then the fight would begin, and so would my little game.