Blood & Tacos #1 (13 page)

"Okay, but how do we get to the draw?"

Professor squinted at the dusk bruising the spine of the mountains, spoke evenly into the radio. "Understood. I don't owe you anything either. It never was about owing. You know that."

Jasper skittered his fingers along the yellow of the map, then skipped them into a green patch in its center. "Well, we just march right up this private road until we can see this here elevation, about 800 yards shy of it, and cut into the woods bearin' north-northeast from there."

Vaquero frowned. "What if Teague's people have advance snipers covering the road?"

"They don't," Jasper said."

"What if they do? What if they shoot us?"

"They won't."

Vaquero sighed. Wind and birds held their breath, and the only sound was the rumble of a monotone voice on Professor's radio.

It paused, and Professor was quick to answer. "That's right. This is about honor. That you can trust in."

His Tiger Team exchanged dismayed looks at his answer. Jasper was first to shrug it off and started circling his finger around the green patch, the target, on the map.

"Once we make it through the draw," Jasper said, "they'll have pickets around the main site."

"And, we can guess," Vaquero said, rocking on his snakeskin boot heels, "a house where they're holding Alexandra and your families."

"Right." Jasper couldn't smile at that. "We just slip in through the pickets, then make contact at the back of the house."

"Easy as that." Vaquero's tone was flat as a folded flag.

"Easy as that." Jasper said.

"I know we're putting our lives in your hands. Like I said, it's how it's always been. We'll see you soon." Professor keyed off the radio and turned to the stares of his men.

"Got the uniforms?" Professor Colonel asked Jasper, sending him rummaging in his Confederate-colored rucksack.

"How'd you get those anyway, Jasper?" Vaquero slipped off his jacket.

"I'm a person who knows people." Jasper snapped on a grin. "Besides, since the war, this stuff's just been collecting mold down inMississippi. Easiest thing in the world to pinch a few for the price of a case of beer."

"Let's suit up and hit it," Professor said.

Jasper was first to put his fist out. His voice had a heavy sobriety to it for once. It didn't weigh down his smile. "Intensity Level Bravo."

Professor nodded and held his knuckles to Jasper's. "All the way."

The others joined, completing the circle of fists. "All the way."

As countless times before, they broke ranks, suited up and marched into the woods as though they belonged to them.

Captain Teague turned from watching General Parkinson burn the ledgers in the trashcan. He stared at the mellow spill of Ozark forest out the bay window of his three-story lodge. Past the reflection of his glower, one eye slashed by a long-scar fromHanoishrapnel, the sight of mist-ringed trees rolling down the mountain soothed the disgust rising in him.

These dense and gauzy forests were a familiar sight. Teague chose this place as his hideaway after the war because of that familiarity. Their resemblance to the Central Highlands ofVietnammade living inAmericafeel less like being on an alien planet.

"Rotten cocksuckers," General Parkinson said, inspiring a nervous glance from the three MPs clutching M-16s by the study's doorways. "Can't even clean up a simple mess."

The sight of burning records brought a different familiar feeling to Teague. He kept it to himself. Telling Parkinson of how he'd watched Dial Soapers—rear echelon officers—burn records of the Tiger Teams at 5
^th
Special Forces Command beforeSaigon fell would be wasted on the general.

"I told you they'd be a hard target," Teague said, still standing sentinel at the window.

"Your team was supposed to be harder still," Parkinson snarled at him, dumping more files stuffed with Cartel payments and cocaine distributors' names into the trashcan blaze. "Fight fire with fire, right? You were supposed to beAmerica's best."

"We are," Teague said. His shoulders couldn't get any straighter. "But so are Tiger Team Bravo."

Parkinson scraped ash from his hands onto his dress greens. Gave Teague his worst Fort Bragg scowl. "I'd hoped the millions of dollars your Tiger Team Delta is tasked to protect were incentive enough to prevail."

"Millions in drug money."

"Don't play the innocent." Parkinson wadded his swollen features into red contempt. "Whether it was heroin from the Golden Triangle inLaosor coke fromColombia, black ops cash has to come from somewhere. Nothing changes."

"No," Teague said, turning from the window. "Nothing does."

Teague's radio buzzed. He answered it.

He listened, Parkinson staring fixedly at him. "That was Tomahawk," he told Parkinson. "They caught Tiger Team Bravo just outside the rear perimeter, trying to slip through disguised as Guardsmen. He's bringing them in"

"That's more like it." Parkinson shoved the grill of medals on his chest out to match his grin. "We'll get them to tell us where the Cartel records are. Then we'll liquidate them and the hostages and move out."

Parkinson looked around for a way to extinguish the burning files. He picked up a decanter of Glenfiddich ‘37, considered it, and then put it down. "Find me a way to put out this fire."

The study doors parted and Tiger Team Bravo were marched in at gunpoint. Flanked by four MPs, carrying their M-16 carbines, the team looked shaken and weary in shabby Guardsmen uniforms. Teague neither smiled or frowned to see them.

Parkinson stood astride Teague's Buddhist prayer mat, beaming.

"Well, you dumb son of a bitch," Parkinson said to Colonel Professor, who glowered back from below his skewed beret. "Got anything to say for yourself?"

Professor didn't reply. Parkinson's smile went fish-bone thin.

"You can start by telling me where those Cartel records are."

"I have only one thing to tell you," Colonel Professor said.

The smile didn't shift, but Parkinson's eyes readied some venom. It slipped into his tone. "What's that, Colonel?"

"It's time for some Bravo mojo."

Parkinson only had time to wrinkle his nose. The MPs that brought in Tiger Team were already tossing the carbines to them. In a single smooth motion, as if both teams were one, Tiger Team Bravo caught up their rifles and set them on Parkinson while their MPs drew sidearms and aimed them at Parkinson's men.

Parkinson's MPs dropped their hands from their holsters. Parkinson dropped his jaw.

"What the fuck is this?" Parkinson said.

"Fine work, Tiger Team Delta," Teague said to the MPs allied with Bravo.

From behind Banzai's left shoulder, Bear tipped the MP helmet he wore at his commander. "Our pleasure, boss. Good to be back on the right side."

"Get the greenhorns out of here," Colonel Professor ordered. At Teague's nod of agreement, the counterfeit MPs led Parkinson's men away with their white gloves raised high.

"What are you doing, you traitorous cocksucker?" General Parkinson roared at Teague, tone sour as the cigar scent staining his liver-hued lips. "Kill them all!"

He spun to find Teague holding Parkinson's own ivory-handled Colt on him. His gaze floated between his lost pistol and Teague's scowl as if deciding which was deadlier.

As Banzai shut the study doors, Tiger Team Bravo clustered around Parkison. Colonel Professor nodded at Teague.

"Captain," he said.

"Colonel," Teague replied in his coffin-groan of a voice. "I would say it was good to see you, but given the circumstances."

"Understood. Seems it's always that way, Captain."

"Yes it does, sir."

"Traitor," was all Parkinson could spit.

"This the fucker who stole my Pa?" Jasper poked the chill of his rifle barrel into Parkinson's neck.

"As if his kind hadn't already done enough to my grandparents," Banzai added, the burn of his glare showing even through the mirror shades.

"Traitors!" Parkinson bellowed. "All of you. Betraying your country."

"By surviving?" Colonel Professor held out his hand to Teague.

"By not betraying each other?" Teague filled Professor's grip with the General's Colt.

Parkinson's laugh had a disease in its cough. Stare stuck to Tiger Team Bravo like Agent Orange. "No, you fucking grunts. By not letting the war end when we told you to. By not doing as you were fucking told."

Colonel Professor put the Colt's sight on Parkinson's temple. His stare in reply, cool and heavy caliber. The Ozark wilderness outside a perfection of silence packaged in mist and memory.

"If there's one good thing we took from your war, General," Professor said, "it's each other."

Parkinson's lips split to speak. Professor saved the silence with a bullet through the general's skull.

The shot sped through both temples and out for the forest to keep. Parkinson's body shook the ash of the burning files as it fell. It sprawled stiff on the prayer mat, frozen to be forgotten on the floor above where Team Tiger Bravo's families waited to be joined.

THE END

Matthew C. Funk
is an editor of
Needle Magazine
,
editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine,
FictionDaily
,
and a staff writer for
Planet Fury
and
Criminal Complex
. Winner
of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has online
work indexed on his web domain and printed work in
Needle, Speedloader,
Off the Record, Pulp Ink
and
D*CKED.

By Nick Slosser

The year is 1982. Terrorist plots riddle the front pages of newspapers across
the globe: The 15 May Organization detonates a bomb on Pan Am Flight 830. The
Red Brigade kidnaps U.S. Brig. Gen. Dozier and holds him captive 42 days. Carlos
the Jackal instigates numerous bombings and a rocket attack on the Superphénix
nuclear power station. At such a time the world needs a hero…a hero like
Ben Slayton, T-Man.

Apparently 1982 is a time when treason comes cheap: a mere $10,000 will buy a U.S. Senator, such as Willard Parfrey (even though in 1982, U.S. Senators pulled down salaries of $69,800). For ten-grand Parfrey will deliver to known terrorists the travel itinerary of the President of the United States. The only possible reason for wanting this information is assassination, and the Senator knows it. Suffering doubts, Parfrey reminds himself that "the present Administration was unable to move effectively against inflation, social disparity, and economic strife," and comprise "a bunch of mealy-mouthed, candy-ass bureaucrats." Which is enough to rationalize selling out his country and scampering off "to Rio de Janeiro with a wallet bulging with C-notes."

Of course, Parfrey will never get to Rio, because he's thrown in with terrorists of the most venomous breed: "Right-wingers," Slayton affirms, "completely bananas." Like Colonel Kurtz, these ex-Special Forces men have gone off the reservation to carry out their own radical campaign and adhere to no recognizable morality. These are Slayton's opponents in a game where Death holds all the cards. But the seasoned T-Man is no babe-in-the-woods. So when Bambi, a streetwalker with everything to lose, joins Slayton and gets herself brutally murdered, the icy-veined super-agent has only this to say: "Just another casualty of war, I guess."

And make no mistake, war has been declared. Using a highly specialized explosive device, the terrorists stamp their first message on the back of Lincoln's statue, calling for "all-out revolution without partial solutions or constructive change".

To further demonstrate our nation's impotence, the terrorists strike America right in the metaphoric groin: the Washington Monument. But that very display of alpha-masculinity highlights the terrorists' true weakness: they are lesser men; their pseudo-machismo falls flat.

While the terrorists are busy assaulting a symbolic phallus, Ben Slayton gets busy with his actual phallus on one gorgeous, blonde reporter named Wilma Christian, as if warming up for the contest to follow. "Penetrating her from the rear while she lay face down, panting…Slayton propelled her slowly around the bed in a circle until they both collapsed in a pile of sweating, satisfied flesh and savaged bedding." Because that's how a real man loves.