Mackie's Men Page 4

  It had been a long time since she had been intimate with a man. Years in fact, before she joined the agency, before she got all the scars decorating her skin now. The long thin lines on her back were gifts from the slavers. At the age of ten she had been abducted and used as a slave by a drug selling gang, along with six other children, to package their poison white powder. Mackie and the rest of the children learned to keep their heads down and their hands busy to avoid being whipped. Unfortunately she had been born a protector and had gotten beatings many times for interfering with another child’s punishment. She was one of the three children who were saved during a bloody turf war. The gang’s rivals showed up one day and opened fire on the gang that held her and the other children.

  When they heard the gunfire, the three girls had huddled together in the dingy room in a corner until the shooting stopped and no further noise could be heard. It seemed like hours before she got up and opened the door to see what had happened. The seven people in the next room were in various positions around the tables and chairs, they had been killed before they understood what was going on. Mackie watched as Renaldo limped around the room gathering as much money as he could carry in his plastic grocery bag. She thought it strange at the time that he never looked back when he slowly opened the door and cautiously peeked around it to check and see if the rivals had left the area before slipping outside.

  Mackie had turned fifteen by then. Her companions, Carmen and Flora, were fourteen-year-old twins. The girls had cautiously gathered the messy stacks of twenties and hundred dollar bills and filled a backpack for each of them. Carmen and Flora wanted to go home to their family and, after the girls found clean clothing in a closet where their keepers had slept, they slipped out of the building. Mackie went with them to the bus station and watched as they boarded the bus to take them back to San Antonio. Mackie had no home to go to. Her parents were a distant memory. She had been taken from a foster home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

  After leaving the bus station, Mackie decided to go back to the small dingy house and wait until morning to decide what she was going to do. Her back was still bloody from the whipping that Carlos enjoyed giving her almost daily now. She left the bodies where they laid and started going through several envelopes of papers. Some looked like deeds to land, some were I.O.U’s from the junkies and dope peddlers that visited the little house each time a new batch of drugs were delivered. She gathered the things she thought were deeds and the rest of the larger denomination bills. By the time she was ready to leave, she had to figure out how to carry the three heavy black totes full of cash and papers. She didn’t know how to drive so taking one of the many vehicles in the driveway wasn’t an option, she searched the house looking for inspiration and found a large suitcase with a handle and wheels to transfer the heavy cache into so she was left with a large suitcase and a messenger bag.

  She left the only home she had known for years that afternoon taking Bianca’s state identification with her. Bianca had been one of the slave children until Jorge decided that she would make a good bed companion and took her into his room. Within a few weeks Bianca was an addict. She always sported bruises on her limbs and face but the white powder made the pain go away. She remembered the way Jorge would make Bianca crawl on her hands and knees to beg for the white poison. First he would tell her to lick his cock and he would sprinkle the powder over the surface of his damp flesh and tell her to pull the cheeks of her ass wide for her reward. He would slam his hard cock into her cunt or asshole, whichever slot his thick cock hit first, and she would scream and beg him for more as he brutally forced himself inside of her body. Two days before, she watched as he gave her to two of his friends as she begged for the drug and one man laid down forcing her to straddle his small cock while the other shoved his into her rear hole. Jorge shoved his cock into her mouth, pulled it out, and dipped it into a small plastic tub of the powder, coating his thick cock from head to pubic hair. Bianca swallowed his cock down her throat and her body went wild.

  The men slapped her all over her body and Jorge yanked her hair back and forth while choking her on his hardness. When the three men had finished, Bianca offered herself to every man in the room. When Jorge pulled her into the bathroom, Mackie could hear the water flowing from the shower and Bianca kept begging for more. Jorge dragged her back into the room and pushed her down onto the table. He spread her legs and took a straw that he filled with the powder before inserting it into Bianca’s cunt. He blew the powder into her passage and sat down between her legs. He shoved her knees up to her naked breasts and pinched her nipples cruelly while his hands were there, his fingers pulled the hairy lips of her pussy apart and his mouth covered her hole. He sucked and tongued her as her body shook. When he had gotten all of the cocaine laced juice from her cunt that he could, he stood over her and pushed his fingers into her cunt.

  He laughed as she squealed and Renaldo took the opportunity to push his hard cock into her mouth as he grabbed her hair then shoved her head down further onto his length, he allowed her to breathe and shoved her head back, time after time, while Jorge worked his entire hand into her abused pussy. The men finally tired of their game and after showering Bianca with their sperm left her lying there on the table playing with her own nipples and singing a nursery rhyme. Before Mackie left the house, she covered Bianca with a sheet and said a clumsy prayer to a God that had no meaning for her.

  Mackie wondered still now how she had survived those first two weeks at a rundown no tell motel in Houston, Texas. If she hadn’t met Louisa Vaught, it probably wouldn’t have gone nearly as well. The woman was homeless. She worked as a maid at the hotel, when a room became empty she would clean the room and put clean sheets on the bed. One day when she was leaving the building, Mackie had a brilliant idea. Louisa was older than she was and Mackie had enough money and deeds to seven properties. She invited the woman into her room and after an hour of not so subtle questioning, Louisa had point blank asked Mackie what this was all about. A week later Louisa Vaught and her younger sister, Maxine, moved into a modest home in one of the nicer neighborhoods of Reno, Nevada.

  Mackie then thought about the bullet wounds and knife wounds from the many missions she was sent on in the past ten years. Who needs tattoos when her skin was decorated by so many pink scars in varying stages of the color. Being tortured for information about classified documents with a box cutter almost broke her. She knew the long thin scars would be with her for the rest of her life. Her torturers had left her for dead not realizing that none of the slices were deep enough to kill her even if they did bleed like crazy. Mackie hadn’t felt the slices at first until one creative bastard slapped her and poured a bottle of whiskey over the wounds and laughed while she screamed.

  The three bullet wound scars were from a drive-by assassination attempt on a United States Senator visiting Iraq. Mackie had the misfortune to be the first agent to step out of a building and the overanxious shooter thought she was the Senator and opened fire before Senator Downs walked out of the door. The Senator was fine, the wounds ended Mackie’s career as a bodyguard for high profile politicians. When she finally healed enough to be discharged from the hospital in Germany and came back to the States, she decided to keep protecting people, just doing it now on a different scale and in a more covert way. This little plot of land had been home for two years now and she loved the place. It had been perfect for her new enterprise since the old nuke bunker was buried deep underground. The little house that she felt so at home in was gone now. And although Mackie knew she had plans to rebuild, she wondered if the site was completely compromised.

  Mackie knew that at least two of these guys had seen her naked and wondered why neither man asked about the scars. They probably were raised with manners and know better than to bring up something so personal, you dingy. She wouldn’t give them an explanation anyway.

  Reynolds’ whoop brought her back to the present and she saw what had aroused his interest. Her fingers quickly flew over the ke
yboard disarming the detonation devices to prevent the probability of an American soldier’s death. The solders came from the woods and a large helicopter landed in the same area that the Klinger Corporation chopper was sitting yesterday. The sleet was making it harder to see what was happening but they did see both men who had been picking through the wreckage chased down and cuffed by several men in olive drab.

  The dead bodies were photographed and slid into body bags stacked side by side next to the helicopter’s wide open cargo doors. Body parts were placed into plastic bins and stacked with the whole bodies. Two large trucks towing trailers pulled into sight and Mackie groaned,” they’re putting ruts in my driveway.” Within three hours the site where her home had been was cleared dirt. The burned out SUV was loaded on the trailers and curtained sides raised to keep curious onlookers from seeing what was on the trailer bed, the blackened pieces of her home were in the back dump box. Twelve bodies plus two large plastic boxes filled with body parts were loaded into the chopper and the prisoners were shackled in the back of the cargo hold. The sleet had stopped so the chopper had no problems lifting and flying off as the trucks and personnel transport left.

  Reynolds was talking to the screen as he watched the efficiency of the soldiers. “That’s right, boys, don’t forget to look around the perimeter for all them body parts, you don’t want some hunter finding a piece of leg or a few fingers.” He pointed to the screen like he might be directing the searchers for any leftover evidence. “Those soldiers are just lucky it is so damn cold or the smell of the dead would be making more than a couple of those boys lose their breakfast.”

  As she waited for General Thomas Hurrell to travel to the bunker, she held herself upright by holding on to the various pieces of furniture until she reached the far wall. She stood for a moment, resting her tired body on the wall, and gathered her energy to step back far enough to pull the framed picture of cats aside. She punched in more numbers and waited for the light to glow blue, before waving her hand to the men for them to join her. The wall opened by sliding into itself, like pocket doors. On the other side was a barracks with three sets of bunk beds.

  “I’m sorry I can’t offer you better accommodations, but this is as good as I have. You can get some sleep, and someone will be here by morning to make sure you get home safely.” She turned and eyed the distance to the couch, before swaying to the comfortable space. She didn’t lie down as much as she fell down onto the cushions. She was asleep before Fielding touched her wrist to check her pulse. The cat hopped up onto the back of the couch and hissed at him when he tried to move her into a more comfortable position. “Oh for crying out loud, cat, I’m not hurting her, she needs to be moved onto her back and propped up in case she… What the fuck, now I’m talking to a damn cat.” He shook his head and looked back to Liam, “Hey, bossman, I need some help here.”

  They ended up moving her to the end of the sectional where they’d discovered it had a reclining feature earlier while watching football. Fielding was checking the bandaging job she’d done before her shower and saw the wet mess of her wounds. The clear bandage was not meant for injuries such as hers, so he found her cache of medical supplies in the bathroom cupboard and re-bandaged her wounds. His medical pack was still lying by the door and Liam handed it to him so he could give her another shot of the antibiotics and the last of the pain meds. “I’m relatively sure she won’t get up and run around again this time. Her body is in safe mode. I’ve seen men our size do the same thing she just did after they’d been given enough pain medication to put a normal person in a coma for at least twelve hours. When they sense danger, they’re on adrenalin high. Once the danger has passed, they shut down completely. The good news is, she must feel safe. The bad news is, if she spikes another fever, we’re screwed. I just gave her the last of the antibiotic I brought with me.”

  Liam was still struggling with his ego problem. In his family the women depended on the men, not the other way around. The sight of the woman with that gun pointed at him had also confused the hell out of him because his cock came awake in a hurry when she stood there threatening him. What she’d done made him feel as if he had hidden behind her skirts when there was danger, and that didn’t settle well with him at all. Neither Fielding nor Reynolds seemed to have a problem with it. Reynolds could be excused, his ex-wife was CIA. She became an ex when she packed her shit and moved in with a fellow agent.

  He must have slept for an hour or two, because the sound of the door opening and rapid footsteps could be heard coming toward his spot on the couch caused him to sit up, still half asleep. The sight of General Thomas Hurrell flanked by four others with varied ranks on their shoulders told him he was about to get his answers. His outstretched hand was ignored, as the General took a straight line to where Mackie was. The last man shook his hand and introduced himself. “How do you do, Mr. Klinger? I am Lieutenant Charles Ishmeal. I will be facilitating your trip home. If you and your men will come with me, I can get you home by lunch.” The man stood there in front of him expecting his compliance with no explanation?

  “It’s nice to meet you, Lieutenant, but I would appreciate some sort of explanation over this. My life and that of my men has been in danger. We’re whisked into a secret bunker, and are privileged to watch a real life video game, played by a woman with a fetish for guns and violence. I think we deserve some answers, don’t you?”

  Liam thought he had the moral high ground here. His mistake was letting his arrogance get in the way of his common sense. No one told these men what to do, unless you wore more stars than they did. He hadn’t taken that into account when he’d tried to throw his importance around. These people were not boardroom minions, and the General himself let him know it.

  “Mr. Klinger, on behalf of the United States of America, I apologize for any inconvenience that this ordeal has caused you. You will be receiving a formal letter of thanks in the mail to frame and put on your wall. I don’t have time or the patience to deal with your curiosity right now. I need to see to Ms. Vaught and her needs before stroking your ego. Go with the Lieutenant please, before I decide to make inquiries into how our vendor got shot in the first place.”

  There was nothing for him to do or say. The verbal slap down was stinging his pride, but he would back off for now. Whatever rat’s nest they’d stumbled into was obviously not for public consumption. He saw Fielding and Reynolds standing by the door and decided to quit before things got ugly. His father would find out what was going on. It would have to be enough for now.

  “All right, General, thank you for the hospitality. I hope Ms. Vaught recovers with few lasting effects.”

  He turned toward the door and walked out with his men. The small electric vehicle they all piled into zipped them through pitch black tunnels with the only light coming from the headlights. Liam tried to start a conversation with the lieutenant, but the man was barely civil. His one word answers grated on Liam’s nerves and it kept his temper on simmer. He had no idea where they were when they drove into daylight. They followed a path through some dense brush and stopped back at the site where Mackie’s house had been. Klinger’s helicopter was already waiting for them and the lieutenant pulled in close. He waited until they were in the air and drove away. Liam watched him from his seat next to the pilot, until they turned north.

  Chapter Five

  Thomas Hurrell, Thom to his family and close friends, was sitting by her bedside when she finally surfaced from the medically induced sleep. Her shoulder and arm felt like they were on fire, and she couldn’t contain the gasp of pain that alerted him that she was awake. She was too busy trying to breathe through the pain to listen to his barking orders for the nurse to give her something to ease her suffering.

  “Tell that nurse to get her ass in here with a shot for her now, the woman has been through enough for the protection of others, she shouldn’t have to suffer even more.” The warm feeling that his words gave her wasn’t enough to stop the pain, but it allowed her to focus on
him instead of her shoulder.

  She wanted to ask how his wife was doing, but kept her teeth gritted to stop herself from screaming like a sissy. Screaming only got more attention and she hated it when she was the object of that attention. Especially in a hospital where everyone seemed to have access to her scars and sooner than later some well meaning person would ask her how she got them. Some called them battle tats, some drew back in revulsion, and some were fascinated in a sick way with the scars themselves. The latter ones were usually men with bent minds. Most were still in the service because they had nowhere else to go where they would find peace. They were the ones that felt they had nothing to lose, so they volunteered for the most dangerous missions that needed men with their expertise.

  General Hurrell had a vested interest in her for a couple of reasons, the first was that his wife was Senator Downs, the lady that she’d been mistaken for, and was shot for the sniper’s ignorance. The second and probably the most important reason was that she helped his efforts to keep important people the Government needed to hide from being discovered. Her property had an elaborate bunker deep underground, in the middle of nowhere. The place had been built back in the 1940’s and once the war was over, the bunker had been forgotten.

  “You can’t resist, can you? The cameras picked up the way you saved those kids. Don’t you ever get tired of saving people?” He waited until the nurse almost ran into the room with a capped syringe, and put the shot in her IV. Mackie’s jaw slowly unclenched as the medicine began to work.

  “We’ve had inquiries from the head of Klinger Corporation, but they are being stonewalled by Ishmeal. The old man is trying to throw his weight around, but he won’t get the answers he wants, so that’s one problem we don’t have to concern ourselves with in the foreseeable future.” He waited for her to gather her thoughts before she would be able to converse about the situation.