Blood & Tacos #4 Read online

  A man’s voice answered: “To whom am I speaking?”

  “Me,” the janitor said, taking another swig. “Who are you?”

  “The United States government.”

  “Which United States government?”

  “Which government?—I’m SDIO.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.”

  The janitor snorted. “We’re expecting an attack from outer space, then? Where’s the FBI?”

  “They’re here. But any breach in our nuclear program warrants SDIO attention.”

  The janitor chewed on that. The Agency might want him for betraying their own, subverting Operation Cyclone, and personally diverting one-hundred-and-fifty U.S. Stinger missiles away from the Afghan mujahideen, but the FBI and CIA were famous for not playing well together. He could talk to the FBI without fear of exposure.

  But SDIO was new to the sandbox. Who did they play with? The janitor proceeded with caution.

  “Still there?” the SDIO man asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Consider me deputy director of this situation.”

  The janitor chuckled. “Not from here, you’re not.”

  “Yeah, well, China syndromes aren’t known for their delicate beauty, so let’s cut the crap. Where’s the woman?”

  So the woman is in charge, he thought. “Don’t know. But I have killed a few of her men.”

  “What’s a few?”

  “Five down. But the situation out here is not what you think. The Tutelo Nuclear Power Facility is not—I repeat, not—undergoing catastrophic meltdown.”

  “Say what?”

  “Listen, Mr. Deputy Director, if you can’t keep up, give me someone who can. My schedule’s packed here.”

  Behind him a man stepped into the doorway, crouching, his gun aimed at the back of the janitor’s head.

  “The whole thing’s a fake. The computers were tricked into reading a bogus meltdown. The core is stable.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Now what are you going to do about it?”

  The janitor drew his toilet plunger from a belt loop and twirled it like a baton. On open ground the mop offered greater reach and versatility, but for close-quarter combat the janitor preferred the plunger’s maneuverability.

  “Hold on,” the man said. The janitor heard muffled voices. “The NRC’s already begun evacuating a twenty-mile radius.” The area included all of D.C.

  “Evacuate the northern hemisphere for all I care. What you need to do is square it with the Pentagon. Powwow with Moscow and keep the Joint Chiefs from going on the warpath.” He swung the plunger, still twirling, in a hypnotic figure-eight. “Buddy, you need to notify the President.”

  “Hold on.” He heard more muffled voices. “No can do.”

  “What do you mean, ‘No can do’?”

  “Listen—Potomac County, Tutelo included, drains straight into the Potomac River, which runs downstream toward Washington D.C. We’ve got a terrorist attack and a nuclear meltdown all within spitting distance of our nation’s capital. Do you understand the implications? We’re talking about World War III here.”

  “Am I not speaking English? There is no meltdown.”

  The janitor stopped the plunger, mid-twirl, gripping it instinctively like a Japanese tantō. Before the man with the gun could react, the janitor spun in place and batted the gun away. He jabbed him hard beneath the ribs, then slammed the suction onto the man’s face and pressed him against the wall. Windless, the man panicked. Instead of targeting the janitor’s fingers, he clawed the thick rubber.

  “Still there?”

  “That makes six,” the janitor said, while the gunman crumpled to the floor.

  “Six what?”

  “Six dead.”

  “Oh. Uh ... who are you?”

  “I’m me.”

  “Um ... okay. To stand down, Washington—not to mention Moscow—will need more ... much more.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with a phony meltdown? Fake stopping it?”

  “Please hold.” There was a pause. “Sir, all you need to do is fix the computer till it says we’re safe. Until the computer says so, Washington won’t buy it. And neither will Moscow.”

  “Fucking bureaucrats.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re out of options. Will you do it?”

  “You mean clean up your mess?”

  “I mean sanitize it.”

  The words to “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)” burned through his mind, but he couldn’t make himself whistle the tune. The janitor downed the remaining vodka.

  “Done.”

  Click.

  He knew the Reds would never leave the computer control room vulnerable to attack; the terminals there would already be destroyed. That left only one option: the computers within the core containment facility itself.

  To reach the containment facility required passing through the radiation showers—a ninety-foot-long bottleneck and potential death trap.

  With a grim smile and a keycard lifted off the corpse of the Tutelo site manager, the janitor opened the chemical storage unit for supplies. He also grabbed a dozen shotgun shells and one dead Red, wheeling him down the hall in the mop bucket, arms and legs dragging.

  As he’d expected, the Russians were playing it by the book—an old, dusty book. Three men—including a flamethrower—occupied the badge monitoring station at the far end of the showers. Anybody foolish enough to rush the stronghold would be rained on by bullets and baptized by fire.

  The janitor dumped the Russian into a laundry cart, covered him with laundry, doused the fabric with isopropyl alcohol, and sprinkled the shells over the top. With a running start, he propelled the deadly parfait down the tunnel. It weaved and clattered over the tiles, but covered the distance in four seconds.

  The Russians spurted ammunition, drilling fist-sized holes that vomited blood and brain matter as the Trojan hearse spun to a halt inside the monitoring station. Certain they had killed a potential assassin, they watched as the flamethrower unleashed hell.

  At the first lick of flame, the alcohol vapors ignited. The resulting shockwave slammed the men into the equipment. Blue flames consumed the cart. Then the shotgun shells exploded like popcorn—all sound, no fury—and the men curled up, trying to protect their heads and genitals.

  Like a vengeful dragon, the loose flamethrower thrashed its long neck, spitting fire. The janitor darted through the room, witnessing just enough to know the men would be charcoal before the dragon was spent.

  Sharing a glass wall with the core itself, the computer room could only be accessed with the proper passcode ... or a mid-sized explosion. But first, the janitor needed to get past the guards.

  Using the large steam pipes and ventilation ducts crisscrossing the facility for cover, he moved ghostlike to their position and hid behind a forklift. That left sixty feet of open run, plus obstacles that offered minimal cover. He counted three Uzis and one Kalashnikov. Even for the janitor the odds were slim.

  He held the plunger, reverently, as King Arthur might have held Excalibur. He doused the rubber end with blue cleaner and launched the bottle grenade style in a high arc. When it reached its zenith, the janitor howled like a wolf of the steppes to ensure his prey were alert.

  “Chto za huy?” one cried.

  “Govno!” another shouted.

  All four whipped out their hardware and cut loose on the bottle. They stood in a circle, jerking off thousands of rounds, painting the ceiling with lead. The bottle landed at their feet, mangled and empty, but not before enveloping the men in a fine mist of blue death.

  The janitor flicked a lighter, ignited the plunger, and threw the torch like he would a tomahawk. The chemical cloud became a miniature sun, engulfing the men in a yellow blaze. They scattered, screaming, their blackened bodies tumbling over rails and falling to their fiery deaths.

  From the lower level, the jani
tor heard shouted commands and pounding feet. He didn’t have much time. He leapt through shattered glass, popped a panel marked ‘Danger—Do Not Open,’ pulled the motherboard from its slot, reinserted it, and shut down the whole system in a matter of seconds. As the computers rebooted, the lights and alarms went out, shrouding the facility in darkness and silence.

  Using the radio static, enemy footsteps, and breathing, he threaded his way back to the radiation showers by echolocation. He approached the flickering glow of the monitoring station cautiously, finding nothing but charred corpses, glistening from the spray of the emergency sprinkler system.

  Halfway through the showers, he heard footsteps at the far end. It wouldn’t take long before the enemy had him boxed in.

  The janitor ran, turning on all the shower heads, except the center one. He pulled from his pocket two vials of cesium swiped from the chemical storage unit and clamped them between his teeth.

  Soon, the thin beams of mini flashlights cut across both ends of the tunnel. Behind the flashlights, automatic weapons would be held by sweating hands and itchy trigger fingers.

  The beams crossed like mythical swords, bouncing off the wet tile. The janitor spit the vials into his hand and tossed them each direction. The vials shattered mid-distance, sending up walls of sparks and flame as the cesium actually climbed the air from the force of its violent intercourse with water.

  A split second later the tunnel blazed with muzzle flashes, each side squeezing their rods, squirting metal, and hailing white-hot death through the downpour.

  Silence followed as flashlight beams rocked lazily to and fro, and the janitor dropped soundlessly from above. He had observed the uproar from a bird’s eye view, his hands and feet pressed against the walls of the tunnel, his back flat against the ceiling. And now it was time to hole up and wait for WWIII not to show.

  Clanging and buzzing told the janitor that the system was coming back online. Lights flickered. Then he heard clapping. A silhouette stepped into the far opening.

  “Bravo, cleaner.” It was the blonde merc.

  “Custodial engineer.”

  “Toilet scrubber. Why do you fight us?” The merc sprung into the air, demonstrating a stunning martial arts routine. Considering the wet tile floor and tangle of dead bodies, it was impressive. Stepping over a leg, he added: “History is on our side.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is inevitable. The USA shall fall. Or maybe you have seen too many cowboy movies—John Wayne bang-bang-bang.” He performed another kick, this time a reverse roundhouse.

  “You’re insane.”

  Blondie laughed. He butterfly-kicked and stepped over another body, closing the gap. “Your capitalism’s immorality makes you soft.”

  “Amorality. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to the ditch digger and toilet scrubber.”

  “You’re looking at a toilet scrubber.”

  “Not anymore.” Blondie shifted his weight slightly, preparing for a final reverse roundhouse. To the janitor, who had been observing him closely, the move was a tell.

  The janitor barely flinched. The flashlight he kicked skidded through puddles and wedged itself beneath the merc’s pivot foot. Committed to his rotation, he spun out wildly, like a satellite careening out of orbit, both legs flailing comically.

  The janitor drove his knee into a kidney and grabbed a fistful of hair. He smashed the man’s head into the tile, twice, before his enemy kicked off the wall to free himself.

  Dodging a wild elbow, the janitor bounced off the opposite wall, to execute a flying kick. He shattered the man’s nose and followed with an open-hand uppercut to the voice box. Blondie hit the floor, struggling for breath, eyes rolling back.

  The janitor stood over his quarry. “By the way, the meltdown was phony. There is no attack. Your bitch boss screwed you.”

  “Govniuk,” Blondie sputtered.

  Sensing another presence, he looked up just in time to catch her lovely, curved silhouette at the end of the tunnel shouldering what looked like a complicated stovepipe—in actuality an American-made Stinger missile launcher.

  “Speak of the she-devil,” she said.

  The janitor ducked and covered behind the struggling merc. The rocket streaked overhead, scorching the air above him before rocking the tunnel like the proverbial hurricane.

  The woman stood with her hip cocked, dangling her hardware. “Well done, Amerikanski, but your efforts were for nothing.”

  He rolled the gasping man off him, reached around, and snapped his neck.

  She continued: “As we speak, my network of moles and sleepers is gathering documents—documents that will be in my hands by midnight tonight.”

  He blinked. “Of course! This was about evacuating Washington D.C.”

  She beamed. “My crowning achievement. And you have become integral to my success.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “While my pawns infiltrated other targets—the White House, the Pentagon, SDIO headquarters, CIA headquarters, NASA—you were here, ensuring that America won the battle.”

  Now he understood. “But lost the war ... in space.”

  She bowed her head. “Moscow cannot afford a gap in space—especially an X-ray laser gap—and by midnight tonight I will possess the information Moscow needs to plug that gap.”

  “To maintain equilibrium.”

  “If Moscow chooses to cooperate.”

  “Cooperate? You mean compensate.”

  “I’m worth every kopek.”

  “I’m sure you are, but what if Moscow doesn’t agree?”

  “There will be other bidders. Perhaps Libya or Afghanistan will go nuclear decades ahead of its time.”

  “You’re mad,” he said, even as his ears rang with the distinctive squeak of a Queens-born native singing “Money Changes Everything.”

  “No, the world is mad. As you Americans say, I just work here.”

  He stepped toward her, but she shouldered her weapon, fingering the trigger, and chided him, “Ah-ah-ah. Until we meet again.”

  He burrowed beneath the bodies as another rocket stabbed the air above him. By the time the smoke cleared, she was gone.

  The janitor recognized the SDIO man by his voice.

  “George Benjamin Kennedy. That’s quite a name. Washington, Franklin, and John F.”

  The janitor shrugged. “I’m a patriot.”

  “We know who you are.” The SDIO man slapped down a thick file. “Or more accurately, who you were.”

  “Congratulations.” He glanced at the bare conference room walls, wondering if they were in Baltimore or somewhere else.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I understand what you did and why.”

  “Gee, I feel warm all over.”

  “Personally, I think Operation Cyclone is a bust: unclear objectives, short-term gains, and heavy long-term costs. But you left your colleagues with nothing but their dicks in their hands—a big no-no. Just imagine the fallout.”

  The janitor shrugged again. “Having had a couple Stingers turned on me personally, I have to say, boo-fuckin’-hoo. Can I go now?”

  “Maybe later.” The SDIO man slapped a much thinner file on top of the thick one. “I have a job for you.”

  Another shrug.

  “Hey, this is your second chance, pal, but I have no budget to carry dead weight. If you’re not interested, I know people who’d kill to see this file ... literally.” He brushed his hands to illustrate. “Or drop a major-league marker in my back pocket.”

  “Fucking bureaucrats,” the janitor sneered. “You’re all the same, sitting in your soft chairs behind your big desks, trading little favors, and trying not to expose your lily-white asses. You’ve forgotten what this country stands for. Well, let me tell you. It stands for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, like the right to bear arms and refuse service to anyone. It stands for private property and free enterprise. For owning a piece of land—land God-given and taken from nobody—and using it for something
like oil or cattle or building something on it like a casino. But above all, it stands for the underdog: the man outgunned, outweighed, and outclassed. He might get beat down, but he don’t go down. Not for any man. Not willingly. Because Americans hate a punk. You know who said that? Patton. But I bet you forgot. So yeah, I’ll take your job, but not because you threatened me. Because I didn’t forget.”

  The janitor started humming “True Colors.”

  The SDIO man smirked and opened the thinner file: “Your first assignment: Code name: Scarlet Flower. Though her true identity remains unknown—even to her former employer, the KGB—she has many nicknames: the Siberian Siren, the Georgian Gorgon, Black Widow of the Baltic States, and most notoriously, the Steppenbitch. Apparently, she went rogue with a small detachment of men completely submissive to her, willing even to be castrated for her. You killed some of them.”

  The janitor whistled, intrigued.

  “Scarlet Flower currently possesses documents critical to our national security.”

  “You mean Star Wars.”

  “The Strategic Defense Initiative, yes. We believe she’ll sell the documents to Moscow for a premium, but we also believe she’ll threaten to assassinate the President to fast-forward the timetable and drive up the price.”

  The janitor’s eyes narrowed.

  “You’re scheduled to receive a medal at the White House in three days for your bravery in handling the Tutelo incident. We think that’s when she’ll strike. It doesn’t give us much time.”

  “And this’ll get me my file back.”

  “Well ... we’ll see about that. I may have more work for you.”

  “Fucking bureaucrats,” the janitor said, even as he thought: Three days to pluck the Scarlet Flower ... I can hardly wait.

  THE END

  Be sure to check out the Sanitizer #2: “The Iranian Insertion”

  Nick Slosser works at Murder by the Book in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He prefers cats to dogs, waffles to pancakes, samurais to ninjas, and Joan Jett to Lita Ford. Nick recently had a story published at Shotgun Honey.