Page 1 of Puck

1: 99 Problems

Ninety-nine problems, but a bitch ain’t one—the Jay-Z line went through my head. Despite everything it was kinda funny because one bitch wasn’t my problem; there weretwoof them. And don’t get your panties in a knot. I meant “bitch” as a term of endearment—I liked those two girls, Lola and Temple, which was why I was here in the first fucking place.

Significantly higher up the problem list was the fact that I was in the mostly empty baggage compartment of a privately owned 727, and we were way, way up there, meaning it was cold as fuck in here—pressurized and liveable, but fucking freezing.

Another problem was I had no weapons and, furthermore, I had no plan for what to do when we got wherever the hell we were going—that lack of knowledge was yet another problem on the list.

Additionally, Harris and the gang, as far as I knew, had no idea what was going on, although I knew they would find out eventually. Which meant, for the moment, I was on my own . . .

In the cargo hold of an airliner flying at cruising altitude.

Without a weapon.

Responsible for the lives of two beautiful women, who happened to be the girlfriends of my two closest brothers-in-arms.

Between the injury and my lame attempt to cauterize the wound with my cigar, my finger hurt like a bitch.

On top of it all, literally, were the twenty-some armed men a few feet above me in the passenger cabin.

Good times.

Going in my favor, though, were two facts: I was a stone-cold, hard-ass motherfucker, and I wasreallypissed off.

Also going in my favor was my background in both the military and FBI—I was patient, I was used to long periods of hurry up and wait. I could hunker down in the most uncomfortable situations and stay in a state of readiness for hours. Which was what I had in front of me at the moment . . . I was cold, I was in pain, I was pissed off, I had female friends needing rescue, and I had no clue where we were going or how long it would take to get there, and I had no idea what I was going to do once we arrived.

So I did what any self-respecting grunt and cop would: I snoozed.

A snooze was a specific thing for cops and Army grunts: you ain’t sleeping, but you were also not quite awake. You were in-between, relaxing, resting, eyes closed, brain off, muscles loose, but not quite unconscious; you were ready to spring into action at the sound of a CO’s bark or the crackle of the radio. Personally, I have perfected the snooze. I could let myself sink into a state that wasjustthis side of totally asleep and then the instant my senses told me it was go-time, I was in motion without so much as a yawn. It was a great way to juice up your batteries between firefights and also great for passing long periods of boredom on a stakeout. Or, in this particular case, both.

As I snoozed I thought back over the past couple of days. What a shitshow. That bastard Cain and his men ambushed us and, long story short, his goons swooped in and captured the women and me and put us on this plane. What a jackass—and a pussy, too: hurting women and kids was pathetic. He would live to regret it if I had anything to do with it. Not to mention the fact that my chest still hurt like hell from taking bullets in my vest during the firefight. As I mentioned, one of the bullets ripped off the top of the middle finger on my left hand and thatreallypissed me off. That was my “fuck you” finger. I’d managed to cauterize it a bit with the end of a cigar, but the wound would not close completely. When I finally got my hands on Cain, the bastard was going to pay.

I needed to rest more than I needed to lose my shit over my finger, so I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew my snooze had lasted what felt like six hours or so, which meant we were most likely headed to Europe. The runway had been north-south oriented, and the aircraft had taken off into the north and then banked wide and slow to the right. Hard to tell without visual cues, but the angle and duration of the turn made me feel like we’d turned east or northeast, and from then on travel had been straight as an arrow. Six hours or so from Arkansas in a northeasterly direction in a 727 traveling at cruising speed . . . the UK maybe, or Spain or France.

My estimation of the time I’d been snoozing was just that—an estimation. I didn’t wear a watch because there was no point, I’d lost my burner phone at some point during the chase, and I didn’t own a day-to-day personal cell. If we were on a mission, I just bought a burner to use for the duration of the mission, but if we are between ops, I didn’t carry a cell. Time was a construct, and I didn’t like being accessible all the damn time. I liked my personal time and personal space way too much to let any ol’ dick call me and gab at me all fucking day.

Point was, I didn’t know the exact time, or how long we’d been flying. It was just that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

What kicked me out of my snooze was a sharp banking turn, signaling the pilot was orienting himself with a runway. That was followed by thethunk-cachunk-grrrrrrrr-thunkof the landing gear being lowered. A moment later, my stomach lurched as we descended, and then the bark and bump and skid of touchdown. Then I began to feel a bit of panic. Just because I was a stone-cold, hard-ass motherfucker didn’t mean I was devoid of emotions. I got squirrelly before a big op, and if folks were shootin’ at me I got pissy like anybody else. And when I was facing shit like I was facing then, I got a bit panicky.

I could take on plenty of assholes with fists and feet and forehead—I’d been a barroom brawler and bare-knuckled boxer from the time I was knee-high to a tadpole—but twenty assholes with guns . . . I didn’t like those odds.

So . . . now what?

Play it by ear, I guess.

But fuck, fuck, and double motherfuck, I wished to hell Iat leasthad my Beretta.

I felt the aircraft brake and pivot as we taxied, and I took stock again of the small amount of baggage in the hold. A dozen suitcases, all containing nothing but clothes and clothes and clothes and more clothes—all female and of widely varying sizes, but all scanty and skimpy, hooker getups and runway shit. Another suitcase with shoes, another with all kinds of makeup. A cooler full of food, which I raided when I first snuck in here. There were no weapons, and nothing I could even use as a weapon.

And the presence of all the girl gear had my wheels turning. Why would a bunch of mercs and thugs have brought evening gowns and booty shorts and mascara? Well . . . seeing as they kidnapped two fine-ass women, I guessed we were headed to a people market, wherein Cain sold women like sides of beef.

Now here’s something to know about Puck Lawson: I didnottake kindly to the sale of human flesh. People were people, and people ain’t for sale. If a woman made the choice to sell her body, that was her choice, and I got no issue with that—better not, since my mama was a hooker. But that was different. She was doing that herself, to survive, to make ends meet, because she liked sex, whatever the case might be. But if she hadn’t chosen to pursue that occupation, then that shit was slavery, and as far as I knew slavery was ended in this country awhile back. So if Lola and Temple were en route to being sold into the sex trade, then some folks were about to get their shitwrecked.

You wanna see the really ugly side of an already ugly motherfucker? Try to sell someone when I was around.

The 727 came to a halt, and I positioned myself to the side of the cargo door. I heard the rattling rumble of a diesel engine, and the whining of the aircraft jets spooling down, another softthunk—the stair lift was being positioned outside. Voices, male, gruff, speaking . . . Czech? Ukrainian? Not sure, exactly, since I didn’t have Thresh or Anselm’s polyglot skills. Then female voices, several of them, all frightened, angry, speaking English and Russian and some Asian dialect and half a dozen other languages. All the female voices were abruptly silenced when a handgun went off and a male voice shouted, “SHUT UP!”

Yeah, that dude was gonna be first to die if I had anything to say about it.