Mackie's Men (6 page)

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.

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.

“I feel like shit.” Hurrell smiled at her statement. “So did you crack that traitor Edwards?”

“Oh yes, and his men decided to turn on him with the promise of one life sentence in the penitentiary instead of death. Edwards was in it for the money, he has a few very bad habits, and he planned to live in one of his choice vacation spots after the family had been killed. When they went after you, Mackie, they had no idea about the bunker. They were looking for proof to show their bankers that their mission was complete. They thought that the woman and kids were in the house with you. Edwards tried to say he was checking on you, but his timeline was screwed up and we had him dead to rights.” The Diplomat’s family that was being protected in the bunker was safe and the man could do his job gaining support for an alliance with America now. Neither the General nor Mackie voiced the knowledge that Edwards would never make it to trial. He would probably be found in his cell after committing suicide.

“They figured that you could be persuaded to tell them where the family was being held if they weren’t at your place. When the house locked down with the steel curtains, they gave up being nice and figured you’d make a run for it. Edwards was very unappreciative of you being such a stubborn bitch. He was in a bit of pain when he confessed to planning a slow painful death for the thorn in his side for too damn long. Meaning you of course.”

“Isn’t that what they all seem to want to do? What is it about men that have to act like shitheads? It seems every man I’ve met, excluding you and Ishmeal, have the urge to compete with me to show me who wears the balls. Rich men, poor men, it doesn’t matter what the walk of life, if it’s testosterone based, the competition is on.” She remembered Liam Klinger and his butt hurt expression when she told him that he would get his answers from someone else. She knew deep inside that men were capable of just about anything, but why did he have to act like a Neanderthal?

Thom could only repeat the same thing he always told her when she was feeling low. “Look at you, for Christ’s sake, you look like a Valkyrie, carry your weight like you own it and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like it. You are an attractive looking woman with an air of command, some men like to be dominated by a strong woman. The flip side is that some dominant men want to master a strong woman. The payoff is for the man who respects her strengths, and earns her respect. That man will be allowed to command her pleasure as long as she trusts him.”

He grinned when the door opened and Laura Downs peeked her head through the doorway. It still surprised him when he looked at the two women in the same room, or standing together. Laura was only an inch shorter than Mackie, but their hair and eye color was the same. Laura had sprinkles of silver running through her light brown hair that was cut in a shoulder kissing length, where Mackie’s hair was longer, reaching past her shoulder blades without the silver. The body style was almost identical too. His wife had hips to fit his big hands and breasts that he enjoyed at his leisure almost every night now that Laura was finishing her last term as a Senator. He hoped she wouldn’t give into the pressure to run for Governor of the state. He planned to retire next year as well so they could live like normal human beings. They had a grandbaby on the way, and it was time to dangle and spoil a new generation.

Laura came up to the side of the hospital bed to check on her clone. She’d always called the woman who took bullets for her that and had never complained about it. They’d become friendly over the years and she hated seeing Mackie back in a hospital because she defended yet another person. “I see you couldn’t just stay retired from the rescue business, could you?” She leaned down and brushed the younger woman’s hair from her eyes where it had fallen when she tried to sit up.

Thom had to leave and make sure everything was dealt with in the matter of Edwards, but promised to see them later. He kissed his wife in a way that made Mackie envious of the closeness the two shared. Why she hadn’t found such love and devotion still escaped her, but her life was all right. Lonely, but it wasn’t a bad life.

Laura grinned at her once the door shut behind her still handsome loving husband. “So tell me, what did you think of Liam Klinger? He is such a dish and those two men with him, oh hell, Mackie, I think I would have locked the door and kept them as sex slaves.” She waved her hand as if the thought of the men made her hot.