Partners in Crime, page 19
“Is there another way to get the cockroach out?” Piper asked.
“If I use a tweezer, it’s going to fight me and burrow in deeper. That wouldn’t be good,” he said, scratching his head. “But I can give it a good wash. That’s a good idea. We can wash it out.”
“I am one with the insect people,” Adesh said dreamily. “I am the king of the insects. Call me Cockroach Brain King. Sacrifice your children to me, and pray to me on an altar of Pop-Tarts.”
“What kind of tranquilizer did you give him?” Peter asked the doctor.
“Ketamine. I use it on the dogs for surgery.”
“I thought you were a doctor,” Piper said.
“I am. I’m a veterinarian. I take care of the dogs in camp. There are a lot of dogs in mercenary work.”
The veterinarian left the tent for a moment and came back with a hose, which gushed water. He instructed Peter to hold Adesh down on the ground on his side. “We’ll flush it out good,” the veterinarian said.
“The Cockroach Brain King and Aquaman shall merge and become one,” Adesh said, dreamily. “I am the God of the exoskeleton people. Pray to me. Raise your pincers and bow down to me. Wow, I can really feel that cockroach burrowing deeper into my head. Hello, cockroach. Is my brain tasty?”
The veterinarian put the hose against Adesh’s ear and let it run for a good thirty seconds. Then he moved the hose away, and he looked into Adesh’s ear again.
“Well, that made the little bugger even madder,” the veterinarian said.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, alarmed.
“He’s going to town now. I think your friend’s right. The cockroach is seeking revenge and is going to eat his brain right out of his head.” The doctor spoke like he was impressed with the cockroach’s survival tactics.
“Goodbye brain,” Adesh said, as if he was saying goodbye to someone who was going on a cruise. “I was fond of you while you were around, but now I must go and be the king of cockroaches and marry Aquaman. That’s legal now.”
“Do something,” Peter urged the doctor.
“Do you have any oil?” Piper asked the veterinarian. “The cockroach will die in oil. It doesn’t care about water, but oil will drown it.”
The veterinarian looked at her, obviously impressed with her wealth of knowledge. He snapped his fingers. “Great idea. I’ll be right back.”
He left, and when he returned, he was carrying a bottle of olive oil. He uncorked it quickly, stuck a small funnel in Adesh’s ear, and poured half of the bottle of oil into Adesh’s ear. It bubbled and gurgled and spilled out.
“They are mad at the King Cockroach Brain,” Adesh said. “They are eating me alive.”
“It’s eating him alive,” Peter repeated to the veterinarian. He was truly worried about his friend. What a way to die. Getting eaten alive by a cockroach was much worse than being murdered by a vagina.
“It’ll work,” Piper said, sure of herself. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Even under the influence of ketamine, Adesh struggled in agony against Peter, while he held his friend down to give the oil time to work. It was ten minutes of pure torture. Finally, Adesh stopped struggling, and Peter wondered if the cockroach was dead or whether it had done real damage and Adesh had given up the ghost.
The veterinarian looked in Adesh’s ear. “It worked. The damn thing is dead. Now I can get it out with the tweezers.”
Covered in oil, the cockroach slipped easily out of Adesh’s ear. Clamped in the tweezers, the doctor held it up, and they marveled at the large insect.
“How did that big thing get in his little ear?” Peter asked.
Now free of Peter and the cockroach, Adesh stood up. His eyes were wide, and his pupils were fully dilated. He tried in vain to focus with them.
“Maybe I gave him a little too much ketamine,” the veterinarian mused.
“He’s cranking balls,” Peter said, as Adesh started to rip his clothes off his body.
“I am the Phantom of the Opera!” Adesh announced to an empty corner of the tent. “I am Emperor Palpatine. I am Mr. Spock. I will sing songs for you.”
He began to sing the theme from Star Wars, making up the words as he went, while he stripped down to his birthday suit and marched around the tent like a Stormtrooper.
“I guess my work here is done,” the veterinarian said and left.
Peter and Piper tried to calm Adesh down, but there was no calming him down. Poor Adesh was having a wicked bad trip. He was riding a wave of ketamine, and he was seeing invisible science fiction characters everywhere.
They chased him around the tent. Peter thought he had almost subdued him, when Clive and Archie walked in, which distracted Peter, making him free Adesh, who skipped around the tent, singing about exoskeletons and Wookies.
Clive and Archie were flanked by four mercenaries who were armed with automatic weapons. Uh oh, Peter thought. This isn’t good.
“Can we talk later? Our friend is having a bad day,” Peter told them.
“We’re not here to talk,” Clive said. “We’re here to take the girl.”
All eyes turned toward Piper, except for Adesh, who was now crawling on the floor on his prominent belly, searching for his cockroach subjects.
Peter stepped in front of Piper. “Don’t do this, Clive. Let’s just talk a minute before you do something unwise.”
Archie shook his head. “There’s no talking about this, Peter. This is all about the green.”
“So, you lied about the hit being on Peter. You lied about moving a hundred and fifty million dollars,” Piper said.
Clive smiled. “That was all true. Pierre Vivet hates Peter. And yes, we did know the hit was on our old friend. But as you know, Peter, for gentlemen like us in retirement, it’s all about the green.”
“We did our time working for the flag and the country,” Archie explained. “Now we just like to get paid in U.S. dollars or British Pound Sterling. Sometimes we accept Bitcoin. But that’s where our priorities lay.”
“Who wants to pay for Piper?” Peter asked.
Clive shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t take names. All I know is there’s a lot of people looking for this woman. We got word from Princess Anna that you were coming our way, and we agreed to split the profits. Thank you for moving her to the Western Hemisphere, Peter. It makes our job a lot easier.”
“But why?” Piper asked. “Why do they want me? Who wants me? Is it the serial killer? Is that who’s making you do this?”
One of the soldiers put a gun to Peter’s head, and another one kicked his legs from behind, making his knees buckle and making him fall to the ground.
Archie leaned over him. “Don’t fight, or I’ll cut your girlfriend,” he whispered to Peter. He believed him. There was no way to protect her from four trained killers in the small confines of the tent and an army of mercenaries just outside. He couldn’t take the chance with her life. Peter hated himself for putting her in danger. He should have never brought her here.
The two soldiers quickly zip-tied Peter to a chair and then chased after Adesh. They caught him and zip-tied him naked to another chair.
“I don’t do the whole villain monologue thing,” Clive told Piper as he grabbed her and zip-tied her hands behind her back. “I’m a man of action, not words.” He turned to Peter, who struggled against his bonds, but the English knew how to tie up a man better than the Chechens, and he was powerless to escape.
“You got soft on the girl,” Clive chastised Peter, leaning down, and speaking an inch from his face. “First rule of the spy game is never to get soft on the girl. You made a mistake, and now it’s your undoing.”
Adesh screamed loudly. “Luke Skywalker’s cockroaches are after me, but I have the Force and I know how to do the Vulcan neck pinch. I will not be taken!”
Still attached to the chair, Adesh stood and ran out of the tent toward the jungle.
“Who didn’t tie his legs to the chair?” Archie yelled at the soldiers. “Why did you only attach his arms?”
“He kept kicking,” one of the soldiers explained. “He’s high as a kite.”
“You let him escape,” Archie complained. “He’s running naked into the Amazon.”
“Let him go,” Clive said. “He’s not a threat to anybody. He’s off his head, and he won’t make it through the night in the jungle.”
Peter was afraid that Clive was right. All three of them were going to die, and Peter was powerless to stop it. He tried to think of a way to escape, a way to save Piper and Adesh, but the odds had finally caught up to him. The firepower was too strong, too great, and he was outmanned and outmatched. Adesh was going to die in the jungle, Peter was going to die in the tent, and heaven only knew how they were going to kill Piper.
He struggled against his bonds again, but he was locked up tight. The sound of a helicopter grew loud, and sounded to Peter like it was landing close by.
“You’re taking her away?” Peter asked. He was scared for her. Truly scared. If they took her away, he would never be able to find her, and she would be lost to him forever. Who knew what was going to happen to her? Since he met her when she was naked, cold, and alone with a cattle tag bolted to her ear, he could only imagine the horrors that awaited her now.
“I’m not going to go with you. I’d rather die than let you take me away,” Piper cried and struggled against Clive. He grimaced at her and knocked her against the head. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell against him, unconscious. Clive lifted her and draped her over his shoulder.
“Don’t do this,” Peter implored, his voice cold as ice and hard as steel. In his line of work, he had killed people before, but he had never felt a murderous rage like he did now. He would’ve gladly killed Clive and Archie.
And he would’ve celebrated after.
Clive pointed at him. “Remember, never get soft on the girl, my friend.” Clive and Archie left with Piper, leaving the two soldiers behind with Peter. He listened as the helicopter took off only moments later, presumably with Piper, Clive, and Archie on board.
As soon as the helicopter took off, one of the mercenaries in the tent raised his gun, aiming it at Peter’s temple. There was no way out of this situation.
He was going to die, and he was going to die quick.
Peter had already had nine lives, and the threat of his own death didn’t frighten him all that much, since he had cheated death so many times before. But he knew that he was Piper’s best chance at survival. She needed him, and he hated himself for taking her chance at surviving away from her.
CHAPTER 22
There were a lot worse ways to die than getting shot in the head, Peter reminded himself. This death would be painless and instantaneous. He should just close his eyes and accept his fate.
Peter chuckled to himself. There was no way he was going to let two loser mercenaries shoot him in the head.
He wasn’t going to die until he got his eight seconds with Piper. That was a non-starter, as far as he was concerned. Peter was about to fight the two armed men while zip-tied to a chair, when there was a loud noise outside, as if a large animal was tearing through the jungle.
The soldier lowered his gun. The two mercenaries exchanged looks, as if they were afraid of whatever large thing was coming their way.
“Jungle monster,” one of the soldiers said with his voice full of dread. He was obviously afraid of something in the rainforest. Local legends about monsters were contagious, and whatever they had heard about that terrorized the area, they believed it.
Peter hoped they were right and there really was a monster coming for them from the jungle. That way, it would take out at least one of Peter’s foes, which would even out the odds considerably.
One of the soldiers stepped out of the tent with his weapon raised in order to see what the noise was. Peter heard what sounded like a crash and then a scream.
“I recognize that scream,” Peter said under his breath. “I’ve heard that scream a lot lately.”
It was Adesh. He appeared at the door of the tent, bent over, still naked and tied to the chair. He was higher than a kite. His eyes were huge, and his face was bright red. He was drooling, and his hair stood up on end. The ketamine was working overtime on him, and he was having a really bad trip.
But the bad trip was good news for Peter. Distraction was his friend.
“Cockroach Brain King, attack Emperor Palpatine,” Peter commanded Adesh.
Adesh’s eyes rolled around in their sockets. He was trying to focus and figure out which one of them was Emperor Palpatine. Even though the soldier had already seen Adesh, his drugged behavior and their concern over a jungle monster had freaked him out so significantly, he shot a few rounds from his weapon at Adesh.
Missing Adesh completely, the bullets tore through the tent, breaking the tent poles and ripping the canvas to shreds. Without anything to hold it up, the tent crashed over them. The last thing that Peter saw before he was covered by the tent, was Adesh barreling toward the soldier, still naked and attached to the chair. Adesh swung his body, the legs of the chair knocking out the soldier.
It was quiet. The ketamine had finally worked its way out of Adesh’s system, and he was no longer screaming and shouting about insects, Star Wars, or Star Trek. It had been twelve long hours since they had taken Piper away. When Peter finally extricated himself from under the tent and cut his way out of the zip ties, he disarmed the two soldiers and sent them running into the jungle.
They were happy to get away, and Peter wondered how much of a volunteer they actually were or if they were drafted into the mercenary game.
The camp was completely deserted. While he and Piper had been canoodling under the stars, Clive and Archie must have been hard at work, quickly bugging out. All the men were gone, as well as all of the materials and intelligence. There was nothing left except for an SUV, which had probably been left for the two soldiers to use after they killed Peter, and the empty structures.
Adesh’s bad trip had taken a toll on him, and Peter tried to bring him back to health with a big dose of water and the rest of his stash of Pop-Tarts. As Peter took care of him, he thought constantly of Piper. She was long gone, and he had no way of finding her. But he had to put the search for her on hold while he helped the friend that was there and make sure that he was going to be okay.
When he finally came to, Adesh felt terrible that Piper had been taken. He opened his laptop and tried to find Clive and Archie with the GPS trackers, but they must’ve found them and destroyed them.
“They’re ghosts,” Adesh complained after an hour on his computer. “They’re completely off the grid. I didn’t even know that was possible these days.”
“We have to find her,” Peter said. “I don’t care what we have to do. I don’t care if we have to hack into the White House or the goddamned Buckingham Palace, but we’re going to find her. You understand?”
“I understand,” Adesh said, and his eyes filled with tears.
Piper fought to wake up. She wasn’t merely sleepy. She was physically unable to wake up. I’ve been drugged, she thought in her half-conscious state.
I’ve been drugged, and when I wake up, I won’t remember a thing. Again.
But Piper refused to forget Peter. She refused to forget the time that she had spent with him. If none of her other memories returned, it wouldn’t matter as long as she had her memories of him.
“Wake up,” she told herself.
Wake up or you’re going to die. Wake up!
After a long struggle and with all of her will, she cracked open an eyelid. She was hit with a wave of nausea, and her head was thick with what she figured was a drug-induced fog. She touched her upper arm. There was a small raised bump there, which hurt.
She must’ve been injected with something, she thought. Something strong.
Piper opened her other eye and ran her tongue over her chapped lips. Her mouth was bone dry, and she tried to clear her throat, but she couldn’t swallow.
She was weak and dehydrated, and it took a concerted effort to sit up. She noticed that she was on a red silk sofa. In front of her was a gilded coffee table with a glass top. There was a glass of what looked like water on it. Every instinct told her not to drink from the glass, but she was dying of thirst. Literally dying. She got the impression that she had been unconscious for a few days, and if she didn’t drink soon, she would die.
“I found that waking up at five in the morning gives me an edge over the competition,” Piper heard. It was a young woman’s voice, someone who spoke with a Paris Hilton kind of vocal fry. “I get, like, so much done getting up that early. First, I do a pre-skincare routine on my face. I use the Los Angeles Ultra Hot XX Collection to exfoliate and moisturize. I’m so obsessed with that line, guys. Then, I go downstairs to my gym-- which was just redecorated by Margot Robbie’s decorator-- and I do a forty-five-minute workout. I totally change my workout, like, twice a week to keep my body guessing. Right now, I’m doing the Booty Blaster Disco workout, and I’m obsessed with it. I mean, obsessed. Then I come back upstairs and take my bath in New York Extraordinaire bath salts. Then, I do another skincare routine with a laser mask that I’m obsessed with that really gives me what I need for the whole day.”
Piper craned her head, trying to find where the voice was coming from. The room she was in was empty except for her. It looked like a living room with gilded walls and ceiling. There was exotic artwork in golden frames on the walls. The furniture was all Louis Quatorze.
She picked up the glass of water and sniffed it. It didn’t smell like anything. She dipped her tongue in and tasted it. So far as she could tell, it was water. However, there was a good chance that it was poison. It didn’t matter because if she didn’t drink soon, she knew she couldn’t last. She gulped it down and closed her eyes, waiting for a bad reaction, but nothing came.
