Freedom Beer, Part 8

A fireball erupted in the middle of the Sonoran desert.

An F-16 screamed out of the black cloud like an afterburning Angel of Death. Two needle-nosed missiles chased it out. The pair gained on the aircraft.

The F-16 farted and a cloud of flares fell out of the backside. They glittered and shimmered and tumbled down towards the ground. Delicate smoke trails traced their trajectories. The effect was dazzling, especially to the missile. It detected the infrared signature of the aircraft and so thought that it was about to do its job very, very well.

The million-dollar warhead detonated against the side of a fancy road flare.

In the cockpit, Hank relaxed.

Until he saw that the missile warning light continued to flash and the computer continued to squawk.

The two-million-dollar warhead continued on its path. The extra million had been spent to upgrade the infrared detection equipment. It ignored the flares, which burned much hotter than the turbojet, and focused on the heat signature of its dreams.

The needle tip kissed the tail fin of the F-16. Romeo caught up with Juliet at Mach 1 and never before had a tragedy been so pyrotechnic.

Hank watched the scraps of the wreckage plummet towards the desert far below. He followed behind, albeit slowed by the parachutes attached to his ejection seat.

The ejection seat landed with a thump and a small cloud of dust. The parachutes folded over him. They smelled like burnt baby powder and rocket exhaust. Hank pulled out a long knife from the sheath on his calf, slit the straps holding him to the seat, sliced through the parachutes, grabbed the two heavy satchel charges that he'd snuck into the plane for just such an occasion, and set off towards the dissipating black clouds from his attack.

He hadn't finished his business on his first pass.

He'd surveiled the large complex of buildings that interrupted the natural landscape. When the first dozen missiles had gone up, he'd been able to avoid them while he punished the missile emplacements that had been hidden amongst the buildings. They'd gone up in oily plumes that obscured his vision. The missiles chased him out.

Because of his knife and satchel charges, he couldn't cross his fingers, but he hoped that his distress signal had gone through to Colonel Josen.

Hank knew which building he would investigate first: the biggest. Big buildings held more things, including secrets. Especially secrets.

The architect of the complex had not included any chainlink fences, nor any minefields, not even a moat filled with the hundreds of scorpions that seemed to be endemic to the area.

Hank considered that lazy defensive engineering: just because Hank Rockjaw wasn't likely to infiltrate your base didn't mean that you shouldn't take sensible precautions. The architect probably enjoyed long walks on flat fields in raging lightning storms.

The biggest building in the complex loomed before Hank. The sand and wind kept the walls smooth and clean. A door squatted in an alcove along one side. Hank tried the handle. It wasn't locked and the door pushed open.

Hank sighed.

"Shoddy."

He shut the door, then kicked it in.

A black maw yawned in front of him. He held his knife at the ready as he stepped into the shadow. The doorway behind him receded like the surface of the water behind a deep sea diver. Before long he smashed his nose against a wall.

That's when something slid down over the doorway with a clang. It bounced, once, admitting a momentary sliver of light before it settled shut and trapped Hank in total darkness.

"Every damn time," he said.

Several rows of institutional lights turned on. Hank squinted in the glare and took stock of the room.

It was white. And tiny. The ceiling was low. Two entrances interrupted the walls: the one that he'd come through, now blocked by a sliding sheet of metal, and a regular steel door.

Hank considered using the explosives on the door and leaving the building but discarded the thought. The room was too small: he'd blow himself up with the door. He reached for the door handle but it swung open into his outstretched hand.

"This is too easy. I wonder if they have a cake waiting for me, too."

Then a thick mat of chest hair mashed into Hank's face. He stumbled backwards and took stock of the man that had come through the door.

He was burly, bald and bare-chested, with baggy, checked pants on his legs and no-slip black shoes on his feet.

"My name's the Chef, and you're fresh meat that needs to be tenderized."

"A fight! Finally!"

Hank slid his knife into its sheath, tucked the sheath into one of the bags containing the satchel charges, and set them down. Before he had finished, the Chef picked him up like a rack of beef and threw him into a corner. Then the Chef took Hank's knife out from the satchel.

"I don't have my butcher's knife with me, but this cheap piece of shit will have to do."

"That knife is not cheap!" Hank got to his feet. "But you sure are. You didn't fight fair."

"You should have kept your knife for the fistfight. You may have lived an extra second or two."

Hank rushed the Chef. The Chef grabbed him by the shoulders, twisted him around, and suplexed him into whatever harder-than-diamond floor had been poured. Hank bounced twice, rolled and was on his feet while the Chef slashed at him. Hank grabbed the Chef's hand and tried to wrestle the knife away.

The Chef headbutted Hank, who reeled. The Chef closed in for a stab to Hank's kidneys but Hank hadn't reeled for as long as the Chef had anticipated. Hank grabbed the Chef's hand, put him into a joint lock, and bent his arm so badly that an octopus would have tapped out. The knife clattered to the floor.

The Chef fell to a knee under the force of the joint lock. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a handful of sand, and threw it in Hank's eyes.

"We're not even outside and you threw sand in my eyes! That is bullshit!" Hank thought camel thoughts and blinked furiously while the Chef punched him in the face a few dozen times. Or it may have been a few thousand times. Hank couldn't really count after the first couple.

Still blinded, Hank fell over onto the one obstacle in the room: the satchel charges.

With the alacrity of an experienced fighter, Hank evaluated his resources. On the one hand, the Chef was susceptible to a good joint lock. On the other hand, Hank was blind, beaten up, laying down and didn't have his knife.

What he did have, however, was the detonator for the satchel charges in his jacket pocket. He thumbed off the safety. He'd wait until the Chef got real close so that they'd both go up. Wait for it, he thought, wait for those stupid, cheating fingers still caked with sand to grab him for the kill.

"Hank, don't!" A woman cried.

Zelphia!

Hank paused. The sweat from his fingertips condensed on the plastic button.

"Zelphia, is that you?"

"Yes, Hank, don't do it!"