Act II
I can't tell you how long her and I were going at it that night, though I'm sure that it went on for at least an hour or two. Neither of us held back and by the time we were through, both of us and the rack were drenched with sweat and other...uh...fluids. After a quick shower and a few wasted minutes of trying to find all my clothes, I was back out under the night air to top my evening off with some drinking and partying. I tried to bring the girl with me (who at the time would tell me nothing about herself except that her name was "Autumn," not unlike the dozens of other strippers in that bar alone), but all she said was that she had other things left to do. I tried getting her number as well, but she just giggled and said "don't worry cutie, I'll find you when the time is right." Whatever, she was a prostitute after all.
It was my goal that night to get shit-faced drunk and pass out in some random alley between the bars and night clubs on Walking Street. However, my mating rituals with Autumn took more out of me than I first thought. After the first drink or so, I was simply too tired to keep myself awake any longer. A shot or two later and some food from one of the street vendors which I swear must have been fried Growlithe, I hoofed it back to my room which I rented out from one of the nearby hotels to get some shut eye. Didn't take long for me to lie in my rack to pass out completely.
It wasn't even an hour or so later that I woke up at around 2340. Despite my tired state, I couldn't bring myself to sleep any longer. Crawling out of my rack like an old man, I stepped out of the bedroom of my apartment into its main living space. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was bothering me at the time, but something about that dark and dankly hotel room was giving off a really weird vibe. Like a voice in the back of my head, I kept hearing Autumn's words play over and over again "trust your instincts Strauss, trust your instincts."
I shook the thoughts from my head, hoping that a glass of cold water would help to calm my nerves. "Heh, some bloody vacation this has been so far" I grumbled to myself, rubbing my temple weakly as I wobbled myself to the sink. The weird feeling was getting stronger with every step I took.
My breath stopped then, like someone stuffed a cork into my windpipe. I gasped for air, clawing at my throat as though to cut a hole for the air to flow through. I was panicking, my heart pounding violently at the walls of my chest as my vision started to dim. I didn't know what was wrong with me, screaming out for help but hearing nothing more than a dull wheezing sound. I thrashed about as if to punch away a ghost or phantom that was floating above me. It was when I started to fall backwards that I ran into something. There was someone behind me.
With a quick and reflexive swipe that even a year away from the Corps couldn't dull, I brought both my hands to the sides of my head and slid them down, each catching hold of an arm as they pushed off to the sides of my chest. Squatting down, I slid my head out of my attacker's grasp and sent him tumbling into the ground. He smacked the deck hard, with the strand of piano wire dropping out of his grip onto the carpet.
Lifting my leg up, I moved forward to finish him off with an axe stomp, but missed as he narrowly dodged out of the way. Leaping back to his feet, he drew a slender knife from his suit and lashed out with a vertical slash. Parrying the knife away with the spike of my right hand, I took a step to the side and gave a side kick to his knee. To my surprise his knee didn't break, but it did knock him off balance long enough for me to deliver an off-handed punch to his face. My fist landed squarely to his nose, knocking him back further and giving me enough space to give a quick swipe with my left hand at the knife. The blade tumbled off into the dark as my hand connected with his wrist, his reaction time now not being as fast as it was when he first pounced me. As I drew my own fist back to strike him again, he stepped into my defense and landed his own punch into the meat off my neck.
I slumped back, my right hand instinctively going for my throat as my mind and vision swam from the pain. Taking advantage in my broken defense, the attacker lunged at me and knocked me to the ground. Pinning me in the mount, he brought both his hands around my neck and started to choke me with all his might. I gasped for air as he strangled me harder and harder, feeling the claws of his hands digging into the flesh of my neck. My vision began to fade as I lost oxygen, my limbs and body growing weaker and weaker. As every drawn out second passed by, the urge for me to simply give in grew greater; to just stop fighting and allow the darkness around me to consume me. I wanted an end to my pain, to escape the brokenness of the physical and enjoy the quiet rest brought by eternal slumber. It was in those last few moments of life that I heard the girl's words again like a faint whisper in the back of my mind. "You can do it Strauss" she said, those words bringing me a flicker of hope "you've been through worst...your better than this."
With the last ounce of my energy, I released my grip on his hands and rammed my elbows into his arms with all my might. Feeling his grip weaken, I reached up with my right hand and grabbed hold of his head. Howling loudly with what air was left in my lungs, I brought his head down on my chest, hearing a wet smack and tear of flesh as the spike on my chest impaled his head, severing through the base of his neck to the top of his skull.
I gripped his head there on my chest, feeling the spasms of his arms die away and his body go limp. Lying there on the floor with my attacker's head skewered on my chest spike, I stared at the ceiling and gasped for air, relief setting in as I realized that I won. Feeling strength in my limbs once more, I leaned forward and slid the head off the spike with the body and all flopping lifelessly into my lap. Standing up, I leaned myself against the kitchen's granite countertop, taking breath after deep breath of the room's cool, air conditioned air.
A few minutes later after feeling my adrenaline wear off, I stood away from the granite countertop and flipped on a nearby light switch. The light was blinding, but as my eyes adjusted to it I was able to get a good look at my attacker. To my legit surprise, the assassin was a Lucario; and a female one at that. Every inch of her body besides her hands and feet were covered with a slick leather matt black jumpsuit, with a thin fabric covering her face and her eyes hidden behind odd looking goggles that I assumed were NVGs. There were some faint traces of smoky grey camo painted on the suit, though it was obvious that it was meant from the start to hide its wearer in the shadows of the night.
After staring at the corpse for a moment or so more, I walked over to a nearby table where I set my clothes and sifted around then for my cell phone. Cycling through my contacts, I found the one marked by the name Alex Klein. The phone dialed for a quick second or two before I heard Klein on the other end, his voice having an edge of frantic urgency.
"Strauss!?" he said, seeming a little surprised to hear from me "I'm so fuckin' glad you called! I just found out somethin' important now. I think your life might be in danger."
I looked back at the corpse of my assassin, growling at it as if to scare it into not moving again. Klein heard this and with my awkward pause understood what was going on "what happened? What's going on over there?"
I cursed under my breath before speaking into the phone again, still having a hard time believing that any of this was really happening. "Someone broke into my room. She's dead now, but came real close to slittin' my throat" I answered back casually, reaching for a wet napkin and absently started wiping the blood dripping down my spike and chest. I heard Klein curse on the other end.
"This is all my fuckin' fault" he said, sounding somewhat distressed "I should have known this deal was too good to be true. I risked my skin and gambled with your life by trying to chase after hopes of a good payoff. How could I've been so stupid?!"
I took another long breath before answering the phone, dropping the blood soaked napkin and started rinsing off my chest with handfuls of water from the sink. "It was my fault too Alex, I saw all the signs but didn't care enough to say or do anything.
There was a pause over the phone before Klein started speaking again, trying his best to be cool and collective. "Alright...alright. Do you at least still have the paperwork? Our shipping manifest?"
My heart sunk lower into my chest when I realized what the papers were that I gave the man, hanging my head with guilt. "The contact has em" I answered "I slipped up. I thought that I was supposed to give that shit to him. Documents, the manifest, everything."
I heard a cough from the other end before Klein got back on the line. It was easy to tell from the crack of his voice that he was afraid, and I'm sure he could tell from the tone of my own voice that I knew I fucked up. Strangely enough, he was never pissed off at me during that phone call. Rather, he was more focused on how own shortsightedness for accepting a deal that he didn't do any research behind. Mistakes happen to the best of us, only problem was that neither of us might see another tomorrow with a mistake as big as this.
"Those papers can be used to link us to all our sales" he said finally, his voice fluttering with the butterflies in his stomach "not just this deal, but all the other fuckin' one's we've done this last year. If the Feds were to get their hands on these papers then we're both gonna get fuckin' wrecked. We'll be lucky to get away with just life in prison, and that isn't including all the other laws and regulations I stepped over to secure many of my business deals..." he paused for a moment, thinking "...did you check the body?"
"Wait, what?" I said in reply, not exactly getting his message in clearly.
"The body Strauss! Did you check over the assassin that attacked you?" I looked back over at the corpse, cursing myself for not already checking it over for anything that could figure out who she was. "Not yet" I replied, walking back over to it and taking a knee beside it, feeling her thick blood between the toes of my right foot. "Hold on, this'll take me a second"
I started to sift through the pouches and pockets of the female's jumpsuit, pulling out several small objects and setting them on the ground. For having such a tight looking suit, she had a lot of stuff hidden behind all its compartments; tranquilizers, vials of some weird looking serum, knives, strips of paper, a 9mm handgun with 2 mags of ammunition, stimpacks, first aid supplies, and a few other bizzare objects that I couldn't guess for the life of me. Of all these things, one stood out in particular.
"I found something" I said into the phone, holding up a pendant attached to a small card. The pendant itself was that of a star with a laurel and eagle claw in the center. While I personally didn't know much about them, I recognized who the emblem belonged to.
"Looks like this chick was part of Talon Company" I said, turning the pendant around in my hand as I looked at the card. Talon was a shady group of mercs who operated outside the jurisdiction of the UN. Cold, calculating, efficient, and utterly cruel in their methods, Talon Company never had problems finding clients willing to pay the steep fee for their services. "She had a pendant belonging to them, and it looks like it was attached to a small card or something..." I started reading it to myself, intrigued and discomforted by what was on it. "It's a hit card or somethin'...has all my info and everything; name, height, appearance, location of my hotel room, everything." I paused for a second, still only half believing the things I was seeing. "I don't know who I pissed off, but this marks me off as being on the Talon Company hit list, and it looks like this chick was trying to collect. Gives the directions to a pier here where they wanted here to report to. Still though, who hired her?" It was then that I found the answer I was looking for. Turning the card around, I saw an emblem of a coat of arms with several elegant stars etched around it. "Omertas..."
I heard a growl from the other end "it would be the fuckin' Omertas." The Omerta's were Klein's main competition in the arms trade and a major thorn in our side. If the arms trade had its own mafia, the Omertas would be among them. Once a family of rich aristocrats and land owners in parts of South America, they got themselves involved with the arms trade after their property was taken from them by the government. Aggressive businessmen by nature, their way of dealing with rivals is to remove them from the equation entirely.
"This was all a setup. They wanted us to go for the deal so they could pin us for grand treason or whatever fuckin' charges they can lash on our heads. It's so like them to take out their competition." "So why try to kill me?" I asked, puzzled at why they would bother hiring a mercenary when I would be in the same world of shit as Klein was "wouldn't I be charged equally as you? Why bother killing me when I'll be sent to prison as well?"
"They must have figured that we would find out about this sooner or later" he replied. "They wanted to remove you from the equation, since you're the only one who can stop them..." he trailed off, dwelling on what he just said "...you're the only one who can stop them."
"And how do you propose that I do?" I asked with a harsh undertone, feeling one of those 'you're our only hope' scenarios playing all over again. "We have no idea where these faggots are, and even if we did, I guaran-fuckin-tee you that they'll have a shit-ton more of these Talon Company pukes standing guard over them."
"When there's a will, there's a way." He said, not sounding sarcastic in the slightest. "I remember the tales you spun back when you went through Recon training; the Bolivian War, Panama, Team Rocket, Afghan. You're tougher than you give yourself credit for Strauss, so how is today any different than back then? "
I breathed deeply, accepting the fact that once again I would have to go against ridiculous odds for something that should have never gotten involved in. "Alright, I'll do it. But still, where can I find them? The address on the card was a meeting point for the assassin to go to if she accomplished her mission. If the Omertas are that scared of me, then why possibly give me the address to their hideout?" It was then that I remembered the weird things that Autumn said back in the club. She did warn me of this, but was there anything else to her words that could help me now? I recalled all the things she said to me, and remembered the corny phrase she used with me. "Hard as rock" I whispered to myself "hard as rock...Hard Rock." It all came to me now. The phrase she said, and the words 'sweet dreams are made of these'; it was all about the Hard Rock Cafe.
"It's the Hard Rock Cafe" I finally said "what better place to set up shop than a spot as popular and crowded as that? No one would suspect it, would be a perfect area to mask movement, and would be the most difficult spot to infiltrate undetected. I'm willing to bet you that's where our target is."
Klein thought to himself for a brief moment before answering back. "You surprise me Strauss" he said, feeling a bit proud for making the connection. "Even if you're wrong, your evac point which I have for you now is a dock off the beach next to the Hard Rock. The call is yours Strauss."
I growled a line of gleeful affirmation, looking forward to cracking some skulls like I did back in the day. "Consider it done Klein; they'll all be fuckin' dead by morning".
"Oorah motivator" Klein answered back in a dry and sarcastic tone, though I could tell that he was relieved to have me working for him. I brought some hope back to what would otherwise be a disastrous mistake. "You need to get out of there quickly though. Talon Company will notice their missing mercenary, and will be sure to send more your way very soon."
"Understood, what options are available to me?" I asked, wondering what Klein had in mind for me.
"Thankfully for you, I had the box shipped to you just in time. Feel free to open it now, the code is 07-15-31"
I barked another growl of affirmation before turning to the plastic hard case sitting in the corner of the room. Entering the combo in, I pulled the lock off and slid the box open; revealing a black military grade flak jacket, several magazines of ammunition, 2 grenades, and a matt black SCAR-H carbine with holographic sight. A huge grin passed across my face as I picked up the weapon, quickly familiarizing myself again with its operations. Placing the vest on and securing it, I slid one of the mags into the SCAR and pulled the charging handle. Now I was ready to do some killing.
"Nice gear Klein, kudos on you for thinking ahead on the ordinance." He chuckled, taking satisfaction from my praise. "My pleasure Strauss, not like you'd actually need any of it though. The window to the far side of the apartment room is overlooking a catwalk with a ladder leading to the roof. Your best chance of avoiding patrols is to take the high ground.
"Roger that Klein, I'll call you back when I get our papers and that bastard's head." Klein chuckled into the phone "aye-aye sergeant, give em' hell."
I hung up the phone and placed it away in a pouch on my flak, slinging the rifle on my back as I headed for the window. Sliding out the window from its frame and setting it on the ground, I crawled out of the apartment into the night air. So it begins, I thought to myself, my feet making a padded thump as I landed on the metal catwalk. Whatever happens tonight, let it be doing something worth fighting for.
It was my goal that night to get shit-faced drunk and pass out in some random alley between the bars and night clubs on Walking Street. However, my mating rituals with Autumn took more out of me than I first thought. After the first drink or so, I was simply too tired to keep myself awake any longer. A shot or two later and some food from one of the street vendors which I swear must have been fried Growlithe, I hoofed it back to my room which I rented out from one of the nearby hotels to get some shut eye. Didn't take long for me to lie in my rack to pass out completely.
It wasn't even an hour or so later that I woke up at around 2340. Despite my tired state, I couldn't bring myself to sleep any longer. Crawling out of my rack like an old man, I stepped out of the bedroom of my apartment into its main living space. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was bothering me at the time, but something about that dark and dankly hotel room was giving off a really weird vibe. Like a voice in the back of my head, I kept hearing Autumn's words play over and over again "trust your instincts Strauss, trust your instincts."
I shook the thoughts from my head, hoping that a glass of cold water would help to calm my nerves. "Heh, some bloody vacation this has been so far" I grumbled to myself, rubbing my temple weakly as I wobbled myself to the sink. The weird feeling was getting stronger with every step I took.
My breath stopped then, like someone stuffed a cork into my windpipe. I gasped for air, clawing at my throat as though to cut a hole for the air to flow through. I was panicking, my heart pounding violently at the walls of my chest as my vision started to dim. I didn't know what was wrong with me, screaming out for help but hearing nothing more than a dull wheezing sound. I thrashed about as if to punch away a ghost or phantom that was floating above me. It was when I started to fall backwards that I ran into something. There was someone behind me.
With a quick and reflexive swipe that even a year away from the Corps couldn't dull, I brought both my hands to the sides of my head and slid them down, each catching hold of an arm as they pushed off to the sides of my chest. Squatting down, I slid my head out of my attacker's grasp and sent him tumbling into the ground. He smacked the deck hard, with the strand of piano wire dropping out of his grip onto the carpet.
Lifting my leg up, I moved forward to finish him off with an axe stomp, but missed as he narrowly dodged out of the way. Leaping back to his feet, he drew a slender knife from his suit and lashed out with a vertical slash. Parrying the knife away with the spike of my right hand, I took a step to the side and gave a side kick to his knee. To my surprise his knee didn't break, but it did knock him off balance long enough for me to deliver an off-handed punch to his face. My fist landed squarely to his nose, knocking him back further and giving me enough space to give a quick swipe with my left hand at the knife. The blade tumbled off into the dark as my hand connected with his wrist, his reaction time now not being as fast as it was when he first pounced me. As I drew my own fist back to strike him again, he stepped into my defense and landed his own punch into the meat off my neck.
I slumped back, my right hand instinctively going for my throat as my mind and vision swam from the pain. Taking advantage in my broken defense, the attacker lunged at me and knocked me to the ground. Pinning me in the mount, he brought both his hands around my neck and started to choke me with all his might. I gasped for air as he strangled me harder and harder, feeling the claws of his hands digging into the flesh of my neck. My vision began to fade as I lost oxygen, my limbs and body growing weaker and weaker. As every drawn out second passed by, the urge for me to simply give in grew greater; to just stop fighting and allow the darkness around me to consume me. I wanted an end to my pain, to escape the brokenness of the physical and enjoy the quiet rest brought by eternal slumber. It was in those last few moments of life that I heard the girl's words again like a faint whisper in the back of my mind. "You can do it Strauss" she said, those words bringing me a flicker of hope "you've been through worst...your better than this."
With the last ounce of my energy, I released my grip on his hands and rammed my elbows into his arms with all my might. Feeling his grip weaken, I reached up with my right hand and grabbed hold of his head. Howling loudly with what air was left in my lungs, I brought his head down on my chest, hearing a wet smack and tear of flesh as the spike on my chest impaled his head, severing through the base of his neck to the top of his skull.
I gripped his head there on my chest, feeling the spasms of his arms die away and his body go limp. Lying there on the floor with my attacker's head skewered on my chest spike, I stared at the ceiling and gasped for air, relief setting in as I realized that I won. Feeling strength in my limbs once more, I leaned forward and slid the head off the spike with the body and all flopping lifelessly into my lap. Standing up, I leaned myself against the kitchen's granite countertop, taking breath after deep breath of the room's cool, air conditioned air.
A few minutes later after feeling my adrenaline wear off, I stood away from the granite countertop and flipped on a nearby light switch. The light was blinding, but as my eyes adjusted to it I was able to get a good look at my attacker. To my legit surprise, the assassin was a Lucario; and a female one at that. Every inch of her body besides her hands and feet were covered with a slick leather matt black jumpsuit, with a thin fabric covering her face and her eyes hidden behind odd looking goggles that I assumed were NVGs. There were some faint traces of smoky grey camo painted on the suit, though it was obvious that it was meant from the start to hide its wearer in the shadows of the night.
After staring at the corpse for a moment or so more, I walked over to a nearby table where I set my clothes and sifted around then for my cell phone. Cycling through my contacts, I found the one marked by the name Alex Klein. The phone dialed for a quick second or two before I heard Klein on the other end, his voice having an edge of frantic urgency.
"Strauss!?" he said, seeming a little surprised to hear from me "I'm so fuckin' glad you called! I just found out somethin' important now. I think your life might be in danger."
I looked back at the corpse of my assassin, growling at it as if to scare it into not moving again. Klein heard this and with my awkward pause understood what was going on "what happened? What's going on over there?"
I cursed under my breath before speaking into the phone again, still having a hard time believing that any of this was really happening. "Someone broke into my room. She's dead now, but came real close to slittin' my throat" I answered back casually, reaching for a wet napkin and absently started wiping the blood dripping down my spike and chest. I heard Klein curse on the other end.
"This is all my fuckin' fault" he said, sounding somewhat distressed "I should have known this deal was too good to be true. I risked my skin and gambled with your life by trying to chase after hopes of a good payoff. How could I've been so stupid?!"
I took another long breath before answering the phone, dropping the blood soaked napkin and started rinsing off my chest with handfuls of water from the sink. "It was my fault too Alex, I saw all the signs but didn't care enough to say or do anything.
There was a pause over the phone before Klein started speaking again, trying his best to be cool and collective. "Alright...alright. Do you at least still have the paperwork? Our shipping manifest?"
My heart sunk lower into my chest when I realized what the papers were that I gave the man, hanging my head with guilt. "The contact has em" I answered "I slipped up. I thought that I was supposed to give that shit to him. Documents, the manifest, everything."
I heard a cough from the other end before Klein got back on the line. It was easy to tell from the crack of his voice that he was afraid, and I'm sure he could tell from the tone of my own voice that I knew I fucked up. Strangely enough, he was never pissed off at me during that phone call. Rather, he was more focused on how own shortsightedness for accepting a deal that he didn't do any research behind. Mistakes happen to the best of us, only problem was that neither of us might see another tomorrow with a mistake as big as this.
"Those papers can be used to link us to all our sales" he said finally, his voice fluttering with the butterflies in his stomach "not just this deal, but all the other fuckin' one's we've done this last year. If the Feds were to get their hands on these papers then we're both gonna get fuckin' wrecked. We'll be lucky to get away with just life in prison, and that isn't including all the other laws and regulations I stepped over to secure many of my business deals..." he paused for a moment, thinking "...did you check the body?"
"Wait, what?" I said in reply, not exactly getting his message in clearly.
"The body Strauss! Did you check over the assassin that attacked you?" I looked back over at the corpse, cursing myself for not already checking it over for anything that could figure out who she was. "Not yet" I replied, walking back over to it and taking a knee beside it, feeling her thick blood between the toes of my right foot. "Hold on, this'll take me a second"
I started to sift through the pouches and pockets of the female's jumpsuit, pulling out several small objects and setting them on the ground. For having such a tight looking suit, she had a lot of stuff hidden behind all its compartments; tranquilizers, vials of some weird looking serum, knives, strips of paper, a 9mm handgun with 2 mags of ammunition, stimpacks, first aid supplies, and a few other bizzare objects that I couldn't guess for the life of me. Of all these things, one stood out in particular.
"I found something" I said into the phone, holding up a pendant attached to a small card. The pendant itself was that of a star with a laurel and eagle claw in the center. While I personally didn't know much about them, I recognized who the emblem belonged to.
"Looks like this chick was part of Talon Company" I said, turning the pendant around in my hand as I looked at the card. Talon was a shady group of mercs who operated outside the jurisdiction of the UN. Cold, calculating, efficient, and utterly cruel in their methods, Talon Company never had problems finding clients willing to pay the steep fee for their services. "She had a pendant belonging to them, and it looks like it was attached to a small card or something..." I started reading it to myself, intrigued and discomforted by what was on it. "It's a hit card or somethin'...has all my info and everything; name, height, appearance, location of my hotel room, everything." I paused for a second, still only half believing the things I was seeing. "I don't know who I pissed off, but this marks me off as being on the Talon Company hit list, and it looks like this chick was trying to collect. Gives the directions to a pier here where they wanted here to report to. Still though, who hired her?" It was then that I found the answer I was looking for. Turning the card around, I saw an emblem of a coat of arms with several elegant stars etched around it. "Omertas..."
I heard a growl from the other end "it would be the fuckin' Omertas." The Omerta's were Klein's main competition in the arms trade and a major thorn in our side. If the arms trade had its own mafia, the Omertas would be among them. Once a family of rich aristocrats and land owners in parts of South America, they got themselves involved with the arms trade after their property was taken from them by the government. Aggressive businessmen by nature, their way of dealing with rivals is to remove them from the equation entirely.
"This was all a setup. They wanted us to go for the deal so they could pin us for grand treason or whatever fuckin' charges they can lash on our heads. It's so like them to take out their competition." "So why try to kill me?" I asked, puzzled at why they would bother hiring a mercenary when I would be in the same world of shit as Klein was "wouldn't I be charged equally as you? Why bother killing me when I'll be sent to prison as well?"
"They must have figured that we would find out about this sooner or later" he replied. "They wanted to remove you from the equation, since you're the only one who can stop them..." he trailed off, dwelling on what he just said "...you're the only one who can stop them."
"And how do you propose that I do?" I asked with a harsh undertone, feeling one of those 'you're our only hope' scenarios playing all over again. "We have no idea where these faggots are, and even if we did, I guaran-fuckin-tee you that they'll have a shit-ton more of these Talon Company pukes standing guard over them."
"When there's a will, there's a way." He said, not sounding sarcastic in the slightest. "I remember the tales you spun back when you went through Recon training; the Bolivian War, Panama, Team Rocket, Afghan. You're tougher than you give yourself credit for Strauss, so how is today any different than back then? "
I breathed deeply, accepting the fact that once again I would have to go against ridiculous odds for something that should have never gotten involved in. "Alright, I'll do it. But still, where can I find them? The address on the card was a meeting point for the assassin to go to if she accomplished her mission. If the Omertas are that scared of me, then why possibly give me the address to their hideout?" It was then that I remembered the weird things that Autumn said back in the club. She did warn me of this, but was there anything else to her words that could help me now? I recalled all the things she said to me, and remembered the corny phrase she used with me. "Hard as rock" I whispered to myself "hard as rock...Hard Rock." It all came to me now. The phrase she said, and the words 'sweet dreams are made of these'; it was all about the Hard Rock Cafe.
"It's the Hard Rock Cafe" I finally said "what better place to set up shop than a spot as popular and crowded as that? No one would suspect it, would be a perfect area to mask movement, and would be the most difficult spot to infiltrate undetected. I'm willing to bet you that's where our target is."
Klein thought to himself for a brief moment before answering back. "You surprise me Strauss" he said, feeling a bit proud for making the connection. "Even if you're wrong, your evac point which I have for you now is a dock off the beach next to the Hard Rock. The call is yours Strauss."
I growled a line of gleeful affirmation, looking forward to cracking some skulls like I did back in the day. "Consider it done Klein; they'll all be fuckin' dead by morning".
"Oorah motivator" Klein answered back in a dry and sarcastic tone, though I could tell that he was relieved to have me working for him. I brought some hope back to what would otherwise be a disastrous mistake. "You need to get out of there quickly though. Talon Company will notice their missing mercenary, and will be sure to send more your way very soon."
"Understood, what options are available to me?" I asked, wondering what Klein had in mind for me.
"Thankfully for you, I had the box shipped to you just in time. Feel free to open it now, the code is 07-15-31"
I barked another growl of affirmation before turning to the plastic hard case sitting in the corner of the room. Entering the combo in, I pulled the lock off and slid the box open; revealing a black military grade flak jacket, several magazines of ammunition, 2 grenades, and a matt black SCAR-H carbine with holographic sight. A huge grin passed across my face as I picked up the weapon, quickly familiarizing myself again with its operations. Placing the vest on and securing it, I slid one of the mags into the SCAR and pulled the charging handle. Now I was ready to do some killing.
"Nice gear Klein, kudos on you for thinking ahead on the ordinance." He chuckled, taking satisfaction from my praise. "My pleasure Strauss, not like you'd actually need any of it though. The window to the far side of the apartment room is overlooking a catwalk with a ladder leading to the roof. Your best chance of avoiding patrols is to take the high ground.
"Roger that Klein, I'll call you back when I get our papers and that bastard's head." Klein chuckled into the phone "aye-aye sergeant, give em' hell."
I hung up the phone and placed it away in a pouch on my flak, slinging the rifle on my back as I headed for the window. Sliding out the window from its frame and setting it on the ground, I crawled out of the apartment into the night air. So it begins, I thought to myself, my feet making a padded thump as I landed on the metal catwalk. Whatever happens tonight, let it be doing something worth fighting for.