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May 22, 2024 17:36
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- Somebody Awful
- Nov 27, 2011
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BORN TO DIE
HAIG IS A FUCK
Kill Em All 1917
I am trench man
410,757,864,530 SHELLS FIRED
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'Kay.
I threw these together for a TFR Let's Read of some awful John Ringo novels a couple of years ago, just to see if I could write schlock as well as the maestro of excruciating milporn. Maybe this thread will motivate me to finish the third installment.
Introducing Pekka Nielsen, Shark Puncher posted:
“Pekka Nielsen? Jack Valance.” The man behind the desk gestured to the chair in front of it. “Have a seat.”
Pekka sat. The chair was vinyl pretending to be leather, with a plastic undercarriage that creaked as it took his weight. It smelled like menthol cigarettes.
The top man at Nadelmann Global Security's Australian branch was a fortyish American, wild-haired and lantern-jawed, who wore a luridly colored Hawaiian shirt over khaki cargo shorts and running shoes. On his desk, an armada of manila folders floated around an iMac decorated in a constellation of fruit stickers. “How was the flight in?”
“Slept through most of it,” Pekka replied. Not much else to do on an economy overnighter with no movies.
“I wish I could. Planes scare the bejeezus out of me. First time in Sydney?”
“First since the new office opened.”
“So it's been a while.” Valance opened one of the folders and flipped through it. “I read the file on your last mission in Africa. A real shame.”
Africa. Of course he would bring up Africa. “Yes sir.”
“I'm not blaming you. The defense minister shouldn't have let his boy hang out with poachers.” Flip, flip, flip. “You heard that Haeberlin's rhinoceros is extinct?”
“No sir.” No, but it was a forgone conclusion. Pekka knew it ever since he saw where the client's priorities lay. Africa was eight months of blood and sweat down the drain, wasted trying to save a natural treasure on behalf of people who couldn't care less.
“IUCN made it official this week.” Valance stopped flipping through that folder and started flipping through a different one. “Here we go... The company has a new assignment in the pipe. This one's right up your alley.”
He unfolded a broadsheet and pushed it across the desk. A map of the South China Sea, covered with long, sinuous lines which Pekka recognized as shipping lanes. A cluster of islands west of the Philippines were circled in magic marker. “The Alfonsine archipelago?”
Valance nodded. “What do you know about it?”
Pekka shrugged. “Seen some advertisements in travel magazines. What's the story there?”
“Colonized by Spain, ceded to the US, occupied by Japan. Independence in 1946, then a chain of strongmen. Latest one kicked the bucket last year.” Valance laid another, smaller map over the first. “Most of the old regime's manpower deserted when the new administration came in. Our contract is to set up their replacements.”
“Who's in charge now?”
“A civilian transitional government. It's real shaky, no teeth to speak of.” Valance leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms. “The economy was based on fishing and tourism. Now it's fishing and smuggling with a side of piracy. Outlying islands are basically lawless.”
“My kind of place,” remarked Pekka dryly. “We're doing this by the book?”
“Start to finish. They want to get things under control before their neighbors use it as a pretext to escalate the regional pissing contest. Your team will be their training wheels.”
He was right. It was up Pekka's alley. “When do we leave?”
Pekka and friends posted:
It was dark when Pekka returned to the hotel following an afternoon buried in paperwork. He climbed the stairs from the lobby to the third floor, pretending it was exercise. A pair of squealing French children and their apologetic French parents nearly ran him over in the hallway. Narrowly reaching Room 308 unscathed, he announced himself with a brief knock and waited to be let in.
Nadelmann Global organized its specialists into four man cells. A field team was two to five cells, depending on the job, and each cell got its own room. The company booked clean and comfortable lodgings, though not top star ones. Those were uneconomical and attracted the wrong kind of attention. Pekka was content as long as he didn't find any bedbugs.
A woman with handsome cheekbones and a black buzz cut answered the door, wearing a bathrobe meant for someone with smaller shoulders. “Hi.”
“Hi, Hetzer.” Pekka took off his shoes. The room was dim, lit only by a floor lamp between two armchairs. “All quiet?”
“Yes.” She bolted the door. “I was just going to stretch.”
At twenty-seven, Helga Metz was the youngest in Pekka's cell and his junior by six years. She came from the fading twilight of the Cold War, born to a West German barmaid and a USAF serviceman who proved a committed deadbeat. The Bundeswehr taught her the basics of her craft. Nadelmann saw to the rest. She was a breacher, a doorkicker, greased lightning with a twelve gauge master key and a degree in Krav Maga. Pekka understood that to be Hebrew for gently caress you up fast.
Masha wasn't back yet and Pekka knew Wilson wouldn't be back for a while. “I think I'll read.”
He ducked into the bathroom, taking a moment to check for five o'clock shadow. He also tried to comb down his hair, but the mess of hedgehog quills fought back with valor. Maybe Masha was right about needing to gel it.
Hetzer's robe lay discarded on one of the beds when Pekka came out. Its absence revealed a body that would make cheetahs envious, soft lamplight shading every contour as she arched backward until her hands touched the rough red carpet. She practiced a rather intense discipline of yoga, in which both the right ambiance and her nakedness were essential. Something about removing all distractions and attaining total clarity of mind. Wilson called it getting high without drugs.
Pekka stepped around her, picked up his book from the nightstand and eased himself into a chair. He appreciated Hetzer's exertions in an abstract, aesthetic sense, the way he imagined art critics looked at nude paintings and praised the brushwork. They were friends, with a strong trust and respect for one another, but no more than that. The interest simply wasn't there.
Both were romantics of a sort, people who eschewed casual hookups and believed in a fantastic thing called true love. Hetzer had gone through a string of boyfriends and girlfriends trying to find it. Pekka found it once, and then a drunk kid drove a Ferrari into his life at twice the posted limit. He left romance on the back burner these days, thinking it more productive to focus on his job. Wilson said he had a chronic libido deficiency and told him to see a doctor.
A motion in the background diverted Pekka from his reading. Glancing over the top of the paperback, he saw Hetzer brace her head and arms against the floor and raise her body vertically, pointing her toes at the ceiling. A pink flower blossomed as her legs dropped and spread into a perfect T. Pekka turned his eyes back to the current page, where Nately's Whore was trying to murder Yossarian.
Two pages later, he heard knocking. Pekka checked the peephole out of habit and found Masha in the hall, a paper bag cradled in one arm. He unlocked the door for her. “Success?”
Marina Kovshova was six-foot-two, big boned, and had the muscle to break a man in half. Her blue eyes gleamed with the cold intensity of Cherenkov radiation. She kept her blond hair in a practical ponytail and tended to wear fatigue pants and t-shirts even off duty, projecting an intimidating aura. She came from Belarus, born in a picturesque town that happened to be downwind of a nuclear power plant. Fallout displaced the family to Mazyr and then Minsk, where Marina's father, an analyst for Soviet foreign intelligence, taught her English from an early age.
“It's your lucky day.” Masha carried the bag over to the room's mini fridge. “One pastrami sub with the works.”
“My doctor will never forgive you,” Pekka quipped.
The elder Kovshov embraced capitalism in the early nineties and led his family west, introducing young Marina to dangerous concepts like freedom of the press and multiparty democracy. It also introduced her to the digital age. Strangers looked at Masha and assumed she was a dumb brute. Pekka looked at her and saw a genius. Her specialty was battlefield electronics, weaving the invisible web that linked the team together.
“I won't tell if you don't.” Masha put a large bottle of diet lemonade in the fridge. “Looking good, Hets.”
Pekka went back to his chair and his book. Hetzer's workout continued. Masha sprawled across the far bed with an MP3 player and headphones. Knowing her, it was probably a language course or a cryptography podcast. There was silence for a while, save Hetzer's breathing and the intermittent rustle of pages turned.
Trouble announced itself with a quiet buzz in Pekka's trouser pocket. “Wilson's calling,” he reported, placing the Nokia on the chair's arm and setting it to speaker mode. “Hi, you're on Car Talk.”
“Don't do that now, man. I'm in real trouble here.”
If asked to describe the fourth member of the cell, Pekka would say that Carburetor Wilson III looked like Kurt Cobain and sounded like Kevin O'Connor. He descended from a proud line of Ford salesmen, a boy who wanted to be a gonzo journalist but didn't have the creativity or the tolerance for drugs and hard liquor. Wilson's fallback plan was to join the army, which made him a master of explosives. He was also an expert connoisseur of strip clubs and spent much of his shore leave and bonus pay in them. Pekka contented himself with lesser vices like crab Rangoon or jalapeno nachos.
He could hear Survivor's Eye of the Tiger playing in the background. It sounded like a rowdy night over there. “What's the problem?”
“It's these Texan bikers. I asked 'em not to blow smoke at me, one of 'em called me a queer... poo poo, man, they're watching the exits. Real friendly with the bouncers too.”
Hetzer perched on the chair's other arm. Masha was listening as well. “You want us to come get you,” Pekka concluded.
“Yeah, man. Whatever these guys are thinking, it can't be good. I don't want any trouble right before a mission, you know?”
Pekka looked at Hetzer. She shrugged. He looked at Masha. She also shrugged. It was his call. “Fine,” he told Wilson. “But you're paying the cab fare.”
“Whatever you want, man. You got the address?”
“I have it. Sit tight, we're coming.” Pekka rang off. “Who's up for a little heroism?”
A bonus from the same thread:
The Battle of Robin's Drift posted:
A .577/450 bullet struck the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump neatly between its beady, savage eyes. The charging beast fell with a great crash and rolled head over tail in a dusty cloud, momentum carrying it a few paces further. The accompanying section of Woozles, seeing their battering ram felled short of the mark, ceased their advance and began to employ its carcass as cover. A jezail ball futilely struck the stone wall in front of the defenders. Another skimmed over it and clipped one of the Langstroth beehive cabinets in the field behind.
"Bother," said Pooh as he chambered another round. "Where's our bloody artillery?"
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Apr 8, 2018 02:56
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Apr 5, 2018 03:20
