Resistance (2 page)

Recalling her briefing notes, Special Agent Nguyen could not help but wonder if Varatchevsky’s early, and officially curtailed, career as a champion fencer might have had something to do with her obvious fascination for this sort of martial ephemera.

She realised with a start that while she had been wondering about her target’s early teenage years, the Russian colonel had slipped out of sight.

And then the screaming started.

01

The Chairman’s Suite at the Bellagio was a great place for a hangover, or it would be, if Dave had one, which he didn’t. And that was just awesome. Sure as hell he’d made a champion effort to get himself a hangover, but despite his best efforts – or maybe his worst – here he was in this expensive hotel suite, on this enormous and bouncy bed, atop this small but even bouncier Saudi princess, while he chugged a super strong Belgian beer and scarfed down a really excellent breakfast burrito. The beer, his fourth, could probably fuel a ride-on lawn mower. But the princess, his first, was a much better ride and a helluva lot more fun than any goddamned lawn mower.

‘America! Fuck yeah,’ he roared for no particular reason beyond the dizzying joy of being alive, as he bucked away in time to AC/DC’s ‘Shoot to Thrill’
.
The music pounded from a massive TV that loomed over them like the screen of a drive-in movie theatre. The Chairman’s Suite had two bedrooms, but one had been an early casualty of some super-powered romping. Kneeling on the second bed, the unbroken one in the other bedroom, Dave did his best to take a bit more care.

‘I fucking love this show,’ he yelled, after swallowing a mouthful of burrito, ordered by the suite’s full-time, by now exhausted bartender who was herself a significant hottie and the reason the Bellagio was going to need to do some repairs to the sunken bar. Structural repairs.

‘Fuck yeah! A classic of American cinema!’

Ostensibly he was commenting on the
Dukes of Hazzard
YouTube clip they were watching – or rather
he
was watching, the princess being indisposed and somewhat facedown at that moment – but Dave Hooper could just as easily have been making a larger comment on the strange turn his life had taken this past wild week.

To be sure, he was not a guy who was entirely unfamiliar with jungle sex in hotel rooms, and beer and burritos for breakfast. He was, however, more familiar with the kind of hookers you took to Motel 7, and six-packs of 7-Eleven Game Day Ice to wash away the sour taste afterward. Maybe, if he was really flush, he sprung for a Big Mac. But there had not been much to spring at his middling stage of life. Not until a few days ago. Now, he was permanently sprung.

‘Sprung,’ he chuckled through the mouthful of meat and cheese.

The burrito was a step up in quality too. Some kind of tasty Italian ham and bacon in there, they’d told him;
they
being the accommodating management and ever friendly staff of the Bellagio, who insisted on comping him into the Chairman’s Suite lest he have to drag ass back to the budget dive the government had rented for him when he was stranded in Vegas at the last minute. Dave Hooper was a hero, a superhero even, and the Bellagio did not turn away genuine American superheroes just because Uncle Sugar was too fucking cheap to pony up for anything better than a three and a half star flop house, a couple of blocks beyond the frayed edge of downtown. No, the Bellagio did not do that – not when genuine superheroes were so damned good for business, it didn’t.

And there was no question that having Dave at your tables was good for business. Half the city had crowded in to get a little touch of him last night, once word got out he was there – and the Bellagio’s hard-working PR flacks made damn sure that word got out fast. It seemed the other half of the city had dropped by to get a look at Lucille, currently resting on a hastily built display in the main entrance to the hotel. There was no chance of anyone stealing his enchanted splitting maul. Only Dave had been able to lift her up there on to the black satin cushions, and only Dave would ever be able to take her down. In his hands she seemed to weigh far less than the factory-specified twelve pounds of American steel. To anyone else, Lucille was heavier than the super dense mass at the core of a neutron star.

It bothered him only slightly that he seemed to be able to hear her whining to him about being abandoned. Stupid enchanted hammer was as bad as his ex-wife.

Thoughts of Annie were enough to wilt him slightly, forcing Dave to refocus on the princess. A few moments of concentrated effort and she started moaning all over again, causing him to harden, and a happy, mindless grin reappeared on his face.

‘Sprung,’ he giggled again. ‘Totally sprung.’

This end of the world shit had all turned out so well. For him, at least.

Dave had rolled into Vegas, quietly, modestly, around chow time yesterday, a couple of hours after their flight to 51, or Nellis, or whatever the fuck they called it, had been forced down by the dragons
. . .

Well, okay, back it up again, he conceded, while enjoying the vision of Jessica Simpson backing it up toward the camera, and while Princess – er, Mulan? – backed it up toward Dave. Only he’d said they were flying to Area 51. Captain Heath and Ashbury and that puckered ass Compton just called it ‘the base’. (Dead giveaway in Dave’s opinion. Had to be a cover for something X-Filey with a name like that.) And no dragons – or Drakon, as Urgon, the daemon in his head, reminded him – had come anywhere near their slow-moving transport plane on the uncomfortable haul up from New Orleans. It was just that every flight all over the damned country was grounded now because a bunch of big-ass fire-breathing lizards had dropped out of the sky on top of half a dozen planes, some big, some small and one of them Air Force fucking Two, no less.

That particular dragon hadn’t flame-grilled old Joe Biden. He’d been waiting to pick up his ride at the other end. But, long story short, millions of angry, frightened travellers were stuck wherever Homeland Security and their freaked-out air traffic controllers had ordered the planes to put down.

Hence the cheap hotel room. Las Vegas was full, according to Compton.

Everywhere was full.

Including, for once, Dave Hooper. He tossed the remains of the burrito aside and, as AC/DC gave way to Mot
ö
rhead (‘Fuck yeah!’), Dave Hooper turned his full attention back to Princess Mulan or Pocahontas or whatever her name was.

‘Holy shit!’ another voice cried out. ‘What time is it?’

Dave ploughed on with just a bit too much enthusiasm, collapsing the bed frame. Wrapping his arms around the Saudi princess as they rolled out of bed in a hurricane of sheets and comforters, he found he could keep the beat going while getting to his feet.

‘Damn,’ he said happily, taking in yet another broken bed.

The voice was female, light, corn-fed. A blonde and breezy American voice. Midwestern charming despite the discernible edge of panic. The sort of voice Dave Hooper was familiar with from an unknowable number of titty bars. The anonymously pretty blonde girl emerging from beneath the rumpled sheets of Dave’s ginormous bed could easily have been asking him if he wanted ‘more Buffalo wings with the next jug, honey’. But instead she was cursing in a very focused and unfriendly fashion, putting up her little fists and punching him on the shoulder while the princess ignored them both, continuing to grind her ass back into him.

‘You promised me. You promised that you’d give me an exclusive this morning. A live fucking cross. And I promised New York, Dave. I
promised
them.’

But Dave was laughing, Mulan was moaning, and Mot
ö
rhead were not much interested in any live cross. He flipped over Mulan and started walking back to the bar and the snoring barmaid, carrying the princess in front of him. She laughed and gasped something in Arabic that Dave didn’t understand, but that was
hawt
if you asked him.
Hawt
enough to make him want another beer and perhaps more if the full-time bartender was willing.

‘Darlin’,’ he said, ‘I dunno why our two cultures can’t get on like this all the time.’

But Foxy – Dave had insisted on calling her ‘Foxy’ all night because she said she worked for Fox News – was not to be put off. She would be reporting, and America would be deciding, and there was no way known she was letting any reprobate fucking superhero ruin this chance for her.

‘Come on, Dave! Hurry up.’

Dave just grinned at her as he woke up the lady bartender to ask for a beer. She smiled slowly and happily when she saw him.

He got his beer, winked, and turned around to head back to the bedroom, ignoring the shattered dining room table behind him. It lay under piles of sweet, sweet swag that had started showing up from folks wanting Dave to say a few nice things about their fine products.

‘Can’t hurry the superhero, darlin’,’ he said, still ploughing into the princess, her legs locked around his back while her long black hair thrashed back and forth. ‘It wasn’t just my ass kickin’ skills got a power up in N’Orleans. They call me Captain Stamina now.’

He favoured Foxy with an exaggerated wink before making his point by ever so slightly hyper-accelerating while he held onto Mulan. Two seconds of Captain Stamina going at it like the Flash was enough to send Her Royal Hotness over the edge. Quite literally. When Dave let go on his final thrust she flew off him for a soft landing on the ruins of their bed, shrieking and laughing.

‘Great, you’re done. Think you can you get your pants on now, Captain?’ said Foxy. More of an order than a question.

‘Oh baby.’ He chugged his beer while admiring her. There was something about frustrated, angry blondes that really excited him. ‘You really aren’t a morning person are you?

‘No, damn it, I am a morning news producer. Now get your pants on, mister, you have a live cross to get to.’

‘Can’t I even have a shower?’ he asked, pointing down at himself. ‘A bit messy here. We could shower together. You could make sure I was scrubbed ’til my belly button shined.’

She marched through the ruins of the bedroom, past the shattered bed and ducked into a white tiled bathroom, also one of two in the enormous suite, this one still in usable condition. The water ran for a bit as Dave stood there pondering his situation, sipping the bottom half of his beer. When she emerged, she threw a wet towel across the room at him. He accelerated just a notch to catch it with his still erect penis, a feat he could not have managed even in his high school days.

‘Ta-da!’ he shouted until the icy cold moisture sank in. ‘Wooo! Not fair! Come on, have that shower.’

‘It’s not smell-o-vision, Dave. No one’s going to know. They just want to see your pretty face and hear about how you kicked monster butt. Especially after last night. People need a good news story. And this week, you’re it.’

Dave scrubbed and massaged himself with the wet towel in one hand while making sure every last drop of beer was drained from the bottle. He set the empty down with some care and patted the princess on the ass as he passed her by. She panted something in her native language which he took to be contented congratulations. He was inclined to just stand there in all of his naked awesome – and damn if he wasn’t all kinds of awesome these days – enjoying his beer and checking out his reflection in the full-length mirror at the end of the room. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on him. A description of a young Schwarzenegger came back to him from somewhere. Like a ton of walnuts stuffed in a brown condom. Or something.

‘Fuck yeah,’ he grinned, narrowing his eyes just a little, and totally believing that his hairline, which had been creeping backward ever since he got married, was now beginning to inch forward in the right direction, chasing the grey away with it.

‘Do you think my balls got bigger during the night?’ he asked. ‘What do you think, Princess? I think they got bigger.’

Mulan merely mumbled into the mattress, sated and falling toward sleep.

But he didn’t linger. Or not for long anyway. He had the excuse of a long walk toward the bathroom to enjoy the arresting vision of his ripped and naked body – was it possible his dick was getting bigger? – but he didn’t want to piss off Foxy too much. He was fast recovering from his last orgasm and his thoughts were turning naturally toward where he might find his next one. And, to be honest, he did recall promising to do this cross thing for her. And then he’d done all those things
to
her
. . .
so, turnabout was fair play, he supposed.

Plus, he was still pissed at some of those first stories that’d come out blaming the explosion and the fire on the Longreach on ‘human error’. Like it was his fault, him being the safety boss of the rig and everything.

Yeah, he could easily imagine some floor-walking asshole at Baron’s Petrochemical in Houston briefing the press against him, just to give themselves some wriggle room.

‘Well,’ he imagined them saying, ‘Hooper has always been a terrible fuck-up. We have files, detailed files
. . .
’

Yeah, fuck them, Dave thought.

Mot
ö
rhead abruptly cut off, giving way to a rapid succession of infomercials, cartoons and talking heads until Foxy found what she was looking for – the vapid twitterings of some haircut and that chick from
Survivor
, the one where they dumped them in outback Australia.
Fox and Friends
,
according to the scrolling news ticker. Yeah, now he remembered. He’d promised to give his first ever interview to those assholes, just because lil ol’ Foxy here was a damn sight hotter than the old scrote who’d fronted him at the craps tables last night and said he was from
The New York Times
and most interested in recording an interview with ‘Mr Hooper. For posterity’.

Dave had never been one for watching the news, unless it was sports. His ex-wife, on the other hand, was always obsessing about some bullshit story that meant nothing to anyone, but that was why she loved MSNBC. Annie’d go apeshit if he was in
The New York Times
. And a whole different kind of apeshit if he turned up on Fox.

He chose Fox, because a sexy producer plus pissed off ex-wife equalled all sorts of epic win.

He couldn’t tell what the Haircut and
Survivor
hottie were talking about because Foxy was already yelling that they were late, they were late, they were very fucking late, to which Dave responded that her bosses looked cool with it. He waved one hand at the screen while climbing into the jeans he’d discarded just inside the door last night.