Two Guns 19 - Hammer To Fall

There was no perception of time in Dollar's underground clinic, but Sharon just sipped on her coffee and felt the mucous membranes of her mouth suck up the caffeine; it was the only thing that kept her going through the wee hours of the morning. The shivering was getting worse. She drew the blanket over her shoulders closer, trying to trap the warmth. She could've asked Dollar to turn up the heat - but that would've involved talking to Dollar. She freed a pack of smokes from her jacket, flipped a cigarette into her mouth and dug back into her clothes in search of a lighter.

"Hey, wuzzat?" Dollar hollered from across the room. He was there much faster than it should be possible to move and snatched the cigarette from her mouth.
"Do you mind?" she said, angry from being tired and tired of being angry.
"Girl, you's all wired and shit. You don't wanna light up that cancer stick, that'll kick you to hyperspace. You gotta smoke somethin', I'ma hook you up with some fine cheeba so you don't start trippin'."
"I'm fine. Can I have my cigarette back now?"
"That ain't right..."
"You're already down two beatings for the evening; wanna go for a hat trick?"

Dollar dropped the cigarette onto the floor and ground it under his shoe. Sharon met his glare, then calmly fetched another smoke from her pack and lit it.

"That's it. Move over, bitch. You wanna smoke, we's gon' smoke together."

Sharon gave him a strange look but moved over almost by reflex. Dollar sat down next to her on the couch, grabbed a joint from his shirt pocket and fired away. Within seconds, an intense smell pushed the tobacco smoke away, and a sweetness formed in Sharon's nostrils as if they'd been sugar-coated.

"Now this is some bangin' reefer, lady, not the dirt they sling to the preppies. Purple haze, baby."
"You ever try to quit?" Sharon asked.
"Nah, girl, this is what keeps me going."
"I've been quitting for two years now. Gums, patches, whatever, it doesn't work."
"I got a rehab cage in the basement, you know," Dollar threw in.
"...what?"
Dollar laughed. "Girl, how do you think I met Kyla? Little crackhead snooping around for things to fly with, I knocked her on her ass and then we did the cold turkey therapy."
"How long did it take?"
"Shit...three weeks like."
"And you had a cage in your basement - why?"

Dollar took a deep draw from his blunt and cackled.

"Well, I don't get to fuck assassins. Gotta get my kicks somewhere."
"I have to stop asking these questions."
"Don't get it twisted: I never got biblical on my lil' girl. I don't go for spun up jailbait. Rehab ain't sexy, I'll tell ya that for free."
"If I say I believe you, can we talk about something else?"
"Ah, white chick mode: first you squeeze me for details and then you raise your purity shields. Whateva, girl, that's cool with me. You ever get the itch, you know where to find me."

Sharon had to concede that this was one of the most effective arguments for abstinence she had ever heard.

When Kyla entered the room seconds later, Sharon involuntarily had to imagine what she had looked like as an addict. The image wasn't pretty; Kyla didn't seem the type to lose weight gracefully, and Sharon could picture her as a teenage skeleton, rummaging for something worth stealing from the medicine cabinets on the walls.

"Your squeeze on line two," Kyla said, reeling Sharon back into reality. She acknowledged the sentence with a curt nod, got up from the couch and took an extra drag off the almost-finished cigarette as she followed Kyla around a few corners. A wall-mounted telephone (the kind that should probably be in a booth) had its receiver lying on top, with the steel links of its heavy-duty cord still softly clanging against the phone's body. She picked the receiver from its resting place and forced it against the side of her head.

"Mark?"
"...Sharon? Hey. Listen, I..."
"How did it go?"
"Are you watching TV?"
"No. Why?"
"Uh...we're in a bit of a mess right now. Things got loud. But we've got Boris, and Nikolai is history."
"Where are you now?"
"Payphone. Listen, I need some help."
"Tell me where you are and I'll be there."
"No, no, not that kind of help. I've got this Detective's shield, and..."
"What?"
"One of the Russians had a badge with him."
"..."
"I've got the number here. 4-7-4-4. I need that run ASAP."
"...you killed an undercover cop?"
"No! No, I'm pretty sure I..."
"You're pretty sure."
"Look, if you just run the number, okay? Go to the precinct and run it. I'm not immune to fuckups, but I think there's something going on here."
"And if it comes up as undercover?"
"That would be...bad."
"No shit."
"I'm going to drop off Boris at the next emergency room, he obviously doesn't want to go back to Dollar...and then I'll come and drive you to the precinct."
"No, no..." Sharon said, brushing some hair away from her ear while she tried to think clearly. "I'll head over to the precinct myself. Not a good idea for you to show yourself there now. Wait at my apartment."
"You got it."

And then he hung up. Perfect.

---

By the time Sharon reached the precinct - via Kyla's moped, no less -, she was well and truly beat, tired beyond all recognition and with the fondest wish for only her own bed to sleep in. Almost on autopilot, she fed some cash to the coffee dispenser, waited the requisite 15 seconds and grabbed a plastic cup with barely liquid caffeine in it. A sip of that brought her back from the brink, and the elevator ride to the third floor gave her five more sips. By the time she walked into her office, she was almost awake.

4744.

She ran it and it didn't take long enough for suspense to build, it just told her that this was Berkovitz's badge.

She tried his home number, but nobody picked up. Her brain wanted to give in right there and then, sort this out tomorrow, but her fingers were already punching Captain Whitton's number into the telephone pad. It rang a couple of times and she realized that this wasn't the right time of night to be calling anyone, but Whitton picked up before she hung up.

"Whitton."
"Captain, I'm sorry to disturb you, but..."
"Collins? What's the situation?"
"I need to find Berkovitz. I think he knows something about the ambush at the restaurant."
"Yeah...that's not gonna happen. He's on assignment."

Fuck.

"Oh. Sorry to wake you, then..."
"Actually, I've been following the coverage."
"The coverage?"
"Didn't you hear? There was a firefight in Brooklyn. They just about levelled the old Army Terminal, and if we can trust the investigative prowess of the Channel 7 graveyard shift, there's a ton of dead Russians."
"..."
"How's your boyfriend, Sharon?"
"I have to go now."

Sharon slammed the receiver onto the phone, switched the computer off and hurried outside. Her gait was unsteady, her feet more searching than finding, and she felt the typhoon in her guts as soon as she barely glimpsed the sign at the women's restroom. With one palm on the frame and a swift kick, she entered, blundered into the next stall and sank to her knees. Tears streamed down her face while she grappled her hair, forced it behind her head and bowed down over the toilet bowl.

Nothing.

One hand on the seat, the other still holding her long red hair, Sharon knelt over the porcelain and breathed heavily, her eyes almost sewed shut as more tears streamed down her cheeks. The sickness clung to her throat; all that came were acidic belches and gagging. She hovered for a minute, her mind blank, and then she rose up again, slowly walked over to the sinks and opened a faucet. Her hands splashed cold water onto her face, then she help them under the stream and collected some water in her cupped hands. Small, measured sips.

That thought again. Sharon Collins, your boyfriend kills people for a living. How do you feel about that?

Two Guns 18 - The Trooper

Riding in the back of an otherwise nondescript gray panel van, Done and Mark stocked up on the best the Ingues arsenal had to offer; Done finessed another 40mm grenade into his bandoleer to complement the M16A2/M203 combo on the bench next to him, while Mark indulged in the finger-callusing sport of loading a few Calico 50-round magazines.

"So, why Paladin?" Done asked out of the blue.
"You would've understood if you'd met the old boss," Mark said, fishing for a new bag of 9mm cartridges. "He's the guy who set up the great compromise. Very much into history, liked to think he was Charlemagne..."
"Right."
"Now, he suggested Roland, but Roland's too easy to confuse with a real name, so I figured, hey, what did he do?"
"Kill Muslims? Die horribly?"
"In a more general sense. He was a - wait for it - Paladin."
"I actually like it less now that I know where it comes from."
"That's the mark of all great nicknames," Mark said with a grin.

And then there was a crash and metal against metal and BANG and up was down as the van tumbled off the street, rolling onto the parking space of the all-but-abandoned Brooklyn Army Terminal. The rear doors opened rather violently when Done impacted them, throwing him clear off the van and onto the asphalt. He laid there for a few seconds, unmoving, listening to the noise of a heavy-duty diesel engine rapidly closing in. Done rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the off-road tires of a rather large forklift. With no more time to lose, he got up and ran for it. He was shedding loose cartridges in a rather molting-esque visual, but that was secondary - he managed to reach the concealment of a parked car just as the fork stabbed into the rear compartment of the van.

Before Done could right himself and load a grenade, the forklift raised its arm and drove off with the van still hanging off it, towards a rather large collection of railroad tracks and abandoned train cars to the South. Whatever duty Done felt to get Mark and Vince out of this pickle took a back seat to the large cloud of shot that banged against the car panel he was sitting next to - and even considering the generally low penetration powers of 12 gauge 00, that kind of last-minute stop was as lucky as things got. With a snap, he closed the launcher on the 40mm shell and dropped to the ground, spotting the wheels of a car approaching his position. With a grunt and a few more rolls, he cozied up to the car, waiting for his attackers to come by and check their supposed kill - but when they circled around the lot to find him and he got them into his sights, all they received for their troubles was a cracked windshield from the impact of the HE shell. Muttering incoherent curses at the inventor of the whole "minimum arming distance" feature, Done simply snapped the rifle's safety off and let them have a good portion of the magazine. When he was finished, the security deposit on that rental car was seriously forfeited.

In other words, holes and not just a few of them.

Mark wasn't having much of a good time either, because he was still somewhat caught in the existential crisis of nearly getting his skull crushed by a big fat piece of sharpened metal going through the side of the van. It took a couple of seconds to recover from that one, but when he did, he grabbed the Calico and scrambled to reach the back door. It didn't work, and then it continued to not work, until Mark realized that the fork had not missed his trenchcoat. With the kind of grace that only comes from years of practice and a deep-seated fear of God's judgment, Mark slipped out of the coat and out of the van, diving into the dirt a couple feet below and rolling with the landing while the forklift driver slammed on his brakes, sliding the precariously-balanced van off the forks. Mark abused that little moment for all it was worth; jumping up and breaking into a dead run for the heavy vehicle, he managed to jump onto the back just as the driver tried to reverse and applied his own brand of reversing to the situation by yanking the Russian from the cockpit and taking control of the construction equipment. The Russian landed rather worse than Mark, twisting his ankle, and arguably that's what killed him - arguably because what actually killed him was Mark running him over. But, you know, that damn ankle. Maybe he could've gotten away without that injury, and then he wouldn't have been turned into communist road kill.

In the land of the not-hypothetical, however, Mark came under fire, and no matter what the A-Team may have told us, construction equipment is not bullet-proof.

As quickly as he'd gained control of it, Mark left the forklift, running back to the Administration building to the North. Shots followed him, and to add insult to injury another Russian climbed onto the forklift and set off after Mark. It became painfully clear that Mr. "Ain’t never seen a foot point that angle" wouldn't have made it in any event, for the forklift was doing a rather good job of closing the distance to Mark sprinting for his life.

Then there was the whistling and the BOOM! and a little 2 second sun over the dirt while Mark went flying with the most intense pain in his ears (despite the earplugs), and finally the dust settled and the forklift was fuckin' toast. A couple hundred yards away, Done smiled and popped the grenade launcher open. Mark scrambled to his feet and limped away, clearly worse for wear but too rattled to realize that for at least a couple of seconds more. His ears were ringing, he was going the other way and there was a flaming wreck in the way, so Mark couldn't notice Vince come to and kick the van's driver's door open. The Russians staging from the train tracks had other problems now, chiefly Done bringing the hurt from a full bandoleer of 40mm HE grenades and a quite accurate leaf sight, so Vince had the breathing room to grab his rifle bag from the passenger seat and run for it.

Mark reached a depression in the sand and half-dove, half-fell down into the ditch. The ringing in his ears was fading way too slowly, but even so he could hear the shouts of Russians trying to push north and take out Done's artillery support. With fevered motions, Mark unclipped the Calico's magazine and shook the dirt out, then snapped it back into place, turned around and raked the advancing line of Russians with an unhealthily long burst of 9mm strafing.

In the Calico's defense, it only jammed when it was already halfway through the magazine and had killed five Russians. The rest failed to reconsider their charging ways, figuring that they'd have more luck clubbing Mark with their Kalashnikov stocks rather than trying to shoot him. Mark dropped the Calico into the dirt like a hot potato and freed a combat knife from the sheath in the small of his back; he blocked the first Russian's thrust with the spring-loaded Hi-Power on his left lower arm, then rammed the knife into the attacker's midsection and pulled it out - the long way. Without bothering to check for life from his first hit, Mark picked up momentum, body checking several attackers as if he was trying to breach a defensive line for a touchdown.

Then again, most football leagues have regulations against doing that with a piece of sharpened carbon steel in your hand.

Without the distraction of people shooting at him, Vincent made it to the administration building and kicked in the front door; the padlock hanging off it held, but the door it was attached to didn't, so he gained access. On his way to the stairs, he hastily opened the bag and grabbed his Dragunov, which was good because the Russians had anticipated that kind of play and had a guard inside. Vince flipped the rifle's safety and fired it from the hip, punching a big hole through the guy's shoulder, then he followed that up by rifle-butting the man into bloody submission. Moments like this reaffirmed Vincent's love affair with Soviet infantry weaponry - so maybe the French rifles were more precise, but what good is a rifle you have to rezero after bashing a couple of heads in? Vince lined up a proper shot to the guy's neck - at CQB distance, aiming through a scope that lets you see the pores of your target's skin is fun, even if it's horribly impractical. With a bang, the man stopped twitching, and Vince hurried up the stairs for higher ground.

By the time the Russians realized that maybe they should stop charging and start attacking Mark, he'd killed three of them and left two with only fond memories of their kidneys; in the great free-for-all of the pseudo-foxhole, Mark took a stock to the arm, which was infinitely better than taking one to the head, and dropped to the ground, kicking the attacker in the family jewels. Flipping the bloodied knife around, he flung it into the leg of the next contestant, grabbed one of the discarded AKs, narrowly dodged a butt plate coming for his face and shoved Uncle Mike's muzzle against the Russian's chest before pulling the trigger.

Two things to consider here: A) An AK-47 is not accurate or controllable when fired one-handed, B) at this range, it doesn't matter.

After twenty-two bloody messes (all collected into one meta-mess that would make even the most battle-hardened CSI guys ask for a raise), the Russian dropped, literally shoved over by the wall of lead. Mark dropped the AK and picked up the re-dirted Calico, then started for the line of train cars. If the Russians were all cooped up there...well, then maybe they kept Ded in one of those.

The interior of the administration building was cramped and tight, the atrium more like a prison with the scattered lights and steel mesh everywhere. Assault-slung Dragunov in one hand, CZ 85 in the other, Vince cowered behind a waist-high heavy concrete wall while withering Kalashnikov fire chipped away at the wall behind him. The Russians were quite good, alternating their fire so he couldn't catch them reloading, but he had the better cover; sticking the pistol out a bit, he blindfired, forcing the attackers to scramble. He rose with the fire, dialing in his shots, and actually managed to gun down half of the Russian defender duo with his third-to-last bullet. One more shot at the other Russian to keep him in check, then Vince dropped back down, let the magazine drop out and fed a fresh one. That gave him 17 shots total, but he figured the remaining guard would be watching for him to try the blindfire trick again - so the CZ went back to the holster. Dropping his fancy suit into the dust, he crawled while bullets whizzed overhead; when he reached the end of the covering wall, he brought up the Dragunov and switched magazines.

Out: 7N1 (precision load). In: B-32 (Armor-Piercing, Incendiary).

One might find the precise difference between 7.62x39 and 7.62x54R calibers somewhat academic if encountered in the context of, say, an evening's conversation over green tea - who cares what the Soviets used to kill Mujahidin freedom fighters? If, however, the relative muzzle energy and penetrative properties of the two calibers were suddenly the linchpin of one's survival, the issue might receive more attention. In any event, the Kalashnikov's lighter caliber didn't really manage to get through the concrete in front of Vincent's body, and the Russian wasn't a good enough shot to hit the part with the rifle that stuck out. In contrast, Vince aimed his shot carefully and sprayed his opponent with a loud cloud of reinforced concrete ejecta, and at that stage it didn't really matter if it was the debris or the bullet hitting the guy. It didn't kill him, but it forced him to stumble back and right himself (including trying to shake off burst eardrums), a process that involved showing his head.

Vincent's next shot was utterly predictable. The carnage it produced strained against the upper bounds of the "closed casket funeral" definition.

According to standard military science, Mark shouldn't have reached the line of train cars; a single attacker against a fixed line of fortifications was to be laughed at briefly, pitied even briefly-er and then pumped full of bullets at the earliest convenience. Without a way to determine the general emotional state of the Russian defenders, Mark nevertheless noted with some bewilderment that their Step Three was sorely lacking, that is to say: completely absent. Not one lousy bullet welcomed him, and that set off Mark's danger sense something fierce. As far as he was concerned, Russian attitudes toward him really didn't rise above shooting, so if they weren't doing that, God knows they must've had something worse in mind.

Think of something worse.

Go ahead.

...

Yeah, it would pretty much have to be a flamethrower.

Mark saw it coming, that's why he put a car between himself and the user, but the attack still left him panting. It felt like the air was burning, superheated and thin, and he struggled to limp away from it before collapsing into a hyperventilating heap. The flame hadn't even come close to him, but even that was a small mercy - he was down and nearly out, gasping in the heat of the burning boxcar. The man with the flamethrower stepped out, his hands cradling a weapon as infernal as his grin. His eyes knew fire, in a way that humans weren't meant to. Mark raised the Calico, but it was an empty gesture - the weapon was jammed solid. If Mark had known that this was Nicolai's lieutenant Sasha, he...well, he would've still tried to kill him.

"Mark?" came a weak voice from inside the train car. Ded! The jammed Calico felt like the physical embodiment of Mark's frustration with the way things were going. He figured that he owed God some amusement value before going to hell, but did it have to be this way? Sasha raised the muzzle, Mark closed his eyes, and then there was a PING!

The tank strapped to Sasha's back slowly dripped fuel.

At the other end of the battlefield, Done lowered his iron-sighted M16 and cursed his luck. One shot, time for one shot and he had messed it up. He hadn't even meant to take on the flamethrower, that was the wind and the sights at work. What Done didn't know was that Vince had finally managed to set up his rifle for that perfect view of the battlefield. His shot struck true, going through Sasha and into the fuel tank.

Still in the Dragunov: B-32 (Armor-Piercing, Incendiary).

Needless to say, there was a big damn fireball and Mark wasn't it. Well, he almost was, since his pants caught on fire, but he already had the stopping and dropping part covered, so he just rolled like a motherfucker and shoveled sand on his legs. Sasha had rather less luck with this strategy, but then again, he was already dead and all motion of his resulted from his tendons being roasted in a sauce of boiling body fat. Mark picked himself from the ground, looked at Sasha, then at the Calico, then at the burning train car.

No. Not gonna happen. Not gonna let it happen.

With a new surge of adrenaline, the blistered skin of his legs and the exhaustion were forgotten; Mark simply plunged into the heat, throwing his weight against the door of the boxcar. Smoke in his eyes, smoke in his lungs, and he still pressed on, trusting his ears, stumbling for Boris's screaming. With a fumbling grab, he got the Russian by the collar and dragged him away. There was no way to be sure of the way back, no way to tell - he just turned and powered forward, slamming against a hot metal panel and being thrown back. No more oxygen, everything...so...hot...

Boris rose from below, maneuvering his shoulders close to Mark's arms; he dug his feet in, unleashed a war cry unique in its ferocity and shoved Mark against the wall like a battering ram, dislodging the panel; the two fell out of the car, Mark clutched Boris and they rolled away in the dirt. When they came to a stop, Mark was coughing his lungs out, acid tears running down his cheeks from the smoke. Boris wasn't coughing; in fact, he wasn't breathing. It took Mark a second to realize this, given the immense amount of pain that demanded to be felt, but he got on top of that, too, quite literally: he leaned over Boris and plunged his fist onto the Russian's chest in as close an approximation of CPR as he could manage.

Nothing.

Mark did his level best to get his own breath under control, tried it again, eventually even switching to proper presses. He even had a slight edge on the average CPR-using civilian - he knew where Boris's heart was.

Nothing.

"Motherfucker!" Mark shouted, pounding on Boris's chest.

Nothing.

He kept on working it even when he heard the sound of motorcycles behind him.

"Come! Back!" Mark screamed, tears still streaming down his face as he folded his hands and delivered a mighty blow to Boris's chest.

Nothing.

Mark looked up to see Nikolai tearing away on a dirt bike; almost blind with anger, he grabbed the Calico from the ground and pulled the trigger, but the gun still refused to fire - especially now that it was half-melted. The Russian hitman fixed him with a mixture of terror, respect and pity, then tore off.

Mark howled with rage.

Dropping the Calico like a bad habit, he rose to his knees and spread his arms, snapping the Hi-Powers from their spring-loaded holsters. He rose up, a phoenix from the ashes, and then the remaining Russians rode by and Mark cut them down, every shot a blood-splattering picture of brutal precision. Bikes wiped out, necks and bones snapped among shouts of agony, but Mark was just getting started. He emptied his left pistol at the fleeing Nicolai while running towards the bikes, kicked one of the mortally-wounded Russians off a still-running bike and righted it. With a painful rev of the engine, he let the rear wheel dig in before the bike just lurched forward, snapping forward like a rocket-boosted horse from hell. Mark had absorbed enough punishment to take down five men and he still wasn't done, not by a long shot; he gunned the dirt bike to the limits of its admittedly beefy engine, the raw hate coursing through his veins keeping him strong enough to ride the beast.

There's a moment of sheer terror in everyone's life. Nicolai's wasn't that Mark was still hunting him; it was Mark catching up. There didn't seem to be any good reason for him being able to do that, but maybe ignoring every throttle position besides "full" had something to do with it.

Nikolai didn't have much time to admire Mark's driving prowess, because a) the enforcer topped that by actually holding on with just his legs and one arm while b) raising his right arm to fire the Hi-Power in his hand. Shooting tires is a hard thing to do under the best circumstances, and to Nicolai's relief, even Mark couldn't manage such a feat. He realized too late that this was absolutely immaterial to the pursuit, because trying to dodge Mark's fire diverted Nicolai's attention away from the ground. One railroad tie taken at the wrong angle, and Nicolai's ride started oscillating as he hurtled towards and across the street before crashing onto the grounds of the Owl's Head sewage treatment plant; he barely avoided crashing head-on into a large assembly of silos by laying the bike down. Mark slid in just behind him as Nicolai stumbled away, his leg torn up from the semi-wipeout. Mark's bullets chased him towards the coast...oh God, the coast, maybe he could make it there, dive in and finally lose Mark. Or at least find some cover to hide behind...

Something slammed into his back, forcing him to fold and lie down for a bit. The late muzzle flash from Mark's gun didn't even register anymore.

Nikolai crawled on, momentarily forgetting how to stand up. A warning shot next to his head stopped even that. He froze, catching his breath, acutely hearing Mark reload the Hi-Power.

"Get up," Mark snarled, barely human. "Get up on your knees."

Nikolai didn't kneel for anyone. He had the tattoos to prove it. With a second wind in his veins, he turned and brought up his Makarov PB, but a bold move doesn't help when the other guy can see it coming a mile away. Mark fired thrice; one into Nikolai's arm to disabuse him of the notion that he'd ever fire a gun again, two into his knees in a bloody form of lead-based tattoo removal.

"You just don't get it, do you?!" Mark screamed, spittle dripping from his canines. "End of the motherfucking road!" His chest heaved, and with every breath it seemed like some of the rage was fading from him. "You little commie bastard."

To his credit, Nikolai didn't whimper or plead for mercy; instead, he struggled to free the pistol from his now cramped-up hand. Mark closed the distance and stepped on the gun arm, producing a new scream of pain from the Russian. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Nikolai's leg - hanging on at the knee by a few muscles and tendons - and dragged the flailing gangster behind him, the way a hunter might drag a deer carcass too heavy for his shoulders. When they got to the open sewage pools, it dawned on Nikolai what Mark's plan was, and he started to scream in earnest. The distant sound of police sirens seemed to promise salvation for the Russian - better jail than death! -, but Mark wasn't acting with a lot of care. A rational criminal would've looked to his own escape; Mark calmly dragged Nikolai to the edge of a pool, grabbed him by the scalp and lifted his head from the ground. Mark's breathing was flat and mechanical, and his voice hovered a handful of degrees above liquid nitrogen.

"Eat shit and die," Mark said.

And then he tossed Nikolai into the pool.

A criminal with even half a mind for practical concerns would've made his exit there, but Mark couldn't resist watching Nikolai struggle to swim in the sewage; after a few seconds, Mark raised his pistol one last time and shot Nikolai, finally pushing him below the surface. As if to add insult to injury, Mark collected the tastes in his mouth into a major-league loogie and spit it into the pool. With a sort of grim satisfaction, he turned to face the music while the motorcycle cops closed in.

Wait...motorcycles?

What actually pulled up a few seconds ahead of the red&blue lights were two dirt bikes; one with Vince, the other with Done and Boris. Mark's emotional high from seeing his friend outside the context of a funeral was cut short when Done reached into his pocket and tossed Mark a little leather-bound something - an NYPD shield. No time for questions, so Mark climbed on the bike with Vince and the foursome motored off to the South, fading into the night with a hell of a lot of fire and dead Russians behind them.

So much for the Cold War.

Two Guns 17 - Everything is Broken

Sharon stood in a ballet of snowflakes, performed on the windy pathways of Central Park. The ice danced around her, each frozen tear of God on a course more complex than the collected writings of Spinoza. She hummed an old tune and embraced the world, her coat open and her arms spread. With the patience of a deer stalker, Mark moved behind her, softening his steps until they were too faint for human ears. His breath was hot against her neck, his hands like intense sunshine on her belly. While he drew her closer, she reached back and grabbed his head, bringing it forward for a soft kiss.

“Hold me,” she whispered.

He pulled her tighter, and she turned around, resting her head on his shoulder. He drew his coat around her, sheltering her from the cold for a moment.

They danced with the snowflakes.

---

“I had a lot of fun tonight, you know,” Sharon said with a slight giggle as they walked down the hallway outside her apartment. The jaunt through Central Park had exhausted her - even the best snuggling can’t hold off dropping core temperatures for long.
“That’s, uh, good,” he replied, scratching an itch on the back of his head. “Vince helped me plan that, you know. I’m hopeless with wines.”
“So, how long have you guys known each other?”
“Oh, we go back. Almost shot him in ‘84, back when he was still with the Cosa Nostra…but he could tell that ship was sinking, so he changed teams.”
“Ratioli’s a rat?”
“Don’t say that around him, Shar. It’s been all uphill for Vince to get anywhere after that, but now he’s the boss’s bodyguard. That takes a lot of trust, so when I tell you he’s solid, he’s solid. You get his word on anything, that’s the truth right there.”
“And he knows his wines.”
Mark grinned. “That he does.”

The door was ajar. Mark froze in his steps and motioned for Sharon to do the same, then reached below his coat for a holster that wasn’t there.

Dammit, you get sloppy one time…

Sharon tapped on his shoulder to get his attention, then bowed down and raised the hem of her dress. With a deft move, she removed a small Walther PPK from her thigh holster and readied it. Mark gave her a questioning look; she just mouthed “Daddy” and gave him a small smile. Resigned to his fate, Mark silently stepped behind her, watching the hallway behind them. Sharon put her back against the wall and proceeded towards the door, elbows bent and PPK against her shoulder, ready to let it drop into firing stance in the blink of an eye. Reaching the door, she steadied herself and mentally reviewed her training. She would swoop into the doorframe, take a quick peek and fire at anything threatening. If there were no targets, she’d keep moving to the other side of the doorframe, take a breather, slice the pie around the corner. Piece of cake, literally.

“I’m also good with locks!” came Vince’s shout from inside the apartment. Sharon took a deep breath – cursing under the same – then spun into the doorframe, quickly sweeping the room but keeping her trigger finger in check. Other than Vince – in the process of cleaning her guns –, there was nobody in there.
“Goddammit, Vincent, don’t do that ever again,” Sharon said, lowering her gun and raising her voice. “I could’ve shot you.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” he said nonchalantly, wiping some oil from her Beretta’s firing pin. “But I thought that if I called out, I wouldn’t startle you when you come in – because I know you’re the kind of woman who shoots what startles her.”
“Hesitation kills,” Sharon remarked, switched the safety on the PPK back on and set her boot on the table to holster it again.
“Hey, Vince,” Mark said as he closed the door behind him. “Uh, thanks for the cleanin’, we hadn’t gotten around to that part yet…”
“I know you usually need a poke, and Detective Collins here just spread a couple pounds of half-melted muck on the table…” – Sharon checked the table under her boot, smiled sheepishly and began to take off the boots before she could spread the mess further – “…but that’s actually not what I came here for.”
“Oh. Oh!” Mark slapped his forehead. “Christmas Dinner! Man, I’ve been a total jerk, all this romantic dinner planning stuff and I didn’t even ask if you had a spot. Well, fuck…we didn’t get doggy bags, because we finished our stuff. Even the salad, that was kind of a weird feeling, empty plates and all. It just wasn’t a lot of food, I guess…in fact, I’m kinda hungry enough for seconds. Sharon?”
“I could eat.”
“Right! Chinese cool?”
“Chinese very cool,” Sharon said, wiping the muck off the table with some paper towels.
“Vince?”

Mark’s friend just shook his head slowly.

“Still not what I’m here for,” the Italian hitman said. “You forgot your cellphone…”

“…crap,” Mark said, faking surprise quite effectively. He hadn’t forgotten his phone, it was more like ‘deliberately left behind’. What could happen in a few hours?
“Don’t worry, I covered for you. But something came up and I had to see you, because we have to take care of that situation now.”
“Situation?”
“We got photos in the mail. Boris in a bed down at Dollar’s, with yesterday’s newspaper.”

That could happen in a few hours.

“That’s all kinds of fucked up,” Mark said. “Dollar is neutral, he wouldn’t do that.”
“Maybe not, but the Russians might do it to him.”
“So it’s a trap,” Sharon threw in.
“That’s the only fact we’ve got,” Vince said, nodding as he put the Beretta back together. “Trap at Dollar’s.”
“Yeah, that…” Mark began, but stopped when Vince pointed to a shoulder rig with two Browning Hi-Power pistols hanging off the chair. “Vince, where would I be without you?”
“Retired,” Sharon threw in. “Peaceful life, blowing your savings to hell with the girl you love.”

Mark gave her a glance, trying to figure out if she was yanking his chain or spilling more than she intended to, but Vince brought down the moment by handing Sharon the reassembled Beretta.

“This is my guarantee, Detective: When you’re rolling with me, you may be up shit creek, but you’ll always have a paddle.”

---

“I think you’re too trusting, Mark,” Sharon said bluntly as the trio walked down the alley to Dollar’s basement door. “I mean, there’s the family stuff, right? Alfredo was untouchable, Alexandra’s so fresh she doesn’t have her own business cards and you back her, Vincent can do no wrong – I’m sorry, Vincent, this isn’t meant to be a dig at your personal trustworthiness but still, this is messed up. It’s not just that, though, I mean, I can sorta understand that” – Mark knocked at the door – “but then we get to people like Dollar. This guy’s a bastard and yet you’re going in, fully believing he was set up by the Russians? And let’s not forget that the whole reason we’re here is this Boris guy, who’s a Russian but somehow definitely not in league with these guys, who I haven’t even met and who might be fucking dead already…just saying.”
“Are you done?” Mark asked sweetly.
“Pretty much, yes.”

Dollar opened the door. Mark socked him in the gut with a punch like a brick dropped from orbit.

“I can see what you’re getting at,” Mark said as he stepped in. “Sometimes, I’m just too nice.”
“Okay, now that was gratuitous,” Sharon said, wincing sympathetically at Dollar’s squashed guts.
“Just a second,” Mark said and turned to Dollar, who was quite busy writhing on the floor, his jaw locked up too tightly to scream out the pain. “Let’s make this quick. I know you’ve been fucked by the Russians, and I can appreciate that this puts you in a difficult position.”
Dollar moaned incoherently. Mark went on.
“I know that you were going to tell me everything anyway, because I know you are an honest man. However, we’ve never been in a direct conflict, so I needed to show you that I am serious and will do the safety dance on your kidneys if I smell bullshit. Are we clear so far?”
Dollar’s condition was improving – not only could he understand what Mark was saying, he also managed to nod.
“Good. Me and the gang need coffee, so we’re going to help ourselves to a few cups. You just get up whenever, we’ll be waiting in the lounge.”

Without further ado, Mark stepped over Dollar, while Sharon followed more reluctantly. Vince closed the door behind him and looked down to Dollar, shaking his head.

“Woah, that was a damn good punch. You okay down there, Doc?”
“Fuck…you…” Dollar managed to spit out.
“Sounds okay to me. Hey, guys, I’m gonna go black on my coffee, right?”
“Right!” Mark shouted back.
“Hell of a punch,” Vince said, then moved on.

Dollar got back on his feet. Eventually.

---

“Okay, mo’fuckers,” Dollar said, spreading his records across the table in the lounge. He seemed to take special pleasure in making Mark lift his cup of joe from the surface. “After reviewing my documentation real careful like, I got a theory on how ol’ Boris got into this mess. Though I don’t know why you crackers need that shit, seeing as I gave you the fucking business card…”
“Yeah, yeah, that tells us where the trap is,” Mark said. “We need to figure out what makes it tick, and that means we need to know the people who assembled it.”
“Right, whatever. Let’s start here. December 12^th, some Russian guy came in and bought a handful of antipsychotics off me. Haldol, specifically. That’s what they use when crazy people need to go sleepy-sleepy, but it’s got real therapeutic uses and shit at lower doses – plus, honestly, why the fuck should I care? His cash was good.”
“They track down Boris,” Mark threw in, “then they knock him out with this?”
“Possibly. Anyway, loooong hole here. Don’t see any Russians here for a long time, but if they used all the Haldol and didn’t buy none from other dealers, that shoulda given them a week or so of having Boris under control. Enough time for torture, MKULTRA shit, whatever. By the time your meeting rolls around, they’ve broken him. They get him to call in, shit goes down, you end up here. At the same time, somebody does a smash & grab from the Russians, kidnaps Boris, takes him to the pier. Probably to kill him. But he just throws Boris into the water – me, I woulda put a couple slugs through the skull, just to make sure. Anyway, by this time, Nicolai’s there, he kills the kidnapper and rescues Boris, to hear him tell it. They both show up here, I do my thing, Boris gets better over the next couple days. I discharged him just a few hours ago.”
“Wait a second,” Mark yelled. “Boris was here while you treated me, and you didn’t tell me a thing?”

Dollar leaned back and smiled.

“Neutral ground, baby,” Dollar said.
“And how the fuck did he get in when Sharon was here?”
“You really think I have only one entrance, sucker?” Dollar said. “’sides, what were you gonna do to him here? I wouldn’t let you fight here and pickups are neutral, too.”
“Pickup? They kidnapped him and you helped them!”
“You seem to be under tha impression that I’m on their side, or maybe yours right now. Fuck that noise. I’m on the side of green and the Russians had deeper pockets, you hear me?”

Mark considered that a down payment for at least two more kidney compressions, but Sharon held him back.

“This is going nowhere. We need more facts. Who was the kidnapper?” Sharon asked. “And why does Nicolai want Boris alive so badly?”
“Fuck if I know, girl. That’s what makes this such a big fucking waste of time, you guys are trying to play puzzle but I got a third of the pieces here, tops.”
“Very encouraging, Dollar.”
“You want me to put on a skirt and do a little cheerleading dance for ya? Now, guys, lemme just say something here, kind of an Uncle Dollar’s Moral of the story: Screw this investigation shit. You wanna stick your neck out for poor old Dedushka, get the fuck on with it before the Russians cancel him for good. You’re proficient at wrecking shit, so wreck shit. If you make it, hey, you can just ask him to fill in the blanks when you’re having a brew together.”
“Alright then,” Mark said, rising from his seat. He spat out a “Thank you”, his mind still weighing the loss of face over starting a fight here with the satisfaction of caving Dollar’s nose in.
“Thank me with cash,” Dollar said. “Oh, and if you hit me again, I’m gonna hunt you down and sew your asshole shut, got that?”

Mark counted off benjamins from his money clip, noted Dollar’s facial expression and finally just gave him the whole thing.

“You’re the worst person I know,” Mark said.
“Oh, that’s real funny,” Dollar replied with a grin. “Seeing how I’m the only guy in the room who never killed a man…”
“I heard different things about ‘nam…”
That added a glint of madness to Dollar’s eyes, as something broke through the marijuana-addled surface.
“Fuck ‘nam, everybody’s talking shit about ‘nam but I didn’t kill nobody, says so right in my records, zero confirmed kills, and I only ever shot to scare Charlie! ‘sides, we didn’t murder them. I defended my fuckin’ country, unlike you pansies, so don’t you go telling me about fucking ‘nam. That was the will of the people, and we gave it to them good and hard until they cried Uncle! You wanna hear my theory of justice, Simmons? Y’all are DA jackpots waitin’ to happen. I pay my taxes as a medical fuckin’ consultant, my records are all in code, I’m so clean you can run a blood culture lab on my police file. Ask yourself, if a cop car stops you and runs your ID, what kinda judgement is America gonna level on you, as a person? I ain’t afraid of no all-white jury, how do you feel about twelve of your ‘peers’?”

Mark just stared at him.

“Violence is the, uh, the last resort of the incompetent,” Dollar recited. “Now go kill shit, I got work to do.”

Disengaging from that particular trainwreck, Mark turned back to the team, finding Sharon with a worried look and Vince on the phone.

“What’s the matter, Shar?”
“I’m…how do I put this? I’m not sure I should come with you guys. I mean, the Silvestro thing, I knew that was wrong but it wasn't going to stop until we put a bullet in the guy. I’ve no stake whatsoever in this, though, and I am a cop. I can’t just go around killing people.”
“Nikolai had you at gunpoint. He’s been fucking with us all the way. We’re just evening the score.”
“I’m not saying he should be free to do this, but can’t we do this without violence? I mean, we know where he is, I can call in an ESU team.”
“And how’s that gonna be different, Shar? You think there won’t be a gunfight just because those guys have badges?”
“Yeah, I thought about that.”
"So?”

Sharon sighed.

“That’s what I’m stuck on at the moment.”
“The problem is that I can’t just leave you behind.”
“I’m your assignment.”
“You’re also my girlfriend,” Mark said with a smile, “so I have to protect you twice as much.”
“This is how every crooked cop story ever starts. Rules become inconveniences. And I refuse to play this point of no return game. If I fucked up with Silvestro, if I made a mistake by getting involved with you, that’s a problem, but I won’t keep digging the hole.”

Mark sighed deeply. Say the right thing…

“You know what Jesus told the prostitute, right?” he said.
“Are you saying I’m a prostitute?”
“More importantly,” Vince threw in, “does that mean you’re Jesus?”

There was the glimmer of a smile on Sharon’s face, so he ignored the barbs and continued.

“He said, go forth and sin no more.” Mark lifted Sharon’s head by the chin. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
"I just can't do this," Sharon said, playing with the strap of her shoulder holster. "DA's office is already on me for the hotel shootout, and this isn't really my fight anyway."
"I understand," Mark nodded. "But I can't leave you home alone."
"I'll just stay here."
"Aw hell no!" Dollar exclaimed, trying to punctuate his expression with an evil stare, but Mark beat him quite squarely at that.
"I don't like leaving you here," the assassin said. "On the other hand, I do like pissing off Dollar."
"So it's settled?" Sharon asked, a small smile returning to her face.
"Be back soon."

Sharon reached out, narrowly missing Mark's hand as he turned away and left with Vincent. Sharon stood there, arms crossed, until the sound of Mark's car faded into the distance.

"Fuck you, bitch," Dollar growled. "Fuck you and the gangster you ride in on."
"I'm thinking hot chocolate," Sharon said.
"Screw you. There, how's that sound? I figure, well, that bitch gets a lot of fucking, maybe she don't even hear that anymore. So, screw you. Wait, he does that, too, don't he? I bet he's all sensitive and goes down on ya real good." Dollar's face switched into a grin, as if somebody had flipped his switch from surly to sweet. "But if you into that shit, babe,you's wasting your time on white boy, 'cause I do like me women who know what they want, your standards can't be that high and we got some time to pass..."
"With marshmallows." Dollar took a deep breath for his next assault, but Sharon quickly continued her line. "If you don't have any, your teeth will do."
"I don't think you can actually pull that shit off, sugar. I'm a trained fuckin' soldier, US Army, I got me a Purple Heart and shit, and you..."

With a stunning economy of violence, Sharon elbowed Dollar right on the nose. He went down with a yelp and rolled around the floor in pain the second time in as many hours.

"No sugar," she said, then went off in search of somewhere to sit down.

Two Guns 16 - Sweet Dreams

The streets of Manhattan were busy on Christmas Eve, but Mark and Sharon didn't seem to acknowledge that. They walked down 5th Avenue hand in hand, little snowflakes dancing around them.

"So what did you want to be?" she asked.
"Astronaut. I thought it was gonna get me closer to God."

Sharon smiled.

"Okay, you're smiling," Mark acknowledged. "But I'm still confused. This is your 'Keep talking' smile, not your 'I'm about to mock you' smile."
"How many smiles do I have?" she purred.
"Quite a few, but shouldn't you know?"
"I rarely practice my smiles in front of a mirror," Sharon explained. "That's like asking me about the hairs in the back of my neck, how am I supposed to see that?"
"I thought being a woman came with full control over all the little details that drive men insane."
"Maybe it does, but I traded my wiles for soldier's hands and sailor's tongue. Now I can cuss with the best of them, but strangely enough it scares them off when it comes to dating."
"Oh, come on. You're smart, you're hot, don't tell me I'm your first guy."
"Would you want to know if there had been others?"
"Of course I would! A good relationship can stand up to honesty and comparisons. Mind you, it's pummeling exes and potential rebounds with a baseball bat that really makes a couple tight."
"It figures I date a hitman just after the shrink lays my revenge fantasies to rest."
"You see a shrink?" he asked; they stopped at a pedestrian crossing waiting for the signal to change.

Sharon snuggled up closer.

"Many cops do. Police work is stressful, even when people aren't trying to kill you in particular. Why do you think I smoke?"
"Because you want to sound like Clint Eastwood?"

She gently elbowed him in the ribs, fortunately not on the injured side.

"Okay, message received, funny time is over," Mark said, trying not to wince. "So there's a lot of stress."
"I never wanted to buy into that 'thin blue line' bullshit. We're all just people, we're all trying to get through the day. I figured, hey, everybody knows the rules, occasionally they gamble and occasionally they lose their shit, but we're all human, right? That's what I used to think when I started, but around here, idealism seems to get you kicked harder. I get people like Silvestro, or even Nikolai, they're ruthless and it's all about power for them, but every now and then you go after a really sick bastard. I used to be in Vice, you know."
"Ooh..." Mark drawled, but Sharon interrupted him.
"Not undercover, don't get your hopes up. Anyway, we were crackin' down on this guy in Queens...well, long story short, child pornography."

Mark's hand tightened as they crossed the street.

"And it wasn't even that he had raped those kids, made photos and sold them...no, that was his fucking hobby. He sold them, but just to cover his costs. He wasn't even making any fucking money off it, and best of all, he'd been doing it for years. The only way we were able to track him down is because he'd lost his job, so he tried reaching out to new customers and got one of our informants."
"That's fucked up."
"We got a conviction on three cases. Three cases. That was all we could prove. He'd been doing it for God knows how long and we barely got him locked away for ten years. Now, that was extreme. I'm not trying to go for moral panic here, okay? Most of the time, we nailed those guys, we had a decent percentage of convictions, and he was like a whole different level, a freak accident. But if you ask me, even one's too many. The whole thing tore me up pretty bad, I asked for a transfer to Organized Crime. I figured, hey, at least these guys have a proper motive going on. The Mafia doesn't kill people because it gets them off."
"What would you have done to him? I mean, if you could've done anything you wanted."
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like breaking his face, good and hard, but I wouldn't have acted on that. I'm a cop, I enforce the law and sometimes you just gotta be better than you'd like to be. Paperwork, gunfights, forget it - being a cop is doing it the hard way, every time."
"Character is what you are in the dark," Mark said with a rigid face.

Sharon pulled back and gave him a distrustful look. Mark shrugged.

"I read books, too," he said, and smiled.

---

Ded wasn't dead, and that was a crying shame. Sure, there was a basic gratefulness for being alive, but nothing compared to the feeling of sucking icy water into his lungs, the panic, the fear...and the knowledge that it was possible they'd do it to him again, just for kicks. Ded was too old to develop new phobias, or so he tried to tell himself. No more swimming for this Russian.

Then he opened his eyes. Bad move.

"All yours, chief," he heard Dollar say. Dollar...what was he doing here? His eyes managed to dial down the illumination from searing photon daggers to a more reasonable dimness, and he spotted Nikolai at the side of the bed, counting off cash for the underground doctor.

"You..." he managed to say, but found his hands chained to the bed. Even if they hadn't been, he was in no shape to fight.
"You'd best start sucking my dick now, old man," Dollar said. "Hypothermia, water in your lungs, no heartbeat, not to mention all the shit that happened to you before you stumbled into Superfund River - you were a mess when you came in, a big stinking mess. Thank your lucky stars that your pal here jumped in after you and dragged you out of there. By all rights, that shoulda killed him, too."
Ded looked over to Nikolai, who gave him a curiously friendly nod. "He's not my pal," Ded said.
"3000 bucks says he is," Dollar said, counting his bounty. "Oh, and I managed to set that finger right. No piano sessions, but you'll have some mobility."
"Why are you doing this, Nicky? Berkovitz was about to rid you of your biggest problem and you shoot the guy?"
"I never meant to kill you, Boris," Nikolai said. "I respect you. When the war is won, I will gladly return you to power - and keep you on the right path. Now, I had an agreement with Berkovitz that he would keep himself and his Captain out of this, but he thought he could make his own play. Instead, he suffered the fate he had laid out for you. It seems fitting, somehow. Anyway, we will keep you in a safe house until this blows over and we have eliminated Marcus Simmons."
"Simmons? What happened to the kid?"

Dollar looked to Nikolai.

"I patched him up," the doctor said. "I don't play favorites."
"I respect that," Nikolai answered. "You take the Hippocratic oath seriously."
"I also got me an accountant, tells me that makin' money is good."

Nikolai smiled, but Ded grinned.

"Nicky, I got news for you. You fucked it up. Simmons will wipe his ass with your moustache."
"You have been unconscious for the better part of a week, Boris." Nikolai scratched the back of his neck. "We have not heard a peep from your 'kid'. He is clearly marshalling his forces for a decisive strike. But rest assured, we are working on the problem. This time, we will tackle him at a location of our choosing."
"I won't help you, Nicky. If you think I'll trick him again, you'd better just shoot me now."
"Fortunately, this trick does not require your active participation. You remember Sasha, yes? He is my trusted lieutenant, and he likes you, too. Why, he was visiting you just yesterday..."

Dollar gulped, while Nikolai reached into his coat and produced a handful of photos.

"He thought it would be great if you had some...what is the word? Ah, yes...memento of your stay here. We will see to it that Marcus Simmons receives copies of these. He should recognize the place..."
"Hold on there," Dollar said. "3000 bucks one-time doesn't make me your accomplice, Commissar Backstabsky."
"I have considered this," Nicolai said, then handed a business card to Dollar. "I do not require you to lie for me. When Marcus Simmons shows up, simply give him this. I can pay you for the service, if you wish it so."
"I ain't leading Simmons into no trap of yours."
"Please do not torture yourself with the notion of choice, Doctor Walker. The photos are on their way already, which means Marcus Simmons will come here and ask you about anything you know of Boris's location. I suppose you could refuse to give him this address, but I believe he is rather liable to just beat it out of you. Feel free to protest that this was not your idea or that it will lead him into a trap. He is unlikely to care."
"The patient's ready to move," Dollar snarled. "I suggest y'all move before I develop a conscience and schedule you for brain surgery with my four-four."
"No hard feelings, Doctor Walker," Nikolai said with a smile. "I'd hate for a good man like you to start picking a side - especially the wrong side..."

Two Guns 15 - Hungry Like The Wolf

Christmas Eve in Sharon's apartment didn't look very Christmas-y at all; in fact, it looked rather like the rest of the year, a kind of cold disregard for holiday spirit that would make Baby Jesus cry. Well, at least that's what Mark made of it when he stepped inside; there was a pile of guns on her table in various states of cleaning, and Sharon looking stressed out while talking on the phone. Mark set down the large shopping bag, closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall, hands deep in his pockets.

"...I understand, but you're not...I'm not putting you down, I'm just saying...Look, if you'll listen to me for a second. Nobody's there now...yes, yes, emergency response. Okay. Nobody you want to talk to is there. It's Christmas. You do know what Christmas is, right?...Yeah, you too, bitch."

Mark raised an eyebrow, Sharon raised her arms and nobody raised their voice. Sharon just ran her fingers through her hair, eyes closed and head tilted back, as if the annoyance could be massaged out of her skull. Mark stepped forward, a fresh suit under a slightly classier trench coat. He walked behind her, clasped his hands in front of her belly and bowed his head to whisper into her ear.

"Is this a bad time?"
"No worse than any other," she replied. "Aftershave?"
"Some people indulge their inner slob, I indulge my inner snob."
"Occasionally?" she asked playfully.
"Very occasionally. Now, I know just the naughty thing to do..."
"Go on."
"I say you don't pick up that phone tonight..."
"Kinky."
"...and let the machine get your calls."
"I'm shivering from excitement, but I don't really believe in delegating. Now suppose I give in to this delightful madness, what would you have us do with the evening?"
"I have a reservation at Elio's," he said, his gaze shifting about as if he was John Wilkes Booth on the way to the gun shop.
"That's great. I could go for something to eat."
"...and a new dress."
"That's great, too, but what do I wear?"

Sharon realized about two seconds too late that the placement of Mark's hands was no accident; she doubled over and cringed from the revenge tickling, then burst out laughing before she could free herself. He pulled her back in, lifted her off the ground and turned on the spot, carrying her to the door.

"How did you - wooaah! - how did you know my size?" she giggled, finally getting a grip on Mark's hands and forcing them apart. To his credit, he let her down before she had to continue to the painful stage of that move.
"I can read clothes tags, too," he said with a knowing smile. He grabbed the shopping bag and held it open; Sharon drew a long evening dress from it, made of black velvet with a greenish tinge. Wordlessly but with a smile on her face, she held it up to her body for a size sanity check. "Think I know every saleswoman down Fifth Avenue now," he continued.
"It's lovely. And my color, too."
"The photos helped."
"Huh?"

Mark silently pointed to a cupboard. Sharon gave him a glance.

"It occurs to me now," he said by way of apology, "that I could have just asked to look at some pictures of you."
"Oh, you want to get to know me better, then?" she said with a devilish smile. "I have a slideshow, family history...just the thing after lunch tomorrow. And then you'll tell me about your family, okay?" Without waiting for a reply, she snuck away into the bathroom to prepare. That was a prudent measure, as no reply was forthcoming - Mark just stood there, wordlessly. Slowly, a small smile snuck onto his lips.

Well played, milady. Well played.

---

What makes a gentleman, then? Mark looked the part, but Sharon found the little touches lacking. She topped up her glass with more Pergole Torte '79, and wistfully remembered a time where she thought any man who could date her would do this for her, no questions asked. But she could tell Mark wasn't being a jerk about this - he just didn't know, and she didn't want to lecture him. The wine was excellent, no doubt, but that wasn't on her mind - the more time she spent with Mark, the more he managed to convince her that his omnicompetent act was just that. Lots of trivia, but raw, unfocussed. And that's how he worked, basically: he would land his first strike around a nugget of insight, then switch topics before a true master could tell he was faking it. That didn't make him incompetent, far from it, but it did make him seem more...human. And in turn, she felt better about herself, once she stopped assuming things and realized that she knew a lot of things he'd never heard of. There was something like parity in that.

"Thank you for the dinner. For the dress," she said, some small blush escaping from beneath the makeup. "And for everything else."
"It's been a pleasure," he replied, raising his glass. "To chance."
"To chance," she repeated and took another sip of wine.
"Did you enjoy the ride?" he asked, setting down his glass. His eyes twinkled with the steel of business, if only for a moment.
"A lot. And I don't want to stop here."

This is the moment it all goes to shit, she thought.

"All I can promise you is terror for breakfast, pressure for lunch, and aggravation for sleep," he said. He tried to look serious, but she couldn't hold back her grin.
"That was a terrible movie," she said, laughing softly.
"I watched it five times. I'm one of those men who dig terrible movies." She laughed some more. "I also never share my popcorn. You'll always have to buy your own bag. And I sing in the shower."

He waited for her to quiet down, then leaned forward.

"Could you..." he whispered, "could you love a guy like that?"
"I already do," she answered, then leaned in and kissed him.

No room for thought, just candlelight in his eyes and hellfire in her blood.

---

"Evenin', Captain," came the words from the medical examiner's mouth; Paul Whitton hardly registered them anymore. It was like listening to a record of Bing Crosby's White Christmas - eventually, you don't need to listen anymore, you already hear every word in your head. To the morgue staff's credit, the place actually looked slightly festive, with evergreen twigs on the walls, a diorama of Santa Claus on his sleigh and even mistletoe over the door to the supply closet. Whitton couldn't imagine much romance going on here, but he knew that people down here could get very bored and very lonely. All bets are off when you work shifts in a basement.

"Dental work checks out, then?" he asked; the ME merely nodded.

The corpse wasn't pretty, even for a corpse. Just a bloated, middle-aged guy, his face blown off by a rendezvous with firepower. The kind of Kodak moment that made Whitton thankful for his insomnia.

"Any foul play?" he asked.
"Nothing fancy, no. Just got a bullet through the back of his skull, it bounced around a bit inside, then tore out through the front."
"Caliber?"
"Something small and subsonic. Like I said, it went back out, so I can't get any more precise than that. Only thing I can say for sure is that this was an execution, well-aimed shot. Not point blank, though, there's no powder burns on the skin."
"Restraints?"
"No, and that's the strangest thing. It's like he just stood there while somebody shot him in the head."
"But the shot came from behind. Somebody could've snuck up on him."
"Possible, but this was pretty close. We're talking about a pretty sneaky bastard here, Captain."
"I know a couple of those. Well, that's it, then. Thanks for your time, Josh."
"Merry Christmas, Captain."
"Yeah, merry Christmas."

He waited until the medical examiner was out of earshot, then stepped over to the corpse and bowed down.

"And merry fucking Christmas to you, too. For all it's worth."

Leaving the corpse behind, Whitton wasted little time on his way to the elevator. He stepped inside and felt the doors close like the embrace of a lover long gone, the cab shaking as it brought him back to the city of the living.

Goddammit. What happened to you, Berkovitz?

Life - Chapter 1

Check the suit. Iris hated checking the suit.

The suit, as the engineers kept reminding her, was her only shot at surviving the many ugly things that could befall an exoatmospheric vehicle. They also reminded her not to call it a "spaceship" at every turn. These are the kind of things her Master's in Exogeology degree had glossed over. They make you study alien rocks for a year, a whole year of your life spent on nothing but looking at alien rocks, talking about alien rocks and thinking about alien rocks - and all of that on top of her Bachelor's, with a Geology major. It had gotten so bad that Iris couldn't even go for a walk anymore without pondering what had shaped the ground beneath her feet, the hills on the horizon or even Earth itself. Of course, after that this particular level of indoctrination had been achieved, the first thing they'd done to poor Iris - she of 16 years and still in possession of her bleach-blonde hair - was sign her up for an environment that was so rockless as to be a mockery of her profession.

They reminded her of the suit again. Pay attention to the drill, Iris. It's about the suit.

For all intents and purposes, Iris was as much wearer as inhabitant of the suit, and had been for the last 3 months. That was a strange thing, because those 16 years of living on Mother Earth had taught her to change her clothes every day, lest they get dirty and sticky, and who would want to wear the same thing every day? Oh, they did build clothing like the suit, which didn't get dirty or sticky, but what was the point? Most people changed their clothes every day, no matter what, so why make things complicated? Worse, it made her feel like one of the socials. Government-issued smartclothes and no money to spare for the real thing, not to mention that jumpsuits don't really look all that good. In theory, the suit - her suit - might've sounded like a more attractive thing, a unitard of sorts, given that it was supposed to mold itself to the wearer, but that was mostly on the inside layer. Watching Iris in her suit suggested that she had curves, but didn't really show them off. Like a quantum theory of fashion, wearing the suit was neither modest (because there was the next big disconnect: no underwear!) nor particularly flattering. The great egalitarian ideal of Government Issue: makes everyone look equally stupid. In this case, the torso armor (no, wait: protective plating!) and life support backpack obscured anything remotely interesting.

There was no excuse to take off the suit, even. It wasn't uncomfortable, because it fit you perfectly, it carried its own weight - in fact, it made Iris's exposed skin (her head) feel that much worse in comparison, given that it wasn't enjoying the suit's regulation of skin temperature and humidity. You didn't even have to take it off for bodily needs, and so it wasn't designed to be taken off easily, period. It was locked onto you and there it stayed. Instead of dealing with the inefficiencies of the human digestive system (and the engineers wouldn't shut up about that, either: ew! gross!), nutrients and hydration level were regulated by the suit. Direct bloodstream injection. The result was a constant sort of low-level churning in her guts as carefully-dosed drugs told her colon to keep working, lest it shut down. Clearly, dignity wasn't in the budget. The chewing gum in her mouth was losing its flavor, and even worse she couldn't indulge in her childhood habit of swallowing it, either - this was just for flavor, for keeping her jaw muscles working. They showed her the payload calculations for old-school consumables - they made her eyes water. The ship - she persisted in calling it that - would've been four times bigger, with real food and showers and more than the emergency toilet. Clearly the engineers were furious: stupid humans! They need to use their muscles to keep them in working shape, dumbest thing anybody could ever come up with! They were working on this, she felt. Whipping up a strain of humans who don't break down their muscles and bones when they're not used. The greatest problem with human spaceflight was including humans, but sometimes you didn't have that choice, and Iris imagined that this is what inevitably snapped the mind of every engineer in exoplanetary R&D. It made them crazy, and then they twisted that into some sort of punishment for what they couldn't keep away from their beautiful mechanical spaceship. Whip the apes to remind them that they're not welcome. Like with the helmets.

They were getting to the helmet part. God, how she hated the helmet part.

It wasn't enough that she'd left her hair on the floor of the spaceport ("Do you know how much it costs to boost your ponytail into orbit, Miss?") and arrived with a close shave; at least that was convenient when she couldn't really wash her hair, and reducing the number of things that could get stuck between your helmet and the suit collar when you're depending on the two forming a vacuum-proof seal, that was a good thing. (Engineers say that the seal isn't vacuum-proof, it's atmosphere-proof since it keeps the air in. Iris nods. She doesn't feel like fighting over this.)

The helmet. Iris slipped it over her head and felt the helmet come alive around her - the flickering lights of the display built into the faceplate, the clicking interlocks at the collar, the soft test tones of the loudspeakers.

WELCOME

Yeah, you too, helmet. Missed you really bad.

The helmet was a particularly strange piece of, if not technology, then doctrine. One size fits all, exchangeable, with a good deal of helmets to spare for emergency use. Iris considered the payload penalty of that and shivered. She found that she could think of fifty things, little comfort items, that they could've brought for the same weight and volume as a single spare helmet, but apparently this was the right amount of redundancy from a safety engineering perspective. Worse, they smelled. Not overtly, but subtly, because Iris's nose wasn't getting much of a workout and frantically latched onto any recognizable smell. No body odor on the suits, obviously, no other discarded clothing, but the helmets were regularly brought out for drills, at complete random, and then put away and forgotten. They didn't get dirty as such, but they did get used. Iris had heard that cleaning out helmets after drills was actually a job, a viable job, on the big deep exploration vessels, but on a small scoutship like this, mission duration didn't make it necessary. Or maybe the cleaning gear weighed too much. Either way, helmets smelled. Iris could smell the Chief in this one, and worse, she was desperate enough to think this was a good thing.

Boring piece of shit, this expedition. The helmet didn't come off. The engineers laughed.

"That's how we should all walk around," one of them said. "Massive weight savings if you don't keep the vehicle pressurized..."
"Not funny," Iris managed to say; the helmet microphone caught this, the AI determined that the lack of code words precluded it being intended as radio traffic, and instead routed it out of a small, pipsqueaky speaker built into the helmet. The engineers laughed their asses off. It was like talking to someone over a can & string "telephone".

Then there was a horrible tearing noise, and it was all the worse because Iris didn't hear it so much as feel it. The deck under her feet groaned. The engineers had good reflexes, pushing themselves towards the next equipment locker for their helmets, but it simply happened too quickly. In a flash, half the metal around them was gone, and everything was hot and bright. Iris couldn't see much of the brightness, because the helmet darkened the visor at once, shielding her eyes from the intense light and shifting the cooling into overdrive to keep her cool inside while the outer layers of the suit slowly radiated the heat it had absorbed. The gloves of the suit bombarded Iris's fingers with little pricks - radar information, converted into tactile input. She could feel/see something slip past her rapidly and grabbed it, still blind; with the help of the suit's abrasion-resistant material and strength augmentation, she managed to hold on to what had to be a rogue safety rope. The zero-G drills finally paid off; she managed to hold on and clip the rope into the utility harness she wore over the suit. All the while, the suit increased its pressure on her, keeping her blood going to the important parts of her body against the acceleration she was under. Something smashed against her leg, and even the suit couldn't protect her from that one - suddenly, she only felt pain from her right side, but a few seconds of that seemed to confirm that her leg was still attached. She screamed even as the helmet calmly told her that it was activating the distress beacon, and eventually she stopped, not because she wasn't in pain or not afraid, but because she knew that she was wasting air.

You never know how deep the drills stick until you use them.

It felt like minutes until the visor cleared again. Iris barely recognized the ship she was still tethered to; it drifted in the distance, torn asunder into multiple sections that were already spreading away further than she could see them. A look down at her leg showed it sitting at an angle a leg should never sit at, but again the suit did what it could and fortified her blood with a generous dose of painkillers. The material of the suit seemed worn, but not breached, and despite everything else, it looked like she'd gotten off easy.

The helmet should've told her that it was picking up other distress signals. That's what they told her in the drills. Find other survivors, huddle together, share resources.

"Suit..." she managed to say, "I need you to tell me where the other signals are."
NOT RECEIVING OTHER SIGNALS. DAMAGE TO RADIO ASSEMBLY.

One thing the piece of scrap had hit on her torso armor, the one thing, and it had to be the radio assembly. Iris felt like screaming again, just to make a point.

Why did she have to pick exogeology?

Memetastic!

Going through this for Mark.

Boy or girl?

Man. I like to think that that much is obvious...

How old are you?

Ugh, don't remind me. Too old. Younger than Algernon, but the guy gets a pass for being dead a lot of the time. Me, I'm close to retirement.

What's your height?

Six feet and a couple inches. Been that way for as long as I care to remember, actually.

Are you a virgin?

Nope.

Do you have any kids?

Nope, and frankly I don't see how anyone who can't hold a gun could be safe around me. I guess I gotta adopt a teenager or something if I ever want to get that fatherly pride.

What's your favorite food?

Italian-style thin-crust pizza with a pound or two of toppings. No such thing as too much extra cheese.

What's your favorite ice-cream flavor?

Vanilla, actually. I don't like how chocolate tastes. As far as I'm concerned, anything else ain't ice-cream. Keep your cappucino-flavored abominations away from me.

Have you killed anyone?

Yeah, that's pretty much my "thing". Stopped counting.

Do you hate anyone?

I used to get an itch in my trigger finger for a lot of guys, but I guess I'm mellowing out a bit now. I can even think kinda clearly about Dennis Gray, but I owe the guy a few dozen bullets. He's going down. But hate? Nah, that's too strong a word. Just gotta do what I gotta do.

Have any secrets?

I'm just a private guy. There's a lot of things I keep to myself, so if you want to call that having secrets, then yes.

Do you love anyone?

Used to. Didn't work out.

What is your job?

I go places and do things. Usually bad places and very bad things.

Any powers or weapons?

Powers? I've got skills. I guess I'm lucky, generally, but that doesn't seem like much of a power when my co-workers read minds or wield mjolnir. I've got plenty of weapons, though. Pistols up my sleeves, a few knives and whatever else I need, and that's just what I'm carrying. You catch me in my armory, I could outfit a platoon of rambos with bullets to spare.

What do you do to relax?

I train in my off-time, but when I need to get away from the job completely, I usually go to the cinema and read a good book. People should read more books, in general. I don't know how often remembering some piece of trivia has saved my ass, and it makes for good conversation.

What do you think your life expectancy is?

All bets have been off for the last thirty years or so. Why paralyze yourself with the thought? All I know is that it's gonna be violent, and that's fine by me.

What is your opinion of the opposite sex?

I'm kinda in the modern boat, I've seen plenty of women that can keep up with me, so I try not to judge too quickly. But sometimes I can't help but get into "protect the women and children" mode, you know? I guess I can come off as patronizing. Oh, and I have no patience for the whole emancipation thing. You wanna be treated equally? Act that way. You can't just grab all the perks and still expect me to give you the special treatment. And for God's sake, don't preach. Pisses me off something fierce, that.

Now what are you going to do?

Waiting for the next call. Hoping it won't come, 'cause when I get called, things are fucked up already. I guess that's my fate, though.

Two Guns - Chapter 14 - Losing My Religion

Like every waiting room ever conceived by mankind, Dollar's place didn't have comfortable seats. Sharon was slumped over a worn-out leather couch, holding a cup of hot chocolate in one hand and rubbing the tiredness from her eyes with the other. Her clothes were sticky, the tanned animal skin beneath her was hot and cold in all the wrong places, and for some reason she just wanted to walk outside and scream herself hoarse. It was mostly a matter of trying to find a solution to this whole mess that didn't include killing a hell of a lot of people. Everything she'd ignored about Mark that last week was now hitting her, in the manner of being tied to a wall in a game of dodge ball against a particularly vicious pack of 6th grade bullies. She slurped on her not-so-hot chocolate. All the cigarettes in New York City wouldn't have relaxed her.

It was time to stop pretending. Sharon Collins, your boyfriend kills people for a living. How do you feel about that?

Shuffling combat boots were barely audible through the closed door; finally, the wood groaned, the handle turned and the door opened. Mark was awake, steadying himself on a heavy cane; with careful, deliberate steps, he walked through the frame, his mouth forming the beginning of a painful grimace with every movement. All told, he looked more like a man who was acting out a few gunshot wounds rather than a guy with actual lead poisoning, but considering what Sharon knew about Mark, the man had to be tough.

"Mind giving me a shoulder?" he said, and if nothing else, his voice sounded like that of a guy with a couple too many holes in him. Sharon rushed over, ducked under his outstretched arm and helped to steady him, all without thinking about it. "Any news from Whitton?"
"I wouldn't know. I haven't checked in yet."
"We need to find Ded," Mark said. "If we're lucky, Nicky hasn't killed him yet."
"How did Nicolai make it past you?"
"That's what I called Ded for. He endorsed Nicky. The little shit must've snatched him up and forced him."
"Assuming, of course, that Ded didn't sell you guys out. He might be working with Nicolai. We don't know what the Russians are up to, and we haven't exactly tried to find out. Hands-off policy, I'm sure you're familiar with that."
"Listen, I've known Ded for years. He wouldn't do that. That's not how things work here."
"That brings me to another point. Nicolai had a gun. Didn't you frisk him?"
"You come in there, you hand over your guns, that's how the fucking meeting works. I can't just go feeling up the bosses. That's basic etiquette."
"No, it's basic stupidity," Sharon said. "At the checkpoint, the guard is God. That's how the Army does it, that's how we do it, and that's how it makes sense. But I guess that would be too much of a personal slight for your bosses, so instead you do the stupid variant, which only works as long as everyone plays fair. Nicolai knew that when he went in, and as we can see - that man doesn't play fair."

Mark stopped and looked at her. She shrugged.

"I'm a cop. I figure things out."

And thus they walked to the car in silence.

---


The Ingues manor loomed large against the first slice of the new moon; Mark left his Oldsmobile standing in the driveway and hobbled over to the house's side entrance. The inside was comfortably warm, but Mark didn't recognize the new guards. They were crawling all over the area, and Mark couldn't help but wonder who would pay for all those mercenaries. The hallways were echoing a lively discussion; he walked towards the lounge, following the voices to their origin. Aside from five more guys with guns standing guard, the large dinner table played host to Alexandra, Vincent and a large man he didn't recognize. Just then, one of those pieces of sentimental flotsam floated to the top of his consciousness - he remembered his first family dinner with Alfredo Ingues. Mark had to smile at that. It was another winter like that one now, and the first good piece he'd tasted of the Big Apple. The first night in his new home, still scared and with only Alfredo's assurances to keep him company.

Things had worked out so well for so long, Mark found it hard to get his head around the fact that the Boss was dead and buried now.

He closed in, and for the first time it seemed like Alex had really noticed him coming in; she forced a smile onto her face, got up from the table and walked over to Mark, still relying on a cane of her own.

"Looks like we can make a race down the hallway now, Mark," she said and gave him an affectionate hug. Mark winced from the discomfort, but returned it.
"Maybe later, boss. I've got some catching up to do. What's going on?"
"Well, as you can see," Alex said while helping Mark walk to the table, "we've called in a few favors. This" - she indicated the large man - "is John Done. He's new in the mercenary business, but he comes highly recommended."

Mark shook hands with John Done and inspected the man more closely. Underneath the practical clothes, Done was sporting a serious physique. Despite being a good deal younger than Mark, life hadn't done him any favors - several heavy scars marked his weathered face. Mark felt like he'd finally found a man for whom "ugly son of a bitch" would be a compliment.

"Mr. Done will be here to help us organize a response to the recent attacks," Alex continued. "He's also an experienced operator in urban combat, and I can only hope he'll be able to lift some of the 'heavy hitter' burden from you, Mark. Let's face it, you're wearing the results of our previous policies."
"I'm fine with that," Mark said. "There's a lot that needs killin' and my trigger fingers are only so quick."

Done cracked a smile at that; Mark gave him an eyebrow.

"So, what's the plan?" Mark asked Done.
"First, we scout ahead," Alex said; Done kept his lips sealed. "Find out how many men the Russians have and where they hang out. Then we look at who supports them. We take out their support, cut them off from outside help, and then we whittle them down nice and slow. Sooner or later, they're going to go all out and try their home invasion again. And that's when we suck them into a serious ambush. That done, we send in a second team to mop up before they have time to regroup."
"Why are you telling me this?" Mark said.
"Already said it once," Done said. "And she has a pretty voice."

Alex blushed a bit, but Mark frantically hoped that Done would talk again, because that couldn't be his actual voice. It couldn't be the voice of a human being. He must've misheard that, because that wasn't speaking, that was coughing up gravel and tar. Smoking all the tobacco in the world wouldn't give you a voice like that.

"That answer your question?" Done said, and Mark leaned back and nodded. That was Done's voice, and Mark understood why the man didn't talk a lot. He didn't have to.

"Where's your girlfriend?" Alex asked; Mark ripped his gaze off Done and turned to look at her.
"Let her out at the precinct. She has to report in, too."
"Yes, that's what we were worried about," she said. "We have to consider the possibility that she's a plant."

Mark had a strong answer for that, but his better judgment made him keep his voice down and lean back.

"...how?" he asked.
"She's in Whitton's unit, for example. She was where you were when Silvestro's coke deal went down..."
"I was on assignment, she was following a lead. Doesn't strike me as unusual at all."
"Okay, but remember how you had to hold her hand when you faked the evidence? She's more competent than that, we know that now."
"Sure, but we got her on the wrong foot. Everybody has an off day."
"The way I see it, it's more like she was trying to look vulnerable so Daddy would assign you as protection," Alex said, quickly raising her voice and emotional involvement. "That way, she could get close, distract you and Vincent with an attack on the hotel. She knew Silvestro would send his assassins after Daddy then. So she faked the attack..."
"That attack wasn't faked!" Mark protested. "People died that day!"
"Really? I don't see you or her buried next to my father!" Alex cried, rising from her chair. "How did she make it without a scratch while they killed my family?!"

Mark banged his fist on the table; he held back too much anger of his own. Alex froze in full swing and slowly settled back down. The silence was deafening. Mark thought about a funeral he hadn't even known about, a last goodbye forsaken for...what, exactly? His heart pumped raw guilt through his hands and head.

"This is paranoia," he said, recomposing himself.
"What about Whitton, though?" Alex threw in, eerily calm yet sullen. "He knew Nicolai, he could've arranged for all this!" she said, picking up steam again.
"Nice meeting you, Done," Mark said. Without further words, he rose from the chair, grabbed his cane and headed for the stairs.

"Come back here, Mark!" Alex said sharply, producing no result; after a second, she shouted "Simmons!" at him. He froze in place, just for a second. Then he continued on, ignoring her. As he started to climb down the stairs to the basement armory, Alex almost pursued him, but a strong hand on her shoulder held her back.

"I'll handle this," Vince said, then followed Mark.

In the eye of the storm, Done sat back and enjoyed the show. Amateurs...

---

"If you would close the door, Detective..." Whitton began, hunched on his leather-clad office chair and rubbing his temples. Sharon - badge prominently dangling from a chain around her neck - closed the door behind her, closed the blinds and grabbed the rather more spartan chair in front of Whitton's desk. She found Whitton's office comfortingly familiar - the bulletin board with nice, orderly notes about current cases, the file drawers in the back, the hotplate with the customary jug of coffee, even the rather tacky brass-plated cuckoo clock.

She sat down. Whitton opened his eyes and slowly leaned forward.

"Do you know where Simmons is?"
"Right now? He said he was headed for the Ingues family mansion."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely."
"Good." Whitton leaned back, and his face relaxed a little. "Do you think he'll do something stupid against the Russians?"

A little voice in Sharon's head screamed "Of course he'll do something stupid! He's Mark Simmons!", but she ignored it.

"Well, he's got a major hate-on for Nicolai" - Whitton frowned - "but he's not in fighting shape. He could barely walk when I saw him off."
"Good. We need time to sort through this mess and come to a reasonable conclusion."
"Captain, if I may..."
"Yes?"
"What do you think is a 'reasonable conclusion'?"

Whitton cracked a small grin, as if he was congratulating himself for anticipating that question.

"The one that gets the least people killed. If I can find a way to keep them from shooting up the whole city, that's what I'll go for. Protect and serve, Detective."
"I'm just asking because...back at the restaurant..." Sharon said, then trailed off for a second. "Nicolai. It looked like we were going to back Nicolai."
"I'm not friendly with him, if that's what you're going for. Dolvich called me last week, wanted to introduce me to a new business associate. He's very old-fashioned, the whole 'announce yourself in the lord's domain' thing. He wanted to make it official. So I talked to the guy, figured I'd give it some time before I pass my judgment. When we met at the restaurant, I was just trying to keep Simmons from shooting him right there. What a great idea that turned out to be..."
"Okay, but...Dolvich? The name doesn't ring a bell..."
"Boris Dolvich."
"...oh! Oh, you mean Ded."
"Yes..."
"Sorry, Captain, didn't click for a second. It's just that Mark...that Simmons keeps calling Dolvich 'Ded'. From Dedushka, which means..."
"Grandpa. Yes, I know."

Sharon suddenly felt like she'd been sent to the headmaster's office for a school prank. Get your mind on the job, girl.

"What's eating you, Sharon?" Whitton said, effortlessly slipping from boss to friend in the blink of an eye.
"I'm fine, I just...it feels like I need a vacation from the vacation."
Whitton smiled warmly. "I can see where you're coming from. You've seen a lot of things those last weeks, sights a cop could do without. I understand. You ever consider talking to a counselor about it?"
"No, I haven't actually thought about the whole situation that much. I'm just trying to keep my head above the surface, you know?"
"I back my Detectives 100%, Sharon. I've been there. Up is down and black is white, suddenly, and before you know it you're knee-deep in it."
"It sounds like a cliché when you say it that way."
"Everything's a fucking cliché until it happens to you. Look at yourself, Sharon. You're head over heels for a hitman, torn between law and justice, all the jazz."

Sharon lowered her head a bit. She was actually blushing - still in that headmaster's office.

"All I'm saying is that there's always gonna be rain, Sharon. I'm here with an umbrella, if you need me," he said, with a small paternal grin. "Get some sleep. Put your head straight, and talk to Monica if you want to. You'll see, we'll get all this behind us and then things will get better."

With a sigh, he snapped back to Captain Mode.

"That's all for now, Detective. You can leave now."
"Thank you, Captain. I'll...I'll give you a call if there are any new developments. I don't know where I'll stay..."
"Technically, you're on vacation. I don't think I have to bother you with the dreck that requires reaching you on the phone. You've got enough on your plate already. Just keep swimming, Detective."
"Thank you, Captain."
"You already said that."
"It bears repeating," she replied, with a small smile.

She turned to leave, but Whitton raised his voice again. Sharon braced herself for a parting shot.

"One last thing, though: How is Simmons?"
"I'm...not sure how to interpret that question."
"Is he a decent guy? Does he treat you right?"
"In between the bullets and the terror? Yes, actually, he's a nice guy."
"Good."
"Why did you ask?"
"If you two are going to be together, I'll have to stick my neck out for him, too. I wanted to know if he's worth it."
"Definitely," Sharon said without hesitation.
"Well, don't let me keep you any further, then. Good night."
"Night, Captain."

And so Sharon walked out, feeling curiously...unburdened. As she closed the door behind her, Whitton sat and pondered the events of the last few days. With a heavy sigh, he reached for a file folder on the edge of his desk and opened it. He wasn't going to get any sleep that night.