The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.15 Doug’s Rescue

The fish caught Doug across the side of his face, a cold moist collision across his flesh. The warmth of his breath caused clouds of condensation around his mouth, and he shivered without his jacket to protect him from the cold. He chuckled as the fish came back across the other side of his face.

“I hate fish,” he said. The suit in front of him, who’d introduced himself as Tommy ‘Big Boy’¹ Bellarico, slapped the fish across the palm of his hand. It wasn’t half as threatening as Tommy thought it looked.

“I’m just warming you up, pal,” Tommy sneered. “I’m going to go to work on you, nice and slow. And when you’re bleeding out and crying for momma, me and the boys will gut you like this little fishy here and stick you up on one o’ these meat hooks and leave you for the cook to find.” Doug leant in, conspiratorially.

“Just between you and me, Tommy. If I did cry for me ol’ mater to turn up, I’d be bloody worried about her actually making an appearance. If she wasn’t six feet under, bless her soul, she’d go to work on your pansy arse!”

This was met with more fish to the face. Doug snorted some of the fish slime out of his nostrils and spat on the floor. He eyed the various implements on the crate nearby. A bone saw, a fishhook, a bread knife, a skewer and a potato peeler; in other words whatever the suits had managed to find in the kitchen.

The Dalminettis had taken over the ship’s conference room and its adjoining kitchen, where they had paid off the catering staff and made Doug their guest in the walk-in refrigerator, removing his jacket and tying him to a chair to keep company with Tommy and a couple of other suits while the rest of the mob relaxed in the main room. On the plus side, the cold had hardened Doug’s bleary alcohol-damaged senses to the point where he was mostly sober.

“Hey Tommy, getta loada me!” one of the suits in the room said. Doug groaned. The man had put on his jacket over his own suit jacket and had one of Doug’s unlit cigarettes in his mouth. “Oim fucking Doug McCracken, big badarse, ‘cor love a duck apples and pears!” the suit mimicked.

“I’m not a fucking cockney, arsewipe!” growled Doug. Tommy clipped him across the face with the palm of his hand. Being mostly numb from the cold, the blow wasn’t effective. Doug spat on Tommy’s immaculate right shoe.

“Oh motherfucker,” said Tommy. “Take five, boys. This is going to get messy. Ignore any screams or noises, it’ll just be me taking care of our friend here.” The other suits left them alone in the cold room with only the hanging meat and crates of food for company. Tommy threw the fish to the side and grasped the fishhook in his hand. Doug couldn’t see any way out, shifting in his seat against the ropes. With guards on all the doors, his arm bound and no obvious way out, he sighed. Might as well go out the way he did everything – with obnoxious sarcasm.

“So, why do they call you ‘Big Boy’ anyway?” he asked. Tommy grabbed his crotch with his hand and thrusted his hips forward a couple of times.

“Need I say more?”

“Oh. Ironic nickname, is it?” chortled Doug. He felt sudden warmth behind him, and tried not to grin more than he was already. Tommy walked towards him, fishhook prepared.

“You know what? I didn’t even like Big Jimmy that much. I’m just going to torture the fuck out of you because you’re an arrogant smug sonnovabitch and I don’t like you.”

“That’s a shame,” replied Doug. “I was warming to you. In fact I’d say that you light a fire in me!”

Tommy reached back and brought the fishhook in an arc towards Doug’s shoulder. Doug pushed all his weight away from it against the ropes and flopped out of the chair, the ropes shedding around him. The hook buried itself into the back of the chair, and Tommy was suddenly aware of a knee in his gut. Doug followed it with an uppercut, launching Tommy across the room.

The chair was burning with green flame. Doug grabbed it by the seat and hefted it up.

“Here, have a seat. I’ve kept it warm for you!” announced Doug, skidding it across the floor on to Tommy, who flailed and howled as the flames brushed his skin. With two large strides, Doug moved low across the floor, grabbing the dropped fishhook in one smooth motion with his hand. He leapt and brought it down with a dull crack into Tommy’s skull. There was drool and twitching, Tommy’s body reacting to the dancing flames consuming his clothes as blood welled across his temple.

Using his foot for leverage, Doug hauled the fishhook out of Tommy and jiggled it about a bit in order to discard some of the blood and skull stuck to it.

“Right,” he said, walking up to the door and rapping on it with the fishhook. It opened casually, and on the other side was the cockney McCracken. Taking a look at Doug in front of him, speckled with blood across his face and looking evil, and then seeing Tommy cooking on the floor while flailing around, eyes rolled back in their sockets, the unlit cigarette drooped in his mouth and then succumbed to gravity, cockney Doug’s gaping mouth no longer supporting it.

“-the fuck?!” was all cockney Doug could say, without the cockney.

“ ‘ullo me old choina, oim Doug McCracken,” said Doug menacingly. With a swift motion of his hand he slit the neck artery of fake Doug with his hook, who clasped at his throat and gurgled as he fell to his knees.

“Oh fucking hell mate, don’t bleed on the jacket!” swore Doug, tossing aside the hook and trying to unclothe the dying man against his will. A suit walked in to the kitchen and saw the bloody sight in the back.

“Hey, what the hell-” was all he could offer before a large bang and gunfire sounded off in the conference room behind him. Doug looked up, having managed to pull the jacket off of the suit bleeding out at his feet. He shook it off a little to remove some of the blood and addressed the suit who had just walked in.

“I wouldn’t worry about me, mate,” he announced loudly across the kitchen while slipping on his jacket. “Sounds like my mates are shooting up your lot. I’d go check on them!”

“Yeah,” said the suit absent-mindedly, drawing his ²Gat™ from inside his jacket and turning his back on Doug to rush back to the conference room. Doug slipped a sharp knife out from the knife rack next to him on the kitchen counter and deftly flung it at the leaving suit. Spinning through the air, it fell low and caught the suit in the lower spine. With a howl the suit fell to his knees, hands trying to reach the knife in his back. Doug lit a cigarette as he strolled along the kitchen, pausing to remove the knife from the suit’s back and kick him in the face with the heel of his boot.

“Nah, just kidding. You should always worry about me, mate,” muttered Doug to the unconscious goon as he searched the man’s pockets, finding a flick-knife and a fat wallet. He stuck the knife into his boot, pinched the money out of the wallet and stuffed it into his jacket pockets, tucked the suit’s Gat™ into his belt and armed himself with the kitchen knife. Puffing on his cigarette, he kicked open the doors to the conference room.

Judging how the majority of the Dalminettis were hiding under the conference table clutching at their eyes, Doug concluded that Blaise’s first move had been to throw a flashbang grenade into the room. Those that had recovered from being temporarily blinded were shooting over the table, towards the far end of the massive piece of furniture.

There were five dead so far. The first was sprawled across the table with heavy burn marks across his face. Doug guessed that he had opened the door to the hall and had received a fire blast to the face for his troubles. Blaise must have then thrown the grenade and set to work with her pistols. The second corpse lay prone by the kitchen door, over the third corpse. They both sported a bullet wound to the head, one bullet having passed through the temples of the second corpse and into the third’s forehead. The fourth corpse had a single bullet wound through his throat. The fifth must have had time to draw a gun as his right wrist had been blown apart and a bullet had been shot through his chest, piercing a lung. In the time it had taken to inflict the damage, Blaise had entered the room and had taken cover down the far end of the ten foot long conference table. Gratin must not have been as concerned with the fight as he had simply walked into the room and had taken to leaning in the corner with his back pressed firmly against the wall, his spirit shield glowing softly around him. He was currently chanting quietly to himself.

The remaining Dalminettis were cowering behind the end of the table closest to the kitchen’s door. They were oblivious to Doug’s presence as they were concentrating on not getting shot by using suppression fire to keep their pistol-wielding attacker at bay.

Gratin shook his head as if he were awakening from a trance.

“It is done,” he told the end of the table the Dalmenettis were shooting at. Doug heard it say “great” just as the Dalminettis ran out of bullets, their guns clicking furiously.

Blaise popped up from the end of the table wielding her dual pistols and fired off two shots. They each hit separate men as they were trying to get back into cover, the first was hit through the left eye, the other between the eyes. Blaise gave Doug a curt nod and ducked again, the Dalminettis managing to reload and recommence their fire.

“Shit! She got Georgie and Vic!” a panicked member of the group cried.

“We know, Paulo!” another man said. Doug recognised him as the black suit from earlier he’d chucked up over.

“We’re droppin’ like flies!” Paulo continued.

“We know, Paulo!”

“‘Oh, we found McCracken up top! Let’s mess him up and send Alfie and Vekowski some pictures so they know what they’re missin’! It’ll be a laugh!’” Paulo said in an exaggerated impression of the man in black.

“Shut up Paulo!”

“Fuck you, Angelo!”

“I think Paulo might have a point, lads. You did bring this on yourselves,” Doug interrupted with a smirk, attracting their attention.

“Shit-” was all Angelo could utter before Doug buried the kitchen knife in his ribcage. The other Dalminettis turned just as Doug casually removed the Gat™ from the waist of his trousers, laughing as he sprayed automatic fire along the line of cowering gangsters. As smoke rose from the fresh, twitching corpses, the Gat™ clicked to signify it was empty. Doug tossed it aside as he strolled down the length of the suddenly quiet room towards his friends.

“How’s your head?” he asked Blaise as she climbed to her feet. Blaise tucked the pistols into her holsters and closed her coat, frowning at him. There were six o’ clock shadows under her eyes, each one looking as if they could do with pressing the snooze button another fifteen times.

“Pounding, but I’ll live,” she replied, tucking her hair behind her ear in order to keep it out of her eyes, “I see that you’re doing fine, all things considered. And here I was fearing the worst.”

“Didn’t realise you cared so much, Love,” Doug japed.

“Don’t get the wrong impression, McCracken. We came to bail your arse out because we need someone on the team to act as blaster fodder and you’re the only guy dumb enough to volunteer,” said Blaise, her mouth cocked upwards in the corner as a cheeky sneer.

“Yeah, I love you too,” smirked Doug.

“Oh sod off, you annoying arsehole,” joked Blaise with a smile. She was glad to see he was alright.

Doug looked at the mage and gave him the finger gun. “Nice trick with the fire back there pal. Must’ve taken some concentration to cast it through the wall. I hate to break it to you though, but you missed the guy by about a metre. You set fire to the chair I was sat in!”

The mage stepped forward from the wall he was leaning against.

“I did not miss,” stated Gratin. Doug raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat. Gratin smiled.

“Anyway!” said Doug, changing the subject, “This has all been fun and games but we should all get some rest. Who knows what else the day has in store for us?” He looked at Blaise, who was searching around the room as if she was trying to pinpoint something.

“What’s the matter, Red?” he asked.

“Jet engines,” said Blaise. Doug looked around and was suddenly aware of the noise. It had been a low-lying groan on the edge of hearing for the last five minutes, but slowly the noise had grown and grown. Right now it was making itself comfortable in the vast expanse of the conference room.

“Passing aircraft,” suggested Doug.

“Why’s it circling the ship, then?” asked Blaise.

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Post by Sean Patrick Payne | November 12, 2013 at 12:00 pm | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment

Tags: Blaise, Dalminetti Mafia, Doug McCracken, Gifelle Arms & Weapons, Gratin, the Dalminetti airship massacre, Tommy 'Big Boy' Bellarico

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