Coffee (32 page)

“That’s
for puking all over me, you bastard,” he said while replacing
the gun in his holster. Still panting, he pulled the radio off his
belt. “Bart’s going to be a happy man.” Without
taking his eyes off Etty, he talked into it. “Bart, come in
Bart. I have the girl.” After a short pause, Bart’s
exhilarated voice came on.

“Where
are you!”

Bryce
appeared behind the guard, standing in the doorway. Etty kept a
straight face not to let on. Bryce moved in slowly, and picked up a
heavy three hole punch from a desk. ‘Much better,’ Etty
thought.

“I’m
in the hospital, looking right into her red eyes.” Bryce
leveled the hole punch hard on his head. Little round circles of
paper blew up into the air like a burst of confetti as the guard
collapsed in front of them.

“Where
in the hospital?” came Bart’s voice from the radio now
on the floor. Bryce picked it up and responded.

“If
I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“Hey,
who’s that? Answer me...” Bryce clicked it off, and
then bent to hug Etty. He looked over her shoulder and saw the now
three bodies on the floor.

“Looks
like you’ve been busy. Warren hit bad? He’s
breathing.” He bent to touch his neck.

“Punched
in the temple. That’s the second blow to that big head of
his, I hope he’s all right.”

“Who’s
the chick?” he asked, noticing Jennie.

“That,
believe it or not, is Global Grower’s secret weapon. She’s
loaded with re-engineered bacteria. That’s what they used on
Knut. Fuckers. She kisses people to death.”

Bryce
couldn’t help noticing her attractive face, even with her
cheeks pushed into the wood floor and her mouth slightly open. ‘Not
a bad way to go,’ he thought privately. He picked up Warren’s
head and put it on his bent knee. “Come on sleeping beauty.
Grumpy and Sneezy want to get the hell out of here.”

The
door crashed open. Etty gasped. Another guard stood in the doorway,
a monster sized man with shoulders nearly as wide as the door.
“Whoa - a steroid overdose,” said Bryce as he placed
Warren’s unconscious head back on the floor. Bryce quickly
attacked, but the guard easily stopped the offensive with a powerful
blow to the stomach. Bryce tumbled back, knocking over Etty and her
chair. She screamed as the needle sank deeply into her arm. Bryce
bounded back up. The guard kept coming, rolling like a tank across
the office floor. Etty scrambled back to right the chair. She
wanted to pull out the drip, but needed more time. She adjusted
the needle painfully, to make sure it followed inside her vein.

Bryce
kept desks between them, out of the guard’s reach. As they
circled, he picked up whatever he could find on the desk tops and
threw them at him - lamps, calculators, and finally a computer
monitor. The guard fended them off easily and kept coming.

Etty
wanted to kick Warren to wake him up to even the odds, but the fight
prevented her from approaching. “Warren! Get up, get up!”

Etty
rolled her chair, holding the IV carrier, toward the supply closet.
She swiped a row of medical supplies onto her lap. She rifled
through, throwing rejects madly on the floor, looking for smelling
salts. She settled for some alcohol swabs. She took a handful of
syringes as well, and rolled back to the room.

The
big guard was pulling Bryce by the ankle toward him while Bryce
kicked to break free. The guard raised him off the floor by the
foot. With a hefty swing, he threw him toward her, like a bag of
potatoes. Bryce hit Etty’s chair sideways and jammed her up
against the wall.

Bryce
shook off the impact and stood to fight again. The guard approached
relentlessly. “Warren! Wake Up!” She quickly sucked a
drop of alcohol from a swab into the syringe, and threw it like a
dart toward Warren. It sailed through the air, and landed perfectly
in his left buttock. The impact forced the plunger down just enough
to inject the stinging liquid into the skin.

Warren’s
head popped up. “Ouch! What the hell ...” He looked
over in time to see the guard connect a fist with Bryce’s jaw.
Warren shook off his stupor, and jumped up. He grabbed a wheeled
office chair, then smashed it down hard on the guard’s head.

The
guard buckled, but straightened without even losing his balance.
Blood pulsated out of a cut above his left eye. He ran at Warren,
grabbed him under the arms, picked him up off the ground, and with a
loud scream, charged toward the office window. Warren hit with such
impact, the glass instantly turned to tiny cubes and fell around him
like water. Warren sailed out the window, back first, falling a
full story to the grass below.

The
guard turned back to eliminate his second adversary. He walked
slowly ahead, blood filling his left eye socket like a strange war
paint. Bryce reached to grab another object, but the guard grabbed
his head before he could react. Bryce dangled from the enormous
hands. The guard tossed him through the air to the wall. The impact
stunned him to near unconsciousness. By the time he re-focused, the
guard already had him again. The guard pushed him out the open
window like a rag doll.

Then
he turned to Etty.

Twenty
eight minutes had elapsed since she connected the IV. ‘Time
enough,’ she decided and yanked the needle from her arm. She
peeled the plastic from a cardiac needle. She held it in her fist
like a knife, and backed up. The guard snapped forward and caught
her other arm. He shoved her backwards into the storage closet.
She fell and skidded on her back until her head hit the far wall.
He continued toward her. Etty looked left, on the floor under the
first shelf. There were plastic bottles of color printer toner
stacked neatly in a row. As the hulk reached to grab her leg, she
jammed the cardiac needle into a bottle of cyan-blue liquid toner,
and drew a full syringe. She wrestled her leg free, and jumped up,
holding the needle like a wild savage. She leaped, landing with her
legs around his upper chest and plunged the needle to the base into
his neck.

She emptied the chamber of the blue dye into his carotid artery,
which feeds the brain with a torrent of blood. Within seconds, he
released his vice grip. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, and
he began to shake. He toppled over. Etty still clung onto his
chest and fell with him. She reached up and pulled a heavy vase off
a desk and held it over his head. As she watched, blue from the
toner began spreading across his cheeks, in his eye lids, through
his lips. Other than the whites of his eyes, the rest of his face
slowly turned deep blue, until he finally stopped resisting. His
arms fell to his side, his head relaxed. He was dead.



With
his Japanese business guest long gone, and his company in total
turmoil, McKinsey returned to his office to re-group. Bart updated
him on the false fire created on the roof, but too late to stop a
column of wailing fire trucks and police cars from circling the
complex. Standing at the window, he looked down upon a band of
people against the metal fence, waiting to return to their desks.
Smoke lingered in the air.

He
pulled a small book from a drawer, and leafed through the weathered,
hand written pages to find a number. “I hate to do this, I
really do,” he said to himself. “If you had only
cooperated, Miss Bishop, we could have had a wonderful
relationship.” He approached the security console. “5358.
Now let’s see how I do this.” He reviewed the
switches. The phone rang. He let it go.

“Mr.
McKinsey Sir? Sorry to barge in.” A secretary leaned around
the door of his office. “It’s John Clorice, calling
from Brazil. You want to take it?”

“Oh,
yes, absolutely.” He returned the book to his pocket.

“This
is Bill McKinsey. John?”

Although
the voice fought through a static hiss, the unusual Brazilian-Dutch
accent was unmistakable. “Good morning to you, Mr. McKinsey.
I am calling to compliment you on the fine analysis of Clorice
Coffee. I received it yesterday afternoon. Excellent job. You
have earned your commission.”

“Thank
you very much. Always nice to have a happy customer. We have a
whole staff of consultants standing by if you wish further details
on any aspect, all of course at your reduced Board Member rate.”

“Money
is not an issue to me, William. Nor is your staff of consultants.
I am interested in the individual who prepared this work, Harriet
Von Enes Bishop.”

“Yes,
she did a fine job. Complete confidentiality at all times. We hire
only the best. And there are many more where she came from.”

“That,
I find difficult to believe. I have worked with you a long time. I
have seen many reports. I requested this monumental work, my most
ambitious ever, only a few weeks ago, and here it is. Clear,
concise, accurately researched, and with recommendations that I
believe are right. Ideas I should have considered many years ago.”

“You
must realize, of course, the recommendation that you step down as
President was not sanctioned by Global. The woman took the liberty
...”

“Silence!
I agree with that recommendation. If you do not, then it
demonstrates my point. Global Growers would never have produced
such an analysis without her. I want her to come to Brazil. I
want to meet her. As soon as possible.”

McKinsey
nervously combed his fingers through his hair. He chose his words
carefully. “John, there are some things about Miss Bishop
that you do not know. I am not sure she fits well into our
corporate structure. I appreciate your feelings, but we know other
things about her, that frankly, lead us to recommend termination
from the company. Understand, we have the best teams in the
industry to support you.”

McKinsey
waited anxiously for a response. Finally, “This is the same
woman who discovered your trading practices, isn’t she. She’s
why you had me contact the American Ambassador.”

“The
same. Her usefulness has diminished.”

“To
you, not to me. That confirms my faith in her. You haven’t
killed her, have you?” Clorice asked.

“No!
Well, not exactly, but there ...”

Clorice
interrupted, “Then I want her to come to Brazil.”

“I
can find out, but I think ...”

“I
want her on a plane before sunset. What you think is of no concern
to me. Reports, analyses, charts, graphs, are nothing compared to
the people behind them. I demand that she be sent here, or that she
call me personally to tell me why she refuses. If anything happens
to her ... are you listening Mr. McKinsey?”

“Yes,
I’m here. Please, let ...”

“If
anything happens to her, you will be personally held responsible.
You are well aware of how I handle incompetence.” With a buzz
and a click, the connection was severed.

McKinsey
unlocked a special drawer of his desk, and removed a semi-automatic
hand gun, equipped with a silencer.



Etty
looked through the broken window onto the grass below. Groups of
employees wandered by the two men, surprised at the dramatic exit
from the building, presumably due to the fire. Warren still lay on
his back, staring into the sky, blinking his eyes. Bryce was
sitting up, rubbing his chin.

“Get
ready to run boys, I’m coming down!” she yelled.

On
hearing Etty’s voice, Bryce realized where he was, and jumped
up to begin climbing back up the wall. Etty stopped him. “No,
stay where you are, or get ready to catch me.” She swung a
leg cautiously through the jagged broken window.

“What
happened up there? Where’s Frankenstein?”

“He’s
out of commission. Tell you later. Someone’s at the door up
here.” She held herself above the sharp edge, and teetered as
she built up the nerve to push herself through.

Bryce
continued climbing up. “Here - wait. Back out the window
with both legs, and climb over me until you can hang on, piggy-back.
I’ll carry you down.”

Etty
approved, and pulled back in to change position. Bryce gripped the
outside sill and arched his back up to provide a more even platform
for her to climb out on. He braced himself, head down, waiting for
her weight.

“Bryce!”
Warren screamed from below. “Get her!” Bryce looked up
just as Bart reached his thick arm around Etty’s face.

“No!”
Bryce heaved forward to vault through the window, but veered left
as he noticed Bart’s other hand fumbling with a pistol. Etty
wasn’t able to break free, but her writhing arms and legs
prevented a steady shot. The bullet shattered a hanging shard of
glass just above Bryce’s shoulder. Bryce lost his footing
with the sudden movements. His feet lost their grip, so he now hung
from his outstretched hands below the window. “Warren! Run!
Now!” he yelled down.

Bart
reached his gun out the window, still unable to control Etty’s
wild gyrations with his other hand. The gun wavered, but pointed
down toward Bryce’s head.

“Bryce!
Let go!” In desperation, Warren picked up a stone and winged
it toward Bart’s head, missing. Bryce released, and dropped.
The dirt around where he fell exploded with shots.

Etty
landed a solid kick to Bart’s ankle. He straightened with the
pain, bashing his head on the upper-side of the jagged edged window.
“God Damn it!”

Warren
ran to help Bryce, but he jumped up on his own. “Go!”
Bryce commanded, sprinting out of the direct line of fire. Bart
checked the flow of blood from the back of his neck, then exchanged
his gun for a radio. From their new vantage point, Bryce and Warren
could see Bart screaming orders over the airwaves. Within seconds,
a rush of guards poured from the main entrance.

Warren
stopped and looked back to the window. “No! No! Not after all
this! We can’t run! We have to go back.”