“Who were they?”
“A company from Charleston, South Carolina. Some archaeological firm called Grolier Recovery Services. They claim that they had permission to explore.”
“Really? How would they have permission?”
“They don’t, dammit. Someone told them they did.”
“You know where they’re staying?”
“Yeah. They gave me all their information. They wanted to clear up what they thought was a misunderstanding.”
“Where is it?”
I spent the rest of the ride back into Roswell in a fine stew, refusing to talk. This whole endeavor was ridiculous. I was sweating out in the middle of the New Mexico desert, pushing a lawn mower on steroids, only to get confronted by a guy and a shotgun. I couldn’t believe the damn junior varsity bullshit. Sweetwater hadn’t even gotten permission to check out the guy’s land.
Jennifer tried to mollify me, saying, “Hey, we found something. At the end of the day, even with the sorry coordination, we need to check that out. We can’t let it get flooded.”
I said, “I could give a shit about that. What I really want to do is punch Sweetwater in the face.”
We connected with Highway 285 and entered downtown Roswell. Once again in the land of fruits and nuts, the drab surroundings doing nothing for my mood.
We passed the vaunted, world-renowned UFO museum, looking like a snake-show on a dirt highway in Florida, and Jennifer said, “Pike, you need to come to grips with the fact that a lot of our work won’t be commando missions. It’s a slow, hard, dirty toil. The payback is the site itself.”
I said nothing. She continued. “You said if I started this business with you that fifty percent would be real scientific work. You said we needed to prove our cover in order to use the cover. This is just that fifty percent.”
I pulled into our hotel and she said, “Okay. Look. Let’s get to the gym. You can show me some commando stuff and then sleep in tomorrow. I’ll handle Sweetwater. I’d rather you didn’t come to the meeting.”
I put the truck in park and said, “All right. I’m okay with that. But you’d better put your game face on. I’m a little aggravated.”
Thirty minutes later we were rolling around on the mat at a local gym just off Main Street. It was privately owned in a crumbling, cement cinder-block building, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t pretty good, with a complete assortment of free weights, cardio, and Cro-Magnon CrossFit gear. We found a corner in a yoga room that wasn’t in use and I went to work, teaching Jennifer the finer arts of kicking someone’s ass.
I played to her strengths, stressing to her that her sole function in a fight was to do enough damage to get away. Never, ever to try to go toe-to-toe with another man — especially a man out to get her. She didn’t have the strength to do so, but she sure as hell had the flexibility and the quickness to escape, something I began to focus on.
We went through a few drills of rapid strikes, techniques that should, if executed correctly, allow her to break contact. Once she had the confidence, I went in harder, bringing her to the ground to see what she would do. I got on top of her and she went into the guard, cinching her legs around my waist and attempting to wrap up my arms. Just like I’d taught her. Only this time the position broke my concentration, the closeness of her body distracting me.
She swam out of my grip and flipped me over, ending up on top, and giving me a couple of pulled jabs to my head, her face glowing at the success.
I said, “Damn it. You need to get up. Get away. Don’t continue the fight on the ground. Pound the guy like you did, but don’t maintain the position unless he’s out of the fight.”
She said, “I could have pounded you. I chose not to.”
She was gazing down at me, a lock of hair out of her ponytail, sweat between her breasts, a grin on her face. I became distinctly uncomfortable. “Okay. Let me up. Let’s go again.”
“Let you up? No way.”
I wrapped my own legs around her waist, grabbed her arm and drew it out, then flipped her, trapping her elbow in an arm-bar. I stretched out and she tapped, shouting in pain. I let go and she rolled away, punching me in the shoulder.
“You asshole! You never know when to quit.”
She stood up and stomped away. I felt my face flush, wondering if she knew why I’d done it. Wondering if she knew my weakness with her. I said, “Jennifer…”
She said, “I’m done. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I’ll take a cab to the hotel.”
She left the yoga room and I felt like an ass. Like I always did whenever we got anywhere outside the range of just business partners. I punched the mat with my fist and heard, “You trying to hurt that thing?”
I looked up and saw two men, both in jeans and T-shirts, both in good shape. One was bulky, with ropy muscles and veins standing out, his shirt a size too small. The other was tall and lanky. I stood, saying nothing. I wiped my head with a towel and walked to the exit. The bulky one blocked it, saying, “You the scientist doing the dig out south?”
I paused, reassessing. I said, “Yeah. As a matter of fact I am.”
He said, “Well, we’d like it if you just went back to Charleston. Head on home. There’s nothing to be found out there.”
“If that’s the case, then you won’t mind us looking. We’re getting paid, and I need to show something for the effort.”
He said, “Money isn’t worth it. Trust me.”
The other man circled to my left, closing the door to the room. I reassessed again, elevating my awareness. Preparing.
I said, “Okay. You got it. I’ll get out of here. I don’t like this damn place anyway.”
The lanky one said, “Unfortunately, we need to make sure of that. You understand. A small lesson for you and your little girlfriend. Just a taste of what to expect if you don’t leave well enough alone.”
The words slammed into me like a frontal punch. If they had two on me, they had someone on her. As I sit here. I gave up all pretense of defusing the situation, saying, “Get out of my way, right fucking now.”
They looked at each other, a small smirk going between them. They had no idea of the shitstorm they had entered. They fully expected to tap me on the head a couple of times just to see me roll over crying, and I might have even let them do that, given the circumstances, but they’d made the mistake of threatening Jennifer.
So it was too late. I fully intended to crush them with more violence than they’d ever seen. And I knew my intentions would bear fruit.
I skipped forward and lanky man looked away in a juvenile attempt at a fake, then threw a wild right cross at my face. I raised my left arm, forming a triangle against my head in order to protect it. I took the brunt of the blow and immediately wrapped my left arm around Lanky’s right, trapping his elbow. I brought my right arm underneath his elbow and wrenched against the joint with great force, causing Lanky’s elbow to splinter upwards, against the direction it was intended to go. Before the damage had even registered in his brain, I dropped down and swept his legs out from under him, causing him to crash straight down on his back.
From the ground I immediately lashed out with my right leg into the knee supporting the weight of muscle-man, doing the same thing with his joint that I had done with Lanky’s elbow. It gave with a crack and a subsequent scream from him as he hit the ground, writhing in pain.
I sprang to my feet, but the fight was over. It had lasted about three seconds. Lanky was shrieking with the keening wail of a wounded rabbit, looking dumbfounded at his destroyed joint and waving it around like a macabre pom-pom, his splintered arm looking like something from a Photoshop trick, the elbow backwards. Muscle-head was rolling around on the ground as well, holding his shattered leg like Joe Thiesmann. I stalked toward him and he screeched at me, the sweat from the pain rolling off his head. I cut off the yell with a roundhouse kick to his skull, knocking him out as if he’d been hit in the forehead with a ball-peen hammer. Lanky was now all wide eyes and fear. I said, “Give me your fucking wallet.”