–Season 3 Episode 30— “Stalemate”
With the Cessna 185 float plane finally void of passengers…. The bush pilot determined it was her turn to escape the melee. She unhitched the floats from the dock, spun the bird on a dime like a Vegas showgirl, then blasted the brawl enthralled crowd with water spray from the prop—accompanied by some straight pipe engine roar that could have registered on the Richter scale.
Now out of the water both Rusty and Cos hurriedly marched their way toward Sally and Tawny who were locked into a Greco-Roman lock with hands knotted together down to bare bone fingers. Neither of the gals could work a gut wrench, suplex, arm throw, or body lock. It was a stalemate.
“Sally! Tawny! That’s enough!” screamed Rusty. And that’s when he witnessed the improbable.
His peripheral vision told him the two figures emerging from the water near the crib dock next to the boathouse were not friendly. Matter of fact their frog suits and Mk 1 underwater defense weapons were significant giveaways.
Now, you the reader, I want you to start considering Rusty an excellent judge of character. From his opposite peripheral, the non-smirking non-blinking Hazel who was previously positioned behind Ellie Waylayer and whispering in her ear—was once again locking eyes with Rusty, but this time doing so while she removed Ellie’s Glock 19 without expressed written permission.
“Ellie! She’s got your gun!” he shrieked. And in that split second the first volley of shots came in waves from the direction of the boathouse.
Tawny felt the momentum of Sally push toward her before she heard the blasts from the muzzles. Then, with Sally in her arms, she heard her choked breath say, “I’m hit.”
With instinct pegged, Tawny let herself go backward off the dock with her former bass partner; current wrestling foe held fiercely in a bear hug. To get off the floater and into the water was to get away from the pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop of the sniping attack.
It was more of a back-dive than a Nestea Plunge. Two people as one—hanging on to each other in effort to disappear like a lake sturgeon seeking bottom. And for a moment they did.
The gunfire ceased when Sally went off the dock. Clearly, SHE was the target. Ellie, Cos, and Rusty were expendable, but Hazel holding them at gunpoint with their hands in the air was satisfactory for a ceasefire.
“You rotten bitch,” Ellie gritted through her teeth. And quickly the pieces came together in her mind. More so when she witnessed Too Tall and Shorty Short emerging from the iron ore colored water and removing their neoprene snorkeling hoods.
From the second they tumbled into Australia; they were unknowingly leading Hazel and her shadowy counterparts straight toward “destination Kraken eggs”. This explained the interception at the first Safehouse…Then the chase, like fish from a barrel, that ensued from the marina…The needless killing of their poor boat guide at Safehouse #2 on the Caye…The trip to the submarine that would have made James Bond raise an eyebrow…And now HERE—somehow back to FSFO Ontario Canada. In short: she and Sally had been completely outplayed by an Aussie. Potentially one with better taste in beer.
Tawny’s clock on holding her breath had expired. She had no option but to surface. Fifteen feet below the waterline she released Sally and fought her way to the top where guns were waiting.
“Where’s Squatsnfishes!” barked Too Tall. “I swear I’ll spray you with lead!”
“She’s gone,” replied Tawny, hands above her head while treading water with her feet. “Check the bottom for yourself, asshole.”
Then, like the great spotted woodpecker…. Rusty sounded off with a “Kik Kik Kik—You killed her!!”
He was breathless, under the ice, being pulled to the bottomless depths of a lake by the mangrove killifish. Then he was on the hump of a ten-thousand-pound bison being carted across the foothills of an endless mountain landscape. And now she is gone.
Death, and or the idea of death was not a new concept or personal experience for Rusty. There had been family pets, elderly relatives of the Flather’s family, and even one close friend from his teenage years.
His Catholic connection played a significant role in the processing of death. Even painful ones. But his present experience hurt beyond recognition. Shock waves were blocking his ability to process what was happening in real-life-time.
“Alright Flathers…. You and your posse (Cos, Tawny, Ellie) are going to need to move off this floating dock and grab a seat over by the fire pit on the beach,” instructed Shorty Short. Obliging, they moved along, and Ellie concentrated from a distance on words being exchanged between new bitch Hazel and apparent partner Too Tall who were now ahead of them waiting on shore.
Prior to her special op assignment, Ellie participated in an eight-week intense government training program, kept highly secret by being buried several depths below the basement vault of national security. This program was designed to transform individuals into experts. It wasn’t a course you could take online through LipReading.com.
“You didn’t need to shoot her,” was roughly what she was seeing Hazel mouth. “She led us to the jackpot, didn’t she?”
“I wasn’t taking any chances with her,” was Too Tall’s reply. “Eliminating her as a target was not part of our mission, but I’ll deal with HQ when the melting pot gets hot. Besides, you said she was thankless, always micromanaging something or other—what’s it to you?”
“Whatever…. Let’s get to the boathouse and see what we come up with. We’ve been at a stalemate long enough, trying to figure out where your mother hid the Kraken eggs.”
–To Be Continued–
Rusty Flathers 