22, Anastasia

“I think that the possibility of a war between large armies of birds isn’t probable, but yes, Owens, I’ll hand it to you that it would be a reign of terror for those below without cover.”  Special Agent Mikayla Doniak stopped staring at her laptop screen to rub her eyes.  She considered armies of birds in an aerial war and shuddered.  “Before I was recruited, I was a veterinarian and a hunter.  I know how much birds shit.  If I had a dollar for every blocked cloaca I had to clean for those damn soccer mom’s pet hens…”  She opened her eyes and looked back at the screen.

“I’m afraid to ask, what’s a blocked cloaca?” asked Master Thief Owens.  He was nibbling on some home made Alaskan deer jerky in the middle of Africa.

“Normally I wouldn’t flinch at answering this question, but I gotta pee.  Take this laptop.  I’ll be back in fifteen.”  

“Keep your com on.”  Owens pointed at his watch as he nodded at hers.

“Duh,” Doniak replied, but she secretly was glad he’d reminded her.  She pressed the “Active” button then slipped out of the old Jeep.

Traffic was calm and the palm trees gently swayed in the hot, late afternoon breeze.  Owens sighed out loud from the relief as the light wind gently cooled him off.  Marare, Zimbabwe was a nice town with paved roads that had a tight central part of town, then spread out with smaller settlements further out.  The two agents were on a stake out in a parked jeep, three blocks away from their target.

Doniak’s voice came through the com.  “If you think about it, the Cooper’s hawk would be the aerial king, but on the ground, I’d put my money on a rooster.”

The bird war discussions were hot.  “You think a Coopers hawk over a Peregrin falcon?”

“Oooo, good call.  But at night, I’ll always give it to the Great Horned Owl.  Ok, I’m diving into the cantina to use the ladies room.  Chat in a few.”  Her com went dead.

Owens contemplated if there might be a better bird army than an army of owls at night.  Silent, deadly, accurate.  Then, it dawned on him, they’d been talking about bird army battles for several hours.  He made a mental note to read more books to help with future conversations.

His com lit up as Doniak’s voice came through cleanly.  “I’m a new woman.  They cleaned the bathroom in the cantina, can you believe it?”

Owens laughed.  “The germ freaks joke that hygiene is contagious.”

“Irony and pun humor doesn’t do shit for me,” lamented Doniak.  Owens could hear her smiling.  “Dick jokes will still always be the funniest, no matter what the feminists say.”

“Sadly, yes,” giggled Owens.  “Our maturity level dwindles as we age, I think.”

“Well said.”  Owens could hear her say “thank you” in the background, then her voice returned.  “I bought you an iced tea that smells like swamp water and feels luke warm.  You’re welcome.”

“Oh, the thoughtfulness,” Owens joked dryly.  “I don’t complain, sister.”

It had been a week of searching and asking friends back home to analyze data, but the agents were able to locate the thief whom they believed to be the one who identified as Anastasia B.  Her real name was Stacey Boothausen from rural Kansas.  She was the same age, twenty nine, as all of the agents on Team Whiskey.  Most importantly, she was a hell of a thief.  

The Master Thief culture was tiny and careful.  Ever since the event known amongst them as “The Great Shakedown,” there were currently only half a dozen people with that particular set of extraordinary skills left around the world.  Owens was under the impression that the few he knew of didn’t want to travel and most were just retired golfers who might pull a heist every few years for fun.  

Owens was guessing at all of this because none of them had ever met or directly communicated.  They communicated on an old World Of Warcraft chat room, but they didn’t talk openly or brash.  Often times, they communicated immense info with small text that looked like chit chat about the video game itself.  They were young when Warcraft went online in their twenties and thirties.  Twenty years later, middle age had caught up to them.  Owens was the youngest he knew of, until now.  

He’d kept an eye on the Warcraft group and chimed in several times a year, but he’d joined Team Whisky a decade ago and his ethical code drove him to steal from bad guys only.  Over the last week, Owens had been very active on this chat room and had learned all about Stacey B.  

The more he learned, the more he liked her.  She seemed to have a moral code about stealing like him.  Owens had learned that she’d made a large score consisting of famous European art and quickly sold it underground to some rich Arabian oil investors.  A couple of days later, large cash donations were made to organizations that help animals in cities.  In the end, the art she’d stolen was from some British bankers who were later convicted of felonies and sent to prison.  Stacey B appeared also to steal only from the bad guys. 

This pattern happened over and over in city after city.  A drug dealer would have a car stolen, and a few days later, an animal shelter would get a massive donation.  A crooked lawyer would wake up to find an empty closet of what used to be very expensive business suits, and a week later a rural veterinary clinic received a massive six figure donation to expand it’s operation to care for more animals.  Over and over, a bad guy got hit and animals won.

Then, the team found her on facebook.  She was cute and bubbly.  She posted a lot about Texas music and cold beer, but one photo made them gasp.  Stacey B was beside a boxing ring in Monaco.  The agents knew the place was holding an illegal bare knuckles boxing match because they’d attended those matches with Sarge in the past.  There were two comments on the photo.

1. Looks fun!

2. I made a ton of money!

Stacey B liked to gamble on bare knuckles boxing matches.  Currently, the agents were parked outside of a known boxing warehouse where a fight was occurring, waiting to see the thief walk out with other patrons.

Doniak seemed to come out of nowhere as she jumped into the jeep.  She handed Owens a large Pepsi cup with a plastic top and straw.  “I swear to you, if you want to pour it out, I won’t take it personally.”

Owens took a sip.  The iced tea tasted like a cess pool of rotten tea leaves topped with earthy overtones.  “I don’t mind it,” he said honestly.  “I’ve had worse.”

“Worse tea than that swamp water?!?”

“Yup,” Owens nodded.  “Try the trucker cafe on I-94 outside of Bismarck.  I got a tea there on a drive a few summers back and within four hours, that tea had cleansed me of all that my intestines had been holding onto.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Doniak said.  

“Sorry, friend, but not really sorry.”

People started exiting the large building as Doniak’s laptop started lighting up with notifications.  “Our  cameras are working.  Get ready.”

Owens rubbed his hands together.  “Well hello, Anastasia!”  He saw her walk out by herself between small groups of people.  Stacey B was five foot six with short, cropped strawberry blond hair.  She was smiling and had her hands in her jacket pockets.  It looked like she was playing it cool, but Owens could see on her face that she was excited.  He wondered if she’d won a lot of money.

“Owens, she’s headed the opposite way.  I’ll tail her.”  Doniak fired up the jeep and handed the laptop off.  She crept down the road until she was a block from behind Stacey B.  The thief turned at a corner and slipped out of view for a few seconds.  As the jeep pulled around the corner, the thief had disappeared.  “Shit!  Where’d she go?” 

Doniak heard a voice from above her.  “I’m on it!”  Master Thief Owens had already jumped out of the jeep and was scurrying silently up a two story gutter without Doniak even knowing it.  He stopped right before popping up on the roof.  “It’s all me from here on out!  See you at the hotel!”  With that, Owens threw his feet over the roof edge and disappeared into the nighttime roof line.

Stacey B had disappeared.  Owens turned into a hunter.  His senses were heightened and he tuned out all mental distractions.  His one purpose in the universe for this moment in space and time was to find that woman.

He sniffed the air around him and snapped his head to the right.  He took off like a missile.  He jumped from roof top to roof top.  All the two story buildings on this block were very old and had tight alleys that allowed cool air to settle and keep the pedestrians refreshed below.  He reached the last rooftop and lunged hard to the side as a very large trash can lid flew by where his face was just moments earlier.

“Hey!  I don’t want to fight!  I just wanna talk!”

Owens super hearing picked up that the woman had slipped over the side of the building and was slipping down the gutter.  He took several large fast steps and jumped.  The twenty five foot drop would’ve killed pert near all the humans who might take that leap, but Owens landed as gracefully as a cat.  He turned around and stood up as Stacy B was getting to the street.

“I can do this all day, mister,” Stacey said.  She grinned widely as she looked him in the eye, as if to challenge him to make a move.

“Look, I’m serious!  I don’t want to fight you!  I just want to meet you, that’s all!”  He reached into the belt line of his pants and pulled out a solid gold hand gun.  “Here!”  He showed it to the woman, then under hand threw it to her.  “You’re right, you stole it first!”

The gun lay on the palms of her open hands and glittered in the early evening light.  She started at it for a second, then looked up and smiled.  “Why are you doing this, um, this way, may I ask?”

Owens looked sheepish.  “Um, I don’t know, actually.”

“I mean, you could’ve just left this thing in the lock box like I asked you and you didn’t have to steal my cameras.  And for real, how’d you do that anyway?  I mean, I was mad, but I was really impressed.”

It was clear that Owens was socially awkward as well as somewhat smitten.  “Look, I gotta be honest, I don’t exactly know what to say or how to act right now.  All I know is, I think you’re a hell of a thief, and I knew I wanted to meet you.  That’s all, really.”  His eyes hit the ground and he searched for something more to say, but even his simple mind escaped him.

Stacey B smiled.  “That’s sweet, actually.”  She nodded at him as he made eye contact.  “I can tell, you’re different like me too.”

“Yeah,” Owens admitted.  Their eyes met and they both understood more in that one glance than a thousand words could have shared.  Owens changed the vibe.  “I’ve had my eye on The Rising Sun for years now, but the security system looked too intimidating.  When I saw that gun in the lock box back in Canada, my heart leaped and sank at the same time.  I was excited that someone stole it but a lot of other emotions too.  Jealous.  Intrigued.  I have to ask, how’d you do it?”  

Stacey grinned a wide grin.  “Well as you would know, the Zancor Security Systems pressure sonsors themselves in their monitors are impossible to fool.”

“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve tried in my practice room to beat them.”  Owens shook his head.  “Infrared, heat, cold, X-rays, gamma rays, you name it, I’ve tried it.  Nothing works.  It detects me every time.  It’s unbeatable, but you beat it.  I have to know how.”

“If I tell you a secret, you have to promise me to tell me your secret in return, about how you knew about my cameras, let alone how you stole them.  Deal?”

Owens shrugged.  “I’m an open book, but I humbly ask you not to inquire too much about my team.  They’re troubled souls and they need my help.  The more they’re talked about, the more they’ll need my help, which means I get to do less fishing and that makes me cranky.”

“Wow.  Ok, so if you’re an open book, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever stolen?”  

“A bronze dildo of Putin’s genitals in full arousal from his personal panic room safe.”  He paused and laughed.  “You asked about the hardest thing I’ve stolen…”  He thought about it for a moment, “no wait, I stole a big diamond once and that’s harder than bronze.”  

“Riveting,” Stacey said in a sarcastic tone.

“Look, ok, sorry.  Probably the Russian bronze dong, yeah.”  She looked at him but he assured her, “that’s what my team called it.  There was another heist in a drug lords personal rainforest aviary where I had to kidnap a rare Tucan that was more difficult, but you asked about hard, not difficult.”

“Are you really this dumb?”  Stacey was half being sarcastic, half being serious.

“Yes, no apologies.  Getting in and out of that aviary was cake, but that bird had it out for me.  Do you see how my nose tilts a bit to the left now?”  He turned his head and lifted his nose for her to examine.

Stacey B knew that this man had to be on the Aspergers spectrum somewhere but didn’t wanna waste any more time.  “I want to know everything, but I want to get out of here.”

“Not until you tell me how you got past the pressure sensors.”

Stacey lifted her face to the night sky and smiled widely as a memory took over.  “I have a couple of computer gals.”

“It’s always handy to have a few of them around, for sure.”

“They’re the best.  They found a zero day back door where they could upload a virus that recalibrated a decimal point to move three places over.  Then the pressure sensors would react normally but the alarm would now go off to a 1,000 millibar disturbance instead of one.”

Owens eyes got big.  “I have no idea what you just said, but I think you’re telling me you hacked it.”

“Nailed it.  We made it to where the sensor wouldn’t trigger.  Then, the bug we installed made the back up infrared sensors stay offline too, so that was one less obstacle.”

He shook his head.  “Genius.  For real.  That’s genius.”  He took two steps backwards and bowed like a Japanese warrior.  “Much respect.”  He stood up.  “Hey, is your name really Stacey?”

The girl froze, then smiled.  “Yes, but in this line of work, I go by Anastasia.”  

“Cool.  My name is Owens.  If you ever bail me out of jail, I’ll tell you my first name.”

“Sounds like a deal.  Good to meet you, Owens.”

“You as well, Anastasia.  And by the way, about your two hacker friends, we could use their help occasionally, especially if they’re as good as you say.”

“Yvonne and Regina are savages.  They also love whiskey and old revolvers.  You’ve been warned.”

From out of the shadows, a thin man in a trench coat appeared.  Owens took a moment and warmed up to him instantly.  “Speck!  Long time, no see, my man!  How’re you doing?”

The man wore a 1930’s Gentlemen’s hat that threw a shadow over his face.  “Fair to shitty most days, but here and there I have a good day.  Today is a good one.”

“Oh yeah?”  Owens looked over to see Stacey getting ready to run.  For whatever reason, she hesitated.

“Anastasia, my name is Speck Arnold, and I work for an organization that also employs this man.  I’d like to offer you a job with our outfit that would utilize your natural abilities.”

Stacey was confused but kept her cool.  “You’re a stranger in a trench coat, offering me a job.  At night.  In Africa.”

“I am doing all of those things,” Speck said confidently, then continued, “and regarding employment, I pay really well.  You’re already well traveled and with our help, you’ll see it all while helping us locate and eliminate bad men.”

With confusion, she tried to not be sarcastic.  “Well tell me where to sign up?”

Speck raised his hand and a business card appeared between the black leather fingers from his walking gloves.  The card looked ghostly with it’s reflective sheen.  “This number has all the info you need.  You need to be back in the states in ten days.  You won’t see your loved ones for a year, but after the initial year of training, you get your life back.”

She took the card.  “Lucky me.”

“Damn straight.”  Speck again magically opened his hand and an envelope stuffed with cash appeared.  He handed it to her.  “And unlucky for the mother fuckers you’re gonna help us catch and kill.”  Stacey froze at that statement as Speck nodded and turned around to walk off.  “That cash will help you get back to D.C. in any expedited fashion of your choosing.  Do with the rest what you will.”  With that, Speck Arnold turned as if to walk away into the evening darkness but kept his eyes on Owens.

“Later, Speck!” Owens said cheerfully.

Speck smiled like a grandfather.  “I was right about you, Owens,” he said.  “I told you, you’d be great and I was right.  I also told you that someday you’d pass it along.  This is the start of that chapter for you.”  Owens could barely see his eyes under the Gentlemen’s hat.  “She’s made of the same stuff you are, kid.  Make her great.  No one else can.”  With that, Speck started to disappear into the darkness.  

Owens called out, “Where are you off to?”

“To the bar.  If you find me, first round is on me.”  With that, Speck had dissolved into the evening darkness.

Owens shrugged and spoke.  “I’m staying at a hotel in town.  I guess you can do whatever you want to do, but if you take the job, you’d be amazing.”  He was waiting, then said, “I got to break into Buckingham Palace on a job once.”

Stacey smiled but didn’t fully believe him.  “Oh really?  And what was your mark?”

“A receipt from a gas company payout worth over a billion dollars.”  Owens started walking away but stayed chipper.  “Seriously, you’d be amazing at the job, and it’s a great feeling every time to put away a bad guy.  I promise.” 

Stacey put her hands on her hips and stared up at the stars for a few seconds.  She dropped her head back down and wanted to say something, but Owens had completely disappeared.  She grinned.  “Well played, Owens.”

In the distance, a man in a trench coat sat in a dark, unassuming bar and drank luke warm light beer while starting at a lone neon light that flickered as he muttered to himself, “I love this job.”