40, Domination

“I will crack you open like an egg and fry your insides, bitch.”  Sergeant Schuman had rage in her soul and joy in her eyes.  “This is a fucking dream come true.”  She expertly dodged a perfect outside punch from her opponent that would’ve connected and knocked out anyone else.  She countered with a left hook that found it’s target with hateful force.  Her opponent’s jaw snapped out of place, but popped back into place as her face smashed hard on the canvas for the second time in the first round.  The crowd went berserk.

Sergeant Shumakov of the Russian army picked herself up and tried to shake it off.  She’d never been knocked down, let alone twice, ever.  She was always the fastest puncher and dodger in every fight she’d had until now.  In just ninety seconds, Shumakov had been hit more than thirty times in the face with the force of a dozen comets.  The Russian sergeant was scared she’d lose for the first time in her life.  “Fuck you,” she said defiantly.

“That’s the spirit, bitch!”  Schuman yelled as she sent a left jab flying.  Shumakov dodged the punch for the first time in the fight, only by a fraction of a milimeter.  “Ooooo!” Schuman squealed as the two fighters shifted their weight between their feet to keep the other guessing.  “You’re adapting!”  

The two women fighting were some of the best of the best in the world when it came to bare knuckles boxing.  Schuman had lost only one fight in her life while Shumakov was undefeated.  On paper, this should’ve been anyones contest, but paper isn’t the real world.

Schuman started getting in tighter and throwing body shots.  The punches were connecting with bone splitting force, but the Russian woman could take a hit like no other.  Schumakov was losing badly, but it didn’t stop her from talking shit with her super thick Russian accent.  “You heet like baby.”

Schuman connected again with a solid straight right to the jaw.  The hit boomed with a big “crack!” and the whole room went deafeningly loud.  Shumakov stumbled backwards but Schuman didn’t pursue for the victory.  “Don’t worry bitch!  I won’t knock you down again for the TKO.  Your suffering needs to last a few more rounds, honey.”

Several wild punches followed from Schumakov, but Schuman was just too fast.  Her eyes never blinked, her grin was permanent, and she was avoiding her opponents attacks with perfect precision while counter attacking with blinding speed.  Shumakov knew it, her opponent was taking it easy on her for the last thirty seconds of the round.  Even though Shumakov was an insanely good fighter, the American she was facing might as well be a demon.  

Mercifully, the bell rang to end the round.  The fighters went back to their corners.  Schuman had no one talking to her in her corner.    She didn’t care.  This was her church.  The smell of sweat and pain, the taste of glory and shame.  In her mind, the Almighty was surely a boxer and must be worshiped with brutality against all opponents in the ring.  

The break was over in a blur and the second round started the same as the first.  Schuman connected combinations with cruel, unrelenting accuracy.  Schumakov was dazed and confused, but she was still standing.  Her smack talk had ended, and now all she was doing was trying desperately to connect a punch.

“Had enough, cutie pie?” Schuman asked innocently.  Another whack ignited the crowd into a frenzy.  Schuman was unstoppable.  She dodged everything that came at her and countered so fast that the crowd barely even had time to react.  “Here,” the American said as she popped the Russian in the nose.  Blood went everywhere.  “Have a knuckle sandwich, bitch.”

The sight of her own blood made Schumakov grin.  “You heet like leetle tiny baby,” Shumakov taunted.  A second later, a combination of jabs and a hook knocked the Russian down for a third time in the fight.  Even from the ground, her defiance continued. “Lucky punch, beech.”

Schuman had to hand it to her opponent.  She was clearly a great fighter, but just not up to Schuman’s ability.  “I have zero guilt beating you ’’til you’re infertile.”  She grinned at her own meanness.

The Russian did get up, bloody nose and all.  No one came to clean up the mess, what with it being Russia and all.  The ref signaled the fight back on.  Fifteen ruthless seconds of punch after punch and Schumakov went down for a fourth time, this time hard to the canvas.  Every part of her face hurt, her arms throbbed from trying to block punches, and her spirit was ready to give up.  It took her a few extra seconds to collect herself as she stood back up.  Inside, she was screaming in fury.  On the outside, she was calm and collected, despite trying to catch her breath.

As Schuman toyed with her opponent, agents Mikayla Doniak and Von Stryker were slipping in and out of the rowdy crowd.  Their fellow secret agents Trent Murdock and Bradley McVandalay had been abducted ten minutes earlier, but the amount of thugs in the room made it impossible to follow their friends out the door.  Doniak snuck up to a guy she knew was military.  She bumped into his side intentionally as she slipped a small device that looked like an ibuprofen pill into the man’s pocket.  It immediately sent out a radio signal that recorded and GPS tracked the man.  It only had battery for forty eight hours, but all she needed was to find out where they all went after this fight.

Von Stryker did the same thing to unsuspecting men, over and over.  The second round ended to thunderous cheering which made the job of bugging people really easy.  Between the two women, they’d planted two dozen tracker broadcasters on their unsuspecting carriers.  As the crowd roared at the end of round two, the two agents met up in a far corner of the room.

Doniak spoke quickly.  “I placed all of mine.  You?”

“I have a few left, and I’d really like to know where Sarge’s little boxer friend there goes when this fight is over.  I guarantee you, it’ll lead us right to the boys.”

The bell rang for the third round.  Schuman knew she had the fight in the bag, but she never once underestimated her opponent.  Shumakov was still light on her feet, but her head movement was slow and her arms were weak from taking a beating.  “Whack!”  Schuman connected with her jaw yet again.  It felt like it had broken in several places, but Shumakov didn’t go down.  Her eyes started watering as she fought back her emotions.  “Whack!”  Her eyes were swollen already and Schuman’s punch instantly made her left go red. It would be black for months afterwards

Shumakov jabbed back several times and missed.  “Whack!”  Her other eye was now swollen.  The body punches that followed cracked ribs and bruised Shumakov’s internal organs, but somehow the Russian would not drop for a fifth time.

The crowd was wild with excitement rooting for the American.  It wasn’t that she’d won them over necessarily, but rather the Russian regulars didn’t like Shumakov.  The Russian had never lost and had always been arrogant.  Today, her reign had come to and end, and three hundred spectators were witnessing the implosion.  Schuman had humiliated her opponent completely and thoroughly.  

“Had enough, honey?” Schuman taunted.

Shumakov retorted through her fat lips and bloody mouth, “You are a dumb beech.”  A combination sent her backwards against the ropes and she barely stayed upright.  She couldn’t hardly see and every part of her hurt.  She had dozens of broken bones.  Still, she never went down.

Schuman backed off to let Shumakov catch her breath.  She wanted this fight to go the full five rounds.  The Yankee was the most patient fighter of all time and she was not going to make a mistake to let Shumakov back into the fight.  She took half a second to look around at the crowd to try and soak it all in.  Suddenly, time and space stood still.

Standing at the back of the room beside the next group of fighters was a tall man with a beautiful smile who was watching the fights with intense eyes.  She knew those eyes.  That smile.   Her soul lit up as she clearly saw the lean Columbian man with a chiseled jaw and six pack abs that she’d been dreaming about for months.  It was him.

It was Bean Pole.

Schuman’s whole world went black.  The room lights never changed, but every face went blurry except for his.  There might as well have been a bright spot light that shined on the man while every other human was shadowed out of view.  Schuman had dreamed of this moment, but seeing him now, he was even more perfectly beautiful than she remembered.  He was smiling directly at her and she was melting inside.  His lips were a vision of perfection.  His muscles called to her every molecule.  

“I quit,” Schuman said.  She ducked under the ropes with a minute left in the third round and jumped down to the audience.  The crowd fell into a stunned silence.  

Shumakov couldn’t see shit so she had no idea she was alone in the ring.  Her jaw was in tatters but her words were still understandable for now.  “I weel keel you, beech.”  Her arms were up, waiting to take a hit, but no hits came.  Every pore of her body felt like bleeding out to death but her shit talk never stopped, ever.  

The ref threw his hands in the air to call off the fight and yelled in Russian, “Here is your winner!”  He lifted Shumakov’s hand into the air.  The crowd murmured confusedly and lightly clapped but the whole room was grumbling in disbelief.

The stunned Schumakov simply smiled and said, “ha ha, of course I ween!  You heet very weak, beech.”  In eight minutes in the ring she’d been knocked down four times and hadn’t hit her opponent with a clear punch even once.  Black and blue, swollen and limping, full of broken bones that would take half a year or more to fully heal, Shumakov gloated in her victory.

Schuman had no clue of anything going on in the room other than her tunnel vision for Bean Pole.  She hadn’t broken eye contact with him, nor had he strayed from her eyes.  She was walking in a straight line for the back of the room to go meet her greatest love for only the second time ever.  She had no awareness of her surroundings. All that existed was getting into the arms of her one true love.  As a result, she did not see the two Russian thugs step behind her with tasers.  Schuman didn’t even know what hit her as she went down hard.  The crowd parted quickly as the men picked her limp body up off of the ground and carried her through the same door where Murdock and McVandalay had been taken.  

“Well I didn’t expect that,” Von Stryker said in hushed quiet to Doniak.

“It’s almost merciful that Sarge left the ring.  That Russian gal is a disaster.”  

“Yeah, but now we have three of our team that are in their custody.  This complicates things immensely.”  Von Stryker took a long pull off of a cigarette and exhaled defeatedly.

“I didn’t know you actually smoked those things, Von.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Von Stryker answered sarcastically.  She took another long drag, held it, then blew the lungful straight up into the air.  After a long sigh, she spoke.  “We’re gonna need a miracle, Mickey.”  She shook her head in defeat.  “We’re fucked on this one.”

“Well, we’ll get the team to us and do what we do best.”

“Which is what, pray tell?” Von Stryker asked.

“Hit them when they don’t know we’re coming for them. You know, like they did to us tonight.”  

Doniak pulled out her phone and texted O’Connor the update, then sent another message to Owens asking if he had any extra ideas or people that might be able to help out their captured friends.  Fifteen seconds later, Owens replied:

“I’ve worked for Von Stryker long enough to know that if they send our crew to Siberia, we’re looking at something that’s never been done before. We’ll make it happen of course, but this will be a very, very difficult extraction process.  I can’t see how diplomacy is gonna work since so many Russian egos are involved, so it’ll have to be old fashioned smash and grab.  Ask Von if she knows of any mafiosos who are locked up on the inside.  I have a tentative plan.”

“How in the fuck does that asshole text that fast?” Doniak asked herself.  She asked Von Stryker the info and she answered in the negative.  

The next fight began to thunderous applause and cheers from the crowd, but the two American women weren’t paying attention.  Mickey relayed the information to her Master Thief friend and had a text response before she could even put her phone down.

“No mafiosos, ok.  Then I’m gonna bring Ana.  She’s ready and we’ll need her.”  

Doniak looked confusedly at Von Stryker. “Who in the fuck is Ana?”  

“No clue, but whoever she is, she’s not ready for Siberia.  Fuck.”

In the distance, three drugged Americans were cuffed and loaded into a transport bound for a maximum security prison of hellish proportions in the farthest, most remote part of north eastern Russia.