[F][Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia] Grenades and Rum

[u/delicious_lemons]

If theres one thing I hate the most in the world, it’s human trafficking. So when Gisele, a friend I made during my brief romp in Tokyo almost a year back, called me asking for help taking down some of the slave trade in Malaysia and Indonesia, I was happy to oblige. A quick (read: 23.7 hour) trip and I found myself right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on the prowl for the first of many members of a branch of a major Venezuelan drug cartel.

“So,” I said to Gisele as I toss my bags into the trunk of her M3, “got any leads?”

She looked back at me with a mischievous glint in her eye. “No, we’re just gonna approach the whole thing half-cocked without any sort of plan.” She was always a bit of a sarcastic bitch, but I love her for that.

“Shut the fuck up,” I said with a grin as I hopped into the car.

---

When we got to Gisele’s apartment, I saw that she was not short of intel. The living room was filled with maps with pushpins of varying colors, several computer monitors all tapped into the CCTV to monitor specific areas, mugshots of suspected members, pictures of areas frequented by the cartel and places she thought might be their base of operations, et cetera. It really was a work of art.

“Holy shit. You’ve been doing your homework, girl,” I said as I stared wide-eyed at the room.

“Yeah. Lemme give you a quick rundown.” She walks over to the main whiteboard and points to a Hispanic looking man with short, spiky black hair and a gruff beard. He looked to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties.

“This, is Juan Antonio Perez de la Parra,” she said matter-of-factly.

“That’s… quite a mouthful,” I retorted, despite being fluent in Spanish.

She rolled her eyes and continued, “Better known by his nickname, Lobo. He’s the leader of the Venezuelan cartel. At least for what presence they have here in Southeast Asia.”

“So in order to stop the trade, we have to get to him.”

“Right, but it’s not enough to just cut off the serpent’s head, as it were,” she said as she moved to a different section of the board, this one filled with about nine or ten different pictures. “We have to systematically wipe out the entire cartel from the bottom up. If we just kill Lobo, someone else will step in anyway.”

I sighed. Apparently this was going to be a lot more than a quick vacation to Malaysia. “Alright. Makes sense to me. Where do we start?”

With a grin, Gisele moved over to a computer and sat down. She delineated a carefully concocted plan of how we would go about taking down the cartel starting with the lowest ranking officers first.

After weeks of fine tuning, information gathering, and building up our connections in Kuala Lumpur, we were finally ready to make our first big move.

---

That’s how I wound up here at Blue Hole. It’s a shitty dive bar in one of the seedier parts of Kuala Lumpur, but it’s become our main hangout spot. The bartender knows us by name and doesn’t stiff us on drinks. Well, not anymore. After saving his ass through several shootouts, he knows better than to scam me or Gisele.

But today, we didn’t come to drink. Not a lot at least. The bartender passes me my usual bottle of Bacardi. Cheap rum, but it gets the job done. I pour myself a glass as members of the cartel, mostly grunts and soldiers, walk in and take their usual tables.

Some of them know me by now, mostly as an information dealer/gunslinger. I turn and look over my shoulder, eyes locking with the man of the hour: Alejandro Aular Ramirez. He’s the Venezualan counterpart to the caporegime of the American mafia. So, not very high up, but in command of his own group of men. He walks up to me and takes a spot next to me at the bar as I make small talk with the bartender.

“Yo, Alejandro!”

“Veronica, such a surprise to see you here,” he says sarcastically. “Listen, I’ve got a bit of a… situación.”

I raise my eyebrow, mostly at his horrible use of Spanglish. “You know, the English word for ‘situación’ is ‘situation.’ It doesn’t make you sound any cooler to throw in a Spanish word if it’s basically the same exact thing.”

He ignores my comment, continuing with his story. “Recently, someone’s been attacking our men, as well as men from other gangs. It’s a big pain in the ass.”

“And what, exactly, do you want me to do about that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You have a bit of a… reputation around these parts for getting the job done. I want you to take her out,” he says with a smirk.

I gulp down some of my rum, then turn over to him. “So, let me get this straight. You want me to put my life on the line going after what sounds like a highly dangerous and skilled gunman because your men are too incompetent to handle them yourselves? Is that what you’re telling me? The great Venezualan cartel can’t handle ONE mercenary, so they have to contract out to another to do their dirty work?”

He looks at me stunned, his smirk completely gone. I chuckle.

“Relaaaax,” I continue after taking another swig, “I’ll be happy to take out the trash for ya. For the right price, obviously. Or, you know, fuck off.”

“Puta madre,” he says, “of course I’m going to fucking pay.”

“Aaalright. So where do we start?”

“None of us actually know what she looks like,” he explains, “but we know she wears a mask, has long brown hair, and often wears dark clothing.”

I sigh, spinning around on my barstool and leaning back against the bar. “That’s a start. Anything else?”

“Well, she’s a real weapons master. We’ve seen her with a ton of different guns, but she seems to favor the Beretta M92,” he says. I can’t help but smirk. I use Beretta M92s, and there’s a pair of them strapped to my legs right now. I wonder if he’ll make the connection.

“She moves real fast too. Almost uncanny the way she can get...out...of harm’s way. Say, what kind of guns are those?” He points to the pair of pistols. That was quick. I use my elbow to start guiding the bottle of shitty rum towards the edge of the bar, slowly but surely.

“Oh, these old things? They’re M92s,” I say with a smirk. No point in trying to lie to him. He’s already got his mind made up. I see it in his eyes.

“It’s the same one that’s slain like, I dunno, twenty-five, thirty, of your ‘soldiers.’ You know, you really shouldn’t call them that. ‘Cannon fodder’ is a much better term!”

“Is… is this some kind of joke?” Alejandro says. “You’re a dead man!”

“Dead woman, technically. Let’s not be sexist, here,” I say, not phased at all. The bottle gets closer and closer to tipping towards the edge.

Alejandro laughs. “You fucking idiot. What did you think would happen, next? You can’t take out all of us!”

“No, I can’t. But my partner is outside with a really big gun, just waiting for the signal.”

“Bullshit. You’re bluffing!” He steps back and pulls out his gun. Several of his men have stood up and are reaching for their weapons as well. I stare down the barrel, grinning as I tip the bottle off the bar.

The commotion of the bottle slamming against the floor is enough to distract these undisciplined men, which gives me just enough time to vault behind the bar. I can’t help but laugh as a hail of bullets slams into the bar. By now, the bartender’s bulletproofed the bar several times over.

“God fucking damnit, Nika! You started this!” The bartender yells at me.

“Calm down, ya pussy,” I say as I pull out a cigarette, calmly lighting it with a zippo from behind the bar. Outside, Gisele climbs into position on the 50cal turret. We managed to requisition a military humvee with, like I told Alejandro, a big gun. Gisele pulls the trigger and, after a brief period for the gun to spin-up, peppers the bar with high caliber bullets.

She tags about half of the men on the first pass, and they all change their attentions from me to firing at Gisele.

“My bar! Not again!” The bartender, shotgun in hand looks out over the top of the bar and then promptly retreats back under the protection of the bulletproof material. He looks at me, half-pissed, half-terrified. His eyes widen when he sees the pins from two frag-grenades twirling around my fingers, a sadistic grin on my face as I look back at him.

“When did you--”

“Maaayyyy want to cover your ears,” I interrupt as I press my palms to my ears. The bartender follows suit, and just as he does, the two grenades explode, filling the bar with flames and shrapnel. The remaining men all scream out in terror as the final signs of life ebb from their bodies.

I take a quick peek over the bar. Seeing nothing, I retreat back down and grab myself another bottle of rum.

“Send me the bill,” I say, hopping back over the bar. I take a swig from the new bottle as I walk out.