The Trouble With Kidnapping

[archiveofarethusa]

Jack Briggs was a simple man with a very particular skill set. Assisted, involuntarily throat-ventilation? Why, it was a specialty. Larceny? The owner themselves would just think they'd misplaced the forty grand. Keeping it zipped on certain matters? Sure, he'd sing, but his laundry list of women he'd like to bed wasn't exactly of use to anybody.

Breaking and entering top-secret laboratories wasn't really something he was good at, and wasn't much similar to inviting himself into ancient widow Smith's home and helping himself to her heirloom jewelry. Also, he was shit at kidnapping, and couldn't drive a car straight to save his own mother's immortal soul. Today, these weren't things he had any say over.

"We were gathered 'round the family matchstick when dad told us he was leaving for America," Jack said, not entirely sure that he'd been telling that particular story when he'd begun and having difficulty in locating the bits to jimmy. "Didn't tell any of us that he had, ah, a traveling companion, or that he accidentally got himself a boat to Venezuela instead. Got myself a litter of half-siblings, last I heard, which is the only wherefore what's keeping his throat unmolested. Jesus Margaret Christ, they don't make this breaking locks business easy on us, do they?"

"Wouldn't this all be easier if we ankled through the main entrance? The security is weak enough," Carrie said, her eyes alert nonetheless. Jack snorted. "Right, pull the other one now. You think they'll let a lovely lady of the sort you look the part of into a place like this? Government's not as big-minded as we are, love. And the boss man says he wants this pulled off nice, bloodless, and subtle. Might as well have sent Lenore, for all he'll get it from us. We stick out like a sore hitcher's thumb, for Christ's sake, it's like he wants us getting a good look at the bottom of Lake Michigan." The door opened, and Jack froze. "He doesn't, does he?"

"He's heard most of the jokes you've told about his wife," Carrie said, stepping through without looking to see if Jack had started after her. "It certainly hasn't endeared you to him, but this is more punishment than...Punishment."

"Oh," Jack said, weakly. "I...right."

Carrie smiled at him, though he couldn't see. "I think you better hope he doesn't hear the one about the codfish, though. Holly Melman is not that kind of exceptional. Her husband is a deeply protective, jealous man with his own private army and connections all the way up to God, so trust me when I tell you this is a point you don't want to argue against."

"Not very much, no," Jack said, and frowned. "How many have they assigned here, four? And we've already dealt with the one. Too easy. What does Mr. Melman want with these men and not, say, whatever ingenious weapon they're making?"

As they walked, a loud, frustrated voice grew louder; Jack knew without having to look that it was Dr. Corn. The man, despite his nondescript Yankee accent and covert place in the military, was more sore thumb than Jack could ever hope to be without the judicious, daily application of a hammer. Jack massaged his ears to no effect, and was not envious of Dr. Archibald, if what Lysander Melman was using against the two wasn't forged. Forgery was hardly unheard of, after all.

"I'm just a peon, Jack," Carrie said. "But Mr. Melman never gives out anything but tiny slips of the whole picture, and he pays for our ignorance very well indeed."

"Right, right," Jack sighed, and, "Ready?"

Carrie raised an eyebrow, and together they walked in to the makeshift lab, Jack closing the door behind them as Carrie went from sweet lamb to unfathomable well of menace in nothing flat.

Breaking into the secret military lab - which ran out of a dilapidated schoolhouse in the South Side - and kidnapping two of its best scientists was, sadly, the easiest part of what Jack had to do that day. He'd have sold his soul to be able to gag even just the mouthy one, but the problem with driving gagged men to and from locations in Chicago was that it wasn't ever like a tree falling in an abandoned forest, and sooner or later somebody was going to notice.

Carrie sat primly in the seat next to him, ankles crossed and her hands folded strategically over her purse, ready to neutralize the two cockheads in the back seat at a moment's notice, possibly unaware that they were in public where people could notice other people being hugely suspicious. She hardly even noticed their passengers, except for when her eyes darted up to the rear vision mirror to check on them every minute and a half. Jack, even with the road needing his full attention, wasn't as lucky, and was beginning to worry of his ears ever being able to stop ringing before he died. For a lack of a more sympathetic party, Jack gazed helplessly at his wing mirror, where even the streets were unimpressed with his plight.

"I can't believe it," the rail-like scientist - Dr. Corn - muttered, for something like the twentieth time. "We've been blackmailed by a pervert with a camera and a hit squad. God almighty. If he ropes us into some kind of threesome, omnipotent crime lord or not, I will be very angry."

"Nah, that's probably the biggest load of nonsense I've heard today," Dr. Archibald said, serene as a statue. "And that includes the piffle about the nuclei. The part about the threesome, obviously. You're always angry."

"Oh, I wouldn't rule it out just yet, boys," Jack said, because he was a bastard before all else. "We've another bender roped into this."

"Jack," Carrie warned, voice barely raised above a whisper. Jack snorted. "Oh, Jack what? They'll know soon enough," he said, and swerved sharply to the right to avoid hitting pavement. Dr. Corn actually screeched.

"I'll watch the road if you stop distracting me," Jack said in reply. "You may as well know my driving license is as specially manufactured as all the dice in Las Vegas, and yeah, maybe everyone knows, but good luck proving it. God in Heaven, but you love the sound of your own voice."

Carrie didn't laugh in Jack's face, but it took some doing.