God, this lil’ whore is no bigger ‘n’ a twelve-year-old. I could kill her with one well-placed punch. Snap her in half like a fuckin’ twig. Weak. Fuckin’ pathetic. I could crack her jaw in half with a bitch-slap.
‘Colonel Rudd, I presume?’
The woman’s voice was soft and lilting; an unsettling contrast to the hard angularity of her physical features. Colonel Rudd didn’t like to be unsettled. He didn’t like her; not at all.
‘Damn straight. And you are, ma’am?’
The Colonel’s gruff Alabaman bark sounded even more masculine when stacked against the woman’s soft timbre, but despite all of this evident weakness, there was something undeniably menacing about her.
‘Ms Caris G. Hutton of Huntsmen Inc,’ the woman answered. Her accent was distinctly upper-class New Yorker. ‘I trust your journey was both comfortable and uneventful, Colonel?’
Colonel Rudd grunted wordlessly in response. Ms Hutton, meanwhile, peered over at the troupe of marines. They were, to a man, all lantern jaws, ox-like shoulders, rippling muscles and gleaming firearms. If she was intimidated by this testosterone-thick show of force though, she did not show it; her pale chestnut eyes remained impassive behind the thick spectacles she wore.
‘You can tell your men to stand down. We’re perfectly safe here.’
Colonel Rudd fired a quick look over his shoulder.
‘At ease boys!’ he grunted.
‘I’m sure they would like some refreshments after the long flight? If they follow my assistant here, he’ll take them to the company dining prefab.’
Ms Hutton turned around and shouted out an order in French to an elderly Congolese man who was busy going through some papers on a camping table. The man quickly set his folder and pencil down, picked up a pair of crutches that were leaning on the table, and then hobbled over to Ms Hutton and Colonel Rudd.
‘Do any of your marines speak French, Colonel? My friend Benoit here is a most useful fellow when it comes to arithmetic, but his command of English is, unfortunately, rather rudimentary.’
‘Yeah, Jimbo over there can speak a bit of that Paris-talk,’ Colonel Rudd grunted. ‘Jimbo! Come ‘ere!’
A strapping black marine, tall and built like a professional football player, hurried over to the Colonel and saluted stiffly.
‘SIR!’ he bellowed in a booming voice that was rough as sandpaper.
‘This here jungle bunny don’t speak English too good! You talk to him in that fancy-ass Paris-talk you can speak! Got it?’
‘SIR YES SIR!’
‘Stand down an’ get on with it, Jimbo!’
‘SIR!’
The black marine saluted again, and then began conversing in fluent French with Benoit, and together they headed off towards the dining area with the other marines in tow. Ms Hutton raised an eyebrow and stared with blatant distaste at Colonel Rudd.
‘Did you really just use the term “jungle bunny” in front of your African-American soldier?’ she asked, her flat tone leaving no room to misinterpret the judgement in her voice.
‘I sure as fuck did!’ Rudd snapped defiantly. ‘You got a problem with that, missy?’
Ms Hutton’s face remained emotionless.
‘I don’t personally care, Colonel, but I think that your African-American—’
‘Jimbo ain’t no goddamned “African-American”, he’s a fuckin’ nigger from the streets a’ downtown New Orleans! An’ he’ll tell ya that straight up, he will. Same as Fernando over there is a fuckin’ bean-eatin’ spic, Yamamoto is a slanty-eyed Jap, an’ Cohen is a stingy, big-nosed kike. An’ I’m a goddamn white trash cracker straight outta the worst buttfuck inbred trailer park a’ deepest Alabama! An’ what’s more, any one a’ them boys will tell you that! They’d gladly lay their lives on the line for me, as would I for each an’ every one a’ them motherfuckin’ sons a’ bitches! That’s brotherhood, real brotherhood, a concept that these goddamn PC pencil-pushing libtards could never understand!’
A thin smile unexpectedly breached Ms Hutton’s mouth.
‘I think you and I will get on quite well, Colonel,’ she said. ‘Come, we’ll talk in my office.’
A few minutes later Colonel Rudd and Ms Hutton were seated at opposite ends of a hardwood desk in her prefabricated office. She turned on the air conditioner, took off her suit jacket and undid the top button of her blouse.
‘I can’t stand the humidity in this godforsaken place,’ she muttered.
‘Wait until you’ve fought battles in the jungles of Southeast Asia, knee deep in crocodile-infested swamp water, an’ carrying an assault rifle, a mortar tube an’ sixty pounds a’ battle gear, while a bunch a’ commies’ AK-47 rounds are flying fast an’ thick all around ya, an’ mortars are comin’ down through the jungle canopy like goddamn rain,’ the Colonel grumbled, ‘then you can whine about “humidity”, princess.’
Ms Hutton ignored the blatant dig at her character and leaned over to an intercom on the left of her desk.
‘What’s your beverage of choice, Colonel? Coffee? Tea? Water? Or something stiffer?’
‘Two shots a’ dark rum, on the rocks,’ he replied stiffly.
‘Done.’
Ms Hutton spoke in rapid-fire French into the crackling intercom, listened for a moment to the distorted reply, and then turned back to the Colonel.
‘Drinks will arrive shortly. Now, let’s get down to business. You understand why we need your services, yes?’
‘I read over the briefing, sure. Lemme hear it from you though. Details can get all mixed up an’ shit, y’see. One person writes this, another says that … you gotsta understand, sweet cheeks, that for my unit t’ do its job an’ t’ do it well, we need clarity. I’m talkin’ ‘bout crystal clear, so-clean-that-the-Virgin-Mary’s-pussy-itself-would-be-put-to-shame clarity. My boys are the best a’ the best, I personally guarantee that. There ain’t no job we can’t handle. But we need absolute
