Sitting with her legs crossed under the Janet Stark-Albright Wellness Pagoda, Hannah breathed in the crisp, only slightly polluted mountain air on the peak of Mission Peak mixed with scented candles that smelled like chamomile tea and jalapeno cheddar bagels. Her stomach grumbled; Operation: Secret Heist at Mission Peak, was a go.
Fucking Tar… Really? Secret Heist at Mission Peak? For being our fixer, she has the WORST OPSEC in the world… Whatever. She’s awesome and we haven’t been caught. Yet.
Cracking open an eye, she nudged Mac with her elbow. “Jack, did you do your part?”
Mac woke with a start, snapping out of his fake meditations on their shared yoga mat. “Huh? Oh… Yeah. Light work, really. Bro just kept talking to me and handed out the door code like the codes for the last nuclear football. Even told me that he’d turn the cameras off.”
“Nice. What did you say to him?”
Mac raised his eyebrows, the big flirt. “Just caught him after Dr. Stern finished chewing him out. Promised that we’d get up to no good in her office to get back at her for him and he was sold on it right then and there.”
He winked. Hannah bit her lip.
God, I could watch him act all day.
Hannah smirked back, trying but failing to return his flirtations in kind, almost letting slip their fake identities. “Getting up to no good, huh? Please, pray tell me your plans, Mr. Mc—Meyers.”
“Savannah… You’re the one always telling me to stay professional… Please be careful.” Mac cautioned as he got up, offering a hand to Hannah.
Fluorescent lights flickered above them as a breeze blew in from Fremont and Milpitas. In the distance, red obstruction beacons dotted the Dumbarton Bridge, the shoreline, and the waters of the tranquil Bay. Just below, the twin satellite campuses of Silicon Valley bustled, the white and red headlights and taillights streaming through the grid of dull orange splotches while the red and green nav lights of drones buzzed over the evening’s traffic. They took in the view, knowing it would be the Bay’s last moment of peace for a while.
Mac spoke up again, breaking the moment. “But anyways, if you’re cool with it we could…”
On his tiptoes, he cupped his hands to Hannah’s ear and whispered his wishes.
Her heart pounded. He carried on, knowing damn well what it did to her. “And maybe even…”
Hannah couldn’t take it anymore. She whipped around to Mac, her face all flushed under the zombie glow dedicated to Janet Stark-Albright. “You were thinking about THAT the whole time we were taking in this beautiful, poignant vignette of daily routine down below?”
He darted his eyes to the side as his cheeks warmed up in turn despite the breeze’s best shot. “Well ‘SCUSEEEE me! You know I think slow. Did I get the wrong idea when you teased me about ‘getting up to no good?’ Because it sure looked like you were all game for clearing off her desk, sitting me down on it and… Uhh, coming up with construction jokes together before stealing that map piece.”
“We pretty much have all night. When are we ever gonna get another chance like this? She’ll probably think we just got carried away making up,” Mac bantered, the roguish glint in his eye scoring a critical hit on Hannah’s logic processor array.
“Fine. How about this: we break in, secure the main objective first, and then… y’know… before we sneak back to our cell for more,” She paused, her brain needing extra time to come up with a witty euphemism.
Failure.
Whatever. I want this. He wants this. And we both find that bitch insufferable enough for us to wanna do it on her desk.
Hannah sputtered on, her heart now holding a smooth idle despite her brain’s dashboard lighting up like a Christmas tree, ready to shift into gear at any moment. “Y’know. Uhh… just to really sell that we’re getting along?” She bargained.
Mac chuckled. “Deal.”
“These fake identities are so toxic…” Hannah admitted, then brushed off. She was the type to always skip to the good part when she watched YouTube videos.
With that, Hannah lifted him up to her face and made him kiss on it before spiriting him away to Dr. Stern’s office door, his legs locked around her waist and her lips locked on his.
Okay, the One-Time Pad, One-Night Stand trick only works once. Better make it count, girl!
---
Predawn. The best time to attack according to Tar, Hannah’s bestie, XO, and CIO. Hannah remembered Tar’s briefing: “Before breakfast and just after they change shifts, start a ‘fight,’ but make sure it’s badly disguised flirting. The armory door is just down the hall from the commons. My suggestion? Inch closer to it using your fake fight. I’ll also give you a name: Jamichael Praiseworthy. He’s the only one there who actually gives a shit about his job. I’ll let you two figure the rest out.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
In line for breakfast with Mac, Hannah caught a tremendous whiff of rice gruel topped with prison cheese and bug bacon, with a side of sawdust biscuits.
Fuck. Just smelling it pisses me off enough to attack now. Not even the rations of passionfruit, orange, and guava juice in the Tetra Paks are enough to quench my two-week long rage about those disgusting food-shaped objects they dare call “breakfast.” Here. We. Go.
“Honey, you would look so much better if you shaved your stubble…” Hannah opened, hoping Mac would get the hint.
He didn’t. “Really now? You weren’t moaning that last night, Banana.”
This dummy’s smirk… He’s lucky he’s cute.
Out of the corner of her eye, a half-asleep guard in a cheap, foldable IKEA chair watching the breakfast line, forced to clock in before having his morning coffee, perked up at overhearing this snippet. The rest of the prison staff: mesmerized by “Jack” and “Savannah”’s dumb flirting.
Bingo. Praiseworthy took the bait. Now I just gotta signal Davey the only way he knows how.
Hannah got down to Mac’s level and pressed her boobs into his shoulder. A signal that nobody had been able to crack up until now. Nobody but Jamichael Praiseworthy, prison guard extraordinaire.
“Oh…” Mac blushed out a response.
Hannah whispered in his ear. “Let’s skip breakfast. I know a place.”
Getting on his tiptoes, Mac cupped Hannah’s ear and whispered back. “Jackhammers?”
That tickles! WAIT. Mac… Got the hint?! Me of little faith…
“Jackhammers.”
Their code word. Step two of Operation: Secret Heist at Mission Peak was a go. Holding out his hands, Hannah took them and led them in a foxtrot towards the armory, with Jamichael Praiseworthy stalking after them.
---
Hannah was running out of things to argue (flirt) about in front of the armory door. Now it was just a waiting game for Praiseworthy to show up around the corner and address them with a “Surprise, motherfuckers.”
Crap. What can I even say anymore? We talked about his “simping,” why he never raises a fuss, that his cooking is making me kinda fat… WAIT. Is this really my best work? They don’t even sound like the arguments Tar outlined in her brief! If anything, I’M the one simping and Mac just has the grace to play along! Quick Hannah… kill some more time. Just need to draw out Praiseworthy.
So she took it to the next level. “H-hey Jack, what if we k-kissed in front of the armory door?”
“You’re kind of a dork y’know… Were you always this weird? Better yet, who hurt you? Kinda blows my mind that you were the cheer captain back in high school… Like how?” Mac teased, not even caring that he was blowing their cover. They both knew that it would become a moot point in a few seconds anyway, given cliché. “But yeah, sure, I’ll indulge you. You’re my dorky cheerleader, after all.”
Hannah picked him up and closed in on his lips. “Ugh, I can’t stand you sometimes.”
“Aww, you know you love me. Professionally, of course.” Mac chirped back, breathing his minty fresh prison-issued toothpaste breath into her mouth.
Hannah melted a little, then no sooner had she closed her eyes…
“Surprise motherfu—”
CRAK! Hannah sprung her trap on Praiseworthy, a lightning-fast elbow into his broad nose. The poor guard slumped over.
“Davey, be a dear and help me with his keyring? I just got my nails done and I don’t wanna break them right away.”
“That was some piss-poor ‘acting,’ Cheryl. I thought the plan was to fight me, not flirt with me.” Mac jocked her with a grin as he freed the key to the armory.
“Yeah, yeah. The bit was getting kinda long in the tooth. Anyways, wanna see what cool shit they have in the armory?” Hannah asked.
“Fuck yeah.”
---
For just the second time in her life, Hannah fell in love at first sight. Under a dusty tarp in the back corner of the room, she spotted the unmistakable silhouette of a battle-scarred M249 Squad Automatic Weapon mounted on a tripod for her shooting pleasure. Fwoosh! She tossed the tarp aside and ripped the machine gun off its mount.
Nice and light… Handles great as well. Ammo?
Nearby, she searched every ammo box but couldn’t find a single round. Just empty belts and cobwebs.
She sighed. “But no ammo…”
With a thunderous clatter, Hannah dropped the machine gun.
“Another day. I’ve always wanted to shoot one of those.”
Fucking budget cuts. Of course the first thing this stupid state takes away is riot guns at a low-security prison for marital criminals. Can’t have shit in California.
Mac called her attention to a cabinet in the other corner. “Hannah, you might wanna give these a look.”
He lobbed something small at her. She caught it with ease.
A Taser? What use is one dinky Taser?
She looked back at the cabinet Mac pinged.
OH. Tasers!
Another, even funnier way to blow this popsicle stand disguised as a state-mandated couple’s retreat sky-high: a rack of brand-new black and yellow Tasers, complete with a messenger bag and an ever-helpful assistant to tote them for her.
“Mac. Shove as many as you can into the bag and carry them for me. I know our next move,” Hannah ordered.
“Already on it, Darlin’!”
---
One long elevator ride, a mess-about with bootleg fireworks so strong they were illegal in every other country besides America, a hijack of the PA system to rally the rest of the prisoners, a shootdown of an ancient AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, an opportunity to cross off shooting an M134 Minigun off her bucket list, and a final storming of the prison guards’ last stand later, Mac stood by the Janet Stark-Albright Wellness Pagoda one last time as Hannah watched. He popped a flare and booked it to join Hannah on their getaway vehicle: a tandem downhill mountain bike.
“You steer, and I’ll shoot whoever tries to stop us,” Hannah ordered.
Mac hopped on the front seat of the bike, pedaling away and getting clear of the compound. “I really can’t believe that all happened like how it went down in Black Ops 1.”
“Yeah, me neither… Tar and Eureka are actually geniuses.”
Mac roared with laughter as Dr. Stern’s Mountain Retreat for Dysfunctional Couples went up in a Michael Bayesque, almost farcical explosion behind them. “Don’t let them hear you say that. You’ll never hear the end of it.”
Hannah slipped on her pair of matching aviator sunglasses, yoinked from the personal belongings hold, before handing Mac his pair.
“Mac, wear these. Cool guys don’t look back at explosions.”
So he did.
“Hell of a honeymoon, Cheer Captain,” Mac quipped.
Hannah replied in kind, chuckling. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Heart Attack.”
