Coiffed

97.

She laughs a staccato ‘Ha,’ starting her story. 

“Allright. We are in the middle of the Phantom Op, sailing along smoothly when two coordinated raids by the Feds take us down. We get busted and I am sent to a women’s detention center in Bakersfield to await trial. The place was a joke but the terrorism charges were not. I am one of only three inmates at the facility. The other two are in for petty shit like murder and armed robbery. Petty but ballsy. They have assigned me a Public Defender but the guy is a jackass and has no idea of what we do or who we are. I pretty much take the fifth on everything he asks and tell him to just go away and I’ll take my chances with the criminal justice system, plea bargain it down and figure out a way to hack my way outta the joint.” She warms up. 

“I also figured that one of two things was happening on the outside, one that I was gonna get whacked so as not to rat you out, to two, and I was hoping this was the more likely one, that you were working the angles to get me out on bail.” She watches their expressions as she lights this important stick of dynamite. 

“And then they get real with my ass. You know what enhanced interrogation is? Here take look,” She stands and turns her back to them lifting her blouse to reveal the artificial scars criss-crossing her shoulders.  Both men raise an eyebrow, Big at the scars and Cy at the tat. 

“They wanted names. They wanted YOUR names. But the harder they hit the more I stayed quiet. It became a test. I was so ‘fuck you’ it made me smile through the pain.  And then one night, I could never sleep in there, I hatched a crazy plan to escape. That plan occupied every second of time from that point forward. I had it worked out in my mind and rehearsed it on a mental endless loop every hour of every day. And then BOOM, the cop that led the raid shows up wanting to talk.” 

Big seems startled at this, but begs her to continue. 

“So this Jack Bauer SEAL dude shows up asking questions about our technology, computer hacking, the Phantoms, the radar and the organization responsible for what they are calling acts of terrorism against the US. And know what?” She asks, leading the two towards a satisfactory release of tension, “I pull the trigger on my escape plan and take him out with a side-kick to his right temple. I guess he wasn’t expecting a girl to do something like that.” 

Cyrus and Big harrumph, excited by both the story and her acumen in its retelling. 

“One of the guards comes in to see what the noise is about and I take her out too, so now I got a pair of unconscious cops laying on my cell floor and I’m thinking ‘this shit is now officially fucking real,’ So I grab her radio and police issue .38, pat down the Fed and wait for him to snap out, which he does in five incredibly long minutes. I stick the .38 in his face and read him the riot act bust-out script but first telling him to tie and gag the guard, which he does. Then we ad-lib our out way out, blow a truck, jack a car and I end up in a flea-bag Super 8 hacking and dyeing my hair as a quick disguise.” She pauses for a breath. 

In the room next door we get set up in time to hear the feedback on her elaborately coiffed new look.