Did this piece to audition for a ghostwriting gig. It’s pretty good. More action than comedy.
Code Name: Bubba
Written by Tony DiGerolamo
Copyright 2018
Y’all might think bein’ a successful spy means fancy cars, having sex with beautiful women and using state-of-the-art gadgets and the like. Me? I gots me a different kind of style with my jeans, t-shirt and worn Dale Earnhardt Jr. baseball cap. Maybe it’s on account I’m just from a little backwater called Killbane, Mississippi. Maybe it’s on account I don’t think much of fancy clothes and whatnot.
“You!” barked the Crown Prince’s bodyguard. “You shall clean the mess up quickly and begone! His royal highness does not want to smell you, peasant!”
Yeah, that’s the way these Saudi types talked to the help. That’s how I got into the embassy and how I usually got in lots of places. Plus it didn’t hurt to have an excuse to wear rubber gloves the whole time. Nobody looks twice at the hillbilly janitor with Garth Brooks playin’ through his ear buds. He searched me again for weapons.
“Aw, what the Hell?” I objected. “Ain’t it bad enough I gotta clean up his vomit and jizz and whatnot? You gotta keep feelin’ me up and touchin’ my unit?”
“Go inside and do your job!” snapped the bodyguard. “We will be watching!”
“Fine. Watch. I don’t care,” I belched, taking the last sip from my soda pop. “But if you hold me up any more, I’m goin’ on my lunch break.”
The Saudis had confiscated all my cleaning materials and made me use theirs. That’s okay. Special Forces taught me 17 ways to Sunday to kill a man, I was sure something in here would do the trick.
When I got inside, the prince was sprawled out on a couch my daddy couldn’t afford if he worked three lifetimes. Heavy set, 40-something and hairy as the balls on a wild boar— Crown Prince Fahid had thrown up on a chair, part of the couch, himself and a rug that probably cost more than whole budget of the CIA. I started scooping his chunks of vomit onto a dust pan, just to get most of it. Then I spied some cleaner with ammonia in it. I knew that smell would not sit well with a feller just pukin’ his guts up.
“Ah! What is that smell?!” the drunken prince spat in disgust.
“What this? I think it’s got ammonia in it. Says here on the label—“
I brought it closer to him and he stood up to shove me away. I, of course, spilled it all over him by “accident.”
“You idiot kahfir!” he roared. “This shirt was a gift!”
“Aw, shit. That’s gonna stain silk, but we can get that out. I got just the thing on my cart.”
We moved into the one place in the embassy that wouldn’t have cameras— The bathroom. As soon as we got past the doorway, I punched him in the throat, kicked his feet out and dragged him over to the toilet.
“This was for Khashoggi,” I told him as I drowned the fat prick.
Didn’t feel right killin’ a man without tellin’ him why. Khashoggi had been a long time CIA asset. Fahid, 238 places from the throne, was part of the team of Saudis behind the scenes that had arranged that fubar assassination. My boss at Langley wanted the message sent that just because you were some rich a-hole from Riyadh, didn’t mean you could fuck with us without consequence. He stopped twitchin’ and shit his pants. That’s how you know the job’s done. It was time to go and I sure as Hell didn’t wanna clean up that.
“The prince is in the bathroom chokin’, I think,” I told the bodyguard like I was in over my head. “You fellas gotta doctor or…”
“Get out of the way, you fool!” panicked the bodyguard, running past me.
In Saudi Arabia, when you guard a crown prince, you’re basically guarding him like your own life. Because if you fuck up that job— It’ll mean your balls in the guillotine or whatever they use to kill people over there.
When he got inside the bathroom, he immediately moved to the floor where I had laid out the prince. He caught a glimpse of me in the mirror as I tried to get the cord from a hair dryer I had found in the bathroom around his neck. This gave him a split second of time to put his hand up so I couldn’t choke him out. If this big bastard pushed me out of the bathroom, the whole embassy would go on lock down and I’d be more screwed than the town whore on a Friday night.
Coupla a hits on his pressure points kept him on his knees, but he was as strong as a bear. Holding onto him with one hand, I grabbed the bottle of cleaner, slammed it on faucet hand to break a hole in it, kicked him in the nuts and then squeezed the stream into his mouth when he tried to yell. I don’t know what was in that cleaner, but he started to foam at the mouth and gag almost immediately. The chemicals took the fight out of him and I was able to continue to choke him but— Holy shit, I ain’t usin’ this cleaner no more! I let his lifeless corpse fall onto the prince. He was still twitchin’ and foamin’.
Taking off my cap, I pressed the top of the three. There was a little signal sender under the fabric that would alert my ride and give me two minutes to get to the roof. Underneath the lining of the cap there was a micromesh that hid some make up, black wig and a mustache. Stripping the bodyguard of his pants and suit jacket, I quickly changed, darkened my face and hands with the make up and put on the wig and mustache. It wouldn’t be enough to get past anyone at the front door, but it sure as shit would look fine to the security cameras until they looked at it later.
Shoving my hat down the back of my pants and the guard’s pistol down the front, I strode out of the bathroom and shut the door behind me. I had about a minute to get to the roof. The dark halls of the embassy were still quiet, which mean no one saw anything suspicious on the monitors yet. The layouts of the floor plan I had memorized were accurate except for one important detail—
The door to the roof had a God damned fire alarm warning on it. How the flying fuck did nobody figure that out looking at the building’s plans?! I grabbed a portrait sized mirrors off one of the walls and kicked the door open with my foot. Immediately, an alarm went off and I could hear guards downstairs scrambling.
Moving into the stairwell, I positioned the mirror tenuously on the railing and the door. I got up my ass up those stairs and outside. Just my luck, one of the guards was having a smoke up there.
“What is that? What’s happening?” he asked.
Charging him, I got three feet away when he went for his pistol. I kicked his knee sideways. He screamed like a little bitch and dropped the gun. I elbowed him into a skylight and he crashed back inside the embassy. I caught a glimpse of a whole mess of fellas in suits carrying MP5’s. I still had thirty seconds and nothing but the guard’s Glock to fend off this little army. Only one thing I could do.
I jammed pistol between the door handle and a handle on the outside of the door. Seconds later, I heard the mirror shatter and men screamin’ in Arabic. Whatever they did to Khashoggi before they cut him up was gonna look like a God damned gum drop picnic if they caught me. That’s when I saw the ladder.
You would not believe how quiet the new shush chopper is. I heard the chain ladder hit the roof before I heard the blades. I grabbed and we were up and out while they were still machine-gunning that door. Up in the chopper, the gunner pulled me up.
“Major Whitcock,” greeted the gunner. “How did your mission go, sir?”
“That’s a need to know, son,” I informed him. “You bring my chaw?”
“Yes, sir!”
He handed me the can and put a pinch between my teeth and gums, while I watched the embassy fade into the darkness.
“I’ll tell you what, though. Them Saudis are a strange bunch,” I said, spittin’ some chew over the side. “Ain’t got no respect for the help, that’s for sure.”
