Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

I told the guys they didn’t know him like I did; I loved him to pieces and I had his back, but I also wasn’t going to put him in a position where he could hurt us. It would be like making Lil Wayne the US ambassador to Germany.

I was overruled. Tanner and Reggie bought him dinner, and the next thing I knew, I had a new teammate.

I’d forgotten how our boss operates, of course. I should have seen it coming. Tanner could, in fact, get Lil Wayne to be an upstanding and respected diplomat – if she actually knew who Lil Wayne was. It’s not just unconventional thinking she likes. She likes leverage. She likes getting people to act against their own self-interest, usually by holding something over them.

In my case, it’s her protection against those in the government who want to cut me open and take out the important parts. Paul has a ton of debt he can’t get out from under, and Annie has a criminal record that would make her unemployed for the rest of her life. I don’t know what secrets Africa has, but they’re ones he wants kept that way. He emerged from the meeting with Tanner ashen-faced, shaking his enormous head, muttering Senegalese swear words.

Tanner had briefed him on my ability, and when I showed him – dancing a coffee cup through the air – he didn’t even flinch. Just grinned, and called me a dëma . A witch. Only he could turn a word like that into a term of endearment. Then he told us a long story about how he once knew a woman in Mali who could make plants grow just by touching them. I’ll admit: I sort of lost track of the plot halfway through, but the key takeaway here is that my freaky-deaky abilities didn’t stress him out.

He also seems to genuinely like the job. It’s helped him get off the streets, move into an actual apartment with his girlfriend Jeannette. She used to be homeless too, and she doesn’t like me very much. I smashed her tent to pieces by accident when we first met. It’s a long story.

“Looking good, yaaw ,” Africa says to me as his giant hands scrub the counter, ignoring the waterfall of coffee still cascading off the side. “You never dress this nice before.”

“Good enough for government work,” I mutter. Ugh, I was hoping to keep my little good mood balloon up for a while longer.

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” I grab a fistful of towels to help, mourning the death of my coffee.

“Hey, Africa.” Paul tried to call him Idriss at first, but Africa refuses to answer to his actual name. “Little help?”

“Yes boss!”

“You really don’t have to call me boss. We’ve talked about this.”

“OK, boss. Sorry. Not boss.”

You’ll be shocked to hear that Paul didn’t want Africa on the team. He said he was a loose cannon, not to be trusted, and wouldn’t hear any arguments. He was flabbergasted when Annie voted against him – I think he genuinely believed that because they were dating, she’d back him up. His gast was flabbered even more when I sided with him. He was the only one who seemed to get that I was kidding when I suggested Africa as a new driver.

I’ll be honest: I could have done without the big guy today. Turns out that the key to getting along with Africa is to do it in small doses. Before, I saw him once every few months. Maybe. Now I see him every day. Imagine hanging out with a really hyper pit bull for hours at a time, only the pit bull is seven feet tall and has a bark that can be heard from space.

The coffee machine is still on the counter. “Thank fuck,” I say, sliding past Africa and heading over to it. “Anybody else want?”

“Can’t.” Annie doesn’t look up from her paper-gathering. “No water.”

“No—what?”

“There’s no water.”

“What do you mean, there’s no water?”

“I mean, it’s been replaced with Miller Lite. The fuck you think I mean?”

“Are you serious?”

“Water’s out to the whole of Venice. Burst main somewhere. Bunch of other places too.”

“Are you serious ?”

“How many cups you drink?” Africa says. “You have too much coffee, Teggan. Your heart go pop.”

“Hey, I have had no more than two cups, OK?” Four, but whatever, I’m fine.

I head over to Reggie’s door, figuring I’d better get this done before the lack of caffeine causes permanent damage. I’m about to knock when I realise Annie is staring daggers into my back – I can feel her from here. Leaving before helping with the clean-up probably isn’t going to win me many brownie points. It might only be Reggie’s permission I need, but it can’t hurt to have the rest of the crew feeling positive about me.

So I take a deep breath and pitch in, working with both my hands and my PK, piling paper, turning chairs the right way up, flipping the whiteboard onto its feet.

It’s not long before the office starts looking like its old self, minus a few glasses and plates. I stand, dusting off my hands, and am about to head over to Reggie’s room when Paul says, “OK, thanks, guys. Everybody gather round.”

I pause, my handle on the doorknob. “Why?”

“Briefing. It was on the Google calendar.”

“Oh, come—”

Annie clears her throat. Behind her, Africa smiles witlessly.

“How are we even still doing Tanner jobs?” I sit down on the couch with a thump. “You know we just suffered a massive earthquake, right?”

“Yep.” Paul gets to his feet, his knees popping. “We still have work to do – the world hasn’t ended.”

“Tell that to San Bernardino.”

Africa lets out a hissing breath. “All gone, huh? S’not good. Very sad.”

I flick a glance over at my backpack, wanting to check my phone, knowing it’s pointless. Nic hasn’t responded to any of my texts – I can tell, because I have the ringer set on high. All the same, the urge to check is almost overwhelming. I haven’t completely killed the poisonous thoughts from the night before, but they at least have the decency to stay in the background.

“But,” Paul says, grabbing his laptop and lowering himself to the couch, “most places held up OK. They’re working to turn the water and power back on. I remember after the Northridge quake in ’94, the 10 went down, and it took them three months to get it moving again. They’ve done a bunch of work since then. More importantly –” he opens his laptop “– the airports went back to normal this morning. That means our target is still on schedule for arrival tomorrow.”

“Mister Germany,” Africa says, nodding, as if he’s answered a tough question in a test.

Paul gives him a pointed look. “His name’s Jonas Schmidt.”

“Ya. Him.”

“What about Reggie?” I say. “Shouldn’t she be here?”

“She’s researching something on the quake,” Annie says. “You know how she is when she gets an idea in her head.”

“I get ideas in my head all the time. Why don’t I get to skip the briefings?”

“Because you didn’t do a bunch of prep work and research beforehand, and you actually have to go out on the job.” Paul taps a few keys, and a picture of Schmidt appears on screen.

He’s one of those young tech billionaires who you want to both marry, and punch repeatedly in the face. He is disgustingly good-looking. The photo Paul has of him was taken somewhere sunny; Schmidt is wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses, smiling a very expensive smile, his shoulders bare and his hair tousled by a light breeze.

Not that his good looks are going to help him. Once you get onto Moira Tanner’s radar, nothing can save you.

Schmidt made his money by taking risks, betting big on start-ups and wild business ideas. His latest one is real good: attempting to sell a list of American overseas deep-cover assets to the highest bidder. It’s not going to make him nearly as much money as his other business ventures, but that’s OK, because he’s trying to get into politics. And by get into politics , I mean become a behind-the-scenes power broker who enjoys causing the fall of three governments before breakfast.