America's Galactic Foreign Legion - Book 21: Breaking Very Bad by Walter Knight Page A

pocket until you really need it.”
    “I really need Czerinski to get rid of DEA Agent Hanks. Think he’ll whack him for me?”
    “Maybe. I’ve heard stories. They call him the Butcher of New Colorado.”
    “What’s that all about? Who did he butcher?”
    “Don’t know. Czerinski gets a lot of bad press. Media bias.”
    Whyte’s communications pad rang. “Hello?” answered Whyte. “Who is this? Can you hear me now?”
    “I kidnapped your human pestilence wife,” replied the spider commander. “Now, you will cook for me.”
    “Did you take my son, too?”
    “No, just Skyler.”
    “Good, keep the bitch.”
    “What about your unborn hatchling daughter?” asked the spider commander triumphantly. “Meet me at the burned-out Diablo Brewery at midnight. Bring Private Pink. I hear you’re a team.”
    “Fine,” relented Whyte. “But I expect to be paid. I don’t work for free.”
    “Fine.”
    “Fine.”
    “Hang up.”
    “You hang up first.”
    “I hope you run out of minutes.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Dude, that was harsh,” commented Pink. “You didn’t really mean that about keeping Mrs. Whyte, did you?”
    “No, of course not,” answered Whyte contritely. “I was just negotiating. You have to be tough when haggling with aliens. It’s like going to Mexico.”
    “Yo, I don’t want to go to the moon,” argued Pink. “There’s like, no air on the moon. All I want is a new life.”
    “Like he said, we’re a team, Jesse. We are going to cook blue powder for the whole galaxy.”
    “Don’t be greedy. One big score of phat stacks, and we’re done.”
    “We’re done when I say we’re done,” admonished Whyte, tipping his cap. “We’re just beginning.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Whyte and Pink agreed to meet at the edge of camp. Pink was to steal a Legion jeep for the drive to Diablo, but Tu-Sting arrived in his place.
    “Your partner got cold feet,” advised Tu-Sting, shaking hand and claw. “You have a new partner. I will handle planetary distribution.”
    “Quite frankly, I’m not surprised,” Whyte said, sighing bitterly. “Jesse is a loser. Always has been. His drug-addled mind has no vision of the future. Some people just can’t stand success. They are destined for mediocrity, no matter how hard you try to pull them up from failure.”
    ‘It’s for the best,” replied Tu-Sting. “Pink didn’t have the killer instinct needed to survive our business anyway. He’d choke before closing the deal.”
    Whyte and Tu-Sting rode most of the night in silence, neither particularly trusting the other. No matter , thought Whyte. He could manage any scorpion. The same went for the spiders.
    At Diablo, an Arthropodan moon shuttle sat camouflaged in the ruins. The spider commander met them at the bottom of the ramp. “Where is Private Pink?”
    “He pussed out,” answered Whyte, shrugging. “This is my new head of planetary distribution, Tu-Sting.”
    Not hesitating, the spider commander shot Tu-Sting between his eight eyes. He summarily cut off the scorpion’s stinger for a trophy.
    “Please forgive my little flare of temper,” explained the spider commander, bathing in Whyte’s terror. “That miserable scorpion was near the top of my list for payback. Come, we have much business to conduct on the moon. I have a fleet of shuttles to take your blue powder to galaxies far, far away.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    As the shuttle blasted off, I handed Agent Hanks a Legion shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. Hanks insisted on doing it personally. He tracked the shuttle across the sky, firing one missile. The missile streaked up, then veered sharply, chasing the shuttle. I shielded my eyes against the fireball explosion.
    “Right on!” exclaimed Private Pink, giving fist pumps to me, Hanks, Gomez, and Major Lopez. Pink gazed skyward with satisfaction at the falling debris, giving Whyte a final one-fingered salute. “You thought all was forgiven? Yo, burn in Hell, Whyte. It’s over when I