2013.09.05 - No Shields for Odame Pt 2

Drug deals always go down in the desert, right?

Suffice it to say the encounter between Jackie Estacado and Dimarco Shields wasn't exactly pretty. Nevertheless, a meeting place was produced, about two miles from the outskirts of Mombasa. The sun is setting in the west, with the lights of the city visible in the distance, but otherwise, the place is as desolate as they come.

As far as Dimarco Shields is concerned, this is an 'all in' type of situation. Therefore, three vehicles begin approaching the meeting area, their headlamps switched off to avoid drawing attention. One is a sports car driven by Shields himself, painted red. The other is a tan Excursion, and the last is a long, black four door sedan with tinted windows. The briefcase is held within the sedan, protected by its armored walls, which rides in the center of the three-vehicle formation.

As the light of the setting sun casts long shadows from the dunes, the meeting place waits no longer quite so desolate. By all appearances, Jackie Estacado came alone. With that briefcase in tow, though, a little piece of his soul whispers to him of Dimarco's proximity, listens in on their conversations and plans... tracks every movement of its fine leather carrier.

That Jackie is arrogant or confident enough not to have the dunes swimming with the special forces he must have at his disposal to pull a show like he did at the cafe is perhaps one surprise.

Another might be the fine beach furniture he apparently carted out here and set up on his own-- there are no tracks leading to the place until Dimarco makes them.. not human, not vehicle. There's only enough chairs for Jackie and Shields to sit, and Estacado is already seated, lounging and sipping dark red wine from a vintage bottle firmly ensconced in ice on a beach table set between the two loungers. He waves Dimarco-- and whoever exits the vehicles with him-- on over.

"You sure the damn thing ain't loaded?" - "Yeah, sure. Went over it with a fine toothed comb! No bugs, no explosives. It's clean as your sisters pussy, man." - "Shut the fuck up." - "Just chill, Shields." - "This mothafucka's a meta, I'm tellin' you. One of those freaks like Odame! If the case blows, he blows."

Finishing the conversation, Dimarco slams his cell phone shut and hits the breaks. He steps out of the car first, his body briefly hidden by a cloud of sand. Thugs in nice, collared shirts come next, all of them heavily armed as they emerge from the other vehicles.

As the sand clears, Dimarco Shields just... stares.

A silent exchange is given between he and his men, before the entourage begin trodding across the harsh ground toward Jackie. "The hell is this?" asks Dimarco, eyes narrowed behind his shades. "Thought you said this was a meet, muthafucka'." He opens his arms wide, scoffing for a moment. "I don't see nobody, bitch."

"Just have a seat, Dimarco. Have a drink." He gestures to the bottle sitting out on the table, and the empty glass beside it... and the comfortable chair beyond. "My associates want for nothing, and the first rule of doing business right.. is comfort." Something that the sweltering cafe just didn't have in spades, in Estacado's humble opinion. There are several black leather folders with hidden documents between their bindings closed and stacked on that table, as well, as yet unmentioned.

Atop those, is a pack of smokes, and a bag of rolled joints-- its scent hits the nose on /approach/ to the site. "So get comfortable." Jackie smirks, simply shaking his head at the druglord. "So. We both know you'll need to grow your operation to fulfill the kind of demand I'm talking about." He has powerful competitors-- some huge ones-- in the H trade, after all. "No bullshit, no bravado, no inflated figures. How much can you get where, how soon? An' how /safe/."

Odame sure did a number on this guy. Ever since the exploding bottle trick, Shields has been on pins and needles. There is a long, drawn out moment of hesitation, before Dimarco finally succumbs to Estacado's wishes. He makes a hand gesture toward the brutes alongside, indicating that they should stay back. However, to one of them, he makes a hissing sound with his teeth, then jerks a hand toward the tinted sedan indicatively. That thug moves off, leaving the group behind.

Taking the offered seat, Dimarco eyes the wine, the hand-rolled cigarettes, and the stack of folders from behind his shades while listening to his counterpart's questions. "Comfortable as a scorpion in the ass," he quips, before reaching for one of those joints with a less hesitant gesture. He pinches the cigarette between his fingers, smells the product within, and his eyebrows visibly rise up beneath the sunglasses with a gesture of surprise.

"Can't turn anything big without proper investment," he remarks, while reaching into his pocket for a matchbook. A flame is struck, and the end of the joint is lit. A long and careful drag is taken, held in, then released through his nostrils without any sign of coughing. "You an' I?" he remarks offhand, while gesturing toward Jackie with the cigarette-wielding hand in a motion of appreciation. "We could become good friends." There is another pause, before he decidedly gets down to business.

"My product is grown in Afghanistan. Pure. Cheap. High quantity. Biggest trouble is with the fuckin' United States Marine Corps. Cock blocking almost every good way out of the country. Way it works now? The movers are on a rotating transit system. Leads go out first, spot military patrols, signal which routes are clear. High-eyes keep an eye out for drones. Movers are packed with enough explosions to blow a mid-rise, so if they do run into oo-rah, it's a firestorm. On average, we lose twenty-seven percent of the product this way, but?" He shrugs. "The profits make up for it, and the movers are dirt poor. Paid the equivalent of ten bucks, US currency. They don't even know what they're doing. Goods are collected across the border, sent into Kenya via boat for production."

It's funny, if he'd spent a little more time looking, they'd have found the subsonic 30.08 that took out that bottle. Fired from the suppressed rifle of the man assigned to kill Shields if things went south, if one must know. Jackie waits patiently as Dimarco sits, listens to the druglord's story from beginning to end without interruption, only a nod here or there. It's almost like the majority of the tale... the shadowy Don is already quite familiar with.

"Top folder there is an interesting read, Shields." Estacado jerks his head towards the table, slips off shades that have long since ceased to be necessary, and drops them into his pocket. For about half a moment, he almost looks sad. "Some of those truck runs are family operations. Of course, one way or another, nobody goes home to talk about it. So all the villagers just keep on blaming the fuckin' Marines." Jackie smirks.

"I'd call it a good scam, but..." there's a vague gesture towards the materials provided. Pictures, transcripts of translated testimonials and even some recon that looks first-hand of various men involved in the transaction on the low end. ... and a couple that implicate multinational parties and bureaucrats from no shortage of western nations. The majority, though? Civilian casualties turned into unwitting, suicidal soldiers.

"Here." The second folder, Estacado picks up, and offers over to the nearest bodyguard. "Dimarco's last team." It's police reports and media on Odame's violent, organization-dismantling rampage. Highball made an impression on Jackie too, he'd admit. "Fuckin' rocky career path...."

Too bad Dimarco was too ruffled up by the exploding whiskey bottle to think logically. The irrational fear of metas can do that to a man.

With an amused expression, the druglord removes his own sunglasses, perching them in the crook between his partly unbuttoned shirt, and reaches with a free hand to claim the top-most folder. His expression remains amused as he reads through the information. Clearly, Dimarco Shields couldn't give to shits about the repercussions his 'business practices' have had on these families.

"It's the dope business," answers Dimarco, casting the first folder aside carelessly. "The minute you give a fuck? That's when the rest of the competition turns you into a house n--ga' who ain't worth shit."

Dimarco takes a good, long drag of that joint before reaching for the next folder. However, as he peruses the information, his smug attitude begins to falter. Cold silence takes over as each man looks through the folders given, and after fixing Estacado with a cold glare, he turns to look at the bodyguard.

The bodyguard leans over, eyes hidden beneath sunglasses still worn, and whispers something into Shields' ear.

Meanwhile, the thug sent to the tinted sedan begins walking back across the desert, carrying the briefcase that was once filled with money.

Dimarco snatches the folder from his bodyguard and throws it onto the sand between he and Estacado. Rather than exchanging any more verbal erosion of the English language, Dimarco simply glares at Estacado, as if quietly demanding he explain just what the hell is really going on here.

Rather suddenly, Shields would start to feel the worst case of cottonmouth imaginable. It's like he ate a peanut butter and gorilla glue sandwich, the way his tongue wants to adhere to the top of his mouth... the way his throat barely works for drawing breath, much less intelligent conversation. Then there's the chair. It collapses beneath him even as it wraps inky tendrils around waist and ankles as if suddenly-- if momentarily-- liquefied.

"Decision time, boys." Jackie lights a cigarette and turns to square off against the gang of bodyguards still unimpeded, as that carried briefcase forcibly /jerks/ itself groundward, as though suddenly weighing many times its own mass. "He right? That how men behave?" Estacado smirks, a predatory and humorless thing. "Any of you think you disagree strongly enough to meet -my- standards, think real hard who you shoot when you raise those guns."

The rest of them? Well. Jackie expects what's coming, doesn't bother moving to stop it. He just draws a heavy, blued .44 from inside his jacket, and draws back the hammer.

"You just gonna sit there an strrrmmmppph!"

Dimarco's eyes go wide, and he panics. The garbled and muffled attempts to yell are snuffed out when he begins to gasp for breath. And then, he's trapped in the melted remains of his chair, thrashing about violently while grasping at his neck.

The briefcase-carrying thug is drawn downward with the sudden weight of the case, and tries tugging at it a few times, to no avail. A few words of shock and surprise are fired back and forth between the collected bodyguards, but there's little time given to even acknowledge Estacado's question.

Guns are raised, but the calamity goes silent long enough for Jackie's threat to spill into the air. The silence and lack of movement (save for the stubborn thrashing of Dimarco Shields) lingers until the .44 is raised, and the cocking of the hammer is what triggers the firestorm.

Bullets rain forth as Dimarco's mob open fire, meaning to pepper the bastard with hot lead.

These kind of men are so predictable. It's not one in a hundred, it sometimes seems, that has the will or honor to stand for something besides... well. The choking source of a paycheck thrashing on the ground against unearthly bindings. Jackie's smile only widens when no one really hesitates for more than a moment. He doesn't fire a shot. His white suit turns soot black, and if one could describe the motion, it would be an opening maw. It seems to double, triple, expand exponentially in size, a yawning cone swalling up those bullets... and spitting them back from every shadow.

The motorcade has a set of gunmen firing back, all of a sudden. Some men shoot themselves three, four, more times. One or two manage to execute themselves point blank behind the head, mafia style. Another gets shot up by the guns of everyone there-- another signature hit. The Darkness isn't amused-- nor is the chorus of Darklings somewhere in the void and Estacado's own psyche. They wanted to devour these men, make them suffer, show them terror before death; but Jackie is here to send a message.

Still, the little gremlin that emerges from the briefcase without actually opening it gets his shot at a pound of flesh, pouncing at the courier teeth and claws first, and cackling out a "Omnomnomnomnomnom!!!" before the vocalization is replaced by obscene sounds and gore as Estacado walks to a crawling bodyguard and drives a heel into the man's back. A single round transfers from revolver into, then through the mook's skull.

The poor suckers don't have any idea what hit them. There are a few painted moments of pandemonium before the desert is painted red with death.

Dimarco Shields gets to witness it all.

He's steadily losing life energy, wrapped inside the bindings that won't budge. Just as his throat begins to tighten, the bindings seem to tighten upon him until they are cutting into his skin, bringing fresh suffering to his bloodshot eyes. With his last bit of strength, he wrestles the prison around until he can see Estacado, and though he can't make even a sound from his strangled mouth, the question is all there in his terror-stricken eyes.

'Why?'

Seems some chumps just don't get it.

"Oh calm down, Shields. Gonna fuck up your heart. /I'm/ not going to kill you." The emphasis there? Might not be the most reassuring, nor is the way the man with the unnatural, glowing yellow eyes saunters closer. "Let you in on a little secret, Dimarco. Everybody in this life likes to talk about their principles. Codes of honor they don't actually fuckin' have." Jackie pauses, taking a haul off his cigarette before he continues towards the prone druglord.

"Then when the chips are down, whaddya know? They don't have any fuckin' honor. Don't stand for nothin' but their own worthless hide." He takes another pull, ashes his cig right on Dimarco Shields' frightened, silenced face. "I'll give you credit for just one thing, Shields. You know you don't stand for anything but shit. But you take pride in an operation that's so messy, you piss and shit all over your messes and call it cleaned the fuck up."

The insulting ash is followed by a hearty bitchslap, courtesy of the back of Jackie's hand, and the heavy .44. Then he stoops in closer, and cups Dimarco's face more gently in his hand. The Darkness inhaled, running through Shields' blood is already primed. The druglord's eyes going a golden, glazed yellow. "I'm your beloved son, your only heir, and you are about to die of terminal cancer. You have only moments to share your database of contacts and the codes to all your assets before your empire crumbles forever."

It's something he's seen the Brotherhood pull more times than he cares to recount. It's also something the servants of Chthon understood all too well, before they were consumed and returned to the Darkness. Jackie holds Dimarco's gaze just long enough to complete the magic, then stands and listens. Jackie listens well, and even the obscene little Darkling dressed as a hoodlum in mirrored Lennon shades and black leather knows better than to interrupt.

Only once Dimarco's told him everything does the Darkness swallow him up, taking him somewhere dank, dark, nondescript... seemingly impossibly cavernous and without light or detail. -Is- he still alive? The certain thing: By the night after tomorrow, every friend this man has will be dead or bought, every warehouse and holding in multiple ports worldwide will be looted and sacked, the same message carved or spattered on each ruined carcass: Odame, and a series of numbers.

The numbers don't mean much to just about anyone. They're nothing but the unit number in an old, decrepit tenement where Kwabena briefly slung his poison, deep in the worst parts of the city that never sleeps...