Cache Money

Chapter 3

I awoke in the bunks the next morning, with Charlie next to me.

"What the hell happened?" I groaned. My head was killing me and it felt like I'd just been hit by a semi.

"Take it easy, man. You slipped in the rain last night. We took out those pirates, and everything's fine now. Mr. Chen knows what happened and offered to even throw an extra zero onto our paycheck. We'll be arriving in about an hour. Just rest, Scooter."

I was up and moving in 10 minutes, and made my way up to the mess, where Charlie and Echo were eating lunch. It was about 2 in the afternoon.

"Hey, boss, how you feeling?" Echo looked up from his rations.

"Not gonna lie," I cracked my neck, "I could really use an Advil." Before I knew it, a bottle was thrown at me, and I caught it, realizing that Tex had thrown it to me.

"Miss me, boss?" Tex's gruff voice called from across the room. He had his mask on for some reason. We all had hockey-style masks, and Tex's had the Texas flag on one side and a maple leaf on the other.

"You know it, princess." I chuckled at him and popped a couple pills with a swig of pop. Tex lifted his mask and there was a gnarly cut down the left side of his face, going diagonally from his temple to his chin.

"Jaysus, man! What the hell happened to you?" I was staring right at it. It hadn't healed at all, and it was still bleeding lightly.

"One of those pirates thought it would be smart to pull a buck knife on me, and slashed me. Little bastard was in a pool of his own blood with about 26 stab wounds from his own knife 4 seconds later. Still stings like a bitch, but I'm fine, boss. How are you doing?"

"Pretty damn good, compared to you." I looked down to Charlie. "How much longer till we dock, do you think?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say right about..." the horn of the ship blared that my headache flared so hard, I was on my knees in a second. "Now." Charlie said in a cocky tone when the horn stopped.

Once we'd collected our gear, we made our way to the boarding plank, and got the hell off the ship. One of Chen's guys, who I'd recognized from Vancouver, was waiting there for us, with a single briefcase.

"Here you go, Mr. Cache." The bodyguard handed me a case first. "In that one, you'll find your $10,000 bonus for your injury, and I hope you are satisfied with the contract pay of $700,000 in your bank account?"

"Very satisfied. I trust that you are satisfied with our work?" I looked at the man, shaking his hand.

"Very satisfied indeed, Mr. Cache. We will reccomend you to our friends in the industry as a very reliable company. May fortune always smile on you, Mr. Cache." He said as he got back in his car.

We stood there, high-fiving one another and acting like some football jock who'd just scored the winning touchdown of his first game. But then when we all calmed down, Echo looked at me.

"Hey, boss, question: how the hell are we getting home? We ain't getting over the border carrying all this gear."

Before I could even respond to him, my phone rang, and when I pulled it out, it was Jerry. I answered it, and he told me that he'd just bought us a helicopter with the money we'd received from Chen and that it would be arriving to pick us up soon. That's right, we just bought a friggin chopper.