PART 37 - CLEANING HOUSE

 

 

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Warning: This is adult literature.  If you’re not of a legal age to read this stuff, don’t.

 

Disclaimer: This is a work of pure fiction.  No semblance between the characters described here and real individuals -- living or dead -- is implied or intended.

 

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Plot Synopsis Up to This Point:

 

Four female postgraduate students in New Mexico (Vicky, Tammy, Louisa and Kim) are living depressing lives fraught with personal and professional failures. 

 

One day, driving through the lonely new Mexico desert, they are commandeered by aliens.  Turns out, the aliens would like to come back one day and mine the our earthly sphere until it's Swiss cheese.  But in the meantime, they need a little help mapping the earth's geology and occasionally subduing its population.  And who better to help with that than a handful of local females, recruited involuntarily?  The aliens soup them up with some supernatural abilities and turn them loose.  These supernatural abilities include not only absurd strength, but also being absurdly attractive, with the sexual appetite to match.  The part of their body that pack's the greatest punch are their breasts, which store enough power to level a city.

 

Vicky is the leader of the four.  She could have any man she wants, but she pines after the heart of the one man who knows her better than any other: Jared.  She wants his respect, and hopes that this will lead to a deeper companionship.  

 

Earning Jared's respect means doing superhero stuff, and to that end, Vicky has enlisted the services of her friend Ethan, who heads up the group's command center.

 

In this chapter and the next one, several characters who had appeared earlier in the story now re-emerge.  We cross paths again with Roberto, who we last saw in Parts 17 and 19.   We also encounter Shelly very briefly, who we last saw in Part 12.  And finally, we have an important scene with Chad, who first appeared in Parts 18 and 19.

 

 

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The Phoenix mansion was a storm of activity.  The command center that Vicky required was coming together quickly in the smaller of the two houses -- the one that the girls had earlier "imported" from Malibu.  Ethan had ordered so many computers and so much communications equipment that it had taken a big rig truck to deliver all the stuff.  As the rugby dudes hauled monitors and satellite dishes around the grounds, Ethan was conducting hiring interviews in the living room -- translators, military experts, emergency management experts, international relationships experts, the list went on.  

 

As Vicky toasted a morning bagel in her kitchen over the sounds of delivery trucks backing up, she wondered to herself whether the building she lived in could truly be called her home anymore.  This is what it takes, Vicky reminded herself, to become more than a party girl.  This, and more, is what it will take to win Jared's respect.

 

"Where's Kim?" Vicky asked the other two girls as she joined them on the patio.  She took a bite of her bagel and spoke around the mouthfuls.  "She was nowhere to be found when we did the train rescue, and we didn't see her when we returned."

 

Tamara gave Louisa a grim look before answering the question.  "At a hospital, in Mexico."

 

"Why?"

 

"Remember Roberto?" Tamara asked.

 

"Barely."

 

"I believe the same could be said of Kim.  She met him when she plucked him from a fighter jet over Florida.  He was quite smitten with her and even came back with us to the mansion for a while.  But Kim grew distracted with other things, and neglected him.  He missed the rush he felt when he was around her, and began to experiment with drugs."

 

"Pot?"

 

"Worse stuff than that.  He is not in good shape."

 

"Why is he in Mexico?"

 

"Because he doesn't have much time left.  He wants to be with his family.  Kim is there too."

 

"Show me where."

 

 

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"He was a pretty awesome guy," Kim lamented into the viewing window at the emergency room.  

 

Vicky didn't respond, but instead rested a hand on her friend's shoulder.

 

"Remember his speech to us?  He was the one who helped us accept ourselves for who we are -- supergirls.  He hated to see us slink around in the shadows, avoiding the spotlight.  It was because of him that we got comfortable being wealthy and powerful.  It was because of him that finally acknowledged what awesome creatures we are, and began to stand before the world without shame."

 

"I remember that advice.  He was a pretty level-headed guy."  Vicky looked at the man on the other side -- emaciated and quickly expiring.

 

"And now this.  It's amazing what drugs can do to a mortal man."

 

"Did he get into the cocaine we had lying around?"

 

"No, that was stored away from male reach -- a stone box with a 300-pound lid.  Roberto bought some heroin on the street."

 

Vicky was silently disgusted at the news.  How was it that such deadly chemicals could be bought on a street corner with only a few crumbled up bills?  It wasn't right.  If only...

 

 

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The funeral was two days later, right around the corner from the hospital, in Roberto's hometown.  

 

Vicky was made uncomfortable by just about every element of the ceremony.  The church was old and dusty, and the language was of course foreign to her. Her outfit was ugly: a black dress she had found in a local store.  It was three sizes to big, but the only thing that could fit over her prodigious bust line.  She had used a belt to cinch the fabric in around her waist.  But there was so much extra fabric, it looked as though she had slid a napkin ring over a napkin.

 

There was something else about the ceremony that made her uncomfortable as well: people were staring at her and Kim.  And they weren't desirous stares, or shocked ones as she got in Phoenix.  They were suspicious stares.

 

"Did you notice the way people were looking at us in there?" Vicky asked as the two descended the front steps of the church and 

 

They crossed over into the park and sat on a bench.

 

"Yes," Kim replied.  "I thought they were reacting to me.  They know that I'm the girl who ignored him, and that my doing so was the first step of his demise.  And yet..."

 

By now, a middle aged woman joined her on the park bench.  "You speak English?" the woman asked.

 

"Yes," Vicky replied, turning to her.

 

"Do not look at me.  And I do not look at you.  We look at the park."

 

"Sorry," she replied, averting her gaze.

 

"Why are you in this town?  What business do you have here?"

 

"Nothing.  We just came here for a friend's funeral."

 

"You are in danger.  Bandas... how do you call it... gangs... do not like strangers.  You should leave.  As long as you here, they suspicion of all of us.  You make us all in danger."

 

"What kinds of gangs are these?"

 

"Drogas."  Drugs.

 

The woman was visibly shaking.  That's how strong a stranglehold that gangs have on these people, Vicky lamented to herself.

 

"How did it come to this?" Kim asked as they left the town square.  "Inside that church, my friend is dead in a box because he bought the drugs.  And here in the town square, everyone cowers in fear of the people that sell the drugs.  These substances are ruining every life they touch."

 

The two women had slipped into and unseen alley.  They would discard the their disgusting funeral dresses and soon be high in the air.

 

"Maybe coming to Roberto's funeral was the wrong way to remember him," Vicky suggested as she struggled to unzip her dress.

 

"So if this was the wrong way, then what was the right way?"

 

"Maybe the real way to remember him is to honor his advice: we are super.  We can do anything we want."

 

"Like what?"

 

"Like take on the drug trade."

 

"You want to help the DEA capture a big illegal shipment?"

 

"No," Vicky replied, as she became visibly frustrated with her dress.  She finally tore at it in frustration.  The arms of the dress responded a rapid RRIIIPPP.

 

"Not just a few illegal shipments," she continued.  The splitting fabric gave way to reveal biceps with strength enough to lift loaded train cars like toys.  "I want to clean house: I want take on the gangs themselves."

 

She tore at the bottom hem of the dress, revealing legs with power enough to traverse the country in an hour.  "And not just one gang.  All of them."

 

She tore at the collar of the dress now, opening it up to breasts that contained enough power to level everything within sight.  "We are..." her voice supremely confident, "going to bring them to their knees."  

 

 

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Vicky strode through Ethan's new command center with such vigorous purpose that Tamara jogged to keep up with her.

 

"Ready, Ethan?" she asked.

 

Only the soles of his feet were visible.  The rest of him was crawling around under a desk.

 

"Ready for what?"  He emerged with a wad of cords in his hands.  "Taking on a drug gang?  No, I'm still getting the computers plugged into the server."

 

Vicky's eyes must have been on fire, Tammy thought, because Ethan quickly backed himself into the side of the desk.

 

"I'm not waiting around for the damn computers.  I'm ready to be a hero now.  Where do I get started?"

 

Ethan thought for a moment.  "If you want to fight drugs, you need to understand supply and demand."

 

Tamara watched Vicky's shoulders drop slightly in frustration.  That was not the answer she wanted to hear.

 

But Ethan continued, "I would go to a rehab center or a clinic.  Ask around.  Try to understand how people get hooked on drugs, and what they are dealing with."

 

"Rehab centers would probably depress me almost as much as hospitals," Vicky replied as Louisa entered.  "Call Chief Andersen and get a list of drug operations that the department is aware of.  We're super.  And we need to do what supergirls do best."

 

"Like kicking ass and taking names," Louisa added.

 

 

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"We know it's somewhere within a half mile of here, but that's as close as we've been able to pin it down."  Chief Andersen studied Vicky as he spoke.  She wore a leather jacket over a tattered t-shirt and jeans, creating more the appearance of a drug customer than its most dangerous enforcer.  

 

She was always beautiful when she was angry, which meant that tonight, she was more beautiful than ever.  "This had better be a big bust, this time," she scowled.  "No more bullshit like last night; no more backpacks and half filled duffel bags.   I want to be the girl that stops the drug trade, not just the one that annoys it."

 

"Vicky, you're a hard girl to please.  We gave you all the best reconnaissance our department has gathered.  There simply isn't any more."

 

She tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.  The yellow light of the industrial facility's parking lot made her reddish hair appear appear almost black.  Her mood too, seemed consumed by the darkness.  "I'm not a girl who easily accepts limits anymore.  It might be the best reconnaissance we have, but it's not good enough."

 

Andersen held his tongue.  She was barely old enough to be his daughter.  But last night he had seen her punch through a four-foot-thick rock wall like it was made of soap suds rather than limestone.  He decided not to push his luck.

 

"So you followed the drug delivery to this location and then lost sign of it?"

 

He nodded.

 

"And your drug sniffing dogs weren't able to find anything?"

 

"Their range is about 10 feet.  The exchange point could be a half mile in any direction."

 

She sniffed at the air.  Andersen detected only the dry desert breeze.  He wondered what she might have picked up.

 

"This way," she pointed.

 

The woman took off at a light jog but Andersen was not stupid enough to follow her on foot.  By the time he had climbed into the cruiser and hit the gas, she had accelerated to an inhuman pace.  The engine roared furiously as he tried to follow her.

 

About a minute later, she stopped on a dime, and he had to swerve the cruiser to miss her.  He put the gearshift in "park" and watched her from behind.  She pulled her hair back from her ears and cocked her head to the side, attentively.  The pause was just long enough for him to appreciate the delightful swell of her ass under the tattered jeans, which led his eye down to more gradual curves of her frighteningly powerful legs.

 

She motioned him toward her.  He climbed out of the car and approached lightly.  Her whispered breath smelled of verbena, and elicited involuntary, pleasant memories in him.

 

"I can hear them," she explained.  "They are about 100 yards away, whispering.  It's a loading dock on the far side of that building.  You stay here.  And no back-up units until I call for them."

 

He had long since given up arguing with this firebrand.  "Be careful," he urged, before remembering that the concern was misplaced. 

 

She ignored him. "Let's just cross our fingers tonight's bust produces something bigger."  She removed her leather jacket, revealing smooth olive skin pulled over taut arms.  She handed the jacket to him.  "Hold on to this for me.  I don't want it to get any bullet holes."

 

As she sprinted of into the night, he raised the jacket to his nose and took in her delirious scent.  It was good that her attention was elsewhere, so that she did not see his knees wobble.

 

 

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Several minutes later, Andersen got the call.  His foot put the pedal to the floor as his fingers found the switches for the lights and sirens.  He had another ten cruisers en route as well, from a mile away.  But they wouldn't be needed, he knew.  It would all be over by the time they arrived.

 

The scene he encountered had become all too typical.  A dozen mean-looking guys were on the ground in plastic riot handcuffs.  A large truck was trying to leave the loading bay, but was restrained.  Its tires spun in futility, producing thick clouds of acrid smoke.  The source of the truck's problem was at its tailgate: she had vehicle by the towhook.  

 

She was facing away from struggling truck, lost in conversation with a guy on the floor.

 

"So, one more time.  Who is your source for the drugs?" she yelled over the squeal of the truck.

 

"Like I told you, all I know is his first name, Pablo!"

 

"What about his last name?"  The smoke of the tires was now filling the rom.

 

"He never gives it, only his first name!"

 

Andersen knew this was typical Vicky.  He couldn't guess how many hundreds of horsepower that truck engine had, but her bicep wasn't even strained by the exertion of restraining it. 

 

"Did he give you an address?" The irritated woman asked.

 

"No. I'm telling the truth, I swear!"

 

The truck continued to squeal in protest.  Vicky visibly lost patience.  "Hang on a moment," she requested.

 

Her arm rose in the air, bringing the truck's wheels high off the ground.  The engine seemed to scream as the wheels now spun even faster in mid-air.   Non-chalantly, she brought the vehicle down with a deafening SLAM that shook the whole building.  Four of the tires burst from the impact, and Andersen heard the CRACK of both axles giving way as well.  The vehicle shuddered into silence.  Andersen wondered how the driver had fared in that impact: hopefully, just a concussion.  

 

If the suspect on the floor had been scared earlier, was nearly incoherent now.

 

"How does he contact you?" Her voice boomed.  "At the same phone number every time?"

 

"Please don't hurt me!  Please don't hurt me!  Please don't hurt me!" he screamed.

 

Andersen laid a calming hand on her shoulder.  His palm felt her muscle coil with anger-- a muscle he had once seen tear and I-beam apart like it was salt water taffy.  "You did good,  Vicky.  We'll take him back and interrogate him the right way, once he stops pissing in his pants.  Whatever he knows, we'll find it."

 

"That's not the POINT," she growled.  "The point is that he doesn't know anything.  

And we're not getting anyWHERE.  We keep doing these small time busts -- a few dozen kilos at a time.  The drug pipeline into this country is like a firehose, and we're siphoning off only a drop."

 

"Are you chewing out the Chief again?" came a feminine voice from the distance.

 

Vicky barely seemed to notice. "We need to take this war to a whole new level.  We need the entire map: WHO is moving what WHERE, and HOW."

 

"I think I have an idea," a soft voice from above said cheerily.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Andersen saw something descend from the sky.

 

It was Louisa.

 

 

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The clock read 9:59am, The FBI agent noticed.  He looked the room over one last time.  The papers were locked in the safe, and the laptop too.  He shuffled a few last documents into the paper shredder and turned it off.  After twenty years with the FBI, he had turned these basic procedures into a routine.  If he had been a typical FBI agent, he would never have needed to bother.  But his responsibility to oversee all border-area drug investigation activity gave him access to some pretty sensitive stuff.  And, like everybody else in the world, he wound up taking a lot of it home with him.  It all had to be secured before the cleaning service arrived.

 

But instead of the doorbell, it was the phone that rang.  On the other end of the line was Shelley, the woman who had been cleaning his house for a number of years.  

 

He liked Shelley.  She was punctual.  She worked hard.  It was unlike her to call and cancel at the last minute.

 

"I can't make it over there today.  A substitute is coming instead."

 

"Is everything OK?" he responded.  With Shelley, this was no idle question.  She had been through some rough times with an abusive boyfriend.  He was now out of the picture-- dead for almost a year now -- but the circumstances behind his death were never clear.  Nonetheless, her spirits had improved considerably with him gone.

 

"Yes, everything's fine," she replied.  "In fact, it's better than fine.  I reconnected with an old friend today -- someone who got that awful boyfriend out of my life for good.  She's awesome, and I'm eternally in her debt."

 

Got that awful boyfriend out of my life, he repeated in his head.  That guy had died right about the time the supergirls were gaining their powers.  Several law enforcement locals had secretly wondered whether the supergirls could have been involved in the murder.  But it was not a case that anyone dared reopen.

 

"So, this friend of yours -- is that the reason you can't make your housecleaning shift here today?"

 

"Exactly.  She asked to do my shift for me.  I'm not complaining."

 

Toby had only begun to process this information when the doorbell rang.  When he opened the door, the woman who greeted him was a far cry from Shelley.  Instead of wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, as the cleaning ladies always did, this woman wore a white and black French maid's outfit.  The dress's neck line went down so far, it grazed the edges of her aureoles, leaving her mountainous breasts on full display.  

 

But the outfit didn't stop there.  The bottom of the little black dress flared just a little, and revealed the fullness of her strong thighs and the pertness of her derriere.  The rest of it was cut without an millimeter to spare, taking full advantage of the trimness of her form.  The shoulders were puffy and short, accentuating the elegance of her arms, which seemed cut and athletic.  Ruby red lips topped off the ensemble.  And when they opened, the voice that emanated sent a strange shiver through him.

 

Close the door, he instructed himself.  This is clearly a joke, or worse.  Women don't dress like this unless they are going to a Halloween party or working for an escort service.  She was after something.  And with his level of security clearance, he could not afford to take the risk.  He had to be disciplined.

 

"Hi," she said.  "My name is Louisa.  Are you going to let me in?  Or leave me standing outside?"

 

Her voice was like velvet -- refined and sumptuous.  Whatever he had been steeling himself to do, the thought of it left him as she squeezed past him through the door way, the firmness of her breasts sending thrilling tremors through his torso.

 

"What room do you want me to start on?"

 

"Uh, perhaps you could do the living room, then the kitchen, then the bedrooms and the bath.  I'll be in my office."

 

"OK, be done in a jiff."

 

Toby withdrew to the office.  He had only managed to don his reading glasses when he heard a whir in the living room, like the sound of a humming bird's wings.  He stepped slowly into the living room, hoping to get a glance of her beauty.  But before he could arrive, she was gone.  Nonetheless, the living room sparkled like it never had before, as if she had been working on it for an hour.

 

He poured himself a glass of water and began to follow the whirring sound around the house.  But with every room he entered, the source of the sound was gone before he arrived, and remaining behind was spotlessly cleaned room.  Perplexed, he returned to the office and found her standing there, feather duster in hand.

 

"How does everything look so far?" she asked.

 

"Fabulous," he replied.  

 

"Looking fabulous is important," she agreed.  Leaning over to dust an end table.  Her enormous tits spilled into view.  They heaved with every breath.  He tried not so stare, but it was so hard.

 

"Do you like watching me clean?" she asked, turning away.  She bent at the waist to brush some dust into a bin.  The her derriere came into full view-- two peach halves atop the baroque lines of her thighs.  Still bent over, she turned her head and smiled back at him.

 

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be watching you."

 

"It's OK.  I like it when men watch me.  Would you believe it was my first time?"  she stretched high and dusted the framed Casablanca print between the windows.  

 

He didn't know why he kept the Casablanca print there -- a reminder, he supposed, of romance.  His life had so little.  As she stretched, her maid's dress strained to contain her absurd curves.

 

"No, I don't believe it's your first time," he ingratiated.   "You're very skilled."

 

She cast a smile that lit up the space like a floodlight.  "Thank you."

 

Slowly, she approached him, a practiced swagger to her step that called out the jaw-dropping hourglass of her figure.  "It's my first time for cleaning, but it's not my first time for other stuff."

 

His mind recoiled at the suggestion.  He was being seduced, he knew it.  And it could only be for one thing -- the sensitive information he held.  He had to resist.

 

 

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Louisa watched his face carefully as she swaggered toward him.  He set his jaw in firm determination.  

 

That's cool, she thought.  He's resisting.  Seduction is always more fun when they try to resist.

 

As she approached him, she watched a redness coloring his cheeks.   He was affected.

 

"I have a confession," she admitted, biting her lip and shifting her weight to one leg.  "I'm not really here to clean your house."

 

"You should leave then," he replied, weakly.  It seemed like more of a request than an order.

 

Louisa pouted in reply.  She watched his irises quiver.  

 

"You don't really want me to leave, do you?" she sighed with sadness.  "You want to find out what I did come here for."  With her sigh, she felt the unfortunate dress expand and contort as it tried to contain the bounty of her burgeoning chest.

 

She watched his eyes pulled downward by the gravitational force of her twin spheres.  

 

"OK," he rallied.  "So tell me then.  What did you come here for?"

 

"I want to offer you a job-- a law enforcement job."  

 

His eyes still struggled to climb back up to her face.  Watching his dilemma sent a pleasant tingle through her.  She wondered what it would feel like to have those lips on her nipples.

 

"But I already have a law enforcement job -- an elite one," he protested.

 

She smiled at this.  "Elite indeed.  You probably have a squad of detectives; wire tap authority; blah blah blah."

 

He nodded hesitantly.

 

"But you saw me clean your house in thirty seconds flat, didn't you?  You know what I am don't you?"  

 

He nodded.  "You're one of the supergirls."

 

She slowly pushed him into a seated position on the office couch.

 

"Supergirls-- that's the word everybody else uses for us.  But in this case, I would prefer to think of myself as the most advanced law enforcement weapon in the history of humanity."

 

She clasped his hands and ran them along the sides of her midriff.  "This body can hear 250 conversations right now, without trying, without even a court order.  It can read a printed page from a hundred miles out.  It can tear through a steel barricade like its a piece of paper.  And it can be anywhere you want it to be -- hundreds of miles away -- in only seconds.  It makes every piece of technology used by the Bureau seem like a museum piece.  And it's being offered for your use.

 

Despite his efforts to maintain the stolid demeanor, she saw his eyes sparkle at the suggestion.  Louisa pushed her ruby red lips into a pout.  "But there's only one condition."

 

"What would you have me do?" he asked.  Her sides felt his hands trembling.

 

She lowered the maid's dress over her jubilant tits, letting them spring gleefully free of their confines.  She felt his eyes fixate on her nipples and bit her lip with anticipation.  

 

"I want you to share all your information with me.  All of it -- every file you have on a drug kingpin.  Every map you have on their movements.  Where the supply drops happen, how they get across the border.  How they unload it in the US.  Everything."

 

"There no way I can do that.  It's all classified."

 

"You wouldn't even have to leave your day job," she replied, ignoring his objection. "Consider it a side hobby, a volunteer activity."

 

"Like the Boy Scouts, except that it's illegal and a violation of...."

 

His words drifted away.  She had brought her nipple-- now engorged to the size of a large thimble -- within inches of his mouth.  His hot breath danced across her skin, which turned to goosebumps in delighted response. 

 

"You like looking at my tits?" she asked.

 

He nodded.

 

"They're the best tits you've seen anywhere, aren't they?  Any girlfriend, any magazine, any porno flick -- the chest before you tops them all, doesn't it?"

 

He nodded vigorously.

 

"I might be an advanced pieced of technology.  But like any equipment, it needs to be cared for."

 

She smiled as beads of sweat formed on his temples.  He had done an admirable job of resisting this long.   She felt badly for him, in a way.  The strain was evident.

 

"I took an oath--"

 

"So what?  My body wants you to use those lips for something better than your stupid oaths."  Louisa arched her back and brought her nipple mercilessly close to his mouth.  It was now granite-hard with need. 

 

He closed his eyes in an apparent attempt to regain his composure.

 

Louisa smiled to see his struggles.  "Your making a valiant attempt to resist this, but your discipline is slowly being crushed.  Don't make this any harder on yourself than it needs to be."  She wiggled gently in front of him, her nipple swaying back and forth like a hypnotist's waistcoat watch.  "You're going to give in to me.  It's inevitable."

 

Suddenly, he did-- a gentle suction quickly growing adamant with force.  She gasped as her breast exploded with pleasure.  Involuntarily, her back arched further, thrusting her breasts toward him. 

 

"Oh my gosh-- I didin't realize how much I wanted you."  Louisa grabbed his free hand and led it quickly to her dripping sex, shoving her clitoris greedily downward on the knuckle of his thumb.  

 

She moaned in orgasmic pleasure and felt his body shudder, too, at the sound of her voice.

 

Her breath traced a warm trail down his neck as she softly spoke.  "Remind me, who is giving in to who here?"

 

"I don't remember," he replied, cupping her breasts in his ravenous hands.  He squeezed, and Louisa gasped as another parade of orgasms marched through her.

 

"Sounds..." Louisa struggled between moans, "... sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

 

 

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They had almost finished loading the bags of white powder into the airplane when he heard the sound -- a footstep.  The footfall was well placed, not sloppy-- just a "click" on the tarmac.  Wiping the coke dust off  his hands, the gang member reached for his gun.

 

Hopefully, it was bandits trying to steal the plane's precious cargo.  He could deal with bandits: many were already in their graves due to him.  He could deal, too, with local police.  Here on the Mexico side, they were invariably less well equipped and less trained than his men.  

 

But what he couldn't deal with had been the disturbing news over the last week-- bust after bust after bust.  The authorities somehow tore apart the drug supply pipeline systematically-- from Matamoros to Juarez to Tijuana.  It was as if someone now possessed the entire map of the gang's operations -- every outpost, every lookout, every distribution point, every route.

 

More disturbing than the number of busts was their nature: not a single cop had been killed in the busts, not a single gang member had escaped.  He had his suspicions who might be behind it, but no one was talking.  He had heard stories of supernatural feats recently -- a modern-day Superman, except it was rumored that there were several, and that they were not men at all.

 

Looking underneath the plane, he spied the feet that had made the sound.  And on seeing this, his heart sank.  He would be spending the next decade in jail, he suddenly realized. 

 

The feet were clad in high heels.

 

 

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"Not another one," Vicky groaned as she flew along the fence that defined the US-Mexico border.  

 

Below her and Louisa, yet another smuggling operation had cut a hole in the fence.  This hole was big enough to drive a pick-up truck through, which was exactly what they did.  It was the strategy of the week -- drive a truck through, move the drugs to a US-based truck, dump the Mexican truck and walk back through the hole.  

 

When Ethan had opened up the trove of reconnaissance from Louisa's FBI friend, he wasted no time dispatching the girls to drug busts on the south side of the border.  With him as the nerve center and the four girls as the muscle, the team had been relentlessly effective-- busting up nearly a hundred small smuggling operations.  At the time, Vicky had thought that it would be only a matter of days before the drug pipeline from Mexico ground to a complete halt.   How wrong she had been!

 

The furious pace of the girls' activities was putting pressure on the drug runners, that was for sure.  But to Vicky's surprise, the drug runners had also adapted, opting for lower volume, less centralized methods to get the drugs north across the border.  There were literally hundred of holes in the fence now.  Pickup trucks everywhere were migrating north.  Chasing these trucks had been like weeding a garden with tweezers: by the time she was done, the new weeds were already sprouted.

 

"I can't take this any more," Vicky complained to Louisa.  "I feel like we are just doing the same thing over an over again."

 

The auburn-haired supergirl plummeted to earth feet first, directly onto the hood of the truck.  It collapsed with a CRUNCH, conceding instantly to the pressure of her tiny feet.

 

Her action brought the truck to a sudden halt, and its occupants were thrown forward. 

 

Vicky waited patiently for them to recover, only to yawn when they started firing their guns at her.  It was getting old.

 

She picked up the truck, feeling her muscles easily take on the several-ton-load, and tossed it back over the border.  The truck wobbled as it sailed through the air over the fence.  She had taken the time to shake the truck before hand, dislodging the annoying men and dumping them out on the ground in front of her.

 

Three of the four men received concussion-inducing blows the the head.  But on the fourth, she paused.  He had never fired a gun to her, never raised a hand whatsoever.  He seemed to be sizing her up, thoughtfully.

 

"Why?" Vicky heard herself ask him.  "Why do you risk getting arrested -- or killed -- to run these drugs?"

 

"Because-- my family."

 

"What to you mean 'your family'?"

 

"If I do not do this, the bandas -- the gangs -- will kill them.  And also, there are no jobs. All the jobs left when the gangs came.  I need money for my family.  I don't like doing this.  I have no choice."

 

The more Vicky heard about this stuff, the more complicated it got.  She exhaled and looked at Louisa.  "Nearly a hundred drug busts in the last two days and we still have no idea what the hell we're doing, do we?"

 

Louisa shrugged her shoulders.  "This shit's been going on since I was a kid here, Vicky.  It's not like we ever had a shot of ending it on our own."

 

Vicky took a moment to stare off into the distance.  Have faith in the people, Tamara had said to her.

 

"What do you think?" she asked, turning to the guy.  "How does this all end?  If I go down to Mexico, and declare war on the gangs, does this stop?"

 

He appeared to muster his courage. "No," he replied.  

 

"Oh really?"

 

"You Americans keep buying, and someone always selling.  Maybe it be a different someone.  But where money is, always someone to sell.  Maybe you arrest me, maybe you kill me.  But others still come."

 

The desert wind whipped through them as Vicky stood in silent thought.

 

"You got a plan, o' wise leader?" Louisa quipped.

 

"Busts along the border aren't enough.  We need to break up the centralized production and distribution operations.  Those are further south, and will require our coordination with Mexican authorities.  Go to Mexico City and start talking to the authorities there.  Maybe take Chad; he speaks Spanish.  But keep a close eye on him: the men are easy targets."

 

"And you, are you coming?"

 

Turning her head into the desert wind, Vicky shook her head.  "I'm giving myself a different job."

 

Sixty seconds later, Vicky was descending in front of the rehab clinic -- one that Ethan had earlier suggested she visit.  She knocked on the door, and had to wait for someone to buzz her in.

 

"Can I help you?" said a woman who came to the door.

 

"Yes," Vicky replied.  "I'm here to learn."