'Showdown', Part 7: Extraction Point
by Jean
Walter Skinner had not achieved the exalted
status he nowheld on good looks and arm-wrestling manatees at
Sea World for donations to Big-Eyed Orphans, Inc. alone. Nor was
it his expeditious bravery such as biting through I-beams, saving
numerous cowering hostages held captive by berserk welders who
were actually *tired* of being forced to 'do it in all positions',
and certainly not because the FBI recruitment posters bearing
his back-lit Saran-wrapped torso had increased female enrollment
by six-figured exponentials due to women registering their daughters
at birth. It was due to the display of quick reflexes and hardened,
seasoned judgment in matters that would frighten most agents into
gibbering hysteria and thumb-sucking catatonia, though most of
us have learned to cut Mulder a little slack.
No, the AD had earned his reputation, impermeable to evil-minded
assault from all quarters, with the exception of oleaginous double
agents who insisted on fabricating gossip about the AD's preferences
in domestic livestock without mentioning that every one of those
heifers had been of age, were not transported across state lines,
that the AD never even *owned* a daiquiri-soaked salt lick, he
had been in Tierra del Fuego at the time, and that all bovine
are congenital liars anyway The AD would dismiss these minor harassments
nobly by reflecting on his public achievements which were manifold,
while dodging lustful crones hot on his trail.
Stories were still told in hushed admiration around the day-glo
lingerie dispenser at the Fun'n'Frilly snack bar in the FBI basement,
relating how Skinner had been observed digging his way out of
a missile silo with nothing but a swizzle stick while other agents
in a similar situation had annoyingly whined in offended petulance.
He he had bounced killer lasers off his reflective scalp when
the Space Shuttle re-installed gyros in its thruster controls
that had been repaired by the crew of Mir, leading to a first
strike against the Playgirl editorial offices instead of a powdered
seafood factory as planned. He saving the June issue, now in its
467th printing, due to the digital foldout of Skinner chinning
himself on a shower curtain rod with his hands shackled behind
his back. The apocryphal legend of the AD's presence at an undercover
bust of the nefarious illegal black-hooded rubber-suit export
brokerage, where all the evidence went missing, was a favored
tale, but nobody really wanted to connect the dots on that one,
Skinner bore his fame well, which brings us to the current point
in time, with his standing exposed and alone in a dark city arterial,
bereft of an escape route that would not endanger slumbering squeegee
men, or the lurking paparazzi which followed him everywhere like
a wriggling cloud of gnats, even to that embarrassing stake-out
where an unsuitably enthusiastic Mulder had been set to giggling
while reading an early edition of Barney's latest adventures,
alerting the perps to their imminent arrest, an explosive getaway,
and resulting in Mulder's receiving permanent steel-belted radial
impressions on his butt cheeks which he insisted upon displaying
proudly at each staff meeting, leading to a mass exodus of agents
led by Scully in sighing ennui.
At this point Skinner had only to flatten himself against a Freightliner
bumper until the last adoring creature disappeared over the horizon,
in order to make a dignified, relieved, and unaccosted departure
as he had been fortunate to accomplish countless times before,
but, in keeping with the numerous awkward events enacted during
this long night, the Fates were either out to lunch, or spreading
largesse elsewhere, such as upon the fleeing Krychek, whom Skinner
believed was still skittering along the pavement in fear as if
trying to lay asphalt with his navel.
As Skinner stood and prepared to belt his overcoat over his beatific
physique, the memory of his objective reasserted itself, and he
could not afford much down-time while Krychek remained a threat,
unfettered and at liberty to plow the hallowed ground of righteousness
in his metaphorical greasy-geared tractor, tilling the back nine's
placid sod into sandtraps with gibbering abandon and smug, slacker-garbed
pique.
Skinner believed deeply within his hot testosterone-steeped core
that malefactors would always be brought to justice, but just
as he was committing himself to this unseemly act of desperation,
his attention was deflected by a ratcheting rumble coming from
down the street, increasing in volume as a dark insectile apparition
approached him relentlesslywith obscure intent, like a rain-coated
panhandler detecting a chinless rube just off the bus.
As Skinner watched with wariness, what emerged from the gloom
gave him momentary pause, for it was one of the ubiquitous black
helicopters, notorious with Pentacostals everywhere, and it was
bearing down on him, dangling a rope ladder, then hovering above
the AD, inviting rescue though also ominous and palpable danger.
He did not hesitate in grabbing this cryptic lifeline to, if not
safety, at least remoteness from destined incapacitating fondling.
At this point Skinner was not going to indulge in haggling, and
clenched the offered rung, his forearms locked and swelling with
vein-corded glory, as the chopper flung itself upward into the
impenetrable night, the backwash spinning the blue-hairs and plastering
them onto the side of a dumpster, and lurched Skinner off the
ground with enough force to evert a colon.
The chopper then leapt eastward, and slowly the lashing ladder
was reeled in, but not quick enough to prevent the AD, flapping
like a windsock, from having his attire ripped from his massive
body in the turbulence until only his starched snowy white collar
and burgundy Ralph Lauren Corinthian leather tube socks remained
to clothe him against the elements. Whoever the pilot was, however,
did not possess advanced aeronautical skills, wove drunkenly through
town, and turned Skinner into a human wrecking ball, as the flying
AD's velocity and rocklike body defaced public marble edifices,
center punched the Washington Monument, which has now become an
advertisement for the tongue piercing industry, was swept through
the boy's section of a suburban K-Mart, where he picked up some
pre-teen Speedos for Mulder, and finally out to sea where idle
fishing trawlers observed this phenomenon of aerial streaking
as perhaps some sort of reconnaissance mission in preparation
for invasion by armies of urologists.
Throughout this ordeal the AD remained stoic, pleased to observe
that he would require only a moderate slab of whale blubber to
soothe the groin chafing, at the same time he was calculating
which aims and resolutions presented themselves, based upon whether
this somewhat eccentric and anonymous rescuer was friend or foe.
Skinner, of course,was not overly concerned, as decades of training
equipped him to prevail over most random contingencies, including
the time that editors of GQ and Esquire had buried him alive,
encased in a block of cement under Mount Rushmore for causing
male undie models everywhere to feel like eunuchs.
In fact, Skinner was actually in a state of aroused excitement,
causing the chopper to drop like a stone for fifty feet because
of the sudden weight increase, which inconvenienced the AD not
at all as, somewhere over the Azores, he was finally spooled into
the belly of the aircraft where he could regain control of the
situation and either reward or punish this unknown operative like
a hay combine through a pet store. Skinner gained purchase and
steadied himself on the deck, a gleaming colossus rampant in twinkling
starshine and instrument panel lights, the glow of which also
illuminated the pilot in a queasy greenish hue well-suited to
the moods of both men as they gazed upon each other in aggregate
animosity.
Recoiling like a downhill skier navigating through a grapple museum,
Skinner's blood simultaneously ran cold and boiled over in rage
and recollection.......
To be continued.....