Ballistic

“So I am told that Gentry goes in the dirt. What the hell am I supposed to do, Court? I send Zack and the guys over to your place. I felt like shit about it, but I had my orders. Next thing I know you slaughtered your entire team.”

“I am familiar with the story.”

“All that shit ran downhill on my head. And now, here I am: fifty-one years old and assistant chief of station in fucking Haiti. There’s out to pasture, and then there’s assigned to the dark side of the moon. I hate the heat; I hate the disease, the bugs, the storms, the drugs; I hate every fucking bit of my life now. And it’s all because you could not be a good boy and just fucking die like a soldier!”

Louder and louder, spit flew from his puffy lips.

“You, you worthless piece of shit, ruined my fucking life!”

Carlos, the only Black Suit in the room, stepped forward. “Enough! The van is ready to return you to the park.”

Hanley looked at the Mexican for a moment as if he had forgotten there were others in the room with him. He put his hands up in apology. “Fine. Lo siento, amigo.” He turned back to Gentry. “I wish I could stay around and watch you die, you son of a bitch, but I have to go.” He turned away, and the Mexicans around him turned, too. Then he turned back to the prisoner once again. “A short farewell, a little saying I learned from my ancestors back in the old country.” He looked at Gentry and spoke slowly: “Tugo zakroi rot I derji ih za sheiu.”

Court’s sweat-soaked brow furrowed.

It was Russian.

Odd.

Matt Hanley’s family was Scottish.

Hanley turned towards the elevator, took two steps past the policemen, and just as he arrived flush with the Little Butcher’s table full of torture devices, he shot his left arm out and grabbed a long, thin scalpel.

FORTY

Carlos had turned towards the freight elevator; the federales had their hands off their weapons so they could replace the hood over Hanley’s face.

Surgical steel sparkled in the light of the bare bulb as the spike flashed through the air. Hanley plunged the blade into the neck of the Black Suit in front of him, perforating his carotid artery and causing blood to jet sideways across the room. As the narco grabbed at the pain, Hanley spun 180 degrees, towards the federales, and grabbed both of the smaller men by their ammo vests, turned them around, and shoved them with all his considerable size and might towards Court and the iron fence. The cops were taken completely by surprise, they stumbled headlong, slammed against the metal grating on either side of Gentry. Court used his outstretched hands, bound at the wrists, to take hold of each man. One by the collar of his uniform, the other by the sling of his rifle.

Hanley knocked the Little Butcher back away from the table; he then spun the dial on the electroconvulsive machine to the max. Gentry just had time to get his hand out and around the back of the neck of one federale, and immediately, the two men spasmed under the current of the car battery. The other cop tried to rush away from the fence but was caught by Gentry’s hold on his rifle sling, and the federale stumbled back on his heels, slammed into the metal, and made a connection with the voltage. He began writhing as well with the intense current running through his central nervous system.

The torturer’s apprentice had taken several spurts of arterial blood from the Black Suit to his face, causing him to spin away from the action and wipe his eyes. Finally, he turned back and pulled a weapon from under his apron. Hanley saw the threat and he stiffarmed the young man, pinned him up against the bloodstained wall, and yanked the small Argentine-made .380 automatic from the apprentice’s trembling hand. Matt turned the gun around, pressed it to the protege’s forehead, and shot him dead without hesitation.

Matt then fired twice into the ample gut of el Carnicerito, sending him down to the cold basement floor clutching his abdomen. Hanley turned the electricity dial back down, spun towards the ironwork and the three men there: one nude and shackled to the fence, the other two in SWAT gear and now dropping to the floor stunned and spent.

Matthew Hanley stood over the incapacitated federales and fired a round into each man’s head, killing them both.

Jerry Pfleger had dropped to the floor in the corner. His back was to the concrete wall next to the dead protege, blood splatters were painted across his sweaty white short-sleeved dress shirt like a tiedye design. His face was as white as his shirt had been ten seconds ago, and his eyes were open and blinking quickly. He stared at the blond-haired American in the center of the room.

The Mexicans were sprawled out on the floor in various unnaturally contorted positions. The Little Butcher’s apron had flipped up over his face. He was alive and bleeding heavily from the stomach.

Matthew Hanley flipped off the overhead light, shrouding the room in near complete darkness. The only faint light now was a dim glow from the stairwell. He then pulled a submachine gun from the neck of one of the dead federales, kneeling on the floor below Gentry to do so. He turned low in a crouch, pulled the charging handle back on the weapon, and aimed it at the stairs.

“How many?” he asked. He was all business, intense concentration preparing for the threat to come.

Gentry was barely conscious. That last jolt of electricity, administered by Hanley himself, had almost killed him. Still, he muttered a guess. “Don’t know. A couple of federal cops, maybe more.”

“Okay.”

Several sets of footsteps on the stairs, running down.

Hanley waited.

Court hung from his bindings, a spectator; he felt completely exposed.

Federal police in black appeared in the dim of the stairwell; Matt Hanley fired bursts into their legs to drop them, then more bursts into their faces and necks, hitting them above their body armor. Two men, three men down now. A fourth man took a round to the throat and stumbled on through the doorway before toppling in the middle of the room; his rifle flew from his hands and clanked across the concrete.

It bounced into the lap of Jerry Pfleger. When the embassy clerk recognized what it was, his eyes opened even wider, and he pushed the weapon off of him like it was a live rattlesnake. It landed at his feet, and he kicked it away frantically, his arms raised high.

He didn’t want anything to do with that rifle; he made it abundantly clear. He was not going to fight back. He did not want to give Hanley any reason to shoot him.

Hanley grabbed the new weapon and stepped into the stairwell. He neither heard nor saw anyone else.

As he returned to the torture chamber, he flicked the overhead light back on and the Little Butcher grunted. He held his bloody stomach with his fist, looked up at the armed American with eyes of fear and confusion.

“You need him for anything?” Hanley asked Gentry, motioning to the fat torturer with the muzzle of the MP5.

Gentry shook his head. “Nope.”

Without hesitation Hanley shot the man three more times in the chest, and his groans stopped.

After several seconds of quiet, Court said, “Thanks, Matt.”

Hanley reloaded the weapon with a fresh magazine taken off the chest of one of the dead federales. As he manipulated the magazine release to recharge the weapon he said, “Fuck you, Violator. I don’t like you much more than these assholes.”

“Okay.”

Hanley then began unscrewing the restraints on Gentry’s wrists. “Glad to see you didn’t bite your tongue off. I was worried you’d forgotten your Russian.”

“You told me to shut my mouth tight and to grab the men by the throat.”

“Neck, actually, but close enough.”

Hanley got both arm shackles removed then unfastened the ankle bindings. Court staggered forward, went