The second time I took a life it was more by luck than judgement, scrabbling around on the floor, slick with blood, struggling to free myself from a man who was throttling me. I was stabbing his leg as I passed out; he died before I woke up. But I remember how sickeningly tactile it was. Here I was sharing – causing! – the most important moment in this person's life, more intimate even than sex, and I didn't know anything about him. Not his name, his sexual orientation, footy team, nothing at all. His entire existence culminated in a meeting with me, and yet we were strangers.
After that my killing became more focused and deliberate, even clinical. I saw the confusion and pain on my next victim's face as my knife penetrated his heart. I knew him, so his death was more than just meaningless slaughter; I was aware who and what I was snuffing out. It made me feel unbearably sad and guilty.
And powerful.
Then there were those that I killed in the heat of battle, gone in a flash. They were barely even people, just objects, like cars, which I had to stop in order to prevent collision. Yet each of them was unique, identifiable, and known to someone, just not to me, their killer. I had complete power over them, but they never even saw my face.
That feeling of power grew in me with each death, like a sickness I couldn't control and wasn't sure I wanted to. Until Mac, who I didn't even kill.
It shames me more than I can say, but when I stood in front of Mac, preparing to put a bullet in his head, I felt a thrill of anticipation and excitement that transported me. It was only because I lingered in order to savour the moment that Green was able to shoot him instead.
Let me be clear: I didn't hesitate because I wanted to be merciful; I hesitated because I wanted the moment to last. I even got a hard on. I can't stand to think what that says about me.
And now I was watching another killer, one I had thought I knew better than anybody still living, plying his trade with cool efficiency, and I thought: 'Is that what I look like? Is that what I've become?'
Even with all that blood on my hands, the smooth, practised ease of my father's emotionless murdering shocked me. It shouldn't have. He was a soldier, after all. I knew he'd been in combat, I knew he'd killed people, just as he'd been trained to do. I knew who he was and what he did.
But seeing those hands, the ones that used to tickle me, throw me up in the air, lift me on to his shoulders on sunny country walks, coolly sliding a blade into the back of a man whose face he'd never seen, was a revelation. I realised three things in quick succession.
He was much better at this than me.
I had no idea who he really was.
And finally, if I got to know my murderous father, maybe it would help me understand his murderous son.
Our point of entry to the palace was the cell block. There were no prisoners in there any more, so it was unguarded. Then we were into the servants' passageway and safe in the dark, forgotten staircase. We soon came to the hidden door I had used to escape from my torturers the day before. On the other side was the vast room the general had taken as his office. The only problem was that we had no way of knowing who was in there.
There was nothing for it but to take the plunge, so David gently cracked the door open and peered through the tiny opening. There was nobody there, so he pushed the door open and ran, soft footed, to the main doors of the room. They stood ajar, and he looked through the gap then waved us out; there was nobody around. Everyone was too busy scouring the compound for us. This was the last place they'd be looking.
He gestured for me to watch the stairs, and waved Dad and Tariq across to search the room where I'd been tortured. There was a pool of congealed blood by the door, a memento of my most recent kill. There was a wide smear running to the balcony where the body had been dragged away and tossed over the railing to the ground below.
Tariq indicated that the room was clear. Dad went to the balcony to scan the area. David was already at the desk, hard at work placing the small block of C4 that he'd appropriated from stores on our journey here. I heard footsteps echoing through the hallway below and hissed at them to hurry. But David continued to work. The footsteps reached the stairs, and I hissed again, but David still stayed put. I ran across to him and grabbed his shoulder but he shrugged me off. I looked up at Dad, frantic, what do we do?
Dad ran around, grabbed my shoulder and dragged me towards the torture room. We ran inside and Tariq pushed the door almost closed behind us. Through the crack we could see David finish his handiwork and stand up, turning as if to leave. But then the main doors opened and there was his father, framed in the doorway.
'Ha,' said the general. 'You got balls, son.'
David said nothing. I could see he held the detonator in his left hand, his thumb on the small, shiny switch.
The general turned, said 'stay outside' to the men who had been escorting him, and closed the main doors behind him.
Father and son stood face to face for a minute before the elder man spoke.
'Bet you ten bucks I can put a bullet in your head before you press that button,' he said in a pally way, as if referring to an old shared joke.
'Bet you ten bucks you can't,' said David, with a wry smile.
But neither of them moved a muscle.
I went to push the door open, but my dad's hand on my shoulder stopped me.
'Let it play out,' he whispered. 'David can handle himself.'
I nodded, but Dad kept his hand on my shoulder as a gentle reminder of who was in charge.
'I remember the day you were born…' began the general.
'No,' interrupted David, shaking his head.
The general considered for a moment and then nodded, abandoning that approach.
'I agree,' he said. 'It's gone too far for that, hasn't it?'
'Yes, it has.'
The general shook his head in weary disbelief.
'Was it always going to end like this, do you think?'
'No. If things had stayed the way they were, we'd be eating Thanksgiving dinner with Mom and Sarah, fighting over the gravy.'
'But things didn't stay the same, did they?'
'No, they didn't. They never do.'
'I reckon that's true. I love you, son.'
I expected David to respond with 'I'm not your son' again, but this time he replied: 'I love you too, Dad.'
There was a brief pause, and then a blur of movement and sudden violence that I couldn't even process. There was a single shot and David was lying on the floor, his head at a terrible angle, glassy eyed, his limbs in spasm, a thick pool of blood spreading out from the back of his shattered skull.
My dad gasped, his fingers crushing my shoulder (thankfully not the one I'd recently dislocated, or I'd have yelped). I placed my hand over his and squeezed back.
General Blythe stood over the body of his dead son for a minute, silent, shoulders hunched. But there were no tears, not even a single sob. Eventually he drew himself back up to his full height and walked to the doors, pulling them open and gesturing wordlessly for a soldier to remove David's corpse.
When the mess was cleared away, the general was once again alone in his room with the doors closed. He sat heavily in his chair and swiveled to stare out at the rising sun.
Tariq and I both looked at Dad, guns tight in our grips. Dad nodded and we began to push open the door. Suddenly there was a shrill alarm. I felt a rush of adrenaline. Had we triggered it somehow?
But the general spun his chair so he had his back to us and the large flatscreen telly buzzed into life. That was where the sound had come from. Dad grabbed my shoulder and dragged me back, pulling the door almost closed again. I shrugged his hand off me, full of resentment, but resumed my previous position, watching the general as he began to talk to the man who had appeared on screen.
It was clearly a live feed, so some satellites must still be functioning up there somewhere. The man on the screen was old; seventy at least, with a liver spotted face, pallid, ghostly skin and a thin ring of white hair around his shiny bald pate. He was wearing a black suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, all immaculately pressed, and he was sitting in front of the stars and stripes. He was obviously indoors, but well lit, as if in a TV studio about to present
