pain in the ass. Logan shouted, “Shut the fuck up! I’ll be in there and beat your ass soon as I’m through with this little bitch!” The pounding continued, even harder.
And still the girl just lay there, moaning, refusing to help even though he had total control over her worthless body!
Then Logan, still naked, went into the other room, where the general was handcuffed to the steel frame of a cot. Middleton’s eyes were filled with fury at having to sit there helplessly while a young woman was torn apart.
“You got a problem? Kickin’ on the wall like that?” Logan asked with a sneer.
“You sick shit.” Middleton spat on the floor in disgust. “You’re going to die under my knife!” He wore a loose and dirty Arab robe, was totally under Logan’s control, and yet still was making threats.
“Assholes like you got me kicked out of the Teams,” Logan said, squatting down beside Middleton. “I expect that we are going to get permission soon to blow your ass away. I’ll enjoy it.” He rolled Middleton over, grabbed the little finger of his left hand, and bent it back until it broke.
The general exhaled a sharp groan, then sucked up the rest of the pain, refusing to give Logan the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. When the sharp wave of having a bone snapped ebbed, he glared at the big man. “That changes nothing, you psycho.”
“Don’t judge me, dickhead. You’ve got nine more fingers I can break before I start on the toes.” He left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Logan was washing up in the small, stinking bathroom when Jimbo Collins returned. The water had cooled his body and the demons within.
Collins called out, “Vic? You in there?”
Logan walked back into the main room. “Well?” He was wiping himself with a towel.
“The frog had it right. A grenade apparently was used first, and there was a bunch of brass all over the place. M-16 cartridges. I found tracks of the motorcycle for about a hundred meters on the other side of the checkpoint. The runner took those Syrian dudes out without hardly slowing down.”
“Okay.” Logan sat down and added the checkpoint incident to his report, then hit the transmit button. The names and the details of what happened before dawn near the little town of Sa’ahn zipped into the morning sky and were relayed by satellite to a computer that was waiting far, far away.
Collins tossed his weapon aside and kicked off his boots. “Say, Vic. It’s gonna take some time for me to finish the video. How ‘bout you let me have another piece of that kid first? We’ll probably be leaving soon anyway.”
“Be my guest, Collins,” Logan replied with a sweep of his arm toward the bedroom door and a dark laugh. “And when you finish screwing that dead pussy, you can feed and water the general.”
“She’s dead?”
Logan grinned, his eyes almost sparkling. “Little whore just laid there like a pillow. No enthusiasm at all. The scrawny bitch didn’t earn her life.”
Jimbo Collins looked into the bedroom. The girl and the bed were covered in blood. This was not the first time that he had thought there was something really wrong with Logan, but it was wise to keep that thought to himself. A few more hours and he probably would never see the asshole again. Concentrate on the money, not the corpse. “Good thing we got dirt floors,” Collins remarked as he turned to his camera equipment. “We can bury her right here, then burn this shit-hole to the ground.”
CHAPTER 24
THE ASSHOLE OF THE WORLD sounded like a pig going after slops, snorting in his pleasure, so she just let her mind drift that way. Sprawled in the pigpen, down in the muck, a worthless piece of pork wallowing in a place where feelings were meaningless and the next “oink” meant only that she was still alive to hear it. A surge, heat, a final groan, and her father released her wrists and rolled off, spent. “I’m going downtown,” the Asshole muttered, wiping himself on her bunny sheets.
Usually she curled into a fetal position for a while, safe in her happy place, a pretend enchanted castle, surrounded by good friends and fire-breathing dragons that protected her. Only after an hour or so would she return to the real world of fear and shame and hate and get cleaned up before her mother came home from her late shift as a waitress. On that final night, however, Ruth Hazel exhaled a big sigh and headed for the hot shower and sweet bath soaps and freedom. From her dresser, she removed the tight one-piece black swim team suit she wore for school meets, stretched into it, and then put on old jeans with torn knees, a bulky San Diego State University sweatshirt, and jogging shoes. Out the door and down the hall to her parents’ room, where the Asshole of the World, the gun nut, kept all those weapons loose in the closet. When she was small, before the molestation got really serious, he had taught her how to shoot, thinking that a girl enjoyed the explosions. Respect a weapon, he said. Guns can hurt you if you’re not careful. No shit, Pops. She grabbed the Ruger.22, made sure it had a full ten- round magazine, tucked it into her waistband, and walked out of the house to change her future. One of them, either herself or the Asshole of the World, would not be coming back.
She walked along the beach from the trailer park to Oceanside in the early darkness, thinking she could see his footprints, since he always came this way. He walked because he had been picked up too many times for driving drunk. On the edge of the seedy downtown area, Ruth Hazel found a dumpster in an alley directly across the street from the Asshole’s favorite bar, a run-down strip joint, and she sat on the concrete in the shadows, crossing her legs and listening to the traffic on the street and the rumble of the surf. He staggered out two hours later, alone. Either he had run out of money or had been thrown out again. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Oink.
He ambled down the sidewalk and cut through a vacant lot to the high, dry ground of the beach. She followed his wavering silhouette against the starry night as the waves nibbled and sloshed at the sand about forty yards away. The tide was coming in. Not a soul in sight. Ruth Hazel pulled out the Ruger and began a little jog that closed the space between them in only a few steps. She stopped and took a firing stance, both palms around the grip like he had taught her. “Daddy?” she called in her little-girl voice as she snapped off the safety.
The Asshole of the World turned. The first bullet caught him in the stomach, but he was a big man, and a single.22 shot was not much more than a hard punch to the gut, not enough to put him down. The other six shots went into the chest, careful shots, one after another, and sprawled him on the sand like a beached porpoise. Ruth Hazel stepped closer. She saw recognition in his eyes, then horror as she deliberately aimed the Ruger at his crotch and fired. He screamed. She put the last two bullets into his eyes.
She rolled him onto his side and snatched the wallet from his back pocket, put the pistol back into her waistband, and jogged smoothly away down the beach. About a mile later, she shucked off her bloody clothes and swam through the surf, fighting stroke after stroke to get past the steep slant where the water went deep and the currents were crazy. Treading water, she pulled the pistol and the wallet from within her stretchy bathing suit and dropped them. As the items settled to the bottom of shifting sand, Ruth Hazel went into an easy butterfly kick and let the waves carry her to the beach. She walked home, her feet light on the sand. Another hot shower, stain remover on the blood spots on the jeans and sweatshirt, and those went into the washing machine. Ruth Hazel was drying her hair with a big blue towel, watching TV and eating popcorn, when her mother came home. “Hi, Mom!” she called.
The small woman who had lived with the beatings for years cast her worried eyes around the mobile home, puzzled as to why Ruth Hazel was in such a good mood. “Is your father here?”
“No. He was in for a little while after work but then went out again a few hours ago. Come on and sit with me, Mom. This is a hilarious movie. Have some popcorn.”
“Have you done your homework?” Doris Reed put down her purse and went to the sofa and smiled at her daughter. So much happiness! She seemed to glow.
“Yes, Mom. I did everything I had to do.”
