The Missionary

Pipes, syringes, joint roaches, and half-empty bottles of booze littered the table. There was only one man in the room, though, sitting on a chair facing away from Stone. His head leaned back, and he was making small groaning noises. A wet sucking sound told Stone what was happening.

Casting his gaze around the room, Stone saw a small folding knife on the table beside a hunk of wood that was being skillfully whittled into the likeness of a bull. He crept into the room, snatched the knife off the table and unfolded it partway, waiting to open it the rest of the way so the click didn’t give him away. The man in the chair groaned, long and loud, and Stone used the cover of the noise to snap the blade open.

It was a tiny knife, the blade no more than two or three inches wide, but it was better than nothing. He tested the blade against his thumb, and found it razor sharp, probably kept so by the owner. He took small, silent steps until he stood behind the thug. The man’s groans were growing louder, and he was starting to move his hands and hips in time with his groans.

Stone could now see over his victim’s shoulder. A blonde head bobbed, small, pale, dirty white hands moving below her lips. Her eyes flicked up, saw Stone, and she faltered in her rhythm. He shook his head, displaying the knife, and she only blinked, resumed her attentions. The man began to mumble, repeating a single syllable, “oo, oo, oo,” yes, yes, yes. He gripped a handful of blond hair in his fist and started shoving down, ignoring the girl’s whimper and gag.

Stone brought the knife around, moving slowly, found his target. Drawing a deep breath, he struck just as the man groaned a final time, jabbing the point of the small knife into the thug’s windpipe and twisting, sawing. The thug thrashed, and the girl fell backward, semen dripping down her chin. Blood sprayed over her as she cowered, clapping hands over her eyes. Stone sliced again, widening the hole he’d made, then slid the knife point between his victim’s ribs and into his heart. The thrashing stopped, but thick ribbons of blood continued to pour from the gaping, ragged throat wound, down over the man’s belly and legs and onto the floor. Blood covered Stone’s hand, wet and warm and sticky.

He wiped his hand on his shirt, and then knelt beside the cowering girl. “Hey,” he whispered. “Stay here, okay?”

“Was? Ich spreche kein Englisch.” Her voice was tiny, hesitant.

Stone recognized the German, but didn’t speak it. “Stay,” he whispered again, moving his flattened palm toward the floor. The girl nodded, scrambling farther away from the dead man, away from his red-painted front and limp, bared manhood.

Stone moved to the next doorway, wondering where Cervantes kept finding these mazes of interconnected shanties. Maybe he made them, cutting holes in walls and shoring up ceilings, evicting the residents. He peered around the opening, saw an empty room, and another beyond that. Slow, silent steps took him from room to room, following the faint echo of male voices, laughing.

He stopped at doorless entry way, watching shadows move, hearing voices speak. Stone was too keyed up and focused to bother translating, but his brain supplied snatches of words: “she didn’t like it…won’t hurt her price at all…”

Something gave him away. A shuffled foot, a too-loud breath. Something, it didn’t matter what. Cervantes’ voice halted, and his face filled the shadows in front of Stone.

“Ah, da American soldier. I wondered if you join us.” He grinned wickedly and gestured with the barrel of his pistol for Stone to follow him.

Surreptitiously folding the knife and dropping it in his pocket, Stone followed Cervantes into the room, the largest one yet, lit by several more of the camping lanterns. There were three other men in the room, each armed and sitting at a folding table with several kilo bricks of marijuana in the center, each of them pinching out small amounts into plastic bags, weighing, adding or subtracting until they reached the proper weight.

There were three doors: one led back the way Stone had come, one seemed to lead outside, and another was closed.

“You kill a lot of my guys,” Cervantes noted in a conversational voice.

“What did you expect? That I’d just let you take her and get away with it?” Stone kept his hand out of his pocket, but he was planning out his movements: reach into his pocket and unfold the knife while he was lunging, go for the windpipe, or the femoral artery. He’d take a bullet or two, probably, but he didn’t see any other way around it. He had to take out Cervantes. He slowed his breathing, tensed and coiled his muscles, readying for the pounce.

Cervantes was eyeing Stone with a speculative look in his eye. “I tink I recognize you. You come after my operation some year or two ago. But I ambush you. Kill many of your stupid American friends. I remember you, yeah.” He slid the rack on his pistol and touched the cold O to Stone’s cheek. “You got away den. Not dis time, asshole.”

Stone smirked, a cold, arrogant smile that was a lie to cover the fear in his gut. “Yeah, probably not. You can try, though.”

A fist knocked on the door to the outside, drawing Cervantes’ attention for a split second. It was all Stone needed. His hand flashed up, knocking the pistol barrel away. His knee rose to slam into Cervantes’ kidney, and then Stone snatched the pistol away. Cervantes stumbled, gasping and clutching his side. The men dividing the marijuana turned to see Stone cupping the pistol in the Weaver Stance; BLAM—BLAM—BLAM. Three down, holes in heads; desperation lent Stone unerring accuracy. Cervantes threw himself backward, through the doorway from which Stone had come. Cervantes must have had a spare gun, because gunfire roared and bullets spat, missed, buzzing like bees past Stone’s ear. Cervantes scrambled to his feet and lurched to the right, through another doorway, and Stone’s answering rounds dug into the dirt at his feet.

Stone followed Cervantes, moving sideways through the door, sacrificing speed for caution. His ears ringing from the deafening gunfire, he heard only his own breathing, muffled huffing as he scuffed from door to door, sweeping corner to corner. He heard a door open somewhere, but he was disoriented and couldn’t locate the source. The rooms were all dark, and Stone had no light source. He should have brought a lantern, as unwieldy as it would have been. Better than blind in the darkness, where every shadow could hide Cervantes.

He crept through another room, feeling the tension creep up his spine with every step he took. His instincts jangled, the intangible warning sign that something was about to happen. Just before he’d jumped out of the back of a cargo plane for his first combat mission, his CO had told him to always, always listen to his instincts. The tighter your asshole puckers, the lower you should duck. 

Stone’s asshole was puckered into a knot, so he ducked, dropping to his belly. Muzzle burst flashed overhead, and he rolled, firing upward. A grunt told him he’d hit something, but then gunfire blasted again, and a kiln-hot hammer of pain hit his thigh. He rolled away, hit a wall, then felt something hard against the back of his head.

“Got’chu now.” Cervantes’ voice was strained. “Stand up. Slowly.”

Stone couldn’t have stood up quickly even if he’d wanted to. He leaned against the wall and forced himself upright, teeth grinding. Cervantes grabbed him and shoved him toward the dim light a few rooms away. Stone stumbled, caught the door frame in order to remain upright. Back into the room where he’d first encountered Cervantes, the dead men slumped over, bleeding into the piles of green. Cervantes, bleeding from a deep gouge along his cheek, and now missing his left earlobe, kicked a dead man off a chair and shoved Stone into it, then cast around the room for something to tie him up with. Stone’s bullet had nearly killed Cervantes, missing his brain by less than half an inch but ‘nearly’ wasn’t close enough.

Two of the dead men wore belts, and Cervantes knelt to unbuckle one, keeping an eye and his pistol trained on Stone. While Cervantes’ attention flickered to his attempts to free the belts, Stone fished the small knife out of his pocket and stuffed it into his combat boot. Cervantes wrapped one belt around Stone’s midsection and pulled it tight, pinioning his arms against his sides and his body to the chair. The other belt went around his wrists, binding them together. It was sloppy, but effective. It wouldn’t hold him long, but it would slow him down enough now that Cervantes had more of an upper-hand.

“And now, I kill you slowly. Before dat, I tink I fuck your girlfriend while you watch.” Cervantes went to the closed door that led into the shanty-maze. Stone felt panic turn his blood to ice as Cervantes strode into the next room.

A moment later, Cervantes screamed, “Where da fuck she go?”

Hope swelled in Stone’s belly, but he kept his expression neutral as Cervantes stormed past him.