by Mike Leon
The lizard slowly turns its head up toward Walter. That got the thing’s attention.
“A wife and three children, I believe,” Zap answers.
“Find them and bring them here,” Walter says, never taking his eyes away from his prisoner. Novak tries to hide his concern, but Walter sees through the ruse. He sees fear.
“Let’s bring them down here and find out what’s hiding under their skin.”
Walter leaves the cell seething with hate. Zap follows for a bit, but then goes off on his own to start preparations for his mission to Ohio. Kill Team Two should have no trouble collecting Novak’s reptilian offspring. That does not worry him. What does worry him is how the inner circle of the group will react when they learn he has ordered the assassination of one of their own.
Victoria does not take it well at all.
“What do you mean you killed him?” Victoria Russell screeches. She’s wearing some bright orange rescue jumper pants over the dress that Sid shredded on the plane.
“They set us up!” Walter shouts back. “The bastards have been running us in circles from the beginning. First they put us on Kill Team One. Now this.”
“This? You killed Krupp and a hundred people with a bazooka!”
“Stinger SAM,” corrects Sid Hansen. An hour ago, Walter ordered him to stand here and wait for Victoria’s chopper to come in. Now he is regretting that decision.
“You shut right the fuck up,” Walter yells back at Sid. “You saw that he wasn’t a lizard and you killed him anyway!”
“You ordered me to bring you his head.”
“Oh. Nice, Walter,” Victoria jabs sarcastically. “Fucking fantastic.”
“I’ve had about enough of you, kid!” Walter shouts at Sid. “Get out of my face!”
Behind them, the black chopper she came in on slowly powers down its rotors. Ahead of them, the Graveyard building looms like a massive tombstone. Walter watches angrily as Sid slinks away into the building, a rifle still slung over his shoulder.
The kid is a headcase. Walter doesn’t doubt he can shred an infantry column all by himself, but what good is that if he has no common sense? It’s like whatever Van did to that kid turned him into more of an attack dog than a person. He’s a tool of war, not a human being, and it is equal parts pitiful and frightening. But then there was that shit about not wanting to board the plane. Van didn’t teach him that. The boy is unstable and Walter doesn’t like it. It might be a good idea to keep him at arm’s length.
“What the fuck, Walter? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“We had good intel!”
“Great intel, obviously! And when were you planning to come to the group with it?”
“He had you on that plane. We had to act quickly.”
“They’re going to want your head for this!”
“Not if they don’t find out about it.”
“You just killed the most powerful man in the world! How the fuck would they not find out about it?”
“We don’t tell them.”
“No. I’m not lying for you.”
“You don’t have to. The plane’s at the bottom of the ocean. Only you, me, and a couple of my operators saw it go down. It will be hours, maybe days before they even realize Krupp is missing.”
“You think they don’t already know? Someone had to have eyes on that plane. The thing was full of prostitutes.”
“Listen to me, Vicky! Eli was right! He found out about these things and they killed him for it. Someone in the inner circle is one of them. I’m sure of it. And until we find out which one, everyone is in danger, starting with the other members.”
“And I believe you, but,” she starts to say, but Walter stops her short.
“I need you to help me bring the group together so we can check them.”
“What?”
“If we quarantine the members, the reptoid will have to show.”
“Do you hear yourself right now? This is insanity.”
“It’s not. If they don’t eat human meat, their skin starts to fall off. All we have to do…”
“All we have to do is convince the secret rulers of a global shadow government to let you keep them in a cage for a couple of days.”
“Not in a cage. I have a place in mind.”
Go fuck yourself.
You want to enslave everyone.
That slaughterhouse was real progressive.
So if I hang up this phone right now, and call off all my operators, that will be the end of it? I’ll never see you again?
STOPPING POWER
Cairo is another hell hole. This one is even worse than the others because the fucking sand niggers are packed into the city like sardines. Walking through the streets is more like swimming through a sea of diaper heads than actually walking anywhere. The smell is abominable. He thinks the humidity makes it worse. Victor wants to murder every single one of them he passes. He resists the urge – for now.
The city lies near the tip of the Nile Delta and is rife with plant life, unlike the hundreds of miles of waste they had to travel through to get here. There are trees in the city and patches of grass where the ground has not been paved over.
Niggerfucker brought him here because, in the chain-swinging psychopath’s own words, “I know a guy.” The big ugly bastard walks ahead of Victor at a snail’s pace through the crowd. If they get separated here, they will have to meet back at their designated spot, a building with a minaret that Niggerfucker pointed out earlier. Neither of them has a cell phone or radio or any other way to contact the other, so that would be time consuming. Victor does not like wasting time that he could spend killing. Thankfully, he is a difficult man to shake, even in a crowd like this.
They reach their destination, a brown building with thatched wooden windows and enclosed balconies that protrude from the brick, without any trouble. Avoiding the front door, Niggerfucker leads Victor around to the side where they traverse a narrow alley that seems to have no end. They snake their way along that alley for fifty meters before Niggerfucker stops and knocks on a graffiti covered wooden door with a small slat at waist level.
“Try not to kill nobody in here,” Niggerfucker says. “You want to make a good impression.”
Victor rolls his eyes, annoyed. He does not enjoy diplomacy. Matters of contention should be settled with knives or bullets. Nothing else really means anything anyway.
The slat slides open and the double barrels of a shotgun poke Niggerfucker in the crotch.
“What do you want?” demands a cranky, and shrill voice in English.
“I’m here to see the Philistine,” Niggerfucker proclaims.
“What’s the password?”
“I’m gonna take that shotgun, blast yer feet off, pin you to the floor and shit into yer mouth if ya don’t let me in. That’s the password.”
“That’s not the password.”
“Do I gotta repeat myself?”
“Nobody gets in without the password.”
“I do.”
“Do I gotta repeat myself?” replies the cranky man, in imitation of what Niggerfucker just said. “Nobody.”
“Password is tabasco,” Niggerfucker begrudgingly says.
“There you go. See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“It’s a dumb password.”
In a second, the shotgun has been withdrawn and the door is swinging open. A man with a week’s scruff, shaggy hair, and a tattered trench coat stands on the other side of the door. He is bulky and tall, chest puffed proudly.
“Who’s your friend?” he says, eyeing Victor up and down. Victor puts his hand on the 9mm pistol concealed in his waist band.
“We ain’t got time for this,” Niggerfucker says. “Where’s the Philistine?”
“Upstairs. Follow the screams.”
Victor steps into the room, a tiny kitchen, behind Niggerfucker. He maps his surroundings in an instant and notes escape routes, weapons, potential weapons, and targets.
There is a countertop covered in soda cans and cereal boxes. At a table nearby, three men play a game with playing cards. The man who answered the door props his shotgun in a corner and rejoins them. A tiny black and white television flickers with some sort of Arab game show.
Niggerfucker motions to follow and he walks down a hallway to a staircase that is spotted with stains from blood and vomit. A beer bottle lies on its side about halfway up, its spilled contents still pooling on the steps below. The two of them move up the stairs.
At the top of the first flight, Victor first hears the screams. He has heard many screams before, and these are hardly among the worst. Though they are different than most of the others. There is artificial quality he does not recognize. As they continue up more flights of stairs, the screams grow louder, until they have gone up five floors and the noise is just on the other side of a closed door.
Niggerfucker pushes the door open. Beyond is a small room, carpeted and cluttered with garbage. There is a twin mattress, stacked haphazardly on top of another twin mattress in the middle of the room. The source of the screams is a woman with long legs and smooth tan skin covered in sweat. Her face is covered by a black veil. She lies on her back atop the bed, her legs high in the air as a pudgy man with dark hair fucks her. He is short and hairy. He wears nothing but a spiked collar like a dog and holds a riding crop in one hand which he uses to slap her. She shrieks each time he thrusts into her, and every fourth or fifth thrust is punctuated with a “Fuck! Fuck me!”
Victor notices a strange protrusion of bright green beads dangling from the pudgy man’s ass like a tail. He is at a loss to explain this. The rest of the scene makes perfect sense to him.
“Philistine,” Niggerfucker grunts.
The pudgy man turns, startled. He doesn’t stop fucking, but he does smile.
“Wait in the room across the hall,” he says. “There’s beer in the fridge.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Niggerfucker answers, and he’s already on his way back out the door. Victor follows him.
“We are wasting our time here,” Victor tells his new accomplice, when they are back out in the hallway. “This one is fat, and easily taken unaware.”
“The Philistine ain’t the fat fuck. The Philistine’s the girl.”
“A woman?” Victor snarls. “I’ve never met a woman that was good for more than fucking.”
Niggerfucker swings open the door across the hall and reveals a small unkempt room. There are some old chairs with damaged upholstery, another card table, a refrigerator, and a television. He finds the refrigerator handle and pulls the door open to expose several large twenty four packs of beer in a three different varieties. He takes his time selecting one of them.
“This ain’t the regular sort of twat you plant yer dick in. The Philistine is an arms dealer, and she does the regular shit, supplyin’ rebels with guns and missiles and then sellin’ them out to the regime, you know, playin’ both sides. Thing is, I happen to know she’s holdin’ on to more than just a few AKs if ya know what I mean. She might have just what we’re lookin’ for.”
“I think you’re wasting my time. I don’t like wasting time. I like wasting people.”
“Remember I told you I ended up this way smokin’ some bad government shit? The Philistine’s the one that made it. Lots of other shit too. Nerve gas, virus bombs, stuff nobody even knows about. You ever heard of Revenant?”
Of course Victor has heard of Revenant. He used it on his knives when he was working with the kill team. Still, he only stares back blankly. There is no reason for Niggerfucker to know what he knows.
“It’s a nerve agent way deadlier than anything else out there. It’s not even supposed to exist. She designed it. Fucking genius. Then the plane hit the Pentagon and she was unlucky enough to be in the building right then. Burned a bunch of her face off.”
Niggerfucker downs an entire can of beer in one lengthy gulp. He crushes the can on his forehead and tosses it to the floor.
“What’s she doing in this Arab hell hole?”
“I told you. Playin’ both sides. She just wants to see as many of ’em kill each other as she can. Nobody hates Muslims more than the Philistine, ’cept you probably.”
“You forgot about the concealment it provides me,” the Philistine answers. She stands in the doorway behind them, wearing a grimy purple robe. Her face is still covered by the veil. “There aren’t too many other places you can walk around in a mask and not stick out.”
“Why do you need the mask?” Victor asks.
“You don’t want to see what’s under the mask.”
“I promise I’ve seen a lot worse, lady.” Victor grins. If the Philistine is smiling, Victor can’t tell.
“We haven’t been properly introduced. Who’s your friend, Niggerfucker?”
“You’re gonna love this,” Niggerfucker says. “This here is Kill Team One Junior.”
“The legendary super soldier? Why should I believe that?”
“Fucker took out a White Army division with me.”
“That proves little. We both know there are… things that could do that.”
“I found him tracking Kill Team Three. He was with them for a while.”
“Is that so?”
Victor nods. He’ll see where this is going.
“Then we just might be able to authenticate him after all,” she says. “Follow me.”
The Philistine waves her hand and walks out into the hallway. Niggerfucker shrugs and follows along. The three of them head down the stairs to the floor below, where the Philistine knocks on a closed door. There is no answer to her rapping. She pushes the door open and walks into a darkened room, now with a rectangle of bright light coming in from the hallway. There are no furnishings except a flimsy steel table and a few folding chairs. The room is green with the feint glow of a computer monitor. Something moves in the dark.
It is a man behind a small laptop computer atop the metal table, short and scrawny, he has dyed black hair and huge black leather platform boots over his shiny leather pants. His eyes are encircled with black make-up and he wears a bulky pair of head phones over his ears. Victor recognizes him in a flash. Úlfhednar.
The werewolf becomes a grey-furred hulk baring a drooling maw of canine teeth in the time it takes to stand up from his seat.
“How ’bout that? A fuckin’ werewolf.” Niggerfucker chuckles, without turning to see Victor with his knife out.
“You,” Victor says. “What are you doing here?”
The werewolf growls out single words with considerable difficulty.
“WHAT? ARE. YOU. DOING. HERE?”
“Holy shit. It talks,” Niggerfucker mutters.
“Make your move, furball,” Victor says. “I’ll cut you up just like last time.”
“Behave yourselves,” shouts the Philistine. “I have no doubt you two can bring the whole building down, but the last thing I need is the attention of Egyptian security forces.”
“Why is he here?” Victor demands. “The last time I saw that mongrel piece of shit he tried to mow me down with a burp gun.”
“LIAR!!!” the werewolf grunts.
“Oh. He’s right,” Victor says, grinning like a madman. “The last time I saw him, I was cutting him to pieces with my knife.”
“The Norwegian is my guest,” the Philistine replies. She yells at Úlfhednar. “You sit down.”
The werewolf does as she commands, almost immediately. His giant form melts back into that of a small Norwegian goth rocker and he eyes Victor with glaring hatred from that metal folding chair.
“Well, this answers all of my questions,” she says. “What did you say your name was?”
The Philistine commands the werewolf to “stay” and they follow her back down to the kitchen on the first floor, where she makes some coffee for herself. Victor is offered a seat, which he does not accept. Niggerfucker is all too happy to collapse on top of an old wooden chair in the corner.
The card
players are introduced as Jenkins, Killa, Tim and Chuck. Chuck is the one with the shotgun from the door. Victor already doesn’t like him. Jenkins is a skinny man with brown hair, wearing a bathrobe. Killa is a short man with bulging muscles. He sits in the corner and doesn’t talk much. The last one, Tim, is a little taller than average and has shaggy red hair. He makes a point of introducing himself as a former Delta Ranger.
Niggerfucker tells them how he met Victor in the streets of Mecca, and by now all of them have heard about the lunatic who crashed a plane into the city. The whole world knows about that, even if the Western half doesn’t seem to care much. The Philistine is thrilled to learn Victor is said lunatic.
“Why did you do it?” she asks, with a gleeful fascination, like a journalist that just fell into the scoop of the century.
“I thought I could kill them and their god.”
“Lofty goal,” the Philistine says.
Victor only grins that terrible grin again.
Something in the way she looks at him then says that she gets it. She doesn’t ask about that anymore. She only smiles back.
That’s when Chuck pipes up.
“And why come here then? What do you want with us?” he says.
Victor looks at him like a pest and little more.
“Because Niggerfucker seems to think your boss can help us,” Victor answers.
“Help you with what?” the Philistine asks.
“I’m forming a new Kill Team Three, to finish what I started – to kill all the Muslims.”
“Kill all the Muslims?” Chuck says. “How? That’s like a third of the people on the planet.”
“We will need some kind of weapon to do it. I’m thinking nuclear.”
Chuck bursts into laughter.
Victor raises an eyebrow and smiles. Chuck keeps laughing.
“You’re going to steal nuclear bombs?” Chuck continues laughing even harder than before. “Just you and Niggerfucker? And you want us to come along too? Like what? We just walk into Russian missile command and slide a note across the counter? I have a gun. Put all the ICBMs in the bag.”
