El Compo’s eyes had swollen shut, so he could not see what made Cantrell squeal. The Eagle took a scalpel from one of the steel tables next to El Compo’s gurney and slowly cut away his eyelids and all the flesh around the eyes, exposing the eyeballs. Cantrell screamed as he watched El Compo struggle with what little strength he had and let out howls of agony as the Eagle cut away the flesh around his eyes.
The Eagle stepped back from El Compo, so he could see his fate, and he writhed and screamed against the restraints as the Eagle wrapped his wrists and moved the cherry picker over and lowered the hook and chain for the unit down to his chest. The man moved his head from side to side and looked down at the steel hook on his chest. It was impossible to make out a facial expression with his eyelids and surrounding tissue removed. El Compo could only stare as the Eagle put drops into his eyes, so they would not dry out.
The rear of the hook had been sharpened razor thin. The front of the hook, where the straps went to hold the body’s weight, was solid and rounded. The Eagle turned the hook to the razor side and said, “It just isn’t fair that you only got a few days of torture for all the harm and pain you caused.” He slid the hook into the hole where Mark’s manhood had been, and with the remote units he retracted the chain. It hooked into El Compo’s pelvis, and he let out a scream as the hook slowly moved up from his pelvis through his abdomen stopping at his thorax. Blood was running out of the incised wound, and his gut was splitting open from the incision. The Eagle grabbed an oscillating saw with a rounded end and jammed it into El Compo’s lower thorax and sawed through the breastbone, stopping as the blade cut through the top of the thorax. The Eagle moved the hook and with slow, steady persistence pulled the hook up the sawed incision until El Compo was split from his pelvis to his throat.
El Compo passed out a few times, but the Eagle kept giving him shots of adrenaline and stimulants that shocked him awake. “I don’t want you to miss any of this, Mark. You have earned all of it,” the Eagle said as he placed the hook through El Compo’s wrapped hands. “I don’t want to lift you off the gurney here like I would usually do. All of your innards will fall all over my floor, and I don’t want that.” The Eagle moved the gurney and the cherry picker over next to the meat grinder. He started the blades then took El Compo’s feet in one hand and the remote for the cherry picker in the other and lifted his body high enough to be over the grinder’s hopper. The Eagle slowly moved Mark’s feet over the unit and yelled to El Compo over the sound of the grinder, “There. Now all of you will go into the machine.” He released the legs, and El Compo swung out over the meat grinder. His midsection split from the weight of his unrestrained organs, and his intestines spilled down into the grinder.
El Compo’s stare was all he had left as the Eagle slowly lowered him into the grinder. His head moved from side to side, and he tried to scream, but the pressure of the grinder and the pull of his intestines and other internal organs made it impossible.
Cantrell was doing enough screaming for the two of them as he watched El Compo disappear into the unit. The Eagle grabbed El Compo’s disembodied head and held it up to Cantrell. The eyes of the skull were moving as if probing the room, and the Eagle said to Cantrell, “Believe it or not, Mr. El Compo is still alive.” The Eagle pressed two fingers into the bloody spinal column of El Compo’s skull, and the bodiless head winced in pain. “Yea…the brain remains conscious for up to a minute, sometimes longer.”
The Eagle turned off the grinder with Mark El Compo’s head in his hands and swung it around in front of Cantrell and said, “It is quite interesting to watch the undead stare into the face of its killer. He placed El Compo’s head on Cantrell’s chest, allowing the blood to pool. The eyes were still moving and then slowly they stopped, and the pupils began to dilate, and the Eagle said, “Well, Mr. El Compo is now dead. Don’t you worry. You will not meet such a fate. I’m going to end you by using a killing and body elimination technique I picked up from the man who killed my first wife. I’m going to need assistance, and I feel pretty strongly that Special Agent Steve Hoffman’s widow will want to be involved, so we are going to make a day of it tomorrow. Do you like boats, Garrison? I guarantee you it will be one unforgettable day. There’s a school of great white sharks off the Malibu coast a little over a half mile from shore, and I’ve been chumming the water for a week in your honor.” The Eagle walked out of the operating room, leaving Garrison Cantrell screaming on the operating table.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Why does the Eagle exist?”
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and John, Jim, Sara, Gail, and Barbara had just returned to Los Angeles from Washington D.C. where a moving FBI funeral and memorial service was held for Special Agent Steve Hoffman. Steve’s casket lie in state at the Hoover FBI building in Washington for three days, and then he was taken to the National Cathedral where he was memorialized in a national funeral. President Matthew Hernandez delivered a stirring and heartfelt speech about the man who he said, “Brought the plight of a nation to the government’s attention.”
Hernandez said, “The loss of Special Agent Steve Hoffman is not just a loss for the FBI. It’s a loss for our nation. His heroics in the past several years in the face of great adversity made and kept a nation strong. In the end, Agent Hoffman made the ultimate sacrifice and was killed in the line of duty. Steve Hoffman is a hero; he is what being a member of the FBI family is about. While his death is tragic, through his death a killer of police officers was stopped, and the lives of countless others were saved. Agent Hoffman, facing his own terminal disease battling ALS, chose to stay in the field, working alongside the men and women he once led. While Special Agent Hoffman may be gone, he will never be forgotten.”
John was reading an excerpt from the president’s speech as he rode in a limousine carrying him along with Gail, Jim, Barbara, and Sara to First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica. They had flown in earlier that morning from Washington with Steve’s casket, and they were on the final leg of Steve’s long journey to be laid to rest beside his late wife, Molly, at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles. The car pulled up in front of the church where the white hearse was parked with a special guard detail awaiting Steve’s coffin. They exited the vehicle and saw hundreds of people lining 1220 Second Street in Santa Monica in silent reverence for a fallen officer. John looked around at the droves of people and was visibly moved.
Sara took his arm, and John took Gail’s, and the three walked into the church with Barbara and Jim behind them. There were moving tributes to Steve, and both John and Jim gave brief but deeply personal eulogies as well. Jim broke down twice in his delivery, but he made it through, and as he sat back down and looked at Steve’s flag draped coffin he whispered to Barbara, “If Steve could see this, he would have a shit fit!”
Jade Morgan was sitting behind them with Karen Faber. The two women were wiping away tears as the bag pipes played and Steve’s casket was walked out of the church to the waiting hearse with John and Jim as pallbearers. The church was filled with every branch of law enforcement. All sat in silent reverence for their fallen comrade. When the funeral had concluded, two limousines were waiting to take family and close friends to the cemetery.
Escorted by motorcycle police from around the state and country, the hearse began its slow journey to the 101 Freeway and on to the cemetery for interment. Thousands of people lined the procession route on the way to the cemetery, many saluting as the hearse drove by. Gail wept quietly, sitting off away from the rest in the limo.
When they arrived at the cemetery, John and Jim carried Steve to his final resting place, and as they returned to their wives, Bob Zimmer, Gail’s ex-husband was standing next to her, holding her hand along with his new wife, out of respect for Steve. There was a twenty-one gun salute and a quick graveside service, and the few friends threw clods of dirt on the casket before it was interred. Gail took a rose from the casket spray, smelled it, and threw it into the
grave of her husband and slowly walked away.
The Eagle was in with Cantrell early on Sunday morning. He had a four-by-six inch piece of pine that he had routed out and filled with molten lead. He made sure that some of it landed on Cantrell who was bloody and beaten now on the floor of the operating room with his burned hands zip tied behind his back. Sara walked in and announced, “It’s nine a.m., sir.” “Thank you. We will be ready in just a few minutes. Please have Gail come over.” The Eagle had two horseshoe shaped objects with sharp pointed ends on them that he laid in front of Cantrell along with four eight-inch railroad spikes. He threw them down near Cantrell’s body along with a twenty-pound sledgehammer.
Cantrell let out a cry, and the Eagle stood up and said, “Hold that for a moment.” The Eagle left the room and walked out into the foyer where Gail was seated with Sara and Barbara. The Eagle spoke directly to Gail and asked, “I have prepared Steve’s killer’s final resting place, and I’m preparing to nail him to his doom. Do you wish to see him or speak to him before I begin his end?”
Gail looked up at John with an icy stare and said, “No…I want to help!” The Eagle reached out, and she took a hold of the giant hand and stood up. The Eagle went to walk her back, and she stopped and asked Sara and Barbara if they would help. They nodded, and all of them went back to Cantrell’s holding room.
Cantrell saw them all walk in and was silent. The Eagle grabbed him by the back of the head and pulled him across the floor and cut the zip ties and threw his body down on the piece of wood. Gail leaned down and put her knee into Cantrell’s chest as Barbara and Sara handed the Eagle the first of the horseshoe restraints. He pounded the two spikes down into the wood, pinching Cantrell’s forearms just above the wrists and affixing him to the board. He handed a spike to Gail who took it and the hammer, and he showed her where to drive it into Cantrell’s arm just above the wrist.
Gail had no hesitation and drove the spikes into both wrists, smiling the whole time. Cantrell contorted in pain, and he tried to squirm with each slam of the hammer. The Eagle lifted Cantrell’s nailed body over his head, and he let out a scream as the weight of his body pulled down on the nails and the restraints that affixed his body to the board.
The Eagle had two large steel posts that were mounted to the wall, and he dropped Cantrell’s nailed body and board onto the protruding pieces of steel. Cantrell’s feet were hanging in mid air about a foot off the floor. He was facing the wall. The Eagle took out a whip inlaid with glass and tacks and handed it to Gail. He said, “We will excuse ourselves. Come to us when you are finished with him.”
Gail stood with the whip in her right hand at her side as the three exited. They stood just outside the door and listened to Gail scream obscenities at Cantrell with every strike of the whip. Cantrell’s screaming made Sara and Barbara look away, and Barbara said, “My God, she’s YOU!” as she looked at the Eagle. “No…she’s suffering the pains of hell over Steve’s death at that man’s hand. She is extracting her own punishment. Do you know Gail’s history?” Both Barbara and Sara nodded, and the Eagle said, “Then you understand.”
Inside, Cantrell’s back was looking more and more like hamburger with every strike of the whip. Blood splattered against the walls, and he had lifted his legs in defense of the whip, which only enraged Gail further. For fifteen brutal minutes, Gail beat Cantrell with the whip until she was exhausted and dripping with sweat. She took off her top and bottoms. She was wearing a bikini, and she walked up to Cantrell and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to watch you DIE while I sunbathe on the deck of the Eagle’s boat, you son of a bitch!” She wrapped the whip around Cantrell’s neck and held the end of it. She slowly walked out of the room, pulling the whip with its glass and tacks around Cantrell’s neck.
Once outside, with her T-shirt and shorts in hand, she said, “Well, I need a drink and some sun. Where do I meet you and your boat?” “Sara will bring you down. Give me ten minutes to get Mr. Cantrell down to the boat and situated,” the Eagle said as Sara and Barbara followed Gail out of the Eagle’s lair.
Sara took them back over to the main house where Jade was sitting on the sundeck with a drink in her hand, sunbathing nude. She heard the girls coming but said nothing at first. She saw Gail in her bikini and asked, “Will you be joining me?” She nodded and said, “In a few hours. I have some final business to attend to.” Jade looked on at Sara and Barbara and asked, “Are you going with her?” “If she wants us to,” said Sara. She had just gotten the words out when she heard Jim’s voice coming through the front door. “So, is fuckin’ Cantrell dead yet?”
He saw Gail and said, “I’m sorry.” Gail let out a little laugh while taking off her top and bottoms and laying on a chair near Jade and asked, “For what? Cantrell is not dead yet. I just finished beating him. The Eagle is getting him to the boat, and we are going to go sunbathe while the Eagle feeds Cantrell to the sharks. Want to join us?”
Jim looked on at Sara, Barbara, and Jade. There was a moment of silence, and Sara stripped off her clothes as did Barbara, and Barbara poured them all a drink, and they laid on lounge chairs awaiting the Eagle’s return. Jim looked on and said, “You can’t be fuckin’ serious? You’re all going out with the Eagle while he murders a man?” Gail said, “It’s not murder, and Cantrell is no man. This is my mourning time for Steve, and I want my friends with me, if they choose…and from the look of nude solidarity they do. Come out with us and watch the son of a bitch beg for his life while great whites nip at his feet and eat him. I understand from talking to the Eagle he has a nice unit set up to lower Cantrell ever so slowly into the water while feeding the sharks. I think it will be great fun…want to come?”
John walked back in from the lair to the living room to see all of the women nude on the sundeck. He saw Jim standing there silent and just shook his head and said, “The Eagle has made everything ready whenever you are.” Gail asked, “Can the girls come, too?” John looked over at Jim who was staring longingly at the nude women on the lounge chairs in front of him. John said, “Um…yes, of course. There is plenty of room on the boat for everyone. Do you want to bring a cooler and some booze and make a party of it?” John meant it as a crude off-the-cuff remark; unfortunately for him, it wasn’t taken that way.
Sara jumped up and headed for the kitchen. Jade and Gail followed, and Barbara went to the bar and pulled several different liquors and mixers along with pitchers and a couple of bags of red plastic Solo cups. Barb looked at the color of the cups and said, “Seems appropriate.” She let out a laugh as she called out to the girls and said, “You might as well pack some snacks. I’m sure the Eagle is going to make this take a long time.”
Jim looked at John’s stunned face and said, “Seriously? You are going to have a feeding at a feeding? I mean, John, this is fucked up and twisted even by the Eagle’s standards.” John nodded his head slowly and said, “The Eagle is just the instrument of justice. He’s not going to stand in the way of how the victim’s wife and friends choose to mourn…or celebrate…or…” John stopped mid-sentence and shrugged his shoulders and walked back in the direction of the lair.
Jim called out, “That mother fucker killed one of my best friends!” John nodded, and Jim said, “When you cross that threshold, you’re the Eagle, right?” John nodded. Jim asked, “I know you have to be the Eagle to mete out justice, but when you’re done with Cantrell, if I’m on the boat with you, and the girls, can you be John when you’re done?”
John smiled and said, “Steve’s murder cleared the lines between my role as the Eagle and the agent. Yes, once I have killed Cantrell I will join in the celebration of Steve’s life in any way that Gail wants to celebrate it.” Jim cocked his head and said, “Does that mean you will do with Gail what Steve and Molly did with Gail?”
John laughed and said, “Are you asking me if I will have sex with Sara and Gail together if she asks?” “You’re goddamn right. That’s exactly what I’m aski
ng.” “How do you know that we haven’t already done that?” Jim followed the Eagle into his lair all the while asking, “Have you already done that? Come on, really, seriously, have you…huh…have you?” There was silence from the Eagle, and Jim’s voice was echoing off the walls of the lair as they walked out the door and down to the waiting boat with Jim repeating the question over and over again, getting no response.
It was just after midnight, and John got out of bed and walked over to the fridge and pulled a Coke Zero out of the box and walked out onto the balcony overlooking the sea. Garrison Cantrell was dead, and it had been a long afternoon and a strange celebration. After Cantrell had been dispatched, the rest of the day on the boat had been spent with food, drink, and merriment. There had been dancing and drinking, and by the time he got the boat back to the boathouse, he had to carry all but Barbara and Jim into the house.
John laid down nude on one of the lounge chairs and cracked open the can and took a drink. He listened as the sea crashed on the shore beneath his feet, looking up at the star light. He whispered to himself, “You might be gone, Steve, but you will never be forgotten.” He toasted the sky and said, “There are worse animals out there and a limited amount of time to capture them before they do more harm. The Eagle seems to be no deterrent to crime.” “Yes he is,” Jade whispered through the darkness.
John sat looking up at the stars as Jade came out with a drink in her hand and asked, “Is it okay if I join you?” John patted the lounge next to him, and she laid down nude on the chair. He looked over at Jade and said, “You’re cold.” He got up and grabbed a blanket off the back of a chair in the bedroom and gently put it over her shoulders but left the rest of her body nude in the star light. “So, what do you think, Jade? Is the Eagle a deterrent to crime?” She looked up at the stars, taking a sip of her drink, and said, “I don’t know, John. I just don’t know. The Eagle works in the shadows. He’s not front and center like Superman for God’s sake.” He nodded, taking a drink of his Coke, and said, “He’s not supposed to be. That’s not why he exists.” Jade took a sip of her drink and turned to sit up on the lounge chair. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and in a soft voice asked, “Why does the Eagle exist?”
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