Andrew Peterson - First to Kill

Nathan pivoted and faced the front door. “Infrared on,” he whispered.

They reached up and turned knobs on their scopes. Small red dots could now be seen in the lower corners of their images, indicating the infrared spots were activated. The front door instantly brightened and Nathan’s device automatically lowered the image’s intensity to compensate.

Harv tucked in close behind him.

A smile touched his lips. Here he was again, Nathan McBride in his environment.

He reared up with his right foot and stomped.

The door burst open in a crash of splintered wood and dust.

In the green images of their night vision, they could see everything.

Two men were present, caught in mid-snore. The first lay back in an easy chair, the second in a fetal position on the couch. Simultaneously, both pairs of eyes snapped open. Nathan stepped forward to the easy chair and clubbed its occupant with the butt of his gun. It wasn’t hard enough to knock him unconscious, but it was hard enough to render him dazed and groggy.

Harv jammed the muzzle of his gun against the couch potato’s forehead and said, “Don’t move.”

The guy tried to sit up. “What the fu-”

Harv clocked him. With a grunt of pain, he slumped back into the stained fabric. With his free hand, Harv unzipped his waist pack and grabbed a roll of duct tape.

Nathan yanked his mark to the floor and rolled him onto his stomach. He grabbed the tape from Harv, set his gun down, and secured the guy’s hands behind his back with several loops of tape. He covered the man’s mouth with a six-inch strip and tossed the roll to Harv, who did the same to his man.

Within eight seconds of bursting through the door, both targets had been overwhelmed and immobilized. Just like old times , Nathan thought. “Check the rest of the house,” he whispered.

Harv disappeared down the hall and returned twenty seconds later. “Clear.”

“Okay, let’s get them situated.”

Harv grabbed a couple of chairs from the eating area. Nathan was hesitant to think of it as a dining room because these two didn’t dine, they merely ate, and from the look of things, didn’t get all of it into their mouths. He removed his night vision, turned it off, and reached into his pocket for the lens cap.

“NV off?” he asked.

Harv reached up, turned his unit off, and capped the lens. Harv took both NV visors outside and placed them the front porch. Nathan flipped a switch on the wall and a bare bulb on the ceiling came to life.

“Oh, man,” Nathan said. He hadn’t expected to see Wayne Manor, but this place belonged in a hall of shame museum. He’d seen the mess in shades of green through the scope, but in Technicolor the true nature of this pigsty took on a whole new dimension. The family-room table consisted of three bald tires stacked atop one another, capped off by half a sheet of painted plywood. Household trash was strewn everywhere. Beer bottles. Empty soup and chili cans. Milk cartons. Wadded paper towels. Apple cores. Peanut shells. Candy-bar wrappers. Half-eaten hot dogs and hamburgers. Microwave popcorn bags. Dirty dishes. Crusty silverware and girlie magazines. Clothes were thrown on every available surface. Shoes. Work boots. Socks. Soiled T-shirts. Old blue jeans. Mechanic’s overalls. Several cases of motor oil were sitting under the living-room window. Cleared paths through the clutter and filth connected the various rooms like worn trails on college campus lawns. And the smell: It was like a landfill in here. Nathan shook his head.

“You should see the bathroom,” Harv said. “I don’t know how people can live like this.”

“That’s just it, they don’t live. They survive.”

“I’ve never seen anything this disgusting before.”

“Ever watch the show Cops ? Let’s clear an opening on the floor and set them up right here.” Nathan kept his gun up while Harv went to work. After a minute or so, he’d kicked enough crap out of the way to place two chairs about three feet apart. Harv hauled the two men into sitting positions and wrapped several layers of duct tape around their chests and the backs of the chairs to keep them from slumping over. The guy on Nathan’s left was thin and lanky and might weigh one-fifty with his clothes on. Blood was seeping through a gauze bandage taped on the triceps portion of his arm. That bandage looked uncharacteristically clean, Nathan thought. It didn’t track with this environment. Beneath the guy’s shaved head was a narrow, pointed face with a mustache shaped like a horizontal butter knife. His brother was compact and fit. He had a square face with strong cheekbones and short dishwater-blond hair that looked like he’d combed it straight up with bacon lard. This guy weighed two hundred, and looked somewhat formidable.

“Knife and Fork,” Nathan said, nodding toward them.

Harv stepped back, stared for a few seconds, and smiled.

The Bridgestone cousins were dressed in dirty blue jeans, white tank tops, and scuffed work boots. Their hands, arms, and faces were smudged with motor oil and grease. The bigger guy had a tattoo on his arm that looked like it had been etched with copper wire and a blowtorch. It was impossible to tell who was older-they both looked twenty years past their actual age.

“Let’s bring them around,” Nathan said. He reached down, grabbed an empty beer can, and crumpled it in his palms. As if shooting a free throw in basketball, he tossed it at Fork. It bounced off Fork’s forehead with a metallic clink sound. A few drops of stale beer splattered the man’s nose and cheeks. His eyes fluttered open, then grew wide with terror.

“Nothin’ but net,” Harv said and gave Knife a firm shake. Knife’s eyes registered fear, then changed to rage. He whipped his head back and forth, trying to dislodge the tape covering his mouth.

Nathan dragged a chair over and sat down. Without taking his eyes off Knife, he pulled a thin pair of black gloves from his front pocket and slowly pulled them on. Harv did the same.

“Here’s the deal,” Nathan began. “We aren’t going to play good cop, bad cop with you two miscreants. For one, we aren’t cops and the other, we’re both bad. We don’t work for the FBI, CIA, NRA, PTA or the ASPCA. We’re…” He looked up at Harv. “What are we?”

“Independent contractors.”

“We’re independent contractors, so your Miranda rights are not in play here. In fact, this is an anti-Miranda situation. You absolutely do not have the right to remain silent. Oh, and the Eighth Amendment of our beloved Constitution is hereby suspended until further notice. If you’re curious, it has to do with cruel and unusual punishment being inflicted. Now, before we get started, is there anything you’d like to say?”

Knife began nodding furiously, but Fork stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact. Nathan leaned forward and yanked the tape from Knife’s mouth. It came off with a sound like tearing fabric. Knife’s poor mustache didn’t fare so well. It had been reduced by a good 20 percent. With an expression of revulsion, Nathan held the strip with his thumb and forefinger and tossed it aside like a plague bandage.

“You stupid motherfuckers,” Knife hissed, “I want my phone call.”

He looked at Harv. “He wants his phone call. Would you bring me the phone, please?”

Harv walked into the kitchen and yanked the phone off the wall, cradle and all. Its cord dangling uselessly, he handed it to Nathan.

Without warning, Nathan swung the phone like an oversized palm sap.

“Oh, man,” Harv said. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”

Blood began streaming from Knife’s nose.

Out in the surveillance van, Holly Simpson and the two techs looked at each other in the glow of the black boxes. They’d heard the impact. As promised, nothing was being recorded.