J. Konrath - Fuzzy Navel

“Latham! Latham, please answer me!”

I feel him move.

“Jack?”

Thank God . I keep tugging, removing as much of the bag as I can, my fingers encircling his face. His cheeks are wet, with sweat or tears or both.

I shed a few tears too.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, over and over.

“She put a hole in the bag. A little one. Didn’t want me to die yet.”

He talks in a monotone, emotionless. Probably in shock.

“I gave him a choice.” Alex stands in the doorway. “Fuck me, or die. He told me he’d do it if I put a bag over my head. Personally, I think it looks pretty good on him.”

My fear vanishes, replaced by a hate so intense I can taste it. I get to my knees, then to my feet, and charge at her. Alex doesn’t flinch. When I get close enough she sidesteps my attempted body tackle and trips me. Unable to break my fall, I land on my face, my lips kissing the dirty concrete floor, the wind rushing from my lungs.

“You want to play, Jack? We’ve got time to play.” Alex puts her hands behind her back. “I’ll even play fair. You’re Little Miss Tae Kwon Do, right? Let’s see if you can take me.”

I’m so pumped up with anger and adrenaline that I get up before my breath comes back. I take a feeble gasp, shake away the stars, and run at her.

Alex kicks me in the stomach, so hard that it knocks my shoes off. I fall onto my ass, the handcuffs digging in and twisting my wrists, prompting a scream. I use the pain, continuing to stretch at the cuffs, pulling them up under my butt and over my feet.

My hands are now in front of me.

It won’t help much fighting against Alex. She’s stronger than the last time I’d sparred with her. But maybe if I could get to my bedroom, to my other gun-

I run for it, run like I have a freight train coming after me. Make it to the kitchen, to the front room, to the hallway. Then I stumble and eat carpeting.

“Is that how you got your black belt, Jack? By running away like a scared little bitch?”

I roll over, glare up at Alex. She grabs my handcuff chain and jerks me up to her level. Her strength is amazing.

“Pumped a little iron in lockup?” I say between breaths.

Half of her face smiles.

“A little.”

Then she whips me forward, headfirst into the wall.

Everything goes from very bright to very dark.

JAMES MUNCHEL WALKS into the suburban sports bar with a big yellow grin on his face and a hail conquering hero swagger. He actually lifts up his hand for a high five when he reaches their table.

Greg Swanson can barely hold in his rage. His jaw is clenched, and his shoulders feel like a giant knot.

“Sit down, you idiot,” Swanson orders.

Munchel darkens, lowering his upraised palm. But he complies. They’re at a table in the back, and the place is crowded enough that no one is paying any attention to them. Like all sports bars, this one boasts an impressive number of TVs. The one nearest them is tuned to CNN, at Swanson’s request, and it’s still reporting live from Munchel’s massacre scene.

“What the fuck were you doing?” Swanson asks.

“I was following the plan.”

“The plan was to take out the target, not half the cops in Chicago.”

“They were witnesses,” Munchel says.

Swanson bunches up his napkin, squeezes it hard. He’s bigger than Munchel, by five inches and sixty pounds. But the smaller man is flat-out crazy, and this scares Swanson.

Swanson looks at Pessolano, hoping for some assistance. Paul Pessolano is wearing those stupid as hell yellow shooting glasses, which make him look like a bee. His face is granite, impassive. He’s had military experience, but he must have had his communication skills shot off during Desert Storm. Either that or he’s seen The Terminator too many times.

As predicted, Pessolano offers nothing. Swanson turns back to Munchel, who is flagging down their server. He waits while Munchel orders a beer and one of those fried onion appetizers. When the waitress leaves, Swanson has to count to five in his head so he doesn’t start yelling.

“I’m the leader of The Urban Hunting Club,” he says, his voice as calm and patronizing as a grade school teacher’s. “I’m the one who brought us together. I’m the one who picked the targets. I’m the one who came up with the plan.”

Munchel rolls his eyes at Swanson, then nudges Pessolano.

“Hey, Paul, how many confirmed kills you got?”

“Eighteen.” Pessolano’s voice is rough, like he doesn’t use it much.

“I’m almost caught up to you. I just got twelve.”

“You got eleven,” Pessolano says. “One of the cops lived.”

Munchel shrugs. “Fine, eleven. Still pretty good my first time out.”

Swanson realizes that he probably shouldn’t have trusted guys who answered an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune. But he didn’t have a choice. Where else was he supposed to find mercenaries? Swanson works in a home improvement store, in the plumbing department. He isn’t a killer.

Well, technically, he is a killer now. But he wasn’t a few hours ago. And he wasn’t a few months ago when he placed that ad.

When Swanson’s wife got… attacked … five years ago, he’d been devastated. Jen was, is, his everything. Then the bastard who did it got out five years early – for good behavior, what a fucking joke. Swanson couldn’t allow that. He had to kill the guy. For Jen. For himself. For society. It was more than just revenge. More than justice. The punk needed to be killed, and Swanson felt the need to perform that particular public ser vice.

But he knew that if he offed the guy, suspicion would immediately fall on him. The authorities would look at his victims, following the revenge angle.

Unless it looked random.

Thus, The Urban Hunting Club was born. All Swanson needed were a couple of like-minded guys who hated perverts, and then Rob Siders’s death would be blamed on vigilantes, not on an angry husband.

But Munchel has ruined the plan. TUHC has gone from being a group that might have been respected, even admired, straight to Public Enemy Number One. Cops never forget when you murder their own. They’ll be hunted for the rest of their lives. All because Munchel got himself a kill hard-on.

“We need to break up,” Swanson says. “Go our separate ways, never see each other again.”

“Why would we do that?” Munchel asks. The waitress brings his beer, and the idiot continues to talk in front of her. “We make a great team. We got rid of some real scum today.”

The server leaves, and Swanson leans over, jutting his chin at Munchel.

“And now we’re wanted for killing ten cops,” he says through his teeth.

Munchel smiles, takes a sip of beer. “Collateral damage. Couldn’t be helped.”

Swanson looks at Pessolano, who is stoically picking his teeth with his fork. He realizes he has to distance himself from these two loonies. Hell, he should probably run straight home, grab Jen, and move to California. That might look like an admission of guilt, but Munchel is going to get caught, and when he gets caught he’ll talk. Swanson doesn’t want to be implicated in any cop killing case, especially in a state that has the death penalty.

“I’m ditching the gun, and getting the fuck out of town.”

Swanson stands. Pessolano clasps his hands together, puts them behind his head.

“You ain’t ditching shit. Those are my rifles, and they’re worth more than you make in a year.”

“Fine. Let’s go out to the parking lot, you can have your guns back right now.”

Munchel finishes his beer, lets out a weak belch. He meets Swanson’s stare.