Nick Stephenson - Eight the Hard Way

Therefore, Veritas intended on using James for what he knew was close anyway.

The end.

And Veritas wished it were simply the finish of his own personal vendetta.

For half a decade he’d waged a private war. However, his campaign against the trail of offal left in the wake of a long-time ineffectual justice system had changed him. When he began, it was in part because that ineffectual system had not only let him down, but also so very many other helpless victims of heinous crimes. Now it was more than that; now the evil had infected him .

In fact, a part of him believed that the evil inside himself had poisoned the only person ever to really believe in Corporal Shale Veritas. He’d made a decorated war hero an accomplice both before and after the facts. And he feared compromising his friend and mentor, Cobra Treanor, had poisoned the Colonel, too.

Could there be a better explanation as to why the toughest man to walk in the dirt was battling an extraordinarily rare bone disease capable of delivering a death no human being in the world could—not throughout fifty operations in some of the most dangerous war zones the world had to offer?

Treanor had provided his younger charge with crucial classified, closely guarded, inside information that allowed Veritas to carefully plan and execute many of his missions. But more than that, the Colonel was the singular member of both his family and a partner in the belief that even a small, concentrated personal effort might make a difference in the lives of honest Americans—a mission both soldiers believed they had once signed up to accomplish.

But Treanor had not done the things Veritas had. Not that he was incapable but, rather, because Veritas had kept him at a distance and then, ending the campaign on his own terms would ensure the Colonel’s name would never need be avowed or dragged through the mud of Veritas’ own creation.

So began the process of Shale Veritas’ last operation—Silas Drew—to be followed by the surrender of the worst enemy the heartless criminals in the country never knew they had.

Silas Drew, then with a license and Social Security card naming him Jason Bachman, had been a free man in the WITSEC program for less than thirty-seven hours. He’d puttered around the shabby one-story, one-bedroom house in Albuquerque, New Mexico all day, bored beyond the comprehension of his sociopathic brain. He didn’t feel . But he could still be malcontented, and he was. The plan to escape his new, sedentary life—a plan that had germinated and been growing nicely from the moment he acquiesced to the sweet plea agreement—was to contend with the vanilla life of Jason the warehouse manager until the U.S. Marshals charged with his transition came to believe him settled and less a flight risk.

Part of the arrangement of his new digs was a lifetime ban from ever owning a passport, but men like Silas Drew had enough connections to supply themselves with several lifetimes’ worth of identities. He only required patience for his plan to be successful and of patience he was eminently capable.

So it was with egomaniacal confidence that Drew nested in his freshly-purchased bed and almost did not hear the slightest of inexplicable sounds in the darkness—the kind of inexplicable sounds monsters like Silas Drew were pre-wired to detect; not unlike predators living a cautious existence in the wild, in-tune with others like themselves.

But Drew did hear the unusual sound, and as he began to turn silently and reach for the Glock 9 millimeter in the nightstand, he instead felt a quick bee sting in his neck—and before him flashed a moment of pure curiosity, which quickly became prelude to his brand new, promised world fading pleasantly away.

He awoke strapped to a gurney much like the one he avoided by turning Federal witness against the much larger human trafficking ring with which he was accused of having done a great deal of business and made an even larger amount of money.

A predator captured.

The kill room was of Shale’s own design and was portable: a fifty-seven foot motorhome that had been completely remodeled inside. The front half looked like any modern, spare-no-expense, bus-sized luxury home on wheels. Leather-bound furniture that converted to comfortable sleeping quarters; a stainless steel refrigerator/freezer, stove, oven, microwave, air-conditioner, and furnace.

Style worthy of a travelling rock star or billionaire recluse.

When one entered the rearmost door, however, the illusion ended abruptly. Instead of a large master suite, Veritas had moved everything in the motorhome—bathroom and shower included—forward several feet, and behind the façade had constructed a sound-proof room as devoid of comfort or decadence as it was of compassion or mercy.

“You’re awake,” Veritas said.

“W-what? Who—”

“When I began this part of my life,” Shale said, “I used to enjoy this moment. I liked telling my captive who I was and why our two lives had intersected. There was a shining purpose in the center of my being, probably not unlike the warming purpose you felt each time you ravaged or murdered one of your victims.”

“I have no idea to whom you are refer—”

“Save it, Silas.”

Drew’s breathing hitched when he heard his given name spoken out loud by his captor. Perhaps, Veritas wondered silently, he had hoped this was a mistake of gargantuan proportion. Certainly then he knew otherwise.

Veritas uncovered a table full of equipment that looked well-suited for a dentist in medieval centuries. Hooks and scalpels and every shape and manner of blade.

“I don’t feel righteous any longer,” Veritas said, as much to no one as to Silas Drew. “You know what they say about playing with the Devil.”

“Is that what I am?” Drew said. “Your Devil?”

“Hardly,” said Veritas. “My demons go far beyond the likes of a piece of garbage like yourself, Silas. You are a run-of-the-mill psychopath. I’ve met dozens of you over the past handful of years and you’d be embarrassed to know what common simpletons you all really are.”

“Fuck you,” Drew said, and spat at him.

“There’s that sociopathic gusto. Good for you, Silas. You’re going to need it.”

Veritas picked up two items of his vast collection. One was a medium-sized hook, the other a larger, silver blade that looked sharp enough to split atoms. He walked over to Silas Drew, contemplating both instruments.

“This is the opportunity I give to each of my victims,” he said. “Answer the questions I have for you to my satisfaction and I give you a quick, relatively painless death—with the knife. One hint of subterfuge or unwillingness to speak the truth and, well, a man like you, Silas—I doubt you need me to draw you any pictures.”

Veritas put the flat, razor-edged hook within inches of Silas Drew’s face, eliminating any possibility of confusion.

“I’ll answer any questions you have,” said Drew, ostensibly having given in to his situation. The response was common. Veritas really had seen enough psychopaths over the years to have come to an understanding that lack of compassion or mercy also meant a strange lack of fear for the self.

And a willingness to talk, particularly when the jig was up.

“A man like you kills because of a need inside; he doesn’t change his methods because of something as lacking in scintillation as money.”