Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Thriller (6 page)

“Oh God,” Russo said. “I’m sorry. I truly
am. But I had no idea what was going to happen. I really
didn’t.”

“I know that now. But it doesn’t really
matter anyway. What does matter is this: If you would have known
what was going to happen, would you have done anything about it? Or
would you have been too scared to open your mouth.”

Russo didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought.”

A few seconds of silence, then Russo said,
“Look, I understand you’re upset—”

I pressed the business end of the barrel
deeper into his skin. “You don’t understand shit. So just keep your
mouth shut unless I ask you a direct question.”

“Okay,” Russo said. “Okay. Whatever you
say.” He began to mewl like a newborn kitten. The stench of shit
overrode the lingering smell of urine as he vacated his bowels.

I adjusted the grip on my gun, carefully
slipping my finger inside the trigger guard and letting it rest on
the trigger itself but applying no pressure.

I emptied my mind of thought and started to
squeeze the trigger, putting enough pressure on it to move it
backwards just a hair, applying about half the necessary weight to
complete the action.

It was time to decide, one way or the
other.

Kill him, or don’t.

I relaxed my hand and removed my finger from
the trigger and let the gun fall to my side. I was still staring at
the back of Russo’s head. The pressure from the tip of the barrel
left a little white O on the flesh of his neck.

Russo exhaled audibly, nearly falling
forward out of his chair. His breath came in shuddering waves.

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” I said.
“But since I can’t have you making any noise for a while—”

I struck him in the side of his head with
the butt of my handgun. He fell to the floor in a heap. I checked
his pulse; weak but steady. He would wake up with one hell of a
headache but without permanent damage.

I took a minute to look around and make sure
I hadn’t left anything behind, then headed up the stairs. I left
the house and made my way back to the car following the same path
I’d used to arrive.

Thirty minutes later I was sitting in my
car, mulling over my decision to let Russo live. I still didn’t
know if it was the right thing to do, but since there wasn’t much I
could do to change my course, I decided to just move on and hope
Russo didn’t come back to haunt me.

I pulled my cell from the center console and
dialed Willis’s number.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Not much. I just finished up with our
friend.”

“Oh yeah? How did it go?”

“Pretty well,” I said. “He was quite
helpful.”

“That’s good to hear,” Willis said. “You
want to meet up, tell me what you got from him?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Where are you?”

“The Body Shop,” Willis said. “Where
else?”

I laughed under my breath. Willis was a
simple man in many ways. Give him a high-powered rifle in one hand
and a stripper in the other and he’d be happy for the rest of his
life.

“How long have you been there?” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know. An hour or two. Maybe
five. Probably more like eight though.”

“Jesus, man. You just can’t get enough of
that place, can you?”

“What can I say? It’s my home away from
home.”

“Hell,” I said. “Sounds like it is your
home.”

“One can wish,” Willis said wistfully.
“Anyway, that’s where I am. Get over here when you can.”

“See you in 30,” I said.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

The Body Shop was a run-down strip club off
Midway Boulevard near the San Diego Sports Arena that catered to
college students and military personnel. It didn’t have the hottest
women around, but even the second-rate girls of San Diego were far
superior to the top-shelf girls pretty much anywhere else in the
country. It didn’t do much for me, but to each his own.

The doorman was a full-blown cliché, a 6’3”,
bald, goateed white dude with a holier-than-thou smirk, tattooed
arms and a steroid-enhanced body. He was a little too presumptuous
with his frisk, but that was all right, as I was clean, having left
my weapon under the front seat of my car.

“Keep your hands to yourself, pal,” he said
as I entered. “You look like the touchy type.”

He was staring down at me, his massive arms
crossed at his chest in a look that was meant to terrify but only
served to display his clueless arrogance. His smirk had blossomed
into a full-blown grin.

I stared back, my face impassive.

“You got a problem?” he said.

I was itching to teach him a lesson but it
wasn’t worth my time. I had more important things to deal with. I
shifted my gaze and moved on without a word.

His laughing was quickly drowned out by the
basic yet catchy rock sounds of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me” blasting
over the speaker system.

I saw Willis sitting in front of one of the
side stages. He was drinking a beer and watching a platinum-haired
Barbie doll with fake tits the size of my head and a waist the size
of my thigh gyrate her privates a couple inches from his face.

I came up from behind and tapped him on the
shoulder. His grin faltered quickly once he saw I wasn’t another
one of the strippers.

“Oh, hey Highway,” he said.

“Hoping to see someone prettier?”

“Nah, man,” Willis said, his smile
reappearing. “Not for a while, at least. You got something for me,
huh?”

“That I do,” I said.

“Well then, come on back to my office and
fill me in.”

I followed him past the stage, towards a bar
on the opposite side of the club, around a corner. Here, the music
was muffled slightly, meaning we didn’t have to shout to hear each
other.

The bartender was in his early 20’s and thin
as a rail. He had a bona-fide mullet and scraggly, partially-filled
in goatee. He was standing at the far end of the bar, talking to
one of the girls. He looked over and saw Willis and his face
erupted in a goofy smile. He quickly dismissed the girl and jogged
over to us. He moved like a tweeker, all jittery, as though his
extremities were hooked up to electrical wires.

“Willis, my man,” the kid said, not even
casting a glance in my direction. “How’s it hanging? Having a good
time?”

“As always,” Willis said.

“Cool, cool. What can I get for you on this
fine evening? Wait, don’t tell me. Coors Lite, right?”

Willis nodded.

“What about your friend?”

“Just ice water,” I said.

He gave me a funny look, as though I’d asked
for a glass of wine at a rodeo.

“He’s serious,” Willis said.

“Whatever floats your boat, my friend. All
we got is tap water. That okay?”

“Fine with me.”

The kid poured our drinks. Willis handed him
a 50 dollar bill and told him to keep the change and give us some
space and keep the other customers away from us. The kid went back
to the other side of the bar with a big smile on his face.

“So what did you get?” Willis said.

“A telephone number for you to run
down.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Hell, Highway, I thought you said the
meeting went well?”

“It did.”

“Sure doesn’t sound like it to me.”

I laughed. “Listen to you, all bitter
because you have to do a little work. What did you want, the whole
organizational structure in one shot?”

“That would have been nice,” Willis said.
“Oh well, go ahead and give me what you got.”

I told him the number.

“That’s a Mexican number.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too,” I said. “Makes
sense, considering the situation.”

“Yeah,” Willis said. “I guess it does. All
right then, give me a day or two. I’ll get back to you when I got
something worthwhile.”

“Sounds good.” I stood up, started to
leave.

“Wait a minute,” Willis said. “Where do you
think you’re going?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, playing
dumb.

“I mean, you didn’t tell me what you ended
up doing with Russo.”

Dammit. Even though I should have known
better, I was starting to think I was going to get out of there
without talking about this part of the operation. I already knew
how Willis was going to feel about my choice, but there was no
skating around this conversation. As badly as I wanted to.

“What about him?” I said, putting on an
innocent face.

“Come on,” Willis said. “Don’t give me that
shit. You know what I’m talking about.”

I decided to take my medicine and tell him
the truth. But before I could, a shrill female voice called out
Willis’s name.

I turned towards the voice and saw the girl
who had been dancing on stage in front of him when I walked in. She
was wearing high heels and a dental-floss bikini bottom with no
top. She was smiling profusely, her teeth bright enough to actually
take my attention off of her impossibly perfect, completely fake
breasts. For a second or two, at least.

“Hey Willis,” she said, ignoring me
completely, just as the bartender had. She brushed up against his
leg like a cat looking for a petting. “You ready for some VIP
treatment?”

“In a little while,” Willis said. “I’ve got
some business to finish up first. I’ll come find you in a few
minutes.”

“All right, baby, you do that. I’ll be
getting warmed up in the green room.”

Willis smiled and watched her intently as
she strutted away, her six-inch heels clicking on the concrete
floor.

“Who the hell was that?” I asked.

“Her name’s Misty. She’s a real piece of
ass, huh?”

“Is she a girlfriend or something?”

“Depends on how you define girlfriend,”
Willis said. “But she’s a regular, that’s for sure. Been seeing her
for about six months now.”

“Seeing her?” I asked. “Or banging her?”

Willis flashed a half-smile. “Is there any
difference?”

I stifled a laugh, shook my head. “You and
strippers. When are you going to have a real relationship?”

“I do have real relationships,” he said.
“They just happen to be with different women every night.”

This time I couldn’t hold my laugh in. “It
never ceases to amaze me.”

“What’s that?”

“How a dude as ugly as you can pull wool
whenever he damn well pleases.”

“It’s all in the attitude, my friend.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of that,” I
said.

Willis flexed one of his massive arms,
pointed at the bicep. “Of course, the guns don’t hurt either.”

This just made me laugh harder. The
combination of half-naked girls all around and Willis cracking
one-liners had me feeling pretty good. For a second, I could almost
remember what it felt like before Josie had been killed.
Almost.

Then reality reasserted itself and my grin
started to fade. I took another drink of water to help ease the
transition.

Willis sensed the sobering of my mood and
brought it down a level. “So what did you end up doing with
Russo?”

“I left him lying in the wine cellar.”

“Alive?”

I nodded.

“Are you sure that was the wisest
choice?”

“Not necessarily. But it’s the one I made,
so there’s no use worrying about it now.”

“What if he wakes up and tells the people
that he’s in bed with what happened?”

“He won’t,” I said, trying to sound more
certain of that fact than I actually was.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he’d be signing his own death
warrant if he told them what happened. They would kill him without
hesitation if they knew he’d given out any information.”

“We know that. But does
he
?”

“He knows,” I said. “He was so scared of
them he almost didn’t tell me anything, even when I was pointing my
gun at his face. He knows his only hope of getting out of this
thing alive is to keep quiet and pretend like nothing
happened.”

“I hope for your sake you’re right.”

I shrugged. “Even if I’m not, what’s he
going to tell them? That someone is coming after them? Hell,
they’re going to know that soon enough anyway. And it’s not going
to take them long to figure out who I am, even if Russo doesn’t say
anything to them.”

“All that may be true,” Willis said. “But
there would be a hell of a lot less to worry about if Russo
couldn’t talk.”

“I know. But this was a man tied up to a
chair in the wine cellar of his own home, unarmed, incapable of
defending himself. It was murder. Plain and simple. I just couldn’t
bring myself to do it.”

Willis opened his mouth to comment but I
pressed on.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’ve got no
problem killing the people responsible for Josie’s death. I just
didn’t realize how difficult it would be to draw the line of
responsibility.”

“That’s understandable,” Willis said. “But
you better watch yourself. You’re walking a tightrope here,
Highway. You lose your balance even just a bit and you could tumble
into the abyss.”

“I know,” I said. And I did. I truly did.
But I was also just as worried about the abyss I might tumble into
if I became too much like the guys I was chasing.

I drained the rest of my water but continued
to hold the empty glass up around my face, looking at the world
through the distorted lens of the ice cubes at the bottom.

“You okay?” Willis said.

I nodded.

“All right then. Holler at me if you need
anything else before tomorrow.”

“I will.”

BUD/S TRAINING: HELL
WEEK

The first two weeks of BUD/S training is
just the appetizer. The main course starts the third week. Hell
Week. Or “the long day” as it is not-so-affectionately known.
Everything that has come before it—the pain, the suffering, the
doubts about continuing on—are magnified tenfold. Hell Week is
where the SEALs are separated from the mere mortals. It is a
singular experience.