To The Lions - 02 (2 page)

Gage
finished his toast and slipped the telescoping blackjack from his back pocket.

Wait for the cops, Gage.

The
young man’s mother screamed.

“Shut
up, you fat old bitch!” one of the punks yelled.
 
He turned and shoved the boy they were
tormenting, sending him to his knees.

Rage
ruled the evening.

Punk
number one—short, tubby, and with a shaved head—was the first one to hit the
deck.
 
Gage struck him with his elbow
just behind his right ear, turning him off like a light.
 
If he’d had the luxury to pause and admire
his handiwork, Gage would have seen two of the punk’s front teeth break as his
head smacked the oil-stained concrete.

But
Gage was already on to punk number two, the biggest kid of the bunch.
 
He was the one who had done the little mime
job earlier.
 
He’d turned, cursing Gage
as he pulled his arm back for a punch.
 
Before he had a chance to throw that punch, Gage’s trusty spring-loaded
blackjack smashed his nose, sending him down to the ground, squirming like an
earthworm on hot asphalt.
 
Not satisfied
that the punk was out of commission, Gage smashed a straight left into his ear
as he passed, momentarily silencing him.

The
last two punks had backed well away.
 
Gage grasped the young man who’d been the target of their insults, lifting
him and nudging him toward his mom.
 
Gage
looked at her and told her to drive away.

When
Gage turned back to the two punks still on their feet, his eyes went
immediately to the gun being aimed at him.
 
The punk aiming it, a ghostly white kid with a poorly-represented Eminem
fantasy, held the gun “gangsta-style.”
 
It was a small, cheap revolver, probably a .32.

“You
dead, mothafucka!” he yelled, pulling his lips back to his gums in some prehistoric
effort to appear menacing.

His
still-standing partner, a stick-figure tattooed punk, stood behind his gun-toting
friend, sneering and saying, “Yeah, bitch, who’s bad now?”

“The
police are coming!” the mother yelled from Gage’s right.

“Get
in the car, ma’am,” Gage said, keeping his eye on the gun.
 
“Just drive away.”

“Get
on your knees, muthafucka!” the one with the gun said to Gage.
 
His finger was all over the trigger.

Heart
thudding, Gage chanced a fast glance to his left.
 
The first punk was still down, facedown, teeth
fragments shrouding his face.
 
He wasn’t
moving or even twitching, making Gage briefly wonder if he’d killed him.
 
The second one, the one with the gash across
his broken nose, was sitting up but didn’t seem to have any will to rejoin the
fight.
 
Turning back to the one with the
gun, Gage pondered his options.

“I
said get on your damned knees!”
 
The punk
took a few more steps in Gage’s direction.

Keep coming, you little shit
.

“Cap
his ass, Slick.
 
Burn that bitch down,”
the stick-figure friend urged.

Suddenly,
sirens punctuated the night.
 
Probably
from years of conditioning, both punks whipped their head to the sound.

Bad
for them.
 
Good for Gage.

He
lurched forward, leading with his right boot and catching Slick, the gun-toter,
in his narrow chest.
 
The .32 went off,
shooting up and shattering a fluorescent light.
 
The kick knocked the punk into his skinny friend as they both tumbled to
the concrete.

Lurching
forward, Gage kicked again, knocking the .32 from Slick’s hand.
 
Gage kicked a third time, connecting with the
kid’s jaw, snapping it like a dry cottonwood branch.
 
As his motion continued, Gage brought the
blackjack down on top of the fourth punk’s head, sending him to the ground.

After
a fast scan of all threats, Gage pushed the .32 again with the side of his
foot, sending it skittering under an adjacent car.
 
He stood there in modified knife-fighter’s
position, the blackjack at the ready in his right hand.
 
Three of the punks were awake but seemed to
have no appetite to come off the deck for another dose of the former special
operations soldier.

With
the blackjack pulled back, ready to strike, Gage yelled his query to the
conscious fiends.
 
“Why were you picking
on that kid?”

The
skinny one that had been dispatched last still retained a measure of piss and
vinegar.
 
From his downed position, he
snarled and extended his middle finger as he said, “Blow me,
pendejo
.”

Conspicuous
due to its flashing lights, a police car could be seen rocketing under the
interstate bridge.
 
This would all be
over in less than a minute.
 
Keeping his
eyes on the other Fiends, Gage dropped the blackjack.
 
He straddled the skinny Fiend and dug a
fingernail into the soft skin behind the punk’s ear.
 
With his other hand, he gripped the Fiend’s
vulgar middle finger, bending it to a point of whiteness.

“Aiyee!”
the punk screamed.

“Tell
the kid and his mother that you’re sorry!”

The
Fiend continued to scream, but said nothing.
 
With no time to spare, Gage snapped the Fiend’s finger like a dry twig,
immediately grabbing the one next to it.

The
Fiend’s agonized screaming pleased Gage.

“What
do you say now?”

“No!
No! Please!”

 
“Tell them!” Gage yelled, twisting and pulling
the finger, simultaneously burrowing his fingernail into the soft skin behind
his ear.

“I’m
sorry!” the Fiend cried.
 
“I’m sorry for
what I did to your son!”

Screeching,
the police car bumped over the curb and roared into the gas station.

Gage
released the pressure but maintained control over the gang member.

“Stop!”
roared the command over the police car’s loudspeaker.

Somewhat
mollified, Gage straightened, raising his hands above his head.
 
With admirable efficiency, the police took
control of the scene.
 

The
first few minutes were utter chaos and went about the way Gage expected.
 
Once the McLennan County sheriff’s deputies
had taken control of the situation, they began to attempt to determine what
exactly had happened.
 
Sitting alone in
the air-conditioned police car, his hands cuffed firmly behind his back, Gage
remained quiet.
 
Though a tiny piece of
him was angry that he’d let himself get pulled into such a situation, he didn’t
regret it one bit.

In
fact, he’d rather enjoyed it.
 
But Gage’s
primary concerns were with the young man and his mother.

Gage
watched her, sitting over by the store portion of the gas station, tearfully
explaining all that had happened to a trio of deputies.
 
The deputies occasionally glanced at Gage.

Finally,
after about a half-hour, a statuesque, ebony-skinned deputy wearing sergeant’s
stripes opened the rear door of the police car.
 
He helped Gage out, leaving the cuffs on.

“You
got I.D., pardner?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
In that rental car over there.”

“Mind
if I have a look in the car?”

“No,
sir.
 
But you’re going to find something
in there.”

“What’s
that, pard?”

“My
pack.”

“What’s
in your pack?”

“A
package of money.”

“How
much?”

“Fifteen
grand, cash.”

The
sergeant arched his eyebrows.
 
“Okay,
pard, am I going to find anything else?”

Thankful
they’d not brought their own weapons for the contract job, Gage said, “It’s a
rental and I haven’t been through it, so I can’t speak for anything other than
what’s in my pack.”

Another
deputy stood with Gage while the sergeant walked across the lot to Rudy’s and went
through the rental.
 
He came back with
the small dark pack, placing it at Gage’s feet.

“Your
I.D. in there?”

“Front
pocket.”

The
sergeant retrieved the I.D.
 
“Gage Nils
Hartline of Hope Mills, North Carolina.”
 
He looked up.
 
“Where’s Hope Mills,
pard?”

“Fayetteville,”
Gage said.

The
sergeant, eyeing the I.D., began to walk away.
 
Suddenly, he stopped, coming back, scrutinizing Gage.
 
“When I call this driver’s license in, what
am I going to learn, Mister Hartline?”

“Nothing,
sir.
 
No record at all,” Gage answered
earnestly.

“What
sorta job you do?”

“I’m
a contractor.”

“You
currently employed?”

“No,
sir.”

“Well
if you ain’t employed, pard, where’d the wad of cash come from?”

“I
did a side job.”

“Where,
and for whom?”

Gage
took a moment before answering.
 
“To be
honest, I don’t know
who
it was for,
and I don’t know exactly where we were.
 
South of here, but that’s all I know.”

“Mexico?”

“It
might have been, sir.”

The
sergeant was visibly displeased.
 
He
turned to the deputy next to Gage.
 
“They
already run the first two to the M.C.J.?”

“Yes,
sir.
 
The other two’s over at the
ambulances still gettin’ ‘valuated.”

“Go
over there and check on ‘em, Murphy.
 
If
they don’t need to be admitted, get ‘em hauled up to the jail.
 
I’ll be along directly.”

When
the deputy had taken his leave, the statuesque sergeant removed a tin of
Copenhagen, seating a massive pinch between his cheek and gum.
 
He opened the front door of the patrol car,
coming back with a Styrofoam cup and spitting into it.
 
He lowered his voice, saying, “Mister
Hartline, the Fiends might be skinny punks, but they’re well acquainted with
violence.
 
And judging by the three
witnesses I talked to, you ran through ‘em like a twister through a slat barn.”

Gage
shrugged.
 
“I had the drop on them.”

“On
two of ‘em.
 
Then, based on what I heard,
you had a dime-store Rossi .32 aimed at you and still managed to extinguish two
more gang-bangers.”

“Pricks
ruined my barbecue dinner.”

The
sergeant smiled with eyes only.
 
“You
were in Rudy’s?”

“Finishing
my meal.
 
I had a few bites left.”
 
Gage shrugged again.
 
“They pissed me off.
 
That was the first good meal I’d had in a
week.”

The
sergeant briefly glanced to the east.
 
“Fayetteville’s
right there at Fort Bragg.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Home
of the Airborne, Special Forces, Delta, and probably more retired and
mothballed mercenaries than any place on this here planet earth.”

Gage
said nothing.

The
statuesque sergeant grinned at Gage, the brown of the snuff marring an
otherwise gleaming set of teeth.
 
“I was
infantry and a Ranger, ninety to ninety-five, Mister Hartline.
 
Korea then Fort Campbell, Special Troops
Battalion, in the hundred-and-first.
 
Spent a good bit of time in Bosnia with all types of you boys from Bragg.”
 
He spat and took a step closer.
 
“I suppose you don’t wanna hang around and
make statements, do you, pard?”

“I’m
in a bit of a hurry, sir.”

“Thought
so.”
 
He turned Gage and un-cuffed
him.
 
“I’m gonna forget about the fifteen
grand.
 
Somehow I got a feelin’ you ain’t
plannin’ on filing that on your comin’ taxes.”
 
The dark-skinned sergeant aimed his muscular arm to Interstate 35.
 
“See that strip of asphalt right there?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“I
want your butt on it.
 
And, if you’ll
please high-tail it outta my county, Mister Hartline, I got all kinda stuff to
do tonight.
 
For starters, I gotta get
the surveillance video and make sure my buddy in ops can obscure a rental car’s
license plate.
 
Then I gotta go by my
jail and make sure some of my friends on the wrong side of the bars know just
what those four shits did here tonight.
 
You with me?”