by Captain Sammitch
The night was young, and there was work to do. Hector Vargas didn't like to think of himself as a killer, but then he never really liked to think about anything he had done recently. But it was true all the same. He had snuffed out two little girls as easily as putting out a cigarette. And now it would only be a matter of time before someone came looking for him.
It was time to leave.
The whole operation would have to move with him. Enrique, Manuel, and Fernando had come over to help him move, along with three or four other guys from the barrio who didn't mind helping an hermano out - for a reasonable fee. The eight men were taking all the hardware down from the walls and ceiling and discreetly hauling it out to the big moving van in front of the house. The cover of darkness and the fact that people on the block knew better than to investigate helped somewhat.
It also kept them from noticing the lone figure in the condemned building across the street.
Phil had been watching the men work for the past hour or so, but was waiting for the right moment to make his move. He wasn't waiting out of fear of collateral damage or fear of being noticed. He was waiting for one simple reason.
Hector Vargas and anybody with him had to pay for what they did.
And Phil was figuring out how to exact that punishment in the most terrifying way possible.
He picked out Vargas and two associates, but didn't know who the others were. They might not even be part of Vargas' operation.
Too bad, muchachos. Wrong place, wrong time.
The innocent suffered for the choices of the guilty all the time. Why should this be any different? The little guys could prove instrumental in nailing the big fish, after all.
Phil settled in his perch. Almost time to rock and roll...
One of the unknowns came outside. It would have been very difficult to tell what he was carrying, but in his thermal-imaging-enhanced scope sight, Phil could see it very clearly.
A video camera. Possibly the same one that had filmed the horrors visited on those two little girls - and maybe plenty of others.
Evidence.
The man holding it was filming his associates as they loaded the van. And he was laughing! This was fun, as if he were filming a documentary of a road trip.
Lights out.
Another man was headed back into the house. The man with the camera panned around him, coming to a stop facing the building where Phil was perched.
He has NightShot!
The man with the camera could see Phil. And he knew it too.
Phil dialed the scope up a touch.
The man turned and started to call for help. He pointed the camera back at Phil, his eye to the viewfinder.
Crack!
The rifle recoiled against Phil's shoulder, but not enough to throw his aim off. With a range of less than twenty yards, descending at an angle of about thirty degrees with no interfering winds, there was simply no way for this shot to go wrong. And it didn't. The deadly accurate hardpoint sniper bullet passed neatly through the camera's eyepiece, into Diego Ramirez's right orbital, through his prefrontal lobe, temporal lobe, cerebellum, and brain stem, out the back of his skull, and into the gap between two bricks to the right of the front door of the house.
The effect was catastrophic. Unlike a pistol bullet, the smaller rifle round didn't leave a big hole in and of itself, but created a tornado-like vortex in its wake. The hard plastic of the camera was much more resilient than Ramirez's right eye and brain tissue, which wasn't blown but rather dragged behind the bullet, blasting off a fist-sized chunk of the back of Ramirez's skull and splattering against the bricks and a corner of the front window of the house. The bullet itself smashed against the bricks, throwing up a cloud of red dust but more importantly flattening against the house, distorting the rifling marks necessary for ballistics investigators to identify the round.
The most chilling thing was that the muted crack! of the muzzle signature of Phil's rifle wasn't as loud as the sickening crunch and squish sounds of the bullet navigating its way through Ramirez's head, and nowhere near as loud as the thwack! of the bullet impacting the bricks. It was that thwack! that got Fernando Vieira's attention. He turned to see Ramirez - still holding the camera - toppling to the ground with a sizable portion of his head missing. Vieira collapsed to his knees and vomited.
It was his nausea that cost him his life. Phil had already chambered another round, and before Vieira could get to his feet, another round passed through his aorta and into the wooden door of the house. Neither man felt any pain, which made Phil feel slightly better about what he had just done.
Time to move.
With no time to go downstairs, Phil dropped the now-safetied rifle and jumped from the open window to the ground. He softened his landing with a telekinetic burst, then pulled out his favorite Ingram - also silenced - and dashed across the street.
He had just gotten in the door when he heard the crack! of a revolver. He felt a dull impact on his left shoulder, but looked down to see absolutely no marks on himself. He looked up to see a man holding a .38, his face paling when he saw Phil's untouched state.
No time for mercy.
Phil cut him down with the Ingram almost as an afterthought. Two more men rushed at him screaming invective in Spanish.
These were the bastards!
Phil glared at them. Uttering a primal roar, he opened up on both of them. Nonlethal shots. He was punishing them. He prolonged their execution as long as possible, pumping lead into the most painful places possible. Then he left them to die, slowly and agonizingly. The Ingram clicked on an empty chamber. Phil holstered it and drew an H&K .44 from a shoulder holster.
Now that we've gotten under way...
Things had gotten strangely quiet. Phil had seen eight different men going into the house, and three were still unaccounted for. Phil's eyesight and hearing were above average, but neither was helping him find the other three Colombians. He tried another sense. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his mind and probed the space around him. He "felt" around the house looking for signs of life.
Upstairs.
Phil rounded the corner, sidearm drawn. Nobody was there, and the staircase behind an open door at the other end of the room looked empty. But Phil could sense several presences nearby.
Possibly more than three.
There was only one way to make this work. Phil pulled a flashbang grenade from a belt loop and set it on the floor. He pulled the pin and stepped back. Focusing intently on the grenade, he sent it flying around the corner and up the stairs. Phil waited at the foot of the stairs, gun drawn.
There was a loud bang! followed by shouts and swearing in Spanish. Phil dashed up the stairs. One man was bent over at the waist, clutching at his eyes and ears and cursing. Phil didn't even give him a chance to look up. He dropped to the floor with two bullets in his side and one in his head, and Phil stepped over his falling body. He kicked in the door of an adjacent room, where another blinded man shot in his general direction with a .22 pistol. Phil didn't have to dodge (or block) the wild shots as he put a round in his target's chest and another in his head.
The guns seemed to be doing all the work now. Phil felt like he was on autopilot, and it seemed almost effortless to place shots precisely where they were needed. He kicked the falling body over and ran to the next room. The door was locked. Phil blew the lock and then the doorknob off with two shots, then ran inside.
Hector Vargas charged at him like a madman, bellowing his rage. Phil sidestepped his mad rush, grabbed his arm, and twisted it until Vargas' radius snapped in his grip. Vargas screamed in agony as Phil threw him to the ground using the useless arm as leverage.
"How do you like it, you little son of a bitch?" Phil sneered. "You can dish it out but you can't take it?" He yanked on Vargas' broken forearm, eliciting an even louder scream. "You can fight back, you know. Or you can beg for mercy if you want. It doesn't really make too much difference to me."
Vargas could only whimper.
Phil smacked him across the face. "Look at me, you bastard!" Vargas obeyed. "You killed those two girls, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!?"
Hector nodded.
Phil's tone softened. "Ever read the Bible, Vargas?" Vargas didn't answer. "'Thou shalt not kill.' You broke the rules. You gotta pay."
Phil leveled the gun at Vargas' head. He smiled.
And pulled the trigger.
Click!
Vargas jumped. Phil chuckled. "Oops. Used one too many shots on that door over there." He holstered the gun. "This could have been your lucky day. But now we'll have to do this old-school."
Phil drew a Ka-Bar combat knife from its scabbard across his chest. Vargas' eyes widened. "Don't look so startled, Hector," Phil said calmly. "It's a lot less painful than being strangled with a power cord. This knife here is way better than you deserve."
Phil swung the Ka-Bar toward Vargas' carotid artery.
And stopped just inches short of it.
"Answer me this, Vargas. Did you enjoy raping those girls before you killed them?" No answer. "I guess I'll find out when I watch that tape in the camera out there." Hector's only response was ragged sobs as he waited to die. "Maybe," Phil said, "the punishment should fit the crime a little more closely."
He swung the knife toward Hector's crotch.
And stopped.
"There are so many ways I could kill you that it's not even funny," Phil said. "Except to me, of course. Someone like you deserves a particularly creative one."
He stepped on Vargas' usable arm, pinning it to the floor.
"I think I prefer this."
Phil plunged the Ka-Bar into Hector Vargas' Adam's apple, nearly cleaving the Colombian's larynx in two, punching through his trachea and esophagus, missing his brain stem (intentionally) and emerging to lodge in the hardwood floor.
It didn't take long to start, but it took Vargas an eternity to die. The swelling of the destroyed larynx blocked his windpipe even as blood streamed out around the Ka-Bar. Vargas tried desperately to pull the big knife out, but Phil's foot pinned his arm securely to the floor, which was starting to collect an alarming amount of blood. Vargas thrashed around frantically, but his contortions only opened the wound wider, prolonging his agony. It was a combination of suffocation and blood loss - two of the worst ways to die.
Finally, Vargas went rigid. Phil looked into the Colombian's eyes at the last possible moment. "Remember Tina and Alyssa," he whispered in Hector's ear. Hector's eyes widened, then were vacant.
Silence.
Phil looked around.
He had just killed eight men.
Damn.