HE FIRST TIME, it’s hard. Like with anything I suppose. And it’s a thing that you’ll never forget. Mine, I was in a little Afghan village. High in the hot hills. Sandy. Kind of place you’d want to go. Get away from it all. Maybe take some of their gorgeous embroidery for yourself. One of those dark red vests.
Learn to take the local kinds of coffee at one of the little round tables outside a small cafe in the village square. Out in the open. Get pally with the elders who like to sit around of an afternoon with a view of the mountains. Smile and nod. Enjoy the heady, scented air. And the sparkle in the black eyes of the lovely young girls who served the tea.
Underneath all of those wraps and scarves, with their faces and all of their bodies practically covered up, the spark of a woman’s amusement in a dark pair of eyes is still one hell of a stimulant.
I remembered seeing a group like that on the edge of the town square. They sipped coffee and bowed their heads together in hushed conversation. An American sat with them, looking out of place. Sitting back in black shades. Thighs apart. Twirling his over-styled black mustache. Like he was there for some darker purpose.
He had an Afghan scarf on his head and a combat jacket. I didn’t see any insignia. He could have been press, an aid worker, NGO. Anything.
The way that he looked at the serving girl, I knew I wasn’t mistaken. Her eyes alone were enough to tell the story. There wasn’t a lot I could make out about her under all the robes and the head covering. Her eyes and her frame, though, she looked about twelve, thirteen maybe.
If we hadn’t been on a patrol, I would have gone over. Asked what he was doing. We were trained that it was important the locals didn’t see us as an occupying force.
What he was doing, though, it looked like an abuse of power. Exploiting the situation like that. I hated that there were men like him hanging around the fringes of our services. Riding in on the military’s coattails.
I’d seen enough of the Afghans to know that they were proud, courageous, honorable people, even though they’d been infiltrated time and again by very, very dark forces. I thought that there were ways we could work together with them, that getting to know them, letting them get to know us, would be a way to build a future.
Those ideas didn’t find much support in camp. Fair enough. Whatever the reasons or the right and wrong, there were plenty of the fuckers out there trying to kill us. And on this day, those were the ones we were out looking for.
We scurried, scuttled. Low. Weighed down with our packs, dusty, shoulders down, up a back street and through a narrow alley. Looking left and right. Looking twice and once again before you made any move. Near to the target. I knew because it got quiet all of a sudden.
Nobody warns you about that but when it happened I knew. The sound level just dropped. Made the noise of my boots seem loud on the shale and scrub. That subtle quietening set my nerves on fire. Nearly there.
It took me by surprise. He came at me out of nowhere. Nearer than he should have been. Bigger than I was ready for. He was about my age. Just a boy, then. But if you’re out to do a man’s job then you’re a man. Ready or not, like it or not. You waste time on a foolish thought, it’ll be your last.
He wasn’t the target. Just a boy. One of the boys the warlord would have surrounding him. The boy’s eyes were hard and happy. I could see that I wasn’t going to be his first.
He was ready. Looking forward to it as he rushed me. I had guns, of course. Grenades, stick bombs. A thing called a tactical shovel. You want to make a big mess with speed and neat efficiency, a tactical shovel is the thing you want.
But I knew, if I made a sound, if he made a noise, we were fucked. Not him. Me and the whole platoon. He knew it, too. That’s part of why he grinned like he did. In that sense, he could only win. He kills me, he wins. I make a noise killing him, he wins.
And he was pumped, on his way to slay another white invader. So I waited. That’s always hard.
Same age as me. If our situations were reversed, if he were part of an armed invasion, ‘liberating’ my home town, I’d have waited in a shadow for him. I would have taken everything I’d got and I’d have killed him and all of his evil crew. Killed them all any way that I could and all the ones that came after.
Got to respect that.
When he was near enough, I hit him. Hard. Real hard. At the base of his throat. Right above the collarbone. With a short, wide, flat blade. No sound. Only the quiet thump. And the gurgle of his blood.
He knew what I was about. His grin turned to a smile. Sinking to his knees, he opened his mouth to shout. He would have made all the noise he could. Of course he would. He wanted to save his cell of boys and men from us. Just like I saved us from him and them. All that came out was the gurgle.
He reached. Probably for a grenade. So I turned the blade. Hard. Robbed him of his attention and hurried him along.
We got all of his comrades. Took most of them alive. Eight out of the eleven. Afterward, they all had a lot of reasons to wish that we hadn’t. The boy’s father was one of them. I didn’t talk about his son, obviously. But I gave him respect. As the man had given it to me. And he understood.
~~
When the job on Beary was done, I should have left town right away. It was a small place and I didn’t belong. If it were now I would arrange it differently. Now, though, I wouldn’t be so jumpy about getting away. I’d have a little more faith in my work.
Something bothered me about it. Not the kill and not the target. Arden, the voice on the phone, the man who sent files via the cloud and money by wire transfers, he told me, “It’s a simple job. Quick. Easy.”
His tone of voice, the rhythm of his words was wrong. Reminded me of a car salesman. When he tells you about the great price, it’s because the car’s a heap and it’s going to die five miles out of the lot.
And there was another reason I wanted to hang around. But I told myself that was an awfully dangerous idea. One I should forget all about.
I should stay low. Keep quiet. Collect the money from the drop, stay in town for a day or two at most. Do some normal things. Whatever the things were that normal people did at normal times. I thought maybe I should ask one.
One person in particular came to mind. She looked like she might know some normal people. I wanted very much to ask her. Ask her that or something.
This was not a place or a time for entanglement, I told myself that. Even the bloody word, Entanglement, made me hard as a fucking telegraph pole.
The money came through all right. That was enough reason to get gone. Taking cash in amounts like that, whether it’s at a bank counter or it’s a Western Union or whatever, it can be noticeable. It could give people something to talk about. Something to remember. Give others something to follow.
In a normal walk of life, that’s the beauty of invoicing. Part payments, delays. Things can be hidden.
In this kind of work, though, trust is the most valuable and important thing there is. So you don’t ever want to use up the tiniest little bit unless you have to. Nobody trusts anyone for a second longer than they have to. It’s how it is. It’s how you see someone means what they say.
I’d something I needed to research at least, so I went to the library. It was fate. There she was. Alone.
Between the stacks with an open book. She looked up. Her eyes were wet and wide under her strawberry blonde curls. Her sweater heaved and her moist lips parted. It was discipline that kept me there. Fixed. Staring at her.
A long wool plaid skirt. How the fuck can anyone look so fucking sexy in a long, wool, plaid fucking skirt down to below her fucking knees? I wanted to shake her and ask her that. That or something.
Without all of my training I couldn’t ever have stopped myself from rushing, leaping right at her. On her. Shove her through the stack and bring the whole pile of books raining down on us. Rip her white cotton panties.
Grip her hair and look hard in her eyes. Hold her by the strawberry curls and fuck her. God. Fuck her. Feel her cool thighs tremble and squeeze. Slam my hard cock into her yielding, hot, soft, wetness.
She moved back against the books. Her feet were apart. I was fixed on her thighs under the skirt. Down to her knee. Fuck. The corners of her eyes twitched. The tip of her tongue pressed around her lips.
Standing still at that point was maybe the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I never saw anyone or anything I wanted as much as I wanted her. Right there. Right then. But I still had a killing that I needed to get some distance away from. Wrecking public libraries was nothing I’d any experience with, but I’d a hunch that it would bring you into contact with the authorities.
As slowly as I could, I went over to her. Prowled. Stalked. I had to hold myself in check every step. She might have thought I’d sought her out. Hunted her down. Cornered her here.
Do the witness. No loose ends. That kind of a thing.
And in one way she’d have been right. I wanted to do the witness alright. I wanted to rip her apart. I never knew that not fucking somebody could be nearly this damned hard. It wasn’t something I’d ever tried.
I got nearer and her scent shot my pulse racing. Her chin tipped and I saw her show me her throat. No sensible or intelligible thought was left in my head. My mind was drenched in red fog.
Her teeth pinched at her lip. I heard a shudder in her breath.
I seized her by the throat. My thumb was under her chin. I tipped her face up to mine. Her eyes were wide. I felt her nod. Though she couldn’t move. Her hips rocked to me. Like she dangled from my hand.
She whispered and her eyes pleaded.
“Not. Here.”
Her fingers reached for my waist. Her eyes flicked to the big double doors behind me. I understood. Not here. I didn’t know if I could stop myself. I breathed hard and felt her body against mine.
Tasting her sweet breath, smelling her hair, seeing the quiver in her lip, I had to take a kiss. But it would be so fucking hard to stop there. It was pretty fucking hard already. Her hands on my waist, I had to taste her.
I leaned my head down. Touched her lips with mine. Our mouths made a lock. Knowing I would have to stop was unbearable. I didn’t think I would want to stop ever. The whole fucking world could go up in flames and crumble to blackened dust and I wouldn’t care. I’d be glad. Then it would leave us the fuck alone.
Me and the most perfect woman on earth. Me and her breath. Her body. Her soft breasts. Her tightening thighs. Oh, God.
I tugged her hair. Our lips were just touching but my whole body, my whole life, was in the seal between us. The connection.
What the fuck did I think I was doing? In an open, public building. I could be discovered at any moment. The toughest thing I ever did was to rip myself away from her.
If I hadn’t hauled myself away then I would have burned everything down. Stamping out of the fucking library I wished that I had. Nothing mattered. Nothing more than that. And I’d ripped it up. Thrown it away.
My chest and shoulders buzzed. My legs were tight. My jaw clenched. I made too much noise heading down the stone steps. And my balls ached. It wasn’t until then, I was almost to the corner of the street before I even thought, I could have said something to her.
No, I realized. I’d been way too fucking tense and wound up. If I tried to speak, something bad would have happened. Most likely I’d have just roared and growled incoherently like a fucking idiot.
I could have written something down maybe. But I was all about not leaving anything traceable. Maybe this new career wasn’t going to work out for me. Killing people in faraway places seemed like it might be my only option after all. Killing people was all that I really knew, but doing it here at home was starting to look complicated.