Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(8)
My caution is pointless. A moment later I hear the growl of an engine behind me, followed by the crushed popcorn sound of tires over gravel. Turning around with my near useless lighter in hand, I see a moving van skid to a stop less than 10 feet away. Two figures with guns, one of the the mercenary from before, hop out of the sliding door before the shock absorbers finish bobbing.
Both of the gunslingers, the young one from the diner and a woman I haven’t seen before, are wearing variations of mercenary chic. Hiking boots, blue jeans, and flannel jackets over t-shirts. It’s the kind of look that could be mistaken for a hunter’s outfit, which in this part of the world is entirely the point. The shooters’ gloves and fracture resistant glasses on their noses point them out as definite mercenaries to me. The identical, short barreled shotguns in their grips are also a clue, in case I’d needed on more.
Something about the shotguns they carried draws a second look from me. They’re custom jobs that started their lives as short barrel Kel-Tec KSGs.
I’ve never sold a Kel-Tec to a client, but I’ve known one company in particular that used them. The group was, unsurprisingly, co-led by Tom before I’d dragged him down to Hell with me. Considering what I’d done to their friends, it makes sense that they’d have a vendetta with me. Considering who they’d helped, I still regret nothing.
The seconds I lose assessing those weapons screws me over. I’m so busy staring at them, so busy realizing that these were the same fuckers who came after me and Mary, that I miss whatever chance I’d have had to flick my lighter and try another drop, however unpredictable, to anywhere else but here.
The new mercenary from before snaps her shotgun up to her shoulder and aims at something strange. Not my chest, but my hand.
“Drop the lighter,” she shouts. “or lose the arm.”
The mercenaries aiming shotguns at me from less than ten feet away know more than just who I am. They what I am, what I can do, and how I can do it.
“Shit.” I say. “This night really hasn’t been going my way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Surprise, speed, and violence of action are the basic components of winning any given fight. It was something that I’d been told by an Army Ranger down in Bangkok. According to him, the best ways to win without getting killed yourself was to work your way through that trio in order of importance. It’s always a good idea to sneak up on an opponent, because if you succeed, you’ll almost always get to attack first. Moving fast was a second choice if surprise wasn’t possible, and if for any reason you found yourself being slowed down, be ready to fall back on overwhelming force as a last, shaky option.
Surprise is out of the question right now, because the two assholes aiming at me apparently know about drop. Speed is going to be a hard sell as well, because while I’m kind of fast, I’m not itchy trigger finger fast. The last choice, overwhelming force, is the most pathetic of all, because, well, shotguns.
Out of options, I decide that staying alive long enough to kill the devil bastard and so, I cooperate with the not-so-nice people carrying guns. I drop the lighter, and in an instant, the duo is on me. They shove me down hard into the gravel covered ground and zip-tie both of my hands behind my back. I don’t even notice the specific part where they take the lighter. There’s just too much to track, and they move too quickly for me to tell.
Being handcuffed has never been a thing I enjoyed, even under more casual and less-clothed circumstances. My discomfort gets worse when a third, middle aged male mercenary gets out from behind the driver’s seat. He moves slow, unhurried now that I’m fully restrained, and carries a thick canvas hood in his hands. From how he’s walking towards me, he intends to put it over my head.
Handcuffs may be annoying, but blindness is intolerable. Even when in hell, there’s still firelight to see by. Darkness has a way of making you meek. My agitation grows, my heartbeat picks up, and before I know it, I’m panting for air even before the man comes close enough to place the suffocating hood on me.
A voice in the back of my head starts whispering to me. Not in words, but in knowledge and surety. It says that if I allow myself to break now, if I sink down into fear, there’ll be no one waiting to pull my back up. I have to keep myself strong to get through this. I need to focus on something.
In the last few seconds before the man with the hood makes it to me, I use my eyes to drink in all the details I can find. The younger mercenary from before, who’d scoped out the diner, isn’t the only one among the three to sport a USMC tattoo. The woman has one too, though hers is a bit smaller, being placed on the inside of her wrist instead of the meat of her arm. I turn my head, but fail to get a better look at the third man, the hood carrying driver, before he arrives, bends down, and places the canvas over my head.
While the driver took his sweet time in walking over to me, the two others are quick to grab me by the elbows, lift my torso off the ground, and drag me, tip-toes digging through gravel, over to the van a few feet away. They both grunt, swing, and throw me inside, without so much as a token effort made to cushion my landing.
I smack hard on the bare metal flooring of the van and bounce my forehead off something made of steel. Dazed, I can do little more than wiggle around as one of them shoves my feet, which had still been jutting out of the cab, deeper inside the vehicle.
It stinks in here, and not just of the sweating adults that pile into the close metal box after me. I smell vomit, cigarettes and the sour cat-piss smell that I’ve noticed once or twice on an amphetamine addict. All the smells, fresh sweat excluded, are coming from the van. These mercs either bought it cheap from some meth heads or plain lack the common decency to take care of their gear.