“You guys ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you checked to make sure your safety is off?”

  Paul said, “Check.”

  Tony never thought about it. He turned his weapon to the side and checked his fire selection switch, only to see the safety was on.

  He used his thumb to switch it to “fire.”

  Such an elemental mistake caused Richard some unease.

  It could have been disastrous, for if Tony’s rifle failed to fire when the others did it would leave the men in the common area with three men to deal with instead of two.

  Richard tried to relax and put it out of his mind. Now was not the time to stress over something which could have happened but didn’t.

  There would be plenty of time to address Tony’s forgetfulness and carelessness later. Probably with some remedial weapons training.

  Richard had his weapon aimed at the center of Sennett’s forehead.

  It wasn’t the money shot. He knew that. A shot in center mass on Sennett’s chest was more sure and just as deadly.

  But Richard wanted him to pay for what he’d done to his son. A shot to the chest wouldn’t pay that debt.

  A shot which blew Sennett’s head to pieces wouldn’t bring Richard Junior back. But in Richard’s mind it was more appropriate for the crime he’d committed.

  “On my go, at the count of three…”

  The other two men steeled themselves.

  Richard spoke clearly and deliberately.

  “One… two…”

  It was then Tony made his second mistake, which led to another.

  It wasn’t his fault, necessarily. Even hardened men sometimes have trouble firing a bullet into a man’s body knowing it’ll take the man’s life.

  So Tony was nervous going in.

  And he had never fired this particular weapon before.

  He assumed all rifles were more or less the same, and as a novice shooter it was a common assumption.

  When he used to go hunting with his dad as a youngster his father owned three deer rifles.

  All three of them required considerable pressure on the trigger to make them fire.

  Tony assumed that was just the way it was.

  He didn’t know his father adjusted them that way to prevent him from firing before he was ready.

  Had he fired the AR-15 in the past he’d have known it took a lot less trigger pressure. It wasn’t exactly a hair trigger, but compared to his dad’s old Brownings it was close.

  Now that in itself wouldn’t necessarily jeopardize the task at hand.

  But Tony also committed another rookie mistake by anticipating the go signal.

  Like a drag racer sitting on a starting line, eyes locked on the tree, he was antsy to go as soon as the signal came.

  Drag racers frequently leave the line a split second before getting the green light.

  All they suffer for their mistake is a disqualification.

  Tony fired in anticipation of the number three leaving Richard’s lips, and he fired too quickly.

  His mistake spelled disaster.

  -23-

  The other thing he failed to anticipate was the rifle’s kick.

  It takes a lot of power to eject a bullet at a speed of 2800 feet per second, and as Einstein once pointed out, that energy has to expelled in the opposite direction somehow.

  That somehow is the recoil.

  It came sooner than he expected, and it was stronger than he expected.

  It knocked his shoulder backwards and he hit Richard’s leg.

  That, in turn, knocked Richard’s aim off just as he was firing his own weapon.

  Not a lot, mind you.

  Just enough to make him miss Sennett’s head by a fraction of an inch.

  Richard had to accept partial responsibility for his miss.

  Had he taken the money shot and centered his aim on Sennett’s chest, he still would have hit him.

  The shot would have gone through the outer part of Sennett’s lung and would have driven a sizeable piece of a rib through the lung and out his back.

  It might or might not have been a mortal wound.

  But it certainly would have incapacitated him.

  As it was Sennett escaped the assault without a scratch.

  From Richard’s perspective his part of the mission failed badly.

  It could have been called a comedy of errors.

  Except that there was absolutely nothing funny about it.

  Richard’s team had failed.

  Now it was up to Marty and his team to correct their mistake before any good guys got killed.

  The gunshots caught everyone off guard except for the three people sitting closest to the platform.

  Paul’s shot found its mark and Romo hit the floor immediately.

  Despite Tony screwing everything up, his bullet still managed to go in the side of Suarez’ neck and out the other side.

  The wound didn’t kill him outright, but it did take out his jugular vein. He’d bleed out in less than a minute, and he’d spend what was left of his miserable life clutching both sides of his neck in a desperate attempt to stop the blood flow.

  Despite his still being mobile he was on the floor, flopping around like a fish out of water, and certainly no longer a threat.

  As the shots echoed around the concrete walls Sennett turned with a look of shock across his face.

  He almost considered it an insult someone would dare attack him and his men. After all, this was their prize. They were the aggressors. They were in control.

  Not anymore.

  Sennett reached for the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  It was a tactical error.

  Had he reached for his sidearm instead he might have had a chance to take out the men before him reaching under their jackets.

  He assumed they were reaching for guns, but didn’t have time to wonder where they’d hidden them.

  He chose the wrong weapon in the split second he had to decide.

  There was no way he’d get the rifle off his shoulder and lined up in time to take a shot.

  It was the last error he’d ever make.

  Marty’s knife found its mark in the center of his chest, ripping a big hole in his heart and stilling it forever.

  A split second later Richard had his second shot lined up and a small hole appeared in Sennett’s forehead. At seemingly the same instant a wide spray of skull pieces and brain matter exploded out the back of his head and coated everything behind him.

  His last look, and the one which would register on his face for all eternity, was a look of puzzlement.

  For in the last two seconds of his life he saw Gary Cupp produce, from the inside of his jacket, a can of wasp spray.

  The look on his face when the bullet drilled through his skull was a look which said, “What the hell are you gonna do with that?”

  Sennett wasn’t alive long enough to see it, but Gary answered his question.

  He answered by spraying a can of synthetic pyrethroids into Jerry Martin’s face.

  Martin wasn’t a man who reacted quickly. When the powerful insecticide blasted him in the face he still hadn’t gone for his gun. The entire assault, from Tony’s first shot until Gary’s shot of wasp spray took just three and half seconds.

  Once the spray hit his face he was defenseless. Instead of pulling his gun his hands went to his face in a vain attempt to shield it.

  At the same time he went to the floor, unable to see, unable to breathe, unable to get away.

  The fourth man, Kelly, fell under a similar assault from Ace Ashton.

  He responded in a similar manner because… well, because there was absolutely nothing else he could do.

  Ace and Gary followed their victims as they rolled around the floor, spraying an unending stream of poison into both their faces until Marty finally said, “Okay. That’s enough.”

  Everyone else backed away, for the stench of the pesticide was burning everyone’s eyes and lungs. Even those who got no spray on them were having a difficult time.

  All hell was breaking loose.

  -24-

  Seemingly the only person in all of Eden South who wasn’t affected by the spray was Richard Sears.

  And in fact, that wasn’t the case. It burned his nostrils and lungs just as badly as everyone else, and tears poured from both eyes.

  But he was high on and powered by adrenaline, which gave him the strength of ten men and helped him ignore his pain.

  Between coughs he barked orders.

  “Get your kids back in their cubicles!

  “Wash your eyes and get that stuff out of it. Go outside the fire exits into the yard and get some fresh air! You people who are in good shape grab some blankets to wrap people in against the cold.”

  To Marty he said, “Get some cuffs from the control center,” even as he took the sidearms from Martin and Kelly and threw them aside.

  Ace and Gary threw their cans aside, held their breath as best they could, and helped Richard cuff their hands behind their backs.

  Richard went a step farther. He handcuffed both men at the ankles and passed their ankle cuffs over the first cuffs, between their wrists.

  They were hog-tied and painfully so.

  And Richard didn’t care.

  He was having trouble seeing. He was shedding tears so badly, his eyes were burning so much, they were mere slits.

  They needed to be dried but he was covered with wasp spray and dare not use his hands.

  Martin went still. Kelly was still writhing around on the floor and begging for mercy.

  Richard started wailing for his wife.

  He’d lost his son. He still didn’t know if he’d lost his wife as well.

  “Ruth! Ruth!”

  From the other side of the cavernous room she responded, “I’m here, Richard. I’m okay!”

  Richard said, “Somebody wipe my face with something clean.”

  Somebody, he didn’t know who, took off a dry t-shirt and wiped it across Richard’s face.

  It helped.

  He blinked several times and then, still fueled by adrenaline and rage, grabbed Kelly by his ankle cuffs and dragged him to one of the emergency exits.

  He pressed his hip into the panic bar to open the door and dragged Kelly into the frigid cold, through two feet of snow, and deposited him without fanfare twenty feet from the doorway.

  Every step of the way Kelly’s face bounced and scraped against the hard floor, over a hard rubber threshold and across packed ice beneath the snow.

  At the same time, though, the snow helped wash some of the poison from his face and soothed the burning a bit.

  That wasn’t Richard’s intent, of course.

  He didn’t give a diddly damn about the man’s comfort.

  He went back inside and grabbed Martin the same way.

  Martin was still unconscious, still blissfully unaware of what was going on around him.

  His body gave him a temporary reprieve from the pain. It shut down his mind because it couldn’t deal with the shock of getting sprayed and being unable to breathe.

  However, once his face quit bouncing on the concrete and hit the cold snow he regained consciousness.

  He started coughing again, his eyes started to burn again and he clamped them shut in an effort to make the burning go away.

  It didn’t, but having his face dragged through the snow did wash some of the wasp spray off of it.

  That wasn’t a show of gallantry or kindness on Richard’s part.

  That was because Richard wanted to get the scum out of his home.

  While Richard was doing that everyone else stayed far away from him; he was a wild man and they were afraid of getting in his way.

  They watched him for a time and Ace Ashton felt a tap upon his shoulder. It was Marty.

  “Give me a hand, will you Ace?”

  “Sure. What are we gonna do?”

  He led his friend over to the body of Richard Junior.

  They’d tried to move him earlier but Sennett wouldn’t let them.

  Now that Sennett was a pile of bloody flesh on the other side of the platform, they didn’t expect him to object any farther.

  Marty grabbed Junior by the shoulders of the bloody shirt he wore.

  Ace picked up his feet.

  They carried him ever so gently to his cubicle and placed him upon his rack.

  Junior was a big rock music fan.

  Not modern rock.

  Junior loved music from the days when music was actually good. When a lot of thought was put into song lyrics and every other word wasn’t a curse word.

  His cubicle was decorated with posters and memorabilia from CCR, Three Dog Night, the Stones and ZZ Top.

  Ruth, his mother, covered his body with a Grateful Dead blanket and didn’t even see the irony in it.

  She just wanted to cover up that awful gaping hole in his chest; to make him more presentable as he lay in state.

  The exit door slammed behind Richard as he came back into the building.

  Two of the men were coughing and hacking and dragging Romo’s body toward the door and Richard stopped them in their tracks.

  “Drop him there, fellas. This is my job. I’ll take care of it.”

  -25-

  No one wanted to ask Richard why he thought removing the bodies was his job and would accept no help from his friends.

  He more than anyone else should be given a pass from the cleanup process.

  He lost a son. His only son.

  He was hurting, and not just from the physical agony the wasp spray had delivered upon everyone.

  No, as agonizing as that was, it was the least painful of what he was feeling.

  Once Romo’s corpse was outside in the snow he went back after Suarez.

  As Suarez’ head bounced along the concrete he thought he heard the man moan.

  It might have been his imagination, for his ears were still ringing from the sound of the three rifle shots within that small enclosed storage room.

  And even if he was convinced the man was still alive, it wouldn’t make any difference to Richard.

  He’d give him no sympathy or show any compassion anyway.

  If he was still alive he wouldn’t be for long.

  Richard left him in the snow, face down, and made a point to step on his head to drive it further into the snow before heading back in.

  There wasn’t much left of Sennett’s head. His face was still intact, his eyes still wide open in what looked like surprise.

  But most of the back of his head had been blown away.

  Richard grabbed him by his ankles and started to drag him out, then noticed Marty’s knife still protruding from his chest.

  In a moment of charity to Marty, and certainly not to Sennett, he stopped long enough to pull the knife from the body and to throw it to one side.

  Then he resumed his mission and dragged the dead man out into the snow.

  He threw the body unceremoniously atop Suarez.

  Kelly was writhing about, begging for someone to help him.

  Richard silenced him with a swift kick to his chin, knocking him out cold.

  Back in the cellblock he closed the door and stood before it, as though daring anyone to come near it.

  He felt the adrenaline start to wear off.

  It was getting easier to see again, as the stench of the wasp spray was starting to dissipate now.

  That was mostly because someone, while he was working so hard to move the bodies, had brought a large box fan to the platform and started circulating the air throughout the block.

  He was sweating profusely, yet dare not wipe his face because his hands were still covered with the poison.

  Out of nowhere came two good friends to help.

  One was Al, the mayor of Eden and unofficial leader of the group.

  He said, “Brace yourself, Richard. This is gonna be cold. Are you ready?”

  In his hand was a galvanized bucket, holding perhaps a gallon of water.

  Richard nodded his head.

  The water was frigid, for there was no time to heat it.

  At the same time, though, it washed away not only Richard’s tears but much of the poison that had been burning and irritating his face and neck.

  In that respect, it felt absolutely wonderful.

  Immediately after the dousing the second friend, Tom Franklin, wiped his face with a large bath towel.

  He didn’t rub it. He dabbed it, for Richard’s skin was a fiery red. He was obviously sensitive to the chemicals and commented, “It feels like I’m on fire.”

  Tom said, “Ruth is waiting for you at Junior’s side, whenever you want to join her.”

  Richard, being the devoted husband he was, was more concerned for Ruth’s well being than his own.

  “Did she get sprayed?”

  “No. She was on the other side of the room.”

  “Would you get a change of clothes and meet me at the men’ showers? I need to get all this crap off of me before I contaminate her with it.”

  “Sure. I’ll be there in a minute. Can you make your way to the shower, or do you need someone to guide you?”

  “I can make it.”

  Tom left his side, but Richard wasn’t ready to leave the exit door. Not just yet.

  Mayor Al was still there. Richard addressed him.

  “Al, I will only leave this door if you will promise me you won’t open it or let anyone else open it.”

  Al said, “Richard, two of those men are still alive. We can’t leave them out there to freeze to death.”

  “Damn it, Al. I thought you were my friend.”

  “Richard…”

  “Shut up, Al. Just shut the hell up.”

  He looked around through burning and squinted eyes.

  He saw another friend. Gary Cupp.

  “Gary!”

  Gary was at his side within seconds.

  “How can I help, Richard?”

  “I’m going to the showers, then to see Ruth. Would you promise to stand by this door until I return, and not to let anybody in or out?”

  “I promise.”

  “Not even Al or Marty. Understand?”

  “I understand, Richard. I won’t let anybody in or out, I promise you. Now go get cleaned up.”

 

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