He wasn’t there.
Gage again became aware of his heart rate. He spun to the right to make sure Bruno hadn’t come into the kitchen through the other entrance. He slid into a shadow at the front of the kitchen, waiting.
Gage didn’t have to wait long. Moments later, he heard a flush and Bruno staggered back through the TV room, straight into the kitchen without turning the light on.
He waited for Bruno to open the refrigerator before he moved. As Bruno was retrieving a jug of orange juice and a hunk of unwrapped Swiss cheese, rimmed by bluish mold, Gage pressed the nine millimeter to the back of his head.
“Don’t make a sound,” Gage said in German.
Bruno, for all his drunkenness, acted like a man who’d had a gun jabbed into his skin before. He froze, dropping both items from his hand with a loud clunk.
Gage, concerned the sound might have roused the other one, listened for movement from the back of the house, hearing nothing.
“Sprichst du Deutsch?” Gage asked.
Bruno shook his head, lifting his hands as he swayed. Gage made sure to stay back because as large as his target was, one good swipe could throw Gage across the kitchen before he had a chance to react.
“English?”
“A little,” Bruno said loudly. That was all it had taken for Gage. Just like he had done to the hotel clerk the week before, Gage sliced the weapon through the air, hitting Bruno in the area where the spinal column connects with the brain. The big Frenchman went down in a heap. Gage leapt into action, jerking duct tape from his bag and taping Bruno’s hands behind his back. When he finished, Bruno was still out cold, no doubt aided by the surplus of vodka shots he had ingested earlier.
After tossing Bruno’s pistol into his bag, Gage used his thumb to flick the television off, then he waited. There were no other sounds in the house. Licking his lips, he realized he felt as if he might be high on speed. In the midst of what was soon to turn violent—Gage Hartline was fully aware of the irony—he felt supreme tranquility, as if the world was running at fast forward while he was benefitting from personal slow-motion. There had been plenty of tense moments as a contractor, but it had been many years since he had performed a mission that required hostility and, as Gage covered the scant feet to the back of the house, a piece of his consciousness screamed to him: “Yes! Yes! Yes! This is who you are, Matthew Schoenfeld. You are not Gage Hartline: neo-pacifist. You are Matthew Schoenfeld: mercenary, gun for hire. Get those hands bloody, boy; tonight’s the night you come back to us. Come back, Matthew. Come back!”
Fully aware of his mind’s bizarre ramblings, Gage spun into the back bedroom, seeing the other Frenchman sitting up in his bed and rubbing his head, probably confused by the noise but too drunk to make sense of it.
“What’s your name?” Gage yelled in French.
The man stared at Gage in complete bewilderment, his eyes foggy, shaking his head as if he might be having a dream. “Luc,” he managed to stammer.
“Okay, Luc,” Gage said calmly, “What is your brother’s name?”
“Bruno.”
Gage nodded. “Very good. Here’s the important part. Do you remember Monika Brink, in Frankfurt, Germany?”
Luc was far too intoxicated not to be perfectly transparent. Gage couldn’t have done any better by injecting him with a syringe of sodium pentothal. Luc nodded.
“Did you kill her?”
“Oui.”
“Merci, Luc.” Gage lowered his weapon a fraction from center mass, applying just enough pressure to squeeze off one round. The tongue of yellowish flame licked from the barrel, hurtling a jacketed round at Luc Florence and impacting him in his mid-left abdomen.
Gage held the pistol steadily on Luc, observing. Due to his drunkenness, and the round’s clean passage, it took Luc a fraction longer to process what had happened than it would a normal person. When Luc finally did realize the pain, he shrieked and writhed on the bed, clutching the bleeding hole in his midsection.
And then Gage really went to work.
Or was he Matthew?
***
They were in the kitchen. Bruno struggled against the duct tape to no avail. The American had bound him too well. He walked back into Bruno’s field of vision, admiring his handiwork. Apparently satisfied, he turned his attention to the stove. Bruno tried to zone out his brother’s moaning as he watched the man jerk the stove from the wall, jumping into the gap behind it. Clouds of dust plumed upward as if he had jumped into a pile of loose feathers.
“Oh yeah, this’ll work just perfect. Piece of crap antique doesn’t even have a safety on it.” The tan man with the black beard lifted his head, a wildly intense expression on his face. “But then again, the French aren’t exactly known for their engineering and design, are they?” He shook his head. “Nah, didn’t think so.”
It was another two minutes before the man hoisted himself out from behind the stove. He stood before Bruno, an average sized man, but with lean, muscular forearms and moves as lithe as a twenty-year-old. “Remember me?” he asked, lowering his face to Bruno’s.
Forced to breathe through his snot filled nose, Bruno tried to think but his head was clouded by a day of drinking and the blow to the neck.
“From right here in Metz,” he offered.
Bruno’s brain refused to comply. The man shook his head, clucking his tongue as if he were disappointed. Finally he took his finger and traced the wound on Bruno’s head. “I gave you this.”
Bruno’s eyes went wide with recognition of the man named Gage Hartline. Earlier, when he was being bound to his brother, Bruno thought he might still have a chance to survive this situation.
But not now.
The American leaned forward, ripping the tape off Bruno’s mouth. After taking several great breaths, Bruno faked a pitiful tone. “Please don’t kill me.”
The man straightened. “How many shots of vodka did you have tonight?”
“You were in the bar, earlier?”
“Yes, Bruno, I was. You were too stupid, too arrogant, too drunk to even give a cursory glance to see if you had any enemies there.” The man wagged a finger at him. “In your line of work, that’s something you should always do. Not that it matters anymore.”
Bruno tried to shift his feet—they were also bound—and he felt slickness on the floor, making him glance downward. He saw Luc’s blood pooling.
The man followed his eyes. “Gunshot wounds to the gut are usually pretty bloody. I assume he’s your brother.”
Bruno screamed his name. Luc moaned. Bruno looked to the American. “He’ll bleed to death!”
The man nodded and stepped to the sink. He carried the roll of paper towels around and out of Bruno’s vision. Cloth being ripped was soon followed by screams and then, once again, the unmistakable sound of the duct tape being pulled from its roll. Luc’s screaming then stopped. The man walked to the sink, washing blood from his hands.
“There,” he said. “The bleeding has been stemmed.” He placed his hands on his hips, staring at Bruno. “Was that a setup last week at the book store?”
Bruno forced his mind to think, tearing clumsily through the layers of alcohol, to the night in the book store, to the night he almost died. “A setup?” he asked softly, his French accent heavy. “We only wanted the money.” Bruno did his best to hide the fear from his eyes.
“Bullshit,” the American answered, his gaze steeled upon Bruno. “And I want you to tell me everything, from the beginning.” He stepped around Bruno, doing something that caused Luc to shriek in pain, afterward stepping back into Bruno’s field of vision. “Start talking or I’ll make this night the most painful of your miserable lives.”
Bruno breathed heavily, growing more lucid, his fear starting to be outweighed by the growing anger coursing through his body. “Who do you think you are?” he shouted at the American. “You are nothing, a petit morceau de merde! Do you know who we are? Who we’re with? We’re fucking Glaives and you will be killed twenty ways from Sunday for this!”
The American shivered as if he were scared, laughing afterward. “To me, Bruno, you look like a fat-ass, low-level bully who is completely and thoroughly defeated. And where are your brother Glaives now?” The American waited with arched eyebrows. “If you hope to die somewhat peacefully, I’d suggest you start talking.”
Bruno spat at him. “Your little bitch did not die peacefully,” he said lowly, with a snarl. The seemingly unflappable American straightened, narrowing his eyes.
“Yes, we were sent to kill you, but the cunt had a gun…too bad for you she couldn’t hit shit. She died whimpering like a beaten dog. She was nothing but a cheap whore, and I fucked her before we killed her, and she liked it, coming again and again. She wanted it, you faggot American, from a real man.” Bruno set his jaw, false bravado oozing from his every pore.
The man glared down at Bruno, his eyes glistening, making Bruno feel good that he had touched a nerve. He stayed that way for nearly a minute, taking deep breaths, his eyes locked with Bruno’s. But the long bout of silence, and the man’s unyielding icy stare, made Bruno, in the back of his mind, begin to think that he might have just made a mistake.
After the pause, the American nodded once, as if finally digesting what he’d just heard. He crossed the room and went into his bag. He cupped something in his hand and again locked eyes with Bruno. The damp eyes were gone, now darkened and hardening by the second. “Tell me everything, Bruno. Start with who sent you to kill me. Was it Jean Jenois of the DGSE, or the Glaives?”
“Fuck…you.”
“Speak now, Bruno,” the American said with a twisted grin. It was clearly a warning.
Bruno only glared.
The American moved to Bruno’s left as something long and silver glinted in the kitchen light. Through his drunkenness, Bruno felt his ear being tugged by the lobe.
“I’d stay very still if I were you, dickhead,” the American murmured.
Searing, burning pain emanated from the lower portion of his ear, moving upward as Bruno realized with sheer horror that this madman was slicing his ear off. Bruno tried to keep still, hoping the pain would decrease, but it actually worsened as the blade went higher. The American was humming as he worked, like a madman barber simply going about his daily business.
“Good bit of cartilage here at the top. Ball your fists. This may hurt a little.”
Before he clenched his eyes shut, Bruno saw the man’s arm moving back and forth in a sawing motion. His ear canal clearly picked up the crunching sound as the razor worked its way through the sinew. There was a slight jerk and the American laughed.
“There we go. Not bad at all for my first time.”
Through the shroud of intense pain, Bruno opened his eyes. The man displayed his ear, cauliflowered from numerous fights, dangling it like one might a set of keys. He tossed it in Bruno’s lap as the Frenchman felt his bowels turn watery.
The American’s smile disappeared. “There’s another ear, ten fingers, and then I go to the toes. After that, well, I’ll let you guess.” Bruno’s brother Luc, in intense pain of his own and listening closely, moaned once and then fell unconscious.
Bruno’s face shook as he stared, horrified, at his ear before he vomited into his lap.
“Man, that really smells,” the American said. “Start talking or I keep cutting.”
Bruno stared up at the American, strings of spittle dangling from his lower lip. His fear and pain again turned to rage. One cut ear could not—would not—break him. He reached deep into his throat, snorting loudly until he was able to spit a wad of snot in the man’s direction. This time, though, the man was ready. He dodged the fluid with an amused look on his face, moving forward once again.
“Okay,” the American said as he moved behind Bruno. “I see how we’ll have to play this.” The crunching sounds started again as he quickly removed the other ear.
Again, Bruno vomited a sour mélange of stomach bile and vodka into his lap, covering the freshly liberated ears as the American stepped aside to avoid the spatter. Bruno leaned his head back, gasping for air as he dry heaved.
The American bent over, hands on his knees, at eye level with Bruno. “I ask again: are you going to talk?”
Bruno actually smiled, his brown teeth flecked with remnants of the small amount of food from his stomach. He’d show this American what tough was. The American, though, matched his smile.
“Yeah, that’s why I started with the ears. Not too many nerves there. Let’s try something else, something that will hurt.”
Again going into his bag, Bruno heard a whirring as the American hefted something. When the man turned, he saw what he was holding.
A small cordless drill.
Bruno’s stomach began to make noise loud enough to be heard back in Metz, churning violently as it contradicted his own forced bravado. Without hesitating, the American tightened the chuck around the thin bit, pressing it to Bruno’s left kneecap. His eyes flicked up to catch Bruno’s; they were sparkling with glee. Bruno could see the man’s cheeks widen as his grin emerged. Then the man pulled the trigger on the drill.
The pain lasted only a few seconds, a deep, center-abdomen pain unlike Bruno had ever experienced in his life, giving him an understanding of why the ancient Egyptians thought the soul existed behind the stomach. The carbide-tipped drill cut into Bruno’s kneecap with ease as the Frenchman watched in horror. But it was after the drill bit cleared the kneecap, when it broke through into the soft, fleshy area it was designed to protect…it was then that Bruno Florence screamed and quickly passed out.
Without any reference on how much time had passed, Bruno felt his face being slapped, opening his eyes to see the American standing over him. “I need you awake,” the American said calmly. He watched as the man removed the thin drill bit, dropping it into his pocket and removing a much larger one. The man cocked his eyebrow.
“You didn’t think that was it, did you?” He laughed heartily, speaking through the laughter. “That was just the pilot hole.”
Bruno was on the verge of fainting again after realizing what was about to happen. The new drill bit was very large, the diameter of a ring finger. The madman stepped to him with a wadded-up kitchen towel.
“Bite down on this.”
Readily, Bruno opened his mouth and bit down on the towel. When he did, the intruder stepped in front of him and revved the drill at full speed, pressing it into the trickling hole created with the smaller bit. Tiny chunks of bone flew as Bruno’s muscles tensed to the point of almost tearing the duct tape. Bruno clamped down on the towel, not believing what was happening to him as he watched the 18-volt drill struggle to make such a large hole in his knee. Again, when the drill broke through, the spinning bit pushed into the center of the knee, causing a different, far worse pain to become evident. The American let it whir in the hole he had created, pushing it back and forth like a woodworker might in a freshly punched piece of hickory. The man lifted his head to view Bruno’s face and, as he did, he began to twist and twirl the spinning drill, wrecking what was left of the area behind Bruno’s kneecap as blood and bits of gristle flew through the air.
There was no more vomit; Bruno didn’t pass out. Instead, after the madman removed the drill, Bruno let the towel tumble from his mouth and cried like he had once cried as a little boy. It was a cry of a helpless person, intermixed with Bruno’s cries for his “maman”.
The man disappeared for a moment, reemerging with a bar of white soap. He pressed it onto the freshly drilled hole, making Bruno scream again. The American twisted the soap back and forth before pulling it away and examining it.
“Perfect. As good as a cork.”
His crying not ceasing, Bruno watched the bearded man as he snatched the dish towel and wiped down the drill, seemingly in no rush. He was utterly insane and completely serious, and Bruno’s ear holes and knee hurt more than anything he might imagine. He was drunk and beaten and, with a resigned nod, he lowered his head and began to talk, spittle and drool f
alling from his mouth.
Luc, who had again gained his consciousness but remained curiously quiet during the torture session, also responded openly when questioned.
***
Once he’d learned all he needed to know, Gage pulled the stove all the way out, then set to work with two trip flares, string, and the wire cutters. Due to the two brothers’ transparent confessions, Gage promised them a fighting chance to survive. If they could escape from his death contraption—and he knew they couldn’t—they could live. A quick death was too good for them anyway, and Gage needed to cover his tracks, at least long enough to finish his mission.
Bound back to back, Gage tethered taught string from both men’s arms and legs. He did this on both sides of their body, using an extra chair as a makeshift pulley. This was done to prevent the men from trying to escape, with severe penalties for an inch of movement in either direction.
The strings from each side converged at one main string, leading behind the stove. Attached to the main string were both military pull-tab flares, the safety pins removed. It would take only fourteen ounces of pressure to ignite each flare, which would subsequently ignite the natural gas flooding into the room from the stove line that Gage removed on his way out.
Before he left, Gage opened two windows to provide air into the gas laden room. “This way you won’t die from a lack of oxygen, and there won’t be an explosion—just a nasty fire,” he said as he taped Bruno’s mouth shut.
Luc fell unconscious around sunup, for the final time. By 8:00 a.m. he was dead from shock and a loss of blood. Bruno tried as best as he could to remove the tape that bound his wrists, but the American had done too good of a job in securing him in place. His sobs of frustration were never heard by anyone and, by lunchtime on Sunday, he was thoroughly defeated. With one final desperation attempt, he tried to free his hands. There was no use. He was a dead man.
With his eyes squeezed shut, Bruno gritted his teeth and jerked his legs to the side. For a split second, nothing happened and his heart leapt with joy. Then the searing natural gas-fed fireball enveloped his world.
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