KILL KILL KILL

by Mike Leon

  Copyright 2012, 2013 by Mike Leon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law.

  Cover art by Paul Bohart

  Additional illustrations by Rachel Lang

  PLEASE SEND ALL COMMENTS, QUESTIONS AND DEATH THREATS TO:

  PROFESSIONAL.MIKE.LEON@GMAIL.COM

  Now we are all sons of bitches.

  Kenneth Bainbridge

  July 16, 1945

  LITTLE GIRL LOST

  “It’s a fucking bloodbath in there,” Shelly says.

  The skinny blond is holding a Milkor multiple grenade launcher over her shoulder as she radios to Echo Team that Walter is here. Back when Walter was in the shit, the army still had a no girls allowed policy. Shelly makes him wish they didn’t.

  “Where’s Spears?” Walter asks. He stands with his boots three inches deep in the un-shoveled snow of the driveway in front of Van Duyn Manor. His brown trench coat nearly scrapes the white powder and flakes of it land on his head and melt into his short silver hair.

  “Through that side door there into the kitchen. Just go straight through into the dining hall. The Lieutenant should be in there.”

  The sky is dark and choked with white fuzz. Walter can barely make out the lights high atop the colossal mansion as dim balls of blur in the snowy gloom.

  “Good. You stay here with the big guy.”

  “The big guy?” Shelly says, peering at Walter over the mirror lenses of her sunglasses.

  Walter waves his hand and the Ghoul steps out of the rental car behind him. The shocks creak and the car raises almost a foot.

  Seven feet tall and weighing four hundred pounds fully armored, the creature known only as Ghoul speaks rarely when not excited by the promise of violence or the sight of blood. Its black Kevlar armor reminds Walter of the suits worn by bomb disposal technicians. The obvious difference is the skull faced rubber Halloween mask the Ghoul wears over his helmet. Walter hates that stupid mask, though it is a huge improvement over the hideous face underneath.

  “Um. Okay…” Shelly says. She stares up at the monstrous butcher beside her with obvious unease as Walter walks away and into the house. Walter doesn’t need the monster stomping around inside messing up the scene. It is notoriously careless with its size and strength.

  His way through the kitchen is unremarkable, although the kitchen is notably immaculate and stocked with industrial cooking equipment rather than the common housewares. It looks like the grill line at a five star restaurant – all except for the handful of soldiers standing guard with MP5 submachine guns and body armor. They wear black uniform fatigues under their vests, unmarked except for the fanged skull and crossbones patch on the left shoulder which marks them as operators of Graveyard. The patch, which is plain white and lacks any numbers or rank insignias, has existed for almost a century, and was designed specifically to be ambiguous as well as unnerving. One man nods solemnly as Walter walks past them into the dining room. The sight that greets him there is a terrible one.

  Dangling upside down from the dining hall chandelier is the corpse of Mrs. Victoria Van Duyn, the lady of the house. Walter cannot confirm that entirely, as her head is missing, but her vibrant pink bubble hem dress hangs down exposing her jade lace underwear, which is a telling feature considering Eli Van Duyn’s well known taste for young trophy wives – this being the last in a long series. The chandelier is elaborate and huge. Silver arms and branches extend in many directions and the tiny white lights number at least a hundred by Walter’s estimation. Lady Van Duyn’s ankle is caught somehow in the crisscross of silver so that one bar acts as a fulcrum beneath her knee and the weight of her dangling body levers her shin upwards against another bar to keep her suspended. This will remain until they take her down or her shin breaks – whichever happens first. A dark puddle of blood has collected on the long and ornately carved wooden dining table below her. A few thick lines extend out from the main puddle and onto the surrounding chairs and tile floor. Those were left by the swinging of the chandelier.

  Walter is so transfixed that he nearly trips on another body. A man wearing a gray Armani suit lies face down on the tile at his feet. The suit is perforated with so many bullet holes that they almost make one big hole in the back of the suit coat. His gun, an Ingram MAC-10, juts out from the open wound as if he was stabbed with the muzzle, and the fingers at the end of his twisted and broken right arm are still caught in the trigger guard. Dozens of shell casings litter the floor. So much blood has pooled around the cadaver that the casings are half sunk in it. Walter leans to get a look at the face and he recognizes the man as William Travers. That surprises him. He knew Travers years ago, when they were in Delta together. He was with Travers on an operation in Burma that went completely to shit. Travers, Walter and two others made their way through thirty miles of dense bush with a whole division of guerillas right on their asses. Walter saw Travers gruelingly force his thumbs through the eyeballs of a Burmese militia man in that jungle. Bill Travers was a killer – one of the best. Now it looks like someone stomped him against the floor and emptied his own subgun magazine into his spine. Travers had kids, a boy and a girl, and an ex-wife somewhere. Someone will need to go talk to them.

  For the first time since he entered, Walter takes note of the personnel snapping photos and examining the scene. He vaguely recognizes a few of the dozen people there. He doesn’t fraternize much with the labcoat set.

  Lieutenant Jim ‘KillCrazy’ Spears enters through a wooden door on the other side of the room with two other Echo members. He gives a grim nod of recognition when he sees Walter leaning to get a better look at the body hanging from the chandelier. Spears is a younger man. His hair is sandy blond and if there are any gray strands they don’t stand out. His rifle is slung over his shoulder and he wears the solid black fatigues of a Graveyard operator.

  “They were at a fund raiser for the gun lobby. He left before she did,” Spears says, eyeing toward the hanging body. “Best we can figure, she came home and walked in on the killer.”

  “Where’s Van Duyn?” Walter says.

  “On the back veranda,” Spears answers stone faced. He shakes his head slightly as he does so. “You think this is a freak show? This is just the beginning.”

  Walter follows Spears and another man through the wooden door into the den, which Walter assumes is one of many. They pass another dead bodyguard, this one eviscerated over a glass coffee table which has spider webbed, but not shattered, under his weight. Walter doesn’t know him.

  “There were three guards,” Spears says. “We found another one on the third floor with the butler and a member of the kitchen staff. It looks like they were trying to make a phone call, but all the lines were cut. Power too.”

  Spears opens a glass door from the den to the outside, and as Walter steps out onto the wooden planks of the back veranda, what he sees is even more mind boggling than the scene in the dining hall.

  Eli Van Duyn lies face up on the veranda floor, vacant eyes gazing up at the ceiling in terror. He wears a black tuxedo with a white shirt and black tie that streams from his neck and over his right shoulder until it ends in a tattered tear. His body ends in a similar way just above his waist. His tuxedo top is a shredded mess and the flesh underneath comes to a jagged conclusion as well. Bloody guts pour from the gaping hole. Walter can make out a lower rib pointing skyward and a splintered spine resting against the floor. His lower half is nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s the rest of him?” Walter demands in an uncharacteristically shrill tone.

  “We can’t find it,” Spears answers
. “I’ve seen guys look like that after they stepped on an IED, but there’s no damage here from explosives and well...” He trails off as if purposely omitting something.

  Walter leans closer to the body and happens upon the same bizarre observation. There is a serrated, saw-like pattern to the massive wound.

  “This looks like a shark bite,” Walter says.

  “We know,” Spears answers.

  “What can do that?”

  Spears shakes his head. “A shark, I guess.”

  “A shark doesn’t climb out of the ocean and walk a hundred miles onto dry land through a snow storm, cut the power to the house, shoot Bill Travers in the god damned back with his own gun and hang some bitch from a chandelier. Not any kind of shark I’ve ever seen.”

  Walter is still examining the corpse with grim fascination when Operator Morgan steps out onto the veranda. Morgan is a short man, thick and muscular – the kind of man Van Hansen would say was built like a brick shithouse. He stuffs a heavily padded Blackberry cell phone into a shirt pocket and he displays a look of urgency.

  “I just had Van Duyn’s ex-wife on the phone,” Morgan reports. “His daughter was supposed to be here for the weekend.”

  Spears’ eyes widen. Walter grunts. Echo Team did not find any children during the initial clearing, dead or alive. Both men jump into action.

  “Get Shelly,” Spears barks at Morgan. “I want a fire team on this veranda in two minutes, and bring the dogs.”

  Walter raises a radio and calls a dog of his own. “Ghoul. Follow operator Baum to the back deck.” The Ghoul doesn’t know what veranda means. Walter finds it best to keep his commands simple.

  Two minutes later, Shelly Baum is on the veranda with the Ghoul, four operators, and two German shepherds. Morgan finds a doll, upstairs in the girl’s bed, which the handler gives the dogs to pick up a scent. They hit on something almost immediately, but the trail takes them away from the house – out into the biting cold. Spears leaves Morgan in charge at the house as the dogs guide them into the woods outside. Walter, The Ghoul, Shelly Baum, and the fire team follow.

  Walter figures the girl will be frozen solid if they find her. No one could survive in this for long. The Ghoul stomps through the snow ahead of them with only the dogs to show the way. The cold has little effect on the giant barbarian. It annoys Walter, who pulls his beret down low and covers half his face with the scarf. Spears and his operators are stone faced and cover all directions as they hustle to keep up with the vicious engine of destruction ahead of them. The woods are thick and the sun has been blotted out by the clouds and snow. None of them can see far and some of them are scared, but Walter is confident. He doesn’t care if a fucking T-Rex is waiting for them out there. They will show it straight to the hurt locker.

  A half mile into the woods, the dogs hit on something ahead. Walter can just barely make out the Ghoul as it halts and draws a wicked black cleaver from a sheath on its back. This knife is one of many strapped to the big butcher and is big enough to be a full sized sword for a smaller man. Walter crouches behind a tree as Spears and the fire team converge on the position.

  “What is it?” Shelly Baum asks, her sight and that of her grenade launcher never pointing away from the scene ahead. Spears looks to Walter silently.

  “Wait and see what he does,” Walter answers.

  They all watch as the Ghoul creeps forward into some snow covered bushes at the base of a great oak tree. After a good look into the bushes, the Ghoul turns back toward Walter and the fire team. It cocks its head to the side and shrugs one shoulder. Walter has seen this motion before and he thinks it is the most human one the Ghoul can make. The dogs at his feet continue to bark up at the sky notifying them all that they have reached the end of their search.

  “It’s clear,” Walter says.

  “Alright,” Spears responds. “Let’s move in.”

  Walter draws his 1911 and pulls back the hammer with his thumb. He follows Spears forward as Shelly and the fire team cover them from behind.

  The two men only make it a few feet before they see what the dogs have found. Behind the bushes at the Ghoul’s feet, huddled in a large recess in the roots of the great oak tree, is Van Duyn’s young daughter. The girl couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve. Her skin is pale white and her eyes are blank and motionless. She wears nothing but a sweater and blue jeans. Walter can see that her fingers are black with frostbite. He holsters his gun and rushes forward.

  He removes his right glove and touches the girl’s throat. Her skin is like ice, but she isn’t dead just yet. He can feel a slight pulse and something else. She’s saying something. She’s talking.

  Walter leans forward into the hollow and puts his ear to her mouth. He can barely make out the feint words over the wind blowing through the trees.

  “…the bad man…the bad man…the bad man…”

  Spears already has his jacket off and he’s wrapping it around the girl and yelling into her face to try and wake her up as Shelly screams into a radio for a medic back at the house. The dogs continue to bark. Walter hears none of it as he steps backward away from the oak tree.

  He can feel his hair stand on end as he scans the gloomy woodland around them for anything – anything at all that might explain this insanity. There is nothing.

  “What the hell happened out here?” he asks. Spears is too busy hoisting the girl off the ground and barking commands at Shelly to hear, but it doesn’t matter. Walter knows he doesn’t have an answer. Nobody does.

  A CHILD DOESN’T KNOW

  WHAT TERRIBLE IS

  Helicopter blades chop through the chill night. The bulky headphones Sid wears block out most of the noise. Only two colors exist under the dome light of the chopper. His black fatigues and gloves stand out against the blood red world around him.

  His father’s voice rumbles over his headset, deep and gravelly, with the tiniest hint left over from Eastern Europe. A shade of his former fearsome self, his father was once the mighty Kill Team One. It is said that he decimated small armies with no help from anyone. He killed warlords, champions and supermen with nothing but his wits and steel.

  One day, Sid will be a great warrior like his father, but first he must pass his father’s test.

  “We are dropping you in right here,” his father says, jabbing his finger into a spot on a topographical map, unfolded messily in his lap. Sid notes the terrain. He needs little more than a glance. His memory is almost eidetic, the product of constant beatings over mistaken or misremembered minutiae during the last decade.

  “That’s only a mile from the objective point.”

  “That is right. This is a milk run. In and out. You cannot handle that?”

  “I can, sir.”

  “Good. That is why you have a time limit. Forty-five minutes for the whole op. You hit the ground. Make your way to the target zone. Terminate. Make your way to…” he scans the map briefly before poking another spot “…here for pick up.”

  “I won’t let you down.”

  “And no guns.”

  “What?”

  “No guns,” the old man repeats, grabbing Sid’s M4 rifle. He throws the gun from the open door of the helicopter. This jars Sid slightly. It is a waste of a perfectly good rifle. Neither of them looks to see where it lands. He turns back to his father.

  “You’re going in with just a knife. Leave those grenades here,” he says, pointing to two HE grenades clipped to Sid’s belt. “We want to send a message. The best way is quiet and ugly. Quiet and ugly is best done with a knife.”

  “I’ll make it ugly,” Sid says.

  “This is a picture of the target,” the old man says, leaning over next to him with a manila file drawer folder in his hands. He flips it open in front of Sid. “He is eight.”

  “You want me to kill a kid?” Sid says, not upset, but a little surprised. He eyes the photograph in the folder. It is just a mug shot of a sandy-haired young boy, maybe a little plump for his age, holding a basketball
in some unknown park.

  “You are a kid,” the old man answers with a sly grin. “What is the problem?”

  “None, sir.” It is true. Sid is only fifteen.

  “Are you sure you can handle it? You sound afraid, boy.”

  “I’ll make it ugly,” he repeats. His voice is harsh and angry now. He will.

  “Good. Fear is for the weak. A warrior has no fear.”

  In just minutes, Sid is making his way through the dark woodlands on his way to the target. He is light on his feet without his guns and explosives. He is almost thankful not to have them, as he feels perfectly comfortable with his KA-BAR knife for this mission – this test – and the other equipment would have only tired him faster.

  Only twenty minutes have passed by the time Sid is outside the wall of the mini-mansion where his target sleeps. Sid has no concept of high society and only a rudimentary understanding of social class. He notices that this house is bigger than others he has seen, but in his mind that simply means more people must live there, or perhaps a powerful warlord constructed it to offer more protection than a smaller house without a wall.

  The wall around the mansion is stone and nearly ten feet tall. Sid finds a place where a tree has been allowed to grow too near it and he dashes up the tree trunk before bounding off and gripping the top of the wall. He pulls himself over and drops down to the ground on the other side without a sound.

  He draws his knife and scans the grounds in front of him. The KA-BAR knife is made from high carbon steel, heat tempered and stained black to keep it from glimmering in the night. Sometimes Sid thinks it is his favorite weapon. He tries not to play favorites because his father always taught him not to rely on any piece of equipment. A real warrior can pick up any object and make it a weapon. Still, this one is familiar and simple and he likes those things.

  On his way to the house he meets no resistance. He expected a walled compound to have at least some guards patrolling the area, but he sees none. This does not bode well. Despite his father’s insistence, he does not expect this mission to be easy. The old man’s tests are never easy. Something is going to trip him up somewhere. If it wasn’t outside the house then it must be inside the house.