Jack Hunter: CIA Assassin Origin Story

by Rawlin Cash

  Through the door, he was in a long corridor. He could hear the muffled techno music up ahead and to his left, the sound of fucking.

  He pushed open the door slowly. The sound of three gunshots and a car alarm still wailing outside hadn’t stopped whoever was in there.

  The room was lit by a bare bulb. On the wall was a calendar with a picture of farm machinery on it. Next to the calendar was a small window with a slatted blind. Against the far wall was a table.

  Facing the table, his back to Hunter, was one of the customers. He was an average fifty-year-old man, balding, love handles, patchy hair on his back and legs. His buttocks were the palest part of his body and they flapped with each thrust.

  In front of him was the woman he was fucking. Hunter could only see her splayed legs, feet pointed to the ceiling, a red stiletto on each. Her hands on the table propped her up. She moaned as the man pulled out. He hadn’t climaxed. He bent down, making to eat her out, and it was then she saw Hunter, still standing there, watching.

  He raised a single eyebrow.

  “Jesus,” she cried.

  The man’s mouth had made contact and her cry encouraged him.

  Hunter took two strides and then hit the man hard on the back of the head with the handle of the knife.

  The girl gasped, but didn’t scream.

  “Who are you?” she panted.

  There was an office chair, pushed aside by the customer, and on its back was a ratty blanket. Hunter gave it to her.

  “Stay in here,” he said.

  She nodded.

  Hunter pulled open a gap between two of the slats on the window blind. He watched the car that had driven off a few minutes earlier pull back into the lot. He hadn’t expected them back so soon. They’d forgotten something and one of the men hopped out and made for the door. When he saw the bodies he wasn’t sure what they were in the darkness. He crouched next to one of them and then drew a handgun.

  “Back to three,” Hunter said under his breath.

  He faced the girl.

  “This will be over in a minute. Don’t leave this room. There’s going to be gunfire.”

  He went back out to the corridor. In the next room, the second customer was hurriedly pulling on his pants. He had the sense to realize something was going on. Hunter hit him in the face, the knife handle giving the punch extra weight, and the man was out cold.

  A girl on the bed was looking at him, terrified.

  Hunter repeated the instructions he’d given the other girl.

  In the next room, Hunter found two naked girls sitting on a bed, their backs to the wall, holding their knees. A photographer’s studio light lit them up. Behind them, they’d set up twinkle lights and some decorative pillows. There was a laptop and video camera in front of them but they weren’t performing. They sat there with wide eyes, looking at Hunter.

  No way in hell they were eighteen.

  “Get dressed and wait in here,” he said. “Don’t leave the room. There’s going to be gunfire.”

  He knocked over the camera and stamped on it.

  He heard footsteps in the hallway and stepped back behind the door. A man’s bulk moved into the doorway and paused. Hunter looked at the girls’ faces. They could see him behind the door and they could see the man in the doorway.

  They gave away nothing.

  The man entered the room.

  “Where is he?” he growled.

  Hunter reached from behind the door and grabbed the man around the head, his arm in the man’s face. He pulled the head back and with his free hand, slid the blade of the hunting knife through the man’s sinewy neck.

  “Two,” he said.

  Blood spurted forward, landing on the bed inches from the girls’ feet.

  They drew back their feet.

  Hunter pushed the man forward and turned. A gunshot hit the wall outside the room, followed by another and another. Someone was emptying a perfectly good cartridge into the corridor. Bullets hit all over the place.

  Hunter waited.

  When he heard the click, he went to the door and glanced around the side. The man with the empty gun was standing six feet from him, vulnerable as a lamb.

  Hunter strode toward him, calmly, as if saying hello, as if the man had walked onto a used car lot and Hunter was an eager salesman. The man was solid, two-hundred pounds of pirogies and cabbage soup. Hunter blocked a punch with his left as he reached the man, pushed upward, and with his right, thrust the blade of the hunting knife into his sternum.

  The man fell back and Hunter let the weight of him dislodge the blade.

  “One,” he said, picturing the 7-series BMW.

  Without stopping, he continued through the bar toward the door. The music was louder. The last customer and two women were in the bar. The customer was sitting by a waist-high stage, his beer propped on the side of it. The dancer was holding the pole, a look on her face like she was trying to figure out how long of a pause in her performance this warranted.

  The other woman was behind the bar. She looked like she was in shock.

  Hunter noted there were six women, not the five he’d counted.

  He wiped the blade of the knife on his pants as he made for the door. He stopped when he reached it.

  A bullet hit the side of the frame, sending splinters flying.

  Hunter crouched, moved forward, kicked open the door and then swung his arm around it. A man was there, waiting for him, but hadn’t expected him so low. His gun went off as the knife swept around and landed in his calf. He fell to the ground and grasped for the pistol, which he’d dropped. Then the knife was in his hand, pinning it to the wooden boards of the porch.

  He screamed in pain as Hunter pulled the knife from the wood, raised his heavy, booted foot, and brought it down on the side of the man’s head.

  That should have been the last man but across the lot, the engine of the BWM revved. Its lights came on and the alarm stopped.

  Hunter began sprinting down the length of the porch, his body moving surprisingly fast for a man of his size.

  The man in the car couldn’t see through the shattered windshield but that didn’t stop him from flooring the pedal. The car lurched forward with a spray of gravel. Hunter was running in long strides. At the edge of the porch he leapt, his arms outstretched like a basketball player making a dunk.

  He landed on the hood of the car and in a single motion, brought his arm down like a hammer, jamming the blade of the knife into the windshield. It gave him a handle to hang on to while his left arm punched the driver side window.

  He punched it once and his fist bounced off painfully.

  He did it a second and third time, hanging on to the handle of the knife as the car lurched and careened from the parking lot onto the highway.

  On his fourth try, his fist burst through the window and struck the driver on the chin.

  Hunter reached and clasped, got hold of something that turned out to be the side of the driver’s mouth, and yanked his head against what was left of the window. The car skidded into the dirt and then swerved back into the road. Hunter grabbed the man’s head again and this time smashed him, face-first, into the steering wheel.

  That did it. The driver’s foot let off the gas and he slumped against the steering wheel, the weight of his chest sounding the horn in a monotonous wail. The car came to a halt, its momentum taking it a hundred yards farther down the center of the road. A belated air bag burst open.

  Hunter got off the hood and pulled the man out of the vehicle, carrying him back to the parking lot.

  He was a fat, heavy fuck.

  All five women, and the customer from the stage, were watching him from the doorway.

  “Get me some water,” he said to them.

  One of the girls went to the bar and the customer made like he was going for his car.

  “You stay,” Hunter said. “Throw me your keys.”

  The man hesitated only a second before throwing Hunter his keys.

  “Whi
ch car is yours?” Hunter said to him.

  The man nodded toward the pick up.

  The girl came with a jug of cold water and Hunter poured it on the BMW driver’s face.

  He put his foot on one of the man’s hands and began to press down.

  “Wake up, sleepy,” he said.

  He put more weight on the hand and the man began to squirm. Hunter had expected a Russian or east European accent but the man was American. He just dressed tough.

  “Jesus,” he gasped, grabbing Hunter’s ankle with his free hand.

  Hunter looked at him.

  “I’m going to get the information I want from you, one way or another, you understand?” Hunter said, pressing down and twisting his foot, mashing the man’s hand into the gravel.

  The man cried out, which was answer enough.

  “Who killed my wife and child?” Hunter said.

  The man might not know, but Hunter didn’t have much else he wanted to ask so he got right to the point.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man cried as Hunter mashed the hand into the gravel like he was putting out a cigarette butt.

  “Well you better tell me what you do know or I’ll start siphoning gasoline out of your car and light you up like a bonfire.”

  The man looked up at Hunter and knew he was in trouble.

  Hunter didn’t have much time. The next car to come down the highway would see the carnage and pull over. Then it would be too late.

  “Listen,” Hunter said. “You see the road. When I see two white headlights coming our way, I’m going to kill you. That’s how much time you’ve got. Next car and you’re dead. These girls will have to tell me what you don’t. You understand?”

  “Okay, okay,” the man said, realizing he had nothing to bargain with. He looked over at the five women standing at the door and Hunter realized they probably did know something.

  At that point, the door of one of the other cars opened and the girl Hunter had seen being pushed from the porch into the mud stepped out. Hunter watched as she joined the other women.

  He said to them, “Can one of you go get his car, bring it back to the parking lot, and turn off its lights?”

  The woman who’d brought him the water did it. Hunter half expected her to drive away but she didn’t. She just drove the car back to the lot and put it back where it had been all day.

  “Now talk, fucker,” Hunter said to the man.

  The man spoke rapidly.

  “I didn’t kill your family,” he said. “It wasn’t us. I whore them. I make them dance. But that’s it. None of that weird shit.”

  “What weird shit?”

  “You know. Rituals. Torture. Fetish stuff.”

  The words made Hunter’s blood boil. He refused to allow himself to think of Chianne.

  “Who told you about that ritual stuff? If you didn’t do it, how do you know about it?”

  “Everyone knows about it,” the man continued. “This has been going on for years around here. Everyone knows.”

  Hunter pressed his foot down harder on the hand.

  “Looks to me,” he said, “that if I wanted an Indian lady to torture, all I’d have to do is come to you.”

  The man was crying. Hunter was grinding down on his hand so hard now that it was starting to mush up. Bone scraped into the gravel.

  “No, it’s not like that. These girls come to me. I’m not involved in the disappearances. The girls work, that’s it.”

  “That true?” Hunter said, turning to the women.

  None of them spoke.

  “You all here by choice?” he said.

  “Sort of,” one of the girls said. She was one of the younger ones, from the video room. “He raped me though.”

  “He raped me too,” the other girl from the video room said.

  “Did he pull you off the highway?”

  “No,” they both said.

  “Any of you ever see anything related to the disappearances?”

  The women looked at each other but didn’t speak.

  “I’m a pimp,” the man said, squirming under the weight of Hunter’s boot.

  Hunter lifted his foot off the man’s hand. It was mushed up like it had been in a pit bull’s mouth. Hunter stepped over the man and made to stamp on his other hand. The man pulled it away under his body. Hunter shook his head and pulled the buck knife from his belt. Then he leaned down, grabbed the man’s ear, and cut it clear off in a single motion.

  “I’ve seen what they did to my wife,” Hunter said.

  The man screamed. “That wasn’t me. The disappearances. It’s not me.”

  Hunter turned to the two girls who’d been in front of the video camera.

  “How old are you?”

  One made to speak but stopped when the other touched her arm, shaking her head.

  “They’re fourteen,” one of the older women said, answering for them. She was the woman from the first room with the calendar on the wall, still wrapped in the blanket.

  “Any of you know anything that can help me find out what happened to my wife and daughter?” Hunter said to the women.

  He sensed they knew something.

  He turned back to the man on the ground. “Listen up. You got children making porn inside. You brought them in here in chains. I saw it. I could kill you right now and sleep like a baby tonight.”

  One of the women spoke up.

  “He knows more than he’s letting on,” she said. “He’s got a computer inside with names on it. He might not be the man who killed your family, but he knows something.”

  “He’s got cages in the basement too,” another woman said.

  Hunter looked down at the man and let an animal rage rush through his veins. He snarled like a dog, kicked the man’s face, and the man dropped. His head rolled limp on the unconscious body.

  Hunter lifted him up over his shoulder and brought him inside.

  He told the women to turn out the lights and make the place look closed.

  He locked the customers in the room next to the side entrance, the one with the calendar, and took their cell phones. The window wasn’t big enough to get out and the door had a deadbolt.

  He went back outside and dragged the bodies of the dead men to the back of the building.

  No cars drove by in the time it took.

  Nine

  Inside, Hunter threw the man on the floor in the middle of the bar and got the women to keep watch of him.

  “He comes to, you call me,” he said. “Now, which of you said there were cages in the basement?”

  The woman who’d been behind the bar stepped forward. She was the oldest of them. She went behind the bar and got a ring of keys, then led Hunter into a storage area behind the bar. There were kegs, stacks of soda cans, cleaning supplies. Behind a pile of mops was a steel door and she unlocked it. There was a light switch inside the door and when she turned it on, Hunter saw wooden steps leading down.

  “Will this door lock behind me?” he said.

  The woman smiled and handed him the keys.

  “I’ll come down with you,” she said.

  Hunter nodded.

  He led the way. The basement was cut raw out of the soil. The walls were lined with limestone but the floor was hard dirt. It stank like hell.

  In the center of the room were a number of dog cages, about six feet by six. They were solid. Well built. In the corner of each was a bucket. There was a filthy dinner plate in one of the cages.

  “He never showed us this place,” the woman said. “But I’ve been here longer than the rest of them. I saw it once.”

  “What else did you see?” Hunter said.

  “Emails,” she said.

  “What did they say?”

  “I’ll show you, if they’re not deleted. They were cryptic, but they might have something to do with what you’re looking for.”

  “Did you see him bringing women down here?”

  “No, but I thought I heard things once or twi
ce. Over the years. And I saw women in his car that I didn’t recognize. And their wrists were tied.”

  “And did those women end up dead?”

  “I think so. The picture in the newspaper looked like one of the women I saw.”

  “When was this?”

  “Years ago. Three years maybe.”

  “You see a woman and girl in the last few days.”

  “That was your family?”

  Hunter nodded.

  “I didn’t see them, but I knew something was going on. Leach kept coming down here. He only did that when there was someone here.”

  “Is that Leach upstairs?”

  She nodded.

  “And he got paid. I know that much.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he showed up with a bag of cocaine and threw a party. Then went to the casino and was gone for two days. He and those men were living large the last few days. They’d definitely come into some cash.”

  “So you think his coming into that money might have something to do with my wife and daughter?”

  “Come on upstairs,” the woman said. “I’ll show you the computer.”

  Upstairs, the women were still watching the man. He was still out cold, lying on the ground. The computer was in one of the rooms off the corridor.

  She opened the email application and began scrolling through all the junk. She did a few searches, searched the deleted folder. After a few minutes she found what she was looking for.

  “Look here,” she said. “I seen messages like this from time to time.”

  “He let you read his email?”

  “No but I do other stuff on this computer. Books for the business. If an email comes in while I’m sitting here, I see the notification in the corner. You get an idea of what’s going on.”

  Hunter sat in front of the computer and read the message. It was in the sent mail folder. Sent a few days earlier.

  “Got two for you. Mother and child. 10k each.”

  “Did he get a reply to this?”

  “He must have deleted it.”

  There was a pen and notepad and hunter wrote down the address the message had been sent to.

  “You think he sold my family?”