Military Fiction: THE MAC WALKER COLLECTION: A special ops military fiction collection...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  Don’t do something stupid, hood-rat. Just drink your Coke and let me eat my own meal in peace.

  Li returned from the kitchen and stopped at Mac’s table first to pour him a cup of hot tea. Her hands were trembling slightly as she did so.

  “You ok, Li?”

  Her face contorted into a forced half smile while she nodded.

  “I’m fine, just part of the job having to deal with assholes like him, right? Your food will be ready in just a few more minutes.”

  “Bitch, where’s my Coke?”

  Li rolled her eyes and then whispered to Mac.

  “I’m sorry. We don’t normally get people like him in here.”

  Mac placed his right hand gently on top of Li’s and shrugged.

  “No need to apologize. Like you said, it’s just the unfortunate part of the job sometimes.”

  “Young man, do you really have to talk to people like that?”

  Mac winced. It was the husband seated at the front of the restaurant. While Mac respected the older man’s decision to say something, he knew it would likely escalate a situation he hoped would have soon faded out of on its own. Instead it would give the younger man the excuse to go full on dipshit.

  And that means I have to get involved.

  “What did you say, old man? Shut your tired ass. And tell your bitch to stop looking at me like that. Dried up old skank, get your ass out of here!”

  The older man stood up. Mac guessed his age to be near seventy. He was nicely dressed in a dark brown sport coat and tan slacks, a reminder of a time when people rarely went out in public without looking respectable. It was a stark contrast to the younger black man’s pathetic attempt at an apparently more modern fashion statement. If so, modern certainly didn’t appear to be better.

  “You don’t talk to my wife like that. Now why don’t you just leave?”

  The man’s voice was shaking slightly, betraying his fear in confronting the younger man who was already pushing himself up out of the booth.

  Mac took a sip from his tea and then slowly set the small white cup back onto the table, knowing his own personal sense of duty and honor required he intervene.

  Shit.

  “You want to try and make me leave, old man?”

  Li called out from behind the younger man.

  “Sir, you need to get out of here or I am going to call the police.”

  “No, I don’t think so, bitch. Get my goddamn Coke! I’m sick and tired of you slant-eyes not wanting to serve people like me! Racist little dog eatin’ yellow skinned motherfu---“

  “Time for you to move on, hood-rat.”

  The black man’s eyes widened as he looked to be noticing Mac Walker for the first time.

  “What? What did you just call me, white boy?”

  Mac positioned himself between Li and the black man and was grateful to see the older couple scurrying out the door.

  “I called you a hood-rat, because that’s what you are. Not because of your skin color or even those jeans that are about ready to fall down around your ankles like some prison queen signaling to all the other inmates they should line up and take their turn. No, you’re a hood-rat because that’s your personality. A useless, ill-mannered piece of shit who comes into a place like this and bothers good people just trying to have a nice meal. You see, hood-rat, I got a date with a nice plate of something good, and I intend to keep that date without having to smell your stink. So you turn that candy-ass around and get the hell out of here before you rile something up in me that will mess your shit up eight ways to Sunday, son.”

  The younger man’s eyes blinked several times as his mouth fell open. He had lived several years where his size and aggressive nature caused others around him to defer to his repeated intimidations with few challenges. Even the neighborhood cops did their best to avoid dealing with him.

  Mac turned halfway around to glance at Li.

  “Is there going to be wonton soup with my meal?”

  Li appeared confused by the question, but nodded her head anyways. Mac turned back to face the man he called hood-rat, the former Navy SEAL looking even more serious and determined than before.

  “Ok, that makes your situation even more precarious hood-rat. You see, I just love wonton soup. It’s like Asian gumbo, you know? So if you keep standing here convinced you’re actually some kind of legitimate bad-ass, or whatever it is you think you’re doing, and you make my wonton go cold, I just might have to kill you.”

  “Hood-Rat” looked at Mac as if the special ops veteran had suddenly grown a second head.

  “What are you on about, man? Sit your raggedy old ass down!”

  Mac watched as the younger man once again glanced nervously to the street outside.

  He plans to rob the place.

  “Hey, look at me. Right here, look me in the eyes.”

  Hood-rat puffed out his chest as he turned to face Mac Walker. The unfortunate Chicago native knew nothing of Mac’s intense military training and experience, or the fact he had killed many and killed often in nearly every gone to hell corner of the globe. Instead he saw a white man of forty or so years of age who was of average height and build with closely cropped hair that was already going grey on the sides dressed in a simple blue jacket and jeans.

  There was something in Mac’s eyes though that made the younger man pause. It was an unusual mix of certain confidence, glowering intensity and total absence of fear.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  Hood-rat’s face tightened as he grunted at Mac and then pulled his the front right side of his sweatshirt up to reveal a handgun stuffed into the low slung waist of his jeans.

  Mac’s initial reaction was a thin smile which unnerved hood-rat even more as once again he found himself confused over the older man’s lack of even the faintest hint of fear.

  “My name is shoot you dead if you don’t back off.”

  With the thin smile remaining on his face, Mac slowly opened the front of his jacket to reveal his always present SIG P226 issued to him during his SEAL days, personally modified by him to improve upon its already quick fire capabilities.

  “Hey, I got one of those too! Now you don’t want to try and draw on me, hood-rat. This just isn’t your day. I’m sorry, but the thing is, you are seriously out of your element here. Now I’m going to ask you reeeaaaaaal nice to just turn around and walk on out.”

  Hood-rat stood momentarily frozen, his gaze darting around the restaurant’s small interior in an attempt to avoid looking into Mac’s eyes.

  While watching every twitch from the suddenly silent hood-rat, Mac’s voice called out in soft, even tones to Li who remained standing behind him.

  “Li, who’s in the kitchen?”

  Li’s voice was not nearly so calm as Mac’s. She was trying very hard to remain composed, but Mac sensed she could easily be pushed into outright panic.

  “My mother and father, it’s just them.”

  Mac nodded slowly, sensing hood-rat growing more panicked as well.

  “Ok, I want you to go back there and wait just a bit. I’ll have this trash taken out soon. There’s no need to call the police. Oh, and keep the soup hot for me, ok?”

  Mac waited for the sounds of Li’s departure to indicate she was safely in the kitchen before he once again turned his full attention back onto the young black man who moments earlier thought the restaurant to be an easy robbery opportunity for him. Mac was hoping to avoid involving the authorities for an incident he believed he could easily handle himself. There was no sense in him risking his cover so early in the assignment.

  “I asked your name, but you don’t seem too keen on telling me, so that means I have to keep calling you hood-rat. Now here’s how this is about to go down. You’re ready to get real stupid, and that means you’re stepping into my world. Now in this world, I protect good people who are working hard every day trying to make a living serving good food at reasonable prices. Now who doesn’t like good food at reasonable prices? Assho
les like you, that’s who. The thing is you don’t know a damn thing about hard work, do you? No, you’d rather just take what isn’t yours. You think you’re entitled to it because you have a gun and you think society has somehow done you wrong. Or maybe you’re just another piece of shit bully who likes making people feel afraid and unsafe. Well, this time you picked the wrong place, the wrong time, and you sure as hell picked the wrong guy to mess with, hood-rat.”

  Mac’s voice lowered to a whispered snarl as his eyes appeared lit by a righteous fire that would scorch any who challenged him.

  “Now go ahead you pathetic pile of maggot shit and try and pull that piece and see what it gets you.”

  Hood-rat’s real name was Tyrell Watts, a twenty-three year old product of the government subsidized and perpetually hopeless Chicago Southside. He had been in and out of Juvenile Detention since the age of twelve. At nineteen he was sentenced to a year for aggravated assault but actually served just four months. He came out harder and more convinced of his invulnerability than ever. Two weeks after his twenty-first birthday Tyrell committed his first murder, the shooting death of a neighborhood rival. The local authorities paid it little attention, already overwhelmed by the city’s rampant homicide rate inside neighborhoods that seemed intent on killing one another. Last month while sitting inside a packed nightclub, Tyrell was among several other men who had exchanged gunfire with a rival gang. The news reported two were killed, though Tyrell had no idea if one of his bullets was responsible. He just fired several rounds and ran. Not that he cared either way. Death was simply a part of his day-to-day life.

  The same kind of death he now was ready to deliver to this far too bold white dude who had apparently watched one too many John Wayne movies.

  Mac’s focus was at a level beyond what 99.99% of human beings knew to be possible. Perhaps some professional athletes who had achieved a point of domination in their particular sport would understand, but even they didn’t play in an environment that was literally a quick succession of life and death half moments where failure often proved the very last mistake one was allowed to make. Even among his fellow soldiers Mac excelled at seeing a hostile’s intent before anyone else. It was quality that made him among the most dangerous of soldiers – and the most valuable. It was the same quality largely responsible for Bill Tilley picking him to lead Project Icon. And sadly for Tyrell Watts it would soon prove to be the same quality that would, as Mac so recently put to the Chicago street thug, mess his shit up eight ways to Sunday.

  Tyrell was allowed to make his move, after which Mac’s well honed and all too deadly instincts were unleashed.

  The younger man’s right hand only made it halfway to the gun at his waist before Mac’s left hand encircled Tyrell’s right wrist while the open palm of Mac’s right hand slammed violently upward into the bottom half of Tyrell’s chin. The force of impact caused Tyrell to bite down onto his own tongue, nearly severing the front portion off with his own teeth.

  As Tyrell fell back in a half-conscious daze Mac smoothly followed the motion of the younger man’s retreating body as he reached down with his right hand to remove the handgun and then slide it behind him with a kick of his right foot. Tyrell recovered just enough to attempt a pair of wild, awkward roundhouse swings with both hands which Mac avoided by simply moving his head back a few inches as each fist passed in front of him.

  Tyrell emitted a high-pitched shriek as Mac’s right foot then found an all too vulnerable home in the form of his nut-sack.

  As the black man fell to his knees Mac stepped behind him and in one lighting-fast motion clamped his forearms together just under Tyrell’s jaw. It was a move he learned from another member of Project Icon, a former soldier named Benjamin “Benny” Williams who might very well had been the single most capable hand-to-hand fighter in the entire U.S. military.

  Benny called the move killing the light, a modified version of the common choke hold named so for its ability to quickly render an opponent unconscious or, if one continued applying pressure to the primary carotid arteries of the victim’s neck, kill them.

  Mac tightened his hold and then pulled back with his shoulders and was almost immediately rewarded with the sensation of the other man’s body going limp. Mac held on for a few seconds longer before he released the hold. He then stood up, not bothering to lessen the impact of Tyrell’s face hitting the restaurant floor.

  The span of time between Tyrell reaching for his gun and Mac standing over his unconscious body was no more than seven seconds. Mac reached down to quickly make sure Tyrell was still breathing. Having confirmed that, he called back to the kitchen area.

  “Li, could you come out here please?”

  Li emerged from the back of the restaurant and then stopped several feet from where Mac stood over Tyrell’s motionless body. Her eyes went wide as her mouth fell open in shock. Mac began waving both his hands in front of him.

  “No-no-no, he’s ok. I just decided he needed a little nap time. I was wondering if you knew someone you trust who drives a cab you might get them to drive him out to one of the South Side streets and drop him off?”

  Li remained unmoving, her dark eyes darting from the body to Mac. A middle-aged Asian woman emerged from behind her and began pointing to Mac while speaking a language Mac vaguely recognized as Mandarin. Whatever the older woman said it seemed to shake Li from her shock as she nodded and then took out a phone from the front left pocket of her black slacks.

  “I have a cousin who drives a cab. I can call him.”

  Mac winked, trying to let Li know everything was going to be fine.

  “Good, get him here as soon as possible. Our friend probably won’t be out for more than twenty minutes or so.”

  It was just over five minutes later that Mac Walker dropped Tyrell into the trunk of an older yellow cab as the man behind the wheel waited happily for his promised payment. Mac withdrew three crisp one hundred dollar bills and gave them to Li’s cab-driving cousin, a mid-thirties balding Asian man who acted as if transporting an unconscious man to another part of town was just another day on the job.

  “A hundred for the cab fare, and another two hundred for the trouble, thank you.”

  As the cab drove away, Li’s voice called to him from within the restaurant.

  “Sir, Mac, your meal is ready!”

  Mac looked to his left and right, and then scanned the other side of the street and found nothing or no-one that appeared to be out of the ordinary just as his stomach growled – loudly.

  Soon he was devouring every bit of his wanton soup and shrimp fried rice and washing it down with cups of steaming hot tea. Li brought more soup, rice and tea, telling him it was her family’s honor to be serving him. Only when Mac admitted to not being able to eat another bite did both Li’s parents emerge from the kitchen. It was the first time Mac had seen the father. He was barely over five feet, the result of a badly bent back, and incredibly thin, but his eyes indicated a powerful pride in owning his own business with his wife and daughter.

  The man bowed his head to Mac and then his wife did the same. The older woman said something to Li while keeping her eyes fixed upon Mac.

  “If you will still be in Chicago on business, my parents invite you to be their guest tomorrow evening in our home upstairs. They wish to introduce you to my grandmother, my father’s mother. She is the one who made our voyage to American possible. If you cannot accept the invitation, I will understand, though they may not. Where they come from, it is a very rare thing to refuse such a request.”

  Mac had no idea what tomorrow might bring, but was determined to do his best to accept the family’s kind offer. Plus, he couldn’t ignore the fact Li was very attractive, and if Mac Walker suffered from any potential weakness, it was his inability to refuse a chance to spend more time with a pretty lady.

  “What time would they want me here, Li?”

  Li glanced at her mother and then answered.

  “After we close. I know it makes it ra
ther late, but would 10:00 work for you? We are right upstairs from the restaurant. I could meet you outside and bring you in.”

  Mac sensed Li was just as anxious to spend more time with him as well.

  “I tell you what, if you can round up just one more bowl of that wonton soup, we have ourselves a date.”

  Li smiled and then spoke to both her parents who in turn nodded and smiled at Mac as if he had just made them the happiest people in all of Chicago.

  As Mac sat happily working through his third bowl of soup he began contemplating what he would be doing later tonight.

  I need to scope out Ramtin Armeen’s building. Set up a surveillance post, and possible firing locations based on applicable entrance and exit points.