Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

I said, “Is that right, what was it going to be otherwise, the easy way?”

He said, “You got a point. It was always going to be the hard way, but you chose extra hard, with cheese.”

As they left the cell, the big guy said, “So long.”

The cell door closed. I was alone again, in the dark. I had a sense of impending doom mixed with the growing excitement that always precedes combat. The move to Juneau was a ruse. Those two had wanted me out of the cell for something else, which wasn’t ever going to be a yoga session, or a group meditation, a tea making ceremony, a seminar on contemporary art, or anything else supposedly good for my health.

Fifteen minutes later there was the sound of someone fussing with the lock. The cell door opened once more, spilling light from the corridor. There was a pause, then three new men walked in, blocking the light, and ducking their heads as they entered the doorway. They came in one at a time, lining up. The silhouettes were considerably larger and taller than before, and the figures bumpy with accumulated prison muscle, like plastic action figures. After the third silhouette had ducked his head through the threshold, the cell door closed with a hard clang and keys scraped and clinked. The cell darkened.

So this was the extra hard way.

It came to me, why the guards had wanted to move me to a different room. It must have been for the view, so that they could watch what was about to go down. Here they had a very poor angle and dim lighting. Maybe they had another room, larger with a two-way mirror. Maybe they were supposed to film the whole thing. The three guys stood in a loose arc on one side of the cell.

I stood up from the lower bunk. My hands were still cuffed behind me.

All three were bare-chested, which was their way of showing off the severe tattoos inked into over-pumped muscle. I could see in the half light that it was all about the swastikas, the German crosses, and the number 1488. Given the swastikas and crosses, I figured 1488 was some kind of white supremacist code. The three hulking beasts were not speaking. They were just standing there watching me.

Like a story book definition of scary.

But not for me.

I wondered who these people thought they were dealing with. Maybe they thought it was going to be easy to beat me to death, like a Roman colosseum with three experienced gladiator slaves and a lion going up against a one-legged librarian and his pocket mouse. But it wasn’t going to be like that.

The United States Joint Special Operations Command brings together rough boys from the various branches to form assault teams. They get them from Delta, and the top SEAL teams. But there is always a combat medic attached. Which is how I came to work with the brutes from SEAL team six. Those guys are smart, and like all of us, they receive the highest level of combat training known to humankind, ever, in the entire history of the species. But what really sets SEAL team six apart from the rest, is the fact that they are born killers with more than their share of natural aggression. Born killers smart enough to have made it into the top squad tasked with legalized and glorified murder. For them it was like Christmas every day.

And every day in SEAL team six begins before dawn with fight club.

Fight club is like the movie, bare knuckles brawling. But it isn’t fake brawling with skinny Hollywood action stars, it’s brawling with the most elite killers the world has ever seen, before breakfast. Since I had been attached to JSOC for around four years, I had more than a thousand fight clubs under my belt. We had all loved fight club, but then again we were all professional killers.

These small time prison losers didn’t come close. But it would be better without handcuffs. So, I decided to bait them.

I said, “It isn’t white of you to beat me down with my hands tied behind my back.”

The guy in front looked around at his friends. He said, “What do you know about being white? You’re what we call a race traitor. We aren’t just going to beat you. We’re going to beat you slow, from every angle, on every part of your body. Until the sun rises. That’s how much time we got. Until dawn, which makes it how many hours?” He looked around, but white supremacist prisoners don’t wear watches. “Whatever. We got enough time. I will personally push your button when I see the first ray of light. How’s that for me being a nice guy?”

I said, “It’s even worse than being a race traitor. You’ll live the rest of your lives as race cowards. You won’t deserve to call yourselves white people. Is it truly white to beat a man with his hands tied behind his back?”

The three guys shifted from foot to foot, rippling their gym muscles. They knew that I was baiting them, and they didn’t like it. Three on one, the odds looked overwhelmingly good. But what if it got out, that they’d beaten a guy with his hands cuffed behind him? Maybe they’d be seen as brutal and remorseless. Maybe they’d be seen as cowards. Maybe one, maybe the other. Maybe all three would keep quiet about it, but maybe not. There were the prison guards to consider.

The guy in back spit against the wall. He rapped his knuckles five times on the cell door. A minute later the door was opened. He said, “Need to uncuff him.”

I could see the slim guard’s silhouette in the door. He said, “Need is a four-letter word.”

The guy in back said, “Just do it.”

Five seconds later, a key came skidding across the concrete. I put my boot heel down to stop it. The door clanged shut