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

Three down. Maybe twenty seconds.

I looked around. The first guy might have been dead, I wasn’t totally sure, and since I didn’t care, I didn’t bother to check. Same with the third guy. Maybe alive, barely, but no guarantees. Number two was on his ass, against the wall. He was trying to spit out shattered teeth. Groaning and wriggling. I said, “Don’t get up, don’t make any noise and you might make it to daybreak. Then you can worry about teeth, and the future of eating.”

He stopped moving.

One of the guards was peering in again, trying to see. I couldn’t tell which one, skinny or big. The beam from a flashlight was playing along the floor, picking out the would-be killers in their various stages of bad shape. The light coming in the cell door window needed to pass through the blood smear, bathing the cell in a red ambience. It looked like a circle of hell. I guess the guard didn’t like what he saw, but there was not much that he could do about it. The light went off, and the little hatch closed over the window.

I waited for something to happen, but nothing did. They were probably in some kind of panic. This had not gone according to Plan A. I doubted they had a Plan B. I guess sending in the boys from 1488 was usually effective for prison assassinations. For now, it looked as though they were going to leave me in there with the casualties.

Which suited me just fine.

I could hear the number two guy breathing. I said, “Are you planning on being a problem?” I saw his head shake, no. I stepped back to the bunk bed and stepped on something hard, the pair of handcuffs. I slipped them into my front pocket, I already had the key. Then I lay down on the bunk and closed my eyes. There was no way of knowing what the morning would bring, so I figured it was time to get some shut-eye.

Eighteen

A couple of hours later I opened my eyes from an excellent sleep, well rested and feeling good. It was one of those waking moments when a vivid dream begins to recede almost immediately, leaving behind only a faint outline. The only thing I kept from the dream was the sensation of being underwater at night. When you do your first solo night dive, navigating at thirty meters all alone in the black, the saying is that you ‘see the witches’. In this case it was not a witch, it was the pale figure of a white shark, swimming in the gloom alongside me.

I heard the scuffle of keys in the lock. The cell was a horrifying sight in the weak daylight. Two of the bodies lay motionless, in awkward positions. The guy whose face I had caved in was snoring through his brand new dental configuration. Heavy mouth breathing through the missing front teeth made a high pitched whistle. The jaw line looked bad. Puffy and bruised.

The cell door had opened quietly this time, with only the slightest jingle of keys and a minor scrape of steel on steel. They were coming in cautious and prepared. One guard entered, followed by two more. They wore full riot gear and carried Remington Breacher shotguns with the pistol grip. The face shields were dark, making the guards faceless. They moved in short crab-like steps. I stayed in the bunk. I figured they would have bird-shot loads, and I didn’t want a face full of bird-shot. I figured they’d give me that if I gave them half a chance. So, I stayed quiet and pretended to be asleep, lying on my side with eyes opened just enough to see.

The first guy had his gun on me point blank. The Breacher is a dull-looking weapon on a good day. Up close like that, the hole in the barrel was cold and indifferent, utility gear for shredding flesh. Grim and efficient. The other two guards started dragging out the casualties. When the bodies were gone, the first guard in became the last one out. He crab-walked backward, never lowering his aim, until the last moment, when he stepped into the hallway. Another guard closed the door, and I was all alone again.

A good chance to get an extra hour of sleep. In the end, I got two.

A new guard came this time. Fresh on shift. He looked around the cell, at the various blood stains. He said, “What the fuck.” Then he looked at me. “Let’s go.”

I said, “Where to?”

“Police came to get you.”

I stood up. The guard cuffed me. Then we moved out of the cell.

The detective was waiting in an interview room. A table and two chairs faced each other. A window looked out to the corridor. The detective sat in one of them. The younger cop had called him Jim, radio call sign thirteen. He spoke to the guard. “Take the cuffs off.”

The guard said, “Not sure that’s a good idea, detective.”

“Just do it.”

The guard shrugged and removed my handcuffs. I sat down in the chair and put my hands on the table. The detective looked at me, then at the guard, who walked out the door and closed it. Then he looked at my hands. The right one was bruised on the knuckles. Using the handcuffs as brass knuckles had been a painful workaround. Particularly the part when I punched into the Nazi’s head. Skulls are hard.

The detective said, “What happened there?”

I looked up at him. I said, “You know how it is. Breaking through flesh and bone is hard work.”

He said, “I told you what would happen you play it tough.”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “I didn’t play it any way. They sent three guys to kill me. It didn’t work. That’s all.”

The detective let out a small laugh. “You serious?”

I said nothing.

He gave me a dead-eyed look, then he turned