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10/17/08
1:15 PM
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Tom Piccirilli
twist to their mouths, hoping he’d take a couple shots to the belly and just shut the fuck up. For a second Chase figured, What the hell, I can do that. But then they each grabbed him by a wrist, making their killer faces. Showing teeth, nostrils flared, squinting. They thought it made them look slick. They were dumb. You squint like a spaghetti cowboy and you cut off your peripheral vision. Chase allowed them to begin wrenching him forward. He couldn’t figure out how they intended to break his bones holding him like this. In his head Jonah said, It’s time to move. Chase moved. Pain flared in his collarbone, where he’d been shot. He’d lost some muscle mass being laid up and felt the effects immediately, the weakness that had never been there before. Cheat, you idiot, Jonah said. Chase stomped the foot of one of the thugs. You see somebody do that and you think they’re trying to break the guy’s toes or something, it looks kind of sissy. But if you do it right, the way Jonah had taught him, you smash the instep and you tear tendon away from bone. It’ll take the guy two months in traction before he can limp out of the hospital. The bruiser went down screaming. Chase hadn’t expected screams and apparently neither had Jackie, who jumped away from his desk and huddled against the wall. The other thug stared at his buddy wondering why a soldier going two-fifty would fall down and shriek because somebody stepped on his foot.