RENDER – CHAPTER TWELVE
She picked him up in a Suburban XL.
He assumed the XL meant extra long because there was a large cargo space behind the empty third row seat.
A big truck designed for big purposes carrying serious men to do serious damage.
Except it had been subverted by tiny soccer moms ferrying grubby groups of grass stained players from field to field.
Not this particular one.
It was government all the way.
AM/FM radio from the factory. No bells. No whistles.
Plain black exterior.
The only thing custom about it was the window tint.
He could tell it wasn’t armored by the way it rolled.
An armored truck sits heavy on the ground, a thousand pounds of extra weight.
This felt light by comparison, a feathered yacht floating on the blacktop.
“Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?”
She held the wheel with one hand, casual.
The other was tucked under her coat, gripped the edge of a hidden pistol.
He shrugged.
“I’ll know when we get there.”
It wasn’t an attempt to be tough.
She had seen it already, read more about it in a manila file folder they kept on him.
She knew how tough he was.
His relaxation made her more relaxed. He watched the tension in her right forearm loosen up. Not much, like flexing a muscle.
Enough though.
She remained in that semi-rigid state for the next thirty minutes of the drive. As if she expected him to do something, make a move, and hoped he wouldn’t.
He wondered how she felt.
Like sitting next to a tiger, he imagined.
An apex predator.
It was in the way she sensed him, he knew. The way most people sensed him.
A primal think, part of the monkey mind that kept her ancestors alive a million years ago when so many others did not.
Suppressed now, by civilization and a softness, by dinner in front of the television and board meetings where people argued about things they thought were important.
Still there though.
That feeling.
Still able to pick up on whatever atomic level vibration he was giving off, like a pheromone that perked up her ears and dilated her pupils and sped up her heart rate.
Adrenal glands dumping pump after pump of adrenaline in her system, the monkey mind screaming run. Hide.
He admired her for the fight.
The struggle wasn’t obvious, but she was putting up a good fight against every instinct coursing through her veins.
He shifted against the passenger door, putting space between them, giving her a sense of security.
She glanced at him and worked hard to keep her face impassive.
She almost succeeded.
“We’re close,” she told him.
Thinking his movement was a fidget.
Thinking he was getting bored.
He nodded.
“Still don’t want to say where?”
“Most people ask,” she said.
“Do you give them an answer?”
She shook her head.
A strand of hair pulled loose from the tight ponytail and drifted across her slender neck.
They drove another fifteen minutes in silence as the miles ticked off underneath them.
She pulled between two red brick buildings in an old industrial area of a town.
He didn’t know the name.
One of thousands that dotted the area, he thought. Mills and factories had once been as prevalent as spring dandelions until the companies that owned them shut them down to move operations overseas.
It left the buildings, the structures vast and empty on the edges of towns, untouched, unwanted and unused for decades.
The kinds of places criminals liked, he thought.
Two identical black SUV’s pulled in at the opposite end of the road between two buildings and parked facing them.
“Do you know what this is?” she put their truck in park and kept her right hand under her coat.
“Payback,” said Brill.
“A test,” she corrected him.
He sighed.
“You don’t think it’s fair?” she raised an eyebrow.
Still shifted away from him, still scared, he thought.
“No,” he said. “I do not.”
“We know how you work one on one,” she said. “One on two even. This is only a test.”
She tried to keep the smirk out of her voice.
Failed.
He put a hand on the door handle.
“How far away are the medics?”
“We’ll get them to you fast,” she said.
“I won’t need them,” he stepped out of the truck and closed the door after him.
Eight doors cracked open at the far end of the roadway.
Four guys climbed from each car, left the doors open and moved to the front of the SUV’s.
He shook his head as he studied them and started marching across the distance at a deliberate pace.
They were of a type.
Large, like football players. Broad shoulders. Thick hands. Buzzcuts.
Recruited for delivering punishment, he thought. Bruisers.
This was going to hurt.
Two in the middle moved to meet him as the others fanned out and circled around, like the ends of a crescent moon closing in.
Eight on one was stupid.
Eight on one wasn’t fair, no matter what kind of fight.
But she brought eight for a reason.
They knew he was tough.
She wanted revenge. Revenge for what he did to her chosen boy.
The gap between them closed he watched two right fists clinch in anticipation.
“One chance,” he told them. “That’s all you get.”
He heard a couple of them laugh.
They thought it was big talk.
Bravado.
Part of it was just that.
Talk.
Make them think he was nervous. Scared. Trying to buy time.
The two reached him at the same time, reached for him at the same time.
He dropped to his knees and punched straight out from the shoulder.
Straight into their groins.
Krav Maga training from a Mossad agent who hated him.
Bruisers expected boxing. Wrestling.
A lot of them went for MMA, and were good at it where size and
weight had an advantage.
If they got him to the ground.
He danced up and delivered two kicks, spinning from one chin to the next.
The first two were out of the game.
Their absence created a hole in the moon, a gap he kept walking through.
Three on his left, three on his right as he turned and backed toward their vehicles.
One of the six would break, he knew.
Get a group of more than three guys together, one or two were hotheads.
Hotheads moved fast, made impulsive decisions.
The second to the left bolted toward him, arms wide to scoop him up and slam him to the concrete.
It would knock the wind out of him, and with two hundred plus pounds holding him down, probably the fight too.
He ducked and twisted, and caught an ankle with his.
There was enough momentum to drag him off balance and knock Brill sideways.
But the guy went down and slid.
The move shifted Brill closer to the first guy on the left.
He grabbed him and punched.
Brill ducked and took the blow on the top of his head.
It hurt.
There might have been stars. Little birds that twirled and twittered.
The guy yanked again, hauled him close.
Brill used the pull and slammed into him.
Sent a punch to the groin. It worked twice, why not a third time.
His opponent shifted, took the blow on his thick thigh.
Brill jammed up, caught the exposed throat with the edge of his hand and the guy let him go.
The others were too close, coming in fast.
If they had a gun, he’d be dead.
But they were just supposed to deliver punishment.
Watching three go down fast, didn’t stop the others, and the forth guy was on his feet now, moving in with the others.
They should have coordinated better.
Decided who would do what.
Hell, they could have bum rushed him against the side of one of the SUV’s and pounded him into submission, one to each arm and leg.
Bruisers don’t do strategy though.
They wade in and rely on their size to overwhelm their enemy.
Brill darted in an opening and ran toward the parked cars.
They chased.
He spun around, grabbed an outstretched arm as the first one made a grab and sent him into the grill of a truck.
The last three closed in and there was no where to go.
They punched.
He kicked.
Their blows landed, hard and heavy.
He felt warm blood gush from a hit to his scalp, the hot white lance of pain stinging.
Brill caught a thumb on a fist and bent it backwards until it snapped.
Someone screamed.
Maybe it was him.
One of the last two grabbed him by the arms, lifted him up, held him so the other guy could move in.
Brill sent a foot into his knee that folded sideways, into his face when he fell forward.
Then it was just two, and there was blood in his eyes.
He couldn’t see.
He twisted and fought, and the guy slammed him into the ground, crawled on top of him, pinned him down.
He jerked his head up, chewed a hunk from his neck as the man screamed and tried to get away.
Brill let him roll off and crawl, leaking a trail of blood between his fingers.
He stood up and spit the nastiness out of his mouth and stared.
The bodies between him and her writhed and moaned.
There was a lot of blood.
Some of it his.
He pushed a slick patina of it back from his face and glared at her across the length of the roadway.
She got out of the SUV and raised the pistol.
“Stay there!”
Brill danced back, put the thin door between them.
That was no protection though.
He scooted into the wheel well under the steering column and saw the keys still in the ignition.
He cranked the engine, clawed it into reverse and backed up as he slid into the seat.
Brill watched her jump back into her vehicle before he squealed around the corner and raced away.