Fenn was not inhuman. He felt pain just like anyone else. He didn’t have any specialized training. He wasn’t on any type of drug that altered his mind, enabling him to shut down all the same receptors in his brain that other people had, letting him know when he’d been hurt. He’d been shot. The pain was excruciating. He was badly hurt and he was well aware he was dying. The difference between Fenn and most people who found themselves in this position was his tolerance—his instinct to survive. It took discipline to endure pain. It took discipline and focus to work through it. Most people Fenn encountered lacked enough discipline to keep their emotions in check, to keep from acting out of impulse, much less the ability to move through pain and use it to their advantage.
This country was the worst. Americans were soft. It was a nation of children, spoiled and fat, who blindly followed leaders whose intent was clearly to keep them that way. That is why Fenn had been such an effective tool in the United States. But Fenn was not a tool. He was a soldier. Fenn had been a soldier his entire life but, unlike these fat and spoiled Americans, he followed no one blindly. Fenn had also been a prisoner once. His imprisonment at the camp in North Korea where he learned about discipline—where he learned about pain—had been a direct result of following leaders who didn’t have his best interests in mind. He’d been subjected to some of the most intense and horrific torture imaginable, and although what he learned there was exactly why he was still alive right now, he knew then that it would be the last time he followed anyone. It’s why he wore the vest, although Smoke had told him not to. Smoke said Fenn was weak to take such precautions, but now Smoke was dead. Fenn would’ve been, too, if he had listened to Smoke—if he had followed.
The wound in his shoulder still throbbed and shot fire through his whole body with his every movement, but he moved anyway. It had taken everything he had to push himself off the floor back at the American woman’s house. He had considered staying and ambushing the man who attacked him—the man who killed Smoke—but it wasn’t important. He had what they’d come for. He’d taken the money and made it to the car. He was able to stay conscious all the way to the address he’d taken off the fool he killed at the airport motel in Florida. He thought perhaps he’d find the boy here, the second objective he’d been tasked with. He blacked out in the bathroom. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but he was able to get out before the other men arrived. He left through the back door before he was seen and made it back to the car. There were most likely American police in the house now. They were not with the man who killed Smoke. The man who attacked them last night was a professional killer.
Fenn was still bleeding, and the blood loss was making him too light-headed to drive anywhere else. Discipline was one thing, but science was another. He knew the limits of the human body, and he had reached his. The man with the baseball cap went back into the house, but the other one—the female in the nice clothes—remained outside in the yard. Fenn watched them carefully from the tiny car until the woman went inside, and then drove around the block to the next street over. He could not allow himself to be seen but couldn’t afford to black out again. He was in no condition to take on anyone—even weak American police like the ones inside the house. Fenn stopped the car. He began slipping in and out of the blackness again. White light snapped and sparkled at the edges of his vision. Unless he took care of himself quickly, nothing else would matter. Dead was dead.
Fenn stayed as calm as possible as he unbuttoned his shirt and unpeeled the Velcro straps of the Kevlar vest. Fresh patches of dark yellow and eggplant-colored bruises covered his entire chest. He was sure a few ribs were broken, too, but none of that concerned him. It was the bullet wound from the hit he took in the shoulder that was going to cause him to bleed out all over the front seat of this silly car. Fenn had already carefully torn the sleeve off his shirt, starting at the rip where the bullet had hit him, and wrapped the material around the wound, but it was blood soaked and needed to be changed and redressed. He ripped another large piece of the plastic trash bag that held the money he’d taken from the redheaded woman’s house and wadded it up to plug the leaking hole three inches up from his left bicep. He pushed the black plastic in deep and could feel himself passing out, but he didn’t. He thought of Smoke instead. He thought of all Smoke’s big talk and flashy suits. Smoke didn’t like the way the thick Kevlar vest made him look under those expensive clothes, so he never wore it—vanity—stupid. Smoke might as well have been American himself. Fenn didn’t care how he looked. He just wanted to take his money and find a way home. He pulled himself out of the car with his good arm, and slowly walked around to the trunk. He grabbed the shotgun Smoke had put back there and walked in between the houses and entered the toolshed out back.
“Lashawn!” Wanda stood at the backdoor and yelled for her son, who was upstairs playing video games.
“Yeah, Mom.”
“How many times have I told you to shut the door to the shed when you and your friends are done out there? If someone steals the lawn mower, it’s coming out of your allowance.”
“I thought I did.” Lashawn bent the blinds in his bedroom window and looked out into the backyard. “Sorry, Mom, I’ll go do it now.” Lashawn took the stairs two at a time.
“Don’t run in the house.”
“Sorry, Mom.” He opened the door leading into the backyard and practically walked right into Fenn’s bare and bloody chest, taking up the entirety of the doorway. The sight of the huge man rendered the young boy speechless. Fenn removed all traces of pain from his face and held a single finger to his lips. “Say nothing,” he whispered to the boy, “and turn around very slowly.”
Lashawn didn’t hesitate. He did what he was told. When Wanda saw the man following her son into her house, she started to scream.
Fenn pressed the shotgun into the small of the boy’s back and held that same finger up to his lips. “I will kill him if you open your mouth.”
Wanda stifled her scream hard enough to choke on it.
“Do not speak,” Fenn said, and pushed the boy further into the house. I will ask you questions. Just shake your heads to answer. No words. Do you understand?”
“Yes, just please don’t hurt my son.”
Fenn sighed. Americans were so stupid. “I will repeat only once. Do not speak. I will ask you questions. Just shake your heads to answer. No words. If you speak again, I will kill this boy. Do you understand?”
Wanda nodded.
“Good. Is there anyone else in this house? Do not lie. I will know.”
Wanda shook her head no. There wasn’t anyone else in the house. Fenn studied her. She was too afraid to lie. “That is good. Now sit—both of you. I will need you to surrender your phones. Bring them to me now.”
Lashawn slowly reached into his back pocket and held out his cell phone.
“Set it on the counter, boy.”
Lashawn did.
“Turn around.”
Lashawn did that, too.
“You are a good boy. I can tell.”
Wanda tried to keep from crying, but the tears streaked her face.
“I will need bandages, boy. Needle and thread, too. You will go get them. If you do anything else other than bring me what I ask for, I will kill her. She is your mother, yes?”
Lashawn nodded.
“I will also need food and water. I don’t require anything else from you except a place to rest. Do you understand this?”
The woman and her son both nodded.
“Good.”
With his bad arm, Fenn tossed the trash bag onto the counter next to the phone. Wanda backed up and Fenn lowered the gun to dig through the bag. “In exchange for this service, I will give you ten thousand dollars.” He pulled out a bound brick of cash and set it on the counter next to the bag. “Do we have a deal?”
Lashawn stared wide-eyed at the money, while his mother nodded in agreement a third time. “Okay then. Boy. Go.”
Lashawn took the stairs headed up to the bathroom two at a time. His mother didn’t ask him not to run in the house again. He came back down with a plastic container of medical supplies and his mother’s sewing kit. He set them both on the couch and then joined his mother in the kitchen. She pulled him into her hard and fast.
Fenn removed the battery from the phone and broke it into several pieces. “You will be able to purchase another one after I leave.” Both Wanda and her son nodded. Fenn leaned back into the sofa. “Can you make an American cheeseburger?”
Wanda almost said yes but stopped herself. She nodded again and began to pull the things she needed from the fridge. Lashawn brought Fenn a huge tumbler of cold water and set it down on the coffee table while Fenn patched himself up. He drank the water and ate the burger Wanda fixed him. Fenn slept upright on the couch for several hours. Neither Lashawn nor his mother tried to call for help or leave the room. They waited. The bloodied stack of bills on the counter. It was almost over. They’d done exactly as the man said. When Fenn awoke, he rubbed at his sutured wound and then his belly. The food had been good. He felt refreshed. He took no pleasure in slicing the boy’s or his mother’s throat with one of the kitchen knives before he left. He killed them in separate rooms, so they wouldn’t have to watch each other die. That would have been cruel, and Fenn, after all, was not inhuman.