Felix Volker got off I-95 at Kenly, North Carolina, a town of around one thousand people a few miles southeast of Raleigh. He turned off not so much that he was hungry, although it was just before noon, but because he was tired of driving and he wanted a drink. Tonight, when he got to Norfolk and hooked up with Schlueter and the others, there’d be no alcohol. He was too thirsty and too keyed up to wait until after the op.
He took the narrow county road under the interstate northwest and followed his nose to a small redneck country bar. A few pickups were parked in front—gun racks in the rear windows, a hunting dog in one chained to a ring. The dog put up a baying when he pulled up and got out of his rental car.
Tobacco and corn fields stretched out in either direction across the relatively flat coastal plain that ran one hundred miles all the way down to Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean where the tourists went.
The day was already beginning to heat up, and by this afternoon he figured the lowlands would be unbearably humid. It was something he didn’t like. Germany’s climate was mild, especially south around Munich, and even farther north in Franconia around Nürnberg where he’d lived for a couple of short stretches. Snow in the winter, but nothing extreme. Warm in the summer, but not hot. Schon.
He was dressed this morning in dark jeans, a dark polo shirt, and thick-soled walking sandals. He left his black jacket in the car and headed toward the front door, when a couple of thickly built young men—maybe in their early twenties and farmers by the look of them—came out.
“Well, son of a bitch,” one of the kids said as Volker passed them and went inside.
The bar ran across one-third of the room. To the right there was a pool table, a dartboard against the rear wall, and an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. The men’s room was to the right, the women’s to the left. Two older men in bib overalls were seated at the bar, behind which was an older woman with long gray hair.
Volker took a stool away from the two men, who turned and looked at him as if he were someone from a different planet.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. Her accent was very southern, difficult for Volker to understand.
“A beer, please. Dark, not so cold.”
“Sam Adams,” the woman said. She poured it from a tap and set it down. “Two dollars.”
Volker paid her, and took a deep drink. It was too cold and weak, almost like water to him, but it was okay. “Danke,” he said.
“You’re German,” she said.
He nodded. “Just passing through. I was thirsty.”
“Are you hungry? We have burgers and pizza. Frozen, but not so bad.”
“No. Just time for one beer and then I have to be on the highway to Atlanta.”
The two farm boys came in, big grins on their faces, and came to the bar. “Better give us a beer, Maudie,” the taller, stockier one said. His massive head sat on a thick neck and broad shoulders.
“Thought you boys had to get back to work,” the bartender said, but she poured them a couple of beers.
“Wanted to say hi to the gentleman with the girly footwear,” the other one said. His face was round and filled with freckles. “Hadn’t seen him around here before.”
“I don’t want any trouble in here, like Friday.”
Volker sipped his beer but didn’t look at them. They wanted trouble, of course, and he was of a mind to give it to them. But it would be foolish on his part, as well as theirs.
“Not very polite, you son of a bitch,” the big one said. “Didn’t your mama teach you nothing?” He grabbed Volker by the arm and tried to pull him around.
Volker put his beer down, turned, and smashed a tremendous right fist into the kid’s face, just above the bridge of his nose, driving him backward on his butt, blood gushing down his chin.
“Jesus,” the bartender said. She took a cell phone out of her pocket, but Volker reached across the bar and took it from her.
The second kid hit Volker in the side of the neck.
This is not why he had come to America, to have a duel with a couple of country boys. It would have been much easier if he had been allowed to have his one beer and drive away. But it was too late for that now.
He broke the bartender’s cell phone on the kid’s forehead, then slammed the doubled-over knuckles of his left hand into the boy’s Adam’s apple, crushing his windpipe.
The two old men sat where they were, slight smiles on their weathered faces.
The kid staggered backward, clawing at his throat, trying desperately to breathe. His face was turning beet red, and Volker figured he’d be on the floor unconscious in about ten seconds and dead within a minute or two.
The bigger farm boy got to his feet and charged, but Volker turned and stepped into him, shoving him up against the bar. Reflexively, after hundreds of hours of hand-to-hand combat drills, Volker used his bulk to get the kid turned completely around, grabbed his head, and twisted sharply, the spinal column where it attached to the base of the skull breaking with an audible pop. The boy dropped to the floor like a stone.
Volker looked up as the woman disappeared out the back door. He finished his beer. Then he went over to the old men who had not moved and broke both of their necks, letting their bodies crumple to the floor.
He looked out the front door to make sure that no one else had driven up. Then he crossed the barroom and went out the back door in time to see the woman come out of a small house fifteen meters across a backyard, her purse in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
She spotted him and fumbled in her bag as she sprinted to a dusty Saturn SUV, its blue paint badly faded in the southern sun.
Volker reached her just as she got to the driver’s door.
She dropped her purse and swung the bat, just missing the side of Volker’s head. She was frightened but determined. Volker figured she had to be at least in her late fifties or early sixties and had more spunk than the two farm boys put together. It was a shame.
He snatched the bat from her hands, and as she spun around trying to get away he swung it one-handed into the side of her head, cracking her skull, driving her against the side of the car.
She raised a hand to ward off the next blow, the bat breaking her arm, and her legs started to go out from under her.
Methodically, with not much feeling, Volker hit her in the head again, knocking her to her knees.
Barely conscious, she could only whimper, no fight left in her.
Volker swung the bat, hitting her in the temple. Her head bounced against the car door, leaving a long bloody streak as she fell face-first into the dirt.
For a long time Volker looked at her. He couldn’t tell if she was still breathing, but it was of no matter. She was dead, or as good as dead.
He glanced at the back of the tavern. Too easy, he thought, dropping the bat. Norfolk would be more interesting.