You could tell who the “government contractors” were. There were 6 of them- all looking like firemen: aviator glasses and mustaches…or clean-shaven/bad haircuts… muscled, humorless. There were one or two thug types who probably acted as bodyguards for some suspect businessmen. One definite Mafioso: a thick-necked Guido, almost cross-eyed thick. There were four self-described professional fighters- most were fucking mean guys. There was an Iowa farmer if I’ve ever seen one, and a guy, almost fifty that looked like a Kansas Baptist preacher: straight blond hair, weathered face, good looks sacrificed to some unrewarding principle. There were 3 sick fucks, not that the others weren’t sick fucks, but these guys were here in non-professional capacity. They just wanted to snap some dude’s neck or watch someone else snap some dude’s neck and then go masturbate with the door locked while we waited to get in the bathroom. That’s conjecture. I was a reporter. There was only 1 bathroom on each floor in our compound. I can conjecture.
The sick fucks tried to make us think they weren’t sick fucks by being everyone’s friend, cracking jokes. One guy, Ben, said, out of the blue as we’re walking away from two guys spectacularly offed in front of the whole crew, sighing out their last breath, “What is L.C.C. anyway…. I mean I know that L.C. is lethal combat. What is it? Lethal Combat Corporation? Lethal Combat Company? Lethal Combat Co-operative?”
The other sick fucks laughed. I was as stoic as the mercenaries…um, contractors. But it was pretty funny, especially as I had to get that final C for my story.
This place, in East Texas, was like a set-piece from a Chuck Norris flick: a house, with terraces, some dense woods around it. There was a dormitory behind the house for the poor shits that my friends here were paying to kill. We clients lived past the woods, across a creek, through an electrified, razor wire topped fence, on a ranch where we trained and salivated for the next young Mexican or back-packer neck. They weren’t all Mexicans or back-packers. There were some Vietnamese, probably from the insular fishing communities down here. There were some fugitives, but a few kids, the Anglo ones, just looked like guys that had gotten too wasted at Burning Man- lanky, shaggy college burn-outs.
The Mexicans were just recruited off the streets, loaded in a van and smuggled up here with the promise of a job guarding a rich man’s house. They were unqualified for security, they were untrained as fighters but they always fought like they had a chance. They just didn’t stand in dumb amazement if one of the guys wrapped an arm around their neck and slowly crushed their windpipe. One of the white kids, one of the first guys I saw killed here, just stood in the same spot and looked kind of surprised, mouth open in an “Oh!” as one of the mercenaries, a short, over-muscled runt, Pat, walked up to him, face-on calling him a pathetic fuck, giving him an elbow in the face, which probably looked better in Pat’s mind, kicking out one knee and wrapping his short 18 inch bicep around the kid’s throat. Pat kept up a ‘fuck you’ taunt, spitting words in the guy’s ear, we could see the kid’s curly blond hair puff out from Pat’s breath- as we hear the soft tissue go, then the vertebrae. The kid never fought.
“Appetizer” Pat said after he let the kid, his neck crushed and broken fall to the ground. He laughed.
“Your pythons still hungry after that snack?” one smart-ass sick fuck asked him.
Pat stared him silent.
Some guys were here for the challenge and would take on a cocky Latino, very macho, strong-looking guy. They’d draw out the fight. Give the guy a chance to breathe. They’d back off, assume a stance and let the guy come up with something, anything. One big Mexican guy, must have been a lumberjack, if they’ve got them, a guy that didn’t even fit in his wife-beater, was acting like a sentry on the north lawn. It was a sweltering afternoon, cloudless. This guy’s tight wife-beater was soaked through. He looked bored and pissed. One of the thug guys, drug-lord bodyguard, someone who probably stood sentry himself, said “Let me have him.”
No one argued. The thug was giving away forty pounds and a couple of inches. He was beefy, but it was HGH/Creatine/Protein powder beef. I guess he wanted to prove something outside the gym. He led with a flying kick to the spine. It might have moved the hulking Mexican a foot, but if it didn’t hurt him, it pissed him off. The thug then leapt with a spinning kick to the face. The Mexican stayed up, then with a curse, dived at and took the thug down. They were on the ground for most of the rest of it, until the thug got the Mexican’s back and the guy got to his feet, roaring. This brought one of the Vietnamese sentries around from the West lawn. Saul, the leanest of the pro fighters, pulled his shirt off and headed to intercept. The Viet yelled in his own language, must have been sharing a cigarette on duty, which was punishable, no irony intended, and another Asian came from the same direction. When a merc moved to take that new guy on, one of the other fighters held him back.
“Hell, two of them don’t even add up to that one fucking Mexican.”
The gym-thick thug was trying to strangle the huge Mexican neck with one arm and force the head forward with the other. Then he tried to snap it in the strangle hold, but that bull neck wasn’t giving. Meanwhile, as is said, back to our right…The first Vietnamese just flew into the fight with Saul. Saul, whose body was just bone, muscle and skin moved in for the guy’s waist, picked up the guy in one arm, put the other hand on the guy’s throat and made it look like he was tossing the guy by his head, upended on the lawn. It looked great… didn’t hurt the guy a bit. But while he lay figuring out he wasn’t hurt, the second Viet was already in Saul’s face. Saul just looked the guy in the eyes, shook his head, reached up like it was a fucking handshake and twisted and broke the second guy’s neck without any pretense of giving the guy a shot. “Crick”… like separating chopsticks. Chin twisted about six inches up and behind the collarbone….Then “CRACKK” We had forgot the fucking Mex’can lumberjack. It sounded like a tree being felled, his neck rumbled when the thug broke it. We looked back. The Mexican’s body was on the ground, but his face was still right in front of us, his eyes were rolled back into his head and his tongue was hanging out, his face sagged.
The gym thug ratcheted the head around, shouting, “YEAH!”
“Crick”. Saul had the first Viet on the ground, a knee on his chest and was twisting the neck around like he was giving an adjustment with sensitivity. The look on Saul’s face was bliss, concentration, and personal satisfaction. I’ve seen that look, usually after orgasms.
These were the first. I have to admit, I was made nauseous, but strange to say, it was just from adrenalin and excitement. I tried to feel morally culpable, but it was just a weak pretense.
It can’t have been much later when Saul, who was generally pretty quiet, wanted to take out another guy that night, and a heated debate arose over whether we each paid for one kill or if , as Saul said we didn’t work on quota, but each to his own capacity Naturally I had to avoid killing one of these guys myself, but I couldn’t say, “Hey you take mine!”
My position only got weirder when I was out at 3 or 4 a.m. pretending to scout a dawn raid on our fictitious enemy… and I was on patrol with one of the sick fucks, a handsome guy with too perfect a haircut and he spotted, jumped and dragged a young shirtless Latino by his neck into a utility shed. After a few minutes of waiting, I opened the door. The head was at that unnatural angle, the tongue out, the neck had been broken, but the model was licking the guy’s nipples. He had a boner. He smiled when he stood up and said to me, “You say anything and I’ll break your neck”.
“I guess you’d want to kiss my nipples, too?” I asked.
He smirked.
No one questioned my abilities to my face. I played ball in college. I was still this side of two bucks, maybe 195, mostly shoulders… genetic. I am Jewish, hairy and built like a sort of nerdish athlete. I guess I’d asked myself, as all red-blooded males do, usually when they’re 14, could I snap some guy’s neck?
I guess I’d find out.
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