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11
THE BODY WILL THE BODY WILL NOT GOwhere the mind has not been.
That was why most people were victims, Devine knew. They could not imagine themselves grievously injuring or killing someone else, for any reason, even in order to save their own lives. So they wasted time in attempting to flee or in pleading for mercy to men who had none to give.
Show a picture of someone attacking someone else and ask for a reaction, and 99 percent of the people will say they would be in fear of their life if that happened to them. The other 1 percent, the criminal element, have a different reaction. They will say, “I’d hit them harder.” This was because they never saw themselves as the victim, only the predator. Their minds have been there, and so their bodies were ready, willing, and able to go there too.
Yet all humans were built to be predators. Sharp, strong teeth, forward eyes that were far more efficient for hunting, opposable thumbs, and, most of all, the best brain of any animal.
And we all possess a latent primal ability to fight to the death.
Devine walked toward his Tahoe even as he heard the men follow. When he reached it he turned and faced them. They looked angry and puffed up. That was all he needed to know both of their intent and their being afraid of him. The ones Devine always worried about were not the giant red-faced screamers; they were secretly shitting their pants. It was the quiet, stone-faced scrawny guys that would suddenly gut you with a shiv or pop a bullet into your brain and walk, not run, away, disappearing into the night to do it again when someone else was stupid enough to underestimate them.
His senses did the preliminary calculation and ran it through the combat computer under his skull. Walking away from a fight, if you could do so safely, was usually the best answer. Looking at the three men, Devine knew that was not going to be an option. Unless he did something creative. And he didn’t want to fight them. Not because he knew he would lose; it was because he was certain he would win, and didn’t want to unnecessarily injure them.
And he was also wondering why they had decided to come after him in the first place.
“Can I help you?” he said.
The biggest one said, “Yeah, dude, you can get out of town. That’d be a good start.” He looked at his friends and grinned.
“Sorry. I have a job to do and it can’t be done remotely.”
“Then we got us a problem. Or more to the point,youdo,” said the same man.
Devine glanced up and down the street. Not another living soul. Other than the bar, the storefronts were dark. The roar of the incoming tide along the harbor was really the only sound, other than the men’s collective breathing. They were all big and strong and pumped full of alcohol and who knew what else. Two of them were in short sleeves despite the chilly weather. He looked at the drug tracks on their beefy arms and came up with a plan.
He pointed at the man who had spoken. “I know you, don’t I?”
The man, in his late forties and taller than Devine by about three inches and outweighing him by thirty pounds, looked taken aback. “I don’t knowyou,” he snarled.
“You need to think again,” said Devine. He opened his jacket to show his Glock. The men saw it, and the dynamic instantly changed. He took out his cred pack with the badge and held it up for all to see.
“Homeland Security. But you already knew that. You talked to us about a domestic terrorist network operating up here and selling drugs to fund their operations. I never forget a face. We did the briefing over in Bangor so nobody would know.”
The man looked apoplectic. “I never talked to no fuckin’ feds!”
Devine watched as the other two men glanced suspiciously at their comrade.
“What’s your name?” asked Devine.
“I don’t need to tell you a damn thing.”
“That’s okay. It’ll be in our files. But from what I remember, you were a big help, so thanks. We nailed somelocalbadasses because of you.”
The man suddenly realized his friends were staring at him, and not in a good way.
“He’s lying. I didn’t do any of that shit. You know that. You knowme.”
Devine was not going to give up precious ground. “Well, that’s why we recruit people like you. You’re on the inside and you know everybody’s business.”
“You’re lying,” the man roared.
Devine touched the butt of his gun just as a reminder that it was there and had the means to kill all three of them with hardly any effort on his part. “Now, again, what can I do for you? No, scrap that, I don’t have the time. Any of you see Jenny Silkwell before she died?”
The men looked at one another, ostensibly flummoxed by another abrupt change in the direction of the conversation.
“We don’t know nothing about that,” said the second man, shorter than his friend, but thicker. The drug tracks on his left arm looked like the measles: swollen, nasty, and painful.
