Fuzzy Navel

6:46 P.M.
MUNCHEL

MUNCHEL PAUSES TO ADD another hash mark to the butt of his rifle, using a black permanent marker. That makes nine so far. The number pleases him, but he’s angry at himself for missing that fat cop, the one who came late to the party. Moves pretty fast for a porker. He arrived with that good-looking split-tail who parked in the middle of the street. That pisses Munchel off. Why should cops be able to park wherever the hell they want to? It’s bullshit.

Munchel checks his watch, figures he has a few more minutes before reinforcements arrive. Maybe he’ll have another chance at Fatty, and the double-parker.

His cell rings. Swanson again. Munchel picks up.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Swanson is yelling, his voice high pitched and girlish. Not a soldier’s tone at all.

“Hi, Greg. You at the rendezvous point, sucking down a cool one?”

“You asshole! You’re live on CNN!”

“Cool.”

Munchel pulls the bolt back, ejecting the empty cartridge, then jams it forward to force another round into the chamber of his TPG-1. He peers through the Leupold scope. All the cops in the street are hiding or have run off. Of course they have. An entire platoon is no match for a single skilled sniper. Munchel can shoot the petals off a daisy at three hundred yards. Killing cops at less than two hundred is child’s play.

“What if they catch you?” Swanson whines like a baby.

Munchel’s voice is pure Stallone. “If they take me, it won’t be alive.”

Munchel puts his face against the cheek pad. Aims. Fires. Another head shot. He rubs his shoulder – it’s getting sore, even with the built-in recoil damper – then he uses the marker to draw the tenth kill line on the stock.

“We’re going after perverts, not cops!”

Munchel looks down, sees he’s dropped the cell phone. Swanson is still bitching. He picks it up.

“You say something, Swanson?”

“You’re going to ruin it for us!”

“Relax,” Munchel purrs. “I’ll make sure I kill all the witnesses.”

“You dumb son of-”

Munchel hangs up. He doesn’t need Swanson, or anyone else, telling him what to do. James Michael Munchel knows what to do. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter who they are.

The memory comes, unbidden, and Munchel frowns.

“Military bastards,” he says to himself.

He doesn’t like to dwell on his rejection by the armed forces, but he dwells on it every day. All those stupid tests he had to fill out, being told by the recruiter that there were no wrong answers. A bald-faced lie. Obviously there were wrong answers, or else he’d be in a foxhole in Baghdad right now, killing insurgents.

Munchel chambers another round, imagines it’s Osama in the crosshairs, not some stupid pig.