The 6:20 Man

Chapter 12

Devine turned the corner and neared a sliver of an opening between two buildings where a Dumpster and lines of trash and recycling bins were kept. This must be the place the ass-hole had been referring to. Beyond these articles, a brick wall faced him.

He looked behind him. WASP and his two pals were moving fast.

Okay, here we go.

Devine stepped into the opening, because with the brick wall behind him no one could sneak up on him. He then turned back around as the three men caught up to him. They were shoulder to shoulder as though intending to block his escape.

They could be Iraqis or Afghans, Taliban or Al-Qaeda or ISIS. It had gotten hard to tell the difference, actually. Those desert guys were all tall, and bone and muscle and lethal and muttering shit in a language he had come to learn but never mastered. Their eyes were all the same. Crazy, fanatical, but also cagey, smart. You got plopped in a flag-draped coffin for underestimating those sons of bitches.

WASP was a bit ahead of his pals, but starting to look a little nervous because Devine wasn’t looking nervous at all.

He pointed to the man on his left. “Rick played defensive end at Cornell.” He jerked a thumb at the other guy. “And Doug was NCAA heavyweight wrestling champ from Iowa. And I was All-American in lacrosse at Princeton.”

Devine didn’t waste an ounce of breath replying to this babble, because that was all it was. There were guys who could talk a good fight, and there were those who remained quiet and just put your lights out.

As they walked forward he walked forward. Like two trains on the same track, the crash would be inevitable.

His attention was diverted for only a moment as he saw Stamos peer around the corner, her eyes wide and her face tense. This had gone far past what she had intended, he could read that in her nervous features. And she was wondering how she could defuse things.

She gave him a pleading look. It affected him more than he would have thought.

“Okay, last chance, guys,” he said. “Walk away now or I can guarantee it will not end well for any of you.”

“One against three, and we’re all bigger than you,” said WASP. “So what exactly are you smoking?”

“I was Army. A Ranger. Just so you know.”

“Big shit,” said Rick. “I eat fucking Rangers for breakfast.”

Okay, that was the wrong thing to say, thought Devine. Really wrong.

WASP charged forward, his fists held high, too high. Devine landed a sharp punch to his gut, which doubled him over, and then that blow was followed up with a fully stretched-out kick by Devine to his opponent’s downward-looking face. The force lifted WASP off the ground, revealing that the rough and rugged motorcycle boot had battered the man’s delicately handsome features. Then Devine grabbed him by the shirt front and hurled him at the Dumpster. He hit the metal side and dropped to the asphalt unconscious.

Doug the wrestler roared and punched Devine twice in the head. They were damn hard shots, but that was all. He felt some blood on his skin and in his mouth, some snot on his face, but his senses were intact. The guy tried to pin his arms to his sides, but Devine broke that hold by slamming the top of his head into Doug’s chin and gouging him in the eye with his thumb. Then he hooked him around the ankle with his foot and laid a thunderous elbow into the man’s oblique. This caused the man to stagger back, breathing hard, and bloody from the chin and mouth. Devine pivoted, went behind Doug in a flash of choreographed movement that he had done a thousand times in close-quarter drills, and for real in combat, and came up behind the far larger man. A vicious elbow strike to the left kidney, a rock-hard fist to the right one, and Doug dropped to his knees, howling in pain, because that area of the body was unprotected and sensitive as shit, which made it the perfect target.

Devine planted his left foot firmly on the ground as his fulcrum. Doug’s head was lined up like a ball on a stand for an eager T-baller to bang a home run off. He let loose a ferocious roundhouse kick that impacted the left side of Doug’s head with both power and velocity. The man’s head kissed his right shoulder and his eyes rolled back in his head, as his brain checked out. A moment later he joined WASP on the ground for a long sleep and a painful awakening. This had all taken seconds.

Rick grabbed Devine from behind, lifted him off the ground, and threw him face-first against the brick wall. He struck it hard, painfully so. His shoulder howled, and his face bled and swelled with the impact with the rough brick. Then Rick slammed against him, driving him into the brick wall another centimeter, and cutting his skin below both eyes. Then he landed a trio of hard punches to Devine’s back, which was stupid. Head shots would have been far more effective, particularly against unyielding brick. That was what Devine would have done. You couldn’t fight back if you were unconscious.

The man stepped back to view his handiwork. However, if Rick thought his opponent was down and done, he was seriously mistaken. That might cut it in college football, but not in Devine’s world. And poor Rick was about to realize the consequences of his misjudgment. Devine levered off the wall and used that momentum to boomerang back on the former Ivy League lineman.

He gripped the man’s throat with one hand while he hit him with two uppercuts straight into the diaphragm with the other. Then he landed a bruising hook into the oblique. And one more on top of it. Rick moaned and staggered back, with Devine still holding on to his throat. In combat, with a serrated Ranger knife in hand, Devine would have gutted the guy in the midsection area, upward slash and then side to side, to get to the intestines and aorta, and the fight would be over.

Devine once more glanced at Stamos, who was looking terrified and stunned into silence at what she was seeing. In response, Devine let go of his neck grip and pushed Rick violently back against the wall, where he slumped down holding his gut and his throat. Devine had never not finished a fight, and he was unsure about this time. Maybe he was mellowing in his early thirties.

Still looking at Stamos, Devine turned and started to walk toward her.

“Look out!” she screamed.

He pivoted and put up a blocking arm. The trash can lid wielded by Rick hit him on the forearm. It hurt like a bitch, but broke nothing, only bending the flimsy metal nearly in half. But if it had hit him in the head, it would have been a different story. Devine planted a fist into Rick’s chest right at the heart, which fired off messages of cardiac panic to his brain. He then leapt forward and used the crown of his head to deliver a staggering blow to the man’s chin. Rick’s lower teeth jammed into his upper teeth and blood shot out as gums and hardened calcium collided violently.

Rick screamed and slumped to the ground sobbing, his hands pressed against his mangled mouth.

Devine glanced over at Stamos, who looked stunned in the face of this carnage.

He turned and walked toward her. She backed away, looking fearful.

He wiped the blood and snot off his face and onto his sleeve. “Thanks for the warning. And call an ambulance for those guys.” He paused and added, “And I’ll see you at the office, sweet cheeks.”

He walked down the street, put on his helmet, cranked his bike, and blew past as she stood outside an alley where three large and disappointed young men lay with the city’s trash.