Page 70 of The Fourth Option
Send Paladin forward?
Too noisy.
Blade?
Maybe there was a better way.
Walker holstered his Glock and grabbed the shovel.
“Blijf,” he whispered. Stay.
Kill or capture?
Leigh Ann made the decision for him as her voice, twisted into an unmistakable scream, echoed from the recesses of the home.
Execute!
The man must have thought Walker’s footsteps came from a comrade because he finished shaking the last of his urine into the bushes before turning with a look of annoyance that altered to disbelief as the full force of Walker’s baseball swing with the shovel connected with his face.
His neck snapped back, his brain reverberating against his skull.
If Walker had any thoughts about keeping him alive, those thoughts faded when he heard Leigh Ann’s next scream.
As the man collapsed to the deck, Walker smashed the shovel into his head once again. He then placed the flat cutting edge of the tool against his unconscious opponent’s neck, and as if he was about to start digging into hard dirt, he slammed his boot down onto the footstep. He adjusted the shovel’s angle and brought his heel down twice more in quick succession, almost severing his enemy’s head from the body.
“Heir,” Walker said.
Paladin vaulted onto the porch and crossed the deck to his master, sniffing the body at his feet.
The dead man’s weapon was slung over his shoulder, so Walker set the shovel aside and worked the sling down his arm, prying his left hand from the lower wood handguard, noting the man’s fingernails were stubby and embedded with dirt.
What the fuck is this?
It looked like an AK-type weapon but with a short barrel and without a stock. It had the standard banana-shaped magazine and felt heavy,which meant it was probably loaded with thirty rounds. He pulled the charging handle back slightly to confirm there was a round in the chamber, then ensured the selector lever was in the top position.
I’ll be more accurate with my Glock.
Handguns were often referred to as defensive weapons, but as an instructor at the Farm had told him, it was all about how you used it. Walker was going on the offensive.
As he slung the AK-style pistol, he became aware of a peculiar, almost sweet odor with a tinge of sickness coming from the dead man. Cologne? Aftershave?
“Zoek,” Walker said, pronouncing itzook. It was a command for Paladin to search based on the smell.
Speed. Surprise. Violence of action.
If we still have surprise.
At least you have speed and violence of action.
The man had left the door open when he exited to take a piss. His friends would be expecting him back. They would get Walker instead.
The hunter-killer part of his soul was firmly in the driver’s seat. The philosopher was relegated to the passenger side.
He entered the house pistol up and ready, searching for targets, sacrificing security for speed, Paladin slightly ahead of him off to his right side.
The screams sounded like they had come from upstairs.
He stepped into a hallway lined with the Tabriz carpets John had purchased at Pan Arabian Rugs in an alley in Kabul.
