Opening Shot

Hunsacker started her off on the clique that had snubbed her all those times when she had just wanted to be friends — he told her that the first one had to be close up and personal. He knew that it was going to be bloody. All she had on her was a small pocket knife that she used for sharpening the pencils that she had newly bought for her art classes. Like a natural she went straight for the jugular and rammed the knife home like she was sticking a pig. He sat there smiling — why they had never tapped into this potential source of killing machines before he didn’t know. Some of these girls that he had been watching in the past six months had something of the cat about them — they liked to toy with their prey before they dispatched it and he had no problem with that. There weren’t many people that would believe him about the fact that the erection making a tent of his trousers was due to the kill he had just witnessed and not the little girl in the school uniform but it was the truth and he would have caved the skull in of anyone who suggested otherwise. Jodie was going to be a lean mean killing machine at the tender age of thirteen and he was so proud.

April used a screwdriver for her first kill — the history teacher that failed her. The screwdriver became her weapon of choice; no matter that it took longer to kill someone and that it was decidedly messy. These girls knew what they wanted and he wasn’t going to stand in their way when they had a kill frenzy on. He tried to fix it so that each of them was menstruating when they were given their assignments — he wanted them hormonally imbalanced just to add an extra edge to their savagery. Any chance that he got to fuck with their brains he would do so. He put them in situations that they would consider threatening just to watch them explode with violence. He never let it get too far though; he had made a mistake before and one of the girls had ended up in an asylum after being gang-raped by some bikers who gave him three busted rubs and a fractured jaw when he had stepped in to save her.

Alice was his star pupil — she was the one that he could see having some longevity to her career: she was versatile. Every time he introduced a new weapon into her training program she took to it like she had been using it her whole life. Alice was good enough that he was frightened by her — she had outstripped him and was reaching the point where she would want to branch out on her own — once she had decided that he would have to step back because he knew that she could kill him without so much as breaking her stride.

The program was running well at the moment — it had suffered a few hiccups in the early days and he fully accepted responsibility for those. Mae had been someone that he should have left well alone — he couldn’t make any excuses for what he had done with her; to put it plain and simple every time he had seen her from day one he had wanted to fuck her and so, letting his rules slide just that once, he had gone ahead and done what instinct told him to do. Their working relationship from that point on had gotten overly complicated and when he tried to extricate himself from the personal bullshit which they were having to deal with she went postal. Thankfully none of the kills had been traced back to her — he still had enough power to misdirect the country’s eyes and blame some carefully placed crazy.

The ethical problems involved with this project were skimmed over by the oversight committee — the girls got the job done and the way it was viewed was that they were kids that would have ended up in bad places anyway, so who cared if they died sooner? The parents usually bought the cover stories that were dreamed up for their missing daughters and if they didn’t they were dealt with; ironically it was usually their own daughters that did the wetwork on them. He hadn’t met many girls who wouldn’t give their eye teeth for a chance to stick a shiny blade between daddy’s ribs — even the ones who hadn’t had any previous problems with their parents before he got his hands on them. False memory syndrome was such a useful tool when it came to creating problems where there were none. Who cared if a killer was unstable? They would control them using each other if necessary. Sure, it seemed comically ridiculous sometimes, but life had been like that for him for a long time.

He knew that someone was trying to trace back from several of the less professional kills to a central organising force which they had tried to convince everyone of but he had dead-ended those leads as well as he could and worked hard to discredit anyone asking the right questions. His last kill had been someone that got too close for comfort. He didn’t usually get his hands messy anymore but if he had to he would. They had it set up pretty sweet with these girls and he wasn’t going to let some nosey bastard fuck that up. Detective Purkiss had received a hero’s burial and his wife had got a good pension so things had worked out nicely.

Hunsacker had been thinking about legitimising himself and shifting upwards into the realm of politics. He had the contacts — he had the control mechanisms in place to ease his progress; and he had an army of lethal assassins at his disposal. He had been moving his girls around like chess pieces and letting them apparently play into the hands of the powerful men that he needed to remove to topple the current status quo. When he had got everyone into just the right position he was going to give the kill command and wait for it all to fall in his lap — he had got used to getting exactly what he wanted.

Surgical strikes had been carried out on all the major gangland bosses across the country. It was interesting how many of these great honourable men had a thing for little girls. It was good for him that they did. You didn’t need stealth and you didn’t need infiltration techniques when someone just let you waltz in through the front door. Hunsacker had to be careful though not to get complacent and rest on his laurels just because he had been blessed with a few successes. Success was something you had to work at and he had to keep recruiting and training and staying on top of the game. He had been training Rose up as an in-house police force that would deal with rogue elements. Kayleigh was going to be an in-field commander. Debbie, Faye and Valencia were all deep cover operatives in the making. He wanted each of them to be perfectly meshing cogs that built into a smooth running machine where he would feed in a set of commands at one end and the desired result would emerge out the other end.

‘Mr H?’

‘Yes?’

‘I need to set up a meeting with you asap.’

‘Regarding what, Green?’

‘We have a problem — King knows what’s going on and is trying to shut you down.’

‘King knows nothing. Are you calling from a secure line?’

‘As secure as can be.’

‘OK, the usual place in two hours — no extras with you or there’ll be a new widow in the world tonight.’

‘Enough with the threats, I’ll be there.’

Green was nothing to worry about — he was a coward. King had resources and had the ear of a few people that might be considered to matter. Hunsacker had the drop on all of them. He sent Jodie in to deal with King — it was unfortunate the mess that she made with the children — the whole place looking like Jack the Ripper had been resurrected but they had someone lined up to take the blame already. King’s coterie of politicos that might have been able to make waves for him were removed with single bullet efficiency. That left Green — small fry as far as the rest were concerned. Hunsacker felt that he owed him a face to face before he sent him to his grave and he wanted to do this one himself — wanted to see the look on that shit’s face as he realised that all those years of backstabbing and double-dealing had finally come back on him.

The usual place was a park that has very little cover and nowhere to hide any substantial forces. Hunsacker smiled, happy at how easy this was going to be. Green had nothing to offer him that he couldn’t find out easily enough himself so there weren’t going to be any negotiations, there was going to be no torture to extract facts. He wanted this swift and easy — as little fuss as possible.

The first bullet that hit him came as a surprise. The second one was followed swiftly by an idea as to who it might be that was firing on him. The third bullet confirmed it. The spread was distinctive, and the distance that the person must be at to have avoided being detected meant that had to be one of his girls. It wasn’t a great shock — he had been waiting for this day to come for an age — when one of the killers he created came after him. He had to survive this and then he would make them all pay. He had not come alone. He hit the speed-dial and knew that in ten seconds Rose would be there; Rose would help him.

‘You trained them well, Hunsacker, you should be proud.’

Hunsacker smiled — if Green thought that he had somehow wrested control of the girls from him he was sadly mistaken — if anything he had only shortened his own lifespan by becoming involved in something that he didn’t fully understand. When Green’s knees exploded in a spray of blood and bone he knew that Rose was there. He heard a single distant shot and he knew that Rose had dealt with the rogue girl. He still had no clue as to who it might be: the possibilities were endless.

Green lay moaning and Hunsacker wasn’t sure whether it was entirely due to the fact he had been shot or whether it might have something to do with the thought of why he had been left alive. If it had been up to Hunsacker the sack of shit would have had the back of his skull blown out by now but he supposed it was standard protocol to leave the one pulling the strings in any assassination attempt alive so you could establish a chain of events and prevent it from happening again in the future. It wasn’t something he felt the need to pursue.

Rose was standing above him, her slight figure containing no hint as to how lethal she truly was. He had chosen well. He suspected that at some point she would inherit his job; whether or not it would be at a time of his choosing was another matter entirely, but he truly believed that Rose guaranteed him a legacy.

‘Mr H, what would you like me to do about Mr Green? Do you have any questions which you would like to ask him about how he corrupted Sonja?’

‘No, that line of questioning would be pointless. Make it quick — I can’t stand to hear his whining any more.’

She pulled the trigger and Mr Green was no more. She helped Hunsacker to his feet and then proceeded to help him over to their vehicle which she had parked a short distance away.

‘I think,’ he said ‘that it may be time to issue kill strike orders and start the endgame rolling.’

‘Yes, Mr H, of course — would you like me to open a conference line now or should we wait until we get back to base.’

‘It can wait. We must be swift but there is no need to be careless. All things come to he who waits.’

‘Yes, sir, they do indeed.’

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