Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,55

a bear, but the odds of Bubba manscaping are next to none. I mean, unless he’s more than just a skinhead, and even if he is it’s probably just shaving around his newest NSM tattoo, and—”

“Third party is moving in. You’re going to have to intercept.”

“Great.” August straightened up, then lifted the stun gun to his ear and walked toward the entrance of the garage. He could see Bubba in the distance now, lumbering so hard he put actual lumberjacks to shame, gripping a tire iron. Apparently, he believed in always being prepared for auto maintenance. The guy behind him—white T-shirt, blue jacket, jeans, one hand in his pocket—was definitely closing the distance. The hand in the pocket was rising—knife? Gun? August was going to hope it was a knife but figure it was a gun.

He broke into a light jog and snapped into his fake phone, “I swear to God, Jules, if you touch my fuckin’ weed I’ll break all your goddamn fingers. Try rolling a joint when you can’t even wipe your ass.” He got within two paces of Bubba—Jesus Christ, the man stunk of sweat and Axe body spray, a layered miasma that spoke unhappy volumes about his personal hygiene—and the second he was past him, pointed his stun gun at the third party target and pulled the trigger.

“Wha—” The guy went down with a face full of electrified prongs, and August bent quickly over his body and took a second to frisk him—it was a knife, ha—before turning around and—

“Incoming,” Ricardo barked.

August was barely able to dodge the first stroke of Bubba’s tire iron. It whistled past his head, reversing with a quickness he wasn’t expecting—Bubba might be big, but he had decent reflexes. August dropped the stun gun and pulled his extendable baton, opening it in one smooth swing and deflecting Bubba’s second strike, then bending down and snapping it, viper-fast, across the big man’s knee, then up against the point of his shoulder.

“Fucker!” Bubba yelled, dropping the tire iron and staggering over to lean against the nearest wall. He reached beneath his leather vest and—

Crack! A piece of wall the size of Bubba’s head blew to bits a few inches up and back. Bubba startled so bad he actually dropped the gun he was pulling. His revolver—a fucking revolver, what decade was this, where was the time machine?—clattered to the ground, and August kicked it away before Bubba could try to recover it.

“God, you’re a pain in the ass,” he said to Bubba, pulling his own handgun—the P320, because he believed in taking advantage of the modern era and its hefty magazines—and pointing it at the other man. “All you had to do was follow directions, is that so much to ask? And who doesn’t notice a guy following them from less than ten feet away? Walk,” he added, pointing at the parking garage, only about a hundred meters away at this point.

“Fuck you,” Bubba snarled, spit tangling in his thick beard. “You can kill me right here, but you ain’t gonna make me go nowhere with you.”

“Really?” August smiled in that way he just couldn’t help sometimes when people were inviting violence from him. “Because no matter what happens in the immediate future, Bubba Johnson, killing you isn’t on the table quite yet. I will happily break your other kneecap and rupture both your testicles while we wait for my associate to join us with the vehicle, though. How’s that sound for star—”

“Incoming!”

August whirled around, looking for the target, but almost as soon as Ricardo called the warning, he took the shot. The third party, the guy on the ground who August would have sworn was out cold a minute ago, had managed to get his hands on Bubba’s discarded revolver. It had been bearing on August when Ricardo turned his head into pulp.

August stared at the corpse of his almost-assassin. He stared a little longer. “Ah,” he said after another second. This is not a turn on. Don’t be turned on by Ricardo’s…scene-stealing showmanship. Because it was absolutely not alluring to watch a man who was threatening you die a swift and very messy death, but it did warrant some common courtesy. “Thanks.”

There was no reply. Of course not.

He looked back at Bubba, who’d finally gone pale from more than pain. “Walk,” August said brightly. “Now. Or your foot could look like his head. Maybe we should still do that, actually—which foot do you like the most? Because that’s the one I’ll