Page 7 of Shrapnel

His mom might miss him. She wouldn’t be surprised, but she’d miss him.

Elbow feeling better, he relaxed against the wall and waited. They were keeping him in some sort of storeroom. Brooms with frayed ends were stored up against the far wall despite the fact that the floor was dirt. He could tell by the wall he was leaning against that it was thin and not insulated.

There were no windows or any way he could gauge time. His hunger had not grown insurmountable yet, so it was probably only a day or so, though that was difficult to tell. Since arriving in South America he hadn’t been eating well.

His intimidating size belied the delicate nature of his stomach. South American food did not sit well with him. The last few weeks he had been living off plain tortillas and bottled water.

There was a rustling sound on the other side of the door, and it shuttered open. It didn’t fit in the door frame and the bottom dragged in a sweeping arc across the dirt floor.

A tiny greasy looking man shouted something at Jackson in Spanish.

He stared at him.

“Get up!” the man said again.

Jackson snorted and looked away.

He chatted with his buddy in hurried Spanish. Jackson only caught every other word or so. Their dialect was different from the Spanish he was familiar with, and he had a difficult time understanding.

Whatever they were arguing about was settled and the short man stalked over to grab him under the shoulder, dragging him to his feet. Jackson was a good head and shoulders taller than his guard and had to duck to be comfortably led by him.

The shack he was held in was part of a set of three or four similar buildings clustered beside a large wall. At least eight feet tall, the stone wall cast a long shadow. Jackson squinted up through the canopy of trees. Weak watery sunlight filtered through the leaves. It looked like late afternoon.

His greasy captor led him to a wooden post set into the dirt. Taller than the perimeter wall, it was thick and had deep gauges clawed into its surface. Several metal rings were screwed in at various heights.

Jackson sighed.

This was going to be fun.

The barrel of an ancient-looking SKS rifle dug into his lower back and Jackson glanced back over his shoulder. He never expected goons to be highly trained, but this level of idiocy was insulting.

He spun quickly, grabbing the gun and twisting it out of the surprised grip. They hadn’t bothered to take off his shoes, and the steel toe of his boot dug in just below the man’s ribs into his liver. Whipping the gun by the barrel, he shattered his nose with the butt of the rifle. Unable to handle the gun with his hands bound, he tossed it to the side and crouched to meet the second assailant. The man ran at him with a stupid amount of bravado and no real strategy. Jackson sidestepped his dash, grabbing him by the back of the head and using his momentum to snap his neck. He dropped weightless to the ground by Jackson’s feet.

The crack of a rifle sent a chill up his spine moments before he was tackled to the ground.

Three men were sitting on top of him with his shackled hands crushed beneath him. His elbow ached and the metal cuffs dug into his navel. He gritted his teeth and tried to avoid getting a mouthful of dirt.

Dragged up by his hair, they got him to his feet and affixed the chain between his hands to one of the rings above his head. It was the tallest ring set into the post, and he had to dance on tiptoes to keep the weight off his aching elbow and wrists. He couldn’t see anything past the post, but he could hear the men shuffling and shouting behind him.

They ripped his shirt from his shoulders, and it fell in tatters. The gauged wood dug against his sweaty face, and he tried to brace himself against it. There was a lot of noise behind him. He didn’t need to speak the language to know what they were saying.

Most of them wanted him dead while the others argued that they didn’t have the authority to kill him yet.

One of the men sidled up to him. He was older than the others and stood in a way so Jackson could see him.

“Where’s the money?”

Jackson didn’t answer. How the hell was he supposed to know?

“Where is Carlos Pereira?”

“If I knew, he’d already be dead,” Jackson ground out, eyes flicking up to meet the old mans. He faltered under the intensity of his gaze and shook his head. As if he had extended some kind of boon to Jackson and he had just spat in his face.

He walked back to the group behind him. As he suspected, their motives were not based entirely on getting information from him. They wanted revenge.

Jackson thought back—he had killed a few of them back at the villa, and the guy behind him made it closer to ten.

Snap. Crack.