“Fuck you,” Ervin tried to say. But his mouth was covered by the same duct tape that secured him to the chair so it came out, &# roooo t‡8220;Mmmm-mwoooo.”

“Oh, Ervin,” she said. “Do you have to? You know, I was raised in an atmosphere of constant profanity. But Jim took me away from that. I haven’t cursed in eight years. Not once. Jim showed me how much better you feel when you stop swearing. You should try it.”

She rolled the chair back toward him, step by step, until finally she was sitting face-to-face with Ervin, their knees nearly touching. She was dressed, as usual, in a crisp white cotton blouse, buttoned to the neck, and a black sheath skirt that Ervin might have found sexy under other circumstances. Over the blouse, she wore an incongruous tan vest, apparently homemade, which was covered with numerous oddly shaped little pockets.

“I was always good at art,” she said. “After I got together with Jim, I discovered my talent for taxidermy. My favorite thing? Squirrels. They’re so small. The work requires real devotion. Precision. The face especially. The eyes. The lips. The skin is just paper thin.”

Ervin felt sick, terrified. He was afraid he might vomit inside the tape and choke to death. He needed a hit. But it was more than that. As much as Jim Verhoven scared Ervin Mixon, it was his wife who truly terrified him. Although he’d never seen her do anything especially evil, there was a cruel violence in her eyes, those two different colors like a schizo-psychopath, shining too brightly as she came near.

“I made this vest myself, Ervin,” she continued. “It’s for my taxidermy tools. Each tool that I use has its own little pocket. It saves so much time to know exactly where each and every tool is.” She began pulling out tools. “Rasp. Needle. Thread. Various little rotary grinder attachments for my Dremel. Caping knife. Smaller caping knife. Even smaller.” She pulled out a tiny curved knife. “I had this one custom made by a knife maker in Arkansas. It’s an eyelid knife. That’s the hardest part, the eyelids of a squirrel. I love squirrels. Their little teeth?” She curled back her upper lip and mimicked a squirrel munching on a nut.

Then she rolled her chair around to his side, bringing the tiny little knife close to Ervin Mixon’s face. He could smell her, a clean soapy scent. Ervin’s heart began to pound with terror.

“Don’t move,” she said softly, pressing one finger delicately against his cheekbone. “Wouldn’t want you to get cut inadvertently.” Then, with a small noise like the opening of a zipper, she cut a slit in the tape from one side of his mouth to the other. The cut was so perfect that he didn’t even feel the knife. He gasped with relief.

“See?” she said. “Didn’t spill a single drop of blood.”

Gideon's War and Hard Target

“Fuck you, you fucking cunt,” Ervin Mixon said.

A figure separated itself from the darkness. Mixon recognized it as Jim Verhoven. How long had he been there? Mixon hadn’t even seen him enter.

“I’d ask you not to speak to my wife that way,” Verhoven said.

Ervin Mixon didn’t even look at him, though. He couldn’t take his gaze off Lorene’s face. She returned his stare with a faint smile, her eyes wide and fixed.

Verhoven put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

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“Who have you told about our little operation?” Verhoven asked.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Ervin Mixon heard his own voice, high and shaky. He was trying to control his terror. But there was nothing he could do.

Verhoven held up the recording Mixon had made of his conversation. That’s when Mixon knew he was truly fucked.

“Eyelids,” Verhoven said mildly. “I think we’ll save his eyes for later.” She reached toward him with her blade.

“Wait!” Ervin Mixon tried to thrash around, but he was secured so tightly with the tape that he could barely move. “I’ll tell you what you want to know—”

But before he could continue, Lorene made one quick stroke with her blade, slicing open his left eyelid. Before the searing pain had even begun, blood pooled in his eye, obscuring half his vision.

Ervin Mixon began to scream.

12

ANDERSON, WEST VIRGINIA

Tillman drove his fifteen-year-old Dodge pickup around the rear of Circle Seven Packing Company. With the hog tied to the hood, he backed up to the loading dock and parked with the engine idling. He honked once, and the metal door scrolled slowly open.

The man standing on the loading dock was the owner of the shop, Jim Verhoven. As usual, he was dressed in BDUs and combat boots. Circle Seven was a thinly veiled front for Verhoven’s real business, a way for him to pay the minimum in taxes to avoid federal inquiry. Everyone knew his employees were busy distributing meth while Verhoven tended to the occasional slaughterhouse and meat-processing business.

“My goodness,” Verhoven said as Tillman climbed out of the cab, “that is one monster hog.”

His speech was excessively formal, Tillman noted, as if he were a foreigner who had learned English from a book. Tillman looked into the bed of his truck and nodded. “Yup,” he said.

“What’d you take him with?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Tillman said.

Verhoven raised one eyebrow.

“I was shooting a longbow,” Tillman said. “He spooked, I blew my shot, and I ended up going hand-to-hand with the sumbitch. Lost my knife in the scuffle, finally had to stab him to death with an arrow.”

There was a steel track extending out over the loading dock, with a chain and a hook attached to it. Verhoven pulled the chain down and hooked it to the rear legs of the hog. “Look at those tusks!” he said as he hoisted the carcass up by the legs. “Lucky he didn’t gut you like a fish.”

Tillman laughed. “Wasn’t for want of trying.” He pulled up his pant leg to show off the eight-inch-long bandage on his calf.

“My, my,” Verhoven saids sssssch-lo. Then he turned and hauled the hog down the steel runner back into the little slaughterhouse. After a moment he came back out and said, “Normally it’d take until tomorrow around noon.” Verhoven studied Tillman impassively for a moment. “Might could do it while you wait, if you was to keep me company.”

Tillman looked at his watch. He knew that Verhoven was interested in him—and had been for a while. Guys with Tillman’s résumé didn’t come around every day. Members of Verhoven’s militia group had spoken to Tillman in the past, inviting him to come over for briefings or maneuvers or training now and then. But Tillman had always put them off—and not always politely.

This time he wanted an invitation he could accept. But he didn’t want to press or seem overeager. He needed to let Verhoven come to him.

“Sure,” Tillman said. “I guess I could stay a little.”

He followed Verhoven inside, watched in silence as the “colonel” sharpened a long boning knife on an Arkansas stone. There was something sinister about the room. Everything was sparkling clean, and the fluorescent fixtures overhead flooded the room with pale, shadowless light. Chains and hooks and cutting implements lined the stainless steel walls, everything gleaming and sharp and purposeful.

With one swift stroke Verhoven slit the boar from pelvis to breastbone, the guts spilling out onto the floor in a glistening blue pile.

“Sorry I didn’t field dress it,” Tillman said. “I was pretty much whipped by the time I got the bastard home last night.”

“Truth be told, I’d rather do it myself.” Verhoven cut the anus out of the pig in two swift motions, then yanked the intestines free of the body. “I can’t tell you how many times a day I end up spoiling a great deal of meat because some cretin poked a hole in the guts and flooded the body cavity with fecal matter.”

Verhoven worked silently for almost a minute before he said, “I know who you are.”