The Edge

Not much to work with, but he probably wasn’t going to have that option anyway. Looking at the men he was reminded of a Mark Twain quote one of his instructors at West Point had taught them: Of all the animals man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

He didn’t know if these men took any pleasure in their work, but he did know they took pleasure in the payment they would receive for ending his life.

He knew the hit rate for a moving target was less than 4 percent and the kill rate was under one in a hundred. Only he was stationary. He calculated the kill rate on him at damn near perfect.

When engaged in his ceiling staring process, Devine had sometimes gone through this scenario in his mind. No way out. The last full measure. The end. As it came to all of us, just not so violently. He already knew he was not going to beg for his life, because he refused to waste his last few remaining breaths on useless things.

He had almost died twice while in uniform, and once in civilian clothes. In each case, as his life seemed to trickle from him, Devine recalled being in the moment. He was certainly feeling the pain, and he was experiencing the sense of impending doom that anyone dying suddenly felt, because your brain was releasing all sorts of chemicals into your bloodstream to try to stave off the end of its existence, and yours. And, when all hope was gone, the brain would begin methodically shutting down all the body’s organs in an orderly procession, turning the lights out at the very end. This would normally take moments, not minutes.

Devine had felt all of those things, three times now, and, with that experience behind him reinforcing his psyche, he prepared for what he knew was coming.

What had Dr. Guillaume said? That Jenny’s death was instantaneous. That she was dead before her brain even realized it was over.

But that hadn’t really been the way it had gone down. Jenny had been staring at the shooter, her killer, much like Devine was now looking at the three hardened men in front of him. She knew what was coming. Your brain knew, which meant you knew, that the end of you was imminent. Devine wondered what she had thought about. Had she panicked, pleaded for her life? Sobbed uncontrollably?

No, he didn’t believe she had done any of those things. Everything she had done in her life up to that point spoke of a person in control. She would have stood there staring back at the person about to kill her, with a calm, even defiant detachment, maybe even daring them to pull the trigger before they wanted to. To assume, for one final time, the upper hand over someone, a measure of control, even if that person was going to be the instrument of her demise.

Devine stared back at the men with a calm detachment. He wasn’t going to give the fuckers the satisfaction that what they were about to do had rattled him in the least.

You go out like an Army Ranger, tabbed and scrolled.

But they did not pull their weapons and shoot him dead. They left him there.

He counted three sets of footsteps passing down the hall and then down the stairs.

They had made their first mistake tonight, after an otherwise flawlessly executed mission.

But to Devine’s mind it was a big one.

They had left him alone.

And alive.

Chapter 28

Most people bound in duct tape would expend all of their energy pulling and tugging at their bonds, which only made the bindings that much tighter, like a fly struggling in a spider’s web. But duct tape, like many such things, had one weak spot.

Focused, immediate torque.

With that in mind Devine leaned back in his chair as far as he could and then threw his torso forward with as much force as he could muster.

The duct tape sheared off at multiple weak points. He didn’t wait to hear if any sound he had made doing this had reached downstairs. That was just wasted time better spent elsewhere.

He stood, turned to the side, and got free of the remaining dregs of the tape.

He then sat on the floor. Devine, despite his size and musculature, was quite limber and flexible. This was not all genetic or by happenstance; he had worked at it.

He brought his hands under his butt and then passed them along his hamstrings, down his calves, and under his feet until his hands were now in front of him. He held his arms up in front of him and examined the zip ties. They were black and police grade, meaning they were thicker than what one normally associated with such devices.

They also were susceptible to torque, but you had to line up the weak point.