Fire and ice

10:33 a.m

What the fuck?

K-Rad shouted through the demolished door. “Who’s out there? Identify yourself, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

He knew the sound. He’d heard it a million times before. It was the unmistakable clank of a drum wrench hitting the concrete. Someone was out there. Someone was fucking with him.

He turned and shot Hubbs four times in the chest. “Sorry, boss.”

K-Rad’s legs were cramping again, his head swimming. He should have thought to put some Gatorade or something in his backpack. How stupid of him not to. How utterly fucking stupid. He rooted through the drawers of Hubbs’s desk, found nothing but junk, pulled the drawers out in anger, and dumped everything on the floor. There was a coffeepot on a little table in the corner, but it was empty. He’d planned to walk to the water fountain after killing Hubbs, but now he was going to be forced to deal with whoever it was outside the office.

There wasn’t any Gatorade in his backpack, but there was something that could possibly help him out of this little jam. It was a hand grenade he’d bought from a guy he’d met at a gun show. It had cost him two thousand dollars. Two thousand for one grenade. He’d been saving it for a special occasion, and he reckoned being on the verge of collapse from dehydration was special enough.

It was a Vietnam-era Mk 2, commonly referred to as a pineapple grenade because of the grooves in the cast-iron shell, and it was capable of sending deadly shrapnel in all directions up to two hundred meters. You had to take cover after throwing it or you were likely to get hit yourself. K-Rad pulled the pin and tossed it out the door, toward the area the clanking sounds had come from.