Olympic Dick

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The McFab Compound. 0900 hrs.
A soldier--or a mercenary--always starts his morning with a healthy dose of PT (that's "physical training" to you civvy pukes), and I was already on my second hour of it.
"Work it, you slimy maggot!" the instructor bellowed, his face red with exertion and anger. I loved this video. Navy SEALs Workout Volume Two: Slim Thighs, Bulging Mustache was my favorite exercise tape, even better than Jazzercise Like a Marine. I sat up in bed and opened another Zima, looking forward to the part where the SEAL instructor does one-handed push-ups while grunting something about "pride." It's true, I watch the workout tapes while lying down, but when you're a hard-assed slab of stud-meat like me, you don't actually need to follow along.
I bit into my second head-cheese muffin, fluffed my pillow, and got comfy.

I must have nodded off, because I missed the one-handed push-ups, half a muffin had migrated into my boxer shorts, and I failed to hear the phone ring.
"Randy!" Mama called from down the hall. "Telephone, honey!"
"Damnit, Mama," I yelled back, "I'm sleeping. And eating." I pulled the pubes off my muffin half and took a bite.
"It's the phone you call 'the hot phone,' sweetie! Ain't that the one..."
I shot out of bed and ran so hard for the living room, our mobile home shook with my footsteps. "It's a code mauve!" I said, grabbing the phone from Mama's hand. "When the hot phone rings, the new code is 'code mauve.' Christ, didn't you get my OPSEC brief?" I didn't hear her reply as she lumbered back to the couch to resume watching Maury. I had business to attend to.
"Centenary Lakes Function Center, Mandawuy speaking," I spoke into the hot phone. I never reveal my true identity until I know it's safe--careless mercenaries usually end up dead mercenaries.
"Er...I was trying to reach Randy McFab." The voice was male, American, and had the educated polish of a high-school graduate. "I believe I just spoke to, uh, 'Mama' McFab?"
"So my mother would have you believe." I was still being cagey. "Maybe if you identify yourself I'll admit that I'm Randy McFab. Which I'm not."
"Yes, well...I'm Pierce Hymen," he said, "and I'm the executive director of the organization that monitors Olympic athletes for steroid and banned substances use. Perhaps you've heard of us, the Commitee On Doping and Performance-Enhancing Chemical Emulsions. CODPECE, for short."
"I believe I saw you mentioned in Steroid Testing Monthly," I admitted. I always skim the magazines when I wait in line at the grocery store.
"Yes, well," Hymen said, "are you Randy McFab, then?"
"That's still a maybe. Throw some mustard on this burger and we'll see."
"CODPECE is facing a crisis," Hymen continued. "As you know, the Summer Olympics are coming up in a couple of weeks, and--"
"I wasn't aware of that, but go on."
"And we're worried, McFab--or whoever you are--we're worried some U.S. athletes may be doping, and the last thing we want is for our sports-people to be labeled cheats by the Chinese government."
"The Chi-coms?" I said. "Who the hell cares what the Chi-coms say? They're not even allowed to participate in the Olympics, are they?"
"The Chinese are hosting the Olympics," Hymen said. "In Beijing."
This guy Hymen sounded legit, and I knew what he wanted. "I'm McFab, Hymen. Let's cut to the chase. You want to hire me, and you want me to find out who's behind this Chi-com infiltration of the Olympics. And then you want me to eliminate them. By any means necessary."
"Er, no, Mr. McFab. We want you to infiltrate the Athlete's Village in Beijing, and sniff out the steroid users, the dopers, among the U.S. contingent. Your advertisement in Traditional Homes magazine led CODPECE to believe you're an accomplished private investigator."
I remembered the ad. Accomplished Private Investigator for Hire. Will work for ammo. References dead.
"You believed right, Hymen," I said. "I'm the best there is at whatever that thing you said is."
"Well then," Hymen said, "let's make the necessary arrangements and get you to Beijing. CODPECE takes this issue very seriously, McFab. Any cheaters you catch and bring to me, it's fifty grand each in your pocket."
Holy shit! Fifty hundred dollars, that was...I took a minute to do the math...Five thousand a head! I'd catch some cheaters, all right.
"You've got your man," I said, "but Hymen...If you don't follow through on this...I'll break you like a sixteen-year-old virgin's...uh...Well, forget that part."
I hung up and started packing.

Beijing, China. Glorious People's Democratic A-#1 Airport. 0700 hrs.
The twenty-hour flight had been uneventful, except that I sleep in the nude and apparently the Chinese are prudes. They took the handcuffs off when we landed and now I stood inside the terminal waiting for my contact, Mr. Ping. It didn't take long for him to show up.
"Mr. McFab?" He was short, with dark hair and narrow eyes.
"Ping," I said, and recited the code-phrase CODPECE arranged to verify my identity. "Ping," I repeated, "TOS: 0,128,254."
"Finger Ricking Good," Ping said, completing the challenge and answer phase of our meeting. "I take you rympic virrage now," he continued, "or if you prefer I speak in standard English, I'll take you to the Olympic Village now."
"I'd prefer you sound more Chinese," I said. "I don't get out much." We headed for his car.

Beijing, China. Olympic Athlete's Village. Later that day.
Ping got me through security with no hassles, and I settled down in a room in what looked like a luxury hotel. It was, in fact, a luxury hotel, only filled with athletes--American, in my wing--and secured by Chinese soldiers with AK-47s. My room was small, but well-appointed and more importantly occupied solely by me, to keep prying eyes out of my top-secret business.
I threw my bags down by the bed, found the remote for the television, and spent the next few hours watching Chinese pay-per-view porn at CODPECE's expense.

My room. Later.
I turned off the t.v. and massaged my calloused hand, getting my mind ready for my deep-cover operation. I had my fake identity as an athlete memorized, but before I could mix and mingle with the other jocks I needed to look the part as well as I talked it. I headed for the bathroom.

The Olympic Athlete's Village. American Wing. Tapas bar.
"Jesus, that's a big mustache!" He was an Olympic sprinter, but he had apparently never seen an athlete of my caliber.
"That's right," I said, leaning over my drink conspiratorially. "I do have a big mustache...And I had a little 'help' growing it, if you know what I mean."
"Um...No, I don't know what you mean, but...What event are you in, again?" He looked me up and down, slowly, and lingered on my stomach. He was suspicious, maybe, but I knew I looked convincing in my spandex shorts and muscle-shirt with I'm Not Here to Investigate You emblazoned across the front, so I answered with confidence.
"Are you familiar with Judo?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Then it's not Judo," I said. "I do that other event...the one that's not Judo." I went on before he could pursue the issue. "You run damned fast," I said. "Faster, in fact, than anyone in my high school ever did. And some of them played football." True, the Fort Braggart High School football team consisted of eleven Scotch-Irish southern boys who played both ends of the field, but Mr. Speed here didn't need to know that.
"Yes, well," the sprinter said, "I've worked hard to get where I am."
A-ha! I'd watched enough ESPN to know that "I've worked hard" means "I've shot a massive amount of steroids into my buttocks, and now my liver is the size of a watermelon and my skull grows faster than my hair." I had my first catch.
"Have a drink on me," I said, and handed him the business end of my Taser.

Beijing, China. The Olympic Athlete's Village. My room. Two days later.
I had seventeen cheaters piled up in there, hog-tied and gagged. It didn't even take any stealth to catch most of them--I simply observed their performances and compared them to my control group, the Moldavian contingent. Most of my catches were so suspiciously superior, I didn't need to interrogate them or smell their pee to know they were doping. I did collect and sniff their urine while I held them captive, but only to be thorough.
CODPECE had contacted me via Twitter to let me know the operation was at an end, and now I just waited for Pierce Hymen to arrive, collect the dopers, and pay me my money.
"Ya'll won't be here much longer," I said to the prisoners squirming on the floor. "The most traumatic part of this is already over."
I took off my pants and ordered up some pay-per-view.

My room. A few hours later.
As I cleaned myself up, I noticed most of the athletes had vomited at some point. Foreign food will do that to you. I was just hitching up my pants when Hymen knocked on the door.
"Show me the money!" I beamed, letting him in. "I've got your cheaters here."
"What the--Oh my God!" Hymen stared wide-eyed at my collection of dopers.
"Yes, I'm that good," I said.
"Oh, God, Tim!" Hymen said to one of the captives as he knelt to untie him. "I'm so sorry, I...McFab, this is one of our finest athletes, this man's no doper and I know it!"
"So I got one wrong," I shrugged. "He'll be fine to compete once the concussion heals."
"And Susan," Hymen said, moving to another one. "McFab, Susan was tested just this month, we know she's clean! My God, man, we thought maybe one or two shot-putters might be doping, but this...this is insane!"
"Well," I said, "they're all..."
Hymen looked around the group of prisoners. "They're all black!" he shouted. "You've captured and hog-tied what...fifteen, shit, seventeen of our finest African-American athletes!"
"Damnit, Hymen," I said, "you didn't see what I saw. These people ran faster, jumped higher, and moved with a greater grace than your average Moldavian athlete ever could. There's obviously something going on here. And my God, on the basketball court..."
"McFab, you're an idiot and I'm not paying you a dime! They're black, for Chrissake! Of course they're faster and better!"
I cut him off. "You, Hymen, are a...a..." Just then, I saw him for what he truly was. "You're a damned dirty racist, Hymen!" I shoved him away from the hurdler he was trying to un-gag. "You think it's natural that this black hurdler should be able to run and jump so much better than an equally-trained and dedicated white guy? What are you, Hymen, Jimmy the Greek?"
"What? I--" Hymen sputtered.
"Oh yeah, Mr. Racist," I sneered. "They're just naturally better athletes because they're black. Couldn't possibly be steroids. You disgust me, sir. Next thing, you'll tell me they were bred to be superior work-horses!"
Hymen gathered himself and stalked towards me. "I warn you, McFab," he said, "you're stretching me to the breaking point."
"Then maybe I'll be the first man to break you, Hymen," I said, flexing my muscles. "You black-people-are-better-athletes-thinking-which-thereby-diminishes-their-athletic-achievements racist asshole!"
"Yeah, what Randy said!" It was Tim, the sprinter. He stood up, free from his ropes. "You think I'm this fast because I'm black? I had to work for this, not with steroids like Randy says, but...Okay, a little steroids, but still..."
"You are racist," Susan said, walking towards Hymen with fists clenched. "Here Randy's nice enough to accuse of doping, and you gotta say our skin color makes us good! You're dead, asshole!"
"But...but..." Hymen didn't have much more to say as the punches rained down. I untied the others to let them join in, and threw in a few kicks when they were all finished.

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The McFab compound. A few days later.
"Well, honey," Mama said, chewing on a sow's ear, "I'm sorry that mean ol' man didn't pay you."
"He was a racist," I said. "I don't even want his money. Except for the money I took from his wallet while he was unconcious."
"You should get a gold medal for being a good boy, Randy," Mama said.
"I'm forty-six," I said. "Make that a good man."
"You're a good boy," Mama said, and opened a Zima for me. "Now pay attention, honey, Maury's about to say who that baby's daddy is."

No Stinking License

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The Department of Motor Vehicles. 0800 hrs.
The place was packed, but I was first in line. I had been second in line until the old bat in front of me decided to go home and nurse her severed hamstring, and as they opened the doors I congratulated myself on never forgetting to travel without a knife.
I shouldn't have be here anyway, I thought, looking around at the motley crowd assembled to renew--or gain their first--driving priviliges. I've been driving my entire adult life--often with a license to do so--but that didn't matter. The liberal judge I faced last year decided to "interpret" the Constitution as liberal judges do, and I ended up with a year's driving suspension due to some technicality about operating a vehicle while drunk and bleeding. Now I had to take the driving test all over again to get my license back, like some common sixteen-year-old. Speaking of which...
"Hey there honey," I said to the teenage girl behind me in line. "You familiar with the mercenary position?"
"Predator!" she yelled, pointing. Luckily my name was called just as the crowd moved in on me.
"Randall Nathaniel McFab?" I walked up to the counter and faced the DMV worker. He was young, maybe 30, and suspiciously tan. That usually meant gay, foreign, or...both.
"I'm McFab," I said. "Just give me my license, and a helicopter rating while you're at it. I learned to fly 'em watching Rambo."
"Oh, it's not that easy, Mr. McFab," he said, chuckling.
"I wasn't joking, Pedro. If you watch Rambo one frame at a time you can actually learn to fly a Cobra. Maybe you should try it."
"My name isn't Pedro," he said, a bit huffy in my opinion. "I am officer Saddam Al-Qaeda Bin Laden of the East Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles." He pointed to his badge, which just read, Holy Fuck! That's really your name?
"Holy fuck," I said, "that's really your name?"
"Yes, yes, I know..." he said. "When my parents named me, your government was giving weapons and money to all of those people. Seemed reasonable and patriotic at the time. You may call me Jihadi of Allah if it makes you more comfortable, or...Brad. I also go by Brad."
"Brad sounds kinda gay, Jihadi. Let's get on with this. I need my license back."
"Of course, just a few preliminary..." He inspected my birth certificate, apparently surprised it was printed on blood-stained camo. "You are Randall Nathaniel McFab, son of Nathaniel Randall McFab and 'Mama' McFab, correct?"
"Yes."
He typed into a computer. "And your date of birth?"
"I'm 27."
He looked at me and chuckled. "Oh, sir, we have it all here, and your bald head..."
I told him my date of birth, and he shook his head sympathetically.
"Very very good, sir," he said. "One more formality before the driving test. You just need to look into here," he said, pointing out a device on the counter, "and read aloud the letters you see."
"What, are you saying I'm illiterate?" I demanded.
"No sir, it is for vision, you know...a man your age..."
I put my nose up against the device and peered into the eye-holes, hoping it might at least have pictures of naked chicks or something. Instead, it was filled with bizarre, blurred characters...almost as if...
"You bastard!" I stepped back from the counter and levelled my gaze at Jihadi. "You're testing Americans with Arabic letters? It's come to that now, has it?"
"No sir, I--"
"People!" I said, turning towards the long line behind me. "America has been co-opted by the Islamo-facists. It's not enough that we have to suck up to the A-rabs for gas, now we have to read their pagan language just to get a driver's license!"
The crowd indicated they were with me by their silence, though I did hear a "shut the fuck up" and a "you're holding up the line!" from the liberals in attendance.
"Sir," Jihadi said, "perhaps if you tried again with your glasses...The glasses specified as necessary on your last driver's license."
So that's how it was. He wanted to see a handicapped American. Fine, let him get his kicks. I pulled my glasses out of my ankle sheath and peered into the device again with the specs on.
"Hmm..." I said, "It's in English now. Must have switched it on me...Okay, 'I..A...M...'"
"Keep going," Jihadi said.
"'A,'" I said, still reading, "'P...R...I...C...K.'"
"Yes!" Jihadi said. "You have passed the vision test and I daresay demonstrated a healthy self-awareness. All that is left, " he said, lowering his voice, "is the driving portion."
"You're not the driving tester, are you?" I asked, hoping against hope.
"No sir," Jihadi said, "the driving tester is an American just like you. Meet her outside in the parking lot." He handed me a slip of paper and I headed outside.

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The Department of Motor Vehicles. 1100 hrs.
I waited outside for two hours with no tester and no vehicle in sight. I was about to go back in and demand an explanation when an early-nineties Mercury Cougar with 20-inch rims drove up to the curb, a bass beat from its stereo shaking both me and the windows of the DMV office. I would have assumed the car was being turned in as not roadworthy were it not for the "DMV Test Vehicle" signs magneted to the doors.
The tinted driver's side door opened and a large black woman stepped out, her fishnet-clad ankle the size of my thigh. Though the cheetah-print skirt and black half-top slimmed her some, she easily went a good two-and-a-half bills.
"'Sup, Playah?" She asked, or said...I wasn't sure which.
"I...I'm supposed to take a test?" I held out the form I'd been given.
"I'm Tykeesha," she said. "I be testin' you." She took the form and stuffed it into her ample cleavage, where it disappeared. "Ah-ite. Let's roll." She waddled to the passenger side and I got in the driver's seat.
"How do you adjust this?" I asked, fishing for the lever to bring the seat forward. It was so far back and down, I was practically in the back seat and could just see over the dashboard.
"What?"
"How do you..." I turned the music down, too late for one of my fillings which I swallowed politely. "The seat, I--"
"You don't wanna look like a bitch, do you?" she asked. "Drivin' all up on the windshield like a gram-mamma?"
"No, I guess not."
She made a note on her clipboard and I glanced over. Doesn't wanna look like a bitch, she had written. "Ah-ite," she said, "start it up and pull up in the skreet."
I started the car and turned left onto the skreet.
"Now," she said, "what's the first thing you look for?"
"Prostitutes," I answered honestly.
"That's a good answer," she said, marking the clipboard, "but I mean before you start lookin' for ho's. You look for the five-o."
"Ah, the police," I said, making sure to maintain a safe speed. "Yes, I wouldn't want to get a ticket."
"Nah, nah," she said, "you don't wanna get caught rollin' dirty."
"Rolling dirty? You mean with the illegal firearms and explosives I often carry in my mom's vehicle?"
"Yeah, playah, dat shit." She scribbled on the clipboard some more.
"No worries," I said, "the police don't even know I've been driving around drunk without a license virtually every day since my D.U.I."
"Word, mofo," she said solemnly. "Word."
"Word to your mother," I grinned. This was going to be easy. "Word to your mother."
We carried on down the road a bit and she pointed ahead. "Construction zone," she said, "what do you do here?"
"Get my crunk on," I said, pulling a Zima out of my trousers and opening it with my teeth. I drained the bottle in two or three swallows.
"'Das what I'm talkin' 'bout, playah," she said.
We drove on, approaching a school zone. "Ah shit," I said, speaking her language. "Fifteen miles an hour up in here. I gotta be high to drive that slow!" I took a tube of toothpaste out of my trousers, squirted some into a pyrex pipe, and set my lighter to it.
"Goddamn!" Tykeesha exclaimed. "You smokin' toothpaste?"
"Hell...yeah..."I said, as the Crest hit me, hard. The road up ahead turned sharply, and merged into a yellow-brick rainbow in the clouds so pretty color fast now...

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The Department of Motor Vehicles. 1700 hrs.
I woke up handcuffed on a cold concrete floor, Tykeesha standing over me.
"Damn, bitch..." I murmured..."'dat was some shiznit..."
"Can it, asshole," Tykeesha said. "You didn't really think they hire uneducated people with ghetto mentalities to work for the D.M.V., did you?"
I noticed she was wearing a tasteful pants suit now. "Well, I..."
"I fail more drivers than anyone in the department," she said, "though I rarely get to charge them with D.U.I. involving toothpaste."
I looked up helplessly, wondering whose puke I was laying in. "So I don't get to drive?"
"You'll be lucky if you don't go to jail," she said, her huge thighs blocking out the overhead lights.
"I, uh..." I slicked my hair back with some spare puke. "I don't suppose, after I'm arraigned and all..."
"You and me?" she asked, scowling. She picked me up then, effortlessly, and cradled me to her bosum. "Let's roll, playah," she whispered.

Killadelphia

Fort Braggart, East Carolina. The McFab compound/double-wide trailer home. 1000 hrs.
One of the defining characteristics of a warrior is discipline, and I have it in spades. Even though I wasn't working a merc job, I still got up at 0930 and did three minutes of Jazzercise before breakfast. It's called being hard, and I'm as hard as they come.
"Momma!" I called from the breakfast table. "You didn't put enough sugar in my Pablum!" I would have used stronger language, but I go easy on the old broad.
"Goddamnit, Randy..." Mom trudged in from the living room and pulled the sugar canister from a cabinet above the sink. "You're forty years old, honey. You need to learn..." She spooned some more sugar into my bowl.
"I'm a warrior, momma, not a cook. You know that." I tasted my cereal and was pleased.
"Yeah, I know, honey." She rubbed her ample stomach. "I just think it would be nice if you got some work again. "
The phone rang.
It was the hot phone, my mercenary line, so I answered carefully as always.
"Chooks Fresh and Tasty," I answered. "Doongara speaking."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I--I was trying to reach [telephone number redacted for security reasons--RM]."
"Maybe you have reached that number," I said. "The question is, where did you get it? Are you a fed? Or a tango?" Like all men of action, I refer to terrorists as "tangos," just as I refer to Mormons as Lima Delta Sierras.
"I got the number from your ad in O, The Oprah Magazine." His voice sounded Yankee, which told me two things. He wasn't Mexican, and he was probably gay.
"You're not gay, are you?" I asked.
"What? No. I' m not calling about your personals ad. I'm calling about the other one, the--"
"Gun for hire? Pay by the bullet?" I asked, quoting my own ad.
"Yeah, dat one. I represent a neighborhood coalition here in Philadelphia--or as the media has started calling it, 'Killadelphia.' Due to our murder rate, youze know."
"Yes," I said, "I remember not reading anything about that."
"Um...Anyway, my name's Vito O' Shannon, and I'm a typical Philly resident. Half Irish, half Italian, and half-educated. My organization--"
"How do I know you're even in Philly?" I interrupted. "You could be a lying Fed, for all I know."
"Youze got a problem wit' me?" He demanded. "Maybe youze and me should meet up for a fair one, youze re-tad-ed prick!"
"Okay," I said, "you're really in Philly. So what do you want?"
"I want to keep my neighborhood safe," he said. "Crime's on the rise, and our community feels like the police ain't doing enough to protect us. We want to bring in a pro to clean up the streets and send a message to the criminal scumbags ruining our neighborhood."
"Easy. It'll take me five or ten minutes at most," I said.
"I should warn you, McFab," Vito said, "this neighborhood...it's one of the worst."
"It can't be worse than Beirut," I said, imagining Beirut must be pretty bad.
"It's worse," Vito said. "It's Rhawnhurst."

Northeast Philadelphia. Rhawnhurst. A Jewish Deli. 0900 hrs.
I had flown in on Vito's dime--or rather the dime of the Rhawnhurst Unified Neighbors- Demanding More Cops; Run-DMC for short.
I took a bite of pork roll (a local delicacy reserved for the wealthy), and looked across the table at Vito. He was swarthy and pale at the same time, somehow, and a good hundred pounds overweight.
"I'm here and I'm on your payroll," I said. "I just need a sitrep and then the blood starts flowing."
"A sitrep?" he asked between bites of scrapple.
"A situation report," I explained patiently, remembering I was dealing with a civvy puke and not a man of action.
"Well..." Vito lit a cigarette, coughed up a bit of yesterday's cheese steak, and filled me in. "Dis neighborhood, it used to be good. Hard-working Irish-Italian Americans, a few hebes, and dat was it."
"And now?"
"A few weeks ago...excuse me." Vito pulled a bottle of Yuengling lager from somewhere on his person and drained it in one go. "Dat's better. So yeah, a few weeks ago, dis lady in our Run-DMC organization, she's walkin' down the friggin' street, and she sees..." He took a deep breath.
"What did she see?"
"Dis was right here in Rhawnhurst," Vito said. "And I don't mean Cottman Avenue. Dis was..."
"What was it?" I asked.
"Dis lady," he said, "Tammy Gambino...She's walkin' home from the bar at three a.m., and...and..." He was getting worked up.
"Just say it," I said, "you'll feel better."
"She saw blacks." He let out a deep breath. "She saw blacks, bro!"
My God. I didn't know the area, but I knew it was supposed to be fairly safe. "How many?"
"Tree."
"They were near a tree?"
"Yeah, all tree of 'um."
"They weren't lynching themselves, were they?" I asked. "Sometimes blacks do that to make white people look bad."
"No," Vito said. "Dey were sellin' crack. I know because Tammy bought some."
"So you want these blacks..."
"It ain't just the blacks," Vito said. "It's more than that. The other day, someone dumped their garbage right at the end of our cul-de-sac. Like some kind of animal."
"They just dumped garbage on a public street?" I asked.
"Yeah, and not in the park where we usually dump it. " Vito sighed. "Dere's no respect anymore, McFab. Dat's why we need a mercenary. You patrol our neighborhood for a week, you send the message, and maybe den people will wake up."
I finished the last of my pork roll and looked Vito in the eye. "It's gonna cost you. Six bucks an hour and I sleep in your garage, as you promised. But I'll have your streets so clean, they'll be...they'll be really clean in comparison to other streets."
"Alright," Vito said. He slid an object wrapped in cloth across the table to me. "Youze said you don't fly with weapons, so I got you dat piece you wanted."
I unwrapped it under the table and slid the watergun into my waistband. "Filled with urine?" I asked.
"Mine," Vito said. He belched loudly. "And mine stinks."

Northeast Philadelphia. Rhawnhurst. 2130 hrs.
My first night on the job, and I was ready for anything. Waiting in ambush, cloaked in darkness, and armed to the teeth. It didn't take long before the criminals went into action.
An old guy, probably a semi-retired mobster, left the sidewalk at mid-block and started across the street, pushing a walker in front of him. I rappelled out of the tree I was in and tackled him in the middle of the road.
"You must want to die," I whispered in his ear, my forearm around his throat in a choke-hold.
"I don't...I..." I couldn't hear him well what with his windpipe blocked off and all.
"You jaywalked, old man," I said. "Maybe you'd have been luckier if a car had hit you."
"It's..." I let off a little pressure on his throat so he could talk. "It's eleven at night," he wheezed, "and it's a...it's a residential neighborhood...no cars...I was...I was just feeding the cats across the street."
"'Feeding the cats.'" I pulled a sock filled with quarters from my black BDU trousers. "If by 'cats' you mean children, and if by 'feed' you mean sell crack to...I believe you." I swung the sock.

Northeast Philadelphia. Rhawnhurst. 1600 hrs. The next day.
This area really had gone to shit. The criminals operated even in broad daylight.
I was doing surveillance at a bus stop when I spotted a teen-aged boy about to board a bus with a monthly pass they sell to frequent riders. There was only one problem with that.
The bus stopped and opened its doors, but I grabbed the kid before he could board and placed him in a compliance hold.
"It's okay," I told the stunned driver, flashing my badge. "I'm a mercenary." The driver nodded, closed the door, and drove off. I turned my attention to the scumbag in my control.
"Monthly pass, huh?" I asked the punk, shaking him by the lapels.
"Yes, sir, it's...It's a pass for February." He sounded scared.
"Don't use your big words on me, punk," I said. "What's today's date?"
"The twenty...twenty ninth?"
"That's right, the twenty-ninth. You know goddamn well Feb, as I call it, has twenty-eight days. You were trying to steal an extra day, weren't you?" I shook him hard. "Weren't you?"
"I just...I don't know, I just..."
The cold hard plastic jammed against his head shut him up. I gripped the water gun tight and pulled the trigger.

Northeast Philadelphia. Rhawnhurst. A Wawa convenience store. A couple of days later. 0600 hrs.
I had been up all night doing recon at a Catholic church, with no results. Someone must have warned the Papists I was coming. I stopped into the convenience store to grab a strawberry milk and some turkey jerky, and was shocked to find a crime in progress.
"Drop it, you son of a bitch!" I shouted. The young black man I was talking to sat his coffee down on the counter. "You think you're slick, don't you?" I said, approaching him with my combat knife in my hand.
"What the hell?" The perp said. "Someone call the cops!"
"The cops?" I laughed. "They're probably getting some of the profit from your little game here." I snatched a bagel sandwich from his hand and threw it to the floor, my knife held at his throat. "I saw what you did," I said. "Wawa offers great coffee at great prices. But that wasn't good enough for you, was it? You wanted milk." I pressed the tip of the knife into his adam's apple. "You wanted milk, fresh Wawa milk, but you weren't willing to pay for it...So you grabbed a coffee cup and filled it up with two-percent from the coffee bar, didn't you?"
"Sir, I...I didn't know..."
"You didn't know?" I sneered. "You didn't know that twenty-four ounces of milk costs more than twenty-four ounces of coffee? You didn't know that Wawa provides this milk to their customers free of charge based on the assumption that you'll be responsible and just add a bit to your joe?" I stared into his eyes, and he saw the angel of war. "Twenty-four ounces," I said, knife in hand. "Twenty-four ounces of...blood." His screams were drowned out by the intercom; a customer at pump six couldn't get the gas to flow.

Northeast Philadelphia. Rhawnhurst. A Jewish Deli. Two days later. 0700 hrs.
"It's like dis," Vito said. "Since you got here, crime's actually gone up."
I munched unhappily on a piece of scrapple, noting he didn't spring for pork roll this time. "Vito," I said, "that's an anomaly, statistics change."
"Crime's gone up," Vito continued, "when it comes to assault."
"Well, the criminals are probably increasing their numbers. They're scared."
"Assault with a urine-filled water gun," Vito added, reading from a police report.
"So someone's using my tactics..."
"No, youze re-tad-ed prick. Youze is de problem. I hired you to fight crime and youze is out dere causing it."
"Well what the hell do you want?" I demanded. "I've taken down twelve perps in five days."
"And one of dose perps was my grandmother, God rest her soul."
I rose to leave. "You're not gonna pay me, are you Vito?" I asked.
"No."
"And as for my expenses..."
"No."
"Well, then." I headed towards the door and then stopped. "What about my personals ad, Vito? Any chance..?"
Vito munched on a giant pretzel before responding. "Dey really call you Ensign Throbber?"