What the cat dragged in.

30 The lady and the Sabretoo

Creed guided the rusty brown van down the highway with one hand and held a sausage and egg breakfast sandwich with the other. The things were fucking awful. The eggs tasted like chemicals and the plastic bottle they came out of. The thin, half-dollar sized sausage patty might as well have been a fucking cinder. Still, he'd eaten worse shit. He shoved the last few bites into his mouth. Next time he had to leave at such a ridiculous hour, he'd let the frail cook for him.

He scanned through tinny radio stations until he found some news, then he ignored it in favor of reviewing his itinerary. He figured that about eighty-five percent of what he did was logistics. Get to the right place at the right time with the right equipment and the rest is easy. Hell, sometimes the rest was even fun. Figuring all that shit out was still a pain in the ass though. The more conditions that had to be met, the bigger the pain in the ass. 

This one was easily the biggest mess he'd ever been involved in and if it wasn't personal he wouldn't have even thought of wading into the middle of it. Multiple locations, multiple teams, multiple targets, tightest fucking window he'd ever used and a double transport just to finish out the fun. He figured the best way to do it was treat the whole fucking thing like an onion and start from the outside and work his way in. 

Paulie C's organization was the outside of the onion. His minions didn't give a shit personally, but whoever avenged the sick fucker's death would make him a shoe-in for the top spot. There were three realistic successors. Four more who liked to think of themselves as being in the running. They were the outermost layers. The first ones to go. The rest were low level thugs, not smart enough or organized enough to be dangerous in the near future. 

Cavallo had managed to either sever or avoid all the usual emotional entanglements and that made things easier. There were a couple whores on the payroll, but that was business. Still, no one would miss a couple of whores. His parents were dead. His fine, upstanding siblings had disowned him years ago. The daughter was a wild card. Chances are she wouldn't give a shit. He hadn't come this far to do a half-ass job. She was another layer.

Stan had some paid protection around him. He'd take them out when he grabbed Stan. On the personal side, he had two brothers. Both solid citizens with jobs and community ties. Nothing more than a parking ticket between them. He'd keep up the observations, but he doubted either one would make retaliatory trouble. The CoH was too big and too well-defended to take apart. Shit would crop up eventually. When it did, he would deal with it.

They were all clean kills, but even clean kills took time.

He stepped on the gas.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Kelly tossed the pencil down and pushed the notebook away. "This is ridiculous!" She rubbed her eyes. "We're never gonna get this one."

"It's only our fourth time through it." Cassie said, the sarcasm clear in her voice. "We've got all night, who needs sleep or sanity?" She rubbed the side of her head again. She'd rubbed it so much that some of her hair was pulled out of her ponytail and sticking up in an angry-looking nest.

"And what I want to know is, why do we need to prove it anyway? Is the author of this textbook a pathological liar? If they tell me that one thing equals another why do I have to spend twenty minutes of my life trying to prove that it's true?"

"Twenty minutes if you get it right the first time."

"And what if the author is a liar, why are we using his textbook in the first place? That's just rewarding bad behavior."

Cassie laughed. "God I've missed studying with you."

Kelly giggled. "Because I go off on wild rants when I get upset?"