Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Thriller by Brian Springer

every night.”
    This time I couldn’t hold my laugh in. “It
never ceases to amaze me.”
    “What’s that?”
    “How a dude as ugly as you can pull wool
whenever he damn well pleases.”
    “It’s all in the attitude, my friend.”
    “Well, you’ve got plenty of that,” I
said.
    Willis flexed one of his massive arms,
pointed at the bicep. “Of course, the guns don’t hurt either.”
    This just made me laugh harder. The
combination of half-naked girls all around and Willis cracking
one-liners had me feeling pretty good. For a second, I could almost
remember what it felt like before Josie had been killed.
Almost.
    Then reality reasserted itself and my grin
started to fade. I took another drink of water to help ease the
transition.
    Willis sensed the sobering of my mood and
brought it down a level. “So what did you end up doing with
Russo?”
    “I left him lying in the wine cellar.”
    “Alive?”
    I nodded.
    “Are you sure that was the wisest
choice?”
    “Not necessarily. But it’s the one I made,
so there’s no use worrying about it now.”
    “What if he wakes up and tells the people
that he’s in bed with what happened?”
    “He won’t,” I said, trying to sound more
certain of that fact than I actually was.
    “How can you be sure?”
    “Because he’d be signing his own death
warrant if he told them what happened. They would kill him without
hesitation if they knew he’d given out any information.”
    “We know that. But does he ?”
    “He knows,” I said. “He was so scared of
them he almost didn’t tell me anything, even when I was pointing my
gun at his face. He knows his only hope of getting out of this
thing alive is to keep quiet and pretend like nothing
happened.”
    “I hope for your sake you’re right.”
    I shrugged. “Even if I’m not, what’s he
going to tell them? That someone is coming after them? Hell,
they’re going to know that soon enough anyway. And it’s not going
to take them long to figure out who I am, even if Russo doesn’t say
anything to them.”
    “All that may be true,” Willis said. “But
there would be a hell of a lot less to worry about if Russo
couldn’t talk.”
    “I know. But this was a man tied up to a
chair in the wine cellar of his own home, unarmed, incapable of
defending himself. It was murder. Plain and simple. I just couldn’t
bring myself to do it.”
    Willis opened his mouth to comment but I
pressed on.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’ve got no
problem killing the people responsible for Josie’s death. I just
didn’t realize how difficult it would be to draw the line of
responsibility.”
    “That’s understandable,” Willis said. “But
you better watch yourself. You’re walking a tightrope here,
Highway. You lose your balance even just a bit and you could tumble
into the abyss.”
    “I know,” I said. And I did. I truly did.
But I was also just as worried about the abyss I might tumble into
if I became too much like the guys I was chasing.
    I drained the rest of my water but continued
to hold the empty glass up around my face, looking at the world
through the distorted lens of the ice cubes at the bottom.
    “You okay?” Willis said.
    I nodded.
    “All right then. Holler at me if you need
anything else before tomorrow.”
    “I will.”

 
     
    BUD/S TRAINING: HELL
WEEK
     
    The first two weeks of BUD/S training is
just the appetizer. The main course starts the third week. Hell
Week. Or “the long day” as it is not-so-affectionately known.
Everything that has come before it—the pain, the suffering, the
doubts about continuing on—are magnified tenfold. Hell Week is
where the SEALs are separated from the mere mortals. It is a
singular experience.
    The first evolution of Hell Week is called
breakout. It starts at 6PM on Sunday night. Explosions. Gunfire.
Smoke bombs. Running around in the dark, trying to find your way to
the beach. Instructors yelling, spraying you with water, giving
conflicting directions,