Star Whacker-01

I’m known as “Mr. Smith”. I’m what Randy Quaid calls a “star whacker”. I am a man that very powerful and influential entities contact when one of their human resources ceases to be an asset and becomes a liability, and these entities enter into a contract with me to remove that liability. I provide a desirable service, performed in a professional and confidential manner, that permits deniability to my clients and for which I receive rich compensation.

I came to my profession by a career path that is uncommon to those in my profession. Most of my peers either come organically out of a street-level background in organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia, or they come artificially out of a professional background in the Intelligence community, such as the C.I.A., and as such they possess a certain set of tells and habits that easily identify them to others.

I am one of the more unusual individuals, as I came out of a calm civilian background with an ordinary suburban community and no known ties to either the government or the criminal underworld. I have no military experience, no criminal record, and no secrets from my youth or adolescence that an interested party could use against me- nothing recorded, anyway. What I have is a decades-long study of crime, espionage, and related knowledge; I used what I learned to develop and perfect my practices. This includes the very everyday cover identity that I use to mask my operations: I am a columnist, with degrees in Journalism and Political Science, and a blogger.

My secret is the same as that of my peers: I am a psychopath. I am aware of my pathology, and I have been since I was a child. I have long since learned how to fake the empathy that ordinary people possess, through a combination of the study of body language and my time studying psychology as part of a larger self-education in theater—specifically, acting—that I undertook as an extra-curricular while in college.

Like most, I understand that I am a predator. Unlike most, I sincerely believe that my predation is for the benefit of the species. I got noticed when I successfully disappeared an embarrassing has-been celebrity that emerged from my hometown a generation before, and long-since became a laughingstock. I researched my target as I pushed behind the scenes for that target to come back for one of those ridiculous inspirational talks to high school students.

I used an acquaintance to procure the narcotics necessary to subdue my target, without his knowledge, and I then used the target’s assistant to get them introduced into the target’s bloodstream- again, without the assistant’s knowledge. When the target went into cardiac arrest while on stage, I leaped forward and began administering medical aid; I gave one of my best performances on that day, making it seem as if I were doing the procedure correctly, and kept at it until the target’s death became certain.

I received a postcard at a post office box that I rented under an assumed name three months later. Without leaving prints, I read the card; I left the card in the box, having read the instructions in it, and scoped out the location of the dead drop location. A man in an off-the-rack suit left a wrinkled brown paper bag next to the base of a tree. That night, I retrieved it; inside was a note with yet further instructions. Two days later, I retrieved from another dead drop location $1 million in unmarked, non-sequential U.S. bank notes- and a note of appreciation. By the weekend, I found myself on an audio-only Skype call with the patron that paid me.

“Please,” I said, “you may as well call me ‘Mr. Smith’ for now.”

That, reader, is how I broke into the big time of the assassination game. As for the assistant and the addict, I framed them for the celebrity’s death. After all, someone had to be blamed, so I might as well have set that up beforehand to ensure that no attention came to me. Risky, but worth it.

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This is the end. The last of the enemy, holed up in an old cabin on one of the many lakes in the county, keeping a little girl as a hostage as they wait for their man to come to them. Ken—that man—is on his way, and he’s done talking. Before the day is done, either the remaining gangsters will be dead or Ken will be ripped into pieces. But Ken doesn’t even think about that. All he’s thinking about is his dead friends, their dead son, and their little girl now being held by the men that killed them as bait against to trap him. Ken knows it’s a trap, but he doesn’t give a fuck- he’s going in anyway.
They weren’t as many as they were before, but they were mean and brutal- trained and experienced killers, all of them. They’re armed to the teeth, and they’re out for blood. They were also already dead, and they knew it, so they had nothing to lose and no reason to hold back. Ken also knew all of this, and he appreciated these facts as he skirted around the woods surrounding the cabin to get an opening.

He found one on the corner, where those inside couldn’t see and where those outside were on the far end of their perimeter patrols, and ran for the cabin. Within moments, men hidden outside the cabin sounded the alarm; the patrols came running and opening fire upon him. Ken returned fire, and everyone took cover. Ken caught two of them out of cover, dropped them both with the Mozambique Drill—two to the chest, one to the head, each—and hauled ass for a new position. As he ran, he took out another with a fluke shot that caught the gangster’s throat.

Now a pair of SUVs rolled up, with windows down and those inside firing upon him. Ken again took cover and fired back, killing the drivers and causing them to pile up. Bikers following behind tried to swerve wide, only to be caught by gunfire and shot down. More men poured out of the cabin to go after Ken, but Ken rushed them and cut them down with knife work before they could draw down upon him. By then the surviving men in the SUVs and amongst the bikers got to their feet, so Ken took up a dead man’s rifle and shot them down.

Bursting into the cabin, he killed another man by throwing his knife into the man’s forehead, took the shotgun in his hands and then cleared the ground floor and the basement of the handful of men. Alas, this meant shooting a man carrying incendiaries, which started a fire. Without delay, Ken ran upstairs to the top floor where the girl—and the last man—would be. With the shotgun run dry, all Ken had left was an old revolver he took on the firebug. Ready to die, he drew down on where in that room he expected the man to be.

Instead, he found the little girl shaking and the man dead—shot multiple times in the groin by his own gun—as she tried to keep the pistol pointed at the corpse. Fortunately, she recognized Ken; she dropped her gun, Ken stowed his and they went outside. Ken grabbed a pad of paper and something to write with, and together on the stoop he began writing.

* * * * *  Finished, Ken saw that The Sheriff and his men finally arrived. He took the girl’s hand, and he led her away from the now-burning cabin. He handed The Sheriff the pad of paper, and then walked to an overturned bike. He took the keys off the former owner, picked up the motorcycle, started it up and left with the little girl.


The Hell’s Angels were no more. The Zetas were soon to follow. The Syndicate disappeared. The girl, after burying her family, went to live with Reginald’s parents. As for Ken, he got a call. Guiscard needed a favor done in Europe, and figured that Ken would want a change of venue. Ken flew out, flying directly to France, that night.

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Guiscard anticipated that, somehow, someone amongst these guys would have the means to shoot him down. What he did not anticipate is exactly what it was; one pair of these guys carried a big box in the backseat of a car, and they fled behind some concealment. Out from that car they took the box, and out of that box they took a man-portable missile launcher. While the fight raged on nearby, they loaded the launcher and took aim at Guiscard; they fired, and to Guiscard’s merit he defeated the first attempt by exploited the superior turning ability of his craft.

The second attempt, now at a further range due to Guiscard seeing that a threat he could not easily deal with was at hand, took much more effort to do. They knew that Ken and his allies on the ground now looked for them, so they had to race against the inevitable to shoot down the plane before they got found. They managed to get that second missile off, and then got blasted into hamburger by a pair of militiamen armed with shotguns. As for Guiscard, he again managed to avoid getting shot down, but this time the missile’s warhead exploded a bit too close and damaged his attack plane; he flew for home- the enemy got their wish.

Not yet conceding defeat, the gangsters—now broken completely—scattered and went wild in a mad flight-forward. Some got gunned down by defending homeowners, some by the militia, but more than enough eschewed further home invasions altogether. However, one of the more tech-savvy of the bunch hooked up with one of the more crook-savvy, and together figured out that their original target was not the one that they needed. The two hid long enough to hook into the Internet and trace traffic flows in the county; they figured out that Reginald’s the man coordinating the action, and doing so from home- a location now known.

Not for long, however, as soon after those two got the coordinates to the others Ken came upon them and ambushed them from above. He made short work of them, and then—noticing what they did—warned the militia and the Sheriff, which meant warning Reginald, and then immediately made for Reginald and Kathy’s home. Fortunately, Ken knew how to get there on foot as that was a direct route. Unfortunately, it was still faster to haul ass there on a bike or in a car.

Ken broke out of the brush into the clear backyard to hear screaming and gunfire within the house. Without thought, he burst through the back door and pummeled the man to death that stood just inside that room. Taking the man’s rifle, he saw a handful of others rushing for the front door; Ken fired upon and shot them down without thought. He now heard more screaming from upstairs, and the trodding of feet above, and just as he ran to climb those stairs himself gunfire from above ripped down through the ceiling and impacted the floor and walls where he just stood.

Upstairs he engaged two more men that briefly pinned him down before they both had to pause to reload, whereupon he rushed them and emptied the remainder of his weapon’s magazine into them; he dropped the empty rifle and picked up a pistol off one of the now-dead gunmen, and then ran into the children’s room. There he found Reginald dead—blasted apart by a shotgun—as well as the corpse of their son. Kathy sat slumped against a wall, mortally wounded, shot multiple times in the stomach. Out the window Ken saw a handful of men scrambling into a SUV with their daughter wriggling, now a hostage.

Ken fired upon the vehicle until the magazine went dry, but could not stop them, and then he threw down the empty weapon in frustration. He could do nothing for Reginald or the son, but before he ran after the daughter Kathy looked over at him. She smiled. She nodded. Then Ken ran, weeping.