I would wait for the opportunity. There's a lot of iron in blood.
And these guys had it coming.
Mark
Something had been bothering me since Angus' first conversation with his brother Fergus. Well, something else. There were too many things on my mind for me to really notice this one until I'd had some time to think it through. Once a question occurred to me, I just had to know.
"So how does someone like you know so much about guns and stuff?"
Angus chuckled. "Guns and stuff," he mused. "It's a long story."
I said nothing. I was learning from an expert.
"I've been in the armed forces for quite a large proportion of my fifty-nine years," he said eventually. Every time I heard how old he really was, my mind started lurching around like a drunk. He really didn't look more than twenty. Twenty five if you really pushed it.
"I couldn't stay in any one place for more than, say, five years. People start noticing that you're not getting older. I started off in the British military, the SAS, and worked my way across Europe. I spent a few years in Africa too. I ended up working for the FBI in the states until I retired about four years ago."
"Why did you stop?"
"Because it wasn't what I had expected when I started. I realised fairly soon after my father died that I needed an outlet for my, er, violent tendencies. I joined the armed forces, thinking that I'd be able to hurt deserving people in a disciplined, controlled way. It didn't work like that, though. You didn't get to hurt anyone. You learned about guns and knives and unarmed combat, but you couldn't hurt anyone until you were actually in the battlefield. Those were quiet years, and I spent five and a half years learning to curb my frustration. It taught me that much at least, I suppose."
"But surely you liked the unarmed combat bit?"
Angus laughed humourlessly. "Rolling around on the floor with some idiot, pretending to fight him off? No." He paused, and then he turned to look at me, his expression grim. "I can crush your neck with one hand, Mark, without even lifting the other off the steering wheel here. I can break that massive bone in your thigh by just squeezing it. I could thrust my hand through your ribs and into your thoracic cavity and rip your beating heart out." Expressionless, like he was reading the weather.