The noise of the water hitting the bathtub was too explosively loud for his head to take right now, so he skipped the shower and just got dressed, pulling a pair of jeans on over his boxers, finding a slightly wrinkled white t-shirt and shrugging it on. A glance in the mirror told him he looked pained and hung over, like he'd slept badly and hadn't bothered to shave for two days, and it was all painfully true.

He ran his fingers through his tousled hair, barely getting it under control, and then grabbed a baseball cap (this with a Linux penguin on it) and slipped on some cheap black sunglasses before grabbing his coat and heading out in the brutal light of the hard afternoon sun.

How lame was he to have an actual hangover after only a couple of beers? Man, he was getting old.

In spite of the sunglasses, the light seemed too bright, shooting into his eyeballs and straight into the back of his brain like shards of broken glass, and his eyes were watering by the time he reached the nearest store, a Safeway about twenty miles away. The parking lot was mostly empty, and he held high hopes that he could just grab his meds and get going. He'd have hated to miss his own kidnapping.

In spite of the glaring sunlight spilling through the store's front wall of windows, some sadist had turned on the harsh fluorescents overhead, so he had to keep his sunglasses on as he loaded up his basket with everything he felt he needed: Excedrin Migraine tablets (the really big bottle); Pepto Bismol (only the pint size), a loaf of wheatberry bread; another six pack of Jolt cola; a pint of orange juice; a jar of peanut butter (suddenly the dry toast didn't sound good enough); a small pre - wrapped sub sandwich from the deli, on the off chance he got his appetite back in full; two Hershey bars with almonds; caffeinated cinnamon mints and a tin of regular but "curiously strong" wintergreen mints. More than he initially came for, but he didn't know how long Gabriel was going to be. Obviously he was getting old too.

In the parking lot, he took a hearty swig of the Pepto Bismol, and then washed down three Excedrins with the juice (orange juice tasted terrible with Pepto Bismol - but everything tasted terrible with Pepto Bismol). He drank the rest of the orange juice on the hypnotically dull drive back, the small, ugly little franchise stores that made up this tiny niche of civilization giving way to the bland beige monotony of the desert wastes. He didn't know which was better or worse.

He was starting to feel better, though, the jackhammers behind his temples slowly subsiding, his roiling stomach settling down, and by the time he arrived at his trailer, he was feeling like his old self, the caffeine in the pills inching him up into a better state of mind.

It helped his awareness too, because the instant he pulled up, he knew something was different, something was wrong.

It took Stan a moment, but then he figured it out - tire tracks in the sand. Not just the Mustang's - something heavier, with all terrain tires.

"If I could, I would let it go," he sang along with U2 on the radio, then shut the car off. He supposed he could have backed out and tried to escape, but surely there was a hidden vehicle out there, waiting for the opportunity to run him right off the road. Maybe more than one.

No; he had a plan, and he was playing his game, not the one Gabriel surely expected. He just couldn't let on too soon that he was pulling the strings.

He pocketed his keys, grabbing the plastic grocery bags out of the passenger seat, and went to face the music.

Stan was barely inside the door when some greasy Eurotrash thug shoved a gun in his face.

He grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him violently inside, and Stan hit the edge of the 'kitchen' counter hard as gun boy slammed the door. As he straightened up, he saw another broad shouldered thug in an ill fitting grey Armani suit, looking uncomfortable in the growing heat of the trailer (he had yet to turn on the air conditioning), standing wedged in the door of the bathroom. He already knew another was sitting on the couch as a familiar voice said, crisp and hard, "Where is it, Stan?"

Ginger. Or whatever the fuck her real name was.

"What, no welcome home kiss?" He said sarcastically, putting his grocery bags in the sink (well, there was nowhere else to put them).

She had changed her hair. It was still short, but now straight and swept back, lightened to a driftwood sort of hue. It may have been a wig; he couldn't tell. But he knew her bright blue eyes were courtesy of contacts. Otherwise she was still the same lithe woman as before, wearing a flimsy golden yellow dress that highlighted her pushed up cleavage (but clashed somewhat with her cocoa colored skin), and a high slit that showed off as much leg as legally possible. She was wearing stilettos too, and he didn't know how she got up the trailer's steps in those. Maybe one of the muscle boys carried her.

"Can the crap, Stanley," she replied, her voice icy and derisive. "Did you actually think you could pull this off?"

He didn't answer, simply started unpacking his groceries, the closest thugs constantly tracking him with their weapons as he did so. What, did they think he had bought an Uzi at the Safeway?

"Do you actually think I care what you and your master think?" He replied coldly,  putting the cola in the locker sized fridge.

The goon by the front door clipped him on the back of the head with the butt of his gun, sending him crashing head first into the paneling. For a moment, stars sparkled in the darkness of his vision, and he tasted blood in his mouth from biting into his own cheek, but as his vision came back with the painful throbbing of the newly forming lump on the back of his head, Stan laughed. He reached around to touch the back of his head.

"There's a good tactic - knock me around. Oh yeah, I'll wanna cooperate then. You'd be better off sucking my dick this time, Ginger. Or, can I call you Mary Anne? You look more like a Mary Anne to me."

He glanced at his hand after pulling it away from the back of his head: there was blood on his fingertips. Must have opened up a cut on his scalp.

"Gabriel drove you over the edge, didn't he?" She asked, although it verged on not being a question.

He didn't answer, simply opened the jar of peanut butter, then the loaf of bread. He could feel a warm itch on his scalp as blood started trickling through his hair, down the back of his head. He heard her foot tapping an impatient tattoo on the trailer floor as he went ahead and spread some peanut butter on a slice of bread. When he opened the drawer to get a bread knife, the thug who brained him shoved the muzzle of the gun right into his ear. Stan laughed again as he opened the drawer and pulled out what he wanted. "Hey, Gilligan, did you not inform your trained apes here that if they blow my fucking head off, you'll never get what you want?"

She stopped tapping her foot, and just by the tension in the air, he guessed she didn't like being referred to as Gilligan. "We can blow off other body parts."

He smiled humorlessly, not even glancing at her as he made his untoasted peanut butter toast. Well, there was no sense in dicking around with the toaster now. "Haven't you got it through your head, Skipper? I really don't care what you do to me. What do I have to live for?"

"Holly."

As if on cue. Man, he could have written a script for this. "Try again, Lovey." The blood was now dribbling down the back of his neck. That was the funny thing; blood actually ran like water. In the movies and on television, it seemed almost viscous, like crimson oil, but in real life it wasn't anything like that. If you gave it an opening, your blood seemed eager to escape, like your body was just its prison.

"The obituaries were a cute touch, Stanley. But we know she's alive and you stashed her away."

He scoffed, and turned around, holding his piece of peanut butter smeared bread. He glared at the greasy thug now in front of him, and reluctantly, with a lip curling sneer, he backed up, enough that Stan could slip into the booth that was the rest of the dining room/kitchen set up. "It was only a partial fake, Professor. Maybe you should have looked closer." He bit into the bread violently, chewing it even though he had almost no saliva left.

Her eyes were hard, cold, boring into him like drill bits. "Meaning what?"

It wasn't hard to look angry, as he was, and he hated this cold blooded bitch and her reptilian boyfriend. To his surprise, it wasn't hard to call up tears either; he could bring them to his eyes easily by working on the gash inside his cheek, and peanut butter in an open cut hurt more than he would have thought. "Meaning, you stupid bitch, there was a fucking car accident, and Holly - " he paused to gather himself, let the bread fall to the table and closed his eyes, as if trying to hold back tears and control his rage. It was almost surreal; he was faking none of this. He thought he would have to, but he didn't. " - she's dead, bitch. You hear me?! She's dead. You took everything you fucking could from me so why don't you leave me in fucking peace!" The last few words came out as an anguished roar, and when he opened his eyes to glare balefully at her, tears spilled down his cheeks like the blood down the back of his neck. He was gripping the edge of the table so tight his knuckles were bone white.

Her face remained an expressionless mask, but he saw the flicker of doubt in her eyes, and knew that was all he needed. As long as the seed of doubt was planted, this was his game to lose. "You're lying," she said, but he heard the hesitation - she was hoping he was. She really didn't know.

He just stared at her in open hate, letting the tears continue to fall as he slouched back in the booth, feeling a muscle deep inside his chest clench like a fist. He was never good with expressing emotions, or even being with people; he was always happier with the sterile simplicity of machines. Being in the world, he had learned it was almost all about repressing your emotions, not actually expressing them, and now he was just letting it all out. The funny thing was, while he did his best to keep his expression sorrowful, the tears were springing from rage. He hated her and her goons so much he was almost shaking with fury; he wanted to hurt these motherfuckers. He wanted to kill them. "Maybe Gabe should look into improving his intelligence," he muttered, wiping away tears and snot with his forearm. The tickle of blood dripping down his neck was getting lost, drowned by the throbbing of his head.

She crossed her arms over her chest, her posture defiant, but the doubt was there in her eyes, almost but not quite pity. "We've searched this dump, and we know it isn't here. So where did you hide it, Stan?" Her voice was still strident, but softened ever so slightly.

Like that skirted sociopath felt anything for anyone but herself. He glanced up at her, finding it hard to stop the tears, even as he gave her a sickly smile. "Did it ever even occur to you that I have no fucking idea what you're talking about?"

Her eyes narrowed, the certainty slamming back into place like a visor. "Hair dye and tinted glasses aren't a very good disguise."

"You should know," he replied. He then turned towards the fridge, and the guy in the bathroom doorway edged out further, gun first. "Can I get a drink without you blowing my foot off, Rambo?"

His porcine blue eyes glanced at Ginger, who must have nodded assent, because he gestured at the fridge violently, his version of an okay. They must have searched the fridge too. He wondered if Ginger got a thrill pawing through his boxers.

"Must be in the car," she said quietly, as if thinking aloud. He sat back with his soda, and she said, "Give us the keys, or we'll just break out your windows."

"Classy. Steal a lot of cars, Skipper?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the Mustang, which he lobbed with excessive force towards the oily haired, vending machine sized thug by the door, the one who had clubbed him on the head with the gun butt. He caught the keys with his free hand, never taking the Glock off of him. He gave Stan a look of pure hate, and it made him smile, almost laugh. He hoped he was the one who tried to open the trunk.

"Help him," Ginger said, to the guy covering the dangerous bathroom. "Len and I can handle him." Her eyes scudded over Stan once more, and her crimson painted lips thinned in distaste. She had just dismissed him as any sort of threat, and seemed almost disappointed.
He took a gulp of his soda to cover the smile - just you wait, honey. He was not the same naive idiot she had conned a year ago, no matter what he had led her to believe.

Len must have been the thug with the blond ponytail and dark shades sitting on the couch. He looked relaxed, so good at killing without a single trace of conscience that he wouldn't even bother to stand up to blow your head off. This was probably a really boring gig for him.

If he was patient, it was about to get more interesting.

As the two nameless goons left, Ginger grabbed his laptop from where she had left it on the couch, beside Hitman Len. "This is a hell of a machine, Stan," she said, then scowled at him in open disapproval. "It was a shame to ruin it."

On his beloved Ashton Digital Passport laptop was a custom made program called a 'daemon' in hacker parlance, running unnoticed in the background of everything he did on the laptop. As soon as he booted up the computer, he had to hit the spacebar three times, activate the caps lock, and as soon as the cursor appeared, type in "/XOQ/FYJ/876" - basically a sample Unix path code, but rendered to pure gibberish. If someone tried to crack it, they would have sixteen seconds after the moment the cursor appeared (assuming they got the space bar and caps lock pattern right), and at that rate, with the help of a supercomputer, they might get it in several years, but it would be more likely decades or longer. Because if that exact code wasn't entered in the allotted seconds, the daemon, rendered quiescent by that code, would come to life.

And what the daemon did was destroy all the data on the hard drive, and crash the computer while it was at it. Rebooting it would be unsuccessful, and even if you could force it somehow, not only would you have gibberish, code digested like what Alien had been built to do to the security cameras in Galleon, but the daemon also would have activated its clone  'spores' - invasive viruses that would transfer to the first computer someone used to try and crack it. It would do to their machines what it had done to Stan's computer. He shuddered to think what would happen if the thing got loose on the internet, because he had to admit the daemon was perhaps the most nasty and violent thing he had ever created. Alien had been its cousin.

"You should have known no one would have computer security like me, Gilligan," he finally said, putting his can of Jolt aside. He glanced out the bread box sized window, past the frilly green curtains that reminded him of low rent diners that went by homey names such as 'Ma's', and saw the goons headed for his Mustang.

There'd be no problem until someone walked back to open the trunk. It took Stan a moment to remember where one of them was - he blamed the hangover - but he was pretty sure he parked in the right spot.

"You know we're going to take what we need off of it, no matter what," she threatened, placing the now useless laptop on the small swath of linoleum that passed for the kitchen counter.

He smiled at her, and it was genuine, and refreshingly evil. "You go ahead, sweetheart. You'll be opening up a Pandora's box of shit you can't even begin to comprehend."

She took up her defiant stance again, arms crossed, one knee bent, head cocked to the side, studying him like a particularly grotesque insect. Bending that leg had made the dress ride up slightly higher on the right, and he saw a leather strap on her thigh that could only be a gun holster. "I'm not an idiot, Stan. I'm as good as you are."

"Bullshit. If you were, Gabriel wouldn't have need me or Phamous."

That made her brows draw together in confusion, even as she frowned at the ego blow. Outside, the goons had come up empty in their search of the car interior. "Who?"

"Torvald. The guy whose head you had blown off, remember?"

She smiled in a patronizing way. "Ah, hacker name. What was yours again, Stan?"

"Killswitch."

That made her chuckle. Outside, one of them was starting to move towards the back of the car. "How delightfully childish."

He stood up, going through the motions of throwing his empty soda can away, into a paper bag in the small cabinet beneath the sink. Len didn't move a muscle, but Stan knew he never took his eyes off of him.

Ginger, as he thought she might, sashayed closer to him in an exaggerated, mock seductive manner, but stayed out of arm's reach. She did place a loving hand on the hard metal and plastic case of the laptop, and caressed it like a pet. "I hate to tell you this, Killswitch, but you're no longer the best codeslinger in town."

He turned to face her, and met her eyes with a look so hard and triumphant her smug grin faltered, and she even took a step back, as if suddenly wary of his rage. "Yes I am," Stan insisted, giving her a predator's leering smile.

And it was just then that the car exploded.

The explosive buried under the sand was actually a homemade pressure mine, constructed with the help of the Anarchist's Cookbook, and the wonderfully illegal sections of the World Wide Web - as soon as the man stepped on it, boom. There was nothing more stupid and dangerous than building explosives, but he found it was just like building a virus with the laws of chemistry involved, not math.

He had actually halved the strength of the explosive, figuring the car's gas tank would more than contribute to the concussive force.

And of course Peacemeal was no longer in the trunk, or none of them in a mile radius would have survived.

The moment of the explosion, the few meager windows of the trailer blew out,shards  bouncing around the trailer like razor blade hail, and it rocked on its weak foundation, the front side wall of the trailer warping and blowing inward, as if hit from the outside by a giant fist. Even in the empty rush of white noise that followed the blast, Stan was sure he heard a startled shout from Ginger. And even as he hit the edge of the counter hard, he wasn't knocked so senseless that he didn't remember to drop down to the floor, avoiding the worst of it even as part of the trailer's roof near the front collapsed inward, and the floor near the door buckled, making the entire trailer rock like a boulder set precariously on the top lip of a very steep hill.

He didn't know if the trailer would withstand the blast; but he honestly hadn't cared.

Just like the explosion outside the bank, he survived, and not only that, he remained conscious.

He scrambled forward on his hands and knees even before all the glass stopped flying, and was on top of the stunned Ginger before she even knew he was there.

He pulled the gun out of the holster on her thigh and aimed it at Len as the hit man struggled up from the floor, leveling his own weapon at him.

But Stan fired first.

He had practiced at his own firing range, set up in this empty part of the desert, where he could shoot all night and attract no attention at all. The practice had paid off.

He barely felt the recoil of her tiny gun, which while small, still packed a punch, as the new hole in the center of Len's forehead attested to. The gun must have had fragmenting bullets or hollow points, because the back of Len's skull blew out spectacularly, painting the remains of the couch with blood and brain matter as he dropped like a side of beef, gun still in his hand.

Stan could taste cordite as he saw the startled Ginger try and grab her gun back, get her knees up to kick him off, but he slammed the pistol down, the butt catching her square in the forehead. He checked it a bit, so she was still conscious, but barely so.

He could hear the crackling of fire beyond the hollow white noise, smell the acrid scent of burning metal, gasoline, and flesh, a scent he knew so well it haunted his nightmares.

It felt like the fire was in his blood, not consuming him but fueling him; he felt righteous in his rage as it filled him with adrenaline that seemed to be super - charged.

He pinned Ginger's legs down with his own knees, and grabbed both her wrists with his left hand before pinning them on the floor, over her head, so he had to lean forward and jam the hot gun barrel right between her pretty little eyes.

The heat brought her back. Eyes glazed with semi - consciousness and pain, she looked up at his face and the gun with equal measures of shock and fear, and only squirmed briefly before she realized she was completely helpless.  

"How does it feel?" He shouted into her face, so angry he wasn't breathing more than he was gulping air like cheap wine. "How does it feel?!"

"Y- you don't want to do this, Stanley," she said, trying on a soothing voice, like he was nothing more than a crying child. And she was trying desperately to hide her own terror. "You're not a killer."

That made him laugh mirthlessly, a cackle that threatened to run away with him, keep going, and take what remained of his sanity with him. "Yes I am, sweetheart. You and Gabriel made me one." The tears came back, but he blamed them on the stinging black smoke now wafting into the trailer from the gashes in the aluminum siding.

Maybe cocky Ginger finally realized her standard line of bullshit wasn't going to work, and appealing to his humanity or his pity just wasn't going to fly. She nervously licked her lips, and tried a different tack. "We were never going to kill you, Stanley. That wasn't part of the plan."

"Do you think I give a fuck if I live or die?" He snapped, sending spittle flying down onto her plastically pretty face.  "I have nothing to live for. Holly's dead. All I've had left to keep me going is the idea of finally killing you fucks."

"We didn't know about Holly, Stan. We thought you planted that." She had bought the story. But then again, it was hard not to when you had some crazed, crying madman pinning you down, augering a warm gun barrel slowly into the skin of your forehead in a burning trailer.
"Is that what happened to you? Did you suffer a head injury? Were you seriously hurt?"

He laughed contemptuously at her attempts at diagnosis. "Am I ever seriously hurt, sugar? I was just fucking dandy. I only had my little girl bleed to death in my lap, but hey, I should be able to shake that one off, huh?"

Actual pity flashed in her eyes, and he admired her ability to fake it under such trying circumstances. What an actress. "We didn't kill her."

He uttered a breathless laugh, leering at her. "Yes you did. You fucked me over, you fucked over my pathetic life, and now I have nothing but a fistful of blood money to show for it. I wasn't gonna get Holly mixed up in this shit like you amoral fucks did, but as soon as I lost her, what did I have to lose? My life? Take it baby. Fucking take it!"

She was breathing harder now, both panicked and fighting against the smoke. He wondered if she'd dare to take the seduction angle with him now, offer to fuck him. Sex was such a cheap weapon, but damn if she didn't like to use it.  "I can help you, Stanley. Gabriel's treating me like his lap dog - "

"You are his lap dog," he sneered. "Don't you even try and con your way out of this, or maybe I'll blow off another body part." He jammed the gun into the tiny fold of skin where the ear met the skull. "Never wear a matching set of earrings again."

Her eyes widened in fear. She believed him all right. "Stan, please, don't. You don't want to sink to this level. You're a good man."

"You mean a sucker, a chump. Not anymore, Skipper. Did you know that whole desert is mined? It is. More of your goons come, and they're scattered for the vultures to pick clean."
A bit of an exaggeration, but he'd already lied his fucking head off - what was the harm in one more?

Something seemed to dawn in her eyes, understanding perhaps, even as irritation from the smoke brought tears to them. "You didn't do this alone, did you? Are you freelancing?"

The heat filling the trailer had nothing to do with the desert sun; he'd have to get out of here soon, or smoke inhalation would probably kill him. He gave her a feral grin, all teeth, and said, "They promised me Gabriel. How could I refuse?"

More fear in her eyes, quite genuine. He knew Gabriel - or whatever his real name was - was wanted by several groups, illegal ones along with legal ones, and he also knew that Ging and her slippery man would never entirely credit him with the ability to pull off this scam all by himself. But as long as they could get back what they considered theirs, they wouldn't worry about it.

Burning insulation was starting to float down from the buckled ceiling like satanic snowflakes, and he decided it was time to leave. "Do you wanna live, sweetheart?"

"You know I do."

"Then play nice. I'll let you up, but the moment you do somethin' I don't like, I'm putting a bullet in your leg. And that's just for starters. Got it?"

She nodded, and he shoved himself off of her, staying out of kicking range, with the gun still leveled at her. She moved slowly and deliberately, sitting up with tears spilling from her irritated eyes, and she coughed, bringing a hand to her aching head. She was probably in no mood to fight because they were seemingly trapped in a burning trailer, and she wanted to know more about Stan's mysterious 'employers'.

Still keeping her covered, he backed up and opened the cabinet beneath the sink and tossed the paper bag aside. There was a large rectangle cut into the back of the cabinet, exposing the outside. From the way the wing nuts were askew, it was obvious that the goons had removed the panel during their search, probably thinking it was a secret stash and being disappointed to find it was just an odd hole to the outside. What it was was an emergency escape hatch - it was a tight fit, but he knew he could just crawl through.

Stan didn't bother with the wing nuts holding the panel in place; he just punched a hole in the particle board, and the rest of it gave way, falling through the gap. He didn't realize how dark and smoke occluded it had become inside until the sunlight stabbed through the hole like a spotlight. He crawled in first, knowing there was no room for Ginger to sneak up on him, and said, "Follow me."

Of course there was a two foot fall to the sand, but he knew it and was prepared for it, going down arms first and rolling on impact. He never let go of the gun.

He was on his feet and walking away from the trailer when Ginger fell indelicately through the hole, apparently expecting something that wasn't there. He was able to see she was wearing blue thong underwear, though. Hell of a thing to wear when you were anticipating killing someone. Maybe she was planning to topless sunbathe later.

She picked herself up, staggering slightly as her heels sunk into the sand, and she gave him a pouty look as she brushed the dust off of herself and straightened out her dress. "Now what?"

"Now you take me to your car,Ging. Mine seems to be on fire."

Amazing how her sense of humor had fled her since she was on the wrong end of the gun. She gave him a look like she just bit down on a lemon wedge in her tuna salad, and started walking away, headed towards the direction of the road, always glancing back over her shoulder at him.

"How many goons you got waitin' for you?" He wondered, following her so close she'd be an excellent human shield.

She didn't answer right away, so he knew she was probably lying. "Six. Armed with a lot more than a cap pistol."

"It's your gun," he pointed out.

She ignored that. "So what's the plan, Stan? Gonna try and blast your way out of here?"

"If I have to. I haven't decided what I'm gonna do with you yet. You'd be a nice prize for my employers, but it'd be funnier to hand you over to the feds." He hoped that really got to her.

It must have - her spine seemed to stiffen, and she said, "Turn me over, and you turn yourself in."

"You're assuming I care again."

"Did you like prison that much, Stan?"

"I doubt my new employers would let me live that long. Would Gabriel let you?"

She didn't answer that. He didn't think she would.

There was so little traffic on this tiny highway offshoot that the only noise was the crackling of the flames as they consumed the trailer and finished off the Mustang, the air reeking of gasoline and slagging metal, the sickening odor of roasting flesh and rendered fat so far below the miasma of choking smoke it was hardly noticeable.

Still, one of the goons was very stupid, and Stan heard the slam of a car door even before he saw any movement. He grabbed Ginger around the waist with one arm, startling a yelp out of her as he pressed the muzzle of the gun into the side of her neck. "She's the first to go," he shouted. "And maybe you don't care, but I bet Gabriel does! Show yourselves, hands up, drop the guns! Now!"

By grabbing her around the waist like he did, he pinned one of Ginger's arms to her side, so she had only one free hand, and couldn't do much with it. Not that she would dare - a bullet through the neck would kill her, but much more slowly than a shot to the head. From the way she had gone rigid, he was sure she knew that.

"Do what he says!" She shouted, and that seemed to do it. As he walked towards the cracked grey ribbon of road, men started appearing in the ocean of sand, their overly gelled hair as shiny slick as oil in the relentless sunlight.

He could see vehicles too; attempts at camouflage ranged from middling (partially blocked by clumps of creosote and tumbleweeds) to extremely poor (pulled over at the side of the road like an abandoned vehicle). So far he could only see two vehicles and four heads, but he was waiting for more.

As the four men, all built like various models of refrigerators in ill fitting suits, started slowly walking out to the edge of the road, all dropping one gun (yeah, right - like they all just carried just one piece), Stan shouted, "Freeze!"

They did, all looking as bored as men with IQ's in the double digits could. "Slowly, I want you all to drop your pants," he ordered.

"What?" The biggest guy (with black hair and a face so smushed in it looked like he was whacked with a snow shovel) exclaimed, torn between being horrified or amused.

"Do it! There are other mines out here, and one of you dickheads is standing right next to one. Should I set it off?"

They exchanged wary glances, and then, moving with varying degrees of slowness, they started to undo their belts and let their pants drop to their ankles. Belatedly, he hoped they were all wearing underwear.

"What the hell's this about?" Ginger asked, clearly thinking he had lost what little mind he had left.