Killer Instincts Quotes

“The only scorecard that ever gets tallied in the real world is how many times you walk away from the fight and leave your opponent dead in the dust. I can shoot damn straight when the occasion calls for it, but I’m not a bulls-eye expert. The difference is, I can hit a man on the other side of the street while I'm running, ducking, and dodging automatic weapons fire. Sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for shooting fast and on the move may mean you burn a little more ammo, but in the end, it's going to keep you alive a lot longer. Gunfighting isn't a biathlon. It's an ugly business that rewards dirty tricks and being faster and meaner and more ruthless than the other guy. It's the only way you're going to win.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The news of another predator in the mix put me on edge, made me nervous, made me actually scared for the first time since I’d flown in to Boston. The fear wasn’t of death; I think I'd moved past that notion out in the desert. No, it was the fear of not being in control of the situation, of the destabilization of the plan that I had put into motion. I had confidence in what I had started because I was calling the numbers as I put the plan into action. I was always the initiator, the instigator, never the one reacting to the situation but instead the catalyst. Being in control was the edge that allowed me to operate, to do what I needed to do. Now that edge was being dulled, ground down by the notion that someone out there was just waiting for me to wander in. I was just some fucking kid who watched too many movies; he was a guy who really, actually killed people for money and was good enough to keep doing it and become a “professional”.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Pretty can be a cruel fucking bitch when she sets her mind to it.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“I've never gotten my ass kicked before,” I told Jamie while I examined the blooming bruises across my ribs, “and this hangover isn’t helping my recovery.” “Every grown man should get his ass kicked at least once. Puts a little humility into him. The hangover is just for seasoning.” “I can say with some authority, it was indeed a humiliating experience,” I replied. “Stop it please, now you're beginning to sound like a complete fairy.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Compared to Shanghai, Bangkok, or Saigon, Boston is a city of pussies!” Jamie declared at the top of his lungs, as we made our way down Broad Street around 2 AM.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Bad guys don't deserve long speeches before you pull the trigger.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The most important thing for you to do,” he’d said, “is to make your aura as benign as possible.” “My aura? You mean, what, like my chi or something? Give off warm vibes before I blow them all away?” “You laugh, but it's true. The best close-in killers are able to mask that predatory vibration they send out, the thing that tickles your animal hindbrain when you're on the receiving end and causes all the hairs on your neck to stand up, the old ancestral genetic early-warning radar that told you something had you zeroed in and was moving to make the kill.” “Are you saying they'll be able to sense I'm going to kill them?” I had asked. “If they are good at their jobs, yes. A good bodyguard, really anyone with true combat instincts, can tune in on that aggressive mental energy when it's pointed their way. For most people, it only works at a subconscious level - like instinctively moving out of the way of someone because they make you uneasy and you can't quite put your finger on why, or turning around for no reason and seeing that someone across the room is glaring at you. We all do it from time to time, but it's not conscious. But the real survivors, the operators who dodge those shots that should have taken them down, but they somehow avoid at the last millisecond, those people can use their inner threat radar actively, and can pick up on the predatory vibe coming their way.” “So you're saying I need to act casual, and not give them the stink-eye to keep from tipping them off.” “It’s more than that. You need to learn how to control that aggressive aura, make it work for you. A good killer can put themselves into stealth mode right up to when they pull the trigger, and then when all the innocent bystanders are getting in the way and slowing you down, milling about in a panic, you dial it up all the way and blast it out like the bow-wave on a ship running at flank speed. You can clear a path through the crowd; they'll get out of your way without even knowing why. I've made it work for me, and I’ve seen others do it as well. It's just another weapon in your arsenal.” And so, I did”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“I felt no fear, no regret, no remorse for what I’d done, and zero trepidation about doing it again. Truth be told, I could get used to this.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“And yet, Donne didn't die. With six bullets in him, Donnie remained upright, though brought to his knees, clinging to the side of his car. Donnie kept himself from collapsing into death by sheer drunken stubbornness and his immense physique. The gleaming bullet head was raised, looking for the source of the gunfire but staring into the shadows of doorways and down the street, not up at the rooftop where I sat, invisible and silent, raining down death.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Even though I was very young, I still remember some of the men who would come into my village, the soldiers, the death squads. Most were nothing but jackals, men who killed and raped and looted for fun, because it was the easy thing to do. But some of the killers, they had a fear about them, like an aura of death. They would look at you and your blood would turn to ice and your heart would feel like it had stopped beating in your chest. Those were the men who killed and killed and would never die themselves, time after time. Whether they knew it or not, they had made a pact with the Reaper, a pact to stay alive as long as they kept sending souls in their place.” “And you think Richard is like these men?” “Don't you? Killing is like breathing to him. He has bathed in the blood of countless murders. I have seen him kill three times, and on each occasion, he should have died time and again, but the other men were a heartbeat too slow, or the bullets a few inches to the left or right. No man is so lucky for so long without something making that luck for him.” “Do you think he is evil?” “Killing and evil are not always the same things. I do not think he is a good man, but I don't think he is an evil man, either. I think he is like an earthquake, or a bolt of lightning. If you are in his sights, you die. The only question is, what put you there.” “Do you feel the same aura around Richard that you felt around those men in El Salvador?” “You are comparing a candle to the sun. Those other men, they were apprentices in the ways of Death. Richard is a master.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“He's gotten into your head, too. Richard. You're a part of his insanity now.” I shook my head. “The plan was my idea. My uncle wouldn't go along with it, so he put me in touch with Richard. Richard said he didn't have an opinion on way or the other, he just said he didn't see a problem with a man taking his own vengeance.” Now it was her turn to shake her head. “Two men who've both seen terrible things in their lives, and they let a young man, with his whole future ahead of him, throw away any chance at a normal life, and you don't think you're being manipulated?” I was taken aback by this. “I can't imagine my uncle would let me get manipulated by someone like Richard. It doesn't make sense.” She leaned in to me now, only inches away. Her stare was shocking, piercing in its intensity. “Richard has made a pact with Death. He sold his soul, and to keep the Grim Reaper from collecting on the deal, Richard keeps feeding people into the mouth of Hell. It doesn't matter if he pulls the trigger, if you do it for him, or even if it's you who dies. Everyone who comes into contact with him gets sucked into oblivion. You, your uncle, everyone.” There was the beginning of a laugh in me, but it died when I realized she wasn't kidding. “Sold his soul?” I said. “You can't really mean that. No one makes a pact with Death. That doesn't even make sense.” She sat back. “There are certain men, certain violent men, who live through the blood and the death all around them, surviving when they should’ve died a hundred times. These men have made a deal, a pact, with Death. In exchange for their lives, they must offer up lives in return. It is an old magic. A dark magic, a warrior's magic. That is the magic of blood and murder, and Richard has practiced it all his life. He’s a sorcerer. A vampire. He may never die, he has seen and caused so much death.” She was breathing hard now, her eyes wild. For no reason I could fathom, the skin at the back of my neck and along my arms prickled, the hairs standing on end. An idea came to me. “The brotherhood,” I said.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“She seemed extraordinarily at ease for someone sitting alone in an apartment with a man who was on a mission to kill a number of other human beings in cold blood. I was guessing this wasn't her first rodeo.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“There's nothing like rage and jealousy to drive fantasies of indiscriminate violence on a gorgeous spring day.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“People like myself, we live in another world, the shadow world, and stepping into that world can be quite a shock. You handled yourself all right though, better than many I've seen. Your uncle, he was able to handle it too, at least for a time, but that's because he didn't have a choice. Vietnam made him what he was, what he became. You made the decision to step through the door on your own. I think you'll handle it even better than he did.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Have you ever tried a role-playing game?” Richard asked me one day over lunch. “I don't know if that's any of your business, pervert.” Richard sneered. “Not sex, idiot. It's a kind of game.” “You mean like, what, Dungeons and Dragons? Wearing a cloak and pretending to cast magic spells with elves? No, I've never done that.” “I'm not talking about pretending to be a elf, dummy. Not every role-playing game is about dragons and gnomes. Some of them are about secret agents, or commandos, or anything else you can think of. A role-playing game is a natural evolution from cops and robbers or cowboys and indians into something much more structured and codified. The principle, however, is the same. A scenario creator posits a challenge, and the participants offer up ways in which they would overcome the challenge, with the creator acting as a referee, determining success or failure.” “If I checked under your bed, I wouldn't find a wizard's hat and a magic wand, would I?” Richard flicked a cracker crumb at me. “It is a tool for training your mind to approach situations analytically, and quickly find a solution to the problem.” “Okay, you win, Bilbo Baggins. Give me a challenge.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“This is the point. In any combat situation, the end goal is to defeat your enemy. It is not to avoid getting hurt yourself, although that factors into it. It is not to shoot the bad guy; that is just a means to an end. If the most fundamental point in the art of war is to make the enemy react to you, then the path to performing this feat is keeping your end objective foremost in your mind and always be moving towards that objective. If you are playing checkers, always ask yourself, 'will this move contribute to winning the game, or am I just moving a piece because it's my turn?'. If your answer is the latter, then you are failing to keep the end goal in sight, and you are going to lose every time.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Funny how a meal you'd turn your nose up at back home tastes like a feast after you've been living out in the desert for a week.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The rabbit weighed just a couple of pounds, and Richard walked me through the process of gutting and skinning the rabbit with a few cuts of his knife. The task of pulling away the rabbit’s pelt was something akin to pulling a furry sock off a boiled chicken. I promptly turned and threw up in the dirt. “Last week you shot a man in the face and didn't so much as blink,” Richard said. “Yeah, but I didn't skin his corpse afterward.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“You live in a fucked-up world, Richard. How long have you known Chuck? Thirty years?” “Thirty years or thirty seconds, you don't trust anyone any more than you have to.” “And you don't trust anyone at all.” “Can't tell Jamie you haven't been paying attention, kid.” ”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“What's the count so far?” Richard suddenly asked me. “What do you mean?” He pointed a thumb towards my side of the street. “Body count. I've been watching you track 'em with your eyes as they go past. Your trigger finger spasms occasionally. Having a little imaginary fun?” Jesus, it was weird, the things he noticed. I turned away from the side window and felt myself blush with embarrassment. “It just sorta happened. Never thought like that before today.” Richard smiled as he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Nothing to get too worked up about, it comes with the change. You'll get used to it.” I frowned at him. “'Change?' I'm not a goddamn werewolf, Richard.” This time he laughed out loud. “Sure you are! Maybe you ain't got claws and fangs and overdeveloped facial hair, but believe me son, you've changed. You didn't piss your pants or throw up or toss away your gun and run like you were yellow. You stood fast and cut yourself some scalps last night. That's not something just any ordinary person can do, even after a week on the firing line. There's a switch inside you gotta flip that says ‘killing people that deserve to die is something I can do’. Son, that switch is now 'on' inside you. There's no going back after that.” I had nothing to say after”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The foot locker is booby-trapped, and if the laptop isn't given the right password, it'll self-destruct. I don't mind letting you know I've got this rig, but you gotta know right now, this is confidential; I catch you snooping around in here, I may just have to tell Jamie you suffered an accident with your gun and shot yourself in the back of the head.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“I've been on the warpath for forty years. I've probably put a thousand men in the ground. Women too. Hell, probably some kids mixed in along the way, although I can't say for sure. And I know some good guys got caught in the crossfire, too; cops, security guards, watchmen, even your run of the mill innocent bystanders. Wrong place at the wrong time and all that.” I stared off into space. “Why are you telling me this?” “Because you need to remember I'm not a nice guy. I'm not far removed from that thing in your dream. Call me a war criminal and you'd probably be more right than wrong. I always thought at the time I was working for the good guys, fighting for the right reasons. But the Cold War was still a bloody business and I was always there at its bloodiest. Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Iran, India, Brazil, Russia...I've been all over, always where the fighting was the dirtiest. Tore up some places here in the States as well. Things the press was threatened to keep quiet about, or bribed into silence, or worse.” “Just keeps getting better and better,” I said. “And just remember, I'm one of the good guys. Some of the animals I worked with, they make your run of the mill concentration camp guard look like he's gentle enough to run a daycare center. Some of those older guys, they probably were concentration camp guards back in the day. Plenty of the grey-hairs I went into the field with, those were the war addicts, the guys who couldn't go back home. Saw it after 'Nam, too; men who lived for death, lived for the blood and the thrill of the kill. They weren't much better than the dummies we were gunning after. Matter of fact, most of them were probably worse. At least the guys at the end of my gun usually died for a cause: communism, Islam, even plain old fashioned world domination. Some of the savages I fought with, they killed simply for the fun of it. The money? That was just gravy.” I turned to look at Richard, slouched in his rocker, hat pulled down low over his blue eyes. “So what about you? Killing for a cause, or was it the fun?” Richard finally turned and looked me square in the eye. “You ain't figured that out yet? I killed for profit, kid. And back in the day, business was good. Business was really good.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“Here comes the whirlwind...” I heard Richard whisper next to me. I saw out of the corner of my eye he had the night vision goggles propped up on his forehead, the H&K .45 held out in front of him in a two-handed grip, elbow propped on his knee. He might as well be waiting for a traffic light to turn green, for all the lack of concern in his features.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“In vengeance, there are no half-measures.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“You don't learn to kill without doing some killing, so here we are. Anything less and I won't have fulfilled the spirit of my contract with you, and believe it or not, I'm a man of my word. I'm not sending you away without doing my best to make sure you can do the job.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“That's real gosh-darn unfortunate, because if you need to 'justify your actions' before dropping the hammer every time you've got some jerk in your sights, I might as well spare you the trouble of going on this little crusade of yours and blow your kidneys all over the desert right here and now. Killing isn't about weighing the morality of every trigger pull, it's about putting people who deserve to die in the ground so the people who don't deserve death can go on living their benign, meaningless lives a little while longer. That's it. Do you think you can shoot Pauly Paggiano in the face for what he did, but you can't go down and cap the filth brewing up poison going to some single mother in need of a fix? Well, what makes you think you can shoot Paggiano's bodyguard, who never did anything to you? I mean, he just works for the family, right? Once you start letting that nonsense corrode the wiring between your brain and your trigger finger, you might as well put one in your own brainpan, because you're done.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The only worth a life has, is what you accomplish during your time here. If it wasn't for me, and the guys I fought and bled with over the years, the world would be a much meaner place, and I'm not just speaking in hyperbole! That, at least, makes it all worthwhile.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“The bullets look kinda small,” I said. “It's not the size of the bullet, it's where you put it in a man that counts.” “I feel a little uncomfortable with you saying that to me,” I replied, earning myself a stern look from Richard.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“James has the SAW, the light machine gun. He's young, a big beefy kid all of twenty-three years old, grown up on a diet of Grand Theft Auto and internet porn. He's complained the entire time he's been here that there was “no complimentary pussy provided”. Definitely someone who's bought into their own self-projected stereotypes. All I got from Richard was that James found himself not so politely asked to resign from the airborne infantry at the age of 21, after three years in Iraq. I know the type; a gifted delinquent who's hooked on the real-life video game experience that war provides. It makes me a little nervous, but watching him strip, clean, and prep his SAW I can tell he doesn't fuck around when it comes to his wargear. As long as he doesn't try any Call of Duty bullshit while we're in the thick of it, I think he'll be fine.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts

“From the top of my head to the soles of my feet, I'm wearing black: knit watch cap, a long-sleeved wool pullover on top of a polypropylene undershirt, tough black Cordura nylon cargo pants and high-top black cross-trainers. It's all very ninja. Over all that, I've got a Kevlar-lined tactical vest with six magazines of nine-millimeter frangible ammunition. The magazines are for the suppressed Uzi submachine gun slung over my back. I've also got a black tactical belt rig around my waist, suppressed Ruger .22 automatic riding low on one hip, with two spare mags and a combat knife balancing the load on the other side. I've got a short-range secure radio set clipped to my back, the wire running up to a headset tucked around my ear, throat mic hanging loose at the moment. One frag grenade and two flash-bangs round out my arsenal. I've got a small LED flashlight, a multi-tool, a couple of plastic zip-tie restraints, and that's it. I like to keep my loadout light so I'm quick on my feet; I've seen too many guys bite it because they were turtled by their combat gear. I feel like a G.I. Joe commando. Hell, all I need is a code-name.”
― Jack Badelaire, Killer Instincts