by Paul Heatley
The bartender has come over. “Damn, son,” he says. “You done a number on those assholes.” He looks down at them, wide-eyed. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Tom says, stepping over the blond.
The other men in the bar are all looking at him, awed by his efforts.
“Wait there, son,” the bartender says. “You can’t just leave. We gotta call the police, tell them what happened here.”
“You tell them,” Tom says. “I gotta go.”
Before the bartender can say anything else, Tom is already at the door, then out onto the street. He crosses the road, rounds a building to get out of sight, then runs back to his hotel.
3
Up in his room, packing his bag, Tom is still cursing himself. Should know better. Shouldn’t be provoked so easily, especially not by a bunch of drunken asshole college boys.
It’s time to leave town. To pack his bags, get in his car, and head for the state line, out of Arizona. The bartender will call the police, just like he said he would. The cops will want to know about the man who beat up those boys. They’ll get a description, try to track him down. They manage to track him down, then it’s game over. The CIA will be on this town like a rash, picking him up, taking him back for their own brand of justice.
Tom travels light. There isn’t much to pack. His rucksack contains a few items of clothing, most of which have never left the bag. There’s a Beretta and a KA-BAR kept near the top, within easy reach. He carries burner phones, too. It takes him a moment to realize one of them is ringing.
He picks it up, looks at it. It’s the one his father has the number for, and only his father. He answers. “I can’t talk right now. Give me a couple of hours. I’ll call you back.”
“Ain’t gonna keep a couple of hours,” his father says. Jeffrey Rollins speaks quick, to make sure his son can’t hang up on him. “You need to come here, right now, as quick as you can.”
Tom considers what happened at the bar, figures heading out to see his father in New Mexico isn’t such a bad idea. “What’s going on?”
“It’s your brother.”
Tom’s spine stiffens. “What about him?”
“He’s got himself into some trouble.”
“What kinda trouble?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Tom grits his teeth. “What about Alejandra? Is she all right?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here,” Jeffrey repeats, betraying nothing.
“I’m gonna set off right now, but I ain’t gonna get there ’til tomorrow.”
“Where you at?”
“Arizona.”
“All right. Be careful when you arrive – folks are jumpy.”
Before Tom can ask why, Jeffrey has hung up.
Tom stares down at the phone in his hand. He thinks about Anthony, but mostly he thinks about Alejandra. Absently, he reaches to his pocket. To the Santa Muerte pendant there. He presses down on it so hard it digs into his thigh, like he’s trying to bruise himself, to be certain of its presence.
He has a bad feeling. His stomach is knotting; there is bile at the back of his throat.
But it’s no good standing here fretting over it. He won’t know anything until he reaches his father. He shoves the phone into his rucksack, zips it up, slings it over his shoulder, and leaves the hotel.
4
The blacked-out van cruises through the roads in the warehouse district. This time of night it’s quiet for the most part. They’ve passed a couple of lit-up forklifts driven in and out under the harsh glow of floodlights attached high to the front of the buildings, but they’re nowhere near where the van is going.
There are four men inside. Chuck Benton sits up front, in the passenger seat. Driving is Al. In the back are Jimmy and Pat. Dix hasn’t come with them. Dix is back at the safe house, holding down the fort. They never leave it unattended, not if they can help it.
This is Chuck’s team. When he was approached with this job, he insisted he pick his own men. A job like this, stakes this big, he needed guys he could trust, people he had past experience with, had performed jobs and missions with before.
The guy didn’t care. Said it was his mission, his choice. He could do it how he wanted, so long as by the end of it they’d accomplished everything they were being paid to do.
“It’s this one,” Al says, “down here, on the left.”
He’s come by the last few days, in daylight, in a different vehicle. Checked the place out. Al is a good wheelman. It’s one of his many talents. He doesn’t mess around, doesn’t take risks. Scopes the job out ahead of time, checks for multiple escape routes, just in case. Makes a note of anything that could prove problematic, and how to avoid it. Tonight is a simple task, straightforward, but they’re not going to take any chances. This is just the first hurdle, and the last thing they want to do is trip up here. They’re not amateurs, they’re professionals. That’s why they can demand the big bucks.
Al pulls the van around the back of the building, pulls it slowly down the road until they’re at the rear of the chain-link fence that runs along the back of the warehouse, topped with barbed wire. “Cameras don’t point this way,” Al says, stopping.
Chuck nods. He looks down the road. It’s lined with intermittent streetlights, some of which don’t work. They look like they’ve been smashed. The road, however, is clear. There are only two more warehouses on this side. “That our escape route?”
“One of them.”
Chuck grins. He motions to Jimmy and Pat in the back. “Mask up and tool up, boys. Let’s keep this quick and quiet.”
They pull on their balaclavas, Chuck included. Al does not. Al stays in the van, behind the wheel. If a car passes by, the worst thing for him to be doing is sitting here at the side of the road wearing a mask.
Jimmy and Pat go out the back doors. They carry M16s, though they’re mostly for show. Too noisy to use. Chuck strolls around the back of the van, finds Jimmy already halfway through snipping the links in the fence at the rear of the warehouse. Chuck doesn’t have an M16. He has a Sig Sauer, holds it down low at his side. Pat pulls on the fence, shines a flashlight for Jimmy to see what he’s doing.
Once it’s wide enough, Chuck slips through first, leading the way. He steps lightly down the narrow alleyway at the side of the warehouse, his men following behind, equally as quiet. He reaches the corner, peers around. Watches for the night security guard. Knows there’s one on duty. Al isn’t the only one who did his research.
When the guard doesn’t materialize, Chuck figures he must be inside. He turns to Jimmy and Pat, motions for Pat to stay in place, for Jimmy to follow. With hand signals, he details what he wants Jimmy to do.
The main door is to the left of the roller. A camera is pointed at it. Chuck puts a silencer onto the Sig Sauer. It will dull the shot, but it will not lower it to the quiet thwip of a Hollywood movie. There is enough noise coming from the other buildings, the distant noise of the men they earlier passed working through the night, to disguise it. He nods at Jimmy. They go to the door, into view of the camera. If the night guard hears their movements, he will check the CCTV. They need to move fast. Chuck shoots out the lock. Jimmy kicks the door open, charges in with the M16 raised.
Chuck follows him in. Jimmy has gone straight to the office, rifle pointed at the night watchman’s head. His arms are raised, hands empty. His eyes and mouth are all wide, in the shape of an O.
“He hit any alarms?” Chuck says.
“Didn’t get the chance,” Jimmy says.
“Deal with him.”
“Sieg Heil, motherfucker.” Jimmy slams the butt of the rifle across the guard’s jaw. He drops to his knees. Jimmy lets him fall.
Chuck goes to the door, gives a thumbs-up to Pat, then returns to Jimmy and the guard. Jimmy has lifted him up into his chair. Chuck pulls cable ties from his pockets, hands them over. “Sieg Heil?” he says, laughing.
Jimmy winks at him. “Adding some color to the
scene, man. Figured it would complement Pat’s new tattoos nicely.” Jimmy binds the guard’s ankles and wrists with the cable ties, pulls a gag from his pocket and forces it into his mouth.
Outside, Pat has gone back the way they came, returned to the van, to let Al know things have gone as planned, and to pull the van around front.
Using the guard’s keys, Chuck and Jimmy get the main gate open. Al, with Pat riding shotgun, pulls the van in, turns it around, reverses it back inside the warehouse through the opening. He’s wearing his mask now.
Pat jumps out of the van, runs inside with Chuck and Jimmy to start loading it up with bags of fertilizer. They take as much as they can carry.
They’re all dressed the same. All-black sweaters, trousers, boots, masks. They are uniform. With one exception. Pat is in short sleeves. On his right arm is stencilled a swastika. It looks like a tattoo. In reality, Pat does not have any tattoos.
Finished, they close up the van, close the roller doors, kill the lights, lock the door the security guard came out of. The van pulls out, containing Al, Chuck, and Pat. Jimmy closes the gate again, locks it. He takes the keys. They’ll dump them out the window somewhere.
All four inside, Al drives off. He doesn’t speed; there’s no need. It went off without a hitch.
As they get out of the district, back onto the main roads, they take off their masks. Chuck turns around, to Pat. He nods at the swastika. “You show that thing off?”
“Yeah,” Pat says. “Paraded it around right under the cameras, made sure they could see it from every angle.”
“You sure?”
“Certain.”
“Good.” Chuck sits back, satisfied. Jimmy passes him the keys they took from the guard. He throws them out the window, toward some bushes; then he calls ahead, lets Dix know they’re on their way. That everything went exactly as it should.
5
Michael Wright looks around the room.
Present, at the round table in his basement where they conduct their business, are the elders of the Right Arm Of The Republic. Beside him is his co-founder, his right-hand man, Harry Turnbull. His oldest friend.
Directly opposite is Ronald Smith, their elder statesman of sorts. At fifty years of age, he is the oldest member of the group, and the most experienced. He’s run with many other cells in his life, long before the inception of the Right Arm, and has even had a brief run with the Klan. By now, his bald head is more the result of genetics than of his taking a razor to it. His body is going soft now, his chest and his stomach beginning to sag where they were once firm and strong, but his face remains as hard, as fearsome as ever. Ronald has been known to silence rooms with merely a raised brow. He may be getting older, but no one underestimates him.
To Michael’s left is Peter ‘Terminator’ Reid. One look at him leaves no doubt as to the reasoning behind his nickname. Peter is their enforcer, and he looks every inch of it. He wears a vest that shows off his bulging, steroid-enhanced muscles, as well as his ink. The 88s, the swastikas, the Norse gods. On his left pectoral, above his heart and mostly obscured by the strap of his vest, a right-handed fist proudly holding aloft an American flag, swastikas where there should be stars – the unofficial symbol of the Right Arm. Out of the four men, Peter looks the most worked up. His fists clench and loosen, clench and loosen, atop the table. His knuckles go bone white each time.
Michael looks at these men, and he knows each one of them is loyal. They’re loyal to him; they’re loyal to each other; they’re loyal to the cause.
And thus he knows that not one of them would have tipped off Anthony, sent him racing off into the night. He knows, too, that it was sheer luck they neared the house just as Anthony and his pregnant spic girlfriend were racing out of it, making their escape. Knows that if they hadn’t reached the house just as they did, they would never have been able to take another road, one that didn’t directly follow them out of Harrow but instead met up at the town’s limits, that they wouldn’t have been able to intersect them just in time. That if they hadn’t gotten there exactly when they did, Anthony and the bitch would be long gone, just an angry memory by this point.
And he knows, too, that none of these men present would have called the police, either, alerted them to what was happening on that quiet road right outside town. They all know it has to have been a further betrayal. No one else knew they were there. No one had seen them. There were no other cars, there were no nearby homes. Someone had called the cops, sent them in that direction, told them there’d be something of interest they’d come across.
“Much as I hate to say it,” Harry says, looking around into everyone’s face. “There could be a traitor in our ranks. Someone told that son of a bitch to run. Someone sent the cops out looking for him, trying to cut us off.”
“Shoulda let me pull the trigger,” Peter says, shaking his head. “Shoulda let me just end it right then and there.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t expect him to up and disappear from the goddamn hospital now, did we?” Harry says. “Especially not in his condition. He sure as hell didn’t get up and walk out.”
“That’s another thing we gotta consider,” Ronald says. “Who got him out of the hospital? Where’d they take him?” A contact in the hospital had told them Anthony had been checked out, but he didn’t know by whom or where they had taken him. “Is it the same traitor we’re talkin’ about right here right now, or are there more? Hell, was it someone else entirely, and if so, how did they know what had happened to him, where he was?”
“He was undercover,” Michael says, speaking up for the first time in a while, having previously allowed the others to voice their thoughts. “In terms of the hospital, it was probably his buddies in law enforcement got him out of there. They’ve probably got him in a safe house halfway across the country by now, setting him up with a new identity, trying to make it so we can’t find him.”
“We’ll fuckin’ find him,” Peter says.
Michael nods. “It’ll take some hard work and a lot of digging, but we’ll find him all right. We can’t just let this slide. Gotta make an example outta the asshole. The law can’t go putting no rat in our ranks and thinking they’re just gonna get away with it scot-free.”
“What’d they even bother putting him in for?” Ronald says. “What were they hoping to find out? You’d think they could find a better way to spend their time than just hassling us.”
“You’d think that,” Michael says. “But it’d be wrong. That’s exactly how they wanna spend their time. Just thinking up new ways to aggravate and piss us off.”
“They were probably trying to find where the drugs come from,” Michael says.
“Maybe there’s somethin’ we’re forgetting to consider,” Harry says.
All eyes turn to him. “And what’s that?” Ronald says.
“The person who gave us the information on him in the first place.” Harry locks eyes with Michael. “The person who told us what he was up to. What part do they play in it all? They have something to do with him getting out?”
“That’s an awful complicated way for them to go about doing things,” Michael says.
“Yeah, well, with these kinds of assholes, who knows what they’re thinking or planning or exactly what they’re trying to do.”
“We’re getting off track here,” Ronald says. “We can consider all this other shit at a later date – right now, we need to think about what really matters. Who warned him, and are they in our ranks? ’Cause if so, we gotta flush that motherfucker out and make a real goddamn example. One that won’t soon be forgotten.”
Michael realizes Peter hasn’t said anything for a while. That his fists are no longer compulsively clenching as they earlier were, that he’s looking down into the palms of his hands, thoughtful. “Somethin’ up?” he says. “Anythin’ you wanna share with the rest of us, Terminator?”
Peter shakes his head, clasps his hands. “No,” he says. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
/>
“About all of this. A traitor. Just trynna think who it could be.”
There’s a pause; then Harry is the first to say what they’re all thinking. “Your brother was awful close with Anthony.” He doesn’t say anything more, just lets the statement hang there.
Peter glares at him across the table. “It ain’t my brother,” he says, but Michael can’t help but notice he doesn’t sound entirely convincing – neither to them, or to himself.
“You sure about that?” Harry says. “You absolutely certain?”
“Yeah, I am. I know Steve better’n any of you. It ain’t somethin’ he would do – he wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Michael says. “Right now, we gotta consider everyone outside this room a suspect. We gotta be wary of everyone. Watch all the boys closely. If any of them are acting weird, anything strange, anything out of place, we bring it here, to the council, straight away. That clear to everyone?”
They all nod, mumble that it is.
“And we spread the word. We get it out, we’re still looking for Anthony. We ain’t forgot him, and we ain’t gonna forget him. No matter where he’s gone, we’re gonna find him eventually.”
“We worried about blowback?” Harry says. “It’s lookin’ like he’s got friends.”
“From his buddies, maybe. He ain’t in any shape to come after us. Tell our boys to stay frosty, keep their eyes open.”
“That’s a lotta stuff they gotta remember,” Ronald says. He’s grinning. “Sure they’re gonna keep it all in mind?”
“They’re soldiers,” Michael says. “It’s time they act like it. If they can’t remember a couple of little orders, then they got no place in the Arm.”
The meeting finished, they head upstairs, done. Michael notices Peter remains quiet, still looks like he’s thinking. He doesn’t press it for now. Leaves it. He’ll talk to Harry about it later. Peter may be confident his brother had nothing to do with Anthony’s attempted escape, but Michael knows better than to trust anyone unconditionally.