Fight or Die

by James Hilton

  Golok stood nearly a head taller than the rest of his men. His face bore horrific scars that told of a near fatal encounter: a deep slash that ran from his forehead to his chin (this effectively divided his face in two, lending him an almost supernatural look). His right ear was missing. The canal that remained looked like an extra nostril, misplaced on the side of his head.

  The deal Golok had proposed was simple: every two months or so they would supply a shipment of girls. Barcelo had the option of keeping them and putting them to work as prostitutes or selling them on to another buyer. Both equalled easy money. Barcelo had agreed to the deal and had profited handsomely ever since.

  Yet Barcelo knew that Golok and his Balkan mafia could never be taken for granted. Any perceived slight would surely end in bloodshed. Any weakness in the operation would be cut out like a cancer to protect the main body: the Bosnians.

  Now Barcelo watched as the three Mercedes rolled to a stop in front of him. Seven of Golok’s men stepped out of the vehicles. The AK74s they carried did little to calm his concerns. The enforcers seldom changed; the same hard faces were present at each of their meetings.

  Golok stepped from the middle vehicle. He was dark with a tan that he hadn’t sported on their previous meeting. He accepted Barcelo’s outstretched hand, shaking it once. “We speak English, yes? My Spanish is still… crap.”

  Barcelo gave a slight smile. “And my Bosnian is worse.”

  Golok nodded at the six men that accompanied the Spaniard. “New faces. Where is Ortega? I know Ortega.”

  “He is taking care of business. These are some of my other men.” Barcelo made a circle in the air with his hand. “Up-and-comers.”

  Golok looked at each of the Locos in turn.

  “Shall we?” Barcelo pointed to the visitors’ centre behind him. Golok nodded once in response. Not needing to be told, one of Golok’s enforcers remained outside with the vehicles while the other six followed Golok and the seven Locos.

  They had used the visitors’ centre on previous occasions. The building, much like the rest of the park, was unfinished. Multi-coloured wires hung in tangled clumps from the ceiling where light fittings should have been attached. A table sat at the centre of the room. A set of shot glasses and a large bottle of premium vodka awaited them.

  Barcelo and Golok sat facing each other at the table while the rest of the men stood behind their respective leaders. The Bosnian traced a circle in the fine layer of dust on the table top. Two dots for eyes and a downturned mouth. He leaned forward, his gaze never wavering from Barcelo for a second. “What happened with the girls?”

  Barcelo attempted nonchalance but could feel a heat creeping under his collar. “Some Brits were causing trouble at one of my clubs. They set off some smoke bombs and the fire alarms. Just being a pain in the ass. They’re being dealt with as we speak.”

  “And the girls?” Golok asked again.

  He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Some of the little bitches made a run for it. Nothing to worry about. I don’t think they will be going to the police any time soon.”

  “But some were caught by the police, yes?”

  Barcelo hesitated. There was no point trying to deceive him; that would only make things worse. “Yes.”

  Golok interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on his knuckles. The relaxed position he adopted left no doubt who was the power player in the room. “The police will connect the girls to you.”

  “No. The club is not in my name. Nothing there to link the pollos back to me.”

  “Then they will round up your boys,” Golok continued, as if he hadn’t heard him. “The one with his name above the club door. Then one of the boys will talk. Mention your name; mention my name, perhaps. Then we have problem. Big problem.”

  Barcelo leaned forward to meet the Bosnian’s icy gaze. His voice was just above a whisper. “No way. My men are one hundred per cent loyal. They know the rules. No one talks. No one.”

  Both men remained motionless, scrutinising the other. Barcelo knew this was the tipping point. If Golok desired it, then every one of the Locos in the room would die. Tense seconds ticked by.

  “Okay. I trust.” The Bosnian stretched his hands into a prayer position, his hands now resting against the long scar that halved his face. “You bring money for next girls?”

  Relieved, Barcelo clicked his fingers and one of the Locos stepped forward and placed the bag of used notes on the table. One of the Bosnians in turn stepped forward and after glancing inside, picked it up and placed it next to Golok’s right hand.

  “All is good. But remember, when a finger is poisoned it is best to chop off that finger so the rest of the hand is saved.”

  The Bosnian had asserted his authority in his play but Barcelo knew this was not the time to push back. “Drink?”

  Golok smiled and pointed at the bottle of Belvedere. “I will drink.”

  Barcelo filled two shot glasses to the brim. “To business as usual.”

  “To careful businessmen,” countered Golok.

  They both drank.

  “Another?”

  “Another.”

  Barcelo refilled the glasses. He could see Babi Garcia from the corner of his eye, standing with his hands on his hips. Golok had asserted his status as top dog with his little speech but Barcelo decided to push back just a little. “Golok, this is my man Garcia. He is helping me with the Brits.”

  Golok motioned to the seat next to Barcelo. “Sit. Have drink.”

  Garcia came forward and took a seat, accepting a shot glass from his employer.

  The Bosnian took his third glass. “Now, tell me more about these Brits.”

  57

  “You think he’ll still be there?” Clay peered over the steering wheel.

  Danny grunted his response as he inserted a new magazine into his pistol. “If we miss him at the waterpark I’m coming back for him at the villa. Burn the fucking place to the ground with him inside. One way or another Barcelo’s time is done.”

  “I think you’re playing my song there, wee one.”

  Danny gritted his teeth as thoughts of Barcelo’s demise filled his mind. “Dez died in my place and that just doesn’t sit with me. I’ll gonna kill every last one of them.”

  “Hey, you’re preaching to the converted.”

  “This whole job’s going to shit. Larry and Adam hurt, and Dez gone for good.”

  Clay stared at his brother. “What’s the plan? I feel like we’re going in blind on this one.”

  “We are. The truth is we won’t know what we’re up against until we get there.” The last of the Locos had told them of the boss’s rendezvous at the empty waterpark but had no knowledge of the men he was meeting. Names? Unknown. Numbers? Unknown. Capability? Unknown. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I guess so. It’s a safe bet the gang that runs the skin train won’t exactly be boy scouts,” said Clay.

  “No, but if they’re still there, they’re going down as well!”

  Clay shrugged, offering no contradiction. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  “A pound of flesh in this case.”

  “Ay-men to that.”

  Danny smiled briefly. “Jokes aside, our advantage is they don’t know we’re coming. Downside to that is there could be fifty guys with Uzis, bored and looking for something to shoot.”

  “Fuck ’em. Remember the Alamo, that’s what I say.”

  “They all died at the Alamo.”

  “Yeah, but we took a lot of them with us.”

  “If I see General Santa Anna I’ll be sure to bust a cap in his ass for you.”

  “That’s mighty neighbourly of you, little brother.” Clay leaned forward in his seat hunching his shoulders slightly. “I wish we had GPS. I’ve no idea if we’re on the right road.”

  Danny opened the glove compartment and rifled through the contents. An old crumpled hotel brochure, a ballpoint pen and a pack of gum. Nothing of use. Danny took out
his phone. Google Maps returned no usable results.

  “I can’t find directions on my phone. I guess it’s because it never officially opened.”

  “Great, so I just keep driving and hope for the best?” Clay looked left and right and then raised his open palms. “Should have brought that last yahoo with us to point the way.”

  Danny gave him another wry smile. “Maybe, but it wasn’t me who went all Game of Thrones on the guy with an axe.”

  “Ah, forget him. He had it coming. My only regret is I didn’t get to kill him twice.”

  Danny put away his phone. Technology was great when it worked but he had learned long ago never to rely on it. “And you say I’m cold.”

  The brothers exchanged a look and smiled despite their earlier mood. Danny raised his eyebrows and gave Clay a “what did I tell you” look. He pointed at a weather-beaten sign ahead:

  ULTIMAGUA. SLIDE YOUR WAY TO HAPPINESS.

  OPENING SUMMER 2012.

  Clay slowed the vehicle as he drew closer to the large billboard. The advertisement displayed a cartoon family racing down a water slide side by side. The grins on their faces looked like slices of watermelon. The script on the sign was repeated in Spanish and English. The paint on the supporting arms was faded to an indistinct blue.

  “2012? I guess they missed their grand opening day.”

  “By quite a few years I reckon.”

  Clay pointed to the bottom of the sign. “Three clicks north. We’re nearly there.”

  “Well let’s go have some fun. Perfect place for wet work.”

  Clay pressed down hard on the accelerator.

  58

  Babi Garcia sat to the right of his employer. Barcelo looked much more at ease than he had in the previous week. The big man was now laughing and sharing jokes with the leader of the Bosnian crew. Both men were talking in heavily accented English due to it being the closest thing they had to a shared language. But it wasn’t the two bosses that held his interest. It was Golok’s men. Garcia recognised a quality in them that a lot of Barcelo’s Locos did not possess. The men had shark eyes: flat and emotionless, they never stopped moving.

  Barcelo recounted a heavily abridged version of the encounters with the brothers. Facts were twisted to make them seem like troublesome interlopers rather than the very dangerous opponents they were proving to be.

  The Bosnian leaned back in his seat, drawing his index finger down the long vertical scar that divided his face. “You like my scar, yes?”

  Barcelo was mid gulp, the glass of vodka still on his lips, so Garcia answered for them both. “It is very… distinctive.”

  Golok smirked. “I was a young man in Sarajevo. I had seen so many bad things already. Terrible things. The Serbs had killed many of my family, my friends. Some just disappeared, but we knew who had taken them. I fought back alongside my friends, but they just kept coming. They were better armed than us and they were like ants. You killed one and another ten took his place.”

  Garcia looked directly at the disfiguring scar.

  “But do you know what was worse than the Serbs?” Golok said. “The so-called peacekeeping forces that came later. The British, Norwegians and Americans strolled in like they owned our country expecting us to kiss their asses. I was in the market square with my younger sister when Serb mortars began to land. They killed my sister and took this.” Golok brushed his fingers past his exposed ear canal.

  Garcia sipped slowly on his glass of vodka. He had heard many times of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated during the war. The horrific tales of rape and torture. He stifled a smile; he was sorry he had missed it.

  The Bosnian held out his glass to be filled and continued. His eyes closed as he spoke. “One of the mortars landed right at my sister’s feet. There wasn’t enough left of her to bury. I staggered home covered in what was left of my sister to get my father. On the way I ran into some American soldiers. I went to them with my hands out. They pointed their rifles at me, shouting and cursing. I tried to ask them for help but one of them knocked me down and kicked me. As I was standing up he hit me in the face with a trench shovel, one of the folding kind. Left me for dead. I could hear them laughing as they walked away. Laughing like they were at a baseball game or something. Stee-rike one. I lay at the side of the road for I don’t know how long. Left for dead. But… I did not die.”

  “So you’re not a big fan of the Yanks then?” Garcia asked. Barcelo kicked his foot under the table.

  Golok slowly opened his eyes and ran his index finger down the length of his scar. “They’re not at the top of my list, no,” he said, nodding at Barcelo and Garcia in turn. “I think we are done here. The next girls will arrive on schedule. Make sure there are no more… incidents.”

  Barcelo stood up, extending his hand. Golok reciprocated. A couple of the Locos who had stood in silence throughout the meeting nodded at the Bosnians in farewell. They were rewarded with steely glares and tight lips.

  59

  The shadows cast by the surrounding palm trees stretched out like spectral fingers as the dawn rose. The palms flanked the main gates of the park, which formed an archway comprised of large concrete gateposts and a curving sign overhead. Clay guided the car through the open gates.

  “Where do you think he’ll be?” asked Clay. The unfinished waterpark stretched out with both unsurfaced tracks and paved walkways cutting paths in various directions.

  Danny tapped the Beretta lightly against his knuckles. “Drive straight ahead, we’ll see if we can spot any cars. Go slow and easy, there may be lookouts.”

  Loose gravel crunched beneath the tyres as the vehicle followed the widest of the paths. Directly ahead stood the park’s centrepiece: a towering volcano. Skeletal framework towers were dotted around it. Some of the towers had connecting half tubes that formed the planned water slides. Few of these were fully finished. A couple of the towers had stairways that curled their way from the ground to the slide’s apex. A wide concrete trench formed a perimeter around the interior portion of the park. A lazy river, Clay guessed. Every waterpark seemed to have one. Other sloping tracks of half pipe cut their way through the park’s artificial hills. Some of the channels were only a couple of feet wide while others looked wide enough for large family rafts. Palm trees, still shored up by supporting wooden stanchions until their roots found purchase, stood neglected, fronds the colour of summer straw swaying in the gentle breeze.

  As Clay drove deeper into the park they passed another large sign. This showed an artist’s map of the park with each of the four main areas highlighted in a different colour. The four main quadrants to the park surrounded the volcano. DINOLAND, CREEPY CAVERNS, PIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN and KAPTAIN KORTEZ’S KIDZONE were coloured red, blue, green and yellow.

  The brothers exchanged a glance.

  Danny shook his head. “Please don’t let me die in friggin’ KAPTAIN KORTEZ’S KIDZONE. They’d never let me into heaven.”

  Clay snorted a laugh. “Yeah right. Like you’re gettin’ into heaven anyways.”

  Danny looked like he was about to retort when he stiffened in his seat. “There!”

  Three identical black SUVs were parked in front of a single-storey building. There were another couple of vehicles parked further back, partly obscured by the three Mercedes. A familiar cold fire began to burn in the pit of Clay’s stomach.

  Clay steered the Toyota slowly towards the parked cars. Exhaling sharply through his nose like a boxer, Clay warned, “Knuckle up, we’ve got a watchman.”

  The man’s head snapped up as he heard the rumble of the approaching engine. The rifle he carried was pressed tight into his shoulder and he started moving towards the vehicle in a low scuttling gait.

  Clay could tell by the man’s attire—a smart dark suit and white shirt—that he wasn’t one of Barcelo’s Locos. Those guys only seemed to wear crappy army surplus.

  “Stop the car,” said Danny.

  Clay pressed down on the brakes. Danny opened the glove box and sc
ooped up the hotel brochure he’d looked at earlier.

  The man with the rifle shouted at Danny as he climbed from the car. His voice was heavily accented, something Eastern European. “Private property. Get out!”

  “Hey, buddy, can you tell me how to get to…”

  The man hesitated for a moment, his face relaxing. “Leave.” He hooked his thumb towards the park gates.

  “Hey, what’s that accent? Russian?” Danny asked. “Sounds sexy.”

  “Bosnian. Now fuck off.” The man raised his gun.

  The Beretta that Danny had concealed behind the brochure barked once, punching a hole through the paper. The sound echoed around the empty park. The man’s head snapped back. He fell dead to the ground.

  “So much for the element of surprise,” Clay said. “Everything seems stacked against us on this one.”

  Danny spoke quickly through clenched teeth. “Friggin’ great. Bosnians. That’s who ships the girls through to Barcelo. No surprises there I suppose.”

  “What do you want to do?” asked Clay with grim resolve.

  “I can see four vehicles from here. Up to five men per vehicle, that’s a possible twenty men. If they are Bosnian, they will be well-armed and not bullet shy. Oh, shit, here they come!”

  Six suited men raced from the building in tight formation. Their faces looked as mean as the hardware they carried.

  Danny raced forward and snatched up the dead man’s weapon. He was almost back inside when the first of the bullets began to rip through the car.

  60

  As was customary, the Bosnians had begun to leave the meeting first. The unmistakable sound of a single gunshot changed that in an instant. The six Kalashnikov assault rifles snapped into readiness as one. All were pointed at the Locos. Garcia braced, ready for trouble.