*
Hours passed, and my mind almost went along with them. It felt like prison again, only the room was darker and the air more stifling. The room was spacious though, so I stretched out on the ground and closed my eyes for a bit; but for how long I slept, I have no idea. Time, when you are in complete darkness, does not seem to abide by the regular laws of nature.
I drank from a bottle of water, ate a sandwich that I’d packed, and waited … and waited.
When the time got close, and I couldn’t take it any longer, I clicked on the flashlight and went to work. The control panel ran on car batteries, and as I connected the last wire, the TV screens suddenly illuminated the room. There I was, at the center of it all: all of the cameras around the bar, and all of the cameras around Mr. Carlino’s mansion. I checked my watch; I was right on time.
Mr. Carlino and his men were all there, gathered in a circle upstairs in the barroom, right above my head. Mr. Carlino was giving what looked like a fiery speech. Some were checking and rechecking their machineguns and pistols. After only a few minutes they nodded to their boss, and started to get ready. Some fastened bulletproof jackets around their torsos, and others filled their pockets with ammunition clips. Soon, Mr. Carlino’s strongest and most loyal men filled out the side door to the parking lot, and to the waiting fleet of cars. I saw Stevie in the crowd. He stopped at the bar, reached across and grabbed a bottle of scotch and a glass. He filled it and drained it entirely. He stood there for a moment, when suddenly his eyes came up to the silent camera above the bar. We looked right into each other’s eyes. He refilled his glass, drained it, and then took up position by the window at the front door.
A long time passed until I saw the fleet of cars appear on the other screen, the cameras in front of Mr. Carlino’s house. Their plan was simple: wait until 10 o’clock, and then surprise the six or so Vipers’ cars that were waiting at the end of the block. A boring plan, really, but what else could be expected of Mr. Carlino?
My watch said 9:50.
I took the switch out of my duffel bag, pulled the antenna until it was fully extended, flipped the trigger-guard … then flipped the switch.
The TV screens came alive with the bright and silent explosions. My breath was momentarily lost.
It’s happening … it’s actually happening …
Four of the cars erupted in giant balls of fire in Mr. Carlino’s driveway, filling the screen in unbelievable brightness. Good thing Mr. Carlino’s mansion was on three acres of heavily wooded property, and the man had no children or a wife at home to hear the explosions. A fifth car was badly damaged, and the other just sat there, as if stunned. Then suddenly, their tires kicked up smoke, and they sped away. I turned off the TV screens, pulled the wires from the car batteries, and snuck back to the corner of the impossibly dark room.
I spent a moment rechecking my weapons, but they were fully loaded and ready to fire. Down there, in the vault, it was impossible to hear noise from the bar above. The room was a concrete and cinderblock rectangle, with the only opening a circular, solid-steel bank door. Mr. Carlino had his construction crew install it back when they had demolished the old bank downtown. A movable sheetrock wall hid the door, and nobody outside of our organization knew that is existed.
I stood in the corner of the vault, behind a stack of boxes filled with bundles of money, drugs, and whatever else Mr. Carlino kept hidden away.
This was Mr. Carlino’s control room, his eyes and ears when he was at war, or when he wanted to hide. He could watch his cameras, issue commands to his lieutenants, and seal himself away. His two goons, the ones drinking from snifters that looked like thimbles in their fat palms, were the only other people with keys to the basement and vault, or knew the combination to the outside keypad.
Mr. Carlino was in for a surprise.
The air was really become stifling in there, and sweat had soaked the front of my shirt ... then I heard the creaking of the hinges.
Things were going to happen very fast now.
The vault door swung open and light poured in.
“Turn it on,” Mr. Carlino howled to his men, and not a moment later the computer screens came to life. A dull table light turned on from the monitoring station, and I could see the backs of the three men only a few feet in front of me, their eyes glued to the screens.
I stepped out from the shadows like a ghost, the silenced pistol I liberated from Vlad’s partner leading the way. Before they had time to hear my footsteps, I pulled the trigger, shooting the first and then the second of Mr. Carlino’s lieutenants in quick succession. Mr. Carlino jumped. The screens before him suddenly splattered red as the heads of his two goons popped like squished grapes.
He reeled around and found himself staring down the barrel of my gun.
He muttered, “Oh, Jes-Jesus—”
“Hands up,” I said, and before he could process my words I grabbed the handle of his pistol from his holster and was going through his pockets for his cell phone. I tossed the contents of his pockets into my open duffel bag, and took a moment to look the man in the eyes.
“Mickey, is that you?” he asked, squinting. “Jesus, man, what are you doing? I’ve been looking all over town for you. I’ve been worried sick.”
I shook my head. “Come on now, Chuck. None of that.”
He saw my gaze and dropped the act. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Franky was a hell of a safecracker. The best we had, wouldn’t you agree? How many safes did the man open for you over the years? All I had to do was get to their keys for only a minute.” I nodded to the dead lieutenants on the ground. “I pressed balls of wax against the keys that I needed, put the imprinted wax in old film canisters, and carefully got them to Franky. ”
“When … when the hell did you get to their keys?”
“When they were showering. Those little locks we use in the locker room couldn’t stop a schoolgirl from picking them, let alone a trained locksmith. Franky filed the keys by hand. He made one for the back door, one for the vault, and one for the carport—so we could plant the explosives. As far as the keypad, Franky used some sort of powder to get the combination. He sprinkled it all over the glasses in the bar, and then waited until one of your idiots opened the door. He used a black light to see the keys, and four of them lit up. It only took me a moment to figure out the sequence: 1-9-8-6 … the year you killed Mr. Merazano.”
“I knew you and Franky were working together!” Mr. Carlino said in a hiss. “We searched your car, your house—everything! Where the hell did you hide the explosives? Hell, I even brought in bomb sniffing dogs! But-but, when I saw you torture Franky … I watched you beat the information out of him with your own hands, I watched you do it!”
The look on my face became fierce. I didn’t want to be reminded of the part I was forced to play. If the roles were reversed, and I was caught instead of Franky, he would have done the same thing to me. We were in this overthrow together, to topple Mr. Carlino’s empire. We knew that death was possible.
“Yeah … I tortured my best friend,” I said. “I beat and pummeled him. It was a risk we both knew we were taking. Franky, he had all of the information, the codes, the bombs, everything. I didn’t know where he was keeping everything until yesterday. If you had half a brain you would have noticed Franky holding my hand while he made his final confession.”
“I—why?”
“Because he slipped a tiny shred of paper in my hand. No bigger than a ball of lint.”
I waited, letting the betrayal sink in. Then I continued, “The paper had the combination to his public locker down at Masterson Station. I drove there only a few hours ago, after ending the life of that piece of shit Vlad. Franky kept everything in that duffel bag over there, waiting for me in a locker.”
“So your plan … is to kill me, then take over working with those scum of the earth Vipers? Do you really think the men—my men—will so blindly accept you as their new leader?”
> I shook my head. “It was Franky who was supposed to be boss. I never wanted it. Not back in ’86, when I was next in line, or even now. But I can’t let our organization be led by a bunch of incompetent fools any longer. You tortured Franky, betrayal or not, for hours. Days. The men have been talking about mutiny for years now, ever since you killed Mr. Merazano. I don’t expect they will all follow me, but most will. I’ll deal with the others.”
Mr. Carlino stood there, looking into my eyes, looking down the barrel of my gun. I saw him weighing his options. He didn’t have many. I’m sure he wanted to scream, call out to his men in the bar, but they would never hear him through the vault door.
After a long silence, Mr. Carlino softened his expression. “Listen,” he said, “let’s sit down and talk things over.”
I whacked him with the butt of my pistol. His head turned violently to the side and he stumbled back, arms flailing. Before he had a chance to composure himself, I had him sitting in a chair, and was pulling a roll of duct tape around his torso.
“Mick-Mickey, wait—wait,” was the last thing he said before I covered his mouth, going around and around his head. I had him plastered to the chair, facing the video feed. The bar was crawling with his men, many of them extremely loyal. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to kill them all.
I took the automatic .12 gauge shotgun from the duffel bag, checked the magazine, and made sure a round was in the chamber. Then I filled my pockets with spare shells.
“Enjoy the show,” I said to the struggling Mr. Carlino. I left, leaving the vault door open a crack so he could hear the demise of his crew.
The first man I encountered was right outside the vault door, leaning against the hallway with his hands resting on an Uzi slung over his shoulder. He turned to face me, but he never had a chance to register surprise before I pulled the trigger. The shotgun boomed loud, and his body flew back against the concrete wall and slid to the ground.
I stepped forward, each step slow and precise, my .12 gauge leading the way. A startled looking man appeared from the doorway of the locker room, and another jumped out from a second doorway behind. The automatic shotgun fired as fast as I could pull the trigger, and before they could aim their guns I fired three rounds. The two men flew back into their rooms, riddled with buckshot. I flipped the gun over as I walked, feeding the magazine the four shells I had fired. As I passed the first man, I snatched his Uzi off the ground, swinging it over my shoulder.
Suddenly, the thick door at the end of the hallway swung open, and a dark shadowy figure ran forward. I dropped the man, and moved into a doorway for cover. More were coming down the stairs. I continued to fire into the closed door as the men ducked for cover behind. They were shouting and yelling at each other, but their words were lost to me.
A hole the size of a grown man’s torso ripped straight through the metal door. Bullets were now spraying at me blindly, ricocheting against the walls of the basement; sending shards of cinderblock and cement flying through the air like a torrent of razor-sharp rain. I ducked into the doorway and felt in my pocket for the one thing that surprised the most in the bottom of Franky’s duffel bag—a hand grenade.
I pulled the pin and darted back out into the hallway. The hole in the door was wide enough for me to toss the grenade through even from my distance. Crouching back into the doorframe, I listened to the men holler and clamber back up the stairs. I reloaded the shotgun and listened.
The explosion was deafening, booming down the basement hallway like a bolt of thunder. I swung out and proceeded forward. My hand felt hot and slippery against the handle of the shotgun, and I knew that something, a cement fragment or maybe a ricocheted bullet, had struck my arm. I moved each finger in turn; everything seemed to be working.
The stairway behind the metal door leading up to the barroom was a disaster. I heard a bang, and before I saw him standing at the top of the stairs, I felt a bullet slam into my side. As I fell to the ground I fired upward, not sure how many times I pulled the trigger. At least a few pellets hit their mark. The man slunk down, grabbing the side of his neck while making gurgling noises, and then slid face first and unconscious down the staircase.
I got back to my feet, ignoring the pain in my side. It wasn’t a life-threatening wound, but it was bleeding all right. By the time I reached the top of the stairs my socks were soaked.
I felt in my pockets, but there were only two shells left. I might have dropped some when I fell, or maybe I’d used them all up … my mind couldn’t process basic math at the moment.
I paused before the door leading into the barroom, and took a deep breath.
Cupping a hand against my mouth, I shouted, “All right … whoever’s in there, Carlino is dead. Chuck Carlino is dead, and so are his lieutenants. It’s me, Mickey, and in about a minute the place will be swarming with Vipers. I’m coming out. Holster your weapons, do not fire, and I will not kill you.”
There was no response.
I waited, and then I made my move.
I crouched low and shot out from the doorway, landing on my shoulder and back, and rolled behind the old wooden bar. Bullet fire erupted, splintering away at the bar, and crashing down shards of broken glasses and waves of liquor as bottles exploded. Wasting no time, I jumped to my feet and fired straight into the chest of a man about five feet in front of me. He flew backwards, and I fired again and again. Then I heard the telltale click sound, and knew that I was out of ammo. There were four men in the room, two in the front and two in the rear. The first one peered from behind the table he was using for cover and then faced me, smiling.
Suddenly, a shot rang out, and the man dropped. Another shot rang out, and a man in the corner of the room fell. Stevie stood by the door pointing his gun at the third man. Good ole’ Stevie. A kid really, but he’d been involved in the scheme since the beginning. He was the one who attached the bombs under the cars in the parking lot, using a magnet that could rip a beam from the Eiffel Tower.
The last man looked down the barrel of Stevie’s gun, and said, “All right then,” and lowered his rifle. “So, the boss is dead. Good riddance. He didn’t know how to run things anyway.”
Then, the rest of the men in the building came walking into the barroom, their weapons holstered or slung over their shoulders. Most of them I knew would be happy to see Mr. Carlino’s reign come to an end. The others, they would follow whoever put food in their mouths.
“Always should have been you, Mickey,” one of them said. “Back in ’86, you was next in line.”
I tossed the spent shotgun on the bar, found a glass not broken and a bottle of bourbon, and poured the glass tall. I swallowed it back in one gulp. It burned good.
“So,” I said. “You’re with me, huh?”
The crowd muttered and nodded their heads. “Yeah, Mickey,” a few said. “Fuck Mr. Carlino, he’d have us all dead fighting the Vipers.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” I said, refilling the glass. Jesus, my side was killing me. I grabbed a clean bar towel and held it against the bleeding.
I could hear the sound of speeding cars grow louder in the distance as they approached.
“If you’re with me, you’re going to have to prove it. That’s them now, the rest of Mr. Carlino’s loyal men; the ones the car bombs didn’t take care of. They’re going to be mad as hell.”
The men—my men—looked at one another, and then swung their firearms before them, cocking back the hammers and checking the magazines. They marched to the windows facing the parking lot.
“And gentlemen,” I said, “mind the homeless out there, would you?”
The cars were speeding down the street, bouncing harshly over the smallest of bumps, and came to haphazard screeching halts in the parking lot. The men flooded from the cars, running towards the bar, some injured. Just then, the two homeless men across the street stood up, and began rummaging through the shopping cart. They pulled out fully loaded assault rifles from among the garbage.
&n
bsp; The volley of gunfire, from my men and the Vipers who had been staked out in front of the bar for weeks, eradicated what was left of Mr. Carlino’s men in less than thirty seconds.
I poured another whiskey while Stevie patched up my side and arm. It wasn’t so bad. When the bleeding slowed I went back down to the vault, to check on Chuck. He sat there like a rock, eyes huge. I brought the bottle of bourbon along.
“Hey boss,” I said, with Stevie and a few men in tow. “Looks like this is the end. Should I make it quick, or should I extend to you the same courtesy that you showed to Franky?”
Mr. Carlino didn’t answer. Well, he couldn’t with the tape covering his mouth.
“I got a better idea,” I said.
I had the guys remove all of the valuables from the vault, and then work as fast as possible to drag and carry the dead, and the few who were still alive, down there to the dark vault. We piled Mr. Carlino’s men before his feet.
“Good thing you paid off the precinct to show up late tonight if bullet shots got reported, huh, boss?” I said to the bright-eyed Mr. Carlino. “You thought you were going to wipe out the Vipers, and have this town for yourself? Well, sorry your plan didn’t work out. Have a good rest of your life.”
I shut the door to the vault, cutting away the last ray of sunlight and flow of oxygen to that dark and morbid tomb. Mr. Carlino was wriggling like a fish caught on a hook, trying desperately to free himself from his binds. Wouldn’t even matter if he did; there’s no leaving that room.
Good thing that nobody knows about the vault. It’s not in the architect’s plan of the building, and only a dozen or so men know of its existence. Once I put the fake wall back in place, nobody would be the wiser. The order was already in place for cinderblocks and cement, and soon the wall would be permanent.
I now controlled the Eastside and the Southside. The Vipers aren’t called the Vipers anymore, thank God. They’re my men now, and they work for me. Until someone with some real balls decides to rise up, I think I’ll show this organization how a real boss runs things.
Thank you for reading The Basement Vault. Please read on past the acknowledgments for a preview of Brandon Zenner’s novel, Whiskey Devils.
https://www.BrandonZenner.com
About the Author
Brandon Zenner is an American fiction writer. His short fiction has been published in both print and online publications, the first being submitted when he was just 19 years old. THE EXPERIMENT OF DREAMS, his debut eBook thriller, has reached Amazon's top-ten charts within its genre many times. His second novel, WHISKEY DEVILS, was released in early 2016, and nominated for a Global Ebook Award. His genres of choice are thrillers, crime, dystopian literature, and science fiction.
From the Author
Thank you for reading The Basement Vault. Visit https://www.BrandonZenner.com to learn more about past and future work, and join my email list to stay informed of everything I’m doing. As a thank you for joining my email list, you will receive the short story, Helix Illuminated. What else do members of my email list receive? Well, just for an example, all of my past followers were offered my novel, Whiskey Devils, for free when it was released. You can also follow me on just about any social media outlet. Here’s Facebook and Twitter:
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Thank you for reading down to the very last line, and please enjoy the preview of Whiskey Devils that follows this ramble.
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Brandon Zenner
Preview: Whiskey Devils
"A twisting, turning thriller . . ."
-Author John Grandits, The Concrete Poet
Chapter 1
Spring, 2003
The Basement Vault Page 5