Moments later, I’m walking into church. I’m not the last. Mace comes in behind me, the red flush to his face suggesting he too had taken the opportunity to get close to his woman.
“Okay,” Prez starts. “Cad has some info.”
“From the unknown fucker in Utah?”
Cad nods. “The same. Still no closer to knowing who he is, oh, and he’s now shielded his IP address. Obviously was an error letting me know where he was from.”
“Or her,” observes Pal.
“Or her,” agrees Cad.
Demon growls. “Don’t care what sex he, she or it is, just tell us the info, Cad.”
Our computer expert nods. “Major’s on the move. Looks like the hits coming sooner rather than later. He’s been spotted heading for Pueblo.”
“How far out?”
“Two hours’ drive if he gets a move on.”
“So we wrap this up fast and get into position.”
“Who the fuck is this informant? How’s he,” RIP glances at the Prez, “she or they getting their info? Is it legit?”
“If it’s not,” snaps Thunder, “we lose nothing.”
Bam Bam nods toward Thunder, two sergeant-at-arms on the same wavelength. “Would rather we prepared for nothing, than we’re caught with our fingers up our asses.”
Charmer bumps fists with his prez. “Could do with a good fight.”
Good men these. Glad they’re on our side.
The women, including the club girls, along with Cas and Theo, and the two dogs, Max and Bagel, are quickly gathered up and sent down into the basement. Christ knows where Bitch is, but as she’s still got a couple of her nine lives remaining, hopefully she can look after herself.
Beth’s hesitant to leave Ink. Shayla and Vanna, the other newest old ladies are also reticent, but Mo quickly hurries them up. I sense Vanna’s reluctant because she’ll be forced into close proximity with girls she’s too well aware I’ve fucked. I hate to have it thrown in her face, but right now there’s little to be done. We need to keep everyone safe. I send a message to her with my eyes, mouthing, I love you.
While Mo prefers to keep her life separate from the club, when necessary she can take charge, and at times like these her brusque approach works well. She eyes the three lingering at the top of the stairs. “If you don’t let your men go and prepare, you’re not helping them. Jeannie’s got a few bottles of wine, Fireball and she’s mixing up some margaritas down there. Mel’s brought a few tubs of cakes and muffins.”
I wink at Vanna. “Seems like we might have drunk sex later.”
“Dad!”
Whoops. One of the drawbacks of having a son. But when I look at him, he’s grinning.
“Don’t forget, I’m sharing your room,” he reminds me, laughing at the look on my face.
I chuckle, then grow serious, speaking to him man-to-man. “Keep your mom safe, Son.” Heaven forbid anyone should get through our lines, but if they do? Well, I think I can depend on him.
“I’ll look after them, Liz,” Wills, who’s staying down there with them, assures me.
I know he will.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Mace
I’d thought I was going to have to tie Shayla up at one point. Seeing our preparations had made her want to give herself up and let Major take her. I’d explained and explained that a man like him wouldn’t back down, even if he got what he came for. We’ve poked the hornet’s nest, now we’ve got to grind the emerging insects into the ground.
Cas had killed at least one of his men, we’d sheltered Shayla. Once he’d found that out and who had her—and we’d still no idea how he’d done that—our fate, as far as he was concerned, had been sealed. He was coming for us whether he had her in his hands or not. He might even have gotten a yearning to get Cas back.
When talking hadn’t worked, I’d fucked her. Hopefully, I’ve worn her out.
Wills has got strict instructions to protect the women, Cas, and Theo with his life. Knowing the measure of the man, he’d die before he’d let anything happen to them. I had a quick word with him and told him to watch Shayla carefully, in case she tried to get out in the incorrect belief sacrificing herself would save everyone else. At least the basement is soundproofed so they shouldn’t hear bullets flying.
Sindy and Jeannie are also armed and so ready to protect themselves, I actually pity anyone who tries to get down into our basement.
Once the final ‘goodbyes’ and ‘be carefuls’ have been said, the door is locked and bolted from the inside. Judge is standing guard at the top, and I’m hidden outside with the rest of my brothers.
“Hate this waiting,” Ink speaks softly from my side.
“Me too. Used to it, though.”
“Yeah, well you’re just a bullet sponge.”
“Asshole.” I know only too well what Marines call Army. Cannon fodder, that’s the rep we’ve got. But I’ll admire any man who puts one foot in front of the other heading into a firefight.
“Dogface,” another voice sounds in my ear.
“You can shut the fuck up as well, Leatherneck,” I respond to Ink.
But trading insults with men I’m proud to call brothers is our way of bonding. Whatever arm of the forces we were in, we’re yet again facing a common enemy which unites us all.
Waiting might get on my nerves, but it is what I was trained for. Hours, days, of waiting, doing nothing, keeping still while the enemy was on the advance, knowing at some point we’d jump into action. Sometimes it would be us on the offensive, at other times like these, defending from a protected position.
I resist the urge to take out my phone to see just how long we’ve been waiting. I push down the desire to move, trying to calm my breathing, keeping my hand on my gun.
A glint of sunlight reflecting, it’s Pal’s drone, circling again.
“Looks like something’s happening,” a voice sounds in my earpiece. “Got camera’s picking shit up.”
“Trucks approaching. Got them coming up the track to the rear of the compound,” Pal confirms, presumably from the drone footage.
“Need more men at the rear?” asks Beef.
“Nah,” replies Demon. “Looks like we’ve got the same number who will be hitting the front.
“What I’d do,” I say to Ink and Liz, “is hit us from the rear, then wait and attack from the front as soon as we’re all headed out back.”
“Camera feed is going down,” Cad says. “Switching to back up. Damn. Right. Looks like the trucks at the front are hanging back.”
“They can’t know we’re expecting them, can they?” asks Liz.
I doubt it, but who the fuck knows? Same fucker informing us could have been speaking to them. Don’t trust someone when I don’t know a name, but his info does seem to be checking out.
Suddenly there’s an explosion, followed by another.
“Men down. Not ours. They’ve hit a couple of the land mines. Moving more cautiously now.”
I notice Liz wince beside me. His hands are over his head, and the blood has drained from his face.
“Liz, not now, fucker. Stay here,” I snap, recognising the signs of the onset of PTSD. He needs to stay in the here and now if he’s going to be of any use to us.
“I’m okay,” Liz growls, shaking his head as if to clear it.
The sound of rapid gunfire comes from our rear.
“Casualties?” Demon’s voice snarls in my earpiece.
“A bullet scraped Beaver, but everyone else is okay. RIP and his men are chasing the fuckers down. They’re fuckin’ lunatics.”
And indeed, war cries are coming through my earpiece. Yup, seems like the Wretched Soulz are eager to fight hand-to-hand.
“Coming our way now,” Pal shouts. “Truck approaching the gate, fast.”
We replaced the gates when the mafia knocked them down. Unfortunately, it seems they’re still not strong enough. As they take the full force of the truck, they twist and allow the truck to wedge them open.
“Grappling fuckin’ hooks. They’re climbing the walls.”
“Christ, how many of the fuckers are there?”
I try to line up a shot but cover my head as a grenade explodes close to us.
“Jesus!” shouts Ink, but I can hardly hear him as my ears are ringing.
Stun and gas grenades are landing all around us. Fuck it! We thought we’d planned for everything but haven’t got masks. I pull my bandana up over my nose, but my eyes are stinging, and I can hardly see where I’m shooting. I get off a few more rounds, but then Lizard rolls into me.
“Stop.” He knocks my gun out of my hand. “You might shoot one of us. Retreat, into the clubhouse.”
Trying to peer through my watering eyes, I notice brothers stumbling around in their haste to get inside and away from the debilitating gas. A man’s being dragged, fuck, who’s down? I pick up my gun then I’m running, keeping low to the ground, trying to identify a target to shoot at.
Inside, men are doubled up and coughing, frantically wiping eyes.
“Water, wash them,” shouts Dirt.
But we’ve no time.
A voice comes over a bullhorn, “Give the girl up. That’s all we want.”
I go to the window. My head is seen, a bullet breaks the glass and I feel the wind of it go past my cheek. Close. Too fucking close. I duck back down.
“Casualty report,” yells Demon.
“Bomber’s down,” calls back Rusty.
“Need to get back out,” shouts Beef.
“Not until that gas dies down, can’t fucking see anything,” shouts back Hellfire.
“Mace?” Demon must see where I am. “What’s going on?”
I risk raising my head again. “Hard to see a fuckin’ thing. Hold on. The truck’s backing up. Trying to push the gate back.”
“They’re not fucking breaking down our door again.” Demon sounds furious. “Man the windows. Covering fire.”
I hear the cracking of rifles from upstairs and through the smoke see men falling down.
“Someone’s got the driver,” I call out, taking a shot myself. “The truck is revving but going nowhere.”
“Rear is cleared. We’re coming around,” Pyro calls out.
“Watch yourself. There’s gas and smoke. Starting to clear now.”
Which is good. Now able to see, brothers upstairs are picking the invaders off one by one.
“All those who can still see, together now.”
Most of us head over to Demon. I see Nails with a wet rag to his face, but Dirt shakes his head. “He’s okay, but he was pretty close to a canister when it went off.”
Rusty is crouched by Bomber. When he goes to stand, Demon waves him back down. “How is he?”
“Doesn’t look good. I’m trying to stop the bleeding. We’ll have to get him to the hospital as soon as we can.”
“Ink, Lizard, Mace. You okay?” At our nods and as our bodies stand to attention, he issues his orders, “Get out and give cover to Pyro and his team coming around the building.”
We don’t hesitate. Outside, there are bodies, injured men, but enough live ones still to cause trouble. I load, fire, reload and fire again, emptying my gun time after time. Eventually, I realise I’ve no targets to aim at, or those I can, are standing with raised hands.
Pyro’s already going around disarming them one by one.
“Jeez, move this fuckin’ truck out of the way.” RIP’s voice comes from the front of the compound, the other side of the gates.
I see his face appear, and I hastily jump into the truck and try to back it out onto the road. It takes me a few goes of back and forth before it’s free of the twisted metal.
“Thought you’d like this.” He pushes a man forward with his hand. “Was waiting in a fuckin’ limousine down the road.”
For a moment, none of us move. My eyes go from the man I can’t wait to kill and then back to the Wretched Soulz’ prez.
Demon’s the first to recover from the shock and steps up, his face twisting in distaste. “Major, I presume?”
The man tries to shrug off the men holding him, but Bam Bam’s got him held tight on one side, and Charmer’s got a tight grip on his other arm. Realising he’s no chance of freeing himself, Major stops struggling. As his expression changes from bluff to concern, it’s dawning on him what trouble he’s in. “Look, you can keep the girl. Just let me go. I’ll let you have her and leave your club alone.”
“Keeping the girl anyway,” Demon tells him, lazily.
My ears still ring with the sounds so recently died down, my nostrils breathe in the smell of cordite, but the breeze has luckily blown the tear gas away. I’ll let Demon have his words with Major, then I’ll take him down to the basement, once the girls have been given the all clear and allowed up into the light of day of course. Then I’ll put the basement to the use it was really soundproofed for. I can almost smell the blood I’m about to spill. Major will be screaming for weeks and no one in the clubroom above will be any the wiser as I question him in my own enforcer style. For now, I’ll let him try and bluster his way out of it.
Major’s not put off. “I’ve got money. I’ve got girls, boys, you name it. How about you and I go into partnership? You could run a new arm of the business in Colorado. I’d give you a good—”
Major droops in the arms of the Wretched Soulz holding him, a distant crack sounding momentarily after he does so. Stunned, Bam Bam and Charmer let his body drop to the ground. There’s a perfect round hole in the back of his head, the type of which means there’s no chance of recovery.
What the…?
“What the fuck?” Demon growls, then more loudly, “Who the fuck?” His eyes glare accusingly at the men standing around, then at those still covering us from the top floor of our clubhouse. “Who the fuck did this?” he yells.
“Prez.” I step forward, if possible angrier than him. Seeing Major die in front of me was not good enough. Too quick, too merciful. He should have died by my hands. “The shot must have come from outside the compound.” I turn and indicate the wide-open gates.
“Sure did,” Charmer confirms, shading his eyes and looking into the far distance behind him. “There, look? See that glint?”
Now I see where he’s pointing. It could be the glint off a windshield or window as it appears to be moving. There’s not a chance in hell of us getting close to intercept it, whatever it is, is driving off-road and fast getting away.
“You got a sniper I don’t know about?” Prez accuses his counterpart, RIP.
RIP, turns and gives a disdainful stare at Prez. “If I did, I’d be fuckin’ proud of him for such an accurate shot at that distance, but no, I can’t take credit for this.”
“Could Major have set himself up?” I ask, wonderingly. “Rather be dead than captured?”
“Makes no fuckin’ sense.” RIP is right, it doesn’t.
“He’s dead.” Demon seems to have realised he won’t be able to question him. “Which is the outcome I wanted, though I’d rather have drawn it out.” Him and me both.
“Prez?” Pyro gets his attention. “We’ve got ten bodies out back. Six here in the front, plus injured and captured. What are we going to do about them?”
“You got a burial ground?” RIP asks.
“That’s a fuckin’ lot to bury,” says Charmer.
“Rusty wants to know if he can get Bomber to the hospital?”
“Yeah, Judge. Tell him to go now.”
Fuck. I hope Bomber’s going to make it. Can’t imagine what Jeannie would do if her man was taken from her.
RIP, chewing on a piece of grass, looks thoughtful. “Don’t know how you’re set here, but you take a gunshot wound into the hospital, cops would use it as an excuse to come to my club.”
Demon nods slowly. Chances are they’d use it as an excuse to visit us.
“Shame we can’t heat the furnace and burn the bodies in there. If it could melt half a train, then a few bodies should burn up okay.”
&nb
sp; I turn to look at the VP, at the same time as Charmer says seriously, “You’d have to heat it to fourteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. You able to do that?”
At that moment, Rusty and Judge drive up in a truck. “Managed to get Bomber in the back,” Rusty calls out of the window. I notice he’s looking grave and drawn. Bomber and he go back nearly forty years.
“How is he?” Demon asks, leaning in the window. “Hi, Jeannie, love, you okay?”
Rusty makes a see-saw motion with his hands. “I’ve tried to stem the bleeding, not much else I can do.”
“Just get to the hospital fast,” comes Jeannie’s voice.
We all step back so they can drive through the gap which once held our gates.
“So,” RIP reminds us. “Bodies…?”
“Get them in a truck. One of theirs preferably. I’ll get the prospects to drive them out. Can’t think what else to do with them but put them in the ground.”
“Need help? I’ve got prospects could do with some practice.”
That’s an offer from the Wretched Soulz that we’re not going to turn down.
Chapter Fifty
Lizard
“So who killed him?” Vanna asks, shaking her head and reaching for her glass of wine.
It’s a question we’ve all been asking. The most logical conclusion is someone wanted Major out of the way as badly as we did ourselves. But there’s also the notion that Major had information someone didn’t want him sharing. I know Mace felt cheated that he hadn’t been able to question him.
I’d given a shrug as my answer to Vanna, there was nothing else I could tell her, nor had been able to for the past couple of days since it had happened. We’re all wondering exactly the same thing. Cad had tried to reconnect with his contact on the dark web, but he’d done a disappearing act, and Cad couldn’t locate him again.
Gradually things are returning to normal. We had, indeed, had a visit from the police checking on the story that Bomber had somehow accidentally shot himself in the side, awkward as fuck, but that was what we were all going with. By the time they’d arrived, with assistance from the Wretched Soulz’ prospects, the bodies had been loaded and taken away, and a pressure washer had removed most of the blood. Without a warrant, they couldn’t search further and luckily hadn’t checked on the rear line of our property which looked like a war zone.
Devil's Spawn: Satan's Devils MC Colorado Chapter #6 Page 43