Adversary

by S. W. Frank

  And how we play a fight up in the bathroom,

  Next thing you know I'm making love to you,

  Girl, promise me you'll never change,

   

  She aint perfect, but she's worth it,

  Every breath I breathe, for the life of me,

  And I know I might not deserve it…

  She knows me better, than I know myself…

   

  See I'm a man, that don't believe in much,

  But I'll be damned if I don't believe in us,

  Like when I said I loved you for the first time…’

   

  He saw his love smiling, he saw Selange’s eyes. He tried to not see death or imagine her not in his life. Back in time the song took a fulfilled man who once had a desolate heart. Their first intimate encounter was poetry not only to his body but to his mind. He stared out as the night sucked the light.

  Amazing…simply amazing is what he experienced when he thought of her.

  His eyes burned.

  Stay strong muchacho, it’s like you’ve prepared your whole life for this fight. You have to look at the blessings. There are people who aren’t entrenched in your world and they’re dying every day, gunshots, natural disasters, accidents, sudden heart attacks and the list goes on. You and Selange are blessed. See the love that keeps you strong. What an amazing life when you have love in it, he thought.

  He put a fist to his chest. Beat it hard he did. Beat it like a drum.

  That’s real. His beating heart and his love for Selange is proof the damn thing worked.

  Simply amazing!

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

   

   

   

  Giuseppe waited. He wasn’t stupid these guys had military type weapons and more than twenty to thirty soldier wannabes. He couldn’t tell because everybody nowadays wore army fatigues in leisure. Punks who never fired a gun before in their lives liked the image. He’d been tempted to just pop several of the guys but then why do a foolish thing when his fratellino was a few minutes out, eh?

  His leg went to sleep, cramped from sitting in a vehicle. He slid up as the woman stared him down. “Cosa?” he asked, “You like me?”

  She did not smile.

  Ah, he was losing his touch with women. “What is Gamba’s reason to steal a bracelet,” he asked moments later to draw her out.

  “He believes Semira shamed his family by choosing to marry an outsider. The bracelet is priceless. Greed is his true motivation. There are many who will pay for such an item. A recompense for family humiliation and dishonor is an excuse.”

  Giuseppe snickered. “Semira must have known they have a crazy gene. I can understand her reluctance to marry into such a family.”

  The woman did not smile.

  I have definitely lost my touch, Giuseppe smirked. If the circumstances were different he might find her exotic and interesting. However, he was in enough trouble because of his philandering.

  “Men view women as property you are that kind,” she suddenly said.

  “No bella. That is your Gamba. I see women as a valuable asset.”

  “To cook, clean, have babies and suck your milk like a cow.”

  He frowned. “What have I done to you?”

  “I see Gamba in you. He also wants a woman crawling like a dog.”

  “No, bella. Not crawl. That means she is seeking to get away,” he laughed.”

  “Your charm does not work with me.”

  Giuseppe chuckled. “Sí, I can tell bella. Perdóname.”

  “You will have love when you respect women.”

  “I have heard this, does it work?”

  She smiled. Kefilwe found him funny. “I have heard this too but I do not know.”

  “When you are free of Gamba let me know if you have proof of this theory.”

  “And how I will prove this?”

  “By finding a man who respects you bella and does not make you crawl or kneel, capisce?”

  “I will do that Giuseppe Dichenzo.”

  He winked and she blushed.

  The door opened, “You’re in here chilling, what’s up brother?” Alfonzo said looking in at the occupants. “Let’s go. Time to do damage.”

  “That is mio fratellino who is without manners. Alfonzo this is Kefilwe, she saved your daughter.”

  Alfonzo’s eyebrow rose. “My daughter wouldn’t have needed saving if she hadn’t lured my wife here in the first place. Whatever she’s done after is from guilt. She should thank me for not capping her ass. Vamanos fratello!” Alfonzo sneered in contempt.

  Kefilwe bowed her head in shame. His words were true.

  “That was not nice,” Giuseppe chastised as he stepped out the vehicle and stretched like he had all day.

  “I’m not here on vacation.” Alfonzo had on a T-shirt and a bullet-proof vest. Tucked under an arm were a semi-automatic and another weapon at his belt. He saw the lights from the encampment in the distance as they went through the thicket of trees which hid its existence. He started away with Tony and gestured for the other men to spread out. “Pick as many off as you can. I just need to get to the women. Don’t kill that bastard Gamba, save him for my knife.”

  “No, he is mine. He made Allie cry.”

  “She’s my daughter; I get to take him out.”

  “But it takes a village, and I am the elder.”

  “Oh coño, where have I heard that line before?”

  They quieted when the building was a few kilometers away. The trees partly obscured their arrival. Alfonzo tried to count the number of men, shit there were far more than he expected. Shit…shit…shit! He looked at his brother. “Mucho gracias for getting Allie, I owe you when this is over.”

  “Have your woman reason with Shanda.”

  “That’s out of my control but a drink I can do.” With a lift of his chin, Alfonzo signaled it was time. His first shot hit, second shot, third shot and fourth were accurate. Men began dropping from their bullets and he sought the cover of chaos and night to rush for the building.

  The heat even in the late hours of the southern continent caused trickles of sweat to appear on his forehead. His hair clamped to his scalp and the rolling perspiration ran in his eyes. He blinked many times when he made it to the side of the building. Giuseppe was in pace. They would have made it in, got the women had not Kefilwe shouted to Gamba to come out and to take her and let the foreign women go.

  Motherfuck!

  The sonovabitch came out all right. Selange was held in front of him as a shield. The coward’s gun was pushed beneath her chin. “Drop your guns, or she dies.”

  Alfonzo dropped his gun. Giuseppe cursed, “Stronzo, women!”

  The soldiers surrounded the foreigners and gathered their weapons. Gamba had them tied and put on their knees. Alfonzo and Giuseppe refused to kneel. Both men were kicked in the back and struck the dirt.

  Giuseppe grumbled. “Cazzo!” A boot held him down.

  Alfonzo flexed and hopped to his feet. He wanted to look the man in the eye if a bullet was meant for his head. “Take the shot pendejo,” he spat, “but do it like a man!”

  Gamba smirked as he handed Selange off to a soldier. Ari was presented with her mouth and hands bound. Taken to the end of the encampment she was shoved down on her knees. Giuseppe growled and lifted the weight from his back, sending the weaker man off balance before he was struck by the butt of a gun and to the dirt he sprawled. Dazed he rolled over and stared up at the nose of weapons aimed at his head.

  “Stay!” One of the men said to the angry Don.

  Gamba surveyed the group that had come to take back the women. “Where is your army? Are you not very wealthy? By the way, thank you for the money. Y
ou are a man of your word. Had you not done this I would have kept mine.”

  “I doubt it,” Alfonzo retorted. “Thieves can’t be trusted.”

  “I have stolen nothing. It is your people who have stolen what is not yours.” He then removed the bracelet from his belt. “This belongs to Africa.”

  “Nah, it belongs to mi familia. To Semira, puta!”

  The African’s nostrils flared. “You foreign men think you can take whatever you please.”

  “And what do you believe we took?”

  “Semira.”

  “You don’t know your history. Semira was not taken she chose freely.”

  “Do you love your woman?” Gamba asked.

  Alfonzo answered. “Yes.”

  Gamba smirked and gestured for the soldier to bring Kefilwe forward. His eyes were challenging to the blue eyes. His hand gripped Kefilwe by the neck. He brought her closer and kissed her roughly. Alfonzo saw the hand movement and charged forward but was yanked back and restrained by several soldiers who held his legs and arms. “Puta, fucking coward!” he spat as the jeweled blade was thrust in Kefilwe’s abdomen.

  Giuseppe’s eyes were slits of pure hatred. A strangling noise emitted from Kefilwe’ s throat and with slow precision the African cut her open and shoved her lifeless body to the ground like dirt.

  Selange screamed at her nightmare given life and the feeling of helplessness that she could not save the woman. A sister in spirit had fallen. She saw the oppressed whose voices were silenced and freedoms stripped away. Tears streamed down her face as she peered at the body discarded like trash. She hiccupped in sorrow for all abused women and in her tears her eyes drifted to Alfonzo.  He was chivalrous, honorable and a loving person. Proud, her chin lifted, peace became her soul. In the face of death she too would stand…proud!

  The murderer snarled. “I loved her but she led you here,” he said as he looked upon Giuseppe who wanted to tear him to shreds. “One by one you will watch me fuck the women and then butcher them like the whores they are. Then you will know what my family endured when Semira brought humiliation upon the house of Ghahanzwe.”

  Gamba noticed Alfonzo’s ring then. The jewel encrusted crest of the foreigner’s house. He’d take it, the diamonds were flawless and the blue carats glittering, magnificent. “Remove the ring!”

  Alfonzo smirked. “See you are a thief and a puta. Sometimes people can’t hide who they are.”

  He struck Alfonzo in the jaw but he didn’t stumble.

  Stand.

  Alfonzo spit the blood out of his mouth to Gamba’s boot. “Untie me if you’re a real man and stop acting like a punk, pendejo.”

  “The ring, take it off!” Gamba ordered again.

  “It’s stuck.”

  Another punch to the gut met a head-butt response from Alfonzo and Gamba stumbled back. Moyo jabbed Alfonzo several times in the ribs and Alfonzo doubled over. He sucked in the pain; yep he heaved that shit in and out. His brolic shoulders rolled back and he stood vertical. In el barrio he got his ass jumped many times and damn this wasn’t anything. He laughed in Gamba’s face. To bow a Nuyorican would take more than love taps!

  “Hold out his hand!” Gamba ordered.

  Stand.

  Alfonzo stood tall in the face of adversity.

  Never bow. Stand the fuck up like a man!

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

   

   

   

  “So, it is stuck!” The African glared as he tried to force the ring from Alfonzo’s finger. He tugged hard again but the jeweled ring remained firm above Alfonzo’s knuckle and the smuggler without honor became incensed. “Put him down and chop it off!” he ordered the soldiers.

  It took four to slam the fighting mobster to the earth. Alfonzo’s face twisted in the dirt as his arms and legs were spread eagled. He struggled, closing his mind to Selange’s screams and cursed in his head. The heat of Africa brought sweat dripping down his neck. He could feel the warmth on his belly from the soil. Relentless and inert. Side to side his head turned. Stripped of weapons, kissing dirt and with guns to their heads the soldati struggled, shots resounded as three of Alfonzo’s men broke free to aid him and were shot in their backs.

  Giuseppe’s growl was deep, Tony calm and squinting looking at the options as he eyed something in the trees. The women is who Alfonzo worried about Ari a distance away and Selange close in spirit but so far as she struggled and wailed at the soldiers who didn’t give a damn about a woman’s pleas. The Dons were outnumbered and without a bigger army they were brought down to earth. Alfonzo battled for life and was held immobile by force and tremendous weight.

  “Get the hell off of him you sonovabitch!” Selange shouted but the men laughed at her as one unclipped a knife and kneeled to Alfonzo’s hand.

  Giuseppe struggled and more piled on his back and his face was shoved further to the earth where worms and ants had burrowed. His muffled growls were not silenced. He needed to get up. Fratellino could not die this way.

  Punched and kicked he struggled to get free. Watch. How could he observe the butchery of someone he loved? Hands and feet bound he fought.

  Tears dripped from a helpless wife’s face. Choked by the stench of her captive, she called upon every lost soul, her mother’s spirit and appealed to Semira for womanly strength. The gun at the man’s waist she seized and she fired a shot and then kept shooting until the knife holder hit the ground. Punches struck her side and she absorbed it with a cough, and then she twisted into a kiss of death and shot the face of her captor before another shot struck a soldier holding Giuseppe and then she took off in search of cover of the trucks.

  Chaos, the kind when armed men are shocked that a woman could be as deadly is what gave her the time to sprint before their guns fired at her. She moved from the all-terrain vehicles, and ran for her life as a clatter of gunfire and men pursued. She hauled ass to the trees.  Her eyes danced with happiness when she saw Alfonzo on his feet gripping weapons in each hand, firing and yelling in Spanish for her to keep moving. He then hurried to his brother’s side and she raced on knowing they now had a chance to escape. The glaring sun played a trick on her vision. A woman sprinter, dressed in earth tone fatigues, shiny gloss hair held away from her face by a sparkly clip broke from the far end of the brush. With determination of a deadly soldier she raced, guns in hand firing left and right in swivel motions without stopping. Muzzle flashes from trees gave her extra cover as she rushed forward. Fast as a gazelle, light on the feet, agile and accurate she mowed down soldiers in the encampment. To Ari in the distance is where she ran. Before she reached Ari she sent ahead a bullet which struck the skull of the soldier poised to execute the woman.

  Others emerged from nature’s foliage and joined in the one-sided fight to level the field.

  Bianca breathed through the heat, focused and lethal. Her aim was to get to the unarmed woman and shield her with her life. Shoulder contact designed to topple a person sent a shaken Ari to the ground. Bianca spun to face the mayhem in a prone position firing at several soldiers with both guns. She scampered back, ordering Ari to do the same, directing her to move her ass faster in Italian and go beneath the unoccupied SUV’s wheel. They made it underneath, given armor as Bianca picked off soldiers to abort their pursuit of Selange who she passed. Blood spurt from legs, faces and arms as they belly-flopped to the ground. Other shots were heard, Alfonzo too was taking men down as the chaos ensued. Fighting, brothers and those who lived were in action, limbs and screams of dying men were the sounds under the sun as they were aided by the continent’s Protezi
oni.

  Then Bianca spotted Nico, lethal master in motion. Where her swiftness came from the discipline of running, his, many years of killing with limbs and guns. Active muscles accustomed to pushing the limits dragged a man, snapped a neck and made holes in a body while sprinting. He was on the east side of a jeep. Legs bulged and flexed to wrap around an adversary putting him permanently to sleep. Then around the jeep, his head poked out and retracted when gunfire nearly blew open his skull. And in a game of, Where Am I? Nico circled around the opposite side of the vehicle to surprise the soldier with a bullet to his brain for not guessing right.

  Bianca quickly unbound Ari, then reached to her waist for a spare weapon and placed it in Ari’s hand. “Use it, I must go,” Bianca said before she leaped from the ground leaving Ari protected with a weapon and the SUV’s armor.

  In the fray Bianca rushed, coming behind men, shooting them in their backs and skulls. To Nico’s side is where her feet planted and he smirked. “You’re right; you’re much faster than I am.”

  “Sí and your Ari lives.”

  “Grazie.”

  Then they moved in unison, Bianca a tree’s shadow, executing with lethal precision lesser trained men. Guns are not accurate when the holder’s aim is shaky, eye hand coordination unfocused and besieged by expert killers.

  Professional executioners cleared the dry field, staining the Motherland with liquid red and held alive the African smuggler and his kin who set these acts in motion.

  Nico’s eyes searched for Alfonzo once he’d held and kissed Ari. He hadn’t forgotten his other duty when he walked his wife away from the body missing a face. Gratitude leaped from his chest as he winked at Bianca when he passed and mouthed, “Grazie.”

   

                                                      ***

   

   

  Selange took a step back. A dry twig snapped and the soldier’s ears heard. The soldier rushed at the trees where she’d hidden during the fighting. The gunfire ceased but she could not run or she’d risk getting shot in the back. She stayed there until she saw the foot and swung with both hands clamped into one fist at his stomach. His gun dropped and he quickly bent to recover the fallen weapon. His fingers were within inches when popping sounds filled the air. He tumbled to the earth with lead in the ass.