by Brook Wilder
Parking the ATV behind the thick trunk of an old oak, we dismounted and lay on the ground. The bar itself was about a hundred and fifty yards away from where we waited, in the middle of this wide, miniature land basin. At least two-thirds of the land behind the building incorporated the crest of a small hill just behind the tree line giving us the great spots to spread ourselves out, stay unseen, and all aim down towards the bar itself. The other side, beyond the road that ran past it, the land was clear, open, and with a shallow downhill angle. It was almost nature had provided the perfect barrel for us to shoot our fish in.
Piper lay next to me. Her face looked serious, but not scared. “Are you okay?” I asked her. Her expression didn’t change but she gave me a thumbs up.
“How long?” she inquired.
“Any minute.”
“Why don’t I have a rifle?”
“Do you know how to shoot one?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
I smiled at her as she pouted, then she pointed down to the road, where it carved through the low hill to enter the clearing. A black Mercedes appeared and stopped, almost exactly where Piper and I had waited the first night I brought her here, where she’d taken off her shorts to ride naked.
We had a dozen guys hanging out in front of the bar, along with most of the bikes, to give the impression the place was still full. As instructed, they retreated inside as soon as they saw the car approaching. What the dicks in the car couldn’t see, was the brothers running straight out the back of the clubhouse and dispersing into the woods as well, leaving the place empty.
The Mercedes rolled on, fully appearing in the clearing followed by another Mercedes, an Escalade, then a big, fixed axle cargo truck, and a van. The cars, the SUV, and the van stopped short, about fifty feet from the bar, but the truck just kept barreling on. It wasn’t going too fast, taking a straight line over the rough terrain, but it sure wasn’t stopping.
It drove right on into the first row of bikes, crushing some under its wheels and sending others flying through the air to knock over even more, then it plowed through the second row as well. There were going to be some tears among the brothers tonight. Still, the truck didn’t stop. It thundered on and smashed straight into the bar, just to the right of the central cabin.
The moment it struck, a dozen or more men jumped out the back of it. They all carried shotguns or rifles and immediately began shooting up the building. More men exited the other vehicles, at least another dozen, and moved to join their buddies, firing at the club as well. It was time. I signaled to Marco, who was about forty feet to my right, at a little higher elevation, and he aimed down the scope of the hunting rifle he was carrying. One shot and he dropped one of the mobsters.
The others were so busy shooting up the bar they didn’t seem to notice, but I knew the brothers did. I knew the guys that had been hiding by each end of the road were making barricades now, blocking off the Mob’s escape routes, while the rest of us opened fire. At this distance, it was tough to pick out a target and hit it without a magnifying scope, which is why I had Marco and a few others dotted around with hunting rifles. Those of us with carbines and regular rifles just opened up at the whole group of bad guys, knowing that with enough bullets flying that way, enough of them would get hit.
The wise guys started falling and the rest began looking panicking and around confused. The smarter ones ducked for cover behind their cars but, as we had them almost surrounded on three sides, the was nowhere they could really hide. Others switched their targets, firing blindly at the trees to hopefully hit one of their unseen attackers, but they quickly fell too.
One of them actually looked like he was shooting in our direction. I reloaded and fired six shots at him before he went down. As he did, though, one of his rounds hit the mud a foot and a half in front of Piper, spraying up dirt over her with a dull thud. She yelped and scooted over closer to me, but answered my concerned expression with a quick peck on the cheek.
One of the Mercedes started moving, dust kicking up from its rear tires as it slid around in a U-turn to speed out the way it came in. I concentrated fire on the few mobsters still standing, knowing the car wouldn’t get far. The driver would find his way blocked and be gunned down as he tried to get out or turn and escape the other way.
Less than a minute. That’s how long it took, how long we were shooting for, before the last guy dropped. Silence washed over the clearing, along with a thin film of light gray smoke that began slowly drifting upwards. I signaled to Marco again, who let out a piercing, two-fingered whistle to sound the all clear.
Piper jumped up. I figured she was anxious to make sure Vinnie had been taken care of. I picked myself up too, turning to face her. I was probably about to say something lovey-dovey to her, when I saw her face. Her expression switched from determined hope to actual terror in the blink of an eye. I was about to ask her what was wrong, but she just grabbed me and spun me around, pointing.
I saw Marco, still holding his rifle and looking down to the bar but, behind him, there were three figures I didn’t recognize and they all had guns.
“Marco!” I yelled, lifting my AR-15 and taking aim. He looked up at me in surprise. “Drop!”
He didn’t ask why, didn’t look around to see the trouble, he just launched himself down the shallow hill. An instant before the ground beneath him was torn up by shotgun shells. I fired the rest of my clip at the mobsters who had appeared, aiming a dozen or so bullets center mass and watching them drop to the floor. My rifle clicked empty with one man still standing.
Piper was on her knees beside me, firing her Glock at him. He was easily thirty yards away so she didn’t have much hope of hitting him, but it made him keep his head down. I drew my SIG and fired too, as I saw Marco lining up his shot.
The guy went down. Piper jumped back up.
“I got him! Did you see that?” she hugged me. I looked over at Marco, who gave me the all-clear, smoking rising from the barrel of his gun.
“I’m pretty sure it was Marco. Relax, killer,” I smiled at her. She looked upset for a second, then a wave of relief seemed to wash over her face.
“Oh, thank God,” she sighed. “I’m not sure I could handle actually shooting someone yet.” She hugged me again and I held her, one handed. We got the word out and searched. We found no more mobsters in the woods but we did discover that this small gang had out flanked and killed two of our guys. I guessed they’d been let out of the truck early to either do what they did or to wait in reserve. They must have decided to act when they heard the shooting start.
***
“Wow,” whispered Piper as we stood over the tree dead men. “This one was Pauley, remember him?”
“How could I forget?” I replied, “Especially as this one was Rico.” I recognized him from my first standoff with Vinnie.
“All this death and violence, though, you’re okay with it?” I asked her as I held my hand out to help her up onto the ATV.
“Maybe a few years ago I might have been more upset,” she replied. “Do I think it’s right that you two armies of men should be blowing each other to pieces? No. But I don’t blame you guys. When it’s all said and done, Vinnie is responsible for this. Right now, I just hope that asshole is dead down there.”
My crew was already sorting through the bodies. It was a gruesome business, but some of the mobsters were still alive and needed putting down. I left Piper on the four wheeler and checked through the dead. They’d all been laid face up already so I just had to scan over them. But there was no Vinnie among them. Fuck!
I got on the phone to the guys at the entrance barricade. They told me the car that made a break for it had a fat, bald guy who took six bullets to bring down. Still not Vinnie. I looked over at Piper, sitting there with a hopeful look in her eyes. I gently shook my head and watched her face fall.
CHAPTER 27: Piper
I should have been scared, sickened, appalled even, by the slaughter at the bar. But the wh
ole time, even as Theo was firing off round after round into the attacking group, All I was wishing for was to see Vinnie dead among them.
That man had destroyed lives, terrified and tortured me, and done any number of other horrible things that I’d probably never know anything about but, most of all, I realized, he’d made me meaner. I was never above using violence to fix things, especially if someone was hurting me or someone I cared about, but I cared about life. I could never have watched dozens of men get mown down before, not without caring. Now, to me, they were just bad guys and I was cheering for us, for the good guys. Hell, as soon as Marco was in danger, I was there, shooting away at random guys that were threatening a friend of mine.
I was grateful, though, when Theo told me I hadn’t actually shot anyone. I didn’t feel quite ready for that, unless I had no other choice.
I didn’t know Theo was such a badass, though. He didn’t come across as a killer. Just from what he’d shown me and from what I’d seen, I knew he had fought before, maybe even killed, but it was different to actually see it. I should have been afraid of him. Instead, I felt safe with him. He was killing for us, for me. And, instead of thinking it was bad, I was urging him on. We were on the side of the righteous, after all.
But I couldn’t go into the killing ground. I wasn’t ready for that, I wasn’t that far gone, yet. The bikers were sorting through the bodies, like soldiers mopping up after a battle. You never see that in the movies, the aftermath. The hero walks away, usually with the girl, leaving death and destruction behind him. You never see the poor souls who have to come in clean up the mess, wipe up the blood, and pick up the dead. Yet, here we were. Every so often, a single gunshot would go off, frying my nerves and announcing that another mobster had been found alive, then taken care of.
Theo scouted through the bodies but finally had to admit to me that Vinnie was not among them. Icy fingers crawled up my spine and, suddenly, I felt eyes watching me. I spun my head around, behind me, off towards the woods either side of me, but I saw nothing. I still felt like he was here, watching me, laughing and about to appear behind me. I shivered. This had to end.
***
In pretty short order, the truck was pulled out of the bar and the dead bodies loaded in the back. A couple of bikers escorted it away on a pair of the bikes that weren’t trashed. Theo told me they were just going to drop it into a canyon about twenty miles from here. He said it could be years before anyone found it.
The bar was pretty wrecked, though, with a big hole was punched through the front wall. A lot of the guys were really broken up by their damaged bikes but, Link told me, they could mostly be fixed, as could the bar.
“At least most of the booze survived,” he smiled at me.
Theo called Link and Marco into the cabin. It was dark outside now, but the normal party atmosphere and thumping soundtrack I associated with this place was missing. It was worryingly quiet. Marco handed a beer to each of us. I nearly finished mine in one long pull. I hadn’t even felt thirsty until I’d put the bottle to my lips.
“Better now?” Theo teased me. I just flipped him off and finished my drink.
“He’s not going to stop,” I announced. The guys looked at me. “Vinnie. He wasn’t here today. Now, though, it’s not Theo and I he’s gunning for, it’s the whole gang.”
“She’s right,” said Theo, putting his hand on my knee but speaking to the others. “And it looks like we’ve done enough damage to piss the rest of the mob off. This massacre is going to get back to the bosses in New York.”
“Maybe now,” began Link “they’ll think twice before coming up here shooting.”
“Maybe, but Vinnie won’t,” I told him.
“If he has the support of the other families, they’ll level this place and then go after your families,” said Theo, making the other two look uneasy in their chairs. “If he doesn’t, he’ll go rogue, killing off Angels one at a time until he’s stopped or we’re all dead.”
“So, you’re saying we need to go and hit him first,” said Marco, finishing his beer. Theo nodded.
“How, dog?” whined Link. “We don’t even know where he’s hold up.”
The room went quiet. No one was looking at anyone else, until I turned to Theo. “GPS,” I said.
“What?”
“Those high-end Mercs and that Caddy must have GPS,” I announced, happily. “If you guys haven’t totally blasted at least one of them to bits, what are the chances the GPS has its history recorded? Hell, it might even have Vinnie’s address saved as ‘home’!”
Well, Goddamn!” smiled Marco.
“You guys should drive a car once in a while,” I laughed.
We hurried back outside and we’re in luck to find the second Mercedes barely had a scratch on it. It had keyless ignition but the key was safely sitting in the cup holder. I sat in the passenger seat while Theo turned the car on and looked through the computer. Sure enough, ‘home’ was set to an expensive place in Calabasas. I’d heard Vinnie mention the town before, so that had to be it.
“Okay,” said Theo, a purposefulness returning to his voice for the first time since the battle, “Marco, I need you to organize shit here. Link, you, me and two enforcers are going to whack this asshole.”
“And don’t forget me,” I told him. Marco and Link looked awkwardly at one another, then slid out from the back seat they’d been occupying.
“Seriously?” Theo said to me.
“Seriously what?”
“I can’t do this hit if I’m worrying about you the whole time.”
“Whereas I can stay here and worry about you?” I was raising my voice, mad that he thought he could just go off and leave me. “You want me to just wait here until I find out about you being killed when Vinnie pops up and puts a knife to my throat?”
He was quiet for a long moment. My anger faded as quickly as it had flared up. He looked so sweet, so lost when I shouted at him. I had a feeling I was never going to win an argument with him, he was just too damn sexy.
“You’re right,” he conceded softly. “But you can be driver only. We go in to take care of him, you stay in the car, got it?” I saluted my obedience. He leaned over and kissed me on the lips, long and soft. “You’re amazing, lady. I love you so much, I could never let a shit like Vinnie take me away from you.”
I felt a small thrill in my heart, because I knew he meant it. I could barely believe that after so many years of men I couldn’t care less about, I had met one who would do anything for me and that I could not get enough of. I felt like I’d won the jackpot lotto every time I looked at him. Now, we just had to remove this last obstacle to our freedom and happiness. Just one more thing, it felt like there was always just one more thing.
***
Breaker, a middle-aged white guy with a square jaw, a short, military-style haircut, and hard, sinewy muscles under his leathery skin, and Big Al, another Caucasian who was nearly as big as Tiny, but owed far more to fat than muscle, joined Link, Theo, and I on this little day trip. We loaded rifles and shotguns into the trunk of the Mercedes and left the bar as it was heading towards midnight. The rebuilding work seemed to have been put on hold until tomorrow, as beers were being opened and meat put on the grill. Music was playing, too, as we rolled down the hill to the highway.
I drove the Mercedes, partly because I’d always fantasized about owning one of these, but mainly because the guys insisted they took their bikes. Theo was able to ride Frost’s old Harley, as the guys had been able to repair it before the fight had begun, in the little workshop they had out back.
The idea was to take different routes into LA and attract less attention. The chances, according to Link, of a random mob hit on Steel Angels patch wearers were considerably reduced after we took out the bulk of their foot soldiers this afternoon, but Theo had everyone take off their vests anyway, with assurances not to tell Tiny and not get thrown into the pit.
We met up at in the parking lot of a closed plastic surgeon’s office
about three miles east of the Calabasas Park Estates. This was the Kardashian’s stomping ground, after all. The guys parked their bikes in a row and everyone squeezed into the car with me. It took a few minutes to reach the community but, with the blacked out windows of the Mercedes showing nothing in the night’s darkness, and the rent-a-cop in the gatehouse clearly shit-scared of the mob, the gates opened up easily for us without me even having to stop.
Vinnie’s place was way over the back of the estate, in a little world all of its own. Long after the regular million dollar listings had stopped lining the road, the ranch came into view. I parked up on top of the hill, looking down over the property, and we sat and watched.
Looking down the hill and around the bend, we could see another gate, this one with wise guys guarding it. From there, the road snaked around to the left and down to the house. It was too dark to make out much, but the main house was lit up with soft amber lights and we could see a pair of guys circling it every fifteen minutes. The main house had another apartment attached to the side, probably for guards, with a walkway that crossed the drive as it continued out towards the back. Theo, though, was sure Vinnie would be in the main building. Most likely in a room on the second floor that faced out away from the city. I could see the dark outline of the Santa Monica mountains in the distance. It was probably quite a view in the daylight.