“The ring?” I asked in a low tone.
“Fine by me,” Shovelhead replied in the same tone.
Jake had always kept the Panhead neat, clean and organized. In order to do that when you had a bunch of rowdy bikers who liked to get a little wild when they partied, you had to have strict rules and be ready to enforce them. Though no one could remember Jake ever using the pistol on anyone, no one had any doubt that he would. So, when a fight boiled up, the combatants went out the back door to what was referred to as “the ring.”
The ring was formed by the delivery alley that came into the back of the Panhead, which was L-shaped and closed off the end of the alley. The other side of the alley was another building facing the adjacent street. In essence, three sides were closed off by brick walls and the fourth was where the crowd gathered to watch. If it was a really good fight, they pulled up crates or carried stools out to sit on and watch.
Shovelhead started for the back door and I started to follow along behind, but Pepper put an arm across my chest to stop me. “Not yet,” he said.
I glared at him. “I’m gonna tear him to pieces,” I growled.
“I know you are, but that son of a bitch will cheap-shot you when you step through the door. I’ve seen him do it. Keep your head, Razor.”
“I always do,” I replied. To tell you the truth, for the first time in a very long time, until Pepper stopped me, I had lost complete control of my temper. Seeing Kelly on the floor, and the bruise that was rising up on the side of her face, had brought me beyond my normal calm. Had I stormed right into the fight in that state of mind, Shovelhead might have actually had a chance to beat me. When I kept my head, remained calm and thought out my strategy, I was completely unstoppable.
Pepper had been right about Shovelhead trying a cheap shot. He’d stepped to the side of the door and was waiting for me, but Bird and Junior stepped through the door first, spoiling his plan, and he was forced to step out into the ring.
I’d only been in the ring twice since I’d joined the Brotherhood. Shovelhead had been there at least a dozen times. He tended to be a hothead and always getting into a fight with somebody. He’d won ninety percent of them, too. I was about to lower his percentage. I stepped out into the ring and started to circle slowly to the left, studying the ring. The footing could be uneven out there and I didn’t need any surprises.
“You know that your bitch used to ride with an LD?” he sneered.
I was pretty sure that he was trying to piss me off. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t give a damn. I knew she used to date a biker, but I never asked any other details.
“Not just any LD either,” he continued. “She used to be Sabre’s bitch.”
That stung a bit. Kelly had been sleeping with the enemy? I tried to push it out of my mind. I needed to focus. “You just gonna talk like a bitch?”
That pissed him off, and he charged. I straightened him up with an upper-cut that cracked on his chin, and then missed with a leg-sweep that would have put him on his back. For a tall man, he had decent speed, and I took a hard hook to the ribs that made me catch my breath for a second. I rolled out and reset for another attack.
We exchanged a number of jabs to the body and the head as we both moved in on each other. One thing about Shovelhead, he could punch. He rattled me several times with blows that would have sent a lesser man to the dirt. I couldn’t have stood in there taking the beating, and I didn’t intend to. I was working on his psyche. I wanted him to believe that I was a slugger just like he was, and I wanted him coming at me up top. I had to take a pounding to set him up, but when I did, it worked like a charm.
I sidestepped his overzealous right hook, which was meant to send me to the dirt, and leg whipped him, sending him crashing into the brick wall face first. I could tell that the blow stunned him, but he came up out of it. When he did, he was holding a blade down low.
“I’m gonna gut you, Razor,” he said, coming at me with blood streaking down his face from splitting his head open on the wall.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have gone and done that,” I responded, reaching to my ankle scabbard and drawing out my own blade.
“Fight’s over,” Jake called out.
“The hell it is!” Shovelhead roared.
“The fight is over,” Jake repeated. This time, he leveled the pistol at Shovelhead and waited for him to twitch. “We aren’t going to have a killing here.”
Jake had just saved Shovelhead’s life. I said before that Jake liked to keep his place clean. A fight was one thing, but a killing attracted unwanted attention from the law, and he wasn’t going to let that happen to the main hangout of the SB.
“This ain’t over, Razor,” Shovelhead snarled as he sheathed his knife and then started back into the bar.
I just shrugged and put my knife away. I thought of that line of Val Kilmer’s from the movie Tombstone, but it would have been too cheesy to say it out loud.
Chapter 14: Sabre
I had a problem and I needed to fix it. My profits had gotten worse every month for about three months straight. I knew what the problem was. Both the Silent Brotherhood and the KOTR, the Knights of the Road, and the smaller allied clubs had been expanding their territories at my expense.
“We’ve gotta stop these motherfuckers cold,” I told Gonzo.
“Which one you want to hit?” he asked.
It was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday and Gonzo and I were sitting in the Skull ‘N’ Dagger having a few beers and trying to come up with a solution. The hit that had taken out Clap had been a stern warning to me to back down my operations, but with my profits dwindling, that was becoming more difficult.
“It’s a contradiction,” I growled. “They send an enforcer to tell me to back off, but the squeeze from the other two is making me need to keep pushing the limits.” I knew what was going on, but I wasn’t ready to admit it; not just yet. I didn’t have to. Gonzo did it for me.
“I’m starting to think that the Godfather is pissed off at us and is starting to drive us out,” he suggested. “Shit, Sabre, even the Highwaymen are starting to gain some ground, and they haven’t been doing much for several years.”
Messing with the Highwaymen would have brought on a shit storm of epic proportions from the Godfather. They were an older club that had slowly backed down their operations as the average age of the membership started pushing the 60s. It was understood that they were to be left alone and allowed operate. Nobody would mess with them.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m thinking that the KOTR is getting a little too big for their britches.”
“You want to work the allied clubs?” Gonzo asked.
The usual way of backing off another club was to do so with some force, but the bigger clubs didn’t usually square off with each other. Doing so would start an all-out war that would bring way too much attention from the DEA, FBI and the locals. The allied clubs were smaller and less conspicuous. Working in their areas and making certain that they understood that they were to back off was a way of taking some of the profits away from your rivals and hitting them where it hurt the most. That was the usual way of doing things, but I’d been working that way and I was tired of pussy-footing around. I wanted to send a real message.
“No, I want to hit back, and I want to hit back hard.”
“Jesus, Sabre, you’re talking about starting a war,” Gonzo responded.
“You got a problem with that?” I glared at him and waited for him to answer. It was, of course, a loaded question. I knew he wouldn’t go against me. He was a great lieutenant and was pretty strong in his own right, but he would back me.
“No. No problem.”
“Good,” I grinned. “Because I’ll need you more than ever.”
“You gonna hit the SB?” His eyes were wide with both fear and admiration.
“That’s a possibility,” I replied. I’d kept that idea on a back burner. Hitting them directly might not be good for the future of the Lost Disciples
. The Godfather had his favorites and the SB was included in that list, but KOTR wasn’t. “But we’ll wait to do that one. Right now I want to hit the KOTR. You know, push back and send a message back up the chain.”
There was another reason that I wanted to push back a little bit. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the hit on Clap had been ordered by an enforcer. I had a suspicion that it was a hit by one of those smartasses from the Silent Brotherhood. The best way to find out for sure was to hit the KOTR. If there was a response, it would come from the Godfather. If there wasn’t a response, then I’d know that it was an SB operation that had taken out Clap.
The whole mess sometimes reminded me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Was it rabbit season or duck season? Who was trying to fool whom with what, and making it look like it was someone else? I didn’t have time to play the mind games, and I didn’t have the patience either. While those bitches were playing games, I’d start kicking ass and taking names.
“KOTR is a better choice,” Gonzo agreed after several minutes.
I could tell that he was hesitant about starting a war, even with the KOTR. He had reason to be. Though they were weaker, they were solid, and it wouldn’t be a cake walk. I considered challenging him on it but, to be completely honest, it was better that he was a little bit scared. Being scared made people concentrate more. “You’re going to lead the show.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I’ll be right in the thick of it, but I want you to take point.”
“Gee, thanks,” he chuckled. He took a long draw on the fresh mug of beer that had just been placed in front of him. “When?”
“Soon,” I replied. “Our profits need to start turning around pretty quick.”
“Alright,” he said, taking another long sip.
What I hadn’t told Gonzo—in fact, hadn’t told anyone—was that I was beginning to develop an idea for penetrating the Silent Brotherhood. It wasn’t an easy plan and it would take some time to develop, but I knew that if I could start disrupting them internally, then I could work on splitting them and working on a takeover. To date, I had only been talking to someone who was inside an ally club, but he seemed to have a good ear for what was going on inside the SB. That was good for the time being, but I wanted to work into the actual club and get someone inside there.
Trying to hit the SB head on would never work. If the rumors about them were true, they were all silent and deadly killers, not like the tough bunch that I had in the Lost Disciples. My guys were tough and could hit you hard in a brawl, but they would never stand against guys who used their heads and killed with precision. No, the best way to take down the SB was to weaken their financial base and then get inside and start splitting them apart. The first move in that campaign was to strengthen the position of the LD. To do that, I needed the grey area. To own the grey area, I needed to weaken or destroy the KOTR.
“Strap in, Gonzo,” I said, slapping him on the back. “We’re in for one hell of a ride, but when we get off this wild hog, we’ll be sittin’ pretty. You with me?”
“Hundred percent,” Gonzo replied, raising his mug to me.
I raised my mug toward him in response. Better make it a hundred and ten. This could get ugly fast.
Chapter 15: Sabre
Gonzo had come up with one hell of a plan, and I was eager to carry it out. Although it took a little bit more time to develop than I would have liked, I made sacrifices, because it was the very best way to go about weakening the Knights of the Road.
The plan started off in a similar way to what we typically did with our allies. In fact, we brought them in for certain parts of it, but kept them more or less in the background and mostly in the dark about what we were doing. In order for the plan to work, it had to be obvious to the KOTR that the Lost Disciples were the ones who were making a move on their territory.
The first phase was to begin forcing our operations into known KOTR or KOTR-allied territories. We didn’t do it gently or subtly. It was a bold and concentrated push. That push did two things. It pissed off the KOTR and forced them to do something about it, and it helped us recoup some of the cash that we had been losing over the last several months.
We were getting some pretty good intel from allies, but in the process of developing those sources, I got an even better gift, wrapped up neatly and better than Christmas. One of my trusted allies brought him into the LD fold. Though I had to be wary of him and test him, he was exactly what I was looking for in order to infiltrate and begin to divide the Silent Brotherhood. Initially, however, my only goal was to use him as another source of intel concerning the KOTR. As the second phase began, he was a valuable asset.
The second phase was to slowly start taking out KOTR members and making it very obvious that it was the Lost Disciples doing it. Our new SB friend had worked with the KOTR, sort of as a liaison between them and the Silent Brotherhood, so he knew who and where to pick them off. He also knew that we had caused one hell of a stir among them. His final test was to let us know when we could set the trap that would take them out.
Phase two also served another purpose. It helped support Al Gentry’s claim that the killings that had been going on were part of a dispute between bikers, and he was able to keep the investigation local instead of it getting into the hands of the FBI as a serial. It was dangerously close to happening anyway. Al told me about another hit that was similar to the one on Clap that had taken place in a suburb of Burbank.
I was pretty sure that when phase three hit, there wouldn’t be any more talk about a serial killer.
“Tommy is here,” Gonzo announced as he came into the kitchen.
Behind Gonzo was a tall, thick biker with the sort of face that reminded you of Dolph Lundgren. He nodded and grunted a greeting.
“So, Tommy,” I began, waving for him to take a seat at the kitchen table. I nodded toward the refrigerator and Gonzo jumped to get us a couple of beers. “What do you have for me?”
“You’ve stirred the hornet’s nest, just like you wanted to,” he replied. “They know that it’s you and they are getting ready for a war. They have even asked me to bring in the SB against you.”
“Hmmm,” I mused. “I hope you aren’t seriously considering that option, given our arrangement.”
“I have to run it by the SB leadership, but I’ll downplay it,” he responded. “They’d never get into that anyway. There’s nothing to be gained and plenty to lose.”
“For your sake,” I growled, leveling a steady gaze at him, “I hope we don’t see any SB anywhere near our operations.”
He met my challenge with a gaze of his own. For several seconds, he looked like he was seriously considering killing me. I gathered from that glare that he didn’t like being challenged. “There won’t be any SB.”
“Okay, so what is their plan?”
“Their plan is to hit your operation in the Hunt’s District.”
I nodded to Gonzo. “Let’s get set up for phase three, then.” I turned to Tommy. “When?”
“Tonight,” he replied.
“Jesus, Tommy, a little advanced notice would have been nice.”
“Best I could do,” he responded.
I nodded to Gonzo. “Make it happen.”
The Hunt’s District was an industrial area that got its name when the Hunt’s Corporation moved in and set up a major canning and distribution center several decades before. Other industries moved into the area, but since Hunt’s had always been the major player, it was still called the Hunt’s District.
Our operations in the Hunt’s District was a major portion of our own canning and distribution, only we didn’t use cans to package our product and it wasn’t tomato paste. It was well fortified on a regular basis and also fronted as a legitimate importing and exporting business. Unless someone dug deep and knew what they were looking for, they wouldn’t know that anything illegal was going on inside that warehouse.
The fact that KOTR knew about it was due to intel that we leaked, especiall
y for KOTR ears. It was part of the trap that we had intended to set from the beginning, and Tommy had been very useful in helping to bring that off as well.
I was pretty sure that they had placed people in various locations to watch the place, so we had trickled our own assets into the place little by little over the previous several days in anticipation of springing our trap. We sent in some major reinforcements via a couple of shipping containers once we knew when the hit was going down.
The exterior of the building looked exactly as it always did when Gonzo and I arrived on our bikes, making it look like we were there on a routine visit. My hope was that, with the pot sweetened by my presence, the KOTR would rush into their attack, hoping to get a shot at me. Making them rush into an operation that we were prepared to defend against shifted all advantage to my side. Don’t get me wrong, I can handle standing toe to toe and slugging it out, but I preferred to have all of the advantages over my opponent going in.
It had all been set up perfectly on my end and due to Tommy’s help. We set the trap and sprang it. The KOTR didn’t have a clue what they had walked into and most of them never had a chance to start putting things together. Those who realized that they’d been led into a trap figured it out too late and were cut down along with the rest. The moment the gunfire died out, Gonzo, myself and the majority of our assets were on our way out and the typical warehouse security force was all that remained when the police showed up.
“What the hell happened here?” Al Gentry asked, pulling me aside some hours later when I showed up acting like I was shocked to discover that my warehouse had been hit. “There’s dead bikers all over the place in there.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Were any of my boys hit?”
“Just a couple, but they seem to be alright,” he responded. “You gotta be straight with me, Sabre,” he said in a low tone. “I know you were packaging and distributing out of here. What are we going to find?”
“Nothing,” I replied, matching his tone. “We moved everything out of here weeks ago.”
AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN FICTION: BWWM ROMANCE: Billionaire Baby Daddy (Billionaire Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance) (Multicultural & Interracial Romance Short Stories) Page 143