by Brent Towns
“Shit!” he swore. This changed everything. There was no way he was about to sit idly by and allow them to kill an innocent. But who said he was innocent? He could be a rival. A drug seller.
“Or innocent, Reaper,” he said out loud.
Kane stared at the entrance. For some reason, there was only one man left on the door. He mulled over a new plan in his mind. “Come on, Reaper. You know how to think on your feet. You’re trained for it.”
When he spoke next, his voice was laced with sarcasm. “Got it! Frontal assault!”
Kane climbed out of the SUV and walked along the footpath, his rubber-soled boots almost silent on the concrete surface.
When he reached O’Brien’s car shrouded in darkness due to the absence of the street light, Kane tapped on the tinted side window. With a whirr, it came down, and a face stared out at him.
“What?”
Pop! Pop!
The man’s head snapped back, and he fell across the center console and onto the passenger seat.
Kane lowered the H&K and moved towards the guard on the door.
He kept to the shadows as much as he could until the last minute when he emerged twenty feet from the lone guard.
Without any hesitation, Kane walked up to the man and stopped in front of him.
The man stared at him and snapped, “What the fuck you want, boyo?”
He had a scarred face and a week’s worth of stubble on his jaw. Kane stared into his blue eyes and said, “I want to see your boss.”
“Fuck off!”
The thug reached out to push Kane away. Mistake!
There was a flurry of movement, and before the mob man knew what was happening, he had an H&K pressed hard up under his chin. Alarm spread across his face as he waited for his life to end.
“I’ll say it again. I want to see your boss, please!”
The room was cold and poorly lit. The solid, grey concrete walls gave off no warmth, and the floor sloped gently to the center where a chair had been placed over a grate. Convenient when it came to cleaning up after Colin O’Brien was finished with those unlucky enough to see its interior.
The group came down the steps, and once inside the room the Irishman snapped, “Get the bastard sat down, and we’ll see what he knows.”
O’Brien wasn’t a big man by any stretch. His hair was dyed black, and his face showed his age to be in his mid-fifties.
Bannon forced the struggling man onto the seat and held a gun to his head as one of the other men secured him to the metal legs.
Apart from O’Brien, Bannon, and the guard from the door, there were two mob men in the room. One was the man who’d accompanied the enforcer to kill Gilbert, and the other looked a lot like the mob boss himself.
Once the job was done, O’Brien said, “Right, let’s see what this copper prick has to say for himself. What were you doing in my warehouse, detective?”
There was no response from the man on the seat. He sat there. His head slumped forward onto his chest. O’Brien nodded to Bannon, and the big enforcer grabbed a handful of brown hair and wrenched the man’s head back with merciless brutality.
The seated man gasped, and pain registered on his bruised face.
“I asked you a question, Detective Lemming,” O’Brien snarled.
The detective gave him the best defiant look he could muster and said, “Screw you, asshole.”
The man who’d tied him up suddenly lashed out with a right fist and struck him in the mouth. The sound was akin to an ax biting into wood. Blood flowed freely, and Lemming spat out a tooth.
“The warehouse, Detective,” O’Brien reminded him.
Lemming ignored him and looked across at the man who resembled the mob boss. He gave him a bloody grin. “You proud of your pa, boy? Going to become an asshole like him too?”
Another blow smashed into Lemming’s face. This one crushed his nose with a sickening crunch, and more blood joined that flowing from the detective’s mouth.
O’Brien’s son slid his right hand inside his coat and came out with a Colt Double Eagle. He stalked over to the policeman and placed it against the side of his head.
“You were there searching for our shipment, weren’t you? Someone snitched. Who was it?”
Lemming spat blood on the floor.
The gun in the younger O’Brien’s fist crashed, and the detective’s head snapped sideways. The .45 caliber slug exploded from the other side, dragging blood and bone fragments with it.
“Christ, Sean, what did you go and do that for?” Colin O’Brien snarled at his son. “I wasn’t fucking finished with him!”
“He weren’t going to say nothing,” Sean shot back at his father.
“You got to keep a rein on that temper of yours, boy,” Bannon said stoically. “Before it gets you in a lot of trouble.”
“Shut your gob,” Sean snarled at the big enforcer. “Your job is to do what you’re told.”
Bannon’s face remained passive at the barb directed at him.
“Enough!” O’Brien shouted. He focused his anger on his son. “This is your mess. Clean it up! Roy, go and get the plastic.”
“Sure, boss,” said the mobster who’d tied Lemming up, and he started for the concrete stairwell.
He’d no sooner climbed the first step when there was a pop, pop sound, and he slumped to the floor.
“By Jaysus?” O’Brien gasped.
Kane appeared, pushing the front door guard ahead of him at arm’s reach. The silenced H&K was in his right hand, ready to fire again.
The tall, thin mobster who’d been with Bannon at Gilbert’s, tried for his gun. Kane identified the threat and shifted his aim. He put a bullet in the man’s chest.
“Son of a bastard?” Sean O’Brien snarled and brought his Colt up.
Kane shot him twice, once in the arm and then in the leg. Sean screamed in pain as blood spurted from the wounds.
Once more, Kane shifted his aim and shot Bannon in the top of his thigh. The leg crumpled under the big man, and he choked off a screech of pain as he fell to the hard floor.
Then the H&K settled on the face of Colin O’Brien.
The mobster never even flinched.
“Who the fuck are you?” he growled at Kane. “Did Isaac Kirov send you to kill me?”
Kane didn’t answer at first. Instead, he glanced at the still form in the chair. His teeth ground together, and his jaw clenched as anger flooded through him. On the floor, Sean moaned as waves of pain swept through him. Bannon, however, remained silent.
Finally, he said, “My name is John Kane.”
Recognition registered on O’Brien’s face. “You got big balls, Kane. I’ll give you that. But where do we go from here?”
“A good friend of mine died because of you,” Kane grated. “And after it was done, you decided to clean up the mess that was left behind so it couldn’t be traced back to you.”
“Nothing personal.”
“You made it personal when you acquired information about me and my sister.”
“Ah, yes. Where is the lovely Melanie, by the way? Just so it makes it easier to find her after we drop you in the East River along with Detective Lemming here.”
“She’s safe. You on the other hand …”
O’Brien’s face screwed up in a mask of rage. “Go on, do it! You come here to my place of business and threaten my life! Fucking asshole! But just you remember this after you kill me, my son will hunt you and your sister to the ends of the earth. And when he finds you, he’ll chop you both up into little pieces and feed you to the fish in New York Harbour!”
Kane glanced at Sean and crooked his head in the direction of the wounded O’Brien. “Is that your son?”
Before O’Brien could answer, Sean snarled through the pain of his wounds, “Bet your ass I am.”
Kane shot him; one well-placed round through the forehead.
“Sean!” O’Brien screeched. “You rotten bastard! You’re dead! Dead! De …”
The H&K
fired again and cut off O’Brien’s hysterical screams. The bullet slammed into his chest. Kane fired a second time, and O’Brien went down in an untidy heap. The gun then switched to the fallen Bannon. Kane said, “It’s up to you whether you live or die, you choose.”
“I’ll take life.”
“Am I ever going to see you again?”
Bannon looked at his fallen employer. “That’s doubtful.”
“Then I’ll leave.”
Kane disappeared up the steps, and once he was gone, Bannon dragged himself to O’Brien’s side. He checked for the man’s pulse. Then he looked at the stairwell where Kane had gone. He said in a low voice, “You should have made sure.”
Chapter 3
Retribution Arizona, 6 months later
The Greyhound bus shuddered to a halt beside an old Pepsi sign still displayed on the rusted framework of a rundown gas station. Another sign below it was damaged and read Arno’s. The dark-haired driver turned and stared at the man making his way along the aisle towards the front of the bus.
“Mister, are you sure you want to get off here? Retribution ain’t your average stop along the line.”
Kane paused by the man before he disembarked and said, “It’ll be fine.”
“Hell, I’ll take you to the next town if you want. It is only another thirty miles. The company can wear it.”
“This’ll do. Can I get my pack from underneath?”
The driver shook his head in resignation. “Up to you.”
He opened the door, and a blast of hot air infiltrated the bus. The driver and Kane climbed out, gravel crunching under his boots as they touched down.
The driver flipped open the underneath compartment and grabbed Kane’s pack. “Here you are, mister. Good luck.”
He nodded and watched the driver clamber back aboard, glad to be out of the heat. Within a few more heartbeats, the bus roared away in a cloud of dust.
Kane looked at the sign, which like the gas station, sat on the outskirts of town. It read: Retribution: Gateway to the border.
Behind Kane was no more than a harsh, saguaro-covered landscape, dotted with large boulders, and miles of desert sand. In front of him lay Retribution. It looked large enough. Maybe he’d be able to find work here for a while.
“Howdy, stranger.”
Kane turned to see a broad-shouldered man, dressed in grease-stained bib overalls, emerge from the gas station’s open front door. He nodded.
“You all get off the bus?”
“Yeah.”
“Staying long in town?”
“Maybe.”
“You looking for work?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s a job going here if you want it.”
Kane glanced around and saw one car. “Don’t seem like you’re snowed under.”
The man nodded. “Ever since the mine closed, things have slowed some. But cars and gas ain’t all I do.”
“What else?”
“Run deliveries. Handyman maintenance, stuff like that.”
“Uh huh.”
“You got a name?”
“Kane.”
“That it?”
“Yeah.”
“My name is Elmore. Elmore Druce.”
“Name on the sign says Arno’s.”
“Shit, that sign is older than me. Arno up and quit years ago. The place has had three owners since then, and not one has decided to change the sign.”
Kane figured Druce to be in his middle thirties, although it was hard to tell under the walnut-colored skin, the week’s growth of stubble, and the mop of unkempt black hair.
Kane asked, “Can I think about it?”
“About what?”
“The job.”
“Sure. If you want it the place opens at six.”
A thought popped into Kane’s head. “You got law in this town?”
“Yeah, got a sheriff and two deputies,” Druce replied. Then his expression changed. “You ain’t wanted, are you? Not that it matters in a place like Retribution.”
Kane indicated the sign. “How far to the border?”
“About fifteen miles.”
“Is there somewhere in town I can get a room?”
“Chester’s at the other end of the main street is a budget motel. Won’t cost too much and they tell me they change the sheets once a month.”
His smile disappeared when Kane stared at him stoically.
“There is another motel in the center of town and one on Second Street. They’ll cost you a might more than Chester’s place. Or you can try Molly Miller’s boarding house.”
“Motel will be fine.”
Kane started to walk away when Druce called after him. “Remember, Kane. Be here by six if you want the job.”
Retribution had all the signs of a town in the throes of a slow, painful death. Potholes in the main street’s asphalt, paint peeling from storefront signs, the local bowling alley boarded up. Yet for a dying town, it still seemed to have some life.
A white Chevrolet 4X4 with red and blue lights and the words Border Patrol on the side passed him, headed south.
Kane kept on along the sidewalk. He passed a laundromat, a general store, post office, hardware, café/diner, one of the motels Druce had mentioned, plus a dozen other specialty shops spread out along each side of the thoroughfare.
“Hey, you little prick, get your ass back here!”
The shout brought Kane back to the here and now. Ahead of him he saw a kid, perhaps no older than thirteen, run across the road, followed by four larger boys.
“If you run, you’ll only make it worse for yourself. We was only going to teach you a lesson. Now we’re going to cut you.”
Kane watched as the kid disappeared into an alley between two brick buildings about twenty feet in front of where he stood. He saw the look of absolute terror on the boy’s face and knew he had to intervene before the kid got hurt.
As he walked forward the leader of the group glared at him and snapped, “If you know what’s good for you, stranger, you’ll keep walking.”
Then they too disappeared into the alley.
Followed by Kane.
The alley had once gone all the way through to the rear of the block. But over the years the amount of rubbish and debris that had been dumped in it had built up, creating a dead end. The kid had himself boxed in.
“Got you now, Jimmy,” Kane heard the leader of the group say. “Your mamma ain’t going to help you this time.”
Through a gap in the wall of four pursuers, Kane saw the desperation on the young boy’s face.
“You’re scaring the boy. Let him be.”
They turned as one and looked at Kane. Their leader walked a few paces towards him, his right hand holding a large-bladed knife.
“I thought I told you to keep walking,” the punk said, his voice dripping with menace.
Kane figured him to be maybe seventeen, big for his age and well-muscled. His face still held the scars of pubescent acne which made him seem even more intimidating.
“Maybe you should put that knife down before someone gets hurt.”
The young man glanced at the others with him and grinned. “Maybe I should stick him instead, huh, boys?”
“Yeah, stick him, Bolt,” one of the others said.
Bolt nodded. “Maybe I will.”
Kane was conscious of the H&K stuck down the back of his pants. However, he’d rather not go down that path if it was avoidable. Besides, the kid was only a punk. Take one down, and the rest would run. He placed his pack on the ground.
“Last chance … Bolt, is it?”
“Yeah.”
“OK … Bolt. Here’s what is going to happen. You and your friends are going to walk out of this alley and leave this kid be.”
Bolt snorted. “And if we don’t?”
“I’ll take that knife, and at least one of you will wind up in the emergency department.”
“You got a big mouth, asshole,” Bolt snarled and closed the
distance between himself and Kane.
Kane waited until the last second to move. Bolt thrust the knife forward, aiming to drive it deep into Kane’s guts. With the weapon, no more than six inches from disemboweling him, Kane’s armed services training kicked in.
His left hand clamped onto Bolt’s right wrist and stopped any further progress. He twisted it savagely until he heard the wrist break, and a high-pitched shriek escaped from Bolt’s throat. The knife dropped from his hand and clattered on the asphalt at his feet.
Kane kept hold of the damaged wrist and dragged Bolt forward. He brought up his clenched right fist and smashed him in the face. The nose gave a sickening crunch, and blood ran thickly from the twin orifices. Kane hit him again and felt the jawbones on the left side give. Bolt’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to his knees.
Kane let go of Bolt’s ruined wrist, and the unconscious young man fell to his side and didn’t move.
“Any of you fellers want to join your friend in the emergency room?”
No one moved.
Kane motioned to the kid. “Come on, time you were gone.”
As the kid passed him, he said to Kane, “Gee, thanks, mister.”
“Get out of here, kid.”
He heard footsteps retreat along the alley and stared at the three confused figures before him. “I’m leaving now. If you fellers feel the urge to follow me, think of your friend.”
“Barrett ain’t going to like this, man,” one of them snarled.
Kane looked at the thinnest of them and asked, “Who’s Barrett?”
“He’s Bolt’s older brother. He’ll come looking for you and pop a cap in your ass.”
“He sounds like a mighty scary feller.”
“You best believe it. Retribution is his town.”
Kane nodded. “Tell him that he might want to be more welcoming towards strangers.”
“You hang around, and you’ll get to tell him that yourself.”
“Uh huh,” Kane grunted dismissively and turned around and walked towards the front of the alley.
Once Kane was gone the thin young man said to the others with him, “Dink, get Bolt to the Emergency. Davy, follow this asshole and see where he goes. I’ll go and tell Barrett what happened. When he perches, call me on my cell. The bastard will be dead before nightfall.”