by Rie Warren
If I had one magic fucking wish, it’d be to get him out of this gig once and for all. Him and Solomon.
“I’m just sayin’ I wouldn’t be able to pick this Slade out of a line-up so I don’t exactly feel comfortable having a new dude tag along.”
“You ain’t met him yet?”
“Can’t say I have.” I finished my drink, standing up. “’Sides, Slade sounds like the name of a ska band. Or heavy hair metal from the eighties.”
Angel rolled to his feet beside me. “That was Slayer, old man.”
“Slade goes. Have fun. Deliver the guns. Bring me the drugs.” Venom dismissed us.
Chapter Twelve
Killing Fields
MIDNIGHT AT THE DOCKS. Solomon and I had been right. A fart probably could float in the water down here where millions of tons of cargo was crated in on a yearly basis.
Bellying up on night-cooled concrete, Slade, Ange, and I took stock of the situation at the Port of New Orleans.
Like snakes lying in wait to strike.
That dude Slade though.
Fuck.
He turned out to be the shady, scruffy-faced guy from last night. The one who’d tugged on all my alarm bells just because.
Instincts, wit, and a heavy self-reliance on self-preservation had kept me alive in this game so far, and I wasn’t about to trust a cunt I’d never worked with before.
Before we’d left Thunder Road, I’d gone up to the bedroom. I’d knocked on the door before cracking it open with my boot, my Sig raised just in case Blaize tried to tackle me. Or decided to shoot again.
She was nowhere to be seen.
I’d called her fake cell phone.
She hadn’t answered.
The room was clean enough to eat off the friggin’ floor, though. And she’d unpacked our bags.
The bathroom when I tipped the door open? Goddamn gleaming.
She hadn’t left me a note or a voice message.
I had no clue as to her whereabouts.
And I didn’t like it. Not one bit. My woman needed to check in.
She’d be hearing about it later.
Meanwhile . . .
“You wanna check out the area before they arrive?” Slade glanced at me.
Unlike many of the Legion members, the man showed absolutely no signs of having a drug habit. He didn’t continuously swipe at his nose. His eyes weren’t bleary. His hands weren’t shaky.
He looked like a real cool motherfucker, but maybe he just had orders to plant a bullet in the back of my brain when I wasn’t watching.
I wouldn’t put it above Venom to have me taken out quietly, quickly, off-premises, given how he hadn’t exactly rolled out the welcome wagon for me last night.
My jaw twitched as I answered Slade, “Yeah I wanna check it out first. What d’you take me for? A fuckin’ debutante?”
Angel wisely held his tongue, but I bet he was snickering inside.
I didn’t know who this Slade asshole thought he was, but I’d done my time with the Blood Legion—and done my time inside because of ’em.
He wasn’t in charge.
I was.
“Keep my six,” I muttered. “You know what that means?”
“I’m a vet.” You dick was what he didn’t add. “Got your six.”
“Angel. You’re on protection detail,” I ordered.
He lifted his hand, huddled beside the crates of AK-47s and FN 5.7 semi-auto pistols. “Got it, cous.”
I led the way around the vast vacated area where onshore cranes hung over the docks like extinct dinosaurs. Giant cargo crates in blue, red, orange, and green piggybacked one another as far as the eye could see in long lanes with narrow tarmac aisles in between.
It was dark in our area although live action and longshoremen were still on the job in the busy port terminal on the Mississippi River.
The two of us carried the same caliber pistols awaiting delivery. What better way to sell the goods than to use them yourself? Venom was nothing if not a marketing genius.
Perma-dark settled over Slade and me as we snaked through the cargo shipments.
I detected nothing wrong. No bombs. No booby-traps. No ATF trying to bring Legion down on RICO charges. They’d done that once.
Failed.
“Clean and clear. Let’s get back with the kid.” I lifted my fist in the air, motioning Slade back to the rendezvous point.
“The kid? Angel? I can see that.” Slade fell in beside me. “Cherubic.”
“You swing that way?” I wouldn’t have pegged the dude as gay, but what did I know?
“Nah. Even if I did, he’s too clean for my liking.”
“You do it dirty and gritty?” I couldn’t get over the feeling this Slade character was hiding something—from me or from Venom, from everyone—I didn’t know.
“Not that you’ll ever find out.” His teeth flashed white from behind his black beard.
A few minutes after we rejoined Angel, a line of black SUVs pulled into the dockyard. They bypassed security without stopping. Four Tahoes. Almost looked government-issued.
“Feebs been checkin’ in on the Legion lately?” I asked.
“Not after last time.” Angel handed a pair of binocs to me. “Just the usual.”
Last time, when my first mission had been completely derailed.
The trucks stopped in our eyeline, and I locked targets as soon as the first door opened.
Slade hunkered beside me. “Something smells wrong.”
“Yeah. Where’d you say you came from again?”
“Didn’t.”
Har har.
Airtight asswipe.
“They look like el capitan gangbangers to you?” Slade aimed his gun.
“Nah,” I murmured through tight lips.
He wasn’t the only one who knew how to keep a lid on it.
“Hexbollah?” he asked.
“In Nawleans?”
“Smells like haji to me.” Squinting down his firing sights, Slade gave a disgusted grunt. “You know that feeling when you’ve been set up for a fall?”
“Yup.” Had a sinking feeling he was in on the trap, too.
“You wanna hit the kill switch on this drop?”
“Nope.”
“Got a plan?”
Something was downright hinky with this scenario. If it wasn’t this Slade fella, it was the Middle Eastern terrorists—not Los Reyes de Guerra—here to make the trade.
“Angel, you stay here and stand guard.” I slid my gun into a hip holster, unsheathing my KA-BAR.
“Dammit, Storm! I’ve been on runs like this before. You can’t just walk back in and—”
I gripped Angel’s chin. “You want to own your place in the Legion? Stop your fucking pissing and moaning so you can walk back into Thunder Road like a goddamn hero.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah. I am. The only one who’s gonna keep you alive and kicking.” I pointed a finger at him. “Your job is to make sure none of us die tonight, Ange.”
“What’s the plan?” Slade strode beside me.
“Take the powder, keep the guns.” I shrugged on the run. “Or hand over the guns and take the blow. Ain’t decided yet.”
“I pick door number two.”
“Yeah. Probably shouldn’t interrupt trade relations.” I backed against a container.
Dressed all in black, Slade slipped across from me. “I’m moving left.”
“On your right.”
Silent as a fantôme, Slade rounded the open lip of the container.
I followed up beside him.
Guns clicked all around, ready to plug our bodies full of metal.
“As-Salāmu Alaykum!” A dark-skinned man toting a silenced M2 gave a greeting, all the while keeping aim on Slade and I as we edged inside the container.
I bit my tongue in order not to answer in Arabic. MC goons did not speak Middle Eastern languages.
“Howdy,” I said in reply.
Slade kept his
mouth shut, his gun trained on the terrorist spokesman.
Hefting my KA-BAR in one hand, I held out the other.
“From the Blood Legion?”
“Yeah. Where the fuck you from?” I didn’t receive a handshake or fist bump in return from Mr. Haji in Charge.
“The country of Allah.” The main man was the only one doing the talking.
The rest of the Arabic imports formed a half circle in front of Slade and me, outgunning us ten to two. Those were odds I could work with if push came to shove.
Tension wrapped my shoulders in knots, but I eased forward, lowering my blade to a less threatening angle. “We were supposed to hook up with Los Reyes.”
“José had another appointment.” With a small motion of his head, the radical’s grim band of militants dropped their weapons to the side.
Slade and I did the same, warily.
“You brought the shipment?” the man asked.
“If you brought the blow.”
“Fuck you. I’ll give you a blow.” Suddenly going off-rez, Slade punched forward and head-butted the first man in front of him with a wicked crack of skull on skull.
Maybe he found it just as fucking alarming as me there were potential Al-Qaeda extremists operating on American soil, or maybe he was just a loose gun. Either way, we’d all end up dead if he didn’t rein it in.
Slade laughed as blood streamed from his forehead into his eyes. “Mexican standoff with no Mexicans, yeah?”
Every single gun in the place lasered on him.
Suddenly, the leader stalked over and lashed him across the face with the butt of his gun, effectively muzzling him.
“Enough!” Mr. Taliban, or what-the-fuck-ever he was, glared at his para troops then back at Slade. “Funny sense of humor. But now we do the deal or you both die.”
The altercation ended with Slade marched forward, a high-powered rifle shoved between his shoulder blades.
“Guns first,” was the demand.
“If you get the guns and we get the cocaine, what do the Mexicans get?” I glanced at the brown paper blocks concealing the bricks of white lady the haji’s henchmen showed me from several steps away.
“Let us take care of the cartel.” He flashed his teeth. “You take care of us now.”
I whistled loudly between my teeth, hoping Angel ran in the other fucking direction rather than heeding my call, because this was looking to turn into a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Half a minute later, Angel rolled up in the black van. But instead of stopping a somewhat safe distance away, he drove straight toward the container. After screeching the brakes, he jumped out the door and popped off several rounds from the AK in his hands.
“Lower your weapons!” he shouted, coming out from behind the cover of the open van door.
Goddammit. I was gonna kill him for that stunt.
Slade’s eyebrows shot up. So did mine.
Miraculously, the Jihadi did as ordered.
I knocked my head back toward the van. “Those would be your guns.”
A sneer crossed the leader’s lips as he strode toward the vehicle. “You heard of Qasim Hassan?”
The skin at the nape of my neck prickled, and my heart rate ramped up. “Might know of him.”
Qasim Hassan. Majedah Chehab’s fucking husband. The Lebanese Hezbollah activist and leader we’d flushed out of Beirut like a rat in the sewer system.
“His legacy still lives. So does Hezbollah on American soil!” The madman pulled a trigger-switch from the pocket of his jacket “And there’s your blow!”
Eyes wide, I glanced back at the crates of coke. The farthest two started ticking. Red lights flashing.
I knew enough about explosives from Walker to know what I was looking at. TATP—terrorists’ favorite homemade explosives. “Mother of—”
“Satan! GET OUT!” Slade yelled.
“Take the drugs.”
Slade grabbed my shoulder. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Yeah. Probably. Do it anyway.”
The terrorists scrabbled out of the cargo unit and started closing the rusty, groaning doors with Slade and me inside.
Sweat dripped down my face. I grabbed a stacked pallet, hauling it behind me. Slade took the second one.
The bombs screamed louder with every second lost.
The doors were nearly shut, and we’d be trapped inside with the highly unstable projectiles.
I was really beginning to get a fucking complex when it came to explosives—Beirut, Yemen . . . now in New Orleans?
I rolled out through the doors, shoving the cocaine blocks in front of me. Slade managed to slide through the aperture right behind me, worming on the ground, pulling a pallet like a laden sled behind him.
Immediately drawing our guns, gaining our feet, we blew through the tangos standing in our way, pounding the crate’s doors solidly shut moments before detonation.
No seconds to spare, we hurtled toward the van, barely rolling behind it before the container blew up in hunks of screaming tornado-like metal.
The dust had barely settled before the foreigners converged on the van.
Slade and I leaped to our feet, weapons drawn, but Angel was faster on the draw that time.
That fucking kid.
He held his AK point-blank at the ringleader’s temple.
Escalate the situation much?
Verbal shouts were fired off. By them. By Slade. By me.
The leader had his hands in the air. He talked rapidly in Arabic. Slade and I circled around him and Angel. And all the others pointed their weapons at Angel as the tension mounted, nearly crackling on the air.
“Goddamn you! You wanna be a killer, Ange? Is that it?” I maintained my focus on him. “Shoot him then. Shoot him right now!” I held two guns on two of the other perps, my aim steady, my voice firm.
Seconds clicked by, Angel’s outstretched arm trembling.
“I . . . I can’t.” He finally lowered the machine gun. “I can’t do it.”
As soon as he palmed the gun at his side, the tension immediately dissipated.
Crisis averted, everyone stepped down.
“Jesus Fucking Christ.” I smacked Angel upside the head. “You imbecile. Now say sorry.”
“What? They just tried to blow you up!” he complained.
I dropped my voice. “I think if they’d wanted to fry us they would’ve accomplished it. Apologize so we can collect the rest of our coke and go home with our faces intact.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Fuckers.”
“You proved your point?” I asked the head haji in charge.
“Yes. And you?”
“Think so. Don’t fuck with the Blood Legion and we won’t fuck with you.”
He assented with a nod of his head.
“What about them? Are you gonna retaliate?” I pointed at the dead bodies lying on the ground.
“Collateral damage.” He shrugged.
“So instead of concluding this business transaction with a mass shoot out, we do this like civilized human beings.”
Thank fuck, civility won out.
No more bombs.
No more gunshots.
Twenty minutes later, the new gangsters on the block were on their way with four crates of contraband weapons complete with magazines up the wazoo, and we were sitting on enough snort to make nasal reconstruction a number one item on the plastic surgeon menu throughout the streets of America.
Wonderful.
I wasn’t done schooling Angel though. “Who you been running with lately?”
“Burn,” he said with all the ’tude of a rebellious teen.
“Yeah? Well, cut that shit out. He’s not a man to emulate. He’s a fucking bully.”
Slade leaned against the van, slowly rolling a cigarette from loose tobacco, listening.
“Shoulda pulled the trigger on that fuck when I had the chance.” Angel clenched his jaw in an unforgiving angle.
“No. You shouldn’t have. Being a ma
n doesn’t mean you have to be a killer like me.” I grabbed his shoulder. “You hear me?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Heard you.”
“I’m serious, Ange.”
“Don’t know what you want with me.”
“I want you to be better than me. And that doesn’t mean going off half-cocked just because maybe you can get away with shit. And you don’t wanna piss on Venom’s pastures by fucking up his runs going all cowboy. Not while he’s still at the helm of Legion.”
“Oh-kay. Jeeeesus. Can we get outta here now? Hate this fuckin’ place.”
I looked around at the dockside, kicking my boot against the tire of the van, suddenly remembering. This was where Angel’s dad had been murdered.
“Mais oui. Let’s head.” I bumped his fist.
“Wanna lift back to your bikes?” he asked.
“Nah. We’ll hump it. Just wait on the main road for us so we can provide escort.”
Slade and I set off, me lighting my own smoke, trying to blow out the troubles with big ringed circles.
“That was some tough love,” Slade mentioned.
“He needs it.”
“Let me guess. You’re his boot camp daddy?”
“Fuck you.” Clenching the cig between my teeth, I wheeled on him.
I clamped my hand around his throat, the glowing tip of my cigarette close enough to brand his cheek. “Who are you really?”
“Just a no-name nomad who got hooked up and patched through. You?”
I released him and took another drag of my cig. “Same.” I shook my head at the ground. “Ange shouldn’t be in this game.”
And Venom’s paranoia was catching. Like that fucking marriage virus that’d already taken down Walker and Justice.
“You want to get him disavowed from the club?” Slade asked.
Disavowed.
Only folks in The Job used that term. Not MC knuckle draggers . . .
Maybe I wasn’t paranoid after all.
Chapter Thirteen
The Misère
OUR BIKES GOT A workout on the way back to Thunder Road Bar, Angel keeping pace with us in the black, unmarked van behind.
Traffic checkpoints weren’t unheard of in New Orleans, but given the big Legion back patches on our jackets, we were waved right through the police cars blocking the roads. Venom was one shady motherfucker who held a few key po-po in his back pocket. To go along with the cartel and now the terrorists.