by Ryan Stygar
With a warm smile that he reserved only for her, he accepted the phone and planted a kiss on her forehead. “The needle, please,” he whispered before checking the caller ID on his line.
She turned and retrieved his little black box and began preparing the steroids for his morning dose. Sensing Jordan’s irritation at having his morning routine interrupted, his two shower attendants began massaging the trapezoidal mass of muscle at the base of his neck.
“This is Dimitri Jordan,” he answered.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing Dimitri?” Sheriff Wyatt spat.
“Start over,” Jordan barked.
“A shootout on Las Vegas boulevard?” Wyatt bellowed. “What the shit has gotten into you?”
Jordan shot up from his seat with such force that his attendants were flung to the ground.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. He hurried to look out his window. From his tall tower he spotted the trail of red and blue lights converging along the boulevard below. “What happened?” he asked, his voice dripped with an awful mix of dread and vexation
Wyatt was livid. “It was that damned Lieutenant of yours! He opened fire at Lukas Petrov right in front of a crowd of people! Now I’ve got the Feds on my ass and they wanna open a full on investigation!”
“Which Lieutenant?”
“The same asshole who shot two officers yesterday! Do you realize the kind of hoops I had to jump through to make that mess go away? Jesus, Dimitri, I can’t dodge a federal inquiry forever! What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Jacob…” Jordan fumed.
“Yeah, that’s the guy. I have two officers that witnessed the whole thing. Its chaos out there! My God, there’s a woman lying dead on the sidewalk. A woman! Did you order this?”
“No.”
“So you’re telling me you can’t control your own guys? Not even your inner circle?!”
“I’ll discipline my men, James. This changes nothing in our arrangement.”
“Oh but it does,” Wyatt snapped. “You think all the heat from this is just gonna disappear like magic? You wanna stay outta prison? That’s gonna cost you.”
“Alright, alright. Message received,” Jordan sighed. He scowled at the mess of emergency vehicles on the Strip. “What’s the bill?”
“Keeping the Feds from shoving a RICO case up your ass is gonna take a miracle! I need one million in cash to pay off the right people. Today.”
“You’re getting half a million,” Jordan said. With the phone still pressed against his ear, he hurried to one of the many concealed safes in his penthouse. He counted out five hundred thousand dollars as the Sheriff berated him.
“Don’t try to bargain with me now, Dimitri! If I don’t do something to cover your ass you’ll be drowning in a swarm federal agents by noon tomorrow. What part of RICO didn’t you understand?”
Dimitri couldn’t help but scoff. “I guess I missed the part where you aren’t an accessory to my entire operation,” he said. “If a RICO case gets opened against me, I’ll cooperate. Oh boy will I cooperate! And I’ll make sure that the first thing they find is a library’s worth of documents implicating you as an accessory to murder, bribery, embezzlement, and just about any other bullshit charge they throw at me. If I go down I’m dragging you down with me.”
Wyatt didn’t have an answer for that. Wyatt never considered himself a dirty cop, despite his many dealings with the notorious gangster. In his eyes, it was far better to work with Jordan than to lock the LVMPD into direct confrontation with him. Still, that didn’t stop him from filling his bank accounts with Jordan’s dirty money.
“Into the flames of Hell we fall together, old friend!” Jordan said.
A soft hand tapped Jordan’s arm. “It’s ready,” Kiersten whispered through lips painted black with dark lipstick.
He paused and allowed Kiersten to sink the hypodermic needle into his vein. She smiled and gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek, which immediately softened his mood. She then wiped the blood from where she injected the steroids and took her leave, taking the frightened bath attendants with her.
Wyatt said nothing during the long silence.
“So it’s settled,” Jordan said. “You’ll have your money delivered immediately.”
“Fine,” Wyatt said, sounding none-too-thrilled about Jordan outmaneuvering him.
“Good.”
Jordan was about to hang up when Wyatt spoke again.
“Dimitri.”
“I’m not budging on the money, James.”
“That’s not it, no. It’s about your Lieutenant, Jacob.”
“What about him?”
“There was another report, which I already destroyed, about him opening fire in a strip club last night. He’s out of control. I need a chance to bring him in so that I can get some of the fallout from his behavior to go away. Without a scapegoat it’s going to be extremely difficult to keep the Feds out of our business. This is for both our benefit.”
“He’s yours,” Jordan said. He hung up the phone. Then he turned to shout down the hall that led from the bathroom to his bedroom. “Tyrell!” he roared. In an instant, the muscular but mortified-looking bodyguard came running to him.
“Y-Yes Mr. Jordan?” he said, fidgeting in place. Dimitri gestured to the pyramid of money which he had just counted out. “Get that delivered to Sheriff James Earl Wyatt right away.”
“Yes, Sir,” Tyrell replied. In a hurry he scooped up the cash and nearly tripped over himself as he ran out of the bathroom.
When the bodyguard named Tyrell was gone, Dimitri Jordan glowered out the massive window again. Emergency lights flashed everywhere along the Vegas Strip, and more were arriving every minute.
Kiersten slipped back into the bathroom and from behind where Jordan was standing she observed the tension forming in his powerful back muscles. “What happened?” she asked carefully. Jordan only shook his head. “That imbecile,” he growled. “That reckless… stupid… imbecile!”
21
L ike a battleship that had been struck by an enemy torpedo, the Mercedes buzzed with the sounds of men preparing to fight to the death. Wind howled and Adam was thrown back in his seat as the driver pushed the speedometer past ninety, then one hundred miles per hour on the highway. Their bodies were tossed left and right as their car swerved through traffic, but no matter how fast they drove, they just couldn’t shake the Range Rover behind them.
The man in the front passenger seat was growling in pain; a bloody red patch oozed on his shoulder.
“Vlad! You are wounded!” Petrov yelled.
“Dah, dah,” the gangster said with a dismissive wave. He ripped off one of his sleeves to apply a field-dressing to his wound. “I can still fight,” he said in Russian. “Those dogs will pay for this!”
The driver was shouting in Russian at Petrov who in turn picked up his cell phone and started making calls. Vlad finished bandaging himself and began rapidly loading weapons. No shots were exchanged on the highway, but the enemy was in hot pursuit. The second clash between the Russians and the Emperor of Vegas was imminent.
Vlad yelled and pointed behind them. “There is another one!” Adam turned and saw that a second white Range Rover had joined Jacob’s SUV in the pursuit.
Petrov scowled at the vehicle and chattered excitedly into his cellphone. After a minute spent conversing in Russian, he hung up and shouted over the wind.
“We have help waiting! Take this next exit to the old gas stop!”
The driver immediately swerved toward the off-ramp. The pursuing Range Rovers made a sharp turn to follow them, cutting off a pickup truck and causing a screeching, crashing heap of chaos to pile up behind them. Petrov shoved the metal binder back into Adam’s duffle bag and looked him in the eye.
“Once we stop, there will be heavy fighting!” he yelled. “Stay low and follow me. You will carry the bag and I will shoot. We must get this back to Red Star Tower!”
Dread crept up into Adam
’s throat and the next thing he knew, he was hyperventilating. Howling wind, roaring engines, shouting men, clicking guns, all the awful sounds were too much. He was about to be in the middle of a firefight between the two most dangerous gangsters in Vegas. As if things could not possibly get worse, Jacob had promised to torture him to death if he was caught asking the Russians for help.
And there he was, sitting right there in Lukas Petrov’s Mercedes. He silently prayed to whatever deity might hear him that Lukas would win this fight. Getting caught by Jacob again was not an option.
The Russian driver mashed down on the gas pedal and the Mercedes surged up the road at nearly one hundred and ten miles per hour. Desert wilderness stretched for miles in every direction, broken only by an isolated and badly neglected gas station a short way down the dirt road. Behind them, Jacob’s vehicles weaved in and out of the dust cloud that billowed behind the Mercedes.
“Get ready!” Petrov yelled and braced himself in his seat. The driver cranked the steering wheel down in a hard left turn and Adam was thrown sideways. The car spun ninety degrees and skidded to a halt alongside the gas station in a cloud of dust. Right on cue, six Russian gangsters, each armed with powerful AK-74 assault rifles, emerged from behind the gas pumps and took aim at the pursuing Range Rovers. The ambushers opened fire all at once, unleashing a hailstorm of high caliber rounds upon the unsuspecting SUVs. Both of the vehicles responded with wild serpentine maneuvers to evade the attack. Spinning tires kicked up heavy clouds of dust as the Range Rovers hooked away from the ambush and formed a protective barrier a few hundred feet away from the gas station.
Five seconds later, fiery orange flashes burst from behind the dust as Jacob’s men fired back from behind their SUVs.
The Russians hunkered down behind the rows of old metal gas pumps to prepare for a slow, bloody battle of attrition.
Bullets peppered the Mercedes as Adam tried to get out. He ducked down to dodge the rounds whistling over his head. One grazed right through his hair and sent a terrifying shudder down his spine as it whizzed by. A wet, stomach-turning, thwap! was followed by a mist of warm sticky blood.
Someone had been hit.
Adam looked up and saw that the Russian driver was slumped over in his seat.
“Jesus,” he gasped. That bullet could have easily hit him instead.
Despite the casualties, it appeared that the Russians were winning the fight. Jacob was firing from behind his Range Rover with only one man left standing at his side. In the other white SUV, the devastating Russian ambush had cut down all but two gangsters.
Unfazed by his dwindling numbers, Jacob rammed a fresh magazine into his automatic pistol and sprayed the Russians with one long volley.
“Get out!” Petrov screamed as he kicked Adam out the door. “Stay down!”
Adam’s ankle caught the strap of the duffle bag as he was pushed out, causing him to face-plant right into the dirt. Bullets punched into the ground, throwing up clouds of dust all around him as he scrambled to avoid being hit.
Suddenly, a cargo van painted with the Sumatra logo pulled up right alongside Jacob and his surviving men. Rather than turning and making a run for it, as Petrov hoped they would, nearly a dozen men poured out of the van’s rear doors to join the battle.
The sudden arrival of overwhelming numbers put Petrov and his men at a fatal disadvantage. Petrov knew that they would be overrun within minutes unless he could make a decisive tactical move to turn the tables. Without flinching he stood up and faced his mercenaries who were taking shelter behind the old gas pumps.
He pointed at two Russians armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. “You two!” he yelled over gunfire. “Sweep around from behind and flank them from each side, one will go left and the other will go right. There you will pick them off one at a time while we pin them down from the front. Run on my signal! We will cover you!”
Both of the tough-looking men gave a thumbs-up. Petrov held up a fist and then threw it down by his side to send them off. In a flash the pair sprinted in opposite directions, forming a wide pincer around Jacob’s battle lines. The rest of the Russians fired every round they had to protect their comrades as they ran through the no-man’s land toward Jacob’s vulnerable flanks.
As the two men sprint across the open desert, Jacob’s gangsters opened fire with renewed ferocity to keep them back.
The Russian who was running up the left side took seven rounds at center mass and fell dead to the ground, but the man on the right side made it to the far end of the battlefield and up a small hill. With streams of gunfire chewing up the earth at his feet, the Russian dove for cover behind a large boulder just in time. Bullets chiseled angrily against the massive rock but to no effect; Petrov’s mercenary was in position. From his new strategic location the Russian had a direct line of sight behind Jacob’s defensive line. Racking the slide of his assault rifle, he took aim at the exposed crowd of gangsters and sent a firestorm of lead raining down upon them.
The attack killed three of Jacob’s gangsters before they managed to return fire. In their desperation to get away from the devastating spray of bullets from the right flank, Jacob’s men inadvertently exposed themselves to fire from the front. Lukas Petrov and the Russians picked off two more Sumatras as they tried to find cover.
Through the mess of dust, Adam spotted Jacob scrambling away from bullets with a cellphone pressed against his ear. Adam tugged on Petrov’s arm and alerted him to the prime opportunity to cut the head off the snake. Petrov quickly nodded and stood to take aim, but Jacob scurried out of sight before he could shoot.
“Shit,” Petrov hissed. “He’s calling for more help!”
“Can’t you call more guys?” Adam shouted, throwing a worried look at the other end of the battlefield.
Petrov shook his head with a frown. “See this?” he pointed at the five surviving men behind him. “This is all I have left … there is no more help for us,”
Adam’s heart sank, but Petrov wasted no time in turning around to shoot in Jacob’s direction again. It was a must-win situation. Adam peered through the dust on the other side of the battlefield and counted the dead, noting with some relief that the Russians seemed to be steadily winning the fight. If he could just keep his head down and avoid being hit by a stray bullet, then there was a good chance he might just get out of this alive.
Minutes later, Jacob’s side was on the breaking point, but the fight had been costly in terms of ammo spent by Petrov’s men. Guns clicked against empty chambers and one by one the Russians were forced to reload – causing a noticeable lull in the ferocity of the fight.
Had Petrov’s men been able to keep up the pressure for just another minute, Jacob’s entire crew would have been slaughtered. But the lapse in supporting fire was just the opportunity the Sumatras needed. Jacob ordered a last-ditch, win-or-die assault on the Russian attacking them from the right flank. Two of Jacob’s gangsters charged the boulder above their position while the others covered them with suppressing fire. Petrov’s men scrambled to get their weapons back into action as quickly as possible, but they weren’t fast enough.
Like a pair of wolves, two Sumatras swooped around the boulder and caught the Russian while he was reloading his assault rifle. Several shots thundered out from behind the boulder; the Russian was dead.
“Blyat!!” Petrov cursed. Keeping his body pinned against the Mercedes, he reached into the bullet-ridden car to take a magazine from the dead driver’s belt and slammed it into his CZ-75. Keeping low to avoid the bullets whistling above his head, he scanned the enemy line for an opportunity to strike back. Aiming carefully, exceedingly calm among the hail of bullets flying past him, Petrov closed one eye and trained his sights on a target.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
His expertly-placed shots hit a Sumatra gunman, once in the head and twice in the chest. The man was dead before his body hit the sand. Adam was in awe; Lukas Petrov was a true Spetsnaz warrior, and a formidable one at that.
But t
hings were not going well for the Russians.
Jacob’s dwindling army was reinforced yet again by the arrival of another Range Rover from Dimitri Jordan’s fleet.
“We are not going to win this fight!” Petrov shouted back to Adam. He stood to fire and then jumped behind the metal gas pump where Adam was hiding. Lukas was angry, but clearly unafraid despite his desperate situation. “We must escape, we will not survive here!”
“How?” Adam yelled in return. Both of the men struggled be heard as the battle raged on.
Petrov pointed at the heavily damaged garage beside them. The ambush team had parked a Mercedes SUV behind the garage before the first shots rang out. Adam shuddered; there was a lot of open ground between their current position and the escape route; they would be fully exposed to enemy fire in the attempt to reach the vehicle. Reaching into his waistband, Adam drew Vince’s Bersa Thunder pistol from its holster; this was going to be a fighting retreat.
“Fifteen long strides,” Petrov said, judging the distance. “Look only forward and–
He quickly ducked behind the metal pump. Bullets slammed into the dirt all around them while men from Jacob’s side advanced across the field with their weapons blazing away. A stream of automatic fire from the Russians mowed them down. Still, the bad guys just kept coming. Another Range Rover roared onto the scene and deployed five fresh gangsters to reinforce Jacob’s men. The Russians had lost control of the fight; all that remained was the final slaughter.
Lukas shouted, “We are running out of time! You run first and then cover me when I follow. Go!”
Lukas fired to protect Adam and his precious cargo as he sprinted to the hidden car. Once Adam was safely shielded from the battle, he knelt behind the corner of the building and got ready to cover Petrov’s run, but he was quickly forced down by enemy bullets.