by Jonas Saul
He heard him perfectly this time. But that was insane. He wasn’t about to get in the car.
“Are you alone?” the driver yelled.
Of course, they want to know if I’m alone. This is a trick. I get in, the car explodes. Easy fix. Done deal. Well, no fucking way.
“Get in the car or I drive away and you’ll never see her again.”
Her?
Darwin stepped closer. There just wasn’t enough light to see inside the back of the vehicle.
The driver must’ve seen him bending over and glaring at the back window. He turned on the interior light.
Rosina sat in the rear of the vehicle, abject fear on her face, shaking her head back and forth.
“You have thirty-seconds to decide if you ever want to see your wife again.”
He had no choice. He could play hard ball with Fuccini, but not when his wife was involved.
Is this a test? Are they seeing if I’ll come out into the open so a sniper can pick me off?
No, impossible. H’s men would have warned him if a sniper was close enough to take a shot.
He stepped closer.
“Ten-seconds to decide. If you do not get in the vehicle, I will explain to Fuccini that you weren’t interested in meeting him. Your father and your wife will be murdered in the most brutal way possible. Then Fuccini told me to tell you that he’ll mail you their body parts for months to come. So, save us all a lot of trouble and get in the backseat beside your wife. I’ll drive you to where we’re meeting Mr. Fuccini.”
That’s it. Everything he had planned, gone in a moment’s decision. How could he think that he could deal with a man like Fuccini? Why did he ever feel that he could match the man with wits and acumen regarding the dealing of human lives? Fuccini would always be more ruthless, more vile.
Darwin, against everything he had set out to do at the hangar, stepped forward, one foot in front of the other.
He was in a daze. He was walking to his certain death. He had condemned his wife and he was going to die for it. His father would be collateral.
It was over and he was powerless to stop it.
As he reached for the back door’s handle, it clicked to unlock. He opened the door and got into the seat beside his wife. He barely had the door closed when Rosina fell into his arms, crying and asking him through her tears why, why did he get in the car.
The driver locked the doors and skidded the tires in the dirt as he performed a U-turn and raced away from the hangar.
“Rosina, I had to. I couldn’t leave you to die alone. I started this. I have to pay for it. It’s all my fault.”
She put her head on his stomach and let the sobs shake her apart as she gripped him.
Darwin turned his flashlight on his face as he listened to the driver on the phone. He needed to see if the driver would reveal a location. Maybe Darwin could use his disposable phone to call the police before they got there.
“Yes, I know. No, no,” the driver said. “I got him. Yes.” A pause, then, “No, he came willingly. There was no one here but him. I know because I drove right up to the hangar. I flashed my headlights into the main door. He’s alone. I’d know. I would’ve been told if the FBI were supposed to be here. I got him and I’ll be there soon.”
The driver looked in the rear view mirror at Darwin and then said, “I know, the guy’s crazy. He was actually gonna trade himself in. Brave, if you ask me. Okay, okay.” Then the driver closed his phone and tossed it on the seat beside him.
He looked back at Darwin and said, “You are one crazy dude. I gotta say, I’ve never met anyone like you. Wish you were on our side—”
Something hit the side of the car. It swerved so violently Darwin felt they were going to flip. The driver screamed like a girl as he tried to correct the spin.
Another bang vibrated the car, which spun even faster. The force of the spin caused Darwin to lean hard into the side door, Rosina up against him.
After what felt like five minutes, even though it all happened in ten seconds, the car came to a stop by the tree line. At the moment it stopped, the driver’s side window busted, tiny diamond-sized pieces of glass cascading everywhere. Rough arms yanked the driver out.
It all happened so fast, Darwin could only stare dumbfounded as their would-be kidnapper was lifted out of the car, protesting all the way.
Something clicked beside him. The door he was leaning on opened, and Darwin fell out backwards.
“I gotcha,” H said, his hands wrapped in Darwin’s underarms. H helped him out and Rosina followed.
“What happened? What’s going on here? Who are these men?”
Darwin couldn’t believe it. The driver moaned on the other side of the vehicle.
“This is H. H, this is my wife, Rosina.”
“H?” she asked. “What’s an H?”
“His name is Richard H, but we call him H.”
“Yeah.” H stepped in and extended his hand. Rosina took it.
“We heard about what happened in Rome and it pissed us off. We’re here to help and Darwin said he’d write a documentary about us.”
Rosina looked at Darwin. “You did?”
He nodded.
She shook herself, let out a long breath and stepped up to H. Then, with both arms wide, she hugged him and whispered a thank you in his ear. She stepped back and said, “You saved our lives today.”
H didn’t appear comfortable with compliments.
Darwin calculated everything. He had Rosina back. They could leave. But he couldn’t abandon his father. He could still meet with Fuccini. The driver had reported back that Darwin was alone. Fuccini wouldn’t have a problem coming to the hangar now.
“H, I’m going to walk back to the hangar. The meeting is still on. Can I trust you to take Rosina out of here?”
“I’m not going anywhere without you Darwin,” Rosina said.
“I understand, baby, but Fuccini is coming. H and his men and I need to deal with that. They have my father. If we don’t end this tonight, it never will. Just go with H to where they’ve parked their bikes. It’ll be far enough away that you can’t get hurt and we can deal with this guy.”
Rosina hugged Darwin. “You had better walk away from this or I will fucking well punch your corpse. Stay alive or you’ll feel it.”
“You got it baby.”
“She’s a fierce one,” H said. “Wouldn’t want to piss her off.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Darwin whispered.
H gestured for Rosina to get moving. Before they were lost to sight in the darkness, H turned and said, “Hey big D, you like how we stopped the car by shooting out the tires?”
“Yeah, H, brilliant.”
H smiled, as far as Darwin could tell in the dim light, and strode off with Rosina in tow.
Darwin realized that the dark wasn’t affecting him as much.
Maybe spending all this time in the dark is fixing the phobia.
He walked around the wrecked Crown Vic. As far as Darwin could tell, the driver wasn’t breathing.
“What happened?” Darwin asked the men gathered around.
“He wouldn’t talk. We asked him where they had your father. We asked him where that Fucconi guy was. He wouldn’t talk. We took it a little too far. Sorry.”
“Fuccini.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Have an eye. The Fuccini people will be here as soon as their boy doesn’t show. I’m going to call them, so I’m sure they’ll be along soon.”
“Got it.”
Darwin pulled out the cell phone and dialed the Fuccini number he’d committed to memory.
“Yeah?”
“You made a mistake.”
“Darwin. How nice.”
“You took my wife again. That was a mistake. You were supposed to trade me for my father. Because you didn’t show and you sent that FBI man as your messenger, he’s dead.”
“I had to make sure it was safe. You could’ve had the place crawling with FBI.”
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“And that driver would’ve known if that were the case? He works for them.”
“Not if they were onto him. They would’ve kept it from him.”
“Enough chit chat. I’m at the hangar. I’m alone. I’ve got Rosina in a safe place. It’s all over. There’s just you and me.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
Darwin hung up and dialed Rosina’s mother. She answered on the third ring again.
No doubt, the FBI are taping this call.
“Isabella, I need to talk to the FBI guy in charge.”
“Darwin there’s no …”
He knew she was told to deny that they were there. He waited.
“I’ll put him on.”
After a murmur, a man got on the phone.
“Darwin, where are you?”
“About to meet Fuccini himself. He’s got my father. We’re doing a trade.”
“What kind of trade? You can’t handle this alone.”
“Sure I can. Look, I’m at the abandoned hangar where it all started. Come as soon as you want. Oh, and that guy you had taking care of my wife is dead.”
“Alfred is dead? What are you talking about? Where’s Rosina?”
“She’s here now. Alfred brought her here to kidnap me too. I took Rosina back and now Alfred is dead. Come and collect the asshole’s body.”
“Okay, wait there for us.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Okay, bye.”
“Wait!” Darwin screamed into the phone. “Bring a couple of coroners. You’re going to need them.”
He hung up and tossed the phone into the bush.
Chapter 18
Darwin flicked on a switch to the lights in the hangar, but the building remained dark. He remembered lights were on during the night of the accident.
Must’ve been floodlights they had set up for the meeting.
The only lights that worked were the red ones behind the exit signs. Otherwise, the interior was black, and that was too dark for Darwin.
But he needed to be inside, so he steeled himself and turned on his flashlight. He walked to the back and stood behind a metal partition. No one would be able to readily see his flashlight, and if they came in shooting, he’d have some form of protection.
A car pulled up out front.
That’s fast.
Thinking about cars, he wasn’t sure when he’d want to be in one again anytime soon. In Rome, he was in the van that flipped on the highway. Then Greg’s car on the 401 last night. The FBI car fifteen minutes ago. They come in threes. Maybe that was his last car accident for a while.
A man in a long trench coat stepped into the front door of the hangar and moved a flashlight around.
“You in here?”
“Yeah,” Darwin called out. The flashlight moved to find him, but where he stood was too far back.
“I can’t see you.”
“Show me my father. Make sure it’s Fuccini who does it.”
“No way. He ain’t coming in here in the dark. You crazy? How do we know you don’t have a gun?”
“Okay, at least get my father out of the car and I will come out of the hangar.”
The man stepped away. A car door opened and closed. Then another.
Good. Richard’s men were told to make their move whenever they wanted. As soon as my father was seen, take everyone out with surgical precision. Beat them. Hurt them. But wait for my father to be seen.
Nothing happened.
Darwin waited. Still nothing.
“You coming?” he heard the man shout. “We aren’t waiting all night.”
Darwin stepped out from behind the metal partition. He walked along the inner wall of the hangar, ready to bolt at the sign of a weapon coming through the door.
The trunk opened and closed. He paused, then after a moment, continued on in the darkness.
This is fucking crazy. Something tells me there’s a problem.
He got to the open door of the hangar and peeked around.
In that one vision, Darwin knew the game was up.
It was over. There was no way to come back from this.
Fuccini stood in front of his car, the headlights basking him in an eerie glow. He had his arms crossed and he was smiling.
Four of his men stood with large weapons that looked like machine guns on steroids strapped over their shoulders. They too were smiling.
At their feet were seven members of the biker gang. Four were dead for sure. Darwin could see parts of their anatomy missing. One had half his face dangling off his jaw. The other three were bound and gagged, on their knees. Darwin held his stomach, hoping he’d be able to hold its contents.
“We thought we’d wait to execute these other three until you joined the party. So glad you could make it, Darwin. Oh, and your father. He’s over there,” Fuccini said, and pointed.
Adrian Kostas, Darwin’s father, crawled on the ground, blood coming from his midsection.
“What did you do to him?” Darwin asked.
“I assumed you wanted him back alive. He’s alive. It’s only one stab wound to the stomach. If you staunch the bleeding, he could live out here in the bushes for a couple of days. The only way to completely walk away, get it, walk away, from an injury like that is to go to the hospital. They could fix him up good. But that won’t happen because no one knows we’re out here and all of your faggoty heroes in leather and chaps are dead, or will be shortly.”
“You bastard.”
“I know. I’ve been told. But it is only fair as you took out my Harvester of Sorrow and my Big John, not to mention many other men. You’ve hurt my organization and cost me a lot of money. The only way to hurt someone like you is take out their family. And I mean everyone.” He turned to his men and pointed at two of them. “Go find that bitch wife of his and kill her. I don’t even want to see her face again. Don’t bring her back to me. No mistakes. Shoot on sight. I don’t have time to play Darwin’s games anymore.”
Two men ran off, one behind the hangar and the other entered a door on the side.
“That wasn’t the deal.”
“No!” Fuccini shouted as he raised a finger high in the air. “A trade. You, for your father. There’s your father. He’s alive. I get you. I already had your wife in my possession, but you took her back. By the way, how did you handle that little feat? The driver told me personally that he had you with him.”
Darwin didn’t answer. His mind raced, but with each scenario he came up with, he couldn’t figure a way out of this.
“Wait, don’t tell me. You had help from these goofs.” Fuccini looked down at the three bikers on the dirt. “That’s what they call you in prison, right? The name that’s disrespectful? A goof? Well, if you aren’t goofs, then you’re fucking stupid to get mixed up with the likes of Darwin Kostas. Deal with him, and a lot of people die.”
Fuccini turned to his man closest to the bikers and said something Darwin couldn’t hear.
The man lowered his weapon, chambered a round, and fired.
The head of the first biker came clean off, the sound of the weapon coming across the fifteen-foot distance like an explosion.
The biker’s headless body stayed upright for a moment, and then slowly teetered forward, finally falling on its chest.
The last two bikers screamed behind their gags. It sounded like a barrage of threats.
Darwin broke out in a sweat. His body shook all over. He’d seen a lot of shit in the past few days, but watching a man’s head disappear in a vapor of blood and brain made him want to throw up.
He leaned forward and held his stomach with both hands. He couldn’t have anyone else die because of this mess. Too many had. His conscience couldn’t handle it. He thought it would be simple. He thought he’d walk away the victor. But all along, he had been lucky while he underestimated the man who did this for a living. A man who made this a way of life. He could never be better at out-thinking someone like Fuccini. That was why he was the boss.
Another shot rang out. But this time it came from the back of the building.
“Good. There goes Rosina. Oh, I’m sorry Darwin. Is the loss of someone you love hurting you? How about the loss of my only son? Do you know what I do to people who even raise their hands to me? Do you even know the kind of man I am?”