by Haris Orkin
Kursky looked at Flynn curled up on the floor, bleeding and bruised and not moving. The Slaves who still had energy left continued to kick his motionless body. Kursky waved to them, shaking his hand back and forth, indicating that he wanted the ass-kicking to cease. They didn’t quite understand the meaning of his miming and continued to wail away. Kursky covered the phone with his hand and loudly whispered, “Stop it! Stop it!” The bikers looked at him with confusion. “Get the fuck away from him!”
“I’m sending someone to pick him up,” Mendoza said.
“Pick him up? When?”
“Immediately. You calling from your house?”
Kursky looked at Flynn. He didn’t stir. “Yeah.” Mendoza didn’t say good-bye. He just hung up. The line went dead and Kursky was afraid that Flynn was equally deceased. “Shit.” Kursky rose from his Laz-E-Boy and approached Flynn’s prostrate form. Flynn bled from his nose and his mouth and his ears. The guy was totally limp, like a piece of bloody meat. Kursky poked Flynn. No response.
He whispered into his ear. “Dude?” Then he shouted, “Dude!”
Nothing.
“What’s going on?” the biker with the ZZ Top beard asked.
Kursky ignored him and opened Flynn’s left eyelid. The pupil was rolled back and all he saw was white. “Shit.”
“I think the dude’s dead,” the fat biker blurted.
“I fucking hope not,” Kursky replied. “Because if he’s dead, we’re fucking dead.”
Sancho stayed low and clung to the side of Kursky’s house. Bright security lights illuminated the grounds. He hid in the sparse shadows of the shrubbery and peered in a window to see the fat biker in the kitchen, filling a bucket with water. Another biker was taking a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator. Sancho heard the distant howl of a siren and then the ragged howls of coyotes. It was an eerie, unsettling sound and it raised the hair on the back of Sancho’s neck.
Staying close to the wall, Sancho moved along the house and peered in another window. The room was dark. The next window was frosted—likely a bathroom. He poked his head around the corner to make sure the coast was clear and continued on, the stucco scraping his cheek as he stayed between the wall and the shrubs.
Muffled voices filtered through a large window. Peering in, he caught sight of the bikers all standing around Flynn’s motionless body. The fat biker with the bucket doused Flynn with water. Flynn didn’t move. He just lay there. Sancho’s stomach tightened with dread. Was he dead? Did they waste him? Why were they throwing water on him? He was so distracted by the troubling thoughts rattling around his head, he neglected to hear the quiet footsteps approaching him from behind. He didn’t realize he was compromised until he felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his neck.
Dulcie whacked the steering column with a crowbar. She was trying to hot-wire the Aston Martin, but really had no idea how. She’d watched Mike hot-wire a half a dozen cars and thought she understood the basic principle, but couldn’t figure out how to remove the steering column and access the necessary wires.
The car came with a rudimentary set of tools which Dulcie did not know how to use. Desperate, she took the edge of the crowbar, inserted it into the ignition, and twisted it hard. Something cracked, but she didn’t know what and she didn’t see any wires. Frustrated, she hammered the steering column again and again. She made so much noise she didn’t notice the rapping on the window until she finally stopped whacking. She turned to see Pete Kursky’s face peering at her through the glass.
He was smiling.
He didn’t seem upset at all. In fact, he seemed glad to see her. He tried to open the door, but she’d locked it. He motioned for her to unlatch the lock and she shook her head. Pete stopped smiling. He disappeared from view and when he returned he had something in his hand. It was a rock, which he used to smash the driver’s side window glass. Kursky reached in and roughly grabbed her by her slender arm. He pulled her through the window and the edges of the safety glass clawed at her as he dragged her from the car.
Dulcie couldn’t catch her breath and barely managed to stand as Kursky held her upright with two huge hands. “Where’s the money, Dulcie?”
“It’s in the duffel bag! In the backseat! He spent some of it, but—” Kursky let her drop, reached in the window, and unlocked the car. He found the duffel bag, unzipped it, and looked inside.
Dulcie lay on the shoulder next to the highway. Tears ran down her dirty face. “You can sell the car—If you sell the car—”
“Come on,” Kursky ordered. He pulled her to her feet and dragged her along the side of the road, the duffel bag in one hand, Dulcie in the other.
Mendoza, still ensconced in the limo, entered a number into the satellite phone. He listened and waited and watched as the shadowy shapes of the night rushed by. When he finally spoke, it was in Spanish.
“It’s me. We have a situation.” Mendoza listened for a moment. “Someone took our money off Kursky. But that’s not the problem. The problem is he found the piece of shit who ripped him off and apparently the joto knows about the plan.” Mendoza winced as the voice on the other end grew angry and loud.
When the person finally stopped berating him, Mendoza took a breath and continued, “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He just said he knew about the plan.”
The voice on the other end was a bit calmer now, and as Mendoza listened sweat beaded on his forehead.
“That’s what I’m doing. I’m picking him up. I was gonna interrogate him personally and find out—” Mendoza was cut off mid-sentence. He listened and nodded. “Are you sure?” The loud response from the person on the other end caused the blood to drain from Mendoza’s face. “No, sir, I wasn’t questioning you. I would never…” The voice continued to castigate him and then, “No, sir. Yes, sir. I will, sir.” Mendoza clicked off the phone and sighed heavily.
He looked up to see the eyes of the limo driver watching him in the rear-view mirror. “What the fuck are you looking at?” he spat. The driver quickly faced front as Mendoza wiped the perspiration off his forehead with the palm of his hand.
Chapter Sixteen
Flynn felt like he was falling into a deep, dark, bottomless chasm. The void was endless and the emptiness filled him with an unbelievable sadness. There was no one. There was nothing. And there was no escape. He was about to give up hope and surrender to the darkness. Let it swallow him. Let it consume him until he became one with the nothingness. But then he felt a hand. A soft, warm, gentle hand. Next, he heard a voice. Dulcie’s voice.
“You okay?
Flynn opened his eyes. It was so bright. He squinted into the light, but it burned. His head throbbed painfully. The agony wasn’t centered in any one place in particular. It was everywhere; a deep, pulsating, unrelenting misery. Soon, however, he was able to open his eyes wide enough to see the source of the painful incandescence. It was the huge, ornate chandelier hanging from Pete Kursky’s ceiling.
Dulcie gazed down at him, her fingertips on his face. She had tears in her eyes. She looked so sad.
“What’s the matter?” Flynn asked.
“Look what they did to you.”
“I’m fine,” Flynn replied. He tried to smile, but flexing those muscles made little explosions go off in his head. Dulcie knelt by his side and held his hand. His face was covered in blood and starting to swell.
Flynn tried to sit up but an electric pain shot through his side. A broken rib? Maybe it was just bruised.
“Help me up.” It was then, he saw Sancho, standing next to Dulcie, staring down at Flynn with horror and revulsion. “Do I look that bad?”
“You look like one of those dudes in Dawn of the Dead.”
Flynn attempted a smile. “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”
“I don’t buy that Nietzsche bullshit,” Sancho said. “It sure the hell didn’t work for him. Dude had a nervous breakdown; ended up a mumbling idiot, pissing in his pants.”
“You studied philos
ophy?” Flynn asked.
“Enough to know it’s mostly bullshit.”
Flynn tried to grin again, but the size of his swollen lip made that difficult. “Can you help me up?”
Sancho and Dulcie grabbed him under his arms and managed to get him on his feet. Flynn wavered and nearly fell. Sancho and Dulcie kept him upright. Two of Satan’s Slaves watched from the couch.
Kursky came barreling into the room, angrily munching on a piece of pizza. When he saw Flynn, he winced. “Jesus Christ, I told you to get him cleaned up.”
“I’m trying to,” Dulcie snapped.
“Get him in the bathroom and get that blood off his face. He looks like he got the shit kicked out of him.”
“Wonder why?” Dulcie said caustically.
“You want to look just like him? Keep it up, bitch.”
“Watch your mouth,” Flynn said.
Kursky lunged at him, but then realized he couldn’t lay a hand on him. Instead he took a huge bite of pizza and said with a mouthful, “Get him the fuck out of here!”
Dulcie glared at Kursky and took Flynn by the arm. “Come on, Sancho, give me a hand.”
Sancho and Dulcie helped Flynn to one of Kursky’s palatial bathrooms. There was a glass-enclosed shower stall, a large Jacuzzi tub and a purple throw rug that matched the fuzzy toilet seat cover. Sancho sat Flynn down on the toilet and Dulcie wet a washcloth with warm water. She cleaned the scrapes and cuts and dried blood that covered Flynn’s face. He didn’t wince once. He just gazed gratefully into her eyes as she tended his injuries.
“Thank you for this,” Flynn said. Dulcie shrugged. “And you too, Sancho. You could have driven off and left me here, but you didn’t.”
“Yeah,” Sancho said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Good thing I hung around.”
“We’ll get out of this, my friend. I know it looks like they have the upper hand, but it’s all part of the plan.”
“Are these multiple ass-kickings part of your plan? Because if they are, you might want to come up with a new one.”
“If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead. But we’re not dead, are we?”
“Not yet,” Dulcie said.
“Someone’s coming to see you,” Sancho said. “I heard them talking. That’s why they want you cleaned up.”
“Ah, yes, excellent. Just as I thought. Kursky and Croker are simply muscle. Thugs. Soon we’ll meet the man behind the curtain. The one pulling the strings.”
“I can’t listen to this shit anymore,” Sancho mumbled. He abruptly walked out of the bathroom to find two bikers standing guard.
The fat biker had a sawed-off shotgun. “Where the fuck you going?”
“Nowhere,” Sancho replied.
“He cleaned up yet?”
“She’s working on it.”
“So, go sit your ass down.” The biker motioned to a spot on the floor. Sancho sat and waited and watched as the fat biker lit up a cigarette.
Back in the bathroom, Dulcie unbuttoned Flynn’s shirt to wipe the dried blood off his chest. “They really did a number on you, didn’t they?”
“This isn’t all my blood,” Flynn said. “Besides, I have a very high threshold for pain.”
“Your ear’s still bleeding,” Dulcie leaned in close to examine it and Flynn turned his head and touched his lips to hers. She took a half step back. “What the hell was that?”
“That was a kiss. And not a very good one.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m actually considered a very good kisser. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”
Dulcie smiled at that. “Dude, you are such a fucking dork.”
“I must admit, I’ve wanted to do that for quite some time.” He leaned in to kiss her again and this time she didn’t back away. Flynn gave her a soft, gentle, lingering kiss.
Finally, she pulled free. “This is crazy.”
“Danger awakens all the senses. It’s the adrenaline. It floods through the blood, making everything sharper. Your body goes into overdrive to keep you alive. Self-preservation is a very strong instinct. A near death experience is a powerful aphrodisiac. The body wants to perpetuate itself. Pass on its DNA. It goes to our deepest animal instincts.”
Flynn put his hand firmly on her ass and pulled her closer. Dulcie resisted for an infinitesimal moment before surrending. This third kiss was deeper, longer, and more passionate than the first two. Dulcie started to kiss him back and Flynn winced, gingerly licking his fat lip.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not you, it’s me,” Flynn said. “My kissing equipment is bit wonky at the moment. Once I recover, I promise I will kiss you the way you deserve to be kissed. Properly. Well. And often.”
Dulcie grinned. “Dude, that has to be the lamest line anyone has ever laid on me.”
He smoothed the hair off her face and tenderly kissed her on the cheek and on the corner of the mouth and on her lips.
They felt it before they even heard it. A low rumbling that shook the air. Flynn moved away from Dulcie, suddenly all business. He looked at the bathroom ceiling and listened as the rumbling grew louder.
“Earthquake?” Dulcie asked.
“Helicopter.”
Agent Johnson saw the helicopter before he heard it. The lights were high in the sky, skimming the mountains to the south. Soon he could hear the beating of the blades. The roar grew louder as the lights grew brighter.
The chopper swooped over Kursky’s compound and slowly descended, dust rising, as it touched down in the middle of the street.
Cordero tore off his headphones and climbed into the van’s front seat, next to Johnson.
“What the hell?” Cordero grumbled.
Mendoza and two huge goons climbed from the copter, ducking below the slowing rotor. Each goon lugged a large M-249 SAW machine gun as they headed up the walkway towards the front door.
Kursky stood in the open doorway, a nervous smile cracking his ugly mug. “Mr. Mendoza!” Kursky put out his hand and Mendoza walked right past him, followed by his two massive goons.
Flynn, Dulcie, and Sancho stood against a wall in the living room, flanked by two bikers, both well-armed. Mendoza studied Flynn’s bruised and battered face and turned towards Kursky. “I told you not to lay a hand on him.”
“He tried to escape.”
Mendoza looked at Kursky with his cold eyes and the biker felt the hair rising on the back of his neck. Mendoza held Kursky’s gaze until Kursky had to look away.
“Who are these other two?” Mendoza mumbled.
“The girl’s the squeeze of one of our guys. The other one…I don’t know.”
“Did you attempt to interrogate them?”
“Not after I talked to you. No.”
“Before you talked to me?”
“I might have asked them a few questions.”
Mendoza nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me there was more than one?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You didn’t think. It’s not something you know how to do. So why do you even try?”
Kursky’s guys looked a little surprised to see someone talking to their boss like that. They were even more surprised that Kursky swallowed it.
“We’ll be taking all three.”
Kursky nodded.
“Taking us where?” Dulcie asked.
“Shut the fuck up!” Kursky bellowed.
Mendoza leaned closer to Kursky. “Didn’t I say not to talk to them?”
Kursky nodded. He was fighting an internal battle. He was capable of eating a certain amount of shit, but only a small serving. By the look in his eyes it was clear that Kursky couldn’t take another bite. It was a look that intimidated most men. Kursky took it for granted that he could scare the shit out of virtually anyone alive. But not Mendoza. The fact that Mendoza wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated not only chilled Kursky to his core, it irritated him to no end.
Mendoza stepped closer to Dulcie and gazed into her face.
“You have a question?”
Kursky could see that Dulcie was trying to play Mendoza the way she tried to play him; submissive and seductive with just the hint of a smile. “I was just wondering where you were taking us.”
Mendoza smiled back and that only made his gaze more frightening. “I’m taking you to see someone.”
“Who?”
The smile disappeared. He nodded to his goons. One took Flynn. The other grabbed Sancho. Mendoza put his massive hand on Dulcie’s back and pushed her towards the door. The bikers watched silently as Mendoza marched them outside.
Kursky shouted after them. “What about the money? You want what’s left? Or should we use it to make a buy? Mendoza!” Mendoza didn’t answer him. Kursky shook his head and whispered, “Fat fucking spic.” A couple of the bikers heard the insult and grinned. That was the Kursky they knew and feared. No one gives shit to a Slave of Satan and just walks away.
Mendoza’s two goons walked back inside with their machine guns. “Go get your boss,” said Kursky. “I got a question for him.”
The two goons raised their weapons and pulled their triggers. The Slaves with the shotguns were mowed down first. The other bikers tried to flee, but they couldn’t outrun the machine guns. Kursky was last to go as five high-velocity bullets splattered his brains all over his beige walls.
Outside, even over the sound of the helicopter, Flynn, Sancho, and Dulcie heard the machine guns cut down the Slaves of Satan. Sancho and Dulcie both looked nauseous. Flynn didn’t seem the least bit surprised.
Down the street in the pizza van, Agents Johnson and Cordero heard the carnage over the little speakers in the rear of the van. The shouts and screams were nearly drowned out by the staccato thunder of machine gun fire.
“What the fuck!” Cordero shouted.
Johnson half opened the van door. “What do we do?”
“What can we do.”
“Fuck!”
They watched as Mendoza’s two goons walked back outside Kursky’s palatial McMansion and closed the late biker’s ornate door. Mendoza had an Uzi in his hand. He used it to motion to Flynn and the others.
The DEA agents watched as Mendoza ushered his captives onto the chopper.