by L. J. Martin
“Good. Lax security at the Paso airport so I’ll be on the tarmac at Central Coastal, the FBO. We gotta get there before light if there’s any way. So haul ass into the van.”
“10-4,” he replies.
And he does, but he has to make two trips from plane to van as he’s got three four foot long duffle bags as freight, and they’re all three full. He brought enough stuff to storm nearby Fort Hunter Liggett Army Base.
We roar off to the winery.
“So, what’s in your bags of tricks?”
“Hell, a little bit of everything. An RPG being the biggest. Two M4’s with four clips each—.223’s with Picatinny rail systems, Grip Pod vertical forward grip, both with M68 CCO sights. I also brought the .308 with night vision. Two battle-rattle belts. Kevlar vests. Grenades…shock and fragmentation. Combat shotgun, M15g with grenade launcher. Standard stuff.”
“You da man,” I say and we’re silent as we roar east on Highway 46, and as Pax studies the layout of the house on the plans Sammy has provided.
He finally looks up, “Any idea at all where they might have Skip?”
“If they have him, and haven’t planted him out in the orchard somewhere. And I still don’t have the lady.”
“They’ve got a wine cellar as big as a three-car garage. That would be my guess if you want to keep someone out of sight of the help, and I’ll bet they have lots of help.”
I glance at my watch. It’s five AM and the sun is beginning to lighten the eastern sky in front of us.
We gotta move.
I’ve decided it’s best to split up. Me on the Harley, Pax with the van.
I sling an M4 over my shoulder, strap on my vest and battle-rattle, load my sack of burritos into a saddle bag, and when we get to the west edge of the winery take a two track until I think we’re about even with the main house. We both have radios with ear buds. Giving Pax instructions about how to get around to the back, and down the lane closer to the house, I fire up the Harley and take a ride into the vineyards—not on a road but between the rows of vines.
I get close then idle to within a hundred yards of the house and park the Harley Iron as deep under the vineyard wires and vines as I can get it. I’m walking into a sky beginning to show a line of orange at the horizon. We don’t have much time if darkness is to be our friend.
The dogs begin to bark before I get fifty yards from the yard. As best I can tell, the front of the house is behind a six or seven-foot plastered wall, probably concrete block. The back, however, is a cyclone wire fence mostly covered with wisteria. When I’m only six feet from the fence, two very large, obviously angry, Dobermans are bouncing off the fence trying to get to my throat. I plop down, cross-legged, and work to look harmless and content as Buddha and commune with the doggie gods, waiting until they begin to tire of barking and are reduced to growling.
Only then do I move forward and drop a burrito over the fence.
At first they ignore it, having returned to a vicious cacophony of barks, which they keep up for at least five minutes. Again, they’re reduced to growling, until one of them sniffs the burrito, then in two bites, it’s gone. This time when I approach the fence, it’s only growling, and I drop two more. Dobe One eats his second and Dobe Two his first. Again I approach and the growls are barely discernable. The final three burritos barely bounce on the turf before they’re in doggie darkness, and barely out of sight before Dobe One begins to stagger a little, then retch, then projectile vomit.
I activate the radio and give Pax a heads up. “Dogs handled. You in place?”
“10-4.”
Dobe Two almost immediately follows suit with the upchucking, and as I vault the fence, neither dog pays me any mind. Both are busily emptying their stomachs and I know they will be for some time. Hydrogen peroxide and doggie stomachs don’t mix. They’ll be no worse for the wear, but it’ll be tomorrow or next week before they think of Mexican food again.
I have to skirt a large swimming pool to reach the house, but then I’m deep in some shrubbery, my eyes trying to make sense of the interior of the house in the darkness. Obviously there are no motion detectors scanning the lawn or the dogs would set them off.
The Albanians are not early risers.
I’m looking into a rec room and know from the plans that it has two sliding doors out onto the pool patio, and also has a bathroom with shower and a pass through door to the outside. I’d already decided that the bathroom is my portal to the inside. I’m sure the sliders are alarmed, but the bathroom door may not be as it’s got both a deadbolt and a lock on the knob.
Pax has had plenty of time to get set up on the corner of the property—the house, pool and guest house are inside a two-acre fenced area—and it’s the high side, almost ten feet above the opposite corner offering him the best field of fire. He has both an M4 and the .308 with both night vision scope and open sights when the scope’s removed from the rails.
It only takes me five minutes to pick both locks, but it’s Murphy’s law, and all hell breaks loose when I open the door. I have the presence of mind to lock them behind me even with the blaring of sirens and bells in my ears. If they’ve killed Skip and Tammy, even they are awakened by the alarms. I sprint across the rec room to where there’s a sixteen foot wet bar with eight or ten stools, and duck behind it.
It’s only thirty seconds before I hear two guys running down a hallway, shouting at each other. One enters the rec room and heads straight for the bathroom. The alarm system obviously identifies the area of intrusion.
I can see between the crack of a small swinging door that opens into the wet bar and watch the guy as the room light comes on and he moves into the bath, a semi-auto in hand.
In seconds he yells back. “No one here. No break-in. Doors are locked. Must have been that fucking cat again.”
“Check outside,” one voice says, and I hear a sliding door roll open.
I can’t help but smile. You gotta love cats that set off house alarms.
Then another voice comes from the hall. “What’s going on?”
I take the opportunity to whisper into the radio, “Company coming.”
And get a whispered, “10-4.”
“It’s okay, Mr. Gashi. Go on back to bed. We got this.”
“Bullshit. What’s up?”
“It’s just that damned cat again. If your old lady—“
“Watch your mouth, Fitor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Rostov get here yet? I want this big blonde asshole out of here. Anybody find his car yet?”
“No sir.”
“And no sign of the Castiano woman?”
“No, sir. We figure Sammy and his boys got her and are long gone.”
“And the big guy?”
“Hired help. He keeps saying he’s just a burglar and was by himself, but that’s bullshit as common thieves don’t wear no five grand night vision. I figure they don’t give a shit about him. Sammy got his old lady back. We’ll head back down and twist blonde boy’s tail some more when we make sure things are good here.”
Gashi growls, “Yeah, Sammy’s happy…until we waste them all.”
“You ready for us to go to work on the singer bitch? She’s scared shitless watching us work the big blonde guy over. We should get the plane over here and haul her to Nashville if that’s where she’s got dough.”
“I’ll think about that. I’m gonna call her manager first. I’d way rather have my dough than croak her ass. And hauling her around the country is dangerous.”
“Okay.”
“But first,” the guy called Gashi says, “I’m gonna get me a couple more hours of zees.”
“Yes, sir. We’re on this. Bosco is checking the grounds, just to make sure.”
I’m beginning the cramp up, kneeling behind the bar for fifteen minutes, watching the only guy left in the room as he walks to a far wall, picks up a tuner and clicks on CNN to take in the early morning news. He’s got dirty blonde hair, and if his dark eyebrows are
an indication, it’s dyed. He either had a hell of a case of smallpox as a kid, or his acne ran amuck as his face is the surface of the moon.
Finally he walks to the still-open sliding door and yells out. “Bosco, what the hell are you doing?”
And he gets no answer. I imagine Bosco made the mistake of strolling past a bush where Pax was laying low, and now Bosco is laying even lower.
He yells again. The guy Gashi referred to as Fitor has holstered his weapon, so I don’t worry about confronting him, so long as he doesn’t yell out. He’s a little under six feet, but V-shaped and was either born with the body of a running back or spent a lot of time pushing weights.
He moves back to the pool table and flops his butt on the edge, eyeing the TV, but obviously uncomfortable that his buddy Rostov has not returned. As he’s facing away from me, watching the open sliding glass door, I rise and open the little bar-height door. It squeaks and he turns, and his mouth drops open as I have the M4 and it’s red laser dot centered on his chest.
“You make a sound and I’ll stitch your ass from your dick to your ugly snout,” I say, and he’s still wide-mouthed. He shuts it and nods. “Lay face down on the pool table, arms extended as far as you can reach.”
He does and I lay the muzzle of the M4 against the back of his dirty blonde head and frisk him with one hand, removing the semi-auto at his side. It’s a Sig-Sauer 9mm with a 13 round mag. Nice piece to add to my collection.
I glance up as someone fills the doorway of the slider, then relax as I see it’s Pax.
“I wondered if you were ever gonna take the prick down,” he says.
“You took care of the guy outside?”
“He’s napping, hooked up to a fat bush with enough cable tie to secure a bucking bull.”
I use Fitor’s own pistol and crack him a good one behind the ear, and he slowly slides off the table and flops to the carpet. I grab a cable tie and bind his wrists behind his back, strip his belt away and am happy to see it’s one of those web ones that will take any size, and gag him with the belt pulled so tight in his open mouth he can only barely get his breath. Then I bind his ankles and tie that cable tie to a foot of the pool table. He’ll be no bother for a while.
Pax points to a hallway and we only take three steps into it before he opens a door that’s glass and has an oversized bunch of grapes etched into its surface. Inside there’s a small landing then a stairway going down, into what I presume is the wine cellar. The stairs are carpeted so it’s quiet moving, and the door hinges are well oiled and, luckily, make no sound.
I lead the way and am pleased to see the cellar has a large open area the size of a single-car garage with a large well-lacquered slab of redwood as a table and benches on the two long sides, chairs at the end. The walls surrounding the table are floor-to-ceiling racks of wine bottles, and two wine barrels on edge are on stands at one end of the room. Bungs with spouts allow the filling of glasses.
In one of the chairs is a fat bald guy, but his head is down on his folded arms on the table and he seems to be asleep, and he’s wheezing like a hippo sucking air. His baldhead is lined with veins and what I can see of his face is a mass of fine red veins. His left ear, the one I can see, is split and V-shaped through the lobe. The guy is medium height and way over medium weight…I’ll bet he goes over three hun.
With his back to a post, Skip is on the floor, legs extended and spread, his head hanging, blood dripping slowly down his check and from his nose onto his bare chest. In a small separate room with its own glass door—and its walls lined with racks of bottles—stands country singer Tammy Houston, her eyes wide, blonde hair askew, her face pressed against the glass. And she’s still in a yellow bikini and barefoot. And I recall they snatched her away from the pool.
I do the creep over to the sleeping fat guy, and he gets the semi-auto to the temple as did his buddy upstairs. Fat boy rolls to the side and hits the floor flat on his back, hard enough that I feel the wind from his flop.
Two pairs of cuffs hooked together bind Skip’s big wrists. He’s out cold, both his eyes protruding like half-eggs, and black, blue and damn near closed. I have the cuffs open in a heartbeat as I always carry a cuff key on my key chain, before he starts to stir. The first words out of his mouth are, mumbled, “Fuck you assholes. I ain’t telling you shit.”
I have to laugh, and reply, “I didn’t ask you shit. Can you walk?”
He mumbles through busted lips. “I can run, if it means getting the hell out of here.”
While I’m working on Skip, Pax is picking the keyed lock on the smaller wine room door. It opens and I guess Tammy presumes Pax is one of the good guys as he’s with me; she throws her arms around him and squeezes so tight I can hear his breath expel.
Now, to get the hell out of Dodge
Chapter Eighteen
I’m a little worried as so far this has been way too easy.
The good news is, as we exit the sliding glass doors, that the Dobermans are still stumbling around retching every five steps. The bad, some fat guy is standing beside them trying to figure out what the hell’s wrong. Another sliding glass door, probably to the master bedroom stands open. He’s not too impressive in a terry cloth robe, bare calves the size of telephone poles, fuzzy house shoes, and a prodigious belly.
He turns as we exit the sliding glass door, and yells to us, “What the hell’s the matter with my boys?”
He hasn’t really looked at us, and doesn’t until I speak up. “Your boys are gonna be fine, and you’re gonna stay alive so long as you don’t make any quick moves.”
Then he realizes we aren’t his employees. “Who the fuck…?”
“Frick, Frack, Fred and our girl Fanny. Check the red dot in the center of your gray chest hair, old man. Sit down on your blubber butt on the grass and don’t move until we’re way out of sight, and you’ll stay alive.”
“I’m Ed Gashi, and you fuckers are dead meat.”
“I know who you are, Edvin. Wrong time to act tough. That red dot on your chest could be a half dozen holes in your heart, presuming you have one.”
All the time we’re talking, we’re moving toward the fence. Skip is stumbling along behind.
“Down,” I yell at Gashi, and he complies, sitting on his butt in the grass.
But there’s not a humble bone in his Albanian body, and he yells. “Dead meat, dead fucking meat.”
We reach the fence, and realize it will be tough getting Tammy over it without scratching her up on the jagged fence top, so I trot back to the fat man. “Get up. Give me the robe.”
“Fuck you.”
“You give it or I take it off your body and I don’t give a shit which.”
He rolls to his side and struggles to his feet, and drops the robe off into the grass. He really is a fat fuck with rolls big enough to hide more than one weapon. I should have been more careful as there’s no telling what might be hidden in the folds.
“Step back,” I command, and he does.
Skip has followed me and I guess has a bone to pick with the fat Albanian. Without saying a word he snakes a hand out and grabs the man by the throat and Gashi goes up on his toes. Skip guides him, Gashi tip toeing backwards to the edge of the pool, Albanian fat quivering with every step, and shoves.
A substantial wave moves away from the hole in the water where the fat man has, in his not-so-splendid nakedness, disappeared into the water.
He bobs up and sputters, “Dead…dead…dead fucking meat. I got your ass on the security cameras, and you ain’t gonna get away with this.”
The dumb fuck is pointing at a camera mounted on the wall above one of the sliders, and just for the hell of it, knowing it won’t destroy the tape, I raise the M4 and put a quick three round blast into the camera, blowing it all to hell. Gashi spits and treads water as both Skip and Pax yell at me.
“What the hell?”
“No problem,” I yell back.
Gashi is dead silent for the moment. I grab the robe and hustle back to
the fence. Pax is already on the other side. I throw the robe over, covering the jagged wires, and hoist Tammy up and he takes her down. I boost Skip up and he crashes to the soft plowed soil on the other side. I vault the fence, catch the sling on my M4, hang like a marionette, and Pax laughs. He has to help me get untangled.
“You are one clumsy fuck,” he says, still laughing. “Good thing I took you to raise.”
“Let’s clumsy the hell out of here,” I manage. Tammy’s with me as the bike’s lots closer. “Meet you two at the iHop in town. Don’t be followed.” I hand Skip the Sig-Sauer, “Thirteen in the clip and one in the chamber, a gift from the boys who roughed you up.”
“10-4,” he says, and they disappear into the darkness.
As I’m dragging Tammy to the bike, we can hear Gashi yelling behind us, “You’re fucked. Dead meat, dead fucking meat.”
I give Tammy my helmet as any gentleman would, then dig out some lightweight leathers from my saddle bags and hand them to her.
“Just the coat,” she says, and pulls it on. It’s way big for her but even at that only hits her to the bottom of her shapely butt.
“You’ll freeze,” I say.
“Not that far to town,” she says, and I shrug and she climbs on and hugs me like I was the world’s biggest record buyer, and we’re off. I’m halfway back to town when a set of headlights roar up behind me and I’m about to see what the Harley Iron will top out at, when the red and blue lights fill my mirror.
We stop in the soft dirt of the roadside and dismount and I’m studying the white sheriff’s car, my hand on the Glock at the middle of my back, but happy it’s actually a sheriff’s car and not Gashi and his crew. Unhappy, as I have little interest in waiting for the Albanians to regroup and give chase as I’m sure the presence of one sheriff’s deputy won’t stop them from trying to blow us all to hell.
He’s on the radio, I hope merely reporting the stop, then dismounts and walks into his headlights, and I can see it’s the same cop who jumped me in the boondocks behind Castiano Winery. Officer Brownley if memory serves, and I can see it does as he gets close and I read his nameplate.