Sons of War 3: Sinners

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Don Antonio Moretti.

  “Here’s your fix,” Dom said. He went to work, stabbing Max over and over with the tip of the pliers until he let out a last evil breath and went limp.

  -15-

  “Morning,” Camilla said.

  She hopped into the back seat of the Jeep, next to Rocky, who was sleeping off a hangover.

  “Morning,” Moose said.

  Dom just nodded.

  Rocky moaned and looked up. He had a nice shiner from a blow Tooth had landed in the boxing ring last night.

  “Where you guys been?” Camilla asked.

  “We had an errand to run this morning,” Dom said.

  Moose pulled away from her apartment building, and Dom looked in the back seat. “Did you talk to your uncle?”

  “Yeah. He has a caravan going out, but he’s down to help us if needed.”

  Dom nodded again and turned back to the front seat.

  Something was on his mind. Something was on his uniform too.

  “Is that blood?” she asked.

  Dom looked down but didn’t reply.

  “Did I miss something?” Rocky asked.

  “No,” Dom and Moose said in unison.

  “Okay, I’m going back to sleep,” Rocky said, resting his head against the window.

  “Did you get any sleep at all?” she asked Dom.

  “Not really.”

  “How’s your mom doing?” Camilla asked, almost afraid to do so. That was probably what preoccupied him, she realized.

  Dom fished a loose pill out of his pocket and swallowed it with a chug of water.

  Camilla didn’t ask. For all she knew, it was just ibuprofen.

  Or speed . . .

  “Dom, did you hear me?” she asked.

  He looked over, his tired eyes focusing on her. “Hear what?”

  “Your mom—how is she?”

  Dom shrugged. “Same. She’s never going to forgive me, and she’s never getting better.”

  She turned back to the view of the factories on the right side of the street. They passed a Mosquito spraying the air and cleaning the roads. Several of them were out in the agricultural zone this morning.

  Camilla always enjoyed driving through the zone of warehouses retrofitted as greenhouses for corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and spinach. Most of the food that didn’t come from China through the Port of Long Beach or from government-run farms in the Midwest was grown and distributed right here in the ag zone. Seeing it always gave her a little surge of hope.

  They cut through the area on their way to pick up Cayenne.

  “I’ll grab her after I talk to Yolanda and the kids,” Moose said. He hopped out and jogged toward the courtyard of his building.

  Sometimes, she envied Moose for having someone to go home to. But then again, having someone to love meant having someone to lose. After Joaquín and her parents were killed, she had decided to focus on work—just work.

  “Abdul was killed yesterday,” Dom said quietly.

  “What!” Camilla gasped.

  “Someone killed him in his apartment.”

  Rocky stirred in the back seat. “What’s going on?”

  First Jason and now Abdul. Camilla had a feeling she knew who was next.

  “Do you think Abdul told whoever killed him who we are?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t know who any of you guys are,” Dom replied. “Just me.”

  Moose returned a few minutes later with Cayenne in tow. She hopped over to the Jeep and jumped into the front passenger seat with Dom.

  “Hey, girl,” he said.

  Cayenne licked his smiling face.

  Moose pulled the Jeep back out into traffic, away from the Angel Pyramids, on the long ride to their safe house in the City of Industry. Camilla tried not to think about all the things suddenly stacked against them. But how could they go so quickly from victorious to on the run?

  That’s what happens when you kill Morettis and Vegas.

  She gave a low sigh and focused on the drive. The sidewalks framing the road were already busy with traffic this morning. Kids, adults—even old folks—were out and about. Several cyclists pedaled on the right side of the road.

  “Watch out!” Dom yelled.

  Moose yanked the wheel to the right just as a car shot by, horn blaring.

  “What the hell,” Rocky said.

  Dom leaned forward to see. It wasn’t some random driver, but an armored black LAPD cruiser.

  “Jesus,” Dom said. “Could turn his lights on.”

  Camilla watched two more cruisers fly past them. Their lights were also off.

  “A bit early in the morning for this shit,” Rocky said. He rested his head back on the window, but a second later, two more cruisers tore across the intersection ahead.

  “Something big is going down,” Dom said.

  Rocky pawed at his eyes like a little kid stirring from a nap and tried to get the police scanner on. In the minutes that followed, another four police cars raced by, with several fire trucks and ambulances giving chase.

  “Last time I saw this many cops was during the riots last summer,” Dom said.

  Rocky shrugged. “Let’s hope the mayor doesn’t shut off the power to the slums again, or I’m rioting too.”

  Camilla recalled the busy weeks last summer. Hundreds of people had died from the heat, and even more from the violence that followed. She saw no sign of smoke on the skyline and heard no gunfire—both good signs that whatever was happening wasn’t too terrible.

  “Pull off,” Dom said. “You guys stay here and try and get the radio to work. I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s shakin’.”

  Moose parked on the side of the road, in the shade of a silk-floss tree. He killed the engine, while Rocky searched for fresh batteries in their supply duffel in the back seat.

  Dom pulled his face mask down and got out with Cayenne, who hopped after him on the sidewalk. Several teenagers skateboarded in front of the reinforced entryway to an apartment building.

  Cayenne barked at one that came too close, and Dom snapped his fingers for her to follow him.

  “You got any water up there?” Rocky asked.

  Camilla handed him a bottle.

  He slugged down half and went back to work on the radio. It came to life a moment later.

  “Six officers down . . . Ten civilian casualties . . . Suspects seen in black Range Rovers . . .”

  Camilla covered her mouth in shock as reports of violence rolled in from West Hollywood, where men wearing ballistic masks and armor had used automatic weapons on a group of police officers getting coffee.

  “Christ, this is jacked up,” Rocky said. “Six dead cops.”

  Dom came back to the Jeep.

  “Listen to this,” Rocky said. He turned the police-band radio up.

  “Six dead cops and multiple casualties in West Hollywood,” Camilla said.

  “When?” Dom asked.

  “A few hours ago,” Rocky replied.

  Dom recoiled as if he had just been punched in the face. He massaged his thick brown stubble.

  “Those sons of bitches finally did it,” he said quietly. “Holy shit, they finally crossed the red line. They didn’t just put a price tag on our heads; they went after the cops who were at the port the other night.”

  “Oh shit, this is . . . this is because of us?” Rocky said.

  No one spoke.

  “No,” Moose said. “Don’t say that.”

  “The Morettis did this,” Dom said. “We all know who’s behind those masks.”

  It was hard for Camilla to believe that the gangsters had committed such unprecedented violence against the police. The last time a bunch of cops were killed was eight years ago at the Chevron oil refinery, when the task force under Marks had been caught in an ambush. Since then, an unwritten contract was in force. Cops were untouchable, especially the crooked ones.

  But the contract had just been ripped up. Unless Stone had approved this one, just as some pe
ople believed he had approved the slaughter of the task force that night at the oil refinery.

  “They’ll go after the Russians next,” Moose said.

  Dom avoided the eyes of the other Saints. Even Cayenne must have sensed the tension. She licked his hand. He hammered the dashboard.

  Cayenne hunkered down. Her handler was starting to lose his cool.

  “It’s going to be okay, Dom,” Camilla said soothingly.

  He needed some sleep, and to come off that damn speed. But at least he hadn’t been drinking lately—that she knew of . . .

  She reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Drive us to the safe house,” Dom told Moose.

  Camilla could feel her heartbeat ramping up. Cops were lying dead in the streets out there, and when it came down to it, this was partly the Saints’ fault. She had always believed in karma, and Lieutenant Best probably deserved what he got, but what about the other officers?

  They were still cops. Even if they pocketed money from time to time, they had all sworn the same oath. Most of them were just trying to make the city safer for the people scraping by.

  When they finally got back to the safe house, all the Saints were there. And no one seemed to have heard the news from West Hollywood.

  Namid and Tooth were cleaning their weapons in the garage while Bettis worked with Pork Chop on the Tahoe.

  “Circle up,” Dom said.

  Bettis wiped his greasy hands on his pants, and Pork Chop slid out from under the truck’s chassis, grabbed his trucker hat off the hood, and stuck it on his bald head.

  They met at the long metal war table. Poker chips, playing cards, and empty beer bottles littered the surface.

  “Abdul was found dead yesterday,” Dom said. “And a few hours ago, six cops from Lieutenant Best’s crew were gunned down in West Hollywood. Cops are all over the city looking for the assassins.”

  The Saints who hadn’t heard the news broke out in chatter.

  “Quiet,” Dom said.

  Camilla hated seeing him this way. After recent events and seeing his mom in the mental health ward, the leader of the Saints was near his breaking point. But there was still strength in him.

  “My dad once told me you have to make your enemies fear you,” Dom said. “We did that the other night. Our enemy responded with force, and now we have to hit them back, harder.”

  “Now?” Rocky asked. “Isn’t now when we should be lying low?”

  Dom shook his head. “This is the beginning of a battle that will determine the fate of everyone living in the City of Angels.”

  He let the team chew on that and then added, “But we’re prepared for this. We trained for this. All the safe houses, all the hoarded weapons and vehicles. And we have Sammy.”

  Dom walked around the table, looking at them all in turn. Cayenne watched him, her saggy lips curved into what looked a lot like a smile.

  “Maybe we should try to find more allies,” Rocky suggested.

  “I agree,” Tooth added. “Maybe it’s time to recruit more Saints.”

  “What we really need is an army,” Pork Chop chimed in.

  Namid just sat taking it all in.

  Dom put his hands on Rocky’s shoulders, and the youngest member of the Saints glanced up at him.

  “We have everything we need right here,” Dom said. “We protect Sammy at all costs and let him lead us to Don Antonio. When we topple the king, all this ends. The Moretti organization will crumble, and we will pick off the scraps.”

  Bettis made the sign of the cross over his chest.

  “I’m with you, brother,” Moose said. He stood up from his chair and thumped his left pec. “Ride and die, baby.”

  “I fought with your father, and I’ll fight with you,” Namid said.

  “Us too,” Tooth said, glancing at Bettis, who nodded.

  They were almost all in agreement—they wouldn’t sit back and hide, and they wouldn’t leave the city. But Camilla hesitated.

  “You with me?” Dom asked.

  She nodded, though she wasn’t sure they were prepared for this battle. If it turned into a war, they could lose everything—not only their lives, but the lives of everyone they were fighting to save.

  * * *

  Ray had blood on his hands. And this time it wasn’t the blood of criminals.

  He grabbed his ARX160. It was from the batch he had sold to the Morettis—the same guns they had used to gun down his brothers in West Hollywood. The rifle wasn’t going to do him any good if the gangsters found him.

  For the first time in his life, he was being hunted by the mobsters he was in bed with. He should have seen this coming. He should have known, after the Saints attacked the port and stole the RX-4 shipment, that the Morettis would retaliate.

  But slaughter a bunch of cops? With the same guns he had sold them?

  Ray wanted to puke. He had never expected his actions to cause the deaths of so many of his brothers. Neither had Lieutenant Best and the other officers. They were enjoying a morning coffee when the Morettis rolled up in their fancy Range Rovers and gunned them down like dogs.

  Ray was lucky he was in his car when he heard the calls come in over the radio. Hearing them, he knew exactly what was going down. First off, he called Alicia and told her to go to her aunt’s house and not to argue.

  The second thing he did was hightail it to his cache of weapons and coin. He loaded up his car with half the weapons and money, buried the rest, and drove to his safe house in Harvard Park to consider his options.

  There weren’t many. He could go into the station and ask Chief Stone for protection. He could go underground and wait this out. Or he could call up Vinny and try to make a deal with the info he had collected over the past few days.

  After ten hours of sitting, drinking, and thinking, the only option he had written off was going to Chief Stone. In some ways, the fucker was worse than the Morettis.

  Ray finished off his cigarillo and stubbed out the glowing tip in the glass bowl on the table. The smoke filled the room with a cherry scent. He sat in the cracked leather chair, his muscular body flinching at the rap on a door down the hall. He grabbed his ARX160 and leveled it at the door.

  The building was noisy tonight. Opening and slamming doors. Crying babies. People yelling or fucking, or both.

  The paper-thin walls gave him an audio track to the events around him. He didn’t come here for the peace and quiet, that was for sure. He had rented this place just in case he ever needed somewhere to hide.

  Although he hadn’t seen the violence in West Hollywood coming, he had planned for it. The one thing his degenerate gambler dad had taught him was always to leave himself outs. And that was exactly what he had done.

  Ray Clarke had something the gangsters wanted. It was also why he was still alive after all these years dealing with monsters and scumbags.

  Maybe it’s also because it takes one to know one.

  The things he had done over the past few weeks had him thinking a lot about the blood on his hands. Like a tattoo, it wasn’t coming off.

  Pulling back the drapes, he stood and checked the parking lot. Several wannabee gangbangers sat on the hoods of their cars, smoking and listening to old-school rap.

  He knew one of them, a huge guy with linebacker shoulders and a silver nose ring that made Ray think of a bull. He had fought hard when Ray brought him in a few years ago on a domestic.

  He laughed at the memory of ripping the guy’s nose ring out. He could turn a blind eye to the small stuff like drugs, or even dealing. But a man who beat on a woman? Nah, Ray Clarke couldn’t let that slide.

  Two cars drag-raced out of the parking lot and onto the road, their headlights zooming past a crater the size of a college football stadium. It was all that remained of a shopping mall across the street. The aerial blast had leveled the area and killed thousands of people sheltering there.

  Ray had grown up just a few miles away, in a house with two of the best parents in the wo
rld. They, too, were killed in the violence—burned alive in a fire set by gangbangers trying to kill him or Moose.

  A tear blurred his eye at that memory, and he pushed it away for better ones. He missed hot summer days when he and Moose would stay outside until the streetlights came on, playing ball, chasing girls, and doing the usual dumb shit that teenagers did.

  He had always looked up to Moose, even though Ray was the older brother. And that was why he had to help Moose.

  Ray took the ARX160 over to the bed. A SIG Sauer P320 rested under one of the pillows, and his shotgun was propped against the wall.

  He sat on the mattress and pointed the ARX160 at the door again. Then he pulled out his cell phone and saw a missed call from Alicia.

  Letting the rifle rest on his chest, he dialed her number.

  “Ray, are you okay?” Alicia answered.

  “Yeah, babe. Are you at your aunt’s house?”

  “Just got here. When are you coming home?”

  “Good.”

  A pause, and voices in the background. Lolo was crying.

  “When are you coming home?” Alicia repeated.

  “I don’t know, babe.”

  “What’s wrong, Ray? What aren’t you telling me? Does this have anything to do with what happened in West Hollywood?”

  “Don’t you worry about that now. I’ll call you when I can. Just stay at your aunt’s place. Okay?”

  A pause.

  “Okay, Ray. I love you.”

  “I . . .” His words trailed off as the door to the apartment exploded off its hinges. He dropped the phone, but before he could grab his rifle, a bullet hit him in the chest.

  His body convulsed, his muscles locking up. A group of men stormed into the room as his back arched up off the floor. Then he saw the two electrical nodes sticking out of his chest, just above his ballistic vest.

  These guys, whoever they were, hadn’t shot him, which meant they wanted him alive.

  Or it may just mean he had a long evening of torture ahead.

  He tried to get up, but someone grabbed him by the legs, and someone else grabbed him by the shoulders. He blinked away the stars and focused on a husky figure standing in front of the bed.