“In position,” Christopher said over the comms.
Doberman’s voice came through. “Activating Christmas lights in three, two, one . . .”
Somewhere five blocks away, Vinny’s best friend fired the EMP device into the roof of the Nevsky compound, killing the power in a single invisible blast and disabling their security system.
“On me,” Christopher said. He stepped onto the ladder, his rifle hanging over his back.
Vinny went next.
At the top, Christopher put a shoulder into the lid, and the weld broke free. The superacid gel Carmine applied around the lid had already worked, eating through the steel. He pushed the lid up with ease, took a look, then shoved the lid aside.
Seconds later, the team was fanning out in a field of weeds. Only a few scraggly pandanus trees dotted the landscape, providing almost zero concealment. A half-moon glowed over the dusty terrain.
The team moved toward a ten-foot concrete wall around the Russian compound. The roofs of several buildings rose toward the clouds. Two towers overlooked the eastern and western walls.
Shouts sounded on the other side of the wall. Then a voice, in English.
“What the fuck happened to the lights?”
Christopher pointed to the east tower and gave the order.
Two suppressed shots took the guards out, and both bodies slumped, one toppling over the edge and into the field. Two more suppressed shots to the west tower took out the guards posted there. Yellowtail and his men ran toward the wall.
When the two teams were in position, Carmine pulled a grappling hook and coiled line off his pack and threw it over the side of the wall. Yellowtail followed suit. They gave the lines a yank, pulling the razor wire down in both places.
Two rope ladders were thrown over, and both teams scrambled up them and down the other side.
By the time they were inside, only two minutes had passed since the EMP blast, and they hadn’t been spotted.
Vinny’s boots hit the grass on enemy territory, and he crouched down to orient himself.
Four houses made up the compound. A long driveway through the center ended in a circle outside the main structure. Several vehicles were parked there. Trees and gardens provided cover or concealment in the green spaces between the houses.
A guard patrolling a stone path walked around the corner of the house to the right and stopped to listen. Christopher slit his throat and pulled him backward into the holly bushes. Seeing his dad kill with such ease made Vinny wonder how many men he had executed in that fashion when he was in Afghanistan.
Yellowtail took out two more guards with bursts from his rifle as he advanced. Vinny followed his father to the right, around the side of the smaller building. They stopped at a corner and signaled Carmine and Rush to take up position on the other side of the driveway.
They darted across in the darkness, leaving Vinny alone with his dad. Hand signals from Carmine confirmed three targets outside the entrance of the main house, a two-story Victorian with a dozen wide windows.
If Sergei was anything like his uncle, the windows were bulletproof.
Vinny spotted three soldiers on the stairwell. He spotted a fourth walking near a group of vehicles in the circular drive.
Christopher pulled Vinny back, and Vinny knelt beside his father, moving his finger from guard to trigger. They waited a few more seconds for Yellowtail to get into position.
A shout rang out to the right, and before Vinny could react, automatic gunfire cracked across the driveway.
Their cover was blown.
Rush and Carmine turned into a hail of gunfire. Car windows shattered as bullets punched into the vehicles. Rush suddenly cried out and went skidding. Carmine pulled him to safety while the shooter moved behind a cypress tree to reload.
“God damn it,” Christopher grumbled. He strode away from the corner and fired across the driveway. The 7.62 mm NATO rounds punched through the tree, clipping the soldier and spinning him about.
Carmine’s next shot caught the wounded Russian in the face, and he fell still.
“On me!” Christopher yelled.
Carmine had a hand on Rush, who wasn’t moving.
“He’s gone,” he said.
Vinny looked away from the former AMP soldier’s crumpled body. He had served them well over the years. Losing him was a major hit to the family.
“Vin, come on,” Christopher said.
He followed his dad to the left side of the drive. The guards on the stairwell yelled in Russian and fired into the darkness.
Vinny slowed his pace, aimed, and pulled the trigger. Two of the guards went down right away, tumbling onto the circular drive. The third took up position behind a large stoneware planter full of flowers.
Rounds lanced into the position, shattering clay pots and cracking stone.
Yellowtail led his team into the battle, firing on full auto. Windows above shattered as Russians began firing from the second story.
Christopher bolted for cover behind a Mercedes SUV, and Vinny crouched beside him. Next came Carmine.
“You hit?” Christopher asked Carmine.
He shook his head.
Gunfire cut through the darkness all around them. Muzzle flashes blinking like fireflies in the night. Rounds blew out car windows and plinked through body metal. Vinny heard a bullet whiz overhead. The tire to his right hissed out its air.
Three more guards streamed into the circular drive, using cars as cover.
“Covering fire!” Christopher yelled.
The adrenaline rushed through Vinny. He had never felt anything like this before—not even being high on coke and drunk at the same time.
This was the ultimate rush, and he couldn’t be more terrified.
And yet he still rose up, found a target, and pulled the trigger. A three-round burst took down one of the Russkies taking aim at his dad.
Christopher bolted for another car, stopped with his back against the rear bumper, and nodded at Vinny. They both stood up, firing at the same time. The gunfire took down another guard, and Vinny aimed at the windows above, firing at the muzzle flashes.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Carmine moving his rifle left, toward his father. His shot blew past Christopher and hit another Nevsky soldier on the stairs. Vinny ducked back down and looked over at Carmine.
“Nice shot,” Vinny said. He waited for a lull and then picked out another window, unloading a dozen rounds at the target. Gunfire peppered the hood of the car, forcing him back down.
Yellowtail led his team into the circular drive, firing at the windows.
Vinny rose again to help lay down covering fire and saw his dad running toward the stairs.
“Dad!” he yelled.
Yellowtail and Christopher made it to the stairs at the same time. They loped up the steps, hurdling dead bodies.
“No kids, no women,” Christopher said over the comms.
“Let’s move,” Carmine said to Vinny. He got up and ran across the circular drive, but Vinny hesitated, seeing motion on the right. Four figures darted out of a garden down the driveway and ran for a garage.
“Contacts on east side of main building,” he said into his comm.
“Hold position,” Christopher replied.
Vinny caught a glimpse of an older man in the center of the group of four, making a run for the garage.
Sergei Nevsky, you old bastard.
“Eyes on target, engaging,” Vinny said.
“Hold position, Vinny,” Christopher ordered. “I repeat, hold . . .”
But Vinny didn’t listen. This was his chance to make up for the port and finally make captain. He would bring down the Russian boss while his cousin snorted another line of coke off some hooker’s tits.
Vinny took off running with his rifle cradled. He wanted to wait until the last second before surprising the targets.
He knelt beside a car and searched for targets. He found several, one of them female. The orders about women sounded in the ba
ck of his mind as he waited for a shot.
He followed one of the men in his sights, then pulled the trigger.
Return fire cracked as two more soldiers fired from across the road. The rounds hit a car a hundred feet away. The assholes couldn’t see him, but they could get lucky.
Breathing heavily, Vinny took cover behind a big eucalyptus tree. He glanced around. Sergei’s little group were inside the garage now. He wasn’t sure whether the EMP would kill the vehicles too, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Leaving the tree, he ran across the driveway toward the entrance to the garage, passing the man he had just killed.
Heart thumping in his ears, he approached the side door to the garage. The main door suddenly swung up, opened manually.
Gunfire continued at the main house, and Vinny used the noise to sneak closer.
A mid-1960s Mustang rumbled in the garage. He aimed at the driver’s door and squeezed the trigger, shattering the glass as the car lurched out of the garage and coasted to a stop.
A woman fell out the back door, screaming in horror.
Vinny strode over, yelling and waving with one hand for her to get back while he aimed his rifle with the other hand.
She backed away, and Vinny leveled the gun at the car door. He walked up and opened it, stepping back as a body slumped out.
Not Sergei.
“Fucking dago,” growled a deep voice from the darkness of the garage.
Vinny spun toward the Russian-accented voice and pulled the trigger just as something slammed into his helmet. He went down hard on the concrete, feeling as if an elephant had sat on him.
He tried to move but couldn’t. Was his spine broken?
The muffled pop of gunfire rang out over the dull ringing in both his ears. He finally opened his eyes and saw movement on the ground inside the garage.
Sergei lay on the concrete, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other holding the pistol he had shot Vinny with. The old man aimed it at him again.
Vinny kept his eyes open, staring down the barrel. He had tried to imagine what it would be like to die. Would he be brave, or would he piss himself like most people?
Oddly, he didn’t feel brave or scared. In this defining moment, all he could think about was Adriana.
A flash of motion broke across his vision, and two men darted into the garage. Sergei turned and fired one shot before the Morettis were on him, kicking him over and over.
Vinny squirmed on the ground, finally able to move again. He felt a hand on his back—a good sign he didn’t have a broken neck.
“Vin! Vin!” said a voice. “Can you hear me?”
It was his dad, but Vinny couldn’t respond. The numbness turned to pain. He fought the darkness closing in.
“Did we get him?” Vinny finally managed to say.
Christopher pulled his mask up and grinned. “Yeah, kid, you got him.”
-19-
Ray smelled trash. His eyes opened to stacks of tires and mountains of stinking garbage.
But everything was strangely upside down.
No. You are upside down.
Blinking, he focused on the vehicle directly beneath him. Not just any vehicle, but a garbage truck, its back open and its metal belly half full of refuse.
Mumbling came from his left, and he glanced over.
“Tommy?” he muttered.
His partner hung from a crane.
Ray didn’t need to look up to see that he, too, was hanging from a rope tied around his ankles. Looking past his feet, he was rewarded with a clear sky bejeweled with stars. The last sky he would ever see.
“You boys ready for a bath?”
He knew that voice. Sure enough, Mikey the Mutant walked into view.
“Please!” Tommy wailed. He was still in a hospital gown. The brazen bastards had kidnapped him from the hospital and brought him out here with Ray.
“I’m going to give you both a nice dip in this trash,” Mikey said. “Get you real slimy and shit before I crush you into quesadillas.”
The ugly bastard waddled out from between the two trucks. He pulled his pants up and gave Ray a shit-eating grin of rotten teeth.
A dozen of his comrades had circled around the trucks, all wearing filthy black jumpsuits. They smelled like their surroundings, maybe even worse.
Standing next to Mikey was his right-hand man, Richard Ontiveros, also known as “El Chef.” He wore a rubber butcher’s apron and held a machete. He swatted a fly away from his dreadlocks and went back to smoking his cigarette.
It amazed Ray that the Morettis dealt with these psychos. But they did run the biggest garbage operation in the county, which made their trucks very useful for distributing product and disposing of corpses.
“You’re going to taste real good, güero,” Mikey said, licking his lips and looking at Tommy. “You too, Detective.”
Ray had heard the rumors but always figured it was just part of their mystique—one of those stories the gangsters used to get people to pay up or speak up.
Now Ray knew better—it wasn’t a front at all. The mutant freak was a cannibal, and El Chef was an actual fucking chef who served up humans.
“Before you start crying again like little bitches, I’m going to be honest with you,” Mikey said. “Don Antonio knows you two were involved with the port.”
“What the hell are you talking about, man? We weren’t even there!” Ray said, squirming in the air over the garbage truck.
“Maybe, maybe not, but I’m going to find out one way or the other. Only reason you putos are still alive is because I think you know who did this to me . . .”
He peeled back the yellowed bandage on the right side of his face, exposing flesh as bright and red as ahi tuna.
“The Saints should have made sure I was dead,” Mikey said. “ ’Cause I’m going to spend the rest of my life hunting them down and picking them apart fingernail by fingernail, hair by hair, bone by bone.”
He craned his neck to look up at Ray.
“You’re wrong, Mikey,” Ray said.
“Save your breath, Detective, ’cause I already know you were working with Lieutenant Best at the port.”
Best, that son of a bitch . . .
It made sense that the lieutenant had sold him out to save his own skin. But Tommy? The guy was in the hospital during the attack.
“You’re right, I knew,” Ray said. “But we weren’t there, I swear. And Tommy had nothing to do with this, man.”
Mikey grinned. “You know what I do think?”
“Please,” Tommy wailed. “I can’t breathe . . .”
“I think you two are Saints,” Mikey said, pointing at each of them. “I think you two were the guys that used the Morettis and my people as target practice.”
“What!” Tommy blurted. “No way, man. I’m not a Saint. I was in the hospital during the attack, and I would never join those assholes!”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mikey said again. He smiled and turned to the crane booth, where one of his men sat at the controls holding Tommy aloft.
Mikey gave the operator a nod.
The machinery clanked, and Tommy descended toward the garbage truck. The compactor unit rumbled to life.
“NO!” Tommy shouted.
“Don’t do this, Mikey,” Ray said. “We’re not Saints, and we can help you.”
“That’s what you said back in your rent-a-shack, but I still haven’t heard anything that wets my broken beak,” Mikey said. “Only way Tommy here doesn’t turn into provolone and tomato sauce is if you give me the Saints.”
Tommy struggled violently, swinging back and forth. A thin stream of liquid trickled off his body, into the crunching garbage below.
“He pissed himself!” one of Mikey’s men yelled.
The other guys broke out laughing.
Tommy sobbed harder. “Ray, help me,” he choked. “Help me, please!”
“A guy named Snake told us about the port,” Ray said, “and Lieutenant Best went to get his cut
, just like usual. I swear on my kids. We didn’t know the Saints were going to show up. It was just a routine collection.”
Mikey shook his head wearily and looked back to the crane operator, nodding. Tommy’s head was nearing the opening of the garbage truck. The young cop fought harder, squirming back and forth.
“We’re not Saints!” Ray yelled.
“Then tell me who is!” Mikey yelled back.
A scream rang out as the rope around Tommy’s ankles slid off and he nose-dived into the open compactor. An inhuman screech filled the night, cut off abruptly by a meaty thunk and then crunching. It was over so fast, Ray hadn’t even blinked.
The other men seemed equally surprised and were silent for a few seconds.
And then they started laughing.
Mikey bent over, hands on his knees. “That was fucking awesome!” he bellowed.
Ray wanted to puke.
“Lo siento,” Mikey said, raising a hand but still chuckling. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
He wiped his nose and walked over until he was almost directly below Ray.
“Only one way you don’t end up like that redhead puto, and that’s by giving me the Saints,” he said. “If you don’t, then I might continue on this little spree once I’m done with you. Might go look up your family. I remember you having a fine-ass wife. Am I right, boys?”
The other men all hollered and grunted.
You touch her, and I will cut your balls off and feed them to the pigs. Ray scrutinized the burned face of the man he was going to kill.
“I’m not a Saint, but I know the identity of one,” Ray said. “You let me go, and I’ll bring ’im to you. You got my word.”
Mikey tilted his head slightly and smirked. “Why should I trust the word of a rata?”
“What other choice you got? You guys have killed off all the other cops that were at the port, and if you’re asking me for info, then my guess is, no one else knew.”
Mikey thought on it a moment, then pressed the bandage back on his cheek. When it popped right back off, he tore the entire thing away and threw it to the dirt.
“Tell me who this person is,” Mikey said. “Then if the dude ends up being a Saint, we can talk about you doing more work for me.”
Sons of War 3: Sinners Page 23