Sons of War 3: Sinners

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Marks looked down.

  “The government has already invested hundreds of millions in housing, food, and other supplies to keep the citizens alive here,” Sanns said. “Now there is a new deal with Mayor Buren.”

  “What deal?” Dom narrowed his brows.

  “A recent deal to keep this city from falling into anarchy,” Sanns said.

  “Did you know about this, Lieutenant?” Dom asked.

  Marks was silent.

  “What deal?” Dom asked again.

  “A deal that allows the crime families to keep their power as long as they don’t kill innocent civilians or cops,” Sanns said.

  “The same deal that was in place before?” Dom asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “A line was crossed at the port, and my hands are tied,” Marks said. “Follow me. There’s something I need you to see.”

  Dom and Rocky stood their ground.

  “I’m not asking,” Marks said. “This is an order.”

  “Let’s go,” Dom said to Rocky, finally lowering his weapon. They did the same and followed the soldiers out of the warehouse. The sun peeked out through the clouds, spreading over the solar farms.

  “It’s not far,” Marks said. “You can tell your team to stand down and join us. They’re going to want to see this too.”

  “They stay where they are,” Dom said.

  Marks looked over his shoulder but didn’t reply. They walked through another section of the farm before Dom saw their destination. He swallowed hard when he realized what he was being led toward.

  The soldiers fanned out around a pickup truck parked near a hill that had hidden them from view earlier. Several other vehicles were there too.

  Marks walked over to the back of the pickup and dropped the gate. Then he motioned for Dom. He walked over to the bed, and Marks pulled a sheet off a naked, broken body still tied to a solar panel.

  “We found him like this,” Marks said. “Going to need a fucking mortician to properly remove him from the panel. The sons of bitches burned his back and stuck him to it, then let him suffer in the sun.”

  Dom forced himself to look at the twisted face of Councilman Tom Castle.

  “Jesus,” Rocky said, crossing his chest.

  “Mayor Buren handed him over to the Morettis as part of the deal he made with the government,” Marks continued. “Now you see what we’re up against. There’s no use fighting the Morettis.”

  Dom held a breath in his chest, the evil on display seizing the air from his diseased lungs.

  “You poked the hornets’ nest and you lost,” Sanns said. “We’re here to shut you down.” He motioned for his men, who fanned out.

  “What the actual fuck,” Rocky said. “You’re shutting us down? We’re not the enemy! The fucking Morettis—”

  “Quiet, Rock,” Dom said. He held up a hand to stop the kid from doing anything stupid. He knew there was nothing they could say to stop this. They were here on orders from people across the country who had no idea what was happening here.

  Rocky stuttered and then shook his head. “I don’t fucking believe this shit. Do you not see what they did to Castle?”

  Sanns looked at the body and then nodded at Marks, who covered it back up with the sheet.

  “It’s over,” Marks said. “Hand over your badges and promise you will stop your vigilante attacks. It’s the only way. They wanted to take you in, but I made a deal too. You get to stay in the city, as long as you give your word—”

  “That we will stop fighting evil?” Dom said. “The men who took my sister and killed and tortured your friend here? The men poisoning these streets with drugs and death?”

  He looked his father’s former best friend in the eye. Dom fully understood now what had happened to his father in the hunt for Monica. The darkness and evil of the war and its aftermath had eaten his heart and soul as it was doing to Dom, but his father hadn’t given up fighting.

  “I’m sorry,” Marks said ruefully. “I didn’t want this.”

  “Did he give us up?” Dom asked, jerking his chin toward the pickup.

  Marks shook his head. “Your identities are still safe, or you’d already be dead.”

  Sanns stepped over. “I don’t like having to do this, but the Executive Council wants things to calm down here. From this point forward, the Saints are over.”

  Dom reached into his vest and pulled out his deputy sheriff’s badge. He gripped it in his gloved hand, remembering how he had felt the day he first held his LAPD badge.

  Those days seemed a lifetime ago.

  He tossed the badge in the dirt by the captain’s boots, then turned to walk away with Rocky. Marks followed him away from the truck.

  “Hold up,” he said.

  Dom turned halfway, one eye on the soldiers, who watched them like hawks.

  “If you think I’m going to stand down and listen to these assholes, you’re wrong,” Dom said, his lip curling beneath his mask. “I’m not going to stop fighting even if I don’t have any bullets to fire.”

  “I know, and I was wrong,” Marks said. He leaned in closer, as if to keep the others from hearing, and said, “Your father was right—what he said about embracing evil.”

  Captain Sanns walked over, listening.

  Marks put a hand on Dom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I failed you, Dominic. I failed Castle too, and your dad, and Monica.”

  Dom wanted to reply, wanted to say he was wrong, but Marks wasn’t wrong. He had spent so much time following the rules that he had let the lawless win.

  “I’m sorry too,” Dom said. He walked away with Rocky, leaving Marks behind with the soldiers and the mutilated corpse of the man who should have been mayor.

  “Wait,” Marks called out. When Dom turned, he shouted, “Use evil to defeat evil!”

  -32-

  Rain pelted the umbrellas of those who had gathered to pay final respects to Lucia Moretti.

  Antonio had left his in the car. That way, he could cry in the rain, with no one the wiser. He led the way up the twisting path.

  The little cemetery stood on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Today, he couldn’t hear the waves breaking below or feel the warm coastal breeze rustling through the eucalyptus and cypress trees. Instead, there was thunder and howling wind.

  Lucia had once told him she wanted to be buried by the ocean. Long ago, when they were young lovers in Naples. Back when his empire was just a dream. The conversation surrounding death had come up several times during their marriage, as she realized more and more just how dangerous his chosen line of work was.

  But she had accepted this life after he promised to take care of her always.

  I’m so sorry, my bride. I’m sorry I failed you.

  Wet pebbles crunched under his Italian leather shoes. Tears streamed down his face, along with the cold rain. The twenty people here today weren’t looking at him, anyway. They had avoided his gaze since they left the compound.

  This wasn’t solely out of respect. It was also out of fear.

  All his men knew what had changed after Carmine betrayed him, and the traitor cop Ray shot Lucia. That bullet had shattered everything, throwing wide the floodgates that would bring a tsunami of death crashing down on the enemies of the Moretti family.

  What was left of it, anyway. Raphael was dead. Vito was dead. Frankie, dead. And Carmine was dead after a betrayal that Antonio hadn’t seen coming. It was his gravest mistake, costing him Lucia.

  He turned to see the men still left in his inner circle. Vinny, Christopher, Yellowtail, and Lino were all he had left. In the span of a few weeks, three of his captains had been wiped out, along with his head of security, the former AMP soldier Sergeant Rush.

  The Moretti family wasn’t running low on muscle, but it was running low on Italian blood. Soon he would promote Doberman to soldier. The seemingly unkillable young man had more than earned it. And perhaps soon, Marco would earn his button as well.

  Antonio crested the hill and spotted th
e tent they had constructed in the center of the little graveyard. He stayed put as his men walked past him and gathered under the awning, where a priest and two attendants stood facing a dozen white chairs set up at the graveside.

  For security purposes, his team had already brought the casket up here, without pallbearers. Just as they’d had to do at the funeral for Antonio’s father, on one of the two worst days in the history of the Moretti family.

  A day that he had promised would never happen again. Antonio had learned from his grief. His family would never suffer another ambush like the one on that fateful day in Naples.

  He scanned the cemetery. The former military special-ops soldiers on his payroll were patrolling at the other end of the graveyard and near the bluff overlooking the beach. And though Antonio couldn’t see them, he knew that several snipers were hidden in the surrounding thick sumac and willow scrub.

  Another team of ten men stood guard in the parking lot at the bottom of the hill, watching for any vehicles that might take the back road. The women were still inside the new fleet of armored Chevy Tahoes, waiting for the all clear.

  Antonio wiped his eyes and walked over to his soldiers under the tent. Christopher met him at the entrance.

  “It’s all clear up here,” he said, putting a hand on Antonio’s shoulder. “Are you ready, brother?”

  “Yes. Bring up the families.”

  Antonio walked over to his place in front of the casket, where the priest and two attendants stood in preparation for the ceremony.

  “Father Ricci,” he said with a nod.

  The priest, holding a leather-bound Bible against his black robe, nodded back. He was a tall man, whose neat white beard contrasted with heavy black brows. His eyes stayed on Antonio for a long moment.

  Normally, Antonio wouldn’t take direction from another man, but this holy man was making him bow his head in prayer. He closed his eyes and managed to ask for forgiveness before his thoughts relapsed back into vengeance, rage, and despair.

  The hardest part of losing Lucia was knowing that he would never join her in heaven. When Antonio was done with this world, he would enter one of fury and fire, never to see his precious bride again.

  More tears fell at the thought of life without her.

  You will find a way to see her again. Even if you have to fight your way out of the pits of hell.

  He took solace in the thought, burying the despair. For the next hour, he would honor Lucia. Then he would bury all his enemies.

  Alive.

  The Saints, the Vegas, and every wannabe gangbanger still looking for turf in Los Angeles would be breathing dirt in the coming days.

  Seeing the women arrive in their black dresses snapped him back to the present. Carmen, Vinny’s wife, led the way with a beautiful bundle of red and white roses. As she approached the casket, a heavy boom of thunder shook the ground.

  Antonio glanced at the ocean. Over the drumming of the rain, he could hear the white noise of the crashing waves. Lucia had loved that sound.

  Again he thought about his failure to protect his wife. He had also failed to keep Marco out of the family business—another promise broken.

  Marco stood beside him. He glanced over, his eyes swollen from crying. Normally, Antonio might have been rougher with the lad, reminding him that men didn’t cry. And most of the time, they shouldn’t. But a man who didn’t cry over the death of his mother wasn’t a man.

  The women all moved to the chairs. Vito’s widow, Giuliana, sat, eliciting a groan from the folding chair. Vinny’s wife sat beside her, then Lino’s sister Angela. There weren’t many others. Carmine’s and Frankie’s wives had been exiled from the compound for the sins of their men.

  As soon as Carmen and the others took a seat, Antonio nodded at Father Ricci.

  “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of a beautiful soul taken far too early from this world,” Ricci said. “I did not know Lucia Moretti as well as you did, but in the short time I knew her, I saw that she was a wonderful mother, a devoted wife, and a soul that shone brighter than most.”

  Marco lowered his head and wiped his nose with his wrist.

  “As many of you know, Lucia Moretti was born in Naples, Italy. There, she worked as a barmaid before meeting and falling in love with her soul mate, Don Antonio Moretti.”

  Lightning sizzled over the beach, and the thunderclap made people flinch. The wind picked up, rippling their clothing and peppering them with rain. A rose fell off the casket, and Antonio bent down to pick it up.

  He didn’t believe in the paranormal. Nor did he believe that souls had power on earth in the afterlife, but it sure seemed as if Lucia was trying to send a message today.

  “Lucia was a connoisseur of the arts, fashion, and decorating,” Ricci said. “If anyone could make a room sparkle, it was Lucia Moretti. I’m told she oversaw the remodeling of the Moretti compound, and from what I’ve seen of the inside, it’s one of a kind, much as she was one of a kind.”

  Some of the women nodded. Others smiled.

  “Let’s take a moment to think of other memories, and what we loved about Lucia,” Ricci said.

  Everyone bowed their head, except Antonio and Christopher. His brother seemed to hear the same faint noise coming over the wind.

  It was barely perceptible at first—a whooshing that gradually resolved itself into a rhythmic, percussive beating. Antonio scanned the horizon as Father Ricci went on.

  “Lucia Moretti loved her son and husband more than anything, and she lived her life for both of them. In the end, she showed just how much she loved them, by giving her life trying to save them.”

  The image flashed through Antonio’s mind: her pulling out the pistol he had bought her, using it to save his life while sacrificing her own.

  The anger emerged again, rage filling his veins just in time.

  Father Ricci looked up at the sky with the rest of the men, who were already reaching under their suit jackets. The priest flipped open his oversize Bible. But instead of reading a prayer, he pulled a scope-mounted handgun from the hollowed-out book.

  Both his attendants pulled MP5 submachine guns from under their raincoats as a Black Hawk helicopter came up over the cliffs to the south.

  Antonio’s heart skipped. Here was the moment he had hoped and planned for.

  He hurried to the casket, took the roses off, and set them on the grass. Then he pushed the lid open as the helicopter bore down on the group of mourners.

  “Everyone, get down!” Christopher shouted.

  The bark of heavy machine-gun fire rose over a crack of thunder. One of the special-ops guards Antonio had posted near the edge of the cliffs went down.

  Antonio hadn’t expected them to bring a chopper to the ambush he had set up, but if that was the death they chose, he would oblige. Reaching inside the casket, he came up with an RPG launcher.

  He hefted the weapon to his shoulder and strode out into the rain with Father Ricci. The priest made the sign of the cross, then started shooting with the rest of the men.

  The door gunner jerked from a dozen rounds, then dangled halfway out, held in by his retaining strap.

  The helicopter hovered less than a hundred feet away, over the other end of the graveyard. A dozen Vega soldiers, wearing their colorful skull masks, started fast-roping down four lines. Easy target.

  Antonio lined up the sights and pulled the trigger on the launcher.

  “Hasta la vista, pendejos,” he said.

  The rocket streaked away, veering slightly and hitting the tail section in a burst of metal and fire. The explosion sent the bird spinning over the side of the cliff as the soldiers fell from their ropes, crashing to the ground thirty feet below.

  Others, who hadn’t clipped in, jumped from the troop hold as the bird spun out of control, their bodies landing all across the graveyard.

  Antonio reached out, and Christopher tossed him a ballistic mask and then an M4 from the casket. Lino and Marco fastened on their masks and ra
n for cover behind two big granite headstones. Antonio did the same, keeping low.

  At the other end of the graveyard, several sicarios writhed and screamed in pain, their bodies broken on gravestones after falling off the rope. But the ones who had been lower on the ropes managed to find cover and shoot despite their injuries.

  Antonio fired a burst and took cover behind a headstone. As his men laid down suppressing fire, he turned to check on the women.

  “Stay down!” he yelled. Father Ricci and his attendants stood guard with their weapons aimed out over the cemetery.

  But not all the women were quite so passive. Vito’s widow had a sawed-off Mossberg shotgun in hand, and a few graves over from Antonio, Lino’s sister Angela joined her brother with an Uzi.

  Back at the head of the path overlooking the parking lot, Yellowtail, Vinny, and Doberman provided support to the guards at the parked SUVs.

  “Four trucks, twenty men!” Vinny called out.

  Gunfire was already cracking from the parking lot and road, where a second group of narcos had shown up in pickup trucks that looked loaded to the brim with sicarios.

  Yellowtail hefted up a second RPG while Vinny and Doberman opened fire from their vantage above.

  Antonio fired another burst, then jumped up and ran to the next gravestone with bullets zipping past. Glancing over the side, he counted at least seven sicarios who could still fight.

  Bullets forced him down. He rolled away, crawled a few feet, then got up and ran for Christopher and Marco, who were hiding behind a family crypt much like the one where they had already buried Lucia back at the compound.

  “Cover me,” Antonio said.

  Christopher nodded. The only Moretti man without a mask was chewing on a cigar. He stepped around the stone wall and fired.

  “Go, go, go!” he said.

  Antonio and Marco both ran out, weapons shouldered and blazing away at the sicario positions. Two of the special-ops soldiers were crumpled on the grass, bleeding out from devastating 7.62 mm rounds to their bodies.

  Three sicarios lay nearby, only one of them moving. Antonio put a bullet through his skull. Four more had taken position behind a row of stones. Antonio prayed Esteban and Miguel were among those still alive.