Sons of Anarchy

by Christopher Golden

  Timur said something in Russian.

  Kirill took another drag on his cigarette. “Be polite, Timur. Speak English.”

  The thief sniffed the air, as if he’d smelled something he didn’t like. He glanced at Trinity, but only for a second.

  “Gavril called in,” he said. “There was a fight at Birdland—”

  “The strip club?”

  Timur nodded. “There was a fight earlier. Some of Lagoshin’s men were involved. The doorman heard them talking about a meet at the Russian church on E Street. You know the one?”

  Kirill flicked the ashes from the end of his cigarette. “Stupid question. I assume Oleg paid the doorman?”

  “He paid.”

  “Too easy. How sure is Gavril that this isn’t a setup?”

  Trinity frowned. “They couldn’t have known you’d have people there tonight, askin’ questions.”

  Kirill smoked and knitted his brows. “Maybe not. But if they know we’re looking, they could be setting out bait for us all over. No way to confirm if they’ve laid a trap or not.”

  “How many of our men are with Oleg and Gavril?” Kirill asked.

  “Two others.”

  Kirill nodded slowly. “All right. Tell them to be careful. And to kill as many as they can.”

  Timur grinned a weasel-like grin, then turned and slunk back toward the motel.

  Trinity felt as if she’d turned to ice. She stared at Kirill. “You’re just gonna stay here? The rest of us need to go, right now, and back them up. We have enough guns now. They need—”

  “Stop.” Kirill took a long drag, then flicked his cigarette onto the cracked concrete. “They are all the way on the other side of the city. By the time we reach the church, whatever is going to happen will have happened. If it is not a trap, four men will be enough to cause problems for Lagoshin. If it is a trap and we all go, then they will kill all of us, instead of only four.”

  He pushed off, rusty chains creaking, and began to swing again.

  Trinity stared, feeling hollow inside. Only four, he’d said. But one of those four was Oleg.

  “Breathe, Trinity,” Kirill said. “Whatever comes, it is out of our hands right now. In this moment, at least—when we can do nothing and we do not yet know the consequences—we are free.”

  The swing set squeaked and squealed. She felt as if she ought to speak, to protest. Once again she thought she heard something howl in the distance.

  She exhaled. In some perverse way, Kirill was right. What happened next was not within her control. Slowly, she pushed backward and then raised her feet, letting herself swing forward.

  Breathing, for now.

  * * *

  They parked the Harleys a block from the church, away from the nearest streetlight. The sky to the west was lit up with the neon brilliance of the Vegas Strip, but here on what the locals called the alphabet streets, there were no jackpot winners. Some houses had been kept up well or recently restored, an attempt to drag the neighborhood into the light, but others had cracked or boarded windows, cars on blocks in the driveway, and badly peeling paint. Tourists wouldn’t come here, and in Jax’s experience with neighborhoods like this, the police wouldn’t bother to swing by very often either.

  “Stick with the bikes,” Jax told Chibs. “If there’s trouble, you make the call. Joyce, you’re with Chibs.”

  Joyce made a little noise about the order, but Jax ignored him. He and Opie headed for the church without looking back. If things went to shit, Chibs would either wade in, bullets flying, or he’d withdraw and make sure word got back to Rollie—and to SAMCRO—that the situation had changed. Jax wanted to keep the Russians in the dark about who they were dealing with, but if things went so badly wrong that he and Opie ended up dead on the curb, the Sons of Anarchy would go to war. Every member of the Bratva in Nevada—both factions—would meet Mr. Mayhem.

  “Joyce ain’t happy,” Opie said as they approached the church steps.

  “He can leave anytime he wants,” Jax replied.

  The Russian Orthodox church had been beautiful once. The domes still gleamed gold, and the crosses on top of those were stark white, but the building looked faded and tired, as though it had surrendered to its own abandonment. Long planks had been hammered across the front doors and cardboard NO TRESPASSING signs hung there, torn and dusty. Jax couldn’t decide if the houses that were kept up indicated a neighborhood on the road to recovery or a last handful of homeowners fighting a losing battle, but it seemed the patriarch of this particular church had given up a long time ago.

  “His lead was good,” Opie said. “Birdland got us here.”

  “The lead was good, yeah, but he nearly pissed it away, not handling that waitress better back at Birdland. Didn’t inspire much faith.”

  Opie glanced around, watching the street. Jax studied the front of the church, just in case there were men hiding in its shadows. He felt the comforting weight of the gun tight against the small of his back.

  “We need all the backup we can get,” Opie reminded him.

  Jax shook his head. “Joyce is a wild card. Too easy to tip your hand with a guy like that around.”

  Headlights appeared at an intersection two blocks up—a black sedan. It turned the corner and slid toward them, and the headlights went off as it drew up to the curb a hundred feet from the church. A hulking SUV followed the same path and pattern, dousing its lights before it pulled up behind the sedan.

  “Here we go,” Opie said.

  The drivers did not turn off their engines. Three men climbed from the sedan, five from the SUV. Jax glanced across the street at the trees in the park, then around at the roofs of neighboring houses, and he wondered if there were other eyes watching them. As far as these Bratva men were concerned, he and Opie were just civilians with a mutual interest. For the Russian Mafia, there were no repercussions to killing a couple of civilians who stuck their noses into Bratva business. They’d destroy the bodies or just make them disappear, and they’d do the same thing to any witnesses foolish enough to agree to testify against them.

  Jax flexed the fingers of his right hand. He would have felt a lot better with his gun in hand instead of tucked against the small of his back.

  “Hey,” Opie said quietly. “You okay?”

  Jax nodded. Opie had reason to be concerned. There had been times when Jax’s temper had gotten the best of him, and now would be a bad time for him to let it off its leash. But Opie also should have known better. When Jax came face-to-face with men like this—cold-blooded bastards who thought they had all the leverage in any conversation—an almost reptilian calm descended on him. His anger never went away, but it hid in the shadows, biding its time.

  The Russians mounted the wide, cracked stone steps of the church. They fanned out, surrounding Jax and Opie in a half circle. The man in the center stood about five-five and had his head shaved down to stubble that matched his chin. He didn’t seem like a natural leader, but the proud, upward tilt of his chin said otherwise. To the left of him and one step back was a much taller man, late forties but in murderous physical condition, with pockmarks on the right side of his face that had been left behind by shotgun pellets instead of acne. His bodyguard, Jax figured.

  “Name,” the little stubblehead said.

  “Jack Ashby,” Jax replied. “And this is—”

  Stubblehead grinned, never taking his eyes off Jax. “His name doesn’t matter. Is you who are looking for this woman, yes?”

  Jax felt the cold serpent of that reptilian calm slither into him. “What about you? Does your name matter?”

  Stubblehead nodded as if in appreciation of his brass balls. Then he turned to the guy with the shotgun scars. “Hurt him a little.”

  Opie tried to get in front of Jax and all the Russians moved at once. Jax put up a hand to push Opie backward, then stood facing Stubblehead and Scarface with his own chin raised defiantly.

  “You heard the man,” he said, staring at Scarface’s black shark eyes. �
�Hurt me.”

  The big man—six foot three and built to inflict pain—took a step up and plowed a fist into Jax’s skull as casually as if he’d waved hello. Stars exploded behind Jax’s eyes, and he staggered to the side and up another step. Scarface went to follow him, but Stubblehead put up a hand.

  “My name is Viktor Krupin,” Stubblehead said.

  Head ringing, Jax smiled thinly. The son of a bitch hadn’t cared about giving up his name, only about Jax’s having the balls to demand it. Opie’s jaw was set, chest rising and falling, ready for a brawl, and Jax mentally noted how funny it was that Op had been concerned about his temper. Back where they’d left the bikes, Jax could see that Chibs had a hand on Joyce’s shoulder, keeping him in place. That was good. Chibs would do as he’d been asked, trusting that Jax knew what he was doing. Maybe until it was almost too late.

  “I thought we were gonna meet someone named Lagoshin.”

  Krupin sniffed. “Mr. Lagoshin doesn’t waste his time with street trash.”

  Jax glanced around, made a show of noticing how many Bratva men had come to this little meeting on the church steps. He wanted Krupin to see that he recognized bullshit when it was spoken to him. Lagoshin might not have come to the meeting, but he’d taken it seriously, or he wouldn’t have sent all of these goons.

  “Look, this is supposed to be simple. My sister’s with this Oleg guy, thinks she’s in love with him. The family doesn’t want her to end up catching a bullet, so I’m here to bring her home. If he works for you, all I’m asking is—”

  Krupin shook his head. “Oleg does not work for me. And we don’t know where he is, or if your sister is with him.”

  Jax cocked his head. “Then why the hell are we talking?” He glanced at Scarface, head still aching from that one punch.

  “It’s very simple, Mr. Ashby,” Krupin said. “We wanted to tell you that if you find your sister with Oleg, you’re going to let us know where Oleg can be found. And we want to make sure you are who you say you are.”

  A ripple went through Jax. They had no idea where Trinity was—this meet had been a waste of his time. His temper began to slip.

  “You’re telling me you don’t have a single lead?”

  “We have a few, but nothing very helpful,” Krupin replied.

  “Anything you feel like sharing?”

  “You keep asking the wrong questions.”

  Jax nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll bite. How are you gonna make sure I am who I say I am?”

  Krupin grinned. “I thought you must be smarter than you looked.”

  He gestured with his right hand, almost a flourish, and the Bratva men drew their guns—all except for Scarface and Krupin himself.

  “Only a complete fool would have come here without a gun,” Krupin said. “Carefully take out your weapons and walk them up to the top step, leave them there, and then return.”

  Jax complied immediately, drawing his gun with his fingers, letting the Russians see the whole process. He turned, holding the gun out to one side, and started climbing the eight remaining steps to the boarded-over doors of the church.

  “This is a bad idea,” Opie muttered as he passed by, even as he drew out his own gun.

  “If you’ve got an alternative, I’m listening,” Jax replied quietly as they climbed the last few steps together.

  They both knew shoot-and-run was not an option—not with so many guns, and not even with Chibs and Joyce as backup.

  With the guns on the top step, they descended back toward the Russians. Six steps. Seven. Scarface didn’t wait for Jax to reach the eighth step. Jax tried to deflect the punch, but the big bastard’s fist glanced off his jaw hard enough to nearly unhinge it. The metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth. He shuffled sideways, turned and lunged inside Scarface’s reach, hit him with three fast gut punches and one to the kidneys, but the big man dropped an elbow down on his shoulder, and Jax went to his knees. Wheezing, trying to catch his breath, he fought the blackness at the edges of his vision as pain washed over him.

  He heard a chorus of guns cocking, glanced up, and saw that half of them were aimed at Opie and half at him.

  “No, Mr. Ashby,” Krupin said. “There is no defending yourself.”

  Jax exhaled through gritted, bloodstained teeth. Then he opened his fists and climbed to his feet. Pain radiated through him but he breathed, letting it spread and diminish. Once again, he turned toward Scarface and let the man hit him.

  Opie swore and took a step, and one of the Russians jammed a gun against his throat.

  Punches rained down on Jax. He felt his lip split and tasted a fresh gush of own blood. A fist to the gut and a knee to the balls were followed by another crashing blow to his skull, and those black waves swept in again at the edges of his vision. He blinked, on his knees again, trying not to go down. Even then, in the midst of pain and with blood running freely from his nose and mouth, he understood that Scarface was going easy on him. He could have broken hands, arms, ribs … anything. He could have shattered Jax’s nose or crushed his kidneys. They wanted him bloody and in pain but not broken.

  He let it go on. At one point, he heard shouting and caught a glimpse of Chibs and Joyce over by the bikes, at the edge of the park. Joyce had started toward the church, and Chibs had restrained him because Chibs understood—maybe had understood before even Jax himself. If Krupin wanted to kill him, they wouldn’t have met somewhere so out in the open.

  Maureen, he thought, you owe me.

  But he wasn’t doing this for Maureen Ashby. And, as much as he liked Trinity, he wasn’t really doing it for her, either. He let the punches land, let his blood flow, for his father’s sake. JT had not been perfect, but Jax could not let his old man’s daughter die.

  Scarface stood over him. “Your name?”

  He speaks, Jax thought. “Already told you. And fuck yourself.”

  The fist came down again. Jax barely felt it. He blinked and realized that his cheek was pressed against granite—he was sprawled on the church steps and had lost a few seconds of time. Voices cursed in Russian.

  Jax spat a wad of bloody spittle and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Ears ringing, head and ribs throbbing, he looked up at Krupin. The little man seemed to nod with approval, though whether he was expressing appreciation for Scarface’s efforts or Jax’s ability to sit up seemed unclear.

  “If my friend thinks you are lying, he will continue to hurt you,” Krupin said. “So tell me, Mr. Ashby, are you what you seem to be? Just a piece of biker trash worried about his family?”

  Jax nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving Krupin’s face. “Yeah. That’s me. Biker trash.”

  The words translated differently inside his head, where they were a promise that he would make sure Krupin took a hell of a beating before he and the boys left Nevada. But Trinity came first.

  Krupin produced a business card and slipped it into the pocket of Jax’s leather vest. “On this card is a number where you can reach me,” Krupin went on. “If you discover any information that will lead you to your sister, you will call me immediately.”

  Opie swore quietly, and the men guarding him took a step away. He stayed where he was. Jax spat another bloody wad.

  “If you’re searching for Oleg and his friends, you must have something you can tell me,” he said. “Anything. Point me in a direction to get me started, one of the things you’re pursuing.”

  Krupin glanced at Scarface, and Jax thought the big man would hit him again—he tensed, not sure he could keep himself from fighting back this time—but, instead, it was Scarface who nodded. What the hell is this? Jax wondered.

  “A gun dealer named Oscar Temple and his bodyguards were murdered last night,” Scarface said. “We know that Oleg and his friends were hoping to acquire guns. If you can learn anything about those murders, it might help you in your search.”

  Oscar Temple. The name sounded familiar, but if the guy dealt illegal guns, that was not a surprise.

  But as t
he Russians all turned and began to make their way back to their vehicles, guns vanishing back into holsters, it wasn’t Oscar Temple who was foremost in his mind. He stared at the retreating men.

  “Lagoshin,” he said.

  Krupin and the big man turned—the big bastard with his shotgunned face and his bloodied fists.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ashby,” Lagoshin said, his voice smooth as silk, almost elegant, despite his brutish appearance. “When you are icing your injuries later, remember that they were inflicted merely to make a point. If you have lied to me, or if you discover your sister’s location and hesitate to share it … well, I’m certain you don’t need me to explain. Mr. Krupin believes you are smarter than you look. I hope he is not mistaken.”

  As Lagoshin and his men climbed back into their vehicles, a squeal of tires ripped through the night air. An engine roared. Jax and Opie whipped around to see a gray Camaro tearing up the street toward the church. The Russians scrambled, bumping into each other as some tried to get into the car and others tried to get out.

  “Down!” Opie said, and he slammed Jax to the steps.

  Jax blinked, head still ringing, and from that angle—with his cheek against the granite again—he saw Krupin and three other Bratva men draw their guns and start to take cover behind the cars and the open doors. They were too slow.

  The Camaro’s engine sounded like thunder. A gun barrel poked out the open window, glinting in the moonlight, and the Camaro’s passenger pulled the trigger. The staccato bark of the assault rifle echoed off the steps and the face of the church.

  One Bratva man slammed back against the SUV, his head snapping to one side as blood and brain and bone erupted from his skull. A bullet took Krupin in the shoulder, spinning him around in a fan of bloody mist. Two or three shots stitched the chest of a third man, who hit the ground with a wet, meaty slap.

  Then the Camaro had gone past. Chibs and Joyce shot at the car as it whipped by them, but it skidded into a left turn at the next corner and vanished as instantly as it had appeared. The engine screamed as it raced off through the neighborhood.