Sons of War

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  A woman finally broke the silence. “Give them a chance!” she shouted.

  Moose looked over at Dom again.

  “Let ’em through!” someone yelled.

  The crowd began to part near the gate in the fences. Moose waved for the cops behind them to stay put, and they did. Even the patrol sergeant reluctantly lowered his rifle. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and seemed to be okay with Dom and Moose handling the situation. Together, the two cops walked through the gap in the crowd.

  “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  A boy no older than ten looked up at Moose as he passed, and Moose nodded back.

  The state aid workers and FEMA disaster staff climbed down from the trailer roof to the ground, where an officer was getting treatment from two state workers. A second cop had his gun pointed at the crowd. His hand was shaking.

  “Easy,” Dom said.

  “Back up, everyone,” Moose said to the people lingering around the fence.

  The crowd continued to move back. When they were clear, a male aid worker unlocked the gate and let the cops inside.

  Moose gestured for the patrol sergeant, who ran through the parted crowd with a second officer to help the wounded cop lying by the trailer.

  The young officer had taken a bad whack to the head from a brick. The other cop had been hit on the chest and back. He limped over, gripping his side.

  “Who did this?” Moose asked.

  The cop shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I didn’t see them coming.”

  “Two guys threw rocks and bricks,” said a guy wearing a black baseball cap with the California seal. “We decided to lock off the gates until backup could get here.”

  “You got enough meals to feed all these people?” Dom asked.

  The man took off his hat and pulled his long hair back as he looked out over the crowd. “I think so,” he said. “But the problem is when people fight and try to take more than one ration.”

  “Can you subtly show me who hit the officers?” Dom said. “Don’t point. Just describe him and his location.”

  “Ten people back, to my right, your left. White, six feet, ponytail, thirty to midthirties. Guy to his left has a Dodgers cap.”

  “Good, job,” Dom said. He turned his back and waited while the injured officers were moved away from the scene.

  A squad car drove them to a hospital, leaving four cops behind. They remained on the edge of the crowd, patrolling with their rifles angled at the ground.

  Dom walked over to Moose and relayed the intel. When Dom glanced back into the crowd, the two guys were squeezing through to get away.

  “We’ve got this, Sarge,” Moose said.

  The patrol sergeant nodded and cradled his rifle while Dom and Moose moved out into the throng. As soon as they got a few people deep, the two guys took off, pushing and shouting.

  The officer on the edge moved to intercept, but the guy with the Dodgers cap body slammed him, knocking him to the ground. The second suspect bent down to wrest his rifle away.

  Moose hunched down like a linebacker, lowered his antler ’do, and slammed into the guy just as he picked up the cop’s rifle. The blow sent the man airborne. He landed on his back with a thud, losing the rifle and cracking his head on the concrete.

  Dom tackled the other guy, pinned him down, and put him in a hammerlock to keep him still. The one thing he didn’t have yet were handcuffs, but that didn’t matter.

  Somehow, the man Moose had slammed got back up. He shouldn’t have. A right hook from Moose put him out before he hit the concrete.

  “Get off me, pig!” shouted the guy under Dom, who tightened the hammerlock, eliciting a yelp.

  Moose finished cuffing his dirtbag and looked over.

  “Nice work, bro,” he said to Dom. “I told you you’d make a good cop.”

  * * *

  Vinny still didn’t know where Vito was being held, but he did know that the cops were losing the fight against the gangs. Four naked bodies, all of them mutilated beyond recognition, hung from a steel I beam on a prewar construction site of what were intended to be million-dollar condos. The project was located on the eastern edge of Central Los Angeles, not far from one of the big refugee zones.

  It was a chilly evening, and the air reeked of excrement and smoke. Vinny pulled his breathing apparatus over his nose and followed Sergeant Best and the anti-gang task force crew toward the latest casualties in the gangs’ war on the LAPD. They stopped at the edge of a parking lot and stared up at the hanging corpses.

  Sergeant Best shook his head. “Poor bastards,” he said. “What a way to go.”

  Darwin spat on the ground. “Fucking animals that did this.”

  The county medical examiner’s team was already busy at the scene, while other officers put up a perimeter of yellow tape to seal off the area.

  Vinny didn’t need to ask who the four corpses were. Cops, all of them. One was a woman. And he had a feeling it was the Vegas who had killed them.

  The grisly murders were yet another sign that the uncorrupt officers of the LAPD were losing the battle for control of the streets. The Norteño Mafia had fractured, and the Vegas had absorbed members of the once allied cliques such as MS-13, the Sureños, the Latin Kings, Florencia 13, and a dozen other gangs.

  Vinny had watched the narco family grow faster than the American Military Patriots. He wouldn’t admit it to Don Antonio, but Esteban Vega was, in many ways, like the jefe of the Moretti family. Both were building powerful crime organizations in the wake of the apocalypse.

  But not all the cops were losing the battle. Sergeant Best and his guys were thriving, partly due to the intel Vinny was feeding them—intel that included the locations where various Moretti rivals were keeping their weapons, drugs, and cash.

  Just enough not to look suspicious.

  Not that it really mattered, Vinny thought. Best seemed to care only about the finds. After their last raid, on a warehouse containing a cache of weapons and half a million in cocaine from the Nevsky family, Best had given Vinny a gold Rolex.

  “You’re a smart little shit, I’ll give you that, Nate,” Best had said. “Stick with me, kid. We’re gonna be rich. I might even get to that beach paradise after all.”

  Vinny had gone home to his new apartment in Santa Monica that night to find Doberman working on a map of the city. He had checked off the locations of the gangs Antonio was currently attacking using the anti-gang task force as his surrogate soldiers. It was brilliant, and Vinny and Doberman sat talking about the endgame.

  “Don Antonio is erasing his enemies one by one, without even losing a man,” Doberman had said.

  “Yeah, but Vega is out there adding five men to his ranks for every one he loses,” Vinny had replied.

  He snapped out of the memory when he heard tires crunching over gravel in the distance. Not one but several vehicles.

  “He’s here,” Best said.

  “Who’s here?” Vinny turned as four squad cars and two black Chevy Tahoes pulled up into the parking lot surrounding the abandoned construction zone.

  “The chief,” Best said. He looked over to Darwin. “Make sure the guys keep their traps shut.”

  Darwin walked over to talk to the other guys while the vehicles emptied in the lot. Vinny still hadn’t gotten a good look at the man in control of the small army that was the LAPD. Before today, he had only glimpsed Chief Diamond from a distance.

  The six-foot black man got out of a Tahoe and was quickly surrounded by cops in riot gear, like a cohort of the Praetorian Guard surrounding the emperor. Everywhere Chief Diamond went, his protection detail followed. It made sense now that the gangs were killing cops daily.

  Vinny looked up as two men in a cherry picker lowered the bodies one by one from the steel beam. The scene was straight out of the drug wars in Mexico and Columbia.

>   The cartels went after anyone who crossed them: cops, soldiers, politicians, lawyers, judges, families, including women and kids. Hell, it didn’t matter who you were. If you pissed off the cartels, you died, often in the most horrific of ways.

  It was happening in Los Angeles now, and just as in South America, some police were complicit.

  He didn’t know the details, only that Best was working with the Vegas and other gangs to benefit from the chaos. What Vinny couldn’t figure out, and what Don Antonio longed to know, was where the corruption stopped. Was it Captain Stone orchestrating the bribes, or was Chief Diamond himself in Vega’s pocket?

  What Vinny did know was that he had landed himself smack-dab in the middle of both worlds. A gangster and a cop.

  Sort of. He didn’t have the button of a made man, or the badge of a cop. That was going to change very soon.

  “Nate, let’s go,” Best said.

  Vinny walked away from the parking lot and down a path that led around the crime scene. Diamond and his men led the way, pausing only briefly to see the last of the flayed bodies being lowered to the ground.

  When the group of cops got to the top of a hill, Vinny saw that the construction zone wasn’t completely abandoned. Cranes, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment sat idle in the dirt, surrounded by evidence of their recent activity. Diamond and his men looked out over the construction site, and Vinny listened to the discussion.

  “The Crips are sending us a warning that this is their territory,” said one officer.

  “And I’ll send them one right back,” Diamond said in a deep voice. “This real estate is the most important part of the future. We can’t let them intimidate us. We have to be strong.”

  He turned away and walked over to the crime scene with his contingent of bodyguards.

  “Why the hell are we here?” Darwin asked.

  “My guess is I’m going to get new orders in a few minutes,” Best replied. “But honestly, I don’t know.”

  “What did the chief mean about this being the most important part of the future?” Vinny asked.

  “Keep this shit quiet, kid,” Best said. “You’re looking at one of four major federal projects the mayor and chief of police have been negotiating with the new government. The future home of two million people.”

  “Where do you think all the refugees and displaced folks are going to live?” Darwin asked.

  “In a week, the chief, mayor, and everyone who’s anyone are going to be here to announce the project,” Best said.

  Vinny swallowed. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the public housing going up in the distance, and like his uncle and father, he saw dollar signs. He had to get this info to Don Antonio.

  The next war for the city would no longer be over the camps. Whoever controlled the public housing would be king.

  “Hey, Nathan,” said a voice.

  Best and Darwin turned as a group of Chief Diamond’s guard approached. The chief walked in the middle of the group, hand on his holstered pistol.

  He was bigger than he looked from a distance, with wide shoulders and a muscular frame. Creases formed on his forehead as his piercing brown eyes narrowed.

  “Are you Nathan Sarcone?” Diamond asked.

  Vinny nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s this about?” Best asked.

  “The reason I called you here,” Diamond replied to the overweight sergeant. “You got a rat in your rafters, Best.”

  He pulled the pistol from his holster and nodded at several men, who moved out to flank the task force. Vinny did his best to look calm.

  “This fucker right here,” Diamond said, raising his pistol and pointing it at Vinny.

  “I’m no rat, sir,” Vinny replied, trying to keep his lips from trembling. “I’ve been working with Sergeant Best for three weeks now, providing important intel on the gangs.”

  “You sure have,” Diamond said. “But intel that benefits who? That’s the real question.”

  Best raised a hand. “This has got to be some sort of mistake, Chief. This is Nathan Sarcone, nephew of Enzo Sarcone.”

  “No,” Diamond said. “The real Nathan Sarcone was found in a shallow grave this morning.” He took a step closer to Vinny. “So, the question is, who the fuck are you?”

  Vinny opened his mouth, but no words came out. Before he could react, someone kicked him in the back of the knee. He fell to his knees, right in front of Chief Diamond.

  The chief looked at the bodies being bagged and loaded into two ambulances. Then he holstered the pistol and returned his gaze to his captive.

  Vinny managed to turn slightly and avoid some of the blow as the Chief punched him in the side of the head. He slumped to the ground, stars bursting across his vision.

  Maybe he was going to find out where they were keeping Vito, after all—assuming Diamond didn’t kill Vinny first.

  -23-

  After weeks of patrolling the city’s newly established eastern border, the Desert Snakes had finally been transferred to the Port of Los Angeles for a new mission.

  Ronaldo wanted to believe he was prepared for whatever came next. They had already defended against raiders hunting treasure in abandoned mansions and aided refugees suffering from radiation poisoning. And through it all, his heart had hardened against the violence and suffering, especially after holding the dying girl from the train. The short time he had spent with her during her last hour on earth had reaffirmed what he already believed.

  Sometimes, you have to use evil to fight evil.

  It was the only way to win against the sorry fucks trying to exploit the apocalypse—men like those who had raped and killed her and her sister. Men like the gangbangers who were hunting cops.

  Seeing what humanity was capable of made him wonder whether anything could be done to save the country. Hell, he wasn’t even sure Los Angeles could be saved.

  He had seen terrible things in war zones overseas, though the evil he had seen at home was in many ways worse. But he wouldn’t stop fighting, and neither would the other soldiers and cops.

  Together, they were putting up a fight against evil forces within the city and without. The border west of Anaheim now stretched from the Angeles National Forest all the way south to Chino Hills State Park.

  Every major intersection surrounding the city had checkpoints manned by sheriff’s deputies. Other access points were blocked off by junked vehicles and rubble from destroyed buildings.

  Ronaldo leaned his back against a shipping container at Terminal Island. Gulls squawked overhead, hoping for a morsel of food or a fish head to snack on.

  The entire harbor stank of rotting fish. All along the coast, millions of them were washing up along with dolphins, sea lions, and other marine life—all dead from radiation poisoning.

  “How long we got to play babysitter?” Tooth asked. “It fucking smells like a dollar whorehouse out here.”

  Bettis let out a sigh, and Marks shook his head wearily.

  “Tooth, do you ever shut up, man?” Ronaldo asked. “Can’t you just do your job for one day without complaining? And how many dollar whorehouses you been in, anyway?”

  Tooth futzed with his breathing apparatus. “These new things suck ass.”

  Ronaldo walked away from the shipping container, cradling his rifle, savoring a moment of peace. Other than Tooth’s griping, it was quiet out here, at least. Just the rumble of mechanical equipment as container cranes unloaded the huge cargo ships docked in the harbor, and the occasional shout from a stevedore.

  Being by the ocean was calming, and seeing the signs of recovery filled Ronaldo with a dangerous emotion.

  Hope.

  Power had been restored to key areas of the city, including the port. Gasoline was also coming in by rail and sea. Food and medical supplies were being shipped from countries such as Australia and New Ze
aland, which hadn’t suffered as greatly from the global economic collapse. Even cell phone towers were being fixed. It was a long road to recovery, but things were moving slowly in the right direction.

  On the horizon, dozens more vessels sailed to the port, each waiting its turn to unload. Marks joined Ronaldo by the edge of the water to watch the ships. They stood in silence for a few moments, listening to the waves slap fish carcasses against the rocky beach.

  “I got something to tell you,” Marks finally said.

  Ronaldo turned toward his longtime friend, preparing himself for the bad news.

  “This stays between us, brother,” Marks said.

  “What?”

  “I heard they’re pushing a new base realignment and closure effort, and it includes disbanding most of the Corps. Army too.”

  If Ronaldo weren’t wearing a mask, Marks would have seen his jaw drop. “What the hell are you talking about, Zed?”

  “It’s part of the agreement. AMP wanted assurances they wouldn’t be treated like criminals. Here we go with fucking Reconstruction again. Remember how well that worked last time?”

  “Okay, but what’s that mean for us?” Ronaldo asked.

  “Nothing yet, but it sounds like they’re going to ADSEP anyone and everyone who isn’t deemed mission critical.”

  “We’re good, then,” Ronaldo said.

  Marks shook his head. “Wish that were the case, brother. Guys like you and me? We’ll be encouraged to join the local PD. The military is maintaining only a small peacekeeping force at key points around the country. All the remaining MEUs are being recalled.”

  Ronaldo laughed. “Okay, now I know you’re bullshitting.”

  But when Marks pulled down his mask, his dark eyes held no glint of humor.

  “I wish I was joking, but the government’s in shambles,” Marks said, his salt-and-pepper beard ruffling in the breeze. “I only know about this because there isn’t anybody around here with higher rank right now. It sounds like bullshit, but brass wants to reduce any threat of embers flaring up again. Instead, we’ll be working with former AMP soldiers to help restore order.”