The second guy turned to look in his direction as Ronaldo chambered another round, sighted, and fired, hitting him in the neck.
Pinpricks of light brightened the interior of the offices as the hostages fought their captors. Ronaldo looked for targets but couldn’t figure out who was who in the chaos.
The fight on the street below continued, the gunfire punctuated by screams and wails. He kept his focus on the storefront, finger on the trigger, waiting. He eased off when he saw a big man climbing over the desks.
Reaching back inside, the guy helped two more people over the desks blocking the door.
Cops.
He zoomed in on the face of the big guy who had tossed the smaller men like rag dolls.
“Dom,” Ronaldo said. “Dom, you gotta see this.”
Dom ran over, panting. “We got those fuckers,” he said.
Instead of replying, Ronaldo handed his son the rifle. “Look at this.”
As soon as Dom took the gun, Ronaldo moved over to the roof and looked down at the massacre below. All the bangers were down, but several were still moving, and one was begging for mercy.
“What do we do with those guys?” Camilla asked.
Ronaldo unslung his rifle and aimed at the guy crying for mercy.
“Only one thing to do with these monsters,” he said. He fired twice into the two men who were trying to crawl away. “We fight evil with evil.”
Bettis and Tooth both looked over at Ronaldo. He couldn’t see their eyes beneath their optics, but he knew he would find disapproval there, and he really didn’t care. The gangsters were not worthy of mercy. The fewer of them in the city, the better.
“It’s Moose!” Dom said, running over. “Cam! Moose is still alive!”
Ronaldo watched the two young officers embrace as a thin rind of gold fired the eastern horizon. A new day had begun in the City of Angels, but the fighting raged on.
The comms crackled to life with a message from Marks.
“Snake Two, get back down here. I just got a message about Downey High School.”
Ronaldo clenched up. “What about the school? Is my family okay?”
Dom looked over at him.
“Return to rendezvous, Snake Two,” Marks repeated.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Ronaldo snapped.
“There’s been some sort of attack,” Marks replied. “That’s all I know.”
* * *
“You’re going to tell us who you are and who you’re working with,” said the burly detective, “or I will make sure you never walk again.”
Vinny sat handcuffed to a chair in an interrogation room deep beneath police headquarters. He had been in custody for several days now, but the cops had been too busy to spend much time interrogating him. That had changed a few hours ago.
The two cops questioning him were more serious than the others, and they were getting sick of his silence.
The one asking questions wore a button- down shirt and tie. He was young, no more than thirty.
The other detective, the bald one, was in his forties and almost twice as thick. He wore an LAPD polo shirt a size too small, probably to show off his pecs and biceps.
It was funny to Vinny. He wasn’t scared of these guys. They weren’t Vega soldiers or Crips. They couldn’t skin him alive or cut off his balls and stick them in his ass.
All they could do was keep him locked up and ask him questions that he would deflect or answer with a lie.
The big detective bent down close, but Vinny kept his eyes on the mirror, wondering who was on the other side.
“You may think we’re just normal cops like the guys that have been asking you questions over the past few days,” the man said quietly. “You may think I can’t hurt you and put you in a wheelchair.”
“You’d be wrong,” said the younger guy at the desk.
“You’re wasting your time,” Vinny replied calmly. “You’ve got nothing on me, because there’s nothing to get. I’ve done nothing wrong, unless helping Sergeant Best and the anti-gang task force is wrong. And the only way that can be wrong is if you guys are in bed with the criminals.”
“That’s funny,” the big guy said. “And I’m getting tired of this shit.”
The cop stood and, before Vinny could brace himself, blindsided him with a punch to his right ear. The sting was just the start of the pain. When his chair toppled over, his left cheek smashed against the floor, and his wrists twisted behind him.
Pain shot up his arms and across his face.
The cop picked him up and righted the chair.
When Vinny blinked away the stars, the guy was squatting in front of him with a shit-eating grin that showed off a chipped front tooth.
“Listen, kid, things don’t work the way they used to,” he said. “I can beat you like a piñata until your guts fall out your runt hole if I want.”
The young detective stood up and leaned with his palms on the desk. “I’ve seen him do it before—smells worse than you think. So I’m asking again, who are you and who do you work for?”
Vinny gathered the metallic-tasting saliva in his mouth and spat it in the face of the pig who had hit him.
“My employer—that’s who you want?” The cop wiped the bloody spittle off his face, shook his head, and turned to his partner behind the desk. The guy pushed something silver across the surface.
Vinny swallowed blood. “My employer is going to carve both your hollow fucking heads into jack-o’-lanterns!” he yelled.
“Is that so?” The bald cop grabbed a pair of pliers off the desk.
“Time to play dentist,” the young detective said.
Vinny squirmed as the two men moved closer. They were bluffing. They couldn’t do this—things hadn’t changed that much.
“No,” Vinny mumbled through clenched teeth as the smaller cop got behind him and tried to work a letter opener between his jaws. He fought it, but after several minutes of jerking and squirming, the big guy got the pliers into his mouth.
“Hold still or I’ll take your tongue too, asshole,” he grumbled.
Vinny yowled as he gripped an incisor, levered back and forth, and ripped it out with a pop.
“Tell me who you are and who you work for!” the man with the pliers shouted.
“fuck you!” Vinny yelled back, rage boiling through his veins. Blood dribbled down his chin.
The door cracked open, and a familiar face appeared.
“Captain Stone,” said the bald guy, lowering the pliers, like a teenager caught with a joint.
“These motherfuckers are torturing me, sir,” Vinny said. “You can’t do this, you can’t …”
Stone walked over.
For a second, Vinny expected him to bend down and unlock the cuffs. Instead, Stone punched him in the gut so hard, the chair rocked backward. He braced for another fall, but he couldn’t do much to lessen the impact.
Sometime later, Vinny jerked awake to distant shouting. He sat up and brought his hand up to his head, touching what felt like a bandage. His tongue went to the swollen hole in his gums where one of his front teeth had been.
He looked around him at concrete walls and a metal toilet. Memories flooded his mind—the interrogation and the events that had led to it.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the hard slab that was supposed to be a bed, he placed his naked feet on the cold floor and walked to the door.
Outside the small glass window, there was movement in the hallway. Several officers had prisoners in cuffs and were leading them out of their cells.
Soon, two cops in riot gear stopped at his door and opened it.
“Get back!” one of them shouted.
Vinny held his hands up. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Shut the fuck up and do as we say,” said the other guard.
> “Okay, just chill, man,” Vinny said.
That got him a baton in the gut. He doubled over, glaring at the guy who hit him.
“Don’t even think about it, asshole,” the guard said. “I’ll make sure you can never suck a cock in prison again.” He slapped the baton into his palm.
“Then you’d be doing me a favor,” Vinny said.
The guy raised the baton, but the other guard stopped him. “Come on, we gotta move.”
Lowering the baton, he said, “Hands behind your back.”
Vinny turned and they cuffed him, and a hand gripped him under the arm and jerked him out into the hallway.
The door at the end clicked open onto a squad room alive with activity. Officers were carrying file folders and gear. It looked as if they were leaving.
“What the hell’s going on?” Vinny asked.
His answer was a shove in the back. He was led through the bowels of the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters to an underground parking structure, where an armored car waited.
The other prisoners were already gone.
“Where are you taking me?” Vinny asked.
The guards opened the back doors and pushed him inside.
A moment later, the armored car started up the parking ramp levels, to the street.
Still in his cuffs, Vinny tried to calm himself, but the pain from his injuries escalated his anxiety. He had a bad feeling they were taking him somewhere where they could do worse than yank a few teeth.
His mind raced with the possibilities. Just when he was getting to the really nasty stuff, the sound of gunshots pulled him back to the present.
The truck jolted out onto the street and took a hard left. Through the armored walls, he could hear the distant crack of small-arms fire, including automatic weapons.
It sank in then: the abrupt end to the interrogation, the gunfire outside. LAPD headquarters was under attack. But if that was it, why move the prisoners? Why not just keep them in their cells and duke it out with the gangsters right there at HQ?
The armored car sped up as rounds pinged off the side.
A few minutes later, the driver eased off the accelerator, and the gunshots faded.
Vinny relaxed against the armored bulkhead. If they did get into trouble, the metal would protect him. It was the destination that had him worried. Not being able to see outside made his anxiety worse, but judging by the silence, they had made it through the worst of the fight.
He closed his eyes and thought of his mom—the one thing that always seemed to bring him solace. He could hardly remember her features or her voice, only that it was soothing. And he would never forget what she would say before bed every night.
I love you, my sweet little angel.
He felt like smiling but didn’t get the chance. The warm memories were ripped away as the truck turned sharply and then jolted in the opposite direction.
Vinny felt like the piñata the burly detective had threatened to turn him into. His body caromed off both walls as the truck flipped and skidded.
His head hit the floor hard, and red swirled across his vision. On his back, he blinked up at the ceiling of the armored cargo space.
Not the ceiling, he realized. He was on the ceiling, looking up at the floor.
Gunshots sounded outside. Then a muffled scream.
Something hit the back doors with a huge bang, and sparks burst inside. Smoke flooded the cargo space. He coughed and blinked, eyes burning.
The groan of bending metal came next, and before him stood a blurred shape holding a long crowbar. Blinding sunlight filled the space.
“Hold still; I’m unlocking your cuffs,” growled a voice Vinny didn’t recognize. He blinked at the bright morning sun as he was helped out of the vehicle.
The crushed front of a cab-over semi smoked near the curb. A man jumped down wearing a ski mask and carrying an M4. Voices called out, and gunfire hit the armored vehicle.
Two BMWs jerked to a stop, and multiple figures wearing black fatigues and masks hopped out.
“We got to move!” shouted one of the guys. “The military’s coming!”
The man from the semi pulled off his mask, and through the smoke, Vinny made out a square jaw with a salt-and-pepper goatee.
“Dad?” he mumbled, squinting.
Christopher stopped on his way over, pointing the rifle with one hand and blasting an injured cop crawling across the pavement.
“Get in,” said the Moretti soldier, helping Vinny around a BMW.
The next person he saw was Vito, sitting in the front passenger seat, his face bruised and bumpy. The man helping Vinny opened the back door and told him to get in. Vinny ducked inside and scooted onto the back seat.
Now it made sense. The attack on the police HQ, the cops moving all the prisoners out of lockup—it was all so they could give the Morettis a way to free Vinny.
“Good morning,” said a calm voice. Don Antonio sat relaxed and drinking a coffee. He gave Vinny a quick scan, reached over, and put a hand on his cheek. “You talk to the pigs?”
Vinny tried to speak, but all he could do was shake his head.
“Good boy,” Antonio said, slapping his cheek gently. “You earned your button.”
-26-
The sun rose over a city gone mad, its rays barely penetrating the lingering cloud of smoke. Shooting had continued into the morning all across the city, but most of it had moved downtown, where police and military units fought pitched battles with the gangs.
It was Judgment Day in the City of Angels.
Chief Diamond’s death had rallied the military and police to answer his call to arms, but the gangs weren’t going to surrender easily.
While Dom and the Desert Snakes raced toward Downey High School, the Los Angeles Police Department was being hammered from all sides.
The radio in the Humvee buzzed with reports and requests for aid, but Marks was having no luck gleaning more information about the school.
Marks rode shotgun, with Tooth and Bettis flanking Dom in the back seat. Ronaldo’s mind raced with worry, not only about his sister and mom, but also about Moose and Camilla. She had stayed with Moose as he was being transported to the nearest medical center.
Ronaldo kept his hands on the wheel, not saying a single word. The roads were mostly empty except for occasional military trucks, emergency vehicles, and cop cars. Almost all of them were going in the opposite direction.
The Humvee was headed east, away from the worst of the fighting, but it was still dangerous out here, and Dom was terrified of what had happened at Downey High School.
For the first half of the ride, the men had changed their magazines, checked their gear, and caught their breath.
Now they all sat quietly, waiting to see what had prompted the call to Marks back at the shopping center.
Moose had survived. How, Dom wasn’t sure, but the news filled him with the hope he needed to face whatever awaited them at Downey High School.
Gunfire snapped him out of his thoughts.
“Hold on,” Ronaldo said. The first two words he had spoken in a half hour sounded as if a robot had spoken them.
He swerved around two cars billowing acrid black smoke and gunned the engine.
“Holy shit!” Tooth said, bracing himself against the seat.
Bettis whispered to himself, and Dom glanced over to see he was praying.
“Christ!” Tooth said.
The truck blew through the smoke and continued down the street.
Marks checked the side mirror and then let out a sigh of relief. “Must have been a random sniper. Keep frosty, Salvatore.”
Ronaldo nodded.
“We’re almost to Downey,” Marks said. “Everyone, get ready.”
They passed through a neighborhood of houses burned to their foundations
. Here and there, wisps of smoke still rose from the blackened ruins.
To their right, Dom glimpsed a group of people running across the street, firing weapons at someone he couldn’t see. On the left side of the road, more fighting was under way. The battle had spread to every city block, it seemed.
Three squad cars raced past on the opposite side of the road. Tooth turned to watch them fly by.
“Must be going to LAPD headquarters,” he said.
“Same with those,” Marks said, pointing to the skyline.
Two Black Hawks crossed over the city, vanishing into a tower of smoke.
Dom felt a pat on his knee and looked down to see Bettis’s gloved hand. “It’s going to be okay, son.”
Dom realized that his legs were shaking.
He held them still, and the pain in his foot returned. Good. It would take his mind off his sister and mom.
More gunfire popped across the road, and a bullet pinged into the door.
“Down!” Ronaldo shouted. He pulled to the left and pushed the pedal down on an open space of road.
Another flurry of gunshots came from the other side of the street, peppering the windshield and hood with bullets. A round broke through the spider-webbed windshield and punched into the seat, inches from Dom’s shoulder. The Humvee pulled back to the right, catching more bullets from that side of the road.
“Where are they?” Ronaldo shouted. “I don’t got eyes!”
“Keep driving!” Marks yelled back.
Ronaldo stomped the pedal and raced away from the ambush site. Dom poked up to see several guys running out into the road, firing rifles.
“Twelve o’clock!” Marks shouted.
Dom turned back to the broken windshield. Peering between the cracks, he saw an abandoned truck ahead, and two men standing with rifles aimed over the hood.
“Tooth! Turret!” Marks shouted.
Tooth started to move, but Dom beat him up into the armored turret. He grabbed the M249 and aimed at the truck. The two men standing there fired first, their muzzle flashes winking over the hood.
Bullets glanced off the turret’s armor, but Dom held strong. He could hear the marines yelling inside the Humvee, until the bark of the M249 drowned them out.
Sons of War Page 35