by Ivy Black
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Ten minutes after the last time you asked.”
“Don’t be a shithead. As my spotter, it’s your duty to answer my questions.”
He sighs. “Ten forty-three.”
We’ve been sitting up on the rise for the last hour and a half. We arrived well ahead of the meeting time that Bala had provided for us to settle in. And as expected, the sun is at our backs, which should make us all but invisible up here.
“So, how are things going with Ashley?” Cosmo asks.
I nod. “Good. Really good, actually.”
“What happened to playing the field for a while. You know, dipping that quill into as many inkpots as you could?”
“That was never my idea. That was Trig, if you remember right.”
“You didn’t seem all that opposed to it.”
I shrug. “Maybe I found something I liked.”
He laughs softly. “I knew you would. You aren’t the kind of animal Trig is. You know the value of a good woman.”
“I suppose I do.”
“I have to say, ever since you met her, you’ve been slightly more tolerable than usual. So, I assume she makes you happy.”
Her face floats into my mind’s eye and I smile. Just the thought of her fills me with a happiness that’s still so foreign to me. But it’s a feeling I think I can really get used to. Provided we survive the day, or course.
“Yeah, look at that smile. That’s the smile of a man in love,” he says.
“You’re sounding a lot like Derek with this obsession with my love life, you know.”
“It’s like I told you before, your love life is the most interesting thing happening with the MC lately.”
“The rifle in my hands would beg to differ.”
There’s a brief lull in the conversation and Cosmo shifts his position again. He looks over at me.
“How in the hell do you do that? Lay in one position forever like that?” he asks.
“Training. When you go through sniper training, they teach you to lay in the most uncomfortable positions for the longest times. It’s part of the job. You just learn to block out your discomfort.”
“Glad I never went through sniper training. I would have sucked at it.”
“Tell me about it.”
I watch as a lizard with a gray-green color with blue stripes down its side scurries by. It stops when it spots me, then takes off again, moving rapidly away. Not a muscle on me twitches.
“Great. Now, we’ve got the creepy crawlies out here with us,” Cosmo mutters.
“They’re probably saying the same thing about you.”
He smirks, then looks up at me. “How much have you told Ashley about the MC? About what we do?”
“Everything,” I reply.
“Everything?”
I nod. “I owe her my honesty. Didn’t you tell your wife everything?”
“I did. Took some time, but I did eventually, yeah. It’s how I knew I was serious about her.”
“I feel like you’re trying to make a point,” I say.
“Smartass. But yeah, I am. I’m sayin’ it sounds like you’re serious about this girl. You risked her running away for the sake of being transparent with her. That’s no small thing. And the fact that she didn’t run away and is sticking by you, that’s an even bigger thing. It’s a rare, good woman who doesn’t balk when she hears the kind of shit we get into.”
I make a minor adjustment on my scope as I replay the conversation with her in my head last night. Ash is scared as hell for me right now and I know she has to be sitting on a razor’s edge, waiting to hear from me. I hate that I can’t call her until this is all over with just to let her know I’m all right. But I won’t break operational security for anything. It’s the cardinal rule.
I doubt there’s anybody out here packing the kind of surveillance equipment that can detect cell phones, but when I’m in the field, I don’t take chances, and I don’t make assumptions. That’s a sure way to get your team killed and I won’t risk Cosmo’s life like that. He’s got a wife and kids to think of.
“Well, she wasn’t too thrilled with what we’re up to today,” I say.
“No?”
“Was Cathy?”
“I… uhhh… I didn’t tell her what we had planned for the day.”
“I thought you were transparent with her.”
“I am. Mostly. Dude, she would have kicked my ass and tied me to a chair to keep me from coming out here.”
“Maybe I should have called her.”
“Maybe you should make sure we both get out of here in one piece and back to those fine women we love?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Heads up,” he says, his voice suddenly firm. “I think it’s go time.”
Through my scope I follow to where he’s looking, and I see a cloud of dust rising. Vehicles moving this way. My gut tightens and I clench my jaw, doing my best to settle my nerves.
“Lay still. Completely still. I have no doubt they’ve got men scanning the area. And if they catch sight of us, we’re toast,” I say.
Cosmo says nothing but flattens himself against the ground. He raises a pair of binoculars and looks toward the vehicles headed this way. With the sun behind us, I don’t have to worry about the light glinting off the lenses of his binoculars the way it’s hitting the windshields of the inbound cars, giving away our position.
“One black SUV, two white follow vans, and three bikes. Looks like Ortega and his crew,” Cosmo says.
“To the east,” I say, catching movement from the corner of my eye.
Moving slowly and deliberately, Cosmo looks to the east. It takes him a minute before he spots it.
“Two black panel vans. Likely Zavala’s boys with their product. Looks like we got ourselves a party here,” he reports.
It takes another twenty minutes for all the interested parties to arrive at the gas station. We watch as the men dismount their bikes and pile out of the vans.
“I count thirteen,” I say, pitching my voice low.
“Baker’s dozen confirmed. And Ortega’s the one in the dark blue suit,” he says just as quietly.
“Who’s he trying to impress?”
“Zavala probably. Too bad that prick’s not here.”
“Would make shit a lot easier, that’s for sure. At least Ortega’s made it easy to mark him out.”
We watch for a minute as Ortega talks with one of the cartel men. The rest of the crews are helping unload the black vans and load it back into Warrior’s follow vans. Ortega walks away by himself, looking like he’s on his cellphone. He’s alone and isolated at the moment. It’s the perfect shot.
“We good?” I ask.
“Take him when you’re ready.”
Letting out a long breath, I settle myself and put the crosshairs in my scope right on the back of his head. My training and discipline kick in as I draw in a shallow breath and hold it, not a tremor or twitch in my body as I gently squeeze the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle echoes across the land around us, and as the people below start reacting to it, I watch with a grim satisfaction as Ortega’s head explodes in a violent red mist that splatters the side of the white panel van. He falls to his knees, then down onto his face.
The gas station below is suddenly a hive of activity as they men scurry around, looking for the source of the shot. It’s only then one of them finds Ortega, signaling everybody else to join him. If they’re smart, it’s not going to take them long to figure out which general direction the shot came from. I don’t credit them with an abundance of smarts, but it’s a pretty simple trajectory to figure out.
And right on cue, a couple of the guys in Warriors kuttes unleash a hail of bullets from their ARs. Bullets slam into the earth all around us, with no one shot even really getting close. But I don’t want to push my luck too hard.
“I think it’s time we back out of here,” I say.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.
But it sure would be nice to take a couple of more of those pricks down.”
With the sun behind me, I’m not overly concerned they’ll see my exact position. But it seems foolish to push our luck. Unless, of course, we take them all. This starts the war, and like I said, it’s going to be a war of attrition. Might as well get started.
I line up another shot and squeeze the trigger. Then another. And another. Every shot I take strikes home and adds another body to the growing pile on the ground below us. After eight of the original thirteen have been killed, the wild spray of shots from below start to get closer to our position.
“They’re starting to home in on us. I think it’s time we go,” I say.
Cosmo nods. “I think you’re right.”
I squeeze the trigger once more, sending a shot straight through the heart of one of the cartel men.
“Nine for nine. Damn, I’m good,” I say.
“Yeah, you’re all right.”
“Eat shit. You’re not going to dull my shine.”
Moving slowly, Cosmo and I both back down the rise until we’re in a spot where we can stand without being seen. I quickly break down my rifle and stow it in the case before slamming the lid and throwing it in the back seat. I swing into the passenger’s seat and slam the door as Cosmo is throwing the car into gear. Our rear tires kicking up a spray of dirt and gravel as we roar out of there.
A few minutes of rough riding, we’re on the highway, flying along as we head for the town where our switch car is waiting for us. I turn around in the seat and look behind us, letting out a small breath of relief.
“Road’s clear. I think we’re good.”
“For now,” Cosmo says.
“Like I told you, you’re not going to dull my shine today,” I say and flash him a smirk.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. The good guys finally got a W today. Go us,” Cosmo says. “All we did, though, was touch off a war that’s going to be ugly as shit.”
“At least we’ll only be staring down one enemy. That’s something.”
He frowns but nods. “It is something. And I’ll take it.”
Out on the horizon, I see dark clouds building in the distance, leaving me to wonder when the storm is going to break.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Domino
Getting into the switch car and back to Blue Rock went smoothly. For once in seemingly forever, everything went according to plan. Just as we drew it up. We should be celebrating, but when we get back to the clubhouse, we find the mood is somber. More than that, it’s bleak. There are a dozen guys sitting inside, silently drinking their beers, none of them saying a word. The atmosphere is heavy. Thick.
“Jesus,” I say. “Who the fuck died?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Monk says.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I ask.
“Sheriff Singer’s in there with Leadership. It didn’t look good.”
Cosmo cuts me a glance, then breaks away and heads into the Leadership room, sliding the door closed behind him. I look around the room and everybody is looking grim. Angry. Derek walks over and hands me a beer.
“You look like you could use one,” he says.
“Everybody around here looks like they can use something stronger.”
“You ain’t lyin’.”
“Where were you and Cosmo?”
“Had to handle some business.”
I figure right about now, Tarantula and Bala are handling business as well, taking over the leadership of their MC. I’d be surprised if their MC wasn’t thinned out for a while. No doubt, Ortega’s loyalists aren’t going to take kindly to their prez being murdered and will be out looking for blood.
But so long as Tarantula and Bala hold up their end of our bargain, the Warriors won’t even be looking this way. Assuming their coup goes off as planned, anyway. If it doesn’t… I push the thought away, not wanting to think about that right now. Seems like we’ve got bigger fish on our plate to fry at the moment. Those two guys are resourceful and they’re strong. No doubt they’ll be able to slide into the leadership role of their MC. I knock on the table beside me just to be sure.
“How long they been in there?” I ask.
“About forty-five minutes.”
I suppose it’s possible that Singer got word about the shootout and the murder of Ortega and the cartel men, but it doesn’t strike me as likely. For one, it happened well outside the town limits. It’s an unincorporated piece of real estate, meaning there are no cops out there. And even if there were, there’s no reason to think they’d connect it back to us at all. We got in and out clean. There’s no way we left so much as a fingerprint on the scene out there.
Before I can go through everything that happened out there looking for flaws a second time, the door to the Leadership room opens. Singer strides out and stands in the middle of the room, taking us all in. His face is red, and his nostrils are flaring, which is never a good sign. The rest of Leadership follows him out and stands at the front of the room, apparently giving him the floor for the moment.
“I warned you all about bringing this war into my town,” Singer starts. “Well, shit just got real, boys.”
He slams the file in his hand down on the table. One of the guys picks up the file and opens it, looks at what’s inside, his expression darkening with rage. He hands it to the next guy, and it’s not long before the file makes its way around the room. Nobody in Leadership is speaking. They’re obviously all waiting until we’ve seen what Singer brought along for show and tell.
I take the file when it’s handed to me and flip it open. Sitting on top is a color photo of a large man in a Pharaohs kutte. Or at least, part of a large man. In the photo I’m looking at, the corpse is missing its head and hands.
“Jesus Christ. It’s Costco,” I mutter.
Costco’s real name is James Hilton. He’s called Costco because he’s damn near four hundred pounds, and the joke about him being a bulk item started long ago. He was a good guy who was quick to laugh and told the most obscenely inappropriate jokes. He could get an entire room laughing in a matter of moments. I liked Costco a lot, and I’m taking his death pretty fucking hard right now.
I pass the file to Derek and listen to him groan when he sees the picture and turn my attention back to Singer. He’s positively apoplectic as he stands there staring at us. Only when the file’s made its way around the room and we’ve all seen it, and it lands back on the table in front of him, does he speak.
“Look, I know I played my part in all of this. But this shit has got to end. You see now what’s coming. I won’t let my town be turned into a goddamn battlefield, and I sure as hell don’t want any more ten-year-old girls finding headless corpses all over town.”
“And how do you suggest we end this, Sheriff?” I ask. “If you remember correctly, we didn’t start this.”
“But we’re sure as shit going to end it,” somebody says.
Singer rounds on him. “You ain’t going to do anything. All you guys are going to do is make amends somehow. You killed Zavala’s men, so you guys need to sit down with him and figure out what it’s going to take to end this shit.”
“There is no sitting down and talking to a guy like Zavala. Guys like him don’t negotiate. They simply move into an area and spread like a fuckin’ cancer. And right now, he’s got his sights set on Blue Rock. The only way you can deal with a cancer like Zavala is to cut him out,” I say and the guys all mutter their agreement.
Prophet steps up. “The sheriff is right. We need to find a way to end this. Peacefully. Without bloodshed. Or at least, more bloodshed. I assume he killed Costco to avenge the drive-by shooter we put in the morgue. The score’s even. Now, we just need to get in touch and find a way to end this.”
All heads in the room turn to him, surprise on everybody’s faces. Prophet’s been the one banging the drums of war, trying to rally us to nut up and go after these cartel pricks. To hear him doing a complete about-face on the subject is shocking
. And it also tells me he’s full of shit and is cooking something up. You don’t go from trying to wage a personal crusade to talks of reconciliation like that. Not when the issue is as personal as this is to Prophet.
But I back off for the moment, waiting to hear what he has to say once Singer leaves. Prophet turns to the sheriff and nods.
“We’ll find a way to end this without any more bloodshed, Sheriff. You’ve got my word,” he says.
Singer doesn’t necessarily look entirely mollified, but he looks like he knows that’s the best he’s going to get, so he nods and storms out of the clubhouse, the door banging into the wall behind it as he flings it open. Nobody moves and nobody speaks until we hear Singer’s SUV fire up and drive away. And once we’re sure he’s gone, Prophet turns back to us, his face contorted with the rage that’s burning inside of him.
“We tried to find a way to end this without more bloodshed before. And Domino’s right, Zavala is not a guy you can negotiate with. He murdered one of our own, and I, for one, am not going to stand by with my thumb up my ass and hope things get better. Fuck, no. I’m going to war. And I want to know who’s with me.”
The guys are banging their bottles on the tables, showing their approval for his declaration. I see a couple of the guys in Leadership are uneasy about it still, but I also see a grim determination in their eyes. They’re not about to let Costco’s death go unchallenged and unanswered. If it wasn’t before, war is now inevitable.
“I’m calling an open vote. Full membership and a simple majority rules. The question is, do we go to war or not,” Prophet calls out. “We’ll leave the vote open until tomorrow at noon.”
Doc comes out with an old ammo box from overseas with a slot cut into the top of it. It’s what we use when we have votes involving the full membership. He lays it in the hands of the statue of Anubis by the door, and we’re all expected to cast a vote before it closes. As I grab a slip of paper and write my answer down on it, my cell phone rings. I slip it out of my pocket, see that it’s Ashley, and connect the call.
