by K'wan
“Then hobble on your good one,” Cain pulled him to his feet, and draped George’s arm around his shoulder for support, while he half dragged him to the car. People looked on in shock as Cain stuffed him into the back of the Denali, and proceeded to bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape. Cain seemed not to notice them.
“Please, you gotta take me to a hospital,” George pleaded. In addition to his leg being broke, he felt like the truck had caved all his ribs in.
Cain leaned in to whisper to George. “If my brother doesn’t come out of that place in one piece the only place you’ll be going is hell. I don’t give a fuck who your mama is or whose kid she’s trying to kidnap. If something has happened to my family, you’re meat,” he slammed the back of the truck shut.
“You fucking idiot, why did you hit him with the car? You could’ve killed him and we need him alive,” Sonja barked once Cain was back behind the wheel.
Cain shrugged. “I could’ve killed him, but he’s still breathing, ain’t he?”
Sonja shook her head. “I swear, fucking with you street niggas is gonna get me and my baby killed.”
Cain turned his eyes to her. “It’s us street niggas that are the only thing keeping you and that kid alive, and we’re doing it for free. If I were you, I’d try being a little more thankful and less of a bitch. Now let’s get back to the spot so we can find out what the hell is going on with our people,” he told her, putting the car in gear and pulling out into traffic as if nothing had happened.
• • •
Animal and the others decided that ride or not, they were getting the hell away from the crime scene, so they took off on foot. Animal and Ashanti drew more than their share of attention, running through midtown with handcuffs on. People screamed and pointed at the fugitives.
One brave soul tried to play hero, tackling little Ashanti to the ground and trying to hold him until the police arrived. It would cost him dearly. Abel walked up behind the man as he and Ashanti struggled, and blew his brains out in front of a few dozen witnesses. It didn’t matter to him at that point. After what he’d done in the club, he’d be a hunted man for all his day and he seriously doubted the police would give him the benefit of a fair trail after killing two of their own.
The gunshots attracted the attention of two beat-walkers who happened to be across the street. “Stop . . . police!” one of them screamed. Abel responded by sending a hail of bullets at them.
“Let’s go!” Abel barked, helping Ashanti to his feet.
The three of them took off running, with the police hot on their heels. It seemed like every block they passed, more people joined the chase. Soon they had a mob of police and citizens behind them. They had crossed 59th street and were heading for Central Park. If they could make it, they still had a chance to loose them under the cover of the dark park, but this was not to be. A police cruiser cut off their path, and two officers spilled out with their guns drawn. Between the cruiser and the mob, they were trapped.
Abel checked his gun and realized he only had a few bullets left. “Shit,” he cursed. “I can’t go to prison, man. I’d rather swallow one of these bullets than let them take me down,” he said seriously.
None of them had any illusions as to what would happen to them if they were taken into custody. With Animal’s record, they would throw him into the deepest, darkest hole they could find, if they didn’t kill him first. Anything was better than captivity, including death.
There was the screeching of car tires, before the Denali appeared seemingly out of thin air and rammed the police cruiser. One of the officers had been nearly cut in half when he got caught between the Denali and the door of the cruiser.
“Looks like you boys are in need of a ride,” Sonja smiled from the passenger window.
“Sonja, I could kiss you,” Animal said happily.
“Kiss me after I get these muthafuckas off our backs,” Sonja told him, leveling the Mac 11. The machine gun roared to life, spitting hot death to anyone unfortunate enough to get in its path. This bought Animal, Ashanti and Abel a few precious seconds to jump into the truck. They hadn’t even had a chance to close the doors before Cain peeled off into the night.
• • •
“Man, we thought y’all had split on us,” Ashanti said, once they were far away from the park. They were currently on the FDR heading back to Brooklyn.
“Unlike some people, I’d never abandon my family,” Cain said, half joking.
“Cain, I’m so happy to be alive that I’m gonna let you get that one off,” Ashanti told him.
“What the hell happened in there?” Sonja asked.
“Things went to the left,” Animal told her.
“Obviously,” Sonja looked at the handcuffs he and Ashanti were sporting.
“We lost George,” Animal said in a defeated tone.
“We know, and it’s a good thing we found him,” Sonja motioned towards the rear of the Denali.
Animal peeked over the rear row, and saw George’s prone form, beaten, and bloodied with his hands and feet bound with duct tape. He got nervous, thinking George was dead, until he heard a faint moaning coming from him. “What the fuck happened to him?”
“Genius here hit him with the truck,” Sonja motioned towards Cain.
“Stupid, just fucking stupid,” Animal cursed. “If he dies we lose our leverage.”
“Then I guess you just better make sure he doesn’t,” Cain said over his shoulder.
Animal just shook his head. Part of him wanted to sock Cain in the mouth, but there was also the part of him that understood. He had been Cain at one time, a young, angry kid who thought violence was the answer to all his problems. Speaking of answers, it had just occurred to Animal that he never had a chance to call Kahllah back and see what she wanted. If there had been a problem at home, he was sure Gucci would’ve called. She was still mad at him, but if there was an emergency she would’ve let him know. Whatever it was that Kahllah wanted would have to keep until they had George safely under wraps.
TWENTY
GETTING THE BARTENDER TO GIVE up the waitress’s address was like pulling teeth . . . literally. She started with his incisors, yanking them out one at a time with a pair of dirty pliers she’d found behind the bar. By the time she got to his cuspids, the bartender was singing like Jennifer Hudson when she was still fat. He not only gave her the waitress’s name and address, but he spilled everything he knew about Panama Black.
According to the legend, Panama Black had come to America sometime around 2002, smuggled in on an ocean freighter amongst several other dozen refugees who had been sold on the idea that America was the land of the free. When they got here they realized that the freedoms promised by this country did not extend to those who had not been born on U.S. soil. Instead of equal opportunity, they found low wage jobs and harsh treatment. Some of the refugees who had come over with Panama Black accepted what they were given to work with and tried to make the best of it, but not Panama Black. He had not travelled from one end of the world to the other to become a dishwasher or laborer.
Panama ended up settling in a low-income neighborhood in Panama City, FL, where he took to the streets, doing anything and everything he could to survive. He was an ambitious young moan with the heart of a warrior. When one of the local gangs tried to make him a victim he made them hospital patients. He eventually developed a reputation as a tough guy in the neighborhood, and became popular with other young men his age. Panama would always preach to them how they were meant to be more than what their parents had settled for and that instead of sitting around waiting for a hand-out, they needed to take what the country refused to give them. Panama was a man on a mission, singlehandedly robbing American owned establishments and shaking down tourists. No matter what profited, he would always take a little to do things for the kids in the neighborhood, like buying them ice cream on hot days, or helping their parents buy food when things got tough. Panama was not only talking the talk, he was walking the walk. I
t didn’t take long before some of the men from the families he was helping rallied to his cause. Panama went from a low level gangster to the voice of the people in his neighborhood, thus the legend of Panama Black was born.
It was Panama Black’s sudden migration to California that had Kahllah puzzled. From what she understood, he had been content all these years to occupy his little section of Florida, so it came as a surprise when word got out that he was in California. The local crews buckled down and prepared themselves for a war they were sure was coming, but Panama never made a move on any of them. Outside of buying up a few properties in different ghettos in Los Angeles County and the occasional heist here and there, Panama Black had been relatively quiet since he’d been on the West Coast, at least that’s the way it looked on the surface. If he was tied to Khan’s coup, then there was something bigger going on than what was on the surface, and Kahllah intended to find out exactly what it was.
The girl he was seeing, Delores, stayed in seedy section of Watts. If not for the men posted up in front of run down houses, flying their gang colors, all you had to do was read the graffiti on the walls to know where you were. It was a warning sign to all outsiders.
Kahllah parked her car at the end of the street where Delores lived and killed the engine. She pulled out a pair of binoculars and surveyed the area. Delores’s house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, where it stuck out like a sore thumb. Whereas the houses around it weren’t in the best condition, Delores’s place was well kept. It was a two-story house, with a manicured lawn and paved driveway. She didn’t see any cars in the driveway, but there was a light on in the living room so she knew someone was home. Whether she would find Panama Black inside the house was anyone’s guess, but it was where the trail had led her.
This time, Kahllah wasn’t taking any chances. She was dressed in fatigues and body armor. Strapped to her was her trusty harness, holding two pistols and several blades, but she had also brought some insurance with her, in the form of a shotgun, the same one the bartender had tried to use on her. She liberated it from him before she left and called it compensation. Kahllah preferred her blades to guns, but she had been ambushed twice in the past twenty-four hours and wasn’t looking to let it happen a third time.
Slipping on her mask, Kahllah moved through the shadows, approaching Delores’s house. As she neared it, she could hear shouting coming from inside. One was a man’s the voice, and the other, Delores’s, she presumed. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on something. Kahllah crept into their front yard, making sure to stay low. She had almost reached the house when she noticed that the light upstairs had gone off, and the house was suddenly very quiet. She had a bad feeling, but she had come too far to turn back. If the answers she needed were inside that house, then no one short of God was going to stop her from going in.
Kahllah scrambled on all fours around the back of the house to where she found a door leading into the kitchen. She removed her lock-pick kit from her harness and within seconds had gained entry to the house. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was dark. Kahllah hit a button on the side of her mask, and the eyeholes became night vision lenses. She surveyed the kitchen, with its dishes stacked in the sink and a pot still on the stove boiling. It appeared someone had left in a hurry.
She peered down the hallway that led into the living room and noticed that the television was on. Cradling her shotgun, Kahllah crept into the living room. She expected to find it empty, but to her surprise there was someone sitting on the couch, in front of the T.V. The cherry from the cigar he was puffing, burned ever so bright every time he inhaled. It was dark, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could see the silhouette of his block shaped jaw and a head full of matted dread locks in the glare of the television.
When the cigar smoking man spoke, his voice was gravely and had a thick accent. “You should’ve listened to the bartender when he told you that you didn’t want to find me.”
The light suddenly flicked on and off repeatedly and Kahllah found herself blinded. Next Kahllah felt two hits: something that felt like a bat crashing into the side of her head and her face hitting the floor.
• • •
“I told you not to do this shit in my house,” Kahllah heard a woman saying. She was still laying face down on the ground, with her head ringing.
“What the fuck was I supposed to do? He came looking for me,” the gravely voiced man shot back. “Look, just get your ass out of here. Me and the boys will clean this shit up.”
“You better, because I’m not trying to lose my Section 8 over some shit you got going on. I should’ve never let your ass stay here.”
While the two of them argued back and forth, Kahllah managed to push herself to one knee. Inside her mask she felt blood dripping down the side of her face from where whatever she’d been hit with had opened her up. She would likely need stitches and an entire bottle of aspirin, but those would have to wait. She could see her shotgun, lying a few feet away from her. She tried to lift her head, and found that it started swimming when she did. It would take a minute to pass . . . a minute she likely didn’t have.
“Take our masked friend out back and put a bullet in his head, then meet me at the other spot. There’s been a change of plans,” the gravely voice man said to someone, who was out of Kahllah’s line of vision. She could feel people around her.
“You got it, Panama,” one of them replied.
It was him! Panama Black had been identified and that was all Kahllah needed to hear. She felt the hands of two men take her about the arms. She allowed them to get her to her feet, before she made her move. Kahllah tapped her thumb against her index finger twice, and there was sound of air being released. Before the man holding her even knew what was going on, she was driving one of her retractable elbow daggers into his forearm. Moving fluidly, she swung him around into his partner, sending them both flying into the corner. Before either of them could right themselves, Kahllah was on her feet and had retrieved her shotgun.
“No wait . . .” one of them tried to plead, but she couldn’t hear them over the roar of the shotgun. Kahllah spun, looking to Panama Black and caught the backs of his feet as he was fleeing up the stairs. When she went to give chase, Delores leapt into her back.
“You leave my man alone!” Delores screeched, trying to claw at Kahllah’s eyes through her mask. She managed to tear the mask loose and dug her nails into Kahllah’s exposed face.
Kahllah didn’t have time for games. She grabbed Delores by both arms and broke her chokehold. While still holding her immobile by the arms, Kahllah threw her head back, slamming it into Delores’s face. She then twisted one of Delores’s arms behind her back and dislocated her shoulder. Kahllah looked at the girl rolling around on the floor, squirming and bleeding. All the fight she had in her was officially gone. With Delores out of the way, Kahllah went in pursuit of Panama Black.
She took the steps two at a time, chasing the elusive Panama Black. She lost her footing when she made it to the last step and stumbled backward, which is probably what saved her life. A chunk of the wall just above her tore away in a spray of plaster.
“You wanted Panama Black, well you found him. Now come see about him, muthafucka,” Panama Black roared, firing off another round with his police issued Sig Saur 550. He was backing down the hallway towards one of his bedrooms.
Kahllah popped up, and fired a burst from the shotgun. She narrowly missed Panama Black as he dove into one of the bedrooms and kicked the door closed behind him. Kahllah moved swiftly down the hall after him. No sooner had she reached for the doorknob than the bottom of the door exploded, nearly missing her legs.
“You come on in here if you think your balls are big enough, but I’d best this Sig against your shotgun any day. I got enough bullets in here to last me until you get tired of waiting or the police come and lock us both up,” Panama Black yelled through the door.
As much as Kahllah hated to admit it
, Panama Black had a point. There was no telling how much ammo he had in the room with him and with all the noise the police were sure to be on their way, so there wasn’t enough time to try and find another angle to get to him, but there was more than one way to skin a cat. Kahllah reached into one of the pockets of her fatigue pants and removed the gift Ashanti had gotten her for her last birthday. It was a shiny black grenade. If she couldn’t wait him out, she would flush him out. Kahllah tossed the grenade through the hole in the door and ran downstairs to wait for the inevitable.
• • •
Kahllah had just made it out of the house, when she heard the scream, followed by an explosion. She ran around the back just in time to see Panama Black hit the ground with a thud. From the force of impact, she gathered that he’d very likely broken an ankle, possibly both, but it was better than getting blown to bits.
Though he was down, he was still not out of the fight. He was crawling across the grass, trying to retrieve the machine gun that had landed a few feet away. Kahllah dropped the shotgun and retrieved one of her pistols. She shot Panama Black in the back of one leg, then the other, immobilizing him.
“If you’re gonna kill me then get it the fuck over with,” Panama grunted against the pain. He was lying on his stomach, clawing at the grass.
“Not so fast, my friend,” Kahllah stood over him. “I have every intention of killing you, but not before I have the answers I have come for.” Kahllah rolled him over onto his back so she could finally look into the face of the elusive Panama Black, the man she had gone through so much to track down. When their eyes met, they both had the same slack jawed expression on their faces.
“YOU!” they blurted out simultaneously.
• • •
Kahllah whipped in and out of traffic, casting the occasional glance over her shoulder at her passenger, who was lying across the back seat, bleeding all over the place. Every time she hit a bump, he winced in pain, but he wouldn’t cry out. He was too much of a trooper to show weakness in front of a woman. He’d been a chauvinist when they met and the years hadn’t done much to change that.
