“I knew. We don’t really have much choice in the location, brother.”
“Shit!”
“This is why we need to get in, take care of business, and get the fuck out of there,” he admitted.
“We’re going to be lucky if we get in and out without anyone ending up heading to the slammer.”
“Let’s fucking hope not.”
There was a wooded lot that was for sale to the east of the property. We rolled the vans in there and made sure the vehicles were parked with their engines facing out for the quick getaway we were no doubt going to need. We also made sure they were hidden in the trees and the prospects were made to stay with them so that we had someone who could pull up in case we had any wounded we needed to load in quick fashion.
As soon as we had the vans squared away along with the prospects and their orders, the rest of us took off, getting into position as the sun began to set. We had to wait until all of our men were in position. The guys from Sierra High had pulled in the tree-lined lot to the west of the building and were coming in hot from that side. We had a few of our men break off to come in on the rear. We were literally surrounding the building. It was a good thing we did too, because what we hadn’t been expecting was that they were loading up their vehicles and ready to head out.
“Delivery bay opened. Looks like they’re planning on heading out.”
“The fuck you say?” I yelled into my comms. There was no way that was happening. “Prospect, bring van 1 around and block that entrance. You let those fuckers get through you, and you’ll never patch in.”
“Jesus,” Shorty hissed next to me. “Poor prospect is probably pissing his Levi’s right about now.”
“As long as he does his fuckin’ job, I don’t care how wet he makes his pants.”
“Move in,” Ghost called out. “Can’t wait any longer.” As soon as we started moving in, it became obvious why it looked like they were about to head out. There was a truck in the bay that hadn’t opened yet, and I caught a glimpse inside just before the asshole tried to seal her up. It was full of women.
“Trucks are full of women,” I called out quietly over comms so everyone would know to watch their aim. Then, I popped off a round in the man’s head who had just closed up the truck. I didn’t bother reopening it yet, because the women were safer where they were for now. Instead, I moved to the cab of the truck, and watched as Spike popped a round in the bastard there who had been about to start the truck. I grabbed his gun and ammo, then tucked it away as I kept going.
“Truck two, clear,” Wren called out over comms for himself and Stone.
“Truck one, clear,” I answered back knowing Spike and I had just taken out the players in the room and truck around us. That meant there were probably four down of the fifteen we were expecting. That was if there hadn’t been any others hiding below ground. Clearly, they’d had the women hidden somewhere, so it was possible we would be seeing a whole lot more action.
“Breaching north door,” Ghost called out. There was a resounding boom in the air as the explosives they used to blow the door did the job.
“Breaching west door,” Battle’s voice reverberated through the comms. Battle was one of the men in the Sierra High Chapter. He’d been with them for about eight years now, and was the reason the guys were using strip framed charges that targeted the area better than the way we used to do things. Battle had been demolitions in the military before he was retired early and sought out the comfort of a new band of brothers. Heavy, Shorty, and Six-Pack were with him.
“Breaching South door,” Tuck answered back.
“Breaching East,” Grim announced a half a second later. When he didn’t report casualties, I knew Chief was okay too.
We had Ghost, Sweet, Phoenix, and Hold ‘Em on the north door since it was the only exit point on the backside of the building. All other entry points had two men breaching each door or truck bay. That kept us spread out, but able to maintain the exits at the same time.
“Two down on truck 1,” I called out.
“Three on north door,” Ghost chimed in, followed quickly by Wren. “Two down on truck 2.”
“One down on west door, one rabbit headed east,” Battle called out.
“Two on south door, we got your rabbit,” Tuck answered back.
As we moved further into the building from the loading bays, I noticed movement to my right, between the truck bay I was coming out of and the one I knew Wren and Stone were still in. The man there was headed in, gun drawn before I popped him full of lead and moved the fuck on. “Another down between loading bays,” I stated quietly enough that comms picked it up, but my voice didn’t carry far. That brought us up to 12 bodies dropped. That meant, if our intel was correct, there should only be three men left.
Wren and Stone pulled up on our rear and started clearing our side toward the south door. Grim and Chief moved toward the north door, clearing shit as they went. Ghost and Sweet split off to the right, heading toward the west door while Hold ‘Em and Phoenix moved toward Grim and Chief. Once we all cleared the entire building it quickly became clear that we were still missing a few men who should have been there.
“Someone go open up one of those trucks and let’s get those women talking. They had to be storing them somewhere, which means there could still be more men.”
“Already on it,” Wren answered back.
I moved further out from the middle of the room where we’d all converged after clearing the room, and that’s when I finally happened to look up. “Scatter!” I yelled just before a fucking grenade was dropped from the rafters.
I shot the bastard, but it was already too late by then. Luckily, the damn thing rolled just far enough away from where the men had done exactly as I had said and scattered, that I didn’t there would be any major injuries on our side. Still, just to be sure that didn’t happen again, I scanned the rest of the rafters. There were no more men hiding in them, which meant we still had two bodies unaccounted for, and I didn’t like the fact that Ivan Stasevich wasn’t among the men we’d already taken out. He was the one who had ordered the hit on an Aces High MC family in order to shake us up and get us to turn over Shep’s family.
“The women say there’s an access in the men’s bathroom to the downstairs level. There’s barely any room to stand down there according to what they said. It’s more like a root cellar, but a couple of the girls aren’t on the trucks that were with them.”
“They think the assholes are down there helping themselves to the merchandise?” I asked Wren.
“That’s exactly what the women thought. One of them was reportedly a virgin that Stasevich wanted to break in himself. The other was a labeled a mouthy bitch who needed to learn a lesson,” Wren repeated what he’d been told.
I was already moving toward the bathroom in question in the northwest corner of the building. “Smoke!” I heard Ghost calling out to me, but I didn’t halt my movements. “Smoke! Damn it! Stop. Heavy and Grim could both use some patching up back there.”
“I’m not the only one trained in first aid here,” I told him as I continued on.
“No, you’re not. You’re also not the only one who lost someone to these assholes. We need to be able to question Stasevich. There may be more women out there.”
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?”
“No, I’m not. I need to know you can handle your shit down there. Otherwise, you need to stay up here and patch up your brothers while we get the two assholes who are left.”
“I can handle myself,” I assured him. I wasn’t sure I was being completely honest with Ghost and myself at that point, and judging from the look he threw my way, he wasn’t so sure himself. Still, Tuck stayed behind to patch the men up instead.
As soon as we were down in the tunnel, it took an immediate left and led toward a room that was clearly cut out just beneath the center of the building above us. The floors were natural earth, and the walls were as well. At least someone had been sm
art enough to actually brace the place properly to keep it from caving in on them, though from the looks of it, there was a portion of the carved out hallway that looked as if it had taken some damage from the grenade that went off above us. Loose soil was spattered all around and there was a clear fracture of the wood bracing the ceiling up above us.
“That doesn’t look too stable anymore,” Battle managed to say what we were all thinking as we warily walked beneath it anyway to get to the other men and women who were hidden away down there.
No sooner did we get within five feet of the mouth of the room before bullets started flying. “Shit!” I heard Shorty call out. “Hit.”
“How bad?” I asked.
“Flesh wound,” he called back.
“What the fuck you complaining for then?” Phoenix asked. “Start shooting back.”
“Hold your fire until you have your target in sight. There are women down here.”
I heard Phoenix grumble something and knew that he wasn’t the type to care if there were casualties so long as we won the war without any further harm coming to our own men. It was part of the reason he stayed a nomad. He couldn’t handle the social norms the rest of recognized. We didn’t kill women and children if it could be helped, and we considered men taking some damage as a result to be acceptable.
Still, we managed to gain entrance to the room. Once we did, the two men standing guard over a woman who was tied to a post in the middle of the room were taken out quickly. Each was dropped with a shot to the chest. The woman tied to the post was screaming bloody murder while the other was tossed aside on the dirt floor in a corner looking completely broken. She was lying in a pool of what looked to be mud, but I knew it was her blood that had to be mixing with the dirt on the ground around her.
“Jesus,” Chief called out as he went to her first. I glanced around noticing a partitioned off portion of the underground area. That was where I found Ivan cowering like the little bitch he was as he attempted to load his revolver quietly.
“A revolver, Ivan? Really?” I asked as I pointed my Springfield XD-S 4.0 right at his temple. Some of the guys laughed at it saying it was too small to do any damage. I’d since proven that to be false. For a little, easily concealed weapon, it managed to pack a hell of a punch. I was all for using Ivan’s head to punch a hole through to show the guys just how effective it could be too.
“Smoke!” I heard Ghost and grinned down at Ivan as I tapped the barrel of the gun to his head.
“They want me to keep you breathing. Do you deserve to take another breath, Ivan?”
He spat at my feet in response. I removed the gun from his temple and knelt down so I could be at eye level with the bastard then I grinned at him. “You don’t deserve a quick death, fucker.” Then I stood and walked away to let Ghost and Sweet handle him.
“How is she?” I asked as I moved quickly back to the woman I’d noticed earlier.
“She ain’t good, that’s for sure,” Six-Pack told me as I drew closer. He leaned in. “I think it would be a mercy for us to let her die judging by her injuries.
“Was she the mouth or the virgin?” I asked.
“I’m guessing the mouth,” he informed me. “That one back there keeps thanking Hold ‘Em for saving her virtue.”
“Good thing he already has a road name or that shit might need to be changed,” I joked.
“No doubt,” he explained as he helped me lift the woman.
“We need to get her upstairs before this whole place destabilizes. I don’t want to bring the med kit down here.” As if to hurry us, we all heard another small rumbling as dirt and debris fall loose from the ceiling where the beams had been cracked by the grenade.
Once we got the woman upstairs, the severity of her wounds became far more apparent. The sheer amount of filth in the wounds was going to make them extremely hard to treat. I suddenly wished Surfer hadn’t just had his own issues with another club and a missing kid, because we could have used him here with us.
“Jesus fuck!” Spike hissed as we passed him with the woman.
“Someone call for the prospects to get their asses over here. We’re going to need both the vans and maybe one of those trucks too.”
“Any clue what we’re doing with the women?” Spike asked.
“That’s for Sweet and Ghost to decide.”
“We’re taking them to Angel Girl. The women want to help them out, get information, and get them back to their families if they have them, or keep them on to help rehabilitate them after their ordeal. MiMi started up this thing for victims of sex trafficking,” Sweet told us as he moved over to check out the woman we’d brought up. “She going to make it?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s a mess. We’re going to need to get her clean and then get her some real medical attention.”
“No,” the woman hissed out. “No help,” we all heard her clear as a bell.
“If we don’t get you help, you could die,” I explained.
“Then let me,” she managed to get out before she passed out once more.
“Over my dead fuckin’ body,” Spike growled.
“Let’s get her loaded up in one of the trucks. I’m not putting her in the van with Ivan. He doesn’t get to see the condition he left her in.”
“Agreed,” Ghost called out as he brought Ivan up with his head bagged. The asshole laughed.
“Too late, already know what I did to her body. It used to be lush, now she’ll always remember what I did to her. It’s written there in blood, skin, and maybe down to the bone.” His cackling laughter was cut off by a swift kick to the groin from Spike.
“Oh, sorry, I bet you felt that balls deep, huh asshole?” It was Spike’s turn to laugh. “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.”
It took another three hours to get everyone out, back to the barn where we’d stored our bikes, and we did what we could to render the old factory to dust and ash. All the bodies were put down in the underground area and they were doused and set fire to first. Then, the upstairs was doused and burned too. Everything had to go. We weren’t stupid. They’d eventually find the bodies, but we knew how to make sure they were never linked to our club.
Once we got back I took the injured woman into the farm house to get her cleaned up. Journey, the woman who was once a member of the S.H.E. MC helped me to clean the wounds so that we wouldn’t have to invite more men in than myself to take care of the woman. I was already dreading her waking up and freaking out about me being there with her unclothed body.
Hell, the woman was a complete wreck. Her torso had been carved up with ‘Ivan’s Whore’. ‘Mouthy Bitch’ had been carved into her upper back above her shoulder blades, and шлюха was carved into her lower back like a tramp stamp. “What does it mean?” Journey asked me.
I looked it up using my cell. “Whore,” I told her.
“Those fuckers,” she hissed out. “You know the girls are going to be all over this trying to find out who the bastards were selling the girls to.”
“I get it. I’m sure our clubs will be working together on that front.”
Journey shook her head. “I can’t believe this is still such a prevalent thing. You would think we had already cut the head off this particular dragon before, but it just comes back with more heads each time.”
“You take out the leaders and it creates a vacuum that needs to be filled,” I explained to her. “When one organization drops the torch, another will gladly pick it up. There are too many depraved assholes in this world willing to pay to ruin people’s lives for this to ever come to an end.”
“That’s part of the reason I had to get away for a while. I love her for doing it, but MiMi kept dragging more sad-sack cases into the club, and I just couldn’t handle hearing another story like theirs. I needed a break.”
“I get that. Just remember, for every sad story you heard, there’s another person who was saved and is able to heal now.”
I stayed and watched out for the w
oman to make sure she was healing okay and that the antibiotics we were able to give her were going to help stave off the worst of it. She seemed to be doing well, considering her wounds. It had been 12 hours since we liberated the women from the factory. It was high time I found where and what they were doing with Ivan, and I had a feeling that would be happening in the barn.
“Where is everyone?”
“There’s a small shed out in the woods about fifty yards in,” Sweet told me.
“He still alive?”
“For now.”
I tipped my head up at Sweet and then moved out there to see for myself. “He give anything up yet?”
“From what I hear he’s been pissing himself to tattle on everyone all morning. Was sealed up tighter than Fort Knox until Spike took a run at him.”
“Damn.” I wondered about the man’s motivation because he seemed pretty shook up about the fact that the woman we’d rescued had been so abused.
“He had a woman once, lost her to this same shit.”
“She was killed?”
“No, only wished she had been.”
“She okay now?”
“She is, but it wasn’t Spike that got her there, and he still hasn’t been able to forgive himself for that.”
I didn’t bother asking any further questions. It wasn’t my business and it wasn’t Sweet’s story to tell. Instead, I moved on toward the tree line where he indicated I might find the little shed that housed the man responsible for killing my sister and brother-in-law. “He still alive?” I asked Wren, who was standing outside the building keeping guard.
“He is, but he ain’t in the best of shape anymore.”
“Doesn’t deserve to be. Mind if I get in there, or are you under orders to keep me out?”
“Wouldn’t keep you out even if I had been ordered. You do what you need to for Soph, and we’ll figure the rest out another way if we need to,” he told me. I patted his shoulder and then opened the barn door. The stench hit me immediately. Hot piss, coppery blood, and on top of that was that acrid smell of shit. Since I didn’t see a bucket anywhere for the man to relieve himself I figured he had shit himself at some point.
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