Once a year, drugs from various police agencies were taken to the desert and burned. It was a practice that required heavy security because of the danger involved in transporting the drugs.
When Candy found out about the tight security, she contacted an artillery dealer from Switzerland, and ordered dozens of cases of bulletproof vest–piercing bullets, along with vests that even those bullets couldn’t pierce. For the job, she rounded up the majority of the guys from 190 East Coast Crips, along with some of their homies from 30s. Their street knowledge would play an important role in the heist. Many of them had served time in prison for robbing banks, with most of the robberies involving explosives. Vaults were blown right out of the wall, with the money suffering little or no damage.
Candy found out about the time, date, and location of the drop through a gangsta-cop with the Beverly Hills Police Department.
A gangsta-cop was a crooked cop who stole both money and drugs from the evidence room of a police department. It normally involved several officers working the gang unit. The officers would plant “dirty guns” and drugs on drug dealers during police raids, leaving just enough to ensure long prison sentences. One of Candy’s friends from her old neighborhood was a gangsta-cop, giving her the full heads-up on anything that involved a come up.
Ten Suburbans, each carrying eight Beverly Hills SWAT Team members, completely surrounded the armored truck as it traveled down the I-5 freeway at two o’clock in the morning. All freeway transitions that led to the valley had been shut down. Motorists were forced off the freeway by the California Highway Patrol and left to find alternate routes to their destinations.
Dressed in black combat gear that was equipped with hunting knives, gun holsters, a single pair of night-vision goggles, and a belt designed to hold hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Candy and her entourage waited in the desert in their Hummers for the armored truck to arrive.
Thirty Hummer H3s were parked shoulder to shoulder. The line of Hummers would serve as a shield to hide behind during the heist. Other than their trucks, there was nothing in the desert to protect them from flying bullets.
Candy looked at her watch. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. She estimated that the armored truck would be arriving soon. “Everybody ready?” she asked into the two-way radio.
“Copy!” rang out through the radio from all of her men.
“Remember what I told y’all,” Candy said. “When the truck gets here, it’s gonna park to the southeast of us. There should be a compass on the dashboard in front of the passenger seat; use it. If by chance we have to split up into different directions, the compass will lead you back to the freeway. Now, we tryin’a do this before they start unloading the coke. Why? Because we taking the whole truck. It’s just easier to do it that way. We can split the shit when we get back to the warehouse in LA. I’m sure y’all already know that the SWAT Team ain’t no joke. You know what, I ain’t even gotta tell y’all about ’em ’cause many of y’all done had run-ins with ’em.”
“Right ... right,” someone said through the radio. Candy looked over at Murphy, who was sitting in the passenger’s seat. “Truth and Real gonna roll back wit’ me in the armored truck,” she told him. “You gonna be in the Hummer by yo’self.”
“Candy, are you crazy?” Murphy asked her. “I ain’t lettin’ you roll like that. It’s too dangerous, and Raynail would kill me if something happened to you. Naw, me and Real can roll the truck and you and Truth roll the H3.”
“Ol’ boy is right,” someone chimed in through the radio. “I ain’t tryin’a have Raynail on my ass!”
Candy looked down at the radio. Her fingers held down the talk button, allowing everyone in the H3s to hear their conversation.
“Murphy, trust me on this one,” Candy said.
Murphy shook his head. “If something goes foul, Raynail ... Nope! I don’t even want to think about what Raynail would do to me.”
“Ain’t nothing gonna happen!” Candy tried to assure him.
“No, Candy!” Murphy said, standing his ground. “Too risky. It’s bad enough you out here. We in the middle of the desert surrounded by nothing but hills and shit. If one of us gets popped, by the time the medic gets here, the dark angels be done dragged our souls to hell.”
Truth and Real shifted in their seats at the thought of getting killed. They were well aware of the consequences that accompanied drug and blood money, but had never felt so close to death as they did at that moment. Hiding in the cut, selling coke was one thing, and robbing the law was another.
Their hearts pumped fear, but they would never admit it to Candy.
“Can’t let that happen,” Murphy said. “I’m rolling the truck!”
“Okay, you’re right.” Candy pressed the talk button on the radio. “You’re all right. Me and Truth gonna roll the H3 back, and Murphy and Real gonna roll the armored truck.”
High-beam headlights traveling from the southeast of them caught everybody’s attention.
Candy put the radio to her lips. “All right, fellas, they’re here,” she whispered. Candy was a little nervous. “Put y’all night goggles on,” she instructed.
Candy and her men slid their night goggles from their heads onto their eyes and watched as the SWAT Team prepared to unload the truck.
Ten Suburbans formed a wide circle around the armored truck. A wide space was left between two of the Suburbans for the armored truck to pass out of once the cocaine was unloaded. One by one the SWAT Team jumped out of the Suburbans, with each man holding an assault rifle.
Candy watched from the cut, timing their every move. She looked up from her 9 mm submachine gun long enough to tell Real, Murphy, and Truth to, “Roll down y’all windows and get out.”
Going through several machine guns that she kept in a gun cache in the basement of her house, Candy had searched for a gun that the armor-piercing bullets would fit. In two hours, she had gone through over fifty guns before reaching the M11, with the bullets fitting perfectly. In order to have enough guns to accommodate all of her men, she ordered more guns from the makers themselves. She had made arrangements for the guns to be sent by boat to the Port of Long Beach, where she and several of her men were patiently waiting for their arrival.
“Keep y’all doors open as shields, and don’t nobody start shooting until I say so,” Candy said into the radio. One by one the doors to the Hummers swung open with each man standing with his M11 pointed out of the windows and aimed at the SWAT Team.
The SWAT Team stood with their rifles raised as they scanned the desert. Believing that there was nothing out there, they let their guns hang loose at their sides. They then walked around to the back of the armored truck.
“Now,” Candy whispered into the radio. Candy and the Crips let loose on the SWAT Team. Like a blind man forced to find his way around his home without a guide stick, unable to see what lay ahead of them the SWAT Team dropped to their knees and returned fire.
“Get on the radios and call for a chopper!” one of the men from SWAT yelled as he ran for cover behind one of the Suburbans. “Why the hell don’t we have night goggles?” he screamed.
Candy spotted a man reaching for the radio on his waist. “No, you don’t!” She laughed. Candy raised the M11, and let her finger sleep on the trigger. With his intestines spilling from his stomach, the man flew back on top of a pile of bodies that Candy and her men had already served their death certificates to.
“If you see lips on a radio, blast the head off!” Candy yelled into the radio. She ran from behind the H3 door and dropped to her knees. “Quick! Everybody drop to yo’ stomach and start crawling toward them! Do not let up on the trigger. Think about all the times you been knocked by a pig, and kill they ass!”
Like soldiers under attack, the Crips dropped to the ground, with the butt of their M11s resting on their shoulders. They crawled in different directions and surrounded their enemies.
Round after round of the armor-piercing bullets pierced the SWAT’s
bulletproof vests. Their efforts to return fire were useless, being that they couldn’t see who they were shooting at. None of the Crips were hit, leaving the SWAT Team members who had not yet felt their wrath prey to hundreds of rounds of ammo.
The SWAT Team fell to the ground and drowned in their own blood. As the bullets danced above their heads, they looked from left to right, shooting at the unknown. The shooting lasted for less than ten minutes, with every member of the SWAT Team laid out on the ground either dead, or near death.
“Hold your fire!” Candy yelled.
The Crips continued to shoot, even though no one from the SWAT Team was standing.
“I said, hold yo’ fire!” Candy repeated. “Y’all gonna mess around and kill one of y’all own men.”
All gunfire ceased. The Crips rose from their positions and dusted themselves off.
“Did anybody get hit?” Candy asked.
Each man looked himself over. “We all good,” Murphy said.
“Okay.” Candy pushed the night goggles from her eyes up onto her head. “Let’s head over there and see if there’s anybody alive,” she said, wiping sweat from her forehead onto her pants. Candy followed her men to the mass grave with the headstone that read SWAT.
It was a bloody scene. The bodies were piled on top of each other like a stack of red checkers. The man who was going for his radio when Candy shot him, his right hand was over his heart. What you reaching for your heart for? Candy laughed in her thoughts. You should have reached for yo’ stomach. Another man’s head was partially blown off with his brains scattered all over the chest of the man beneath him. Some of them lost limbs instead of their lives. The worst case was a man lying on his stomach and positioned as if he was running before being killed. His head was blown completely off and lying next to the tires of the armored truck, which was not too far from his body. Many of the men were still moving around on the ground trying to reach for their radios.
“Truth, Real.” Candy turned her attention to Truth and Real, who were standing to the right of her, pointing to different body parts on the ground. “Truth, Real, finish off—”
The sound of gunfire interrupted Candy’s orders. Shots rang out behind her, hitting the men who were still alive. Murphy walked out from between Candy and Truth and continued to fire on the men even after they were no longer moving.
“Murphy, Murphy,” Candy screamed over the gunfire. “They’re dead. You’re wasting my damn ammo.”
“Oh! My bad.” Murphy laughed.
“Damn!” Candy sighed. Her eyes moved from Truth to Murphy and from Murphy to Real. “Truth, you rollin’ wit’ me in the truck,” she said, heading for the armored truck. Candy looked at her men in pure satisfaction. “Y’all head back to the Hummers and roll out,” she told them.
“But, Candy, we already discussed you driving the drugs back,” Murphy told her. “And we decided that it wasn’t gonna happen.”
“They all dead,” Candy replied. “We good.”
“It’s all good, Murphy,” one of the Crips said in agreement with Candy. “But, yo, let’s check out the stash before we roll out.”
“No!” Candy growled. “We gotta get outta here. The sun will be out soon. We can’t risk getting caught on the way back.”
“True that,” Murphy interjected.
“All right, it’s a go.” Candy continued to the armored truck, when she noticed that Truth was not with her. She turned and looked behind her. “Truth, come on,” she spat.
Candy and Truth walked over to the armored truck and climbed in. “They didn’t even have time to take the keys out of the ignition.” Candy laughed. She started the truck and looked over the dashboard at the dead bodies that blocked her path. “How am I supposed to get around this?” Candy wondered out loud.
“Why don’t you just roll over’em?” Truth suggested.
Candy looked at him like he was crazy. “Hell naw! I’m a killer, don’t get me wrong, but I ain’t down wit’ hearing a nigga’s bones poppin’.” Candy got on the two-way. “Murphy, I need some of y’all to move these bodies from in front of the truck.”
Candy and Truth listened to static. And by the time the static had cleared, they only caught the tail end of his message: “Over the bitches!”
Truth recognized the voice as Murphy’s voice. “Murph said, ‘Run over the bitches.’” He laughed. “Same thing I told you.”
Truth sat back against the seat and folded his arms. From a distance, he and Candy could see the Hummers’ headlights come on. They watched the Hummers head out of the desert, shoulder to shoulder. They merged into one straight line and headed to the I-5 freeway.
“So, what you gonna do, Candy?” Truth asked. “The sun gonna be coming up soon. We don’t wanna be spotted by no cops on the way back,” he jokingly mocked her.
Candy looked over at Truth with a smirk on her face. “Funny, real funny.” She looked at the bodies. And seeing that she had no choice but to flatten the bones, she held the wheel straight, closed her eyes, and floored the gas.
The truck shook violently. The sound of the bones breaking caused Candy to flinch. “Damn!” she said, shaking her head. “I should have let Murphy drive this bitch.”
Candy’s foot rested on the gas until she caught up with the last Hummer to exit the desert.
The traffic on the freeway was light, allowing them to get back to LA in less than an hour. When they got to the warehouse, Murphy and Real got out of the H3, unlocked the doors to the warehouse, and pushed them open for Candy to pull the armored truck inside.
Candy and Truth climbed out of the armored truck. They walked to the open doors and looked through the windshield of the lead H3. “Come on.” Candy motioned for the men to pull into the warehouse. “Hurry up!” she yelled.
One by one the H3s entered the warehouse. Seeing that the last truck outside was the truck that Murphy had been driving, Truth took Murphy’s spot at the door, and held it open for Murphy to pull the H3 into the warehouse.
“Two of y’all open the back doors of the truck,” Candy said and walked around to the back of the truck with all of the men in tow.
Candy slipped into the lock the one and only key that was on the key ring she had found, and went to turn it, when she found that it wasn’t the right key. “Fuck!” Candy was pissed at herself for not having the right keys. I prepared for everything but this.
Candy looked the armored truck over. There were only four doors to the truck: the passenger and driver doors and the double back doors. A black wall separated the front of the truck from the back of the truck.
Candy placed her hands on her hips, and looked around the warehouse. “I’m gonna have to call my connect wit’ the Beverly Hills PD.” She puffed.
“Naw, I got this, Candy.” Murphy climbed into the armored truck and took out his M11. He walked to the back of the armored truck, leaving a great distance between him and the truck. With a large grin on his face, he pressed down on the trigger, and replaced the lock with a hole the size of a ripe apple. The doors flew open, exposing dozens of pounds of cocaine stacked neatly on top of a wooden crate.
“Oooooowwweeee,” Murphy yelled. “Look at what we got here.”
Candy and her men stood in amazement. They had never seen so much cocaine at one time, and couldn’t wait to get their hands on it.
It took nearly three hours for Candy to split the cocaine evenly among her and her men. And once everybody had their cut, they all managed to walk away with over $3 million in cocaine apiece.
“Nice workin’ wit’ you, Candy,” one of the Crips said once he was done loading his share of the coke into the H3 he had been driving. “We droppin’ the H3s off at the lot?”
“Yes,” Candy replied. “Once y’all unload, wipe ’em down and return ’em. Y’all remember where the lot is?” Candy didn’t wait for them to answer. “It’s on National and Beverly Boulevard in Beverly Hills.”
“We out,” the same Crip said.
Candy turned to her most loy
al workers. “Truth, Real, y’all done working wit’ me?” she asked them.
“Hell naw, what we do ain’t just about the money.” Real answered for both of them. “You put us on when we ain’t had shit! We ain’t pullin’ out the game until you do.”
“And maybe not even then.” Truth laughed.
“This was one of the biggest accomplishments ever!” Candy grinned. Her grin loosened into a serious face almost instantly. “But I got something major I need y’all to help me wit’.” Candy was referring to the bodies that would lie at her feet once she ripped the souls from those responsible for her husband’s demise.
Chapter 3
Candy was lying in bed when she heard loud laughter coming from outside of her bedroom window. She slid out of bed and picked her robe up from the foot of the bed. Slipping into the robe, she walked over to the window. With one hand holding her robe closed she pulled back the curtain and looked out of the window.
The laughs were coming from Feo and his boys. Feo and one of his boys were sitting on the hood of Feo’s Impala smoking a blunt, while three of his other boys were engrossed in a conversation.
Since Candy lived in a two-story house and her bedroom was upstairs, Feo and his friends did not see her watching them. Damn I wish it was dark. I’d kill all five of ’em and just get the shit over wit’. Dismissing Feo, for the time being, she walked into her bedroom bathroom and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Dried sleep held the corners of her right eye together. Her lips were chapped, and her hair was as all over her head.
Candy wiped sleep from her eyes on her way out of the bathroom. She could hear gentle taps against her bedroom door, followed by light laughter from her son.
“RayRay, you got your bags packed?” Candy called out to her son.
Candy watched the doorknob turn, with her son running into her room, wearing his Sesame Street pajamas, and one white sock. Tucked beneath his left arm was a Kermit the Frog stuffed animal that his father had given him for his fifth birthday, right before he went to jail.
Girls From da Hood 7 Page 2
