Fighting to Survive (The Casey Russo Chronicles Book 1)

by Rick Pine

  The irony, of course, was that the more they got involved in people’s daily lives, and the higher the taxes rose, the more likely they were to buy drugs to help them escape their miserable existence. It was a vicious circle.

  Casey took the pen and cleaned the end the best he could with one of the alcohol wipes from the first aid kit. He set it to the lowest dose setting and stabbed it into his thigh, then pushed the button. The effect wasn’t as immediate as the old way of injecting into a vein, but when it kicked in, you knew about it.

  Casey opened his eyes, feeling nicely high. He made sure to give himself as low a dose as possible, to avoid impairing his judgment too much. Should be enough for an hour or so, he thought. Stepping out of the car, he walked over to the nearest street light. The post was concrete. He stood in front of it, slightly off center.

  “3…2…1…” He took a deep breath, then thrust himself forward, crashing his shoulder as hard as he could against the corner, careful to hit it square on. He felt his shoulder pop, and he screamed and fell to the floor. Maybe he should have had more help from the White Lady.

  After a few minutes, the pain had settled and he stood up. He circled his left arm the best he could to make sure he’d been successful. “I’m gonna feel that for weeks,” he grumbled.

  Casey got into the driver's seat of Roy’s car and started it up. He pulled the tracker receiver out of his uniform’s pocket. The screen was cracked, presumably from his fall, but it still seemed to work. All three dots were currently off-screen. They had a good head start for sure. He zoomed out until he saw the dots from the three tankers. They were traveling together, in convoy.

  Casey put the car in reverse and turned it around. He took one last look at the receiver; the dots seemed to stop still next to each other.

  “Bingo,” Casey said out loud, before speeding off down the road.

  Chapter 20

  Northern Territory

  Somewhere outside Warsaw (formally in Indiana).

  Casey had followed the signal on the receiver for forty-five miles, and he was almost on top of them. He took his last turn onto a dirt road, where his headlights showed the fresh tracks of the tankers in front of him. The road was long and straight, and at the end of which was a group of old, abandoned warehouses.

  Cutting the headlights, he drove slowly in the pitch black, stopping the car a mile away. After turning the car around to face back toward the only way in and out, he parked on the grass verge so as not to block the road.

  Casey opened the trunk to make use of what was left of the small arsenal they had started with just four hours ago at the refinery. He pulled out his SM2065s and attached their matching suppressors. The Cosa Nostra loved a suppressor. Maybe it made them feel like they were in the movies? It’s not like anyone was going to challenge them if they heard gunfire.

  He packed the last of the extra ammo in the small rucksack one of the others had left on the back seat of the car, before opening a box labeled ‘Mine’. Inside he found a hunting knife and a pair of hunting binoculars. “Sorry Roy, they’re mine now,” he muttered in the darkness. Casey closed the trunk and placed the keys back in the ignition without turning it on, before starting his long walk down the road.

  The road was unlit, but it felt wrong to be walking in plain sight, even if they couldn’t see him. So he opted for walking off-track down through the long grass, which skirted the road on each side. He stopped halfway, pulling out the binoculars to look for signs of life.

  There were three main buildings that he could see. Old, square looking concrete buildings to the left and to the right, seven storeys high. It was difficult to tell from Casey’s angle, but they both looked to run a good distance back. In between the building was a large gap, a courtyard, almost. He saw two lines of battered U-Haul trucks in the center, with the lines of trucks facing in opposite directions. Curious.

  At the rear of the complex was the third building, which was barely visible from Casey’s vantage point. He decided to move around to the side for a better look, but not before looking for patrols. He stayed low for a while, watching.

  And then he found them.

  A set of two armed guards patrolled each of the flat roofs of the buildings to the left and right. They seemed to follow the same pattern as they walked back and forth, never being in the same place as each other. On the ground he saw a small guard hut at the end of the road, which wasn’t visible before. There wasn’t even a barrier, just a small hut to the side, barely big enough for one person to sit in. He had to assume there was someone manning that. Not that he planned to stroll in through the entrance in any case.

  He saw no other armed guards on the ground, but he did witness a few workers moving the line of trucks, one at a time. They seemed to be feeding them into the third building at the back in a one-in, one-out fashion.

  Casey kept low and moved through the long grass, inching closer and closer to the building. He has to assume the tankers were in the third building, as he couldn’t see an entrance big enough in the other two structures. Casey worked his way around the side of the right hand building, carefully watching the guards on the rooftop. It was pitch black in the field, so he was sure they couldn’t see him. The only reason Casey could see them was because of the strong temporary lighting that had been set up in the courtyard, also illuminating the rooftops.

  He looked to his left, as he leveled up to the guard hut. They hadn’t seen him either. Maybe it was empty? Casey was a good one-hundred yards away from them at this point. He waited, looking around one last time before he slowly made his way through the last few dozen feet of grass. He was now in the light that was coming from the powerful halogen lights in the courtyard. He had to be careful.

  Suddenly, an armed guard turned the corner from the courtyard and headed Casey’s way. He crouched so low he was practically sitting. He put one hand on his sidearm, ready to draw. As he walked passed him, the guard’s radio came to life.

  “Alpha 1, check-in status?”

  “Status green,” replied the guard, as he continued walking the length of the building.

  “Roger that, Alpha 1.”

  Casey slowly followed the guard, keeping low in the long grass that surrounded the buildings. As they both turned the corner and began down toward the back of the complex, Casey noticed something different about this guard, which he hadn’t, or couldn’t, see on the others on the rooftop. This man wasn’t carrying an older gun, like an M16 or an M4. Instead he was carrying a FBG-1S. How did he come to possess a Mafia weapon?

  Casey focused his attention to the light above the rifle’s trigger. It was green. Not only had they gotten hold of the rifle, but they also had access codes to program it to their guard’s fingerprints. How strange. Maybe Ciro was right. For all his madness, it looked like it was an inside job after all.

  The guard stopped in his tracks and put both his hands in his pockets, rummaging for something. Casey was now just a few feet away. He unsheathed the hunting knife carefully. The guard pulled out a packet of cigarettes with his left hand, as his other hand continued to rummage around.

  Casey stood and sprinted toward the guard, who’s back was facing him. The guard heard the noise of Casey’s steps on the gravel track and spun around.

  But it was too late. Casey had already closed the distance. The guard didn’t have time to react, as Casey sank the knife through his neck and up into his brain stem. He felt no pain, his death instant.

  Casey dragged the guard into the grass, careful not to take him too deep so the guards on the roof would see him. They were still close enough to the building that the guards couldn’t see from their acute angle.

  Casey cleaned his blade on the guard's chest, before searching him for anything useful, but found nothing. The rifle was no good to him, as only the dead guard could fire it. Casey continued to sneak through the grass until he reached the end of the building.

  He turned and was now looking at the side of the third structure. To Casey’s d
elight, the grass carried on around the back of that building, too.

  A side door was now visible, but so was the armed guard standing on sentry duty in front of it. Casey continued on and circumvented to the rear of the third building, where he noticed two windows. The powerful lights from the courtyard shone brightly at the front of the building, which helped to illuminate the sides, too. But the rear was in darkness. Casey remained cautious as he approached one of the windows.

  As he looked inside in the building he instantly saw all three tankers. Each one had a U-Haul truck parked next to it, with hoses running from one to the other. The rear doors on the trucks were all open, revealing a large bespoke tank inside each of them.

  They were decanting the gasoline into the smaller trucks! Casey now understood their plan. This was just a temporary facility. The makeshift lights and minimal guards supported that. If this was the IA’s base of operations he would have expected a lot more security. They were decanting into smaller trucks, which would then all head out in different directions and onto different places. No one would suspect them to be carrying gasoline, so they wouldn’t be stopped by law enforcement or bandits, like they would if they’d driven the tankers themselves.

  Pretty impressive, Casey thought.

  The temporary nature of the facility meant Casey had to hurry, as they only had a few more trucks left to fill. He wouldn’t be able to track them all, but he could try and track three using the trackers currently on the tankers. So, he had to get in there and switch those trackers.

  Casey looked for as long as he dared through the window before someone saw him. He counted one worker manning the hoses between the trucks, and one driver, per tanker. Casey spotted the large doors leading to the courtyard at the front of the building. A set of double doors per tanker. “That’s how they got them in,” he whispered. Each one of the double doors had one door open, presumably to let the U-Haul truck back out when they were full. Casey shifted to the other window for a better view of the courtyard through the open doors. He saw six others in the courtyard. Casey knew there were likely more.

  “This isn’t going to easy,” he muttered.

  Chapter 21

  Casey knew he had to get inside quick before it was too late. Keeping his back to the wall he slid from the window along the brickwork, stopping a few feet short of the corner. He had to distract the guard somehow so he could get inside. He contemplated throwing a rock or something to get his attention, and then pounce unexpectedly. Casey had never used such a lame trick and was sure it only worked in the movies. The other possibility was that the guard might radio it in before Casey could strike. He was certain he didn’t have enough bullets to take on the entire compound.

  After a few too many moments of deliberation Casey decided on his plan of action, and it wasn’t pretty.

  After taking off his backpack he pulled out his suppressed SM2065 and flicked off the safety. With one giant leap, he flew out into the guard's view, spinning in mid-air to face him, before pulling the trigger. The guard never got the chance to utter a word.

  Casey was conscience of jumping far enough out so the bullet hit the wall on its exit from the guard’s body, and not to his side, where someone might discover it sooner. Casey slung the guard over his shoulder—dragging him would be far too slow—and dumped his body in the long grass.

  Casey held his gun in a firm grip as he opened the door to the third building. Opening it just enough to squeeze through, he closed it behind him quietly. He was surrounded by a wall of hooks, presumably where the long forgotten workers of the building used to hang their overalls and helmets. Most importantly, Casey had walked straight into cover.

  The back half of the building was almost pitch black, making it easy for him to move about unnoticed. The front half of the building was lit by the residual light from the powerful halogen lamps from the courtyard. It was enough for the workers to see.

  The tankers were still lined up with the U-Haul trucks next to each one. He could probably sneak from one to the other easily enough, but he had to time it right. There were plenty of eyes around to spot him, so he had to be careful. Maybe this was the time for a distraction.

  He planned to leave the same way he came in. All he had to do was to switch the trackers from the tankers to the U-Haul trucks.

  The far left tanker—the closest one to Casey—was currently being disconnected by the worker, and the driver was inside and ready to switch it out for an empty truck.

  The hose guy gave a signal to the driver, and he started his engine and drove through the open door in front of him. Then hose guy walked to the front of the tankers and waited for his partner to drive a new truck through the door.

  Casey didn’t hesitate, and moved swiftly. He dropped to the floor as quickly as he could without making a sound, and when he reached the tanker he crawled commando style underneath to remain out of site. He was just in time, because a few seconds later a new truck pulled in through the doors and the men began connecting the tanker up to the tank inside.

  Casey crawled beneath the full length of the tanker, positioning himself under the cab. He had less room to move under the cab, and got his clothes snagged on the low-hanging metalwork.

  The door in front of the tankers remained shut, but Casey had a wide enough angle to see through the open doors to the halogen lights in the courtyard.

  He took aim and fired.

  The bulb in the first halogen light shattered. Then another one. And another. The guards in the courtyard were suddenly confused and frantic. The drivers left their trucks and wandered into the courtyard as it suddenly got much darker inside the building.

  The noise of the pumps and the yelling of the men outside covered the noise of his suppressed gun. There was now more yelling as the men scrambled to get more light so they could continue to work.

  Casey rolled onto his back to see the tracker directly above him on the underside of the cab. He tucked his gun away and removed the tracker left by Nicolas.

  He slid back down the length of the tanker until he was parallel with the U-Haul truck opposite. He checked one last time to make sure the worker was still out of sight, busily checking the hoses connecting the two vehicles.

  Casey log-rolled from the tanker to beneath the adjacent truck. He placed the tracker on the bottom of the truck, and immediately log-rolled back beneath the tanker.

  “One down, two to go,” he whispered.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Casey lay patiently for a few minutes, unable to move from his position under the tanker. The workmen around him remained busy, frantically trying to work in the low-light. The worker watching the dials and hoses on the second tanker was less studious than the first, making it difficult for Casey to roll under the second truck.

  He watched as the worker approached the driver of that truck. Between the engines of the U-Haul trucks and the pumping of gasoline, there was a fair amount of noise, which Casey was currently using to his advantage. He tried the best he could to hear the worker’s conversation.

  “Cover me a second, I need a piss,” said the worker.

  “Again? You need to see a doctor, man. No one pisses that much.”

  “Whatever! Will you man the tanker or not?”

  The driver didn’t bother to reply and opened the door of his truck, getting out. Casey watched as he walked outside and disappeared out of sight. The driver was now sitting on the ledge at the back of the U-Haul truck, his back to the dials.

  Now was Casey’s chance.

  Again, he log-rolled across the six-foot gap, stopping under the second truck. He quickly looked around, before continuing his roll under the second tanker. When he was briefly under the second truck, Casey had noticed that the cab on the second tanker looked different to the others. It was beaten up and a little rusty. It had been replaced.

  Casey shimmied his way up beneath second tanker’s cab. His fear was realized. No tracker. This must be one of their cabs ... maybe they damaged the original when t
hey hijacked it? Casey mused.

  There was no point in waiting around; he had to get to the last tanker and then get the hell out of there. The third tanker was sitting alone, as the truck next to it had pulled out of the warehouse just a few moments ago. The distance to the next truck was too great to roll without the truck to shield him. He’d have to be quick to avoid getting seen.

  Casey flipped onto his stomach, and commando crawled until he could stand, then got up and sprinted to the third tanker, keeping as low as possible while maintaining a good speed. He dropped and rolled under the last tanker, and looked around for any sign that he’d been spotted in the darkness. Nothing.

  He worked his way along underneath the tanker and retrieved the last tracker. He just needed to wait for the new truck to pull in and get connected, before placing it in position.

  The worker walked back into the warehouse holding a halogen lamp, and positioned it to face the back of the trucks and tankers. He plugged it in, and it immediately illuminated the warehouse, much brighter than the residual light from outside had before.

  “Hey! There’s someone under the tanker,” yelled the worker who’d just plugged in the light.

  Shit!

  Casey rolled out from under the tanker’s far side and was soon standing in front of the side door to the warehouse on the opposite side that he’d entered. He immediately tried the door.

  Locked.

  “Hands in the air,” yelled another voice. “Turn around slowly.”

  Casey started raising his hands as he turned, but not too high, mentally readying himself to draw his guns and shoot. But he needed to see what he was shooting at first.

  As Casey steadily edged around, careful not to make any quick motions to upset any trigger-happy guards, he was now facing three of them, all with FBG-1S rifles. The workers and drivers had started to join the ranks, too, all holding handguns.

  Casey was sure he could take out two guards easily before they could shoot. After all, he had two guns and two hands to shoot them with. But the third would probably get a few shots off before Casey could take him out. He had an automatic weapon, which was too much of a risk. He wasn’t about to die needlessly. Especially not for Ciro DeLuca.