Edge of Chaos

by Brynn O'Connor

  'Not my problem, Luke. How could you be so stupid to tell everybody about some dumb party? That’s on you, not me, so quit your blubbering and come down and do your chores,' he had yelled.

  'I hate you! You’re a beast and a bully!' I had shouted back.

  I never saw it coming then. I just felt an explosion of pain on the side of my head and I was completely off balance. I threw out my arms in an unsuccessful attempt to break my fall, but I crashed into the corner of my desk and my gold fish bowl smashed on the floor beside me.

  'Dammit, Luke! Look-' he had just said.

  'Speedy!' I had cried out in horror. 'My fishy, my fishy…'

  I screamed and cried hysterically as I tried to pick up the poor creature, but I just couldn’t with one hand. My other one hung at my side at an awkward angle. When I was about to catch it, a giant black motorcycle boot put an end to it. I looked on in horror as my father ground the little creature into the carpet.

  'I hate you, I hate you! You’re not my father, you’re a horrible beast!' I had managed to say before my father put his other foot on my shoulder and shoved me hard down to the wet carpet. He had then turned and left without another word, slamming the door in his wake.”

  Kayla wipes her face with her napkin. She doesn’t like crying in public, but she is just heartbroken for young Luke. She can’t imagine what it’s like to have a father like that. Her own parents were a loving, caring and supportive couple and would not have dreamed of doing any of the things Luke’s father did to him.

  “I don’t know what to say, Luke,” she finally says.

  “And that’s not all. I did all my chores while cradling a broken arm.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Yeah, when I fell against my desk, I broke my left arm. It was horrible and the worst part of it was I had to lie to the doctor in the ER. I knew if I told the truth, they would take me to an orphanage or something since my mother disappeared when I was five.”

  “Oh, my God! I am so sorry, Luke! I jus—”

  “Stop, Kayla. I didn’t tell you so you would pity me. I just thought you should know why my father and I aren’t close; nor will we ever be. Believe me, that was not my worst birthday and he’s done a lot worse than just break my arm.”

  Kayla looks around her. The sun is still out; there’s not a cloud in the sky and it’s 78 degrees according to the diner’s outside thermometer, but chills are running down her spine. She can’t push the horror of what Luke had just told her out of her heart and mind. The two of them are so diametrically different that it’s amazing they can even stand being in each other’s company.

  “Look,” Luke says after a while. “I need to get back. We’re having an officers’ meeting at the club house in a few hours. We need to get going, so I won’t be late.”

  Kayla pushes her plate away, full and satisfied. “Let’s get to it then.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Best Laid Plans

  “So what’s the plan?” Luke asks, as he takes his seat at his father’s right hand at the great oak table.

  “We’re going to hit the Harbingers tonight!” his father announces. “We’ve identified one of their meth labs out near the old quarry. This ain’t your normal meth lab. This one’s permanent.”

  Most Harbinger meth labs are run out of trailers and are highly mobile. For that reason, anytime the police take down a meth lab, it’s usually not one belonging to the Harbingers. Larry, one of the Clubs newer brothers, is a CI (confidential informant) for Oakland Police and he’s an expert at working both sides of the fence. The police accidentally discovered this lab a few days ago when one of their SWAT teams was doing some night time field exercises and they had picked the quarry for an outdoor training session. Once the lab was discovered, they tipped off Larry so he could gather Intel on the lab. They wanted to know how many Harbingers were in there at any given time and what they were armed with. With the help of the brothers, he’s gathered the requested information; but the club is going to hit the place first to get even with the Harbingers who tried to ambush Luke and Carter on the last gun run, as they suspect.

  “We’re gonna send ’em one helluva ‘you’re not fucking welcome here’ message,” Luke’s father joked. “But this is gonna be a dangerous one. It’s heavily armed, so we’re gonna hit it after they have made their monthly delivery. Since we’re not interested in their product, they’ll never expect anyone to hit them when there are no drugs there. It’s the perfect setup. After they ship out their product, the majority of the crew leaves for a few days to recuperate and only a skeleton crew is left behind. But don’t let the fact I just said skeleton crew fool ya. They’ll still have a half a dozen heavily-armed guards, hopped up on meth with itchy trigger fingers.”

  “So how we gonna hit it?” Carter asks.

  “We’ll do it at 3:00am when the guards will be the least vigilant.”

  “What about the cops?” Luke asks.

  “This is so new that they haven’t started watching it yet. They rely too much on Larry here, so we’re safe from them at least. The only way in is an old air vent on top of the building. I think Carter will be the best one for scaling the walls with a backpack full of Molotov Cocktails. He’ll light a half dozen of those suckers and drop them down the chute. That should be enough to ignite some of the chemicals in there and the guards will come running out. Of course, they’ll know they’re being attacked and will come out guns blazing, so we’d better be well-positioned to handle heavy fire.”

  The meeting goes on for several more hours as the plan is examined from every angle and every scenario is run through to make sure they have prepared for any eventuality. If this goes bad, they stand to lose some key club personnel. The time is two in the afternoon. In twelve hours, ten guys will saddle up and be at the target by 2:45am.

  By 3:15 Carter will be on the roof dropping his load, but not until the Kings in the trucks have set up about thirty feet from the only door in or out of the lab. After Carter makes his drop, he’ll wait on the roof with a rifle to snipe the Harbingers who will come running out. Luke will be in charge of making sure Carter gets off the roof and safely away from the building. For this raid, they’ll take two trucks and two bikes. Luke and Carter will be on their bikes and each truck will have a driver and two brothers lying down in the back. That should do it.

  2:45am…

  Luke and Carter pull up on their bikes two hundred yards down the road from the quarry. They don’t want the throaty rumble of their bikes to spook the Harbingers. They make their approach silently and on foot. While Luke handles security, Carter throws the rope with a grappling hook up towards the two-story roof. The hook is padded to reduce the noise of it landing on the roof. There will still be some noise, though, and that’s the reason Luke is standing by with his Mossberg 410 pump action shotgun.

  His own H&K is stuffed in the back of his pants. Carter makes his first toss and it lands on the roof, but it fails to catch and lands on the hard ground next to them. They both wait, tensely praying no one heard them. Carter tries again. This time he doesn’t throw quite high enough and it bounces off the wall. Carter lets loose his third attempt when the shit hits the fan.

  The door at the far corner of the building bursts open and out stream Harbingers, armed and ready to kick ass! Both men hit the dirt, but it’s no use. They’re seen right away. Several Harbingers open fire immediately and Carter is winged on the first burst before they can disappear around the corner of the building.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Carter swears under his breath.

  “Where you hit?” Luke hisses.

  “Shoulder. I think it just went on through. Hurts like hell, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Let’s make our way towards the tree line. Our brothers should be there in about three minutes and we can escape back to our bikes while they lay down cover fire.”

  Both men take off, running low to the ground and bent over, but they only get about fifty feet before a group of Harbingers s
tep out of the tree line and open fire. Luke and his best friend in the world hit the dirt, returning fire with their H&K’s. Unfortunately, their guns are for closer combat and the Harbingers are using more suitable rifles.

  “We gotta run for it!” Luke shouts. “We’ll go back to the quarry and climb down. We’ll never get by those guys and into the trees. Let’s run on my mark.”

  Both men wait, and when it seems the Harbingers are changing magazines, Luke gives the signal and both men jump up and sprint for the lip of the quarry. Somehow they manage to get to the edge. They have no choice but to jump and hope that it’s not very deep on their side. Luke doesn’t even slow down as he leaps over the side. He can hear bullets whistling past his ears as he falls through the inky darkness.

  What the hell happened to our plan? he wonders. Where are the other brothers that should have been here with the trucks to bail us out?

  Luke’s feet strike a steep incline and his body pitches forward. He throws up his hands and tucks his head in an effort to roll, but the momentum is so great that he falls into a barrel roll, limbs flying in every direction. Carter tries the same, with equal success. Both men finally come to a stop in a heap at the bottom of the quarry.

  “You okay, Carter?” Luke asks.

  “You mean other than my shoulder…yeah. You think they’re crazy enough to follow us down here?”

  “Depends on if they’re familiar with the place or not,” Luke replies. “I wonder if we’re even at the bottom…”

  “Shit, lights!”

  Both men look back up behind them and sure enough, there are four lights shining down over the edge of the quarry.

  “Crap, we gotta find something to hide behind,” says Luke, looking around frantically, trying to make out their surroundings.

  “Over there,” Carter hisses. “They just lit up a huge rock thing. If we can get behind it, they’ll never see us.”

  Both Luke and Carter scramble on all fours in the general direction of the giant rock-like structure. Twice, beams of light come from above and nearly expose them, but they finally make it.

  “Shit!” Carter swears under his breath.

  “What?”

  “I just realized I lost my H&K in the fall.”

  “Now that is a tragedy.”

  Suddenly, gunshots ring out in the night. Both men flatten themselves on the hard ground.

  “Don’t shoot back,” Luke cautions. “They may just be trying to draw us out. For all they know, we weren’t crazy enough to come down here in the first place.”

  Luke glances at his watch. It’s a quarter after three. Something has gone horribly wrong. The Harbingers had more guys in the lab than they were supposed to and then another group appears out of the woods armed to the teeth…Something strange is going on and the question is will they even live long enough to find out what happened?

  “What do we do, boss?” Carter asks. “Do we wait it out and hope they leave? What if they're waiting to pick us off when the sun comes up?”

  “I think we have to get out of here under the cover of darkness. It’s the only scenario that finishes up with us alive.”

  “I’ll buy that. So which way do we go?”

  Chapter Ten

  Betrayal

  Two hours earlier…

  Luke’s father, Gunnar, and Mack, his Sergeant at Arms are sitting in their pickup, going over the details of the plan.

  “So how’s this going to work?” Mack asks.

  “We’re tipping off the Harbingers that some of our guys have gone rogue and are going to make a run at their lab. That'll cause two things to happen. First, they’ll beef up security at the lab, and second, they’ll get their entire product out of there and to a safe house. They’ll just have a skeleton crew moving the drugs since they’ll have so many people guarding the lab and waiting to ambush the rogue bikers.

  Gunnar points to a road on a map he has spread out on the seat between them.

  “We’ll ambush them here and take their product.”

  “Okay…but what about the raid on the lab? Who’s going there?” Mack asks.

  A dark look passes over Gunnar’s face. “Luke and Carter will be the only ones there,” he says grimly.

  Mack swallows and nods. “What happens to them?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting soft, Mack. Luke and Carter are well-armed. Luke and Carter are both Army Rangers. If anybody can make it out of there, it’s them.”

  “But you don’t want them to make it out, do you?” Mack asks.

  “What happened the day I got out of Folsom? Luke and his…buddies made an attempt on my life, but it didn’t work. I’m pretty sure that time I got shanked in the joint was a hit ordered by Luke. If I don’t get him first, he’ll get me. That’s just the way it is, Mack.”

  “Your boy may be good, but he ain’t that good. No one’s gonna make it out of there alive.”

  Gunnar smiles wickedly, his eyes gleaming in the faint moonlight.

  This will be a good day, he thinks to himself, a very good day indeed.

  Ninety minutes later, another pickup truck drives up, loaded with Kings. Luke and Carter are following them on their bikes. Gunnar gathers them around for last minute instructions. After everything's ironed out, they move off. Thirty minutes later, they reach the rendezvous point. Luke and Carter are the only ones who move further towards their target, the lab by the quarry.

  Gunnar looks around at his guys. He has eight in all. These guys are loyal only to him; not to Luke. It has to be that way, otherwise they would balk. Gunnar gives them last minute instructions and then makes a call to a Harbinger in the lab, setting the plan in motion.

  “All right, Kings, it’s all set. ” Gunnar says. “At this very moment, the Harbingers are scrambling, loading up their product. In about twenty minutes, they’re going to come barrelling down this road on the way to their safe house and this is where we take them out.”

  He takes a deep breath and is about to continue when he hears a large bike approaching. A few minutes later, London, one of Luke’s faithful, pulls up on his motorcycle.

  “Hey Kings,” he calls out.

  “I think we got all the guys we need,” says Gunnar.

  “I was bored and Luke suggested I come along, so here I am.”

  Gunnar is fuming. This is the kind of thing that can fuck up a perfect plan. There’s no way they can go through with this if London sticks around. He tries once more.

  “London, I appreciate your willingness to help out here, but this is a very delicate operation and we’ve been practicing long and hard to get it right. Having another person will just throw everything off.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” London insists. “Luke filled me in earlier. I’m totally ready to help out.”

  Gunnar motions him over to where he is standing. As the other man approaches, Gunnar slowly eases his 9mm out of the back of his waistband. When London is about two feet away, Gunnar pulls out his weapon.

  Seeing something strange in the other man’s eyes, London reaches for his own weapon. He just about levels it at Gunnar when he takes a bullet in the right eye. He’s dead before he hits the ground.

  Gunnar looks around at his stunned Kings. It’s never a good idea to be running around shooting members of your own club. It makes people wonder if you have any real loyalty and if they’re next.

  “That rat's only loyalty lies in Luke, not in the club. ” Gunnar glances at his watch. “Alright, everybody lights out and take your positions. In about ten minutes, the Harbingers will be here. Someone get this mess cleaned up.”

  Two Kings stretch spike strips across the road. They’d stolen them from a police car several months ago and never had any reason to use them until now. Gunnar is anxious to see just how well they actually work.

  Ten minutes later, the Harbingers come barrelling through; first, two guys on their bikes side by side, followed closely by two trucks and then four more bikes. The spikes work beautifully. The bikes, doing about 60
, hit the spikes and instantly they go down spilling their riders. The trucks see it happening, but it doesn’t register that it’s something in the road way until they hit the strips as well. Gunnar and his men appear out of nowhere, blocking the two trucks with flat tires from running. They open fire with rifles and small arms. The guys on the motorcycles that are able to avoid the strips try to turn around and leave, but the other truck full of Kings prevents their retreat.

  Eight Harbingers enter the kill zone and a scant four minutes later, it’s all over. Not a single King dies or is even hit. The lead truck in the ambush takes so many hits it’s impossible to drive. Quickly, the Kings move the drugs from the Harbingers’ trucks to their remaining truck. It takes five more minutes to get everything loaded and then in a cloud of cordite and dust, the Kings take off with the score of the year.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mexican Standoff Suicide Kings Style

  Things have gone from very bad to a whole lot worse for Luke and Carter. The Harbingers are crazy enough to pursue them. Judging by the lights, it seems to Luke there are about half a dozen Harbingers climbing down into the quarry. Luke’s biggest fear is that the bottom will be filled with water. The last thing he wants is to fall into a deep pool with sheer rock sides all around. They’d both drown before it got light enough for their pursuers to shoot at them.

  Luke takes a deep breath in an effort to calm down. He cannot remember ever being this scared, not even in Afghanistan. During a fight, things happen so fast there’s no time to be afraid. Being pinned down in a rocky pit with no light and being pursued by guys with guns and lights is a hell of a way to go out of this world, especially after all the shit he's seen.

  Luke glances over at his friend. They have been through a lot together. Being here with Carter reminds him of Afghanistan when he and his buddies were pinned down by a large group of Al Qaeda insurgents in Kandahar. The insurgents had played cat and mouse with them for almost eight hours before he and his buddies were able to escape and meet back up with their platoon.