Sons of War 3: Sinners

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  The RPGs thumped away, hitting the garbage trucks at the front and back of the convoy. Both vehicles exploded in fiery blasts.

  Mexican Mikey, still standing in front of the lead vehicle, cartwheeled away, hitting the water like a fat kid doing a cannonball.

  Dom squeezed the trigger of the M1A SOCOM 16, putting three rounds in the side of the middle truck. Then he took down two men who ran for cover. He finished his magazine, ejected it, and slapped in another.

  Tooth and Moose fired off two more rockets, lighting the night up with brilliant fireballs. Silhouetted figures darted for cover. Two men burned on the pier, one rolling into the harbor to put out the flames. Another garbage truck exploded.

  Dom finished off his second magazine and examined their handiwork in that stolen moment. The metal carcasses of the trucks burned on the road, but more crates remained on the ship.

  Flashes of return fire forced Dom down. Both Tooth and Moose fired another rocket at the ship and took cover. The explosions boomed in the distance.

  “Time to move,” Dom said.

  Moose reloaded the launcher. “Just one more, boss.”

  Rounds peppered the side of the building. Tooth abandoned his launcher and crawled after Dom, toward the exit ladder, while Moose fired his last rocket.

  At the bottom, Bettis and Rocky waited with their weapons trained on any shadows that might be hostiles.

  “You guys got to have all the fun,” Rocky said.

  Dom looked up as Moose climbed down the ladder. The moment his boots hit the dirt, the team dashed across the yard, between stacks of containers.

  A few errant pot shots zipped past. Dom stopped abruptly as his team hotfooted it back to the Explorer. He took up position behind a forklift and waited to cover his team.

  Two Moretti soldiers came running around a corner, and Dom fired a burst, catching one of them in the groin before either of them could bring up his rifle. As the first guy writhed, screaming in agony, Dom took down the other guy with a head shot.

  “Let’s go, man!” Moose yelled.

  Still Dom lingered, firing at more Moretti soldiers advancing in the shadows.

  Moose grabbed him and pushed him toward the truck. Breathing heavily, Dom sprinted to the Explorer, where Rocky waited behind the wheel. As soon as they were in, he floored it.

  “What the hell was that about?” Moose said. “You could have gotten killed!”

  “I knew what I was doing,” Dom said. He coughed into his mask in a sudden spasm that he couldn’t hold back. By the time it passed, he could taste the metallic hint of blood.

  “You okay?” Rocky asked.

  “It’s nothing.”

  He turned to look out the back window. Flames from the burning garbage trucks fingered into the night sky.

  He couldn’t believe their good luck tonight. They had just taken out a huge shipment, killed Mexican Mikey, and, if they were really lucky, picked up a van full of RX-4 to redistribute to those who couldn’t afford it.

  A half smile cracked on his face as he pulled out his cell phone to text Namid and Pork Chop. But when he picked it up, he saw a message from Lieutenant Marks: Stay in the dugout. Our team is taking the field.

  The lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers fan always used baseball code words, and Dom knew exactly what this meant. It was an order to stay on the sidelines and let the corrupt cops take their cut.

  Not anymore, Dom thought as he put the phone away.

  “It’s all good in the hood,” Rocky said, looking over from the wheel. “ ’Cause the Saints are basically motherfucking Robin Hood.”

  “Hell yeah, baby!” Moose said, slapping the dashboard.

  Bettis kissed his rosary and nodded at Dom, but Dom didn’t feel like celebrating yet. He couldn’t help but wonder whether he had just dumped fuel on a raging fire.

  -7-

  “How the fuck did this happen?” Vinny Moretti asked.

  Don Antonio Moretti sat behind his mahogany desk, drinking espresso and watching his nephew pace before the bulletproof window of his office. The young man had a lot to learn before becoming a captain.

  The debacle at the port showed Vinny’s lapse of judgment in an area of their business that Antonio took very seriously: security. But Antonio worried more about his son. The young man didn’t know the first thing about the family business. Indeed, he seemed to excel in one subject only: pussy.

  Not unusual for a twenty-year-old kid, but in this world, even pussy could kill you.

  Antonio enjoyed another luxurious sip of espresso.

  “These assholes are dead men,” Vinny said. He turned to Doberman. “Tell the handlers to stop feeding the dogs. I want them starving by the time we find the men responsible for tonight.”

  Doberman hurried out to relay the order.

  Antonio checked the clock on the wall behind his desk. It was almost 2:00 a.m. He didn’t do well without sleep. Fatigue fueled anger, and when he got angry, things didn’t go well. That was why he left most of the nightly work to younger men. Hustling was for the soldiers trying to make a name.

  But tonight, he didn’t trust the soldiers, the made men, or even his captains. Someone had betrayed him at the port, threatening his operation for the first time in years. It would be weeks, maybe longer, before they could replenish their supply, and meanwhile, their customers would cross over to the competition to buy their drugs.

  There were plenty of excuses so far, and his job was to filter through them and figure out what happened and who was responsible. The future of the business depended on his ability to find the truth.

  Vinny was nervous, and he should have been. This port was his responsibility.

  Christopher was nervous too, sitting in a leather chair in front of Antonio’s desk with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He massaged his thick gray goatee while his eyes rested on the gold-framed Italian painting hanging on the wall next to Antonio’s desk, depicting the Battle of Salamis.

  “Tonight, we were the Persians,” Christopher said. “The question is, Who played us? Esteban, you think? Or maybe Miguel, if he found out about Mariana?”

  Antonio looked at the painting of Greek ships ramming the Persians in the straits between Piraeus and Salamis. He was a student of history and loved a good underdog, probably because he himself had been an underdog for years.

  Easier to fight when you have nothing to lose than when you have everything to lose.

  Tonight, someone had gotten the better of them, and his gut told him it was an underdog, and not either of the Vega brothers. This wasn’t Esteban’s or Miguel’s style. They took credit for their attacks.

  The mahogany double doors opened, and Marco Moretti walked in. His fancy Italian shoes clicked on the marble floor.

  Captain Lino De Caro followed the prince and heir to the Moretti empire into the room. Both men were still in their suits. Marco looked annoyed to be here, probably because it took him away from his favorite pursuit.

  You finally give him a chance, and he acts like an asshole, Antonio thought. Perhaps it was a mistake asking his son to come here.

  “We’re all clear outside,” Lino said. “I’ve doubled our men at every checkpoint within two miles of here, and Doberman deployed the drones to search for heat signatures. No one will get through our net.”

  Antonio gestured for the men to sit at the chestnut war table. Marco took up position behind the chairs, as usual when he was invited to meetings.

  He wanted a seat at the table, but he wasn’t ready. Not even close. Billions of dollars had been made around this table over the years, and tonight they were discussing a massive loss. If Marco wanted to learn how things worked, this was a good start.

  Antonio slammed his cup down, shattering the fragile china and spilling espresso over the table. He clenched his jaw, took in a breath, and calmly walked over to his seat at the head of the table.

  Slowly he pulled the red leather wingback chair out and sat.

  “Someone tell me how the fuck this happene
d,” Antonio said.

  “I really don’t know,” Frankie said quietly, chewing on the wooden end of a match.

  “It could have been Miguel Vega,” Yellowtail said. “If he knows it was us who grabbed Mariana.”

  “They aren’t that stupid or that smart,” Lino replied.

  Yellowtail leaned forward, and the chain holding his lucky cross fell out of his shirtfront.

  “Then it had to be that gimp lieutenant,” Carmine said. “Fat fucking sack of shit. The attack started as soon as he took the payoff money and left.”

  Vinny shook his head. “I don’t think so. My contact works for Best and is not a stupid cop. Shit, he just sold us the new ARX160s last week. He’s never fucked around with us.”

  “He’s still a dirty rat-fucking cop,” Lino said.

  While the soldiers and captains threw in their opinions, Antonio scrutinized them like a poker player watching his opponents. Studying their features, mannerisms, and posture, looking for a tell that any of them were involved in the betrayal that had cost him the biggest shipment ever.

  He couldn’t count anything or anyone out right now.

  Lino turned his head slightly to play with the hoop in his left earlobe. It was his nervous tic when he felt guilty for letting Antonio down—which told him Lino wasn’t responsible for tonight.

  Yellowtail was a loyal soldier who would never consider such a thing. The big guy had taken more bullets for the family than everyone else in this room combined. That didn’t mean Antonio trusted him fully, though.

  Antonio trusted only one man: his brother. And Christopher was suspicious too. He had his gaze on Frankie, who had expressed a desire for more dealing territory over the past few months.

  There was also Carmine, who had never liked the deal in place with Chief Stone and the LAPD. He and Frankie both would have preferred just to gun down any cop who got in their way—something Antonio could not allow. Dead cops were bad for business.

  But neither man would make a move like this . . . would they? They had been with Antonio all these years, helping him build the empire.

  The doors opened again, and Vito waddled in with Doberman. They both carried rocket launchers.

  “Fucking Russians,” Vito growled in his raspy voice, holding up a launcher. “Bastards left these behind.”

  Antonio could smell Vito from where he stood—body odor and booze. He had been drinking heavily since taking shrapnel at Long Beach last week.

  “So it was Sergei Nevsky,” Yellowtail said. “He’s got bigger balls than I thought.”

  Antonio stood, folded his hands together, then put them behind his back as he walked over to the window.

  Below, six men and two dogs were standing guard around the fountain in the center of the courtyard. A twelve-foot wall surrounded the two-acre compound, separating the lush gardens and fountains from the brown badlands beyond.

  Inside the gates, Antonio had constructed his own paradise, retrofitting the hotel into a lavish fortress.

  Spotlights raked over the perfectly kept grass inside the compound, illuminating the mausoleums he had built for those they had lost over the years. Raffaello Tursi was interred inside one, next to his wife. Both victims of the Vega family.

  Antonio looked past the crypts and the walls, to the cracked dirt and abandoned buildings beyond, where his drones patrolled the darkness. He wasn’t worried about an attack from the Russians, because Sergei Nevsky wasn’t responsible for this attack. He had chilled Stoli in his veins, but he wasn’t insane. And attacking the Moretti operation was suicide.

  “This wasn’t Lieutenant Best,” Antonio said with his back to his men. “It wasn’t Mikey the Mutant or the Vega brothers. It wasn’t a betrayal from within, nor was it the work of a gang.”

  He turned from the window.

  “Yeah, it was the Russians,” Marco said, pointing toward the weapon.

  Antonio smiled at his son. Still so much to learn.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You really think Sergei would be that naive or that his soldiers would do something so stupid?”

  Marco shrugged, looking back at his father with eyes that still lacked confidence. It was the gaze of a boy, not a man.

  “There’s only one group out there that could do something like this,” Christopher said. It seemed he and Antonio had come to the same conclusion.

  “This was the Saints,” Antonio said. “I conigli.”

  He waited for it to sink in.

  “But . . . how the hell could they know about one of our shipments?” Vinny stammered. “Of all the ships in the piers, they knew the exact moment when to attack,” Vinny said.

  “They were tipped off,” Antonio said. “But not by Billy Best. That fat idiot knows that doing so would be a death sentence. There’s another rat aboard this ship.”

  The silence in the room was palpable, and again Antonio’s gaze swept from face to face.

  “How do you know it wasn’t the Vegas planting Russian launchers to cover their tracks?” Marco asked.

  The hard look from his father made his cheeks flush.

  “Right, they wouldn’t have destroyed the food,” he muttered. “They would have stolen it and sold it.”

  “Precisely,” Antonio said. “Same with our other competitors. But the Saints and their allies, whoever they are, want the food off the streets. They made it look like the Russians because they also want us to go to war. I’ve done the same thing many times.”

  He looked to Christopher and nodded. Time to get their special guest.

  Marco stepped over to his father, standing right in front of the table. The other men waited for the crown prince to speak.

  Was this the moment Antonio had been waiting for? The moment his son stepped up to the plate? He still hadn’t spilled the blood of an enemy or been face-to-face with death. He still didn’t know what sacrifice was, and that was partly Antonio’s fault. He had given Marco everything through the years: fast cars, designer clothes from Europe, cash to throw around. He had even sent him to the best school in Italy, and while Marco had learned all about the world and business, he had no idea how to survive on his own.

  He was weak because he had never had to fight for anything.

  Sometimes, Antonio wished his son were more like Vinny. But he also remembered a time when Vinny was much like Marco.

  “Let me end the Saints once and for all,” Marco said. “It’s time to hang them from the overpasses so the city can see who’s really in charge: Don Antonio Moretti.”

  Antonio felt the grin forming, but he didn’t let it out.

  “I can do this,” Marco said. “The Saints are just a few vigilantes hiding behind masks. But there are allies out there—people helping them who know their identities. People who don’t want us to take over the most precious resource in this city: water.”

  The other men all seemed to scrutinize Marco at the same time. Antonio knew what they were thinking: that his son was right, but he would never be able to bring these seasoned guerrilla fighters out of the woodwork.

  They were as elusive as cockroaches, and as hard to kill.

  The Saints were more dangerous than any other threat. Antonio had met his other enemies face-to-face at one time or another. He knew where they slept at night. The Saints, on the other hand, were cowards who attacked in the dark. And the people protecting them were also cowards.

  Chief Stone, the City Council, and the mayor benefited from millions of Moretti dollars. They claimed even they didn’t know the identities of these rats, and so did all the other cops on his payroll.

  But someone knew. Someone had to know.

  Lino pulled out his cell phone and stepped away.

  “You got to be fucking kidding me,” he said.

  Antonio’s gaze went from his son to his trusted bodyguard, who put the phone away and cursed.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but our shipment of RX-Four was also hit,” Lino said. “Our van was destroyed, and the RX-Four is missing.”
>
  Antonio wanted to pull out his gun and fire it at the bulletproof window. Instead, he said softly, “Put a million dollars in silver on each of their heads. No . . .”

  He hadn’t built this empire by being cheap. He had built it by spending money to make money, and the Saints were costing him a shitload of it.

  “Two million a head,” Antonio said. “Talk to your contacts on the streets, and the cops on your routes. Get the word out any way you can.”

  Christopher opened the door and stepped inside with two associates who held a woman by the arms. Her mouth was gagged.

  The narco queen didn’t look so regal without makeup. Her matted hair and the bruises on her arms and legs didn’t help.

  “Who’s that?” Marco asked.

  Mariana squirmed in the grip of the men.

  “A feisty bitch, is who,” Christopher replied. He pinched her cheek. “Or puta, as your people say, right?”

  She struggled harder, eyes wide with rage, veins popping out on her forehead.

  “This is Mariana López,” Antonio said. “And she is going to help us win the war against the Vegas. Aren’t you?”

  She glared at him, growling incoherently through the gag.

  “Oh yes, you are,” Antonio said, “like it or not.”

  He looked around at his men.

  “You fucked up tonight—all of you. But fortunately, I took matters into my own hands the other night to grab Mariana.” He shook his head wearily. “Get out of my sight,” he growled.

  The group got up from their chairs and left the room, and the guards took Mariana away. But he stopped his son with a snap of his fingers. Marco walked over, and Antonio placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “You want to help the family?” Antonio asked.

  Marco nodded.

  “Lucia and I never wanted this for you, but if this is what you want, I’ll give you a chance. You help my men find the Saints, and you’ll earn your spot at this table.”

  Marco grinned proudly, but Antonio slapped the grin off his face.

  Reaching up, Marco put a hand on his cheek, his eyes as wide with rage as Mariana’s had been.

  “Do not underestimate these men,” Antonio said. “They are not sheep like the other cops in this city. These men are wolves.”