Sons of War 3: Sinners

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  A voice screamed in the distance. It sounded familiar.

  He almost didn’t recognize the guy with the bandages on one side of his face. The hair on the right side of his scalp was singed off.

  “Detective Ray Clarke, it’s been a long time since I saw your mug.”

  Ray blinked again and focused on the features of Mexican Mikey, Mikey the Mutant, or whatever the fat fuck wanted to be called. He really did look like a mutant now.

  “I . . . I heard you were dead,” Ray said.

  Mikey lifted his chin proudly. “The Lord still has work for me to do. And it starts with cutting you up and feeding you to the pigs.”

  He reached out, and one of his men handed him a machete.

  Ray heard the familiar voice again. That’s when he realized it was coming from his phone. Alicia was still on the line and could hear everything.

  “No,” Ray said, squirming in the grip of the two soldiers. “No, please.”

  The guy holding his chest down laughed. “He’s crying like a little girl.”

  Mikey chuckled, then nodded. The soldier walked over with a roll of duct tape.

  “Wait,” Ray said. “I can help you. I have something the Morettis will pay millions for.”

  The guy ripped off a strip of tape and went to put it over Ray’s mouth, but Mikey held up a bandaged hand.

  “You saying what I think you’re saying?” he asked.

  Ray nodded slowly.

  Mikey raised half a burned eyebrow. “Bring him with. This little puto might be useful to us after all.”

  -16-

  There was no way in hell to make it home for dinner, but the wrath of his wife was the least of Vinny’s concerns tonight. He was starting to worry that he might not be coming home at all.

  This mission was far more dangerous than taking out some rookie cops carrying Glocks and shotguns. Tonight, they were facing heavily armed, battle-hardened soldiers.

  He finished his final gear check in the warehouse, where they had spent the past eight hours lying low and waiting for the green light from Don Antonio. All across town, their soldiers and contacts were hunting the Saints and killing the cops from the port raid.

  But this mission was for something very different.

  Reaching into a bag, he grabbed his spiffy new night-vision goggles and the new Ronin tactical ballistic helmets that he and Doberman had personally acquired in a shipment from Japan.

  “Pretty cool, right?” Doberman said, holding up one of the helmets.

  Vinny nodded as his father gave a whistle.

  “Gather around and listen up,” Christopher said. He unslung his ARX160 and waited for the other ten men to form up. Some of these guys were former soldiers and cops, who had switched sides, abandoning the shattered government to work for the Morettis.

  They paid better, especially to guys with skills.

  Most of these men had mad skills. Nicholas Dietz was a former Force Recon marine, and Rush was a sergeant with the AMP. Former enemies, now allies.

  They weren’t blood, which meant they could never be made, but they were still Moretti soldiers, and Vinny was glad to have them by his side.

  “Our target is Sergei Nevsky and his cousin Ivan,” Christopher said. “This is payback for the port.”

  Vinny almost shook his head. His uncle was a wily son of a bitch, suggesting that the Nevsky crew was behind the attack at the port, to rile up the Moretti army and whet their thirst for revenge. Christopher and the other captains knew the truth, and so did Vinny, but it was brilliant to leave the other men wondering.

  For all they knew, the Russians had fired those RPGs that had killed Moretti soldiers on the docks. And for all they knew, the cops in West Hollywood had been in on it.

  But Vinny knew, the Saints were behind everything.

  “They will have women and children with them,” Christopher said, “and I don’t want any of them harmed.”

  Vinny knew that his father had a soft spot for women and kids ever since his wife, Vinny’s mom, was gunned down in the church in Naples.

  “Fuck all of ’em,” said Frankie.

  Christopher shot him a glare. “Kids and women are not to be harmed. You got that, Frankie?”

  “Yeah,” Frankie said after a pause. One of Antonio’s longest-serving soldiers, he had served him well over the past decade, with a list of greatest hits that included killing Chief Diamond.

  Vinny had never liked Frankie or Carmine much. Like Vito, who had helped kidnap and imprison thousands of teenagers over the years, they had no soul.

  But not all his uncle’s men were assholes like those three from the old country. Raffaello Tursi would never have harmed a woman or a child. Indeed, he had spent most of the Second Civil War protecting Marco and Lucia from those who would. And, like too many of the good men, he was gone now.

  “Memorize your route through the sewers,” Christopher said. “It’s going to be dark and cramped down there. Once we get out, we wait for Doberman to take out the power with an EMP from the van he’s going to park a few blocks away.”

  “EMP?” Yellowtail asked.

  Doberman looked up from the glow of his tablet and explained how the weapon worked, in language that the men could understand.

  There were a few side conversations, but Christopher ended them with a snap of his fingers.

  “You got something to say, Carmine?” Christopher asked.

  Carmine ran a hand through his slicked-back hair and then spat a wad of tobacco on the ground. “This plan is no good, Chrissy. Sergei is no idiot. He’s going to be ready for an attack, and these helmets won’t stop what he’s packing.”

  “I got to agree with Carmine,” said Frankie. “This plan is going to get some of us killed tonight, and personally, I want to come home. Thursday is steak night with my goomah.”

  Christopher gave Frankie a side glance. “Steak night with your broad can wait. These orders come from Don Antonio. So pull your dicks out from between your legs and get set.”

  Carmine laughed, but Frankie glared at Christopher like a high school jock with hurt feelings in the locker room. He’d been taken down a peg in front of his peers, and Vinny thought for a second he might do something about it.

  Frankie went back to chewing on a matchstick—his surrogate cigarette—and Christopher knocked it out of his mouth.

  “What the hell, Chrissy!” Frankie said.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t light it in your mouth,” Christopher said. He turned back to the other men. “Does anyone have a question that doesn’t make them look like a damn pussy?”

  Rush spoke up. “How many soldiers does Sergei have at this location?”

  “Twenty, maybe a few more, but tonight we have the element of surprise.”

  Frankie took another match from his vest pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “Christ, brother, that’s double our numbers,” he said.

  Yellowtail ran a hand through his bleach-blond Mohawk. “Frankie’s got a point.”

  “So what?” Vinny said. “We’re Morettis, and we got Doberman and his tech.”

  The older men looked in his direction, but this time he didn’t get the usual judgmental gazes. He had saved Marco’s life today, proving yet again why he had earned his button eight years ago.

  “These are Don Antonio’s orders,” Yellowtail reminded the men. His gaze lingered on Carmine and Frankie.

  “Let’s move out,” Christopher said.

  Carmine and Frankie exchanged a glance but moved to the two Toyota pickup trucks with the other men. Before Vinny could walk to his ride, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “You good to go?” Christopher asked him.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” He paused to make sure no one was around to hear. “I don’t get why we’re going after Sergei if the Saints are who planted the RPGs. Even though the other guys don’t know the truth, it feels weird.”

  “Because it’s time to take him out, and since the men don’t know it wasn’t him at the port, now we h
ave an excuse.”

  His father confirmed his suspicions. God damn, his uncle was a genius.

  Two soldiers lifted the garage door to a crescent moon hanging over the city. Vinny took shotgun in the pickup, and Christopher jumped behind the wheel.

  “You mind?” Vinny asked, reaching for the radio.

  Christopher shook his head. “Long as you don’t play any of that girly shit.”

  Vinny flipped through the few radio channels while they drove away from the garage.

  “Good evening, you sinners and saints,” said the radio host. “Tonight, we have more tragic news coming in from West Hollywood, where several Los Angeles police officers were gunned down by masked assailants. So far, the police aren’t releasing any names of suspects or those deceased.”

  Christopher eyed the radio and then jerked his chin. “Pig fuckers got what they deserved, and soon the rest will get theirs.”

  Vinny had a feeling his father was talking about Billy Best. The lieutenant had been taken to an undisclosed location, where he was probably being tortured for information on the Saints.

  “So much for letting Marco take care of it,” Vinny said.

  Christopher pulled a cigar out of his vest and let out a rough chuckle. “Marco can’t even whack a pig from twenty feet away. What makes you think he can take out the Saints?”

  “He wants his spot at the table.”

  “And you want to be captain.”

  Vinny nodded.

  “You find the Saints, and I bet Don Antonio will give you the Nevsky territory,” Christopher said.

  Vinny held back a smile. He couldn’t wait to tell Adriana. The fact that he didn’t even care to tell his wife was another indication that their marriage was circling the toilet bowl. The thought chilled his pounding heart. He felt trapped, like a caged rat.

  Vinny twisted the dial to electronic music.

  “I can’t stand this shit,” Christopher said.

  “Give it a chance. It’ll help get you in the mood for killing.”

  Mood for killing.

  The words were something he really had never thought he would say. But this was his life now. He was a Moretti, and killing was part of his job.

  The music filled the cab, his heart beating in sync with the amplified bass. He smiled at his father—a rare moment of bonding between two men who normally didn’t speak much.

  As far as Vinny was concerned, his father was a god. Christopher had fought in the Middle East with Don Antonio, in the Fourth Alpini Paratroopers Regiment. The brothers had survived war in Naples, and the Second Civil War in the United States, to build a dynasty literally from dust.

  Blood, tears, and hard work had molded his father into an immortal figure in Vinny’s eyes—a figure that no bullet could cut down.

  Vinny turned down the music and said, “How come you never talk about what you did in the military?”

  Christopher shrugged. “I ain’t proud of what we did out there. The evil is something I’d rather forget.”

  Vinny wasn’t sure what evils his father was referring to, but he had a feeling it had come with him to Los Angeles. That was how his father and uncle had risen to the top—by being the most brutal bastards on the streets.

  The pickups’ headlights cut through the night as they made their way down the nearly empty highway toward the Russians’ shrinking piece of territory on the south side of the city.

  “Be sharp,” Christopher said.

  They were already coming up on a section of highway destroyed during the war. Twisted overpasses hung sixty feet in the air, rebar jutting out of the ends like the twisted veins of a mangled limb. Swimming-pool-sized craters marked the ditches and rights-of-way where bombs had missed their targets.

  Vinny could almost hear the fighter planes rumbling in overhead and dumping their payloads on the fleeing civilians. He had been in the Morettis’ old warehouse, hiding in a basement, when the worst of it happened. He shook the memories away.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were out of the wastelands and back into civilization, crossing over into the southern territory still controlled by Sergei Nevsky and his crew.

  “Here we go,” Christopher said, pulling out his walkie-talkie. “Radio silence here on out. Lights off.”

  One by one, the vehicles went dark. Vinny flipped his expensive NVGs over his eyes.

  The lead truck took a right, speeding down a frontage road toward an old marsh long since dried up. They passed an abandoned school, once used as a fortified billet for AMP fighters in the war. Now it was home to the junkies who shot competing Russian H into their veins. Soon, these people would migrate to western or eastern LA to feed their habit.

  Vinny didn’t normally think of the lives ruined by his family’s product, but sometimes, when he was out here, he did pause to wonder whether he had a spot in hell waiting for him.

  But as with most young men, death seemed far away.

  He felt invincible, like his old man.

  The convoy finally stopped in a residential neighborhood outside a derelict water treatment plant. Frankie hopped out of the truck ahead and ran over to the gate with a pair of wire cutters. Doberman continued driving the van to the second location, where he would fire the EMP launcher.

  Good luck, brother, Vinny thought.

  “Stay with me once we get inside,” Christopher said. The rough tone of his voice carried a rare hint of nerves.

  Frankie opened the barred gate, allowing the pickups through. Once they were all safely inside the vehicle bay, the gates closed and the men piled out.

  Christopher flashed the signal to advance toward a pair of doors across the garage, but Vinny whirled at the sound of footsteps outside the gate. He raised his rifle barrel at a figure standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the bars.

  Carmine raised his rifle too, but Vinny quickly waved him off.

  “Just a kid,” he whispered.

  The boy stood there, looking at both men.

  Christopher walked over. “Go home, kid,” he said.

  In the drip of moonlight, the boy’s brown eyes seemed to focus. “Are you robots?”

  Vinny flipped his night-vision goggles up and pulled off his mask, revealing his eyes. He bent down in front of the gate.

  “We’re engineers, here to fix the water,” he said. “And you never saw us. Because if you did see us, then we won’t be able to fix the water. Got it?”

  The boy tilted his head, curious. “You don’t look like an engineer.”

  “Can’t let him go,” Carmine said. “Got to tie him up or take him out.”

  Christopher shook his head. “I said no kids, God damn it.”

  “You’re the boss,” Carmine said, backing off.

  “Go home and don’t say anything,” Vinny said.

  Please, listen.

  The boy stepped up to the bars to give the garage a closer look. Christopher reached out.

  “Come here, bud, we’re not going to hurt you,” he said.

  Yellowtail pulled some rope from his bag.

  The kid must have seen that and suddenly backed away, stumbling. He lost his balance and fell on his butt. “Ouch,” he said, raising his scratched palm to see blood in the moonlight.

  He pushed himself up and took off running. “Mom—” he started to yell when something cut him off.

  Two pops followed the sound of his little feet hitting the pavement.

  Vinny and Christopher both whirled about, to see Frankie holding a suppressed pistol. He lowered the gun and shrugged.

  Glancing back at the kid, Vinny tried to make sense of the limp body on the sidewalk, blood pooling from the two .45 rounds that had blown out his heart and shattered Vinny’s.

  “You son of a bitch,” Christopher growled.

  Frankie lowered the gun, keeping his voice low. “Kid was going to make us, man. Kill the mission before it got started.”

  “Help me with ’im,” Carmine whispered to Vinny.

  But Vinny couldn’t move. H
e could hardly breathe. He had seen a lot of death in his young life and had killed his fair share of men, but never had he seen a child gunned down right in front of him.

  “Come on, Vin,” Carmine said.

  Vinny finally snapped out of the trance and moved over to the gate. They opened it, and Carmine grabbed the boy by his feet while Vinny took his hands. Blood leaked from the hole through his chest as they carried him into the garage and set him down.

  This was someone’s child. Just a kid, maybe seven years old.

  Vinny set the boy down gently and looked up at Christopher, who stood face-to-face with Frankie, their masks nearly touching.

  Back off, Dad. This isn’t the time or the place.

  He could tell that Christopher was doing everything he could to hold back the rage inside him.

  “I’m sorry,” Frankie said. “Really, man, but it was him or us. What’s more important, taking down Sergei or letting some kid live and blow the mission?”

  Christopher didn’t reply.

  The other men watched uneasily.

  Carmine moved back to the gate to keep an eye on the street.

  “Let’s go, Chrissy,” he said. “Nothing we can do for the kid now.”

  “You could have tied him up,” Vinny said. “You didn’t have to blow him away.”

  Frankie turned to Vinny. “Kid was running and—”

  In the blink of an eye, Christopher whipped out his holstered pistol and fired two shots directly into Frankie’ chest, then a third into his neck. The fully jacketed rounds punched through his armored vest and made a neat hole through his Adam’s apple. He staggered backward, hands on his neck, blood already gushing out.

  Christopher kicked Frankie’s pistol toward Vinny, and Vinny picked it up off the ground.

  “Kill a kid, and you end up like Frankie,” Christopher said quietly but loudly enough for everyone in the garage to hear. “You all got that?”

  Vinny watched Carmine’s hands, making sure he wasn’t about to do anything stupid to avenge his friend. But not even the street-hardened captain was dumb enough to take on the second in command of the family.