Sons of War 3: Sinners

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  In your sick dreams, asshole.

  Mikey must have seen the reaction on Ray’s face, because he snorted and said, “Don’t act like you’re better than me, pendejo. You’re a dirty rata cop. I ain’t no rata.”

  He thumped his hairy chest, rattling the chains that hung over it. “That’s why the Morettis work with me. They trust me to get shit done.”

  “I was wonderin’ why they work with you, actually,” Ray said. “Now I know.”

  Mikey raised his chin proudly. Then he looked over at the second crane and started to raise his hand.

  Ray knew that what he said next would determine whether he lived or died.

  “Only way I’m helping you is if you let me take care of this on my terms,” Ray said.

  Mikey snorted again and gestured to the operator to proceed. The crane cable lowered, dropping Ray toward the back of the garbage truck.

  “Two million bucks,” Ray said. “That’s how much you get if I’m right!”

  The compactor groaned. The trash below stank terribly.

  “In gold!” Ray shouted.

  Mikey held up his hand, and Ray’s body jerked to a stop. He swayed slightly, holding his breath.

  “You fuck me, and I will find your family and have my fun. Then I will eat their pretty faces.”

  * * *

  “I think we lost them,” Moose said.

  He took a right down another street and sped down the empty road while Dom tried to calm his heart rate. It was thumping fast, and sweat dripped off his forehead.

  Watching Don Antonio’s BMW burn was one of the greatest feelings of his life. So why did he feel so much anxiety?

  Maybe it was because he had wanted to do this with his bare hands, or maybe it was because they were in the middle of a lawless zone. Or it could be because he hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time for a week straight.

  His body was going to crash; it was just a matter of time.

  Dom downed half a bottle of water, hoping it would help.

  “You okay there, boss?” Moose asked.

  “Hell yeah, baby,” Dom said, forcing a smile.

  “I will be if we get out of here alive,” Rocky added.

  After the attack on the Hollywood Freeway, Moretti soldiers had deployed all across the city to hunt the Saints.

  They really needed to ditch the Jeep, but he wasn’t about to start walking in this part of town.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Rocky asked, gripping his rifle and keeping low in the back seat.

  “You don’t want to know,” Dom said. “Keep an eye out for tails—and freaks.”

  Rocky pointed his rifle at the back window, shattered from several Moretti bullets. Dom didn’t blame him for being nervous. They were in the second-worst part of LA—almost as bad as the Malice Wastes. It was the state of nature, like most of the United States.

  Tonight, the world seemed a shade darker. A foreshadowing of what was to come, perhaps, or maybe it just seemed that way to Dom, who saw the world for what it was now: decayed and dying.

  The police didn’t even come here. Ruled by members of old gangs and cliques that survived the war with the LAPD eight years ago, it had no laws. No code. No rules.

  Worse, the grid was down, making the Jeep lights a target in the dark city blocks.

  “Shut off the lights,” Dom said.

  Moose glanced over again. “You serious?”

  “Do it.”

  Moose clicked off the beams and pulled over to the shoulder. Dom walked to the rear and shattered the brake lights with his rifle butt. He scanned the shadows as he walked back.

  Several gang-run communities were clustered in this former industrial zone, occupying the graffiti-covered buildings with broken windows.

  He got back in, and they drove to a former residential area where the houses had burned down to the aluminum wall studs. The apocalyptic sight sent a chill through his body. Or maybe he was just coming down from the speed.

  Dom knew he had to stop with the Dexedrine, but without it, he feared he wouldn’t be able to keep up his pace. Besides that, his biggest fear was of turning into the same men he hunted.

  You will never be like them.

  Suddenly light-headed, he blinked away the stars before his eyes to study the oblique shapes. Metal fences formed a periphery around several brick apartment buildings. He didn’t see a soul outside.

  “Get us out of here,” Rocky said. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  A black cat darted across the road, stopping to hiss at the Jeep.

  “See? Place is cursed,” Rocky said.

  Moose snorted. “It ain’t cursed, kid.”

  “Whatever, man. This is where people come to get skinned alive. Just as well be outside the wall.”

  “Shut it,” Moose said. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  Dom looked right, then left. “I’m not exactly sure where we are,” he said.

  “Well, ain’t that fucking great,” Rocky murmured.

  The Jeep slowed.

  “You see that?” Moose said, leaning to the side for a better look.

  Dom squinted at the intersection ahead. Several rusted vehicles blocked the route. Figures perched on the roofs like gargoyles. But these weren’t statues.

  “Back up,” Dom whispered.

  “I don’t think they see us,” Moose said.

  Dom aimed his rifle at the windshield and zoomed in to see male faces covered in lesions.

  “Oh shit,” Dom whispered.

  “What?” Rocky said.

  Moose put the Jeep in reverse and swung a bootleg turn, tires squealing as he turned.

  Two men jumped off the vehicles and took off running toward the Jeep. Their deranged screams pierced the night.

  Dom leaned out the window and fired high, trying to scare them off without killing them. That did the trick. The crazy pricks knew they weren’t invincible. Both pursuers dropped to the concrete as Moose raced away down another street.

  “Go, go, go!” Rocky shouted.

  They passed another abandoned apartment complex and several streets of fire-gutted houses before finally finding a street that wasn’t blocked off.

  Dom lowered his rifle and pulled out the magazine to check the rounds. It was almost empty, and he swapped it out for a full one just in case they ran into more trouble before they got back to the safe house.

  They made it out of the gang-controlled territory a few minutes later, and Rocky slumped in the back seat, letting out a sigh.

  “Don’t relax,” Dom said. “We’re back in Moretti territory.”

  “Shit,” Rocky mumbled.

  Moose flipped the headlights back on. Tents littered an open park at the end of the street. Thin people shuffled along a sidewalk toward a city-run soup kitchen set up on the next corner.

  Ironically, it was one of the stations Moretti funded.

  Two scooters zipped down the street, passing the Jeep, no doubt carrying Moretti product to sell to the people in the lines. The riders yelled at the crowd.

  Moose took a left through an intersection to avoid the cars waiting at a stop sign. The road ahead appeared mostly clear—only a few cars out on its two lanes. Palm trees and weeds shifted in the sultry breeze.

  It seemed almost peaceful.

  Dom pulled out the police-band radio and turned it on, eager to hear anything about Don Antonio now they were out of the lawless zone and had ditched their tails.

  “How we doin’ on gas?” Dom asked.

  Moose checked the fuel gauge. “Not much left, but we should be good.”

  Dom bent down, listening to multiple reports of violent crimes across the city. For the LAPD, business was brisk. He strained to hear over the rush of wind coming in the broken windows. A 10-10. Two 10-16s.

  Fights, especially domestic assaults, spiked around midnight when the booze ran out. So did murders. On a good night, only a few people were killed in the city. On a bad one, the morgues were packed.

  Tonig
ht was going to be one of the latter. Especially after Dom heard the report about deputies needing backup on the wall. He had already heard the low whine in the distance. As they got closer, it rose into the full wail of an air-raid siren. The city was being attacked.

  “Raiders,” Moose said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dom said.

  Rocky’s eyes widened in the back seat. “This isn’t happening . . . Holy shit!”

  They listened for several minutes as reports came in of multiple vehicles attacking one of the main gates. It wasn’t often Chief of Police Stone authorized officers to help Sheriff Benson.

  Dom massaged his temples. News of violence across the city made celebrating their assassination of the king of Los Angeles difficult. It still hadn’t quite sunk in.

  They had killed Don Antonio.

  The Jeep slowed as they came upon a line of cars curving around the next corner. Beat cops were searching the vehicles.

  “Another fucking roadblock,” Moose said.

  Lights flashed in the distance, heading toward the wall where the raider attack had occurred. The distant air-raid sirens wailed on, the threat still present.

  The cops ahead were looking either for raiders who had made it in, or Saints, or both.

  “We’re about to get boxed in,” Rocky said.

  “Pull a U-ey,” Dom said.

  Moose backed up, then whipped into the oncoming lane. One of the cops, bent over, looked up from the passenger window of a stopped vehicle.

  They were clearly looking for a vehicle, and the Saints couldn’t take the chance it was theirs—not with a two-million-dollar bounty on each of their heads. These cops didn’t know that the king was dead and the bounty thus gone.

  Moose waited for his moment to cut across, but several teenagers on scooters were speeding away from the cops, shouting.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Dom said.

  “What? And run over one of these punks?”

  The officer checking the vehicle ahead raised a hand as the beams from another car hit him in the face. Dom didn’t recognize this man in the glow, but he was young, probably just a rookie.

  “Stop!” he called out.

  The second officer ran toward their vehicle, drawing his pistol as he moved.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Moose said.

  “Get us out of here!” Rocky yelled.

  Moose squealed out into the other lane, narrowly missing one of the mopeds. Dom watched the two officers running after them.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  Two flashes, then the crack of gunfire. One round shattered the passenger side mirror. The other hit the door. Dom ducked instead of returning the fire. He had killed enough people tonight.

  The Jeep rounded a corner, fleeing the gunfire.

  “You okay?” Moose asked.

  Dom nodded and looked to the back seat.

  “I’m really getting sick of everyone trying to kill me!” Rocky said. “Morettis, bangers, and now cops!”

  “Better get used to it, kid,” Moose said.

  The old clunker picked up speed, racing around slower vehicles. City of Industry wasn’t far now. Just another few minutes.

  “We’re going to have to ditch this vehicle,” Dom said.

  They tore down another road, away from civilization. Radiation signs marked the side of the road, but the threat was minimal out here.

  “Keep heading east and take a right on Canyon Road,” Dom said.

  They were taking the back way to City of Industry and were coming up on the city limits. Traffic was almost nonexistent until they turned down Canyon Road. Now he saw why.

  Smoke rose from glowing fires on the southern border.

  “Those raiders must have been Pyros,” Dom said.

  “Got some contacts ahead,” Moose said.

  Dom readied his rifle.

  They moved to the shoulder as four former military trucks sped down the opposite side of the road, packed full of deputies wearing brown armor, orange goggles, and breathing apparatuses.

  “Must be heading to the border,” Moose said.

  “Or outside the gates to hunt down the raiders,” Rocky said.

  They sat there for a few moments until the trucks were out of sight.

  Dom pulled down his face mask and wiped the sweat off his face. The adrenaline had subsided.

  Before he could crack a grin, another report came over the police band: an attack on the Nevsky compound.

  Dom turned up the volume.

  “Two bosses, baby,” Moose said. “That’s one hell of a night for the Saints!”

  “Oh yeah!” Rocky yelled. He did his robot dance in the back seat. Moose laughed, but Dom suddenly didn’t feel like smiling. Something felt off, as if they were in the path of a storm he couldn’t see.

  “Time to crack some beers,” Rocky said. He moved forward between the two front seats. “Can’t wait to tell Tooth the news.”

  Dom felt a buzz in his vest and pulled out his burner cell phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but only one person had this one.

  “Who’s that?” Moose asked.

  Dom brought the phone to his ear to talk to Lieutenant Zed Marks.

  “This line secure?”

  “Yeah,” Dom replied.

  “You hear about Sergei Nevsky?”

  “Yeah, you hear about Antonio Moretti?”

  There was a short pause on the other line.

  “I’ve had my hands full tonight with Sergei and a coordinated attack by Pyros in zone one, but I did hear about an attack at Cahuenga Pass. So that was you, huh?”

  “We finally got the king,” Dom said proudly.

  “No,” Marks replied dryly. “You didn’t, but you did just start a war.”

  Dom almost dropped the phone.

  “It was a decoy convoy. Antonio wasn’t there.”

  Marks let the words sink in just long enough for Dom to realize that wasn’t the reason he called.

  “You’re playing with fire now and putting everything we’ve worked so carefully for at risk,” Marks continued. “In three days, Mayor Buren is going to announce a new project to help save what’s left of this city, and Councilman Castle is going to speak. Until then, sit tight, and don’t do shit—or I’m shutting you down for good.”

  The line severed, leaving Dom holding the phone in a shaky hand. He had screwed up, and bad. And this time he hadn’t just poked the hornet’s nest.

  The Saints had knocked it out of the tree.

  -20-

  Tonight was shaping up to be even better than Antonio had thought, with the Nevsky family all but wiped out and his son about to learn a life lesson. But first, they had some unfinished business.

  “Be quiet,” Antonio said to Marco, who sat in the back seat of the Escalade. They waited in a line between two Toyota pickups, stopped at a roadblock on the city border.

  “But . . .”

  Antonio’s iron glare silenced his intoxicated son. It was better than a backhand with his gold Moretti ring.

  A sheriff’s deputy walked away from the pickup ahead. He lowered his orange goggles at the open window.

  “Not a great night to be leaving the walls,” he said. “Don’t you hear the sirens?”

  Vito nodded.

  “Then you know there was a raider attack in zone one tonight. Had to call the LAPD for backup. A few of those freaks got into the city, but we’re huntin’ ’em down.”

  Don Antonio kept his head down in the back seat while Vito handed a bag of coins out the window.

  “Good luck finding them,” Vito said. “But we’ll be fine out here.”

  The deputy tried to look in, but Vito moved to block his view.

  “I’ve got business to take care of,” he said, “so unless you want to give that silver back, I suggest you get the fuck out of our way.”

  The deputy stood and circled his fingers through the air, the conversation over.

  On the shoulder, a crane rumbled, and the operator used an electro
magnet to pick up the shipping container blocking the road. It lifted the red box into the air, exposing another set of roadblocks ahead.

  “Almost cheaper than the cops,” Vito said. He answered his cell phone as the deputies moved concrete barriers out of the way.

  “Have they found them yet?” Antonio asked.

  Vito shook his head. “We’re still looking, sir, but don’t worry. They won’t escape this time.”

  Antonio clenched and unclenched his fist, in and out, trying to manage his temper. As he had suspected, the Saints seized the opportunity to attack the decoy BMW he had sent out with the Suburbans after he left through the Dragon’s back door.

  It was all part of his plan, but he wouldn’t know whether the trap had netted the Saints until he got back to the city. In a few minutes, they would lose cell phone coverage.

  Vito looked back at Antonio.

  “You sure about this, sir? The raiders are still out there.”

  In answer, Antonio lifted the ARX160 resting against the door.

  “Raiders?” Marco slurred.

  The convoy moved around the concrete barriers and passed through the gate, leaving the city limits under a dazzling star-filled sky.

  Marco looked at the minefield warning signs posted along the road. “Where the hell are we going?” he asked.

  Antonio handed him a bottle of water. “Drink this.”

  Marco took the bottle, and Antonio looked at his watch. Almost 1:00 a.m. He expected to feel tired, but instead he felt energized.

  Marco screwed the cap off the water and gulped it down. “This better be worth it,” he said. “I was about to close on Jenny—been working on that for a month.”

  “Is pussy all you think about, man?” Vito asked.

  Not a man yet . . . Antonio went back to checking the horizon for the star-blotting movement of a dust storm. They frightened him more than any raiders.

  Marco muttered a response under his breath, and Antonio almost slapped him. A little tough love might help the kid. But that would come soon.

  For now, he just needed Marco to sober up.

  A sliver of moon hung over the desert, casting a glow on the cracked brown dirt and dried-up foliage. The temperature continued to drop in the early-morning hour. Antonio spotted a coyote darting away from the road.

  Tonight, it wasn’t the only hunter in these parts.