That fact brings me back full circle.
I get to my feet and head outside toward my mother’s silver Jeep Grand Cherokee. She’s still sitting inside, talking to someone on the phone with her driver side window down. Leaning forward, I pop my head inside, kissing her cheek. “Keep an eye on Sabrina while I’m gone, okay?” I straighten up and start to walk away with Axe.
“Uh, sure,” she shouts with the phone still at her ear. “Because I have nothing better to do with my day.”
She’ll whine and moan and bitch about it, but she’ll do it because she knows I can’t let Sabrina go yet, and I also can’t be in two places at once.
I round the bend into the back section of the parking lot and find Tate, Cole and our reinforcements perched on their motorcycles parked next to my ride. They’re all waiting for me to lead them into battle. I straddle my bike and zip up my cut as I look over at Axe next to me.
“Everything’s set?”
“Ready to roll out, Pres,” Axe shouts above the chorus of the off-beat rumbling of our Harleys, Choppers and other custom-built bikes.
“Let’s see if we can make some Mexicans dance,” Tate adds.
Shaking my head, I give the signal. “Follow me and keep up.”
Almost two dozen angry bikers head out onto the highway with the early evening sun at our backs. I relish the warmth that presses through my leathers, a silent reminder we’re taking the heat right back to Los Diablos’ doorsteps.
Twenty or so miles down the road, I wave my hand in the air, signaling for my men to make a hard right. We turn off the highway to a gravel side road, heading down a path beside a narrow dried-out gorge where red rock mountain ranges divide the northwest Arizona desert. We’re minutes away from prime Los Diablos territory, but our rivals won’t expect us to come from this direction. I make them all stop to do a final weapons check. There’s nothing an arsenal can’t fix. On these special trips, everyone needs to be packing the heat in a big way. I trust my boys to be armed to the teeth and ready to use their gear without question. It’s the Satan’s Saints way.
“Move out,” I call out.
We’re set to go.
We reached the last section of the gravel road leading up to a sprawling, private ranch house about a half a mile from the Los Diablos main clubhouse. I motion with my hand again and they all stop, park and get situated. Getting off my ride, I look on as they secure their weapons of choice and prepare themselves. Although this is a surprise attack, I brace myself. We’re on enemy territory. They’re probably not expecting us, but we need to be ready for anything. My gaze flicks across the uneven, rough desert terrain. Everything is calm. Except, why is it that Los Diablos don’t have men stationed everywhere after attacking my clubhouse last night? That makes no sense at all, but I put it out of my mind, explaining it away with the idea that they’re here and taking cover because they must be expecting our immediate retaliation. Which means we need to be that much more vigilant.
It’s time, so I start giving orders. We four executives will head in first, and our seventeen reinforcements will be waiting to close in on the place once we draw out the Los Diablos scum hiding out who knows where. I want Vasquez. He’s today’s target, and I don’t plan to remove him from this earth just yet, I want answers. I wrap it up with, “Remember my orders. Women, kids and the elderly are off limits. I don’t care if they’re armed. We’re focused on the patch-wearing Los Diablos men and officers we know, because they can get us to their Pres. It’s blood for blood, so remember their attack didn’t take out any of our members. That means no one dies today. This visit is about getting answers and sending a message without going overboard. Let’s show Antonio Vasquez how we fucking rule.”
The men all nod.
Time to exact our own special brand of justice.
Satan Saints style.
Chapter 16
Silas
The long row of connected adobe houses that make up the Los Diablos’ headquarters has fresh coats of paint on it. Chickens are clucking and roaming around, and there are more than a couple dozen Los Diablos MC bikes parked out front. All is well in their fucking neighborhood. Or, it is for now, until my boys and I step up to their front door, ready to start hurting people.
“Looks like the lazy asses are all still taking a fucking siesta.” Tate unsheathes two machetes and licks the back of one of the blades. “Time to put these new beauties to work.”
“You’re way too excited about those, man. Do you get off with them too?” Cole rumbles with laughter as he double-checks the safety on his Glock and hands me a sawed-off he’s had tucked under his cut at his lower back.
“Alright, enough fucking around. Everyone knows what to do? We need to stick to plan.”
“We’re square.” Axe pulls his rifle out of the custom holster he built onto his bike seat. “Time to find our marks. Then we raise hell, blow off some steam, and ask questions later.”
I wave Tate over. “Put one of those knives away and find your IR gear. This place could be rigged.”
Tate reaches into the satchel slung over his shoulder and pulls out a set of military-issue thermal imaging binoculars. “Got it.”
Buffered by the Satan's Saints inner circle with Tate in the lead, I get an overwhelming hit of adrenaline. I don’t want to give away the possible advantage, so we move in. Tate circles around the central adobe-style stucco house and comes back to the cluster of trees where we’re taking cover. He gestures with the thumbs down.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Axe questions him in a raspy whisper.
“There’s a small army inside that small side building over there,” Tate informs us. “Those guys are packing weapons and ammo to the hilt.”
“How the fuck did they not see you?”
“Stealth mode,” he grins.
“We need to draw them out, just as planned,” I tell them. “Once we have them outside, we can call in our men to back us up. Everyone knows what to do. Keep your radios on channel nineteen and listen out for changes in the plan, if any. Let’s go.”
I give the all clear and we split into two teams. Axe and I go straight ahead to the front of the building, while Tate and Cole head around back. That’s our way. Leaders out front. Plus, when shit goes down, the brazen motherfuckers inside will come in our direction and the cowards will head back to Tate and Cole. I don’t want stragglers. I want the big guns who are higher up the food chain. I didn’t just come here to launch a counterstrike, I’m here for answers. Taking a deep breath, I settle the trembling of anxious fingers, and the excitement tingling low in my gut.
Then my foot meets with the shitty wooden front door of the Los Diablos’ building in question. It cracks and splinters everywhere, making me smile.
“Rise and shine, fuckers!”
Moments later, I tuck myself to one side of the doorway to dodge the shower from a hail of Los Diablos members’ bullets. Axe and I duck and cover on the front porch. Just as Tate said, the men inside are ready and waiting. I smile. This will be easy. Right now, Los Diablos members probably think they have an advantage. They’ll soon find out that it’s not the case. Keeping up the act, I fire a few distracting shots into the open spaces and above the moving targets I see inside through one of the big picture windows. Satan’s Saints don’t make a habit of firing blind. We don’t kill innocents. Just the guilty. At the moment, these shots are mostly for show. Los Diablos may have a fuck ton of firepower inside, but every arsenal eventually runs out. Part of our plan is to give these bastards a false sense of security. Soon enough, they’ll nut up and bring the fight outside. When they do, I have my own shit ton of raging bulls hiding out less than half a mile away.
I catch a glimpse of Axe going wild west on their asses. Anyone who doesn’t know him will believe he’s careless and haphazard, seeming to shoot everything and anything he can aim at. But we know better. That’s his style. Chaos with precise purpose. He’s actually herding our exposed patch-wearing rivals one by one, directin
g them where we want them to go. These shots are missing on purpose because no one is more precise than Axe.
Los Diablos members are still taking their sweet time at the moment. They’re all hunkered down inside. Not one of them has come out of the house yet, but we have time. The fuckers will eventually get careless, and if they don’t, we have a fix for that possibility too.
“On a scale of one to ten, how well would you rate this raid?” Axe shouts the question over at me.
“It depends on how our brothers are doing out back.”
He laughs and rolls across the plank floor of the porch, then crouches behind a cedarwood open-back rocking chair. Worst fucking cover I’ve ever seen.
“The guys are fine. No one’s left the building yet. I’d give it a three outta ten, but should be able to bump that up to a seven when we start doing target practice on some Los Diablos MC kneecaps.” He bounces up on the balls of his feet and gets off three shots before he drops to the floor again. “They still think they outnumber us. I can’t wait until they realize we’ve got them trapped. We can’t fucking lose.”
I peek around the doorjamb and shoot a few inches from the exposed boot of a Los Diablos member in my line of sight. The guy yelps like a girl and falls to the floor as though I actually hit him. His return shot goes wide, missing me by several feet. I have to smile at the guy’s lack of aim.
“Which one of you pussies is gonna tell me where your boss is?” I shout. They won’t answer, but my question has intention. Talking is distraction, and distraction is good for business. “Do you even know English? Wait, are you guys all fucking idiots in there or what?” I taunt them. “Must be that, because if you had any sense, you’d know that planting those explosives at our clubhouse wouldn’t go unanswered. Is your president here, or is he cowering in a safe-house and shitting bricks somewhere? You’re all boring the fuck out of us out here.”
I don’t mean much of what I’m saying. Winning a war is a mental game as much as it’s physical. Distract, intimidate, and conquer.
Axe has that look now, and I’m sure my face looks the same way. We’re bored. The sorry excuses for rival MC members stay holed up inside, making this no fun at all. It’s time to up the ante. The gunfire coming from inside is more sparse too. Most of them have moved to an inner room away from the front door. Ready to head in, I give Axe, Cole and Tate the order over the radio to enter with caution wherever they see an opening, and I remind them to concentrate on taking out only patched members, one by one. I’m sure we’ll be close enough to disarm, disable, immobilize and incapacitate every single one of them. Tunnel vision becomes my world as a vivid memory of slamming Sabrina down into the floor right after the explosion takes over my instincts. They’ll get what’s was coming to them.
“Axe, how you doing over there, bro?” I shout the question, throwing myself to the left as a shell whizzes past my right ear.
Axe doesn’t answer right away, except with incoherent shouting. The next time I have a free moment to breathe, I take a quick peek over at the man. Axe is lying on the porch with his hand clasped to his shoulder, face screwed up in a grimace as he rolls around on the ground. “Jesus fuck, I forgot how painful it is to get shot.”
I bolt across the open doorway, staying as low as I can squat.
“You okay?” I swallow, clutching my gun until my knuckles ache.
“Nothing I can’t walk off,” he answers with a groan.
“You sure?”
“I’m peachy. They got the wrong arm. I think it’s a flesh wound.”
“No more fucking around,” I grumble, and give my reinforcements the all clear to enter the compound. To get in on the action, I drop my sawed-off and revolver, and crack my neck. “Time to level the playing field, you twisted sons of bitches!”
I have four stun grenades in my pocket. One by one, I pull the pins, throw them various distances from the doorway where they disappeared somewhere inside the house, and give it a minute for the devices to do their jobs. Soon, the confusion and panic start inside. I take out the sawed off again and run inside kamikaze style. I make it blindly past a couple of hallways and grab hold of one of the cocksuckers. He tries to tackle me. Big fucking mistake. I’m so revved up it’s like he’s fighting me in slow motion. His punch is forced, causing him to stumble forward. Twisting to the side and using his own sloppy forward-motion, I avoid his punch, push his arm away and elbow the fool in the back of his head. That’s pretty much it for him. I instinctively grab him in a headlock, dragging him outside to a safer spot behind a metal water storage tank beside the building.
Tightening my hold on him, I get to the point.
“Where the fuck is Vasquez?”
Chapter 17
Silas
I look down at the cut covering the idiot’s chest. He’s struggling to breathe, but I notice his patch and lift my fingers to see the whole thing. Fuck. It’s got the letters ‘VP’ right under my grip.
“Francisco fucking Garcia?” I shout, calling him by his full name because his face is so fucking busted up from a prior beating, I didn’t recognize him. “Where’s Vasquez holed up?”
“Calm down, Corrigan. We don’t have to be so uncivilized about this.”
“Uncivilized? What about the bombing of my club. Was that civilized?” My voice level raises and I pistol whip him in his right ribs for saying something so fucking stupid.
He grips my forearm, thinking it’ll help to relieve the chokehold. It won’t. Not that I want to kill the fucker—well, not yet.
“Stop talking crap and tell me where the fuck is your sorry-ass President.”
“He’s not here!” the man insists. “He’s been gone all day. I think he’s at one of his exes or something.”
My arm pistons into his ribs again. “How the fuck does a VP not know where your number one is?”
His demeanor changes and his voice goes calm. “Corrigan, you must be more foolish than I thought. You really believe I’ll rat on my Pres for you?”
He’s right. All of my boys would give their lives up before they ever risk betraying our club. I take a moment to think of my next move. Killing him right this second will only kick the rivalry between our clubs up a notch. And although I’m willing to go that far if I have to, an all-out war with these guys isn’t smart. I want some answers before heads roll.
“Pres! Yo, Pres! Over here!”
I swivel my head to the far right. It’s Tate. He’s in the driver seat of one of the Los Diablos’ pickup trucks, and has Axe in the passenger seat. “Boss, these Los Diablos pricks are falling like dominoes.”
“Vasquez ain’t here either,” I tell them, motioning to the head still locked in my chokehold. “His VP says so.”
“Yo, Garcia,” Tate grins. “You look like hell froze over on your fucking face. Your old lade beat you up again?”
“Get our men to pack it up,” I instruct them. “I’ll throw Garcia in the back. The least he can do is get Vasquez on the phone so we can talk.”
“Sounds good, boss.”
Axe gets on the radio, and after I throw Garcia into the truck’s cab, Tate sticks his head out the window. “I’ll drive us out to our bikes.”
“Has anyone seen Sabrina or Cindy?” I ask the guys outside the clubhouse a while after we return. By now, hunger’s kicking in too, but I’m more curious as to whether those two were able to play nice while we were gone. “And please tell me someone restocked the kitchen.”
Tate comes out of nowhere. He shoves his hands into his pants pocket and passes me a granola bar, which I open and shove into my mouth. The disgusting fake meal tastes like chemically coated plastic. What I really need is medium rare, a little bloody, and of the cow variety.
“This crap won’t cut it.”
Axe returns to his bike and throws me a resealable plastic bag full of beef jerky. “This should help.”
“No one answered my first question.” I rip open the bag and shove a few pieces of the dried meat into my mouth.
/> Axe swears under his breath and rubs the back of his neck, then finds a cig and lights it up. “Oh. That.”
“Where is she? Talk.”
Only Tate looks like he’s anxious to share. He shrugs one shoulder. “Your mouthy female chew toy went off with your mother on some kind of girls-only gig. It has to be some weird bonding thing. The guys inside said they were pretty excited to leave.”
Yeah, that doesn’t send off any alarm bells or anything.
“And who let them leave?”
I glare at Tate but it’s impossible to intimidate him. He isn’t afraid of anything. Everything’s afraid of him. Of course, that’s also why it’s a waste of time to be mad at him. It’s one problem down and about eight more to go, and then maybe I can chill with my feet up and a few ice cold six-packs of beer.
Fuck, who am I kidding?
“You told them to keep an eye on the broads, not handcuff them to the bed. Now that I’d be willing to do, even without your asking nicely.” He makes a couple of hip thrusts and mimics smacking a chick’s ass while he’s at it.
I ignore him because he’ll never stop if I encourage his crap. “Where’s Garcia?”
“Resting. Getting ready for round two, whenever he wakes up. As for your lady, I’ve got to say thanks for bringing her around. She’s one of the most perfect specimens I’ve seen walk into our twisted establishment. I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to corrupt the shit out of her for an hour or two.”
One moment, I’m standing there listening. The next, Tate goes down. He should know better, but I give him some extra home-schooling, my fist gripping his junk and squeezing hard so he knows I’m not past ripping it off and feeding it to the coyotes. He starts to whimper, and his face twists with pain as I gave it another tug.
“If you value your body parts, you won’t fucking speak like that about her again.” Fuck, I don’t recognize my own voice.
Outlaw (Satan's Saints MC) Page 9
