So, Lionel was watching anyone suspicious, and anyone tall was suspicious, like the dude walking his way right now.
And yeah, the guy was just dressed in work clothes and carrying a thermos, but who said they had to wear the body armor all the time?
The man came closer and Lionel tried to look taller, bigger, but at five-eight and one-forty, it was a tough job, but then the man passed him, while paying him no mind, and Lionel felt safe once again.
That’s when the knife was placed at his throat.
“Give me the money, muthafucka.”
Lionel didn’t move at first.
Where the hell did this bitch come from?
The man was black, in his thirties, and... there was something familiar about him, but Lionel decided to puzzle it out later, because the knife had just punctured his skin.
“I said give me the damn money.”
Lionel fumbled down in the deep pockets of the carpenter jeans he wore and came out with three separate wads of cash. The man snatched it all away.
“All I got is cash. I ain’t holdin’ man, the brother on the next corner’s got the drugs.”
“I know how it works, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that your partner is going to show up at any minute and shoot my ass, but he ain’t, cause he’s dead.”
Lionel shifted his eyes to the left and could just see past the man and across the street where Kevin was stationed, Kevin, whose job it was to protect the money, but Kevin wasn’t there, or rather, he was, but all that was visible of him were the soles of his Nike's, as he lay in the doorway.
“He dead?”
“He dead,”
“Fuck, am I dead?”
“No, you get to deliver a message.”
“What message?”
“Do you know who I am?”
“You look familiar.”
“I’m Darnell Hopkins.”
“Get the fuck out of here,”
“I am.”
The man released the pressure on the knife and leaned back. Lionel put a hand to his neck and felt a trickle of blood. He stared at the man. He was dressed in a pair of old jeans and a gray, tweed poncho with a hood, he also looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, but yeah, shit yeah, he was Darnell Hopkins.
“Fuck, Mr. Hopkins, it is you.”
“Yeah, I know, now here’s the message. You tell Mr. Brown that I’m coming for his ass, you tell that muthafucka that Darnell is coming, you here me.”
Lionel nodded his head rapidly.
“I’ll tell him Mr. Hopkins. I will.”
“There ain’t no Mr. Hopkins anymore, this is old school Darnell right here, a gangsta, you tell Brown that too.”
“I will.”
Darnell’s eyes grew cold.
“Run bitch!”
Lionel did just that, and it was a while before he stopped.
***
He was sitting with his wife, Tyler, Jace, and Kari, on Tyler’s patio. It was a rare moderate day for November, and so they sat outside and talked.
Two days had passed since they discovered Szabo, Szabo who had been tortured beyond imagination, and yet, had never revealed the location of Tyler’s house, or his friends’ identities.
Darnell had yet to surface. There was an APB out on the man, but he was originally from the streets and knew how to fly low.
“So what’s your next move, dude?” Jace asked.
“We have to find Darnell before we can kill him, but we can’t do it alone, so, tonight we plan to recruit an ally.”
“Who?”
“The people that know him best, his gang,”
“They ain’t gonna help you.”
“They’ll help, or else,”
Tyler released a weary sigh and Jessica looked over at him in concern.
“You’ve been quieter than usual, what’s wrong?”
“I’m wrong, doctor, the life I’ve been leading. I’ve been fighting the scum of the streets in order to avenge what they did to my wife, but now, now that she’s gone and... after Szabo. I don’t think I have the heart for it anymore. I’m sick of fighting against the tide, of pretending to be Trey Winslow.” He looked over at Kari. “All I want to do with the rest of my life is to teach, and to make that lovely woman over there happy, and, I think I’ll do that once this is done.”
“When does your sabbatical end?”
“Oh, I’m not due back until next year, but I’m not going. I’m sick of Detroit, and Kari agrees, it’s time for new pastures.”
“You know, I remember hearing about an opening at the small college in our town, and don’t quote me, but I believe it was for an economics professor.”
“Really? And how many students attend that university?”
“It’s rather small; I doubt there are even a thousand,”
“I’ll look into it, and who knows, perhaps we’ll soon be neighbors.”
“Tyler,” he said. “If you want out, I’ll understand, and you can guard the house while Jace and I look for Darnell.”
“No, I’m in, but for the last time, and lord help those who stand in our path.”
***
They struck that night, and it was bloody, when they left their target, a third distribution center, twenty-three street soldiers lay either dead or wounded and over two million dollars was lost.
Mr. Brown stood amidst the carnage and stared at the writing on the wall.
DARNELL!
“Shit, first Szabo, now Darnell, these bitches must think I’m FedEx. How the fuck am I supposed to deliver them Darnell? If I could find him, I’d kill him myself.”
Brown’s phone rang, and he answered it and listened.
“Three more dealers? And they’re sure it was Darnell?”
More listening, then,
“Yeah, I know, yeah, raise the reward to fifty-thousand; this shit has to stop.”
He hung up while muttering to himself.
“I should’ve killed that bitch the moment Naomi walked him in the door.”
“Did you say something, Mr. Brown?”
He turned around; it was Gloria, his new “assistant.”
“No honey, I was just talking to myself.” He looked around at all the devastation. They had used the damn grenades again. “You shouldn’t be in this shithole, why don’t you take off early, but hey, I want you at my house at eight. Tony will pick you up.”
Gloria smiled her big plastic smile.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Brown,”
He watched her as she walked away.
Phony bitch, but she’s hot, and she looks like Naomi,
As that last thought crossed his mind, an idea began to form, an idea that made Brown smile.
***
1:27 a.m.
Brown woke up from a dreamless sleep with Gloria lying naked beside him.
He was in his new bed, inside his newly furnished house, with four guards and a state of the art security system to help keep it that way. He cocked his head to listen, and heard a growing rumble.
It was a truck, a tractor-trailer, and it was loud.
Damn it, people are trying to sleep, asshole,
He turned over and Gloria moaned something in her slumber, then he closed his eyes and hugged the pillow, but the damn truck was getting louder.
How fast is he going?
Seconds later, everything went to hell, as the massive truck scattered the cars along the curb and rode up onto the lawn, then, it collided into the front of the house, as the guards outside fired in vain.
“Son of a bitch!” Brown yelled, and then he was falling sideways off the bed, to tumble along with Gloria as the floor dipped and splintered, its supports smashed by the truck.
He could see his kitchen!
The truck had gone clear through the living room and had entered the kitchen, and the table from the breakfast nook was now crushed against the sink, along with the two bodyguards who had been playing cards on it, their blood soaking into the checkerboard t
ablecloth.
Gloria fell first, and landed atop the double sink with a PHLUNK! sound, that a small part of his brain recognized as her skull shattering. Then, he followed her down, landed on top of her, and the impact burst the breast implants in her chest.
He gazed upward while still dazed, and saw the bed coming. He flipped himself sideways to land on the bloody table, amid the remains of his guards, then slid off, slick with gore, and landed unceremoniously upon his naked butt, as the bed wedged to a stop on Gloria’s body.
With his breath coming in gasps, he suddenly realized that he was safe, that he had survived the fall, that he hadn’t been crushed.
And that’s when the truck door opened and Darnell jumped down to land beside him.
“Oh shit,”
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The shots came from behind Darnell. It was one of Brown’s remaining bodyguards. Darnell spun around and returned fire, before scrambling up onto the hood of the truck, sliding down to the other side, and crawling out of the hole where the refrigerator had sat.
“This shit ain’t over!” Darnell called, but already his words seemed distant.
“Mr. Brown, are you hurt?” The guard asked, as a second one limped into sight.
“I’m fine, but I need some clothes for my naked ass, and call the police, let them clean this shit up.”
The bodyguard took off his leather coat and passed it to Brown.
“We need to leave Mr. Brown; this whole house could fall in.”
“Take me to the office and have everyone meet me there. Darnell dies today.”
CHAPTER 11
9:52 p.m.
The Penny Lanes Bowling Alley was once a busy venue for fun, but closed its doors in the spring of 1995, then, in 2008, a stockbroker with more dollars than sense decided to revive it, in an effort to relive the best days of his youth.
When he was finished, he had fully refurbished the building and the thirty lanes resounded once again with the joy of play, along with an arcade and restaurant area. Then, the stock market took a dive, along with his fortunes.
Business at the lanes slowed down to almost nothing by 2010, while the calls from bankers and creditors increased and he was forced to close, and later, declared bankruptcy. Still, the property was viable as a business location, but then, in the flooding of 2011, the access bridge from the highway washed out, and the property became accessible only by back streets, chopping its value in half.
Enter Darnell and Naomi Hopkins.
They bought the property for a song, and within weeks were using it as a club/meeting place for the members of their drug syndicate.
***
He stood with Tyler a half mile from the south end of the building and searched it with a pair of night vision binoculars.
The building was constructed in the thirties and then used to manufacture parts for airplanes during the war years of the forties. There were also two smaller buildings farther into the woods that once served as supply sheds, but that due to disuse had become unsafe and surrounded by vegetation.
They watched as cars entered the main building, driving into the south end through an overhead door.
“That’s the weak spot,” he told Tyler. “They can’t leave their cars outside, or else, someone may come nosing around, but that door is little more than tin and we can breach it with a grenade.”
“It looks good,” Tyler agreed, as he gazed through his own pair of binoculars. Then, he leaned forward, while studying something. “At your three o’clock, is that who I think it is?”
He looked to where Tyler indicated and saw a hooded figure skulking at the edge of the woods.
“I think you’re right, that’s Darnell.”
***
Darnell could feel their eyes upon him and knew they were there. He was on the north side of the building; the side where the trap door was hidden from sight by a grouping of shrubs that he himself had ordered planted there.
When they took over the building, they were having a skirmish with Benson’s gang, and so he made sure that there was a safe way out in case they were ever attacked during a gathering. That way out to safety will now become his way in to revenge.
He saw the men at last. Two large men, one white, one black, were scrambling down the hill and headed for the trap door, somehow the sneaky bastards had learned of its existence. Darnell watched until they entered and then followed, confident that by the end of the day, all of his enemies would be dead.
***
Inside the bowling alley, Brown waited, while knowing that the bait had been taken. He had spent the morning and afternoon hours rigging this trap, and now, now it was time to spring it. Security cameras were mounted overhead alongside speakers, and nestled among each of the thirty lanes of pin returns was a man with an arsenal and enough ammunition to kill an army.
***
They had foregone the grenade because it wasn’t needed. They had watched the last man who entered the building, struggle, as he tried to get the corrugated door to settle flush against the concrete ramp, but all in vain.
As the man walked off, the figure they believed to be Darnell, simply rolled under the door and beneath the gap. Minutes later, they repeated the act, to find themselves in a cavernous space.
It was quiet inside, but from the middle of the building there carried the sound of voices, along with music, laughter, and bar sounds, such as the tinkling of glasses.
They went towards the light and, as they grew closer, they could see that a large, white sheet of plastic was hiding the activity that was making the sounds they heard, but then, as they grew nearer, they realized that the sounds were actually coming from the ceiling, from a set of speakers hidden amidst the lights.
There was a clicking noise, and the sheet fluttered upward like a giant window shade, and revealed Darnell Hopkins standing mere yards away.
“Welcome to my trap,” Brown said from his hidden position, and the walls reverberated his voice as if it were coming from on high.
Next, the overhead lights dimmed, to be replaced by spotlights, and with the hint of a giggle in his voice, Brown gave the command,
“Fire!”
CHAPTER 12
When he was sixteen, his mother, the woman who raised him, was dating a man named Chaz.
He thought of Chaz as Number Thirty-four, because he was the thirty-fourth boyfriend his mother had been with since he was a child.
Chaz was a gifted amateur magician, but his occupation was that of carpenter. He worked with Chaz during the summer, mostly on weekends, and whenever a job was running behind, he would be called in to help out. On one such job, Chaz was hired to install the flooring for a bowling alley, and it was then that he acquired the knowledge that would save his life.
***
In the PENNY LANES BOWLING ALLEY Mr. Brown’s trap was being sprung, and thirty men took aim.
Tyler heard the readying of many guns coming from behind the blinding lights, saw Darnell in front of him, a wall to his left, and came to a disheartening conclusion.
“We’re trapped!”
“No, there’s a way out, gas grenades,” he shouted to Tyler, “Use them all!”
Tyler attempted to comply, but as the first grenade hit the floor, he felt a bullet ping off his armor-plated chest. There was a loud roar behind him and he jumped, then, stared in amazement at the hole in the floor, a floor sitting elevated upon wooden I-beams, above a concrete foundation.
Darnell was actually closer to the hole, and already lying flat on the floor, with a small piece of shrapnel in his arm from the grenade. He slithered forward on his belly and fell head first into the narrow, 17” deep hole, as above, thirty weapons discharged as one.
They were both driven down from the impact of numerous bullets, and then bellied their way into the hole, only to find Darnell waiting for them, holding a machine pistol with an extended ammo clip, and the ammo inside was armor piercing.
“Don’t shoot my ass, and I won’t shoot y
ours. I need you two alive... for now.”
Tyler said something, but it came out as little more than a whisper, or perhaps only seemed so, as the massive discharge of firepower above their heads was deafening.
“What was that, brother?” Darnell shouted to Tyler, while at the same time he kept an eye on him.
“I said, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,”
“We ain’t friends, I’m still going to kill you fuckers, but right now, I need you alive to help kill those fuckers.”
“And vice versa,” Tyler said, and then laid a restraining hand upon his friend’s arm, the arm he was using to raise his gun. “We need him too,” Tyler told him, and then he flipped up his facemask, wheezed, and spit out blood.
“You’re hit!”
“One made it in under the armor, there’s little pain, but it’s still in there.”
“Can you move, still fight?”
“I can do both, but I’m not sure for how much longer,” Tyler said, and then he lobbed another gas grenade up through the hole.
***
Mr. Brown was laughing.
His plan was brilliant and they had all walked right into his trap. He squinted, trying to see through the gas, but it was useless, not that it mattered, who the hell could survive that, body armor or not.
He shut off the spotlights and the overheads came on, the signal for his men to stop shooting, and begin clean-up.
Over two dozen men walked across the lanes, headed for the last place they’d sighted their prey. And as the gas dissipated, and the hole was revealed, the wiser among the men looked down.
***
He was flat on his back, lying near Darnell, thirty feet south of the hole, as Tyler remained near the opening to dissuade any who might attempt to follow.
When the crowd of men gathered above them, with their footwear squeaking on the boards, he held twin Glocks against the sides of his chest, closed his eyes, and fired.
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT
Shards of wood rained down on him as screams erupted above, and beside him, Darnell emptied and then reloaded his Mac 10, before crawling east as he crawled to the west, and back towards Tyler.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 9-12 (Taken! Box Set Book 3) Page 15
