Page 32

Diesel

Samantha is deep asleep when I wake up the next morning. I leave her be. There’s a look on her face — a furrowed brow, a downturn to her lips, a slight scrunching of her nose — that tells me the pressure is getting to her and she needs all the rest she can get. Seeing the edges of a paper bag peeking out from beneath a pile of her clothes, probably a little something extra from Molly to help her cope with the stress, tells me it’s definitely the right thing to let her keep sleeping. Still, before I start what is sure to be a busy and violent day, I can’t resist giving her a kiss.

She stirs in her sleep, murmurs, “I love you,” and then snores.

It’s perfect.

She’s perfect.

Something sizzles through me just looking at her sleeping in my bed while my thoughts drift to a future — our future — together. It’s an exciting, uncomfortable sensation, like something burning through old wounds, tearing open scar tissue that’d done nothing except stop the worst of the bleeding. Now, maybe I can heal.

And it’s all because of her — someone I can trust, someone I can talk to, someone I never thought I’d find again.

I have to protect her.

I have to kill Moretti and anyone else who threatens her, threatens us.

“Love you, Samantha,” I whisper just before I leave the room, the words so quiet, like a prayer spoken so softly that to give it any more voice, any more volume, is to risk losing it. I’ve learned that the best things — love, life, and one’s heart — are far too fragile.

Outside, in the common area of the bar, the club is milling about. It’s early. Many of my brothers still bear the trace — or not so trace, in the case of Tractor, who smells like moonshine — smell of the night before a lockdown. Because why face your last night of freedom, and possibly your last night of life, entirely sober?

Rabid is at a corner booth, with Chains and Goldie seated opposite him. I catch his eye, and he nods at me, beckoning for me to sit.

“Glad you’re up on time,” he says. Of everyone here, he’s the only one who doesn’t smell like something alcoholic. Even Goldie, that hippie motherfucker, smells like something I’ve learned is hard kombucha, a homebrew concoction that he somehow, shamelessly admits to drinking. “I was just about to go over the mission parameters.”

“Parameters?” I say. “What more parameters do we need than crashing Pitbull’s hideout, capturing and interrogating him, and then dumping his lifeless corpse in the nearest dumpster?”

“There’s prep work we have to do: surveillance, intelligence gathering, the basics. I’m not sending you guys charging into Pitbull’s fucking drug den with your cocks out and your guns blazing,” Rabid says.

“Which means Diesel would give new definition to the term small arms fire,” Chains says.

I shoot Chains a glare, but he just grins, unrepentant. Motherfucker.

"What kind of prep work?"

"First, we need eyes on Pitbull's place. Confirm he's there before we make a move. We need to determine what sort of armaments he has, how many men, if Victor’s sent him any reinforcements. That things are moving so quickly in terms of Pitbull flooding the market with Moretti’s product and pushing out other dealers could mean several things. It could mean he’s heavily armed and ready for war, in which case, we may need to reevaluate our strategy. Or it could mean he’s a sloppy, shit-peddling drug dealer unprepared for the storm he’s unleashed. In which case, we capture him and take his fucking head off.”

"I can take point on recon," Goldie says. "Set up in nearby, keep tabs on the comings and goings. It’ll give me a peaceful moment to practice Yoga, too."

Rabid nods. "Good. Take Tractor with you. He may be three sheets to the wind right now — fucking country boy smells like he was born in a bathtub of moonshine — but that boy can still shoot the dick off a squirrel at 200 yards."

“How do you know?” Chains says.

“I went hunting with him once. Literally saw him do it with some old bolt-action rifle he said was his grandfather’s gun. We’d been drinking most of the day set up in a blind. He got bored and boastful, and I challenged him to put up or shut up. Cost me a fair amount of cash, but it was well worth it to see him make that shot.”

"What about the rest of us?" I say, eager to get this show on the road.

"Chains, you're on explosives. I want options if we need to breach or make a quick exit. Diesel, you and I are going to the hospital. I have it on good authority that someone we’ll want to talk with is checking out this morning after recovering from an overdose. His name is Needles, and he’s been a regular customer of Pitbull’s for a while.”

I grunt, and my eyes go to the doorway that leads back to my bedroom. The thought crosses my mind to get up and crawl back into bed beside Samantha and sleep the rest of the morning away. “So, let me get this straight: Goldie gets to practice Yoga and drink with Tractor, Chains gets to play with bombs, and you and I are going to go talk to a junkie?”

“Yes. Now, go drink some coffee. We leave in five,” Rabid says.

“Sounds like a fucking blast.”

* * * * *

The day passes in a whirlwind. At the hospital, Needles spins a story that comes across like an addict’s fever dream — a hazy recollection of a doped-out crash in Pitbull’s drug palace in a seedy neighborhood on the outskirts of town, a place that, even though the city boundaries technically denote it as being part of Ironwood Falls, feels like it’s on an entirely different planet.

When night falls and the intrusion crew — me, Mayhem, Chains, Bishop, and Bones — arrives at the surveillance point where Goldie’s been keeping watch with Tractor, it’s the first moment I’ve had to breathe all day. And my first non-rushed breath comes downwind of a place that smells like meth, mold, and old salmon.

“God damn,” I mutter as I look out on a crumbling McMansion with cars on blocks in its front yard. “You’d think a drug lord could afford better.”

“Pitbull’s not a drug lord. Until Moretti tapped him, he was barely a dealer,” Goldie says. “Like, this entire process is like some smack-dealing little caterpillar spinning a cocoon, and what comes out of that magical metamorphosis is someone who’s poisoning and shooting up our entire town.”

I roll my eyes at Goldie. “Did you just try to compare drug dealing to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon? How much of that hard kombucha of yours have you had?”

“It’s been a long day watching a guy sell tainted drugs. I’ve done what I had to do, and I have no regrets,” Goldie says.

“What did y’all learn from Needles?” Tractor says.

“Learned what bad meth smells like when the body sweats it out,” I say. “It’s worse than you can imagine.”

“I can imagine quite a bit. There was this one time, growing up, that a family of possums died inside this old outhouse we had,” Tractor says. “You know how, in cartoons, they sometimes draw stink with green clouds and squiggly lines? That isn’t always just in cartoons.”

“Fucking gnarly,” Goldie says.

“Moving on, because I’d like to finish this shit and get back to Charlotte — I’ve got all our explosives needs prepped,” Chains says.

“Really? Are you sure about that?” Mayhem says. “Even my needs, Chains?”

“No. Fuck that. Do you think yours can ever be satisfied?” Chains says.

“Maybe. There was this one time, the Soviet Union, they tested this bomb that…”

I cut him off; I want Pitbull’s blood, not a Penthouse letter from an explosives addict. “When do we do this?”

“Pretty sure I saw some of Pitbull’s guys smoking something that didn’t look like tobacco, so I’d say you go in about five minutes and you can hit them in a way they’ll never forget,” Goldie says.

I load my gun and check my gear. The adrenaline is already pumping through my veins. Time to put this rabid dog Pitbull down.

"Let's roll," I growl.

The crew nods, grim determination in their eyes. We move out, stalking through the shadows toward the dilapidated drug den. Chains takes point, his fingers twitching near the detonator for the explosive charges he's rigged. Mayhem and Bishop flank him, arms at the ready. Bones and I bring up the rear. We reach the side entrance, pausing in the darkness. The stench of chemicals burns my nostrils. Chains holds up a hand, listening. Muffled voices drift from inside, punctuated by manic laughter. The fuckers are high as kites in there.

Chains mounts one of his prepared explosives to the door and gestures for us to step back as he mouths a countdown.

Three, two, one...

The door blasts inward, a furious eruption that scatters shrapnel — bolts, shards of wood, steel — in all directions. Several screams of alarm break out inside. We storm in, guns blazing. Two of Pitbull's guys spin around, eyes wide with shock, fumbling for their weapons. Bishop and I mow them down with practiced efficiency. Two less meth-pushing pieces of shit in the world. I smile.

But nobody stops to savor the moment; we move fast, bursting into the next room in formation, weapons at the ready. Two of Pitbull's guys sit slouched on a filthy couch, eyes glassy and distant. They barely have time to register our presence before Mayhem and Bones drop them with clean headshots. One man’s head bursts open like a cantaloupe smashed with a sledgehammer. The other’s stays intact, nothing but a perfectly round hole just above his left eye and a spray of blood onto the couch behind him.

Both slump to the floor.

In moments, more men pour into the room, alerted by the gunfire. Bishop and I lay down suppressing fire, sending them diving for cover behind overturned furniture. Bullets zing past, splintering wood and shattering glass. The air reeks of cordite, meth chemicals, and the iron tang of blood.

"Go, go!" I shout.

We charge deeper into the house, boots pounding. More men appear, firing wildly. Bullets rip past my head, their impact sending shrapnel — wood and plaster — pelleting into my back. I dive behind a ratty couch, popping up to squeeze off rounds. Across the room, Mayhem laughs maniacally as he sprays death indiscriminately at the attackers taking cover.

There’s a flash of movement as Chains lobs a grenade. The explosion rattles the walls. Pained screams follow.

We advance under the smoke, stepping over bodies and debris. The gunfire never stops.

A shotgun booms from the stairwell; buckshot rips a hole in the wall not inches from my face and the shrapnel peppers my face, leaving fine cuts. I wheel and return fire. The gunman tumbles backwards in a spray of blood.

"Upstairs!" Mayhem shouts.

We thunder up to the second floor, trading shots with Pitbull's men as we go. It's close quarters, brutal. I take one down with a knife to the throat when he tries to grab my gun. We push through a narrow hallway, firing at shadows as they dart between rooms. The air is thick with smoke and dust, a haze through which danger lurks. Pitbull's men are dwindling, but desperation makes them fierce. A door swings open ahead, revealing Pitbull himself, eyes wild and teeth bared in a snarl. His eyes spin in their sockets, propelled by bloodlust, fear, and meth.

"Get him!" I roar, my voice barely cutting through the cacophony.

Pitbull raises a gun, but Chains is faster.

“Take that, motherfucker,” Chains shouts. He fires, knocking the weapon from Pitbull's hand with brutal precision. Pitbull staggers back, then spins on his heels with surprising agility.

"He's running," Bones shouts.

We give chase as Pitbull bolts down the corridor. It's like hunting a ghost — every room we pass feels like it harbors some hidden threat waiting to pounce. Pitbull crashes through a door at the end of the hallway, and I hear the splintering of wood as he throws himself out a window.

"No!" I bellow, reaching the frame just in time to see him land heavily and roll to his feet in the alley below. Gunfire still echoes from inside the house where some of his henchmen fight on stubbornly or stupidly; I can't decide which. My focus is on Pitbull now — he’s our quarry, almost within our grasp but slipping away.

I vault over the windowsill without hesitation.

The night air rushes past me as I plummet to the ground, landing hard enough to drive pain up my legs but ignoring it as adrenaline fuels me forward. Pitbull is already sprinting down the alley, weaving between dumpsters and piles of refuse. For a moment, I lose my balance as my boot slides through something both slippery and sticky.

I regain my footing and charge after Pitbull.

The alley is narrow, littered with trash and debris. My lungs burn as I push myself harder, gaining ground. Pitbull glances back, terror in his eyes. He's fast, but I'm faster.

Suddenly, Pitbull veers left, ducking behind a dumpster.

I skid around the corner, raising my gun.

A sharp pain explodes in my side as Pitbull leaps from cover and tackles me. We crash to the ground, locked in a furious struggle. Pitbull fights like a cornered animal, all teeth and nails. He claws at my face, trying to gouge my eyes. I slam my forehead into his nose, feel cartilage crunch against my skull. Blood sprays between us. It gushes from his busted face, coating me in thick, slick red.

We roll across the filthy ground, trading blows. My gun skitters away. Pitbull gets his hands around my throat, squeezing. Black spots dance in my vision.

With a roar, I buck him off, gasping for air.

Pitbull scrambles to his feet, but I lunge forward and tackle him into a chain-link fence. The metal rattles as I slam him against it repeatedly and then ram my elbow into the back of his skull. Pitbull's head snaps back and forth, his eyes glazing over.

I spin him around and pin him to the fence with my forearm across his throat.

"It's over," I snarl.

Pitbull wheezes, blood bubbling from his broken nose and busted mouth. “Please don’t kill me.”

I press my forearm harder, deeper into his throat, feel the cartilage flex beneath the force of my rage. He gurgles, dribbles blood, and squeals in pain. Behind me, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps and I grin, knowing my brothers are close; I want their support to make sure this prick doesn’t get away, and just as much, I need them here to keep me from sending Pitbull six feet under. As those footsteps get closer, I laugh.

“Don’t kill you? Oh, Pitbull, by the time we’re done making you sing, you’ll wish I had.”