Page 26 of Warrant (The Berserker’s Rage MC: Wyoming Chapter #1)

Warrant

C ypher held up his hand and then motioned to the right. Half our group split up and streamed around the right side of the bright blue barn.

I was out front, with the others following, as Cypher took his half and waited at the front entrance. He’d give us a few minutes to get around to the back of the barn before going through the front. This farm had changed a lot since I’d last been out here.

There were new outbuildings and abandoned trucks everywhere.

Once that corporation had bought the place, construction had started, so we had no idea what the inside of this building looked like anymore.

I doubted it was just a wide open barn. This was also the biggest barn in the county.

The add-ons the corporation constructed, before giving up on the place and leaving, were extensive.

It was about the size of two large warehouses shoved together.

I slowed as I came around the back corner, holding my hand up in a fist to warn the others to slow as well. There was a man standing out back, smoking a cigarette as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He didn’t. Yet. But he was about to.

Pulling out my knife, I waited until he turned his back toward me. As soon as he faced away, I stepped forward, wrapped my arm around his chest and sliced the knife over his throat before he could scream.

There was no remorse, or worry, or guilt at taking his life.

He kidnapped a kid, or at least helped those that did.

That was enough. Not everyone would agree with my sense of morality, but I’d long since accepted it.

The government had taken a wild kid and taught him to assess a situation and handle it as he deemed appropriate.

Just because I didn’t officially work for the government anymore didn’t mean that was going to change.

While society insisted that people be tried in a court of law, my moral code allowed me to be the judge, jury, and executioner and not feel an ounce of guilt about it. I always made sure the people I dispatched were worthy of the punishment before I did it. You had to be guilty. But that was all.

Case in point. You didn’t get to work for a group who stole kids to sell them off—which is what they did with Aella—to some unknown horrible fate. Or anything else they might have done. You didn’t get to do those things and live. I didn’t need a court of law to know this.

I let the body slump quietly next to the door. Staring down at it, I looked over as Torque walked up.

“Want me to drag it around the side?” Torque asked.

I shook my head. “By the time someone finds it they’re going to be dead.”

“That literally doesn’t make sense.”

“Shut up fucker, you know what I mean.”

The rest of the group came around the corner and waited for my direction. “Demo, take Cynic, Torque, and Butcher and go to the right once we enter. I’ll take Toxic, Pyre, and Rotor.”

Toxic began to whistle a tune I’d heard him sing before when going into battle. He wasn’t singing the words, but they played through my mind.

One little, two little, three little dead goons. Four little, five little, six little dead goons.

One of these days I needed to ask him if there was more to the song.

Cypher had Scythe, Riggs, Steel, Axel, Glitch, Hush, and Jury up front.

Once we all entered it was going to be a cluster fuck. Judging by the asshole I just killed though, we’d at least be able to identify each other by our cuts. Last thing we needed was to accidentally shoot one of our own in the heat of the moment.

“Heads on a swivel,” I announced. “No quarter. Whoever finds the boy, get him out of this fucking building and wait by the bikes and SUV. Everyone else will stay and fight, but get the boy out.”

“Will do.”

“Sure thing.”

“Can we go fucking kill people already?” Butcher muttered.

Chuckling, I nodded. “Demo?” I’d already sheathed my knife. Now I adjusted the rifle that’d been hanging on my shoulder by a sling so that it was ready to go once I went through the door.

Demo nodded, put a hand on the door handle, and looked back at me, waiting.

A short jerk of my chin had him throwing the door open and I went through, ready to shoot the first motherfucker I saw.

I almost instantly got my wish. The others streamed in behind me, Demo bringing up the rear, and as soon as I went left there was another door.

This one, I kicked in and two men looked up, startled at the interruption.

Two shots rang out loud in the building.

Two assholes dropped. It was a glorious start.

In the back, where we were, it had been partitioned off into rooms. Some were offices, some were sleeping quarters, kitchens, bathrooms. We moved through, searching.

At one point, Pyre ended up in front of me and went through a door to our right. Bullets pounded through the makeshift walls, forcing me to dive to the side.

“Shit!” I scrambled out of the way, looking around and seeing that my brothers had done the same. “Pyre!” I barked. There was too much gunfire going on for him to hear me.

Army crawling across the floor as rounds blasted past above my head, I made my way to the door. I poked my head around the door frame, eyes searching, and found Pyre tucked behind a desk. His grin said it all, ‘isn’t this great’. Crazy fucker.

I adjusted my rifle and continued crawling up to the next doorway.

I leaned to the side, nestling the butt of the weapon into my shoulder, then rolled slightly to get a view around the doorframe.

Pop. Pop. I fired two shots into the thigh of the asshole that was sending rounds through the wall above Pyre.

“Move!” I shouted. He was up and firing through the doorway. With him moving I rocked back onto my knees and jumped up, following behind. For good measure I put two more rounds into the man that was clutching his leg, this time in his chest.

Now the fight belonged to us. I wasn’t getting pinned behind another wall or desk. We moved past the walls of the office area into the open bays where the trucks and equipment were. They were pinned down from where the Austin crew was engaging them. This was great.

Pyre and I had emerged on their flank and they were totally exposed. We opened fire and charged straight into their side, taking out four of the bastards and pressing our attack directly into them. With these four down we had them cornered. Or so I thought.

I ran up to the side of a tractor, taking cover behind a giant six-foot-high tire when something landed on top of me. It turned out to be a gorilla sized man trying to shove a screwdriver into my skull. Where the fuck had he come from?

Both of my hands instantly went to his wrist while my eyes crossed watching the tip of the screwdriver dance in front of my nose. How the hell was a simple tool so much more menacing than a knife? Seriously, this thing was scaring the hell out of me.

I tried to twist his wrist away but the fucker was bigger than even Demo.

There was no moving his arms. I rolled onto my back and felt a hard metallic pain in the small of my back.

Right! I slid my left leg under my ass, kicked my right leg out for stability, then pushed with my left leg, we rolled just enough to throw him off balance for the second I needed.

I dropped my right arm, grabbed the pistol from the holster at my back and brought it around to unload the mag into his gut just as he was making an overhand swing for my skull.

He looked so annoyed as the screwdriver fell out of his hand, like he never got to kill someone with a screwdriver and I took that from him. I almost felt bad, you know, aside from the fact that it was my skull he was trying to stick it in.

A set of meaty paws grabbed my shoulders and hauled me to my feet. “Quit fucking around!” Butcher said. “Take this!”

‘This’ was Jared. He shoved the boy into my arms.

“Whoa! What are you doing? You’re supposed to get him out of here.”

“I’m not done killing. You get him out of here.” He didn’t stick around to argue, he turned around and ran toward the corner where the rest of the enemy crew was.

I looked at Jared. “Well…you ready to get out of here?”

Thankfully the kid knew who Butcher was—the Austin crew and their families had attended some of the Tucson guys’ weddings—so even though I’d never met Jared, he didn’t fight being handed over to me.

A hail of bullets scattered over our heads, causing both of us to duck. “Yeah, I’m good!” he said with an urgent nod.

It wasn’t that I was disappointed, I was happy to have the kid safe. It was just such a dick move, and so typical of Butcher. I should have expected as much.

I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him in front of me so I could steer him away from the shooting. I wanted my body between him and the bullets. I kept my hand on his shoulder so I could push him where I needed him to be, moving him back the way we came, the way I knew to be safe.

We went back through the office rooms, over the bodies and out the door into the parking lot.

I thought, by the sounds of the gun fire dying down that things were winding down and we were home free.

The rifle butt to the side of my head told me I was wrong.

Pain shot through my brain so bright and hot that my vision wavered.

“You’re not taking the kid, fucker!”

I stumbled back and tried to regain my footing. I was seeing triple right now and trying not to fall over. This douchebag must’ve been hiding behind the door, probably snuck out like a coward when the shooting started, and saw his opportunity to snatch Jared back.

At least that was what I was hoping was the case.

Otherwise there were three of him and I wasn’t in any condition to go three on one.

I brought my arms up in time to block a blow from something he was swinging.

Not a rifle, something red. A fire extinguisher.

It was big, metal and it hurt. Blocking it with my forearms barely helped.

“Get off him, you asshole!” Jared yelled.

I lowered my arms enough to see that the kid had jumped on this guy from behind and wrapped his arms around his neck in a chokehold.

A good one, too, Riggs had taught him well.

Jared was still a growing kid, gangly, all arms and legs with no real mass yet.

But he had reach and he used it. His arm was wrapped tight around the guy’s neck and he let his body hang, letting the weight do the choking.

It was over in a few seconds. The fire extinguisher dropped with a loud metallic clang and then the two of them went over backwards. “Oh shit!” Jared yelled as they went down and the guy landed on top of him, unconscious.

I leaned on my knees catching my breath, Pyre came out, looked at me, then at Jared. “Quit fucking around and get that guy off of him, his dad’s waiting.”