Lash (Club Sin #7)

12. The Gang’s All Here

the gang’s all here

TATIANA

O ur rendezvous with Nils' contact is brief, a liaison of less than five minutes in a clearing outside a village in the rainforest some twenty miles from Manaus. The contact is a local from a native tribe who emerges from the forest as we touch down. He is short, slender, and hard-eyed, lugging two huge black duffel bags, staggering under their weight. Solomon and Nicolae leap out of the helicopter and jog to meet him, taking the bags from him. He nods, waves, and trots back into the jungle.

Once airborne, the men open the bags and examine the contents.

Solomon hoots with excitement as he lifts a strange-looking assault rifle from the bag. "A Steyr-Aug. Where the fuck did that little dude get this shit?"

Lorenzo snorts. "You would be surprised. He was probably holding them as a favor to someone. Currency means little to him, so he will likely receive compensation in the form of goods he and his tribe will find useful." He pulls another gun out. "This is excellent gear, however. Lash, you owe your friend Nils a huge debt of gratitude."

Despite growing up around guns, I know very little about them, as far as makes and models go, but the men and Scarlett seem very pleased with the contents of the bags—ten assault rifles, the same number of handguns, several boxes of ammunition of assorted sizes, magazines, and clusters of grenades and flashbangs.

We spend the rest of the flight loading bullets into the magazines. I am shown how to do it, and which bullets go into which magazines, and I spend the rest of the flight slotting cold brass shells into hard plastic magazines.

Solomon receives a text message with a specific location where we will meet the rest of the Broken Arrows—a large field on a hilltop overlooking a river. The rainforest has been clear-cut and burned here, and I notice that Lorenzo in particular is looking around at the devastated landscape below us with sorrow and anger.

As the helicopter touches down, Lorenzo is the first out, an assault rifle slung on his back, and a few grenades clipped to a bandolier, along with spare magazines. Large yellow construction machines sit parked in a row at the edge of the far side of the field, perhaps half a mile away.

Ignoring everyone, Lorenzo marches across the field, a grenade clutched in his hand.

"Oh, shit," Solomon says, watching. “He's gonna blow that shit up."

Nicolae, with anger suffusing his handsome features, spits on the ground at his feet. "Good. It won’t stop them, but it's something. This is evil, this destruction."

Solomon nods. "It is," he says. Movement catches his eye—a caravan of battered SUVs emerging from a two-track path in the forest close to where Lorenzo has reached the equipment. "Oh, hey, here come the guys. Let's go, ya'll. Double time."

Nicolae and Solomon carry the bags on their backs, their arms hooked through the handles. We jog across the field—footing is treacherous, the ground lumpy and rough, with rocks and roots and stumps littering the brown soil. The SUVs, four of them—all old, battered Land Rovers—cut a wide circle and stop facing the path from which they emerged. Doors open and five massive men get out.

We reach them a moment later, and Solomon in particular is greeted with rough, energetic, hyper-masculine hugs, full of backslapping, laughter, and playful fighting. Two men seem especially happy to see Solomon, both of them tall, lean, and hard, one with blond hair like Solomon's, and the other reddish like sun-burnished copper.

Nicolae, close to my side, murmurs to me. "Those are his brothers. Solomon has been missing for some time. Well before I got hijacked to Zagreb." He entwines our fingers and kisses the back of my hand. "I shall make introductions once Lorenzo has finished his act of protest."

I look across the field to see Lorenzo jogging across the line of machines, yanking pins free and tossing grenades into the tracks, engine compartments, and cabins. Once the last machine has received an explosive, Lorenzo pivots on his heel and sprints as hard as he can toward us, his rifle clutched in his hands. He gets perhaps a hundred meters before the first explosion sends him sprawling in the dirt. He hits the ground, rolls, and springs to his feet, turning to walk backward so he can watch the rest of the explosions— BOOM…BOOM…BOOM…BOOM ! Parts fly and burning diesel fuel sends black clouds of angry smoke spewing into the sky.

The machines are wreckage now, little more than charred hulks of scrap metal. He nods once and makes his way more carefully across the field to the line of vehicles. The explosions, naturally enough, dominated everyone's attention. Now, it's time for introductions.

Solomon takes the lead on this. He claps a hand on Lorenzo's good shoulder. “Lorenzo, meet the crew.” He points to each man in turn. "That big motherfucker over there is Chance. The almost-as-big motherfucker next to him is Rev. Beside him is Kane. These two knuckleheads are my younger brothers, Saxon and Silas." He squeezes Lorenzo's shoulder. "Everyone, this is Lorenzo. He's our South American guide and translator, and he and Inez are…I dunno. Something."

Rev, a massive, muscular, brown-skinned man with a short, black-haired mohawk, frowns. "Inez is something with someone?"

Lorenzo chuckles. "Indeed. She and I have an extensive history."

Rev snorts. "I always sort of assumed Inez just appeared on the earth one day, fully formed and scary as fuck. Hard to imagine her getting all cozy with anyone."

Lorenzo laughs again. "That is an understandable notion, Rev. Sophia is…rather unique, shall we say."

"The fuck is Sophia?" Rev asks.

“That is the name she was born with," Lorenzo answers. "Any more is her story to tell, however, not mine, so please do not ask. I won't betray her trust."

"Just as soon interrogate a cobra," Rev mutters. "The woman scares me."

“That is wise," Lorenzo says.

Solomon wraps an arm around Scarlett. "This is Scarlett Gutierrez. She was in the CIA with me, and she sprang me from the jungle."

Saxon grins at his brother—Saxon is burlier than his brothers, with a nasty scar running down the side of his face, and blond hair shaved on the sides and back, left longish on top and swept diagonally backward. "Somethin' tells me you're leaving some shit outta that little summary, bro."

The other brother is tall and lean with clean-cut good looks and coppery hair. He slugs Solomon's arm. “Yeah, like all the good details."

Solomon snorts, shoving his brothers away from him. "Back off, you damn cavemen. Yeah, yeah, we're together." He indicates them both. "I hear the two of you came outta shit with women of your own. We'll shoot the shit once things go back to normal."

The brothers nod and drop the subject.

The huge man, Chance, frowns at Nicolae. "Wait, hold the actual fuck up. Lash? Shit, brother, I didn't even realize that was you. Goddamn, son."

Nicolae grins. "A lot has happened since I got on the plane." He rubs the back of his head, feeling the fuzz there. "I will fill you all in at a more appropriate time, when we are all together, as Solomon has said. But what you must know for now is that my name is Nicolae Dragos. Lash was a…a persona, I suppose."

No one speaks for a moment or two—they all seem stunned.

"Nicolae Dragos," says the man named Kane.

He is not especially tall, around six feet, but monstrously muscular, wider than two of me across the shoulders and chest, with arms and legs like tree trunks, his hair cropped on the sides and tied back in a long ponytail. He wears a black-and-white checkered scarf around his neck, the kind of thing men from Middle Eastern countries wear—at least, on the news I have seen.

"It's a good name, brother," Kane says. "Nice to finally meet the real you. Cut looks good, too."

Nicolae grins at me. "See? You did a wonderful job."

I blush, shrugging. “It was nothing. You told me what to do,” I say in Croatian.

Rev looks from me to Nicolae. “Who's she? And what language is that?"

"She is Tatiana Juric, daughter of the man who hijacked my flight—I worked for him, many, many years ago. She is Croatian. And we are together."

Rev juts his chin in the direction of our joined hands. "Figured. Glad for you, brother."

Kane frowns. “Her dad gonna come lookin' for her?"

Nicolae shrugs. "I do not think so." He looks at me.

"I should call him soon," I say in English. "I am upset with him right now, but he is my father and I love him, and he will be worried. We did sort of disappear from Zagreb."

Solomon claps his hands. "Okay, gang. Introductions have been made, environmental protests have been conducted, and reunions had. Let’s get this shitshow on the road. I'm not sure if we're rescuing Inez from Mercado or the other way around, but either way, I'm not leaving her with him any longer. Lorenzo, this is your show, bro. Take us in."

Lorenzo rolls his injured shoulder, wincing, and then nods. "We're about nine or so hours from his compound. Last intel I had on his operations there, he retained somewhere between twenty and thirty men on-site—hard, bad men, ex-military, and mostly special forces. They are heavily armed and well-trained, and their orders are to shoot on sight anyone who has not received clearance from Mercado himself. He can field another thirty or forty men from a nearby village, perhaps twenty minutes response time." He pauses, thinking. "His estate is walled all the way around, topped with razor wire, patrolled, and alarmed with state-of-the-art security."

"Fuckin' lovely," Kane says. "This'll be a real fun fuckin' party."

"Indeed," Lorenzo answers. "It is a fortress. Ingress will be difficult at best. We will need to come up with a plan before we attempt anything, or we will only get ourselves slaughtered."

"So we're ten people against potentially as many as seventy?" Saxon says. "Fuck, man. We don't need a plan, we need a fuckin' Apache."

I raise my hand. "I do not know if you should count me. I am not trained like the rest of you."

Nicolae glances at me. "You cannot sit this one out, Lovely One. I will do everything I can to make sure you are safe, but once we have Inez, we will have to exfil and bug out very swiftly."

I frown at him. "What is 'exfil' and 'bug out'?"

"Oh. Military terms. Exfil means get out of the combat zone, and bug out means get away, as in go home."

I let out a shuddery breath. "I will do what is needed, Nico. But I am afraid."

The big man, Chance—seven feet tall and as broad and dense with muscle as Kane—gives me a reassuring smile. "Sweetheart, we're all hardened combat vets, and even we get scared. We'll take care of you."

Scarlett comes up beside me and slings an arm through mine. "I got you, chica. You and me will fuck up some thugs. If you can gut a rapey motherfucker with a knife, you can pop a few in the fuckin' skulls.”

I sigh and shake my head. "I sell clothing. My father is the popper of skulls, not me."

She grins. "Well, chica, you do what you gotta do. But I'll be with you the whole time."

Solomon meets my eyes. "If Scarla says she's got you, you're safe as houses, honey."

I frown at her. "Scarla?"

She shrugs. "Nickname." She touches the long, nasty-looking scar running down the side of her face, a near mirror to the one on Solomon's brother Saxon's face.

"Ah. I see." I nod. "Well. I know how to shoot a pistol. I will do my best."

Scarlett pats my back. “All any of us can do."

Lorenzo puts his fingers to his lips and lets out a piercing whistle "We must go. My Sophia has been in Rafael's hands for too fucking long as it is. I will drive the lead. We stop for no one and nothing but to refuel as necessary."

Kane pats the tailgate of the nearest SUV. "Got that covered. We got jerry cans full'a fuel in each Rover as well food, water, and med kits." He juts his chin at Nicolae. "I assume those bags have the bang-bang goodies in them."

Lorenzo nods, sighing in relief. "Good. Very good. Yes, we have plenty of guns and ammunition. We are as prepared as we can be. Now, we get to the compound and figure out a plan that will hopefully get us all out alive."

It's a bouncing, jouncing, teeth-rattling ride through the jungle. I've long since lost track of what time it is; time distorts. We've always been here, in the jungle, on these hard bench seats, hot and sweaty and jarred by ruts and hillocks and thrown to either side as we swerve to avoid potholes that could swallow the compact cars so prevalent in my native Europe.

We stop after a few hours to stretch our legs and refuel. Scarlett pulls me after her off the trail and into the rainforest just out of eyesight of the small caravan. She shows me how to use her trench knife to dig a pit at the base of a tree, lean back against it with my pants and underwear around my ankles, and pee without splattering myself. She even has a small package of biodegradable wet wipes that get buried once we're done.

As we walk back, she hands me a pistol. "Pull the mag and put it back."

Understanding her intention of assessing my familiarity with the weapon, I eject the magazine and tap it back into place.

"Good. Put it away and draw it," she instructs.

I tuck it in my waistband at the small of my back. Pause, hands at my sides. Draw, assuming the basic triangle pose taught to me by Anton, the instructor at the gun range.

She nods again. “Good. How accurate are you?"

I shrug. "Okay. I can hit the target, but I am not an expert."

She smiles at me. "That's okay. No need to be an expert. What you need to know is that if you're gonna draw that gun and point it at someone, you gotta be ready to pull the trigger. And you can't hesitate. If you know you gotta shoot, then draw, aim, and fire. Don’t think, just do it."

I nod, a memory of being attacked in the alley in Zagreb flashing through my mind. "Lash—Nicolae, I mean—said the same thing. I…" I shake my head. "I didn't listen. I was in that alley by myself. And that man walked by. He saw me. He started walking toward me, and I was afraid. I could feel that he meant nothing good for me, but I…I didn't see if he had a weapon, not until it was too late. I didn't even draw my gun. I…it is embarrassing, but I lost it in the struggle. He got close, and then he had a knife, and I fought him. I remembered some things I was taught about defending myself from big men with knives." I shut my eyes, stopping to lean against the smooth bark of a tree. "I still don't know how, but I got the knife from him and I stabbed him and I stabbed him and I stabbed him, so many times I stabbed that man, and he kept—he wouldn't—he just would not die."

She rubs my shoulder blade. "A horrible way to get your first kill. Knife work is messy and intimate. And yes, it's very, very hard to kill someone quickly with a knife. There are only a few places on the human body where you can cut or stab someone for an instant or nearly-instant kill. Human bodies are complicated. We can be very fragile and we can also take a shocking amount of damage and survive."

I let out a breath and shake my head. "I just want this to be over, Scarlett. I sell clothing. All the guns and the shooting and the killing, I…I never wanted any of it. That is my father's world, not mine. I did everything I could to live my own life, to be separate from my father and his stupid, awful business."

Scarlett pats me again. "I know. I wish we could get to the good stuff, too. But in shit like this, the only way out is through."

I push away from the tree, hearing the SUVs cough and bark and rattle to life. "Does it get easier? Killing people, I mean."

Scarlett shrugs. “Unfortunately, yes. You're never not afraid before a battle, though. But the first few kills? You always remember them. The rest, not as much. When you've spent as much time downrange as I have, you kinda block it out when you're not doing the job. Otherwise, it'll just…fuck you up. Probably a lot like cops, medics, and ER docs and nurses. You can't think about it when you're not doing it. You can't think about the shit you did, the shit you had to see." She moves behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders, affectionately and gently guiding me back to the road. "Hopefully you'll never have to know whether or not it gets easier. Hopefully, we'll get Inez back, and we'll all go live happily ever after in good ol' Las fuckin' Vegas."

I laugh. "I sense perhaps you are being sarcastic about Las Vegas."

She barks a laugh. "Yeah, just a little. I fuckin' hate Vegas. It's hotter than Satan’s ball sack, there's no nature, and everyone is fuckin' crazy, desperate, and stupid. And also, fuck casinos. Noisy, smoky, lightless, soulless hellholes of addiction and desperation. Fuck Las Vegas."

I laugh. "I see. But yet, despite feeling this way, you are going to move there with Solomon?"

She sighs. "Yes. Yes, I am. I love him, and that's where he has to be for now. I'm gonna take the brand and the oath and become a Broken Arrow. And hopefully, I won't have to leave the Club."

We reach the road and the caravan, piling into one of the Land Rovers—Solomon drives and Nico is in the front seat beside him, so we slide in behind them.

Into the jungle we go, sweating, bouncing, and avoiding thoughts of the future.

I am roused from a fitful, restless half-sleep when the caravan halts and the engines turn off. I blink awake, peering around—it's pitch-black outside beyond the windows, and for a moment or two, all is dead still and silent. After those moments of silence, the night creatures of the jungle come to life once more, croaking, whirring, chirping, hissing, and rustling.

The whole team circles up in the road in the yellow bath of the lead SUV’s headlights; flying insects flutter and swarm.

Solomon seems comfortable taking the lead, and the others seem content to let him. "We're two miles from the compound, according to Lorenzo."

Lorenzo shrugs. "As close as I can estimate, at least. Probably a little more, as it is better to be farther away than closer."

"So, my thinking is we send a few of us out for recon,” Solomon says. “Get the lay of the land, sniff out patrols, and see if we can get eyes on the compound itself for some intel so we can make a plan."

Lorenzo scans the group. "I think it should be myself, Scarlett, and Lash—sorry, Nicolae."

"Reasoning?" questions Kane.

"Very simple. We three are not bound by the oath against killing," Lorenzo answers. "And we need the patrols neutralized, not just incapacitated. We can't afford some hard-headed asshole waking up and giving us away."

Nicolae's hand goes to the back of his neck at Lorenzo's words.

Rev is the first to speak, after a long, stunned silence. "Wait… what ? Scarlett and Lorenzo, you're not Arrows. No brand, no oath, so I get it. But Lash? What the fuck , dude?"

"I had hoped to avoid this conversation till after," Nico says, sighing. "But we may as well get it out of the way. Yes, it is true. I took the oath of loyalty to the Broken Arrows, but our employer did not, in my particular case, demand the oath against killing. I did not know that was unusual until after I joined you, for one thing, and I was not given reasoning, for another. I took the oath that was asked of me. If it had included the injunction against death, I would have sworn to that. I did not ask for that exception. I never saw a point in telling you. I worried it would only muddy the waters, or cause resentment. Which I can see it has."

Rev shakes his head. “Not resentment, man, just…I dunno. Maybe a little. We've all had to do this shit with one hand behind our back, so to speak. It's a lot fuckin' harder when you can't kill 'em."

Nicolae nods, shrugging. "I know. When we have the luxury of time and safety, I will tell you all the backstory which will explain, I believe, why I was not required to take that particular oath. For now, we have work to do. I am your brother. I will live for you, fight with you, and die for you if required. And when this is all over, I will take the oath again, with a new brand to mark the occasion."

Rev nods, satisfied with the answer. “Well then, let's fuckin' go."

Nico rummages in one of the duffel bags and produces a suppressor for his pistol, which he screws on. From the other bag he finds a long knife with a black, serrated blade; he whips off his belt and fixes a holster for his gun on one side and the knife and sheath on the other, and puts the belt back on. Once more into the bags, coming out with a thick black bulletproof vest. He slots magazines into the front of the vest, and then grabs one of the assault rifles; his has a short, thick barrel, which he explains is a built-in suppressor. Thus armed and armored, he is ready to go.

I catch his arm. "Nico, please be careful."

He grins, confident, cocky even. The hard, angry, closed-off mask of Lash is gone, leaving only the charming breeziness of Nicolae. “This is what I do best, my love."

"What, exactly?" I ask.

He gestures at the surrounding jungle. "Infil, recon, target elimination, and exfil, without being seen."

He catches the back of my neck and pulls me to him, crushing my body against his and slashing his mouth over mine in a hot, demanding kiss. "Stay close to the others while we are gone. Listen to them when they give you instructions. And above all, do not—"

"Hesitate," I say, overlapping with him. I kiss him again, rubbing my hands along the hard line of his jaw. "I learned that lesson."

His expression darkens. "I am sorry you learned it the way you did."

"I will not make that mistake again." I scratch his jaw. "I like this. The new you—I like him."

He looks away, thinking. "I am not so sure it is a new me."

"It must be, Nico. The old you died. Then, you were Lash. Now you are Nicolae again, but what made you Lash is not gone. Nor is what has remained of the old Nicolae. You are a bit of both. A new you."

He shifts his gaze, considering, then looks back at me. "You are not wrong."

Lorenzo and Scarlett are similarly armed and attired.

“We have to go, Nicolae," Lorenzo says. "My gut is telling me time is short."

Nico kisses me once more. "See you soon."

After a brief murmured conversation, Lorenzo stalks forward down the path, Scarlett cuts to the right into the jungle, and Nico goes left.

Chance sees me staring after Nico and comes to tower over me. "He'll be fine."

I nod. "I know. I still worry."

His huge, heavy hand rests on my shoulder for a moment. "I'm glad he found you. He's different. Better."

"I am glad, too."

He nods. "Well," he sighs. "Now we wait."