CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They arrived at Monk’s safe house located in New Jersey, just across the George Washington, in a suburban part of town that was more woods and trees than houses.
Down a long path that led to a small wooden house surrounded by woods, Mick parked his Escalade and they all got out and headed for the entrance.
Four of Monk’s guys guarded the door, and they all were surprised to see the Sinatras with the boss.
Did that mean the war was over? Was Frankie going to let them get away with killing sixty-five of their men?
Who was his true allegiance to, they wondered not for the first time, as Monk and the Sinatras went inside and closed the door.
Four men were seated in a row in the middle of the room.
All four had their hands tied behind their backs and then their wrists were hooked onto the back of the chairs with handcuffs.
Their legs were also held down with ankle restraints.
Two more of Monk’s men were also inside of the house.
It was obvious to Mick that they had been playing cards at the table before they hopped up when his SUV arrived.
It was also obvious to all of the Sinatras that all four men had been badly tortured. They all were bleeding from the sides of their heads. They all were bruised everywhere else.
“What we got so far?” Monk asked his men.
“Nothing,” said his lead capo. “They ain’t talking. No matter what we did, they won’t say. And we tried everything.”
Monk and the Sinatras stood in front of the men. Nikki stood near the back of the room with her gun drawn: just in case.
“What’s your name?” Monk asked them.
The men said nothing.
“You know my name?” Monk asked them.
One of them, number three, looked at Monk. He knew him, but he still held his peace.
“You will talk,” Monk said. “Eventually, you will talk. You will endure more torture, if that’s what you prefer, but at the end of the day you will talk. Why not save yourself the pain?”
Still nothing.
“Do your asses speak English?” Teddy asked. They all looked Eastern European to him.
Number three looked at Teddy the same way he looked at Monk. And his face made clear they understood every word. That wasn’t the issue.
“Then what’s your problem?” an irritated Monk asked him. “You think we’re gonna stand up here after you kidnapped Duke Sinatra, Mick Sinatra’s son, and allow you to get away with that? You think you got it going on like that? You think we’re gonna let this shit stand?”
Still no response.
“You hear me, motherfucker!” Monk yelled at number three as he punched him so hard that his head rolled from one side of his shoulders and then to the other side as if it was barely able to sit up on his neck.
“We can do this the easy way,” Monk said, “or we can do this the hard way. But it will be done! Now which is it gonna be?”
Prisoner number three looked at Monk after that punch with a look so filled with rage that he spit at Monk with the blood that was already in his blood-filled mouth.
As soon as that spit occurred, and before Monk could react, Mick stepped forward with a Glock nobody realized was in his hand and he shot, straight through the forehead, number one, number two, and prisoner number four.
Then he looked at prisoner number three with his gun still locked and loaded: “You can talk,” he said, “or you can join them. Pick your poison.”
Monk and Teddy were shocked that Mick would do away with three of the men that could help them get answers. And to keep the very one that was most defiant baffled them.
But Mick knew what he was doing. That defiance was fear. The other three were never going to talk. Number three had a breaking point.
Number three was stunned that Mick had escalated it to that degree already.
He was behaving as if he still had cards up his sleeve.
As if he was going to wait it out until some rescue that probably was never going to come.
And perhaps with Teddy and Monk he did have cards, and he could have waited it out.
But not with Mick. He had underestimated his opponent.
That was why, when he didn’t immediately respond, Mick didn’t hesitate to lift his Glock to the forehead of number three, and put his finger on that trigger. It was also no surprise to Mick that number three became most compliant. “What do you want to know?!” he screamed out.
Teddy and Monk looked at each other. How did Mick do that shit?
But Mick was concerned because prisoner number three spoke with a definite Russian accent. And he cut to the chase. “Who do you work for?” he asked him.
Number three’s dark eyes made clear that he didn’t want to name the boss, as if that was the one thing they were never supposed to do, but he knew if Mick the Tick saw any hesitation on his part that would be his undoing anyway. “Datvey,” he said.
Mick had heard that name before.
“Datvey?” asked Monk.
“Datvey Gagarin,” said number three.
Monk and Teddy looked at each other. They’d never heard of anybody by that name ever. But when they looked at Mick, they suspected that he definitely had.
Mick didn’t like where this was going, but he kept it to himself. “What was your assignment?” he asked number three. But when Mick didn’t ask who this Datvey Gagarin was, it only confirmed their suspicion.
“We were supposed to snatch the wife or one of the twins, or both if we could,” number three said. “The team that was supposed to get the wife bungled it, but we were able to get the boy.”
“Snatch him and take him where?” asked Monk.
“I do not know.”
Monk frowned. “What you mean your ass don’t know?”
“I do not know. He was supposed to call us. But your men took control of our van, dropped off our target, and brought us here.”
“When was he supposed to call?”
“After we delivered our subject.”
“Delivered him where?”
He hesitated only for a second. Mick shot him in the foot, which shocked everybody.
Especially number three. “To the club!” he cried out in pain and fear.
“What club?” Mick asked him.
“His club. He was supposed to text us the name and location, but he did not. We were driving around waiting to get his orders. But they never came.”
Mick, Teddy, and Monk looked at each other. “They might have had spies in the area too,” said Monk. “Once the van was highjacked, they may have changed their plans.”
Mick nodded. He agreed.
“What was the backup plan?” Teddy asked number three because there always was.
“Bella was the backup plan. But that failed too.”
Monk and Teddy were shocked. “Bella?” Teddy asked. Then they looked at Mick.
But Mick had already figured Bella was tied up in it some kind of way when he heard who the mastermind was. Datvey Gagarin was Bella’s Russian Oligarch boyfriend. The man she had run to Mick’s hotel to get away from. He was most likely Russian mob.
“How was Bella the backup plan?” Mick asked him.
“She was supposed to go to your hotel and distract you before you left for your wife’s opening night on Broadway. She was supposed to keep you at that hotel so that you would not be around to interfere with the abductions. But she failed. When we saw you drive up, we knew she had failed.”
“Gotdamn Pop,” said Teddy. “Bella in this shit too?”
It was a scary feeling for Mick. Bella was his daughter’s mother. It would devastate Gloria if anything ever happened to her beloved mother. What the fuck?
But as they all seemed taken aback by Bella’s role in all of this, Monk noticed a red glow out of the side of his eyes. When he looked, he could see the red dot laser of a rifle on Mick’s back. He could see that it was the glow of a target on Mick’s back.
“Hit the deck!” he yelled as loud as he could as he pushed Teddy down while he dropped down too.
But Teddy was worried about Nikki near the window, and he cried out to her. “Nikki, get down!” he cried. But Nikki had already dropped to the floor.
Mick and Monk’s capos inside the house had dropped to the floor, too, as gunfire ripped through the window of the safe house without a sound.
The only reason they knew they were being shot at was because of Monk’s warning and the sound of glass shattering around them.
And the fact that bullets were ripping through all four prisoners.
Those bullets took out number three and shot up the ones already deceased. Bullets knew no difference.
When it appeared as if no more bullets were being fired, Nikki leaned up and peeped out of the window. That was when she saw a man with a rifle in his hand running away from the safe house and into the woods. “He’s getting away!” she cried as they all jumped up and ran out of the front door.
Monk’s four men were already dead when they ran outside, as if the gunman took them out before he trained his silencer-enhanced weapon indoors. If his goal was to catch them unawares, he succeeded mightily.
Monk and Teddy and Monk’s two capos took off after the gunman. Nikki started to run after them, but Mick pulled her back. “Come with me,” he ordered as he hopped onto the driver side of his SUV. Nikki hopped in on the front passenger seat, and Mick took off.
As Monk and Teddy ran through the woods that surrounded the safe house, Mick sped all the way around, down three streets, until he drove to the backside of those woods.
By the time he made it up to the opening where Teddy and Monk, along with Monk’s two capos, were running out onto the back street, the gunman had already jumped into his getaway car and was speeding off.
Mick slammed on brakes, Monk and Teddy hopped onto the middle row with Monk ordering his two capos to wait at the safe house, and the Escalade sped off behind the gunman’s car.
But before they got to the end of the backroad, the getaway car slammed on brakes and did a quick U-turn in the middle of the street. Then the gunman, who appeared to be alone in the car, began speeding straight for Mick’s Escalade.
Mick pressed down both windows on the middle row and Teddy grabbed his gun and leaned out of the left side window, while Monk, with his gun, leaned out of the right side window. Both began firing on the gunman even as he sped toward them.
“Nikki, get down!” Mick ordered as he pushed her down himself.
“Hold on!” he yelled to Monk and Teddy as he swerved his SUV so violently fast and so sudden that it ended up leaned sideways on two wheels. But it was just the move Monk and Teddy needed to steer the SUV clear of the gunman’s path, and for them to take out the gunman.
The gunman was shot several times and slumped over the steering wheel. The now-driverless car sped across the street into the woods, went airborne when it sped into an understory shrub branch, and then it exploded when it slammed back down.
Mick slammed on brakes and waited for the second explosion. When it came, he knew there would be no surviving. And then he drove away.
Monk was grieving his men that had been killed on guard outside of that safe house.
Teddy and Nikki were grieving the fact that there was another element to this war that would never be as considerate as Monk had been.
But Mick was worried about Bella, and how in the world was he going to get her out of this mess too.