Swerve Chapter
Swerve:
I saw the confused expression on Electra’s face.
She didn’t understand why we were in the middle of the swamp, in an area with no human life nearby.
It was wild and precisely what one expected when someone mentioned a swamp.
We weren’t far from the water’s edge. To someone unfamiliar with this environment, the significance of our location would likely go unnoticed.
For those of us who’d grown up here, we knew.
I’d been helped into a side-by-side, and my chair had been folded to bring along. We were all a safe distance from the water’s edge. The four attackers had been strung up from a large tree branch that hung over the water. They were dangling with their feet facing downward.
Long ago, the club had rigged a series of ropes and pulleys to the tree, allowing things to be raised or lowered. If raised to its highest point, the items hung from the ropes would be several feet above the ground. It was a simple job to drop them if necessary.
The four captives were shouting and still arguing that we should release them. I’d named them idiot one through four, with Idiot One being the leader who did the majority of the talking. He was back at it.
“What’s this supposed to do? Scare us? You fuckers are such amateurs. If you think this will get any of us to tell you shit, you’re delusional. Let us go,” he jeered. His three companions laughed.
“You don’t have a clue what we have in store for you. And I can guarantee you, what we have will make you pieces of shit cry and beg,” Butcher taunted.
“Oh yeah, so you’re gonna bore us to death,” Idiot Two sneered.
“You’re not from Florida, are you?” Scorpion asked casually.
“No, but what’s that got to do with anything?” Idiot Three asked.
“Because if you were and if you were familiar with all aspects of our beautiful state, you’d recognize where you are and would already be spilling everything you knew.
So, let’s get started. We want the name of the person or persons within the FBI who gave you Electra’s real identity,” Diablo stated calmly.
“Fuck you,” Idiot One snarled.
Diablo looked at each of the others. All three shook their heads, smirking.
Seeing they needed to be persuaded, Pres nodded to Punk, who used the master pulley attached to the massive tree’s trunk to lower them a few inches.
When he stopped, Crash walked over to them.
When they were strung up, my brothers had stripped them down to their pants and removed everything else, including their socks and shoes.
In Crash’s hands was a bucket with a long-handled brush.
He lifted it out, revealing a bloody mess dripping from the bristles.
Quickly, he swiped it on their feet and then backed away.
“What the fuck is that?” Idiot Four hollered, kicking his feet like he thought it would get rid of the mess on them.
“Jesus Christ, that stinks.” Idiot Three gagged.
“That, in case you don’t recognize it, is rancid chicken fat, blood, and guts. We might not like it, but our buddy does,” I informed them with a grin.
“Buddy?” Electra whispered in my ear.
“Yeah, our friend. You’ll get to meet him soon, we hope. That smell should bring him running,” I whispered back to her.
“What goddamn person would be attracted to this shit?” Idiot One snapped.
“We promised you’d meet our buddy Bert. No one mentioned that he was a person.
Sorry. We should’ve given you his full name.
It’s Gnawbert. He’s a legend around these parts, and no one willingly wants to tangle with him.
Who can blame them? A thousand-pound, seventeen-foot-long alligator isn’t the way I’d want to go out.
Especially when he’s eating me chunk by chunk from the feet up.
Talk about painful,” I explained gleefully.
Electra gasped. The four captives gave me disbelieving looks, then the leader shook his head. “He’s lying. There’s no alligator out here. If there were, they wouldn’t be standing here. It’s a scare tactic. Don’t tell them anything.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. See, it was my idea to feed enemies to Gnawbert. It’s called Scorpion’s Sting. As for being afraid of him, sure, we have a healthy wariness of Bert, but Swerve and I grew up with him and the other critters in these swamps. You don’t believe me. Watch this,” Scorpion demanded.
He held up his cell phone. From the sounds of it, I knew what it was. It was the video of Gnawbert taking out Paige’s dad and brother when they’d been given to Bert several months ago. The screams of terror were enough to make me shiver.
The captives’ faces went stark white, and I thought Idiot Two was about to faint, but he held off. When Scorpion was done, he stepped back again. Electra was grasping my hand tightly.
“Th-that’s fake. You didn’t feed anyone to an alligator,” Idiot Three stammered.
“Oh yes, we did, and they weren’t the only ones.
Where do you think your dead buddies from earlier went?
They’re in the water throughout this area waiting to be future meals for Bert, his friends, and other animals.
We work with the ecosystem, keeping the wildlife fed.
Now, you have a choice. You can stay quiet and not tell us what we want to know, and we’ll let Bert have you piece by piece.
We’ve heard that it’s an excruciating way to die.
Or you tell us everything and we’ll end your lives humanely, which is more than you deserve, but we’ll do it for all the information we need,” Diablo explained.
“And no, there’s no option where you walk free. You’re going to die. It’s only a matter of how fast and how painful. Which do you want?” Butcher asked.
“Go to hell,” Idiot One said, spitting toward us, not that it could reach us.
“Okay, you asked for it,” Thunder said. He gave Punk a chin lift, which was his signal to lower them another six inches. This caused two of them to cry out in fear. However, they didn’t speak.
After a couple more applications of chicken goo, we raised the heat.
I lifted a female gator call. I blew on it, making the bellow of a mating alligator, although to our ears it sounded more like a low growl.
It would signal to any gators within hearing distance, which was at least a mile, even if our ears couldn’t hear it.
Since this was Gnawbert’s territory, other male alligators would stay away.
“What the fuck did you do?” Idiot One cried out.
“Oh, this, just the sound of a female gator eager to mate. This sound will bring Bert running. He loves the ladies.” I winked.
“Damn straight. We’ve lost count of the babies he’s fathered over the past thirty years or more,” Diablo added.
The traffickers seemed unsure whether they should believe us. However, the answering call from a distance chose that moment to sound. That made them scream in fright and kick their legs.
“Get us down! We’ll tell you whatever you want!” the leader shouted.
“Oh no, we’re not letting you down. Tell us what you know, and then we’ll take care of it. The faster you talk, the faster we can save you from being eaten in chunks,” Butcher told them.
“Let’s start with the name of the one who betrayed Electra,” I demanded.
“The boss has a man on the inside of the FBI. He’s been on the payroll for a few years. His name is Lyle Villard. She’s been a pain in the ass for a long time. Finally, the boss had had enough and made his guy find out the identity of Bellona,” the lead idiot rattled out.
“And you know this because the boss told you this? I don’t see you being that high up the chain to be a confidant,” Scorpion sneered.
“I keep my head down and my ears open. No matter how careful someone thinks they are, I learn things. I overheard the boss on the phone with Villard. You don’t believe me, that’s your problem,” he snapped.
“Alright, let’s assume you’re right. You keep referring to your boss. Who is he?” Electra asked.
When none of them answered, I raised the call to my lips again. Seeing it, they yelled for me to stop. Again, it was the leader who answered.
“We’re dead anyway, and there’s no way you’ll ever be able to take him down. He’s untouchable. I wish I could be here to see him kill you and every one of these motherfuckers. Our boss is Hiroki Ogawa. Maybe you’ve heard of him.” Idiot One smirked at Electra.
Her expression told us she had.
“Babe, who is this Ogawa?”
“He’s a rising star in the Japanese Yakuza. He has been dabbling in so many different things over the past five years. He’s on Interpol’s most wanted list. If he’s the boss, then it’ll take a lot to bring him and his organization down.”
The four goons laughed at her words. “See. You’re a dead woman, and so are the rest of these bastards. You should let us go,” Idiot One prodded.
“That’s never happening. Lower them another foot and call again,” Diablo ordered Punk and me.
“You can’t! You promised us,” Idiot Three wailed.
“I don’t make deals with cocksuckers like you. We’ll let Gnawbert enjoy himself. I suggest you kick as much as you like. He likes his food lively,” I taunted them.
Perhaps I should have felt guilty for calling in Bert and for our not keeping a promise, but I didn’t.
We had work to do and no time to waste. The information we’d learned needed to be reported to Anderson immediately.
We had to figure out how to keep Electra and the rest of us, especially the old ladies and kids, safe until Ogawa and his people were eliminated for good.
I had no idea how to accomplish that, but I vowed it would happen.
The answering bellows had us moving further away from the water’s edge, and the side where Gnawbert liked to enter and leave the water.
Punk lowered the men until they dangled no more than a foot above the water.
As they screamed and kicked, we impassively watched.
I tried to have Electra hide her face in my chest, but she refused to do so.
It wasn’t more than a couple of minutes when the ripples in the water announced the arrival of Bert.
When his mouth opened to grab the first man, Electra gasped and pressed into my side, but she never looked away.
It was only a short time before all four men had been dragged beneath the water after logrolling with the gator.
Their bodies would be stashed for a future meal when they were nice and rotted.
“Let’s go home, Luz de mi vida.”
“I’m ready. We’ve got work to do,” she replied.
It was a quiet ride back to the clubhouse. I wondered the entire ride if we’d ever be able to make any of us safe again. I’d never regret being with her, though I hated the danger I brought to my club.