Chapter 10 – The Regiment
Chapter Ten
The Regiment
At the end of World War II, General John Bastian, a respected and decorated general of the U.S. Armed Forces, was sickened by what he considered a weak and corrupt leader. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t the only military leader sickened by his leader’s lack of resolve to annihilate the enemy. In fact, he was delighted that the same men who were forced to surrender, strong and fierce military generals from Japan and Germany, shared his distaste and dissatisfaction with the resolution of the war.
Buoyed by that discovery, General Bastian looked within the ranks of his allies, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China to find like minds. He was immensely pleased that there was a unifying clarion call between the nine generals.
They agreed that their leaders could not be trusted to finish any job, that there wasn’t sufficient resolve to do what needed to be done because insignificant priorities seemed to take precedence, and that their countries didn’t pay them enough for their sacrifice. Their anger, thirst for violence, and conviction that they deserved more adequate compensation resulted in their group, the Regiment, being founded.
It was ridiculously easy thereafter to find men in the lower ranks who were just as angry and dissatisfied, demanding compensation to carry out their bidding.
The main goal of their group was that, above all else, they would ensure that they shared in the spoils of whatever conflict emerged around the world. Their alliance was no longer to their country but to their brotherhood and the men who worked under them.
The intervening years were profitable and oh so gratifying. The nine generals gained wealth and power far beyond what they ever dreamed. They looted gold, oil, and minerals from the African continent because no one seemed to give a shit what was going on there. They smuggled drugs and guns out throughout Asia, North and South America, and Europe. They created pockets of crime syndicates in the developed population of the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, Italy, France, and Germany. Through those syndicates, they gained properties and businesses that they had never, not even in their wildest dreams, considered possible.
They had built an empire that their children and children’s children would benefit from. Almost eighty years later, the Regiment was a well-oiled organization with strict bloodline and misogynistic succession rules. Nothing and no one could touch them for wealth or power.
There had been many would-be strong men who had tried in those eighty years, but the Regiment had always crushed them. The Regiment’s strength was not only in their wealth and power, which, under normal circumstances, were enough, but their strength lay in their diversity, both in ethnicity and geography, their sheer size, and their anonymity. In the eighty years of their existence, only a select few knew that they even existed, and even fewer knew who made up their leadership.
The last founding member had died more than thirty years ago, and each founding member had been succeeded at least once by their sons and a few by their son’s son. They were a misogynistic lot. No women allowed.
The original ideals of the group hadn’t changed, but the leadership and their men were more violent, more ruthless, and cared even less about individual rights and dignity. They took great pride in their unmitigated power to choose the leaders of every major country despite the mirage of a democratic voting process. They determined what wars were worth fighting, when, how, and for how long. And for sure they set the policy agendas for every major government, not the whining activists and certainly not the public who thought that they elected their leaders. The Regiment, whose organization included hundreds of elite military men, was all powerful and destroyed anyone, anything, or any organization that threatened their power with swift and lethal retribution.
The emergence of the unified Italian mafia under one powerful Godfather for the first time since the Regiment’s formation threatened their unchallenged dominance and power. For the past year, the Regiment has been trying and failing to capture and later to kill the Godfather, whose name, Il Carnefice was now whispered in the underworld with the reverence and fear that used to be reserved for the Regiment alone.
Il Carnefice made an instant enemy of the Regiment when he walked in and decimated one of their units, which had been making a routine arms drop to the Triads. It had been in the Regiment’s best interest to continue to stoke the ongoing war between the Chinese Triads and Russian Odessa mafia. And that had been the unit’s mission. When the smaller crime syndicates fought, they weakened themselves and the Regiment would remain the unmitigated power in the underworld and beyond.
Il Carnefice had ruined their plans.
However, when the Godfather intercepted their gun delivery, he may have been trying to ensure that no weapons were being dealt in the Italian mafia territory, but no one told the Regiment what to do. They didn’t recognize territories or boundaries of any kind. Their power had forever gone unchecked, and certainly no new-on-the-scene mafioso was going to strong-arm them. They were determined to capture him and make an example out of him for all the crime world to see.
That had been the thought up until a few months ago, before their every attempt to capture Il Carnefice had been met with failure. Failure that hadn’t gone unnoticed. His elusiveness has only increased his mystique and esteem within the criminal world. After the tenth time that he and his bodyguards handed the Regiment their asses, ll Carnefice was fast becoming a legend.
“I want that fucker dead!” General John Bastian the fourth was practically frothing with rage. “Dead. Dead,” he boomed. Since he was from the United States and his great-grandfather had started the Regiment, he acted as the de facto leader of the organization, even though there was nothing formal giving him that designation.
“We all do,” Gensui Sorato Yamada snarled emphatically in a heavy Japanese accent.
The seven other generals around the table nodded in agreement.
“I had heard reports that he is part of the Petrov family,” Colonel General Vladimir Bakhin advised. “Since they have a headquarters in Russia, I have had some of my men looking into it.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” General Bastian muttered. “They run a weapons company, for Christ’s sake. Why would he need to deal guns on the streets?”
“And he is a black Italian male, not Russian,” Gensui Yamada said tersely.
“If he’s a younger brother, as is being rumored, then he may be unsatisfied with his share in the business and has found a way to freelance,” Colonel General Bakhin insisted. “As for being black, apparently, he was adopted into the family a few years ago. Who the fuck knows? I will receive the report soon, and you can have your answers. Any news on him, his family associations, and even his friends could prove useful.”
“In the meantime, there is a reported sighting of him in Las Vegas.” General Chadwick Newman of Canada was happy to be able to impart such important intel.
“Send a team,” General Bastian ordered. “In fact, send several teams. The Italians’ presence in Las Vegas isn’t that prominent, so I don’t get why he’s there. But whatever it is, I want this fucker surrounded and overpowered. Let’s see if he escapes us this time.”