26. Rashid
RASHID
Devid takes the wheel and I climb into the passenger seat. When things like this happen, it leaves me scrambling. I like order and control, and sudden shocks to my system only bring out my demons. We pull into traffic and he accelerates hard, not bothering with the speed limit at all.
"How bad is it?" I ask, grabbing the door handle as he punches the gas.
"Bad," Devid says, checking his mirrors before he changes lanes. "Multiple shooters, heavy fire. Igor said the front of the building looks like Swiss cheese and he's counting the casualties now.At least one fatality."
This only gets worse by the minute. We shouldn't be losing men over this. How the hell did they find out where our warehouse is? "How many men did we have there?"
"Six on rotation tonight," he says. A truck cuts in front of us and Devid swerves around it, accelerating back into the lane without missing a beat.
"Igor got there first and found the Gusev crews already gone, but we know they'll be back.
It's probably a fucking trap. Mikhail showed up right after and they've been holding the perimeter since, waiting for us. "
"And nobody called me when it happened?" I grit my teeth as I see a light ahead turn red and the car doesn’t even start to slow down.
"Igor tried. Your phone was off." Devid glances at me. "He called me instead and I came straight to get you." He blasts through the intersection to the tune of horns blaring and squealing tires, and he doesn't even look fazed.
My phone was off because I was with Emory and I didn't want to be disturbed, but that was obviously a mistake. The rain picks up and Devid flips the wipers to a faster setting as we skid around a curve. I appreciate that he's the one driving as the roads get slippery. I'd have wrecked us by now.
"What else do we know?" I ask him.
"Not much yet," Devid says, accelerating through the next light before it turns. "Igor thinks it was a crew of six or seven based on the shell casings outside. They came in fast, hit the building from the front, and pulled out before anyone could respond. The whole thing took maybe five minutes."
"So they're sending a message."
"That's what I'm thinking too," he says, clenching his jaw as he steers us onto the river road where the traffic thins out and the buildings give way to stretches of dark tree line. "They didn't take anything. They didn't try to get inside. They just shot the place up and left."
So he's trying to bait me for some reason. He knows I'll come running and wants me to show up. Which means this may end up being an ambush. But I can't ignore a direct attack on my property. I have to show up.
"This is exactly what he wants you to do," Devid says, taking a curve in the road without slowing down. "He hits your warehouse to draw you out, and when you show up angry and reckless he's waiting for you. You understand that, right?"
"I understand it." He doesn't have to say what I’m already thinking. Gusev doesn’t just want my product or my shipping lanes. He's trying to kill me.
"Then don't give him what he wants, Rashid. We should turn around." Devid starts to slow the car, but I pull my weapon out and chamber a round.
"My family is exactly why I'm going," I tell him. "Just fucking drive."
I shoot Krispin a text to beef up security at home, but I don't get an immediate response.
When I look up, I see the warehouse. Bullet holes stitch across the loading bay doors in a ragged line, dozens of them, and the concrete around the entrance is chipped and cratered from heavy fire.
The metal door on the east wall hangs open on one hinge, and Igor and Mikhail are standing beside a black sedan across the street. They cross to us as Devid parks.
I'm out the door moving toward them as soon as the car is stopped. "Show me," I tell Igor. It takes a second, but Devid is hot on our heels as we storm across the street.
Igor leads us through the east door where we see the first body a mere ten feet inside.
One of our men lies face down on the concrete with his weapon still in his hand.
He never got a shot off. The blood beneath him has spread into a wide pool that soaks into the cardboard stacked along the wall. God, does it make my blood boil.
"Over here," Mikhail says from behind a row of shelving. Two more of our men are slumped against the far wall. One took rounds to the chest and the other to the head. Their skin has already gone ashen without much blood left in their bodies.
"Where's the fourth?" I snarl, ready to destroy Gusev and every single one of his men.
"Back corner," Igor says, leading me past the shelving to a support column near the loading bays.
Our fourth man is propped against it with his hand pressed over a wound in his side, barely conscious.
His shirt is soaked through and his breathing comes in shallow gasps.
With only a few left at this location, I'd say Gusev knows we're weak.
And five against whatever crew he has coming back to get me isn't a lot. This is dangerous.
"Get him out of here and to a doctor," I tell Igor. "Now."
Igor and Mikhail sling the man's arms over their shoulders and start moving him toward the east door, while Devid and I stand in the middle of the warehouse surrounded by my dead men and the wreckage of what Gusev's crew left behind.
I'm not giving up. He can come for me if he wants, but after tonight Gusev will know who owns this city. This has gone on long enough.
"Rashid, we should go," Devid says. "You know this is a trap. You know they're coming back for you." He grabs my arm by the elbow and tries pulling me like he's going to force me out the door, but I don't need his protection. I jerk away, snarling at him.
"Keep your hands off me." I start moving back toward the entrance, determined to see this through. I know Devid is only doing his job as my protection. He wants to play savior and I'm not having it.
"Rashid, please. You're my friend and?—"
He's still talking when the first shots come through the loading bay doors. Metal shrieks as rounds punch through it and sparks shower across the floor. Devid and I hit the ground at the same time, and the air fills with the sound of bullets ricocheting off everything else in their path.
"Can you see how many we're dealing with?" I shout at Devid.
"I can't see them," he yells back, crawling behind a concrete pillar. "They're firing from across the loading area and there's too much smoke to count."
I roll behind a pallet of crates and come up shooting through the gaps in the bay door.
Muzzle flashes light up the darkness outside and the return fire rips through the walls around us.
A light fixture explodes above my head and rains glass down on my shoulders, and rounds chew through the crates beside me, making splinters fly past my face.
"East door!" I shout at Devid. "We have to get to the east door!"
Smoke continues to fill the high ceiling of the building as flames start licking up everything in their path. They didn't just come in shooting; they set the fucking place on fire too.
"They'll cut us down before we make it," he shouts back from behind the pillar.
I fire another burst through the bay door and hear someone scream, but the shooting doesn't stop. More rounds tear through the building as the smoke gets thicker. "Devid, the building's on fire," I shout.
"I can see it," he calls back. He already has his shirt up over his mouth, trying to block the worst of the smoke from getting to his lungs.
The flames climb the south wall and catch the wooden pallets stacked against it.
The heat reaches me within seconds, but the thick black smoke is getting worse.
The shooting from outside starts to taper off and I realize what they're doing.
They're pulling back. They're not trying to kill us with bullets anymore.
They're penning us in and letting the fire finish it.
"East door, now!" I shout, and Devid breaks from behind the pillar.
I fire through the bay door to give him cover, then sprint after him, but the smoke drops lower and the heat on my back is blistering.
I can barely see him ahead of me through the haze when a section of burning shelving collapses across the aisle in front of us, twisted metal and flaming debris blocking the path to the door.
The flames roar up from the wreckage and the smoke forces me to my knees.
"We can't get through," Devid shouts from somewhere ahead of me in the smoke. I can't see him, and my lungs burn so bad I can't breathe. I drop to my knees, sucking in cooler air, but my head is spinning now.
"Boss," I hear, but then the world goes dark.