Book 2: Chapter Two

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Ten thousand things to do, and only a few minutes to get it all done. I briefly handed off all of Luis’s weight to Sango so I could peel off my gear. Leaving my rifle was hard, but for once the money truly wasn’t important. I gave Luis the same treatment, pulling off his vest belt to drop them in the back alley. Feeling around in his pockets, I grabbed his wallet and made sure to keep it.

“Sango, got anything on you that would give us away?” I asked.

“No, I do not think so.” He said. His tremors were so bad that they made Luis shake, so I picked up my part of the work as soon as I had the chance.

I could have stopped to bandage Luis’s wounds, but I could hear the ambulances on the street ahead. Giving competent first aid would only raise more questions and make it harder to get away. Once I had him settled on my shoulder again, I leaned forward and let myself fall into a walking pace.

“Everything is gone.” Sango said. “How will we recover from this?”

“Hmm?” I was so tired that I didn’t understand what he meant.

“Our building is gone. Our best employees are gone. Can we still sell if there is nowhere to sell from?”

I snorted a little. “The Block is fine.”

We made it out of the alley and set Luis down on a park bench. The crowd on the street noticed the blood in seconds, shrieking and backing away.

“Need an ambulance!” I said in the most ragged voice I could. “Oh God, someone please help him.”

As big and intimidating as we were, my tone got attention. Within seconds an ambulance was rolling our way, pushing people aside to arrive on the sidewalk. Two EMTs leapt out of the vehicle and pulled a stretcher from the back. The four of us were able to get Luis off the ground, where they tore off his clothes to reveal a visible hole to the left of his belly button. The edges of the wound were puckered with coagulated blood, but the rest of it was bleeding freely.

“What happened to him?” One of the EMTs asked me in Krio. The other was hard at work starting an IV and dressing the wound.

“The three of us were gonna go grocery shopping, and, oh fuck.” I said, pausing to take a breath. “Those bombs went off, except Carlos was walking ahead and got hit. Is he gonna go be OK?”

The EMT turned his attention away from Luis to glare at me, obviously not convinced. “Were you involved in the fighting up the street? This looks like a gunshot wound. I can’t treat it properly until I get an idea of what size it was.”

Right, like I was going to say we’d baited an international mercenary organization into a meat grinder of dirty bombs.

“I swear that’s what happened. I ain’t about that gang life. Please, just save my bud. We ain’t got much left.”

“He’s very sick. We should be able to save him, but he’s very sick.” The EMT said, his attention back on Luis. “You’ll need to stay here to answer some questions. Can’t fix your buddy until we know more.”

I shook my head with too much force. “No, no Carlos has kids at home. I’ve gotta go take care of ‘em.”

A police car pulled up behind the ambulance, lights flashing. Before the cops got out I grabbed Sango by the shoulder and started backing through the crowd.

“You can’t leave! It’s illegal!” The EMT yelled.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’ve got to go!” I replied, and then turned to shove people out of the way. None of the civilians stopped us. I led Sango around a block before slowing down to pull out my phone again. Even as I texted Cambria my mind was on other things.

My only real priorities were getting Luis out of the hospital and finding Cambria. I wasn’t too worried about the second one, but the first was a potential problem. If they held him in police custody on suspicions that he was involved, I’d be questioned when I went to get him. Lying wasn’t hard, but cops could be bought like anyone else. Getting sold out was a real possibility.

Worse still, if The Gray heard about him by name they’d come for blood. Even if we’d done enough damage to put them out of business, they still weren’t all dead. I doubted Ashanda, their field commander, would have shown up in person. She was a deadly unknown, and I couldn’t risk leaving Luis open to an attack.

“Hello, thank you for calling the Eberth Communications Network.” Said the operator on the phone. After repeating the message in multiple languages and giving a list of options, a tone sounded. Ten seconds later the tone ended, and I entered the code I’d been given. I stepped of the street and into a back alley to make sure I wasn’t overheard.

“Mrs. W. Luis is in the company of known EMTs. I take it you were successful?” Spoke the voice on the phone, a woman with a British accent. I paused, slowly making the connections required to understand what she was saying. Shit!

“Can you disable his phone?” I asked.

“I can.”

“Do it.”

“Consider it done. I’m assuming that isn’t the only reason you called.” She said in a dry voice.

“I need him to get out of there safely. Bribe the cops. Don’t let The Gray in, and make sure he doesn’t leave wearing handcuffs.”

I could make out the sounds of her typing on a keyboard in the background. “I think I can do that. Is that all?”

“No. I need to know if we did the job.”

“I strongly suspect you haven’t, but you’ve at least slowed them down. I will let you know what news I get about their status. Anything else?”

“Nope. Just don’t fuck up with Luis.” I said.

“We won’t.” And then the line went dead.

I took a moment to pause, breath, think, and make sure I wasn’t fucking anything up. What were our weaknesses? Luis was an obvious one. Sango and I still being on the street was another. Cambria was out there somewhere, too. I’d need to find her soon, since she couldn’t defend herself. Other than that, things weren’t too bad.

“I am confused.” Sango started. “You said the Block is fine. How is it fine?”

“All of our sales are automated. Cambria did it. We’ve got a computer that handles everything for us, down to the buying from our suppliers. We’d be making profit for weeks after our deaths.”

Sango’s eyes went wide, and then narrowed. “You knew they would come. You used us.”

“You? No. You gave good advice, and we are keeping it mind. Most of the rest were hired as defense, then told to blend in. Not our fault that they didn’t pick up on what was happening.” I said with a shrug.

“I do not like being used, mister Reed.” He said, as if it could change anything. I ignored him, reading the text Cambria had sent. Once I’d looked around to figure out where I was going, I set off in her direction.

After a few seconds Sango followed after me. He was a problem waiting to happen, a single guy that knew too much and had almost no loyalty to me. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to care about him, but I’d have to start pretending to keep him around. It was that or kill him.

Sunset was two hours away, which gave us a little bit of time before gangs would be moving freely. People were still converging on the scene of our battle, mostly because they had nothing better to do. They were paying more attention to the destination than to me, and often bumped shoulders with me as they walked.

I growled and shoved them out of the way. They started to get the message and walked around me, forcing Sango to walk in my shadow to avoid them. As the crowds started to shrink in size I spotted Cambria sitting on a bench. She was looking for us, turning her head often enough that she never was never quite sat still.

“Yo.” I said with a wave. She deflated as soon as she saw me, slouching back into the bench.

“Where’s Luis?” She asked.

“Probably at the hospital by now. He took one to the belly, but I think he’s OK.” I replied.

Her mouth hung open. “Oh no. How bad was it?”

“Bad.” I said. “He’s gonna be out of the game for a few weeks, at least.”

“But he’s not…”

“I’ve seen worse, believe me.”

I caught Sango by the shoulder when he tried to slip away. “Hold up, we need to talk.”

“We have nothing to talk about.” He said, failing to slip out of my grip.

I shook him by the shirt and forced him down onto the bench, causing Cambria to stand up. Shit, how was I supposed to talk him down? The guy had more than a little right to be angry, which put me off my game. My normal method of dealing with people was to buy them or threaten them into listening to me. Neither of those methods would work with Sango, he knew enough that he couldn’t be forced. He needed to trust me before he’d take my money again.

“Let. Me. Go.”

“Not until you hear us out first.” Us, I had said. C’mon, Cambria.

“You used me. Sir, I do not have much in this world but my pride. Tell me that you would have saved me if I had not been with Luis.” It was a command, but also a plea. I could lie, but I couldn’t back it up.

“Let him go.” Said Cambria.

On instinct I obeyed. It felt dirty, like I was losing somehow. Sango stood up and gave me a glare. “I will not share your secrets.”

That was all he said before he walked away. Soon he was out of sight, lost among the buildings in the city.

“Why?” I asked.

“You couldn’t keep him. Even if you somehow convinced him to stay for now, he’d spend every day wondering how we were going to set him up next. With Luis gone we need more people in our inner circle. But not him. Besides, we have a way to watch what he does.”

So that was that. In less than two hours I’d gone from running an organization with a major set of employees, to being essentially alone with Cambria.

“Whelp,” I started. “lets figure out what we’re gonna do next.”

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Book 2: Chapter Three

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“Do you know where Luis is?” Cambria asked.

I thought about it and realized I’d forgotten to ask.

“No, but our backer would. Call ‘em.”

She hummed to herself and looked around as if curious about something. “I’m going to check on him.”

“That’s not-” I started before shutting my mouth. Very few people in the world knew that she was in Kismal. Even fewer knew she was connected to us. I felt better thinking that she would make sure Luis was gonna make it, so I gave in. “Nevermind. Do it.”

She nodded. “Alright, so, I guess this is where we split up. What are you going to do?”

That was a good question. It was only seven in the evening, which gave me plenty of time to get something done. I figured we needed to make our victory sting, to hurt Ashanda in some way while they were off balance. It was too bad that The Gray had their own communications network, I’d have liked to hunt her down personally.

“I’m not sure yet. Figure I’ll call in a favor or two, see if I can find Ashanda. If she’s at the port I might be able to get at her.”

We were still standing in the middle of the sidewalk with people all around us. Normally I’d be worried, but we weren’t sharing anything The Gray wouldn’t know. Even mentioning Luis wasn’t a factor, given that he was in the hospital as Carlos.

“Anything else?” It was like she didn’t want to leave.

“Nope. I’ll keep in contact. Let me know how he is as soon as you see him.” I said, massaging my tight muscles.

I waited for her to pick a direction before heading off the opposite way. The first thing I did was text Hector Sell, the arbitrator Fourth Street used to use. I was asking for contacts in the port, in downtown, and two other apartment nests where I thought she might be holed up. That done, I flagged down a taxi and hitched a ride to one of our suppliers in the east market.

It probably wasn’t my best thought out plan. I wanted to hit The Gray, and I wanted to do it fast. There were mercs that were good for stuff like that, but I felt like it’d have greater impact if it was done with people loyal to me. That left a very small number of groups that owed enough to the Block that they wouldn’t try to fuck me over.

Thirty minutes later I was there, bathed in the smell of fish and sweat. Wiry men by the dozens were unloading open-back trucks that carried the day’s catch into east market at all hours of the day. The market was surrounded by buildings and the paths inside were too narrow for cars to enter. It was a place free of conventional burdens, such as sanitation laws. The fish were gutted on slime-covered tables and sold fresh to the poor who lived in the decrepit surrounding structures.

There were a lot of drugs sold in the east market. We picked up on using some of the locals as suppliers because of how hectic the place was. When hundreds of people funneled through every hour, no one notices a few kilos of coke or some marijuana passing through. At first we’d come asking for people to sell to us, but the Block was growing faster every day. Nowadays we got lower-end groups begging us to distribute for them.

I worked my way through the crowds to a particular hovel buried in the side of a building. If I was remembering right, these goons were particularly stupid and willing to please. Plus, they had guns. I needed guns more than anything.

There was no door on the stairway that led into the basement. How they didn’t get washed out when it rained was beyond me. A plaster hallway emptied into an open room where several goons of varying colors sat on couches. Seven people in total, a few of them were watching movies while the majority were sitting around a table that had plates of Doritos and dip. They stood as soon as I entered, going from relaxed to a fake kind of menacing in seconds.

“Yo, who the hell are you?” Said one of them as he stomped over.

“The guy who owns you.” I said, doing my best to keep my face blank.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You owe your profits to the Block. I run it.”

I looked around for their cooking area and couldn’t find it. Had I gone to the wrong place? No, I could smell a hint of something like drain cleaner in the air, faint enough that whatever room it came from had to be partially air controlled. That was more intelligence than I’d expected from the group, but it didn’t change my intent.

“I don’t believe you.” The goon said with a narrowing of his eyes. Those flanking him chimed in to agree with him.

“Eight kilos this week. That’s what you made, that’s what we bought. We sent an angry native with a gimp left arm to pick it up from you. He didn’t like your boys very much, and said so.”

Shit, I felt like I was turning into the guy who was controlling me.

The goon crossed his arms. “Fine. I’m Victor, and what the hell do you want?”

“Damian. I want you and your boys to help me rough up one of our enemies.”

“Not a chance. That all?” He said as two of his men joined us carrying weapons.

“I pay well. Very, very well. You help me, you’re gonna move up in the city. Not to mention that I’ve got connections that you need to get ahead.”

Victor glanced to both sides and then shook his head. “Do we look like fighters to you?”

They really didn’t. There wasn’t any coordination, a couple of them had weak builds, and their weapons were incredibly basic. One had a breach loaded shotgun while the other was brandishing what looked like a twenty two.

“Doesn’t matter. We’re not storming Los Zetas’ home turf, just something simple.” I said, seeing if I could salvage the situation.

“I said no. We ain’t gonna fight for no one. There’s a reason we’re cookin’ and not slingin’. I want money, and that’s all.”

I frowned at him. Even though I saw where he was coming from, it caught me off guard. I’d spent months now working with people motivated by or pushed into violence. Somehow I hadn’t even considered that there were people in Kismal who weren’t willing to kill and die for their ends.

“You’re not gonna make it in this city with an attitude like that.” I set my face into a glare.

“We’re doin’ just fine now. Got money to eat and money to have fun with. What else do we need?”

I gave it five more seconds to see if he’d fold. “Fine. May contact you again, may not.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not gonna get pushed around for the kind of money you’re payin’.”

The goons stared me down and waited for their leader to give an order. I shook my head and walked out, stomping back up the stairs into the dim evening. Where was I supposed to go? Mercs were still a poor option, but they were a consistent one. Wasting more time on another group that only might be willing to help would mean losing my advantage. Even as I left the market I was looking for ideas and coming up short.

Damn them for being a bunch of pussies. I understood them, might have even done the same thing, but damn them anyway. Still fuming, I reached for my phone to see what news had turned up. There were two texts about The Gray running wounded to their barracks at the port and another saying they saw a suspicious vehicle leaving downtown. Two more were from Cambria. Nothing, however, told me where Ashanda might be.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax, and realized that I’d been wired since the fighting had started. The tension wouldn’t quite leave my body, but as it shrunk I was able to think more clearly. I paused on thinking about Ashanda and opened the texts about Luis.

Found him. They’ve got him in the emergency room, but he’s probably going to have to get surgery to remove the bits of metal that broke off the bullet. He’s lost a lot of blood, and we don’t know his blood type, and they don’t have O negative to give him. I think they might be able to test for it? I couldn’t really understand them. I just hope they do it soon.

That stung more than a little. I should’ve made sure that he got sent to the good hospital in uptown, and not wherever the fuck they took him. Our backer had the cash to pay for the best treatments, so him not getting what he needed was on me.

He’s in surgery now. The doctor told me he would probably be alright, but didn’t make a guarantee. Are you OK? Can you come here?

I didn’t hesitate in asking for the address.

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Book 2: Chapter One

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“It won’t last.” Cambria said, throwing our her hands in a gesture of surrender. “You guys are the experts, but this is simple economics. Poppy prices are up. That’s a cold fact. We can’t keep the same prices on heroin when the cost of business is higher.”

I nodded to show that I was listening, and then looked at Sango. He smiled to show a set of chipped and rotted teeth. Sango grew up poor hungry, which left him with a small frame and a head that barely came to Cambria’s shoulder. By all appearances that fact didn’t bother him.

“You would be right if this the United States, I am in agreement. However, I think that here you would be doing great harm to raise the prices. The sale is not what matters right now. The poor and homeless love the Block for the opportunities it gives them. A man can feed his starving children on the work he does for us. That is what we must grow. Money will come later.”

Cambria looked like Sango was suggesting we take up tap dancing. “But we’ll be selling at a loss. Sure, we can maintain it, but we don’t know for how long. When others start taking action against us those lost profits might matter.”

Tapiwa leaned against the wall to the side, looking bored. I was pretty sure she picked up every word we spoke, though she knew her place. We’d hired her for security, and she never tried to overstep that. Her MP-5 was slung over her shoulder and dangled under one arm, within reach but not threatening. She was nothing like Sango, who did everything he could to earn my favor.

The shitty thing was, he tried to compete with Cambria to ruin my opinion of her. Like most of the third world, he didn’t have very high opinions of women. It often hurt him more than it helped. This time, though, I agreed with him. Our Block had become a local movement, and that was where our power seemed to be.

I shrugged. “I think we should keep the prices where they are. You’ve got a good point, Cambria, I just think you’re not used to this line of work. Emotions matter when common sense isn’t a normal thing to have. You know that we can afford it.”

That earned me an even wider smile from Sango, and a tired look from Cambria. If he’d bragged about it I would have hopped off the desk and laid him out. As it was I kept my seat, leaning back to rest my hands on the desktop.

“OK, then what about the Musitano family’s offer? I’m not going to sample it, but their stuff has a good reputation. We could add it a specialty, make it available by request.”

“I’m alright with that. Sango?” I asked.

“They grow good product. Just know that if you agree, bigger fish will be watching us.”

I nodded again. “Consider it testing the waters, then.”

“I have a concern.” Sango began. “Not about the Musitanos.”

“Go on.”

A roaring detonation echoed through the building, followed by a rolling tremor that seemed to flow from the walls. The desk shook me off, and I stumbled forward to catch my footing. Cambria caught me as I fell and turned her head towards the door.

“What the fuck?” Sango asked as people started to shout down the hall.

Tapiwa was already in motion, putting her SMG to her shoulder and stepping out the door. She pivoted in place to check both directions. “Clear. We need to go.”

Gunfire quickly followed the voices, and screams came next. Shit, shit, shit, fuck! We already had a plan for how to deal with the attack that we knew was coming. It involved getting Luis, Cambria, and I to safety as quickly as possible, and was completely fucking ruined by the fact that Luis was on a lower floor.

“Tapiwa, go with Sango. Get Mason, Wu, and Nhamdi to block both stairs to the second floor. Go!” I yelled.

When Sango hesitated, Tapiwa grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the room. I turned around and walked to the back wall. Reaching up, I tore down the map I was using to cover the dumbwaiter. “Get in. I need to find Luis.”

She stood in place, glancing between the dumbwaiter and the door.

“Cambria, go! I need to move!” My yelling shocked her into action. She clambered in and put her hands on the operating wheel.

“Can’t I help?” She asked in a small voice.

“I’ll manage. Send it back up when you’re done.” I slammed the door shut and watched long enough to make sure that she started to lower herself down. That done, I went to my top desk drawer and pulled out my Glock 19 and the two magazines I’d stored there. I stuffed the mags into my pockets and chambered a round before exiting the office.

I pushed past others in the hallway with quick orders to head to the lower floors. The hallway turned left, going past one set of stairs and ending in a window. Four floors down, people were panicking; civilians tripped over one another as they looked over their shoulders at the door to our HQ. Mercs in blue and black crouched under the windows and by the door, with bodies further out on the street where they’d been cut down. Since there wasn’t any debris out front, I could only assume that one of the other walls had been blown in.

“Fuck!” I roared. The Gray was raiding us. The mercenary organization had a nearly perfect success record, with only one major blot on it. Two months ago they’d attacked and killed most of the gang I was in, Fourth Street. I survived, along with Luis and a handful of other people.

We had struck out to get revenge on them and almost completely failed. After the death of our only other operator we’d nearly given up. Circumstances got us back on our feet, and now it felt like a flashback. Once again my HQ was being assaulted by the mercs in Los Zetas employ.

A part of me that was buried under the cold fear, the pounding of my heart, and the anxious tremors was excited. What The Gray couldn’t possibly know is that we had a trump card this time. Of the twelve people we had working in the building, all but three of them were mercenaries. Tapiwa was the only shooter that knew the whole HQ had been set up as bait.

But before we could have our win, Luis and I had to survive.

I peeled myself away from the window and walked back to the stairs. The sounds of gunfire were rising and falling like tides as the situation shifted back and forth. On the third floor I paused to make a decision. The only thing I needed to accomplish was to find Luis. Since he hadn’t made it up to me yet, I could only assume he was either trapped or dead. If he was in the thick of the fighting, I’d need to gear up.

My rifle and vest were on the opposite side of the floor, and every second I wasted would lower my chances of saving him. Seconds ticked on before I heard another explosion, this one quiet compared to the first. Someone was using grenades on the floor below. I threw myself into a run and sprinted for my gear.

I shouldered my way into the room and grabbed my vest off the hook, using the time to regain my breath. Pulling my rifle out of its locker, I chambered a round and checked my safety. That done, I entered the hallway and started listening for the best way down. It was useless, echoes and yelling made it impossible to judge which side was more dangerous.

Taking a deep breath, I shuffled down the stairs. Leaving narrow areas was one of the hardest things in combat, and stairs were some of the worst. You couldn’t backpedal unless you wanted to risk falling over and getting hit while you were down. I chose to take two quick steps out onto the second floor and pivot in place to catch The Gray off guard. As I spun around someone slammed into my back, making both of us stumble.

We turned at nearly the same time, but he was going slightly faster than me. I leaned forward and put my shoulder into his chest, forcing him back a step. Only a second later did I realize that it was one of my guys I was assaulting.

“Mason, where’s Luis?” I asked. He didn’t respond. Instead, he threw himself against the wall and aimed the way he’d come. Footsteps on tile approached the corner and then stopped. I reacted on instinct, feeling something familiar about the scene.

I grabbed mason by the shoulder and pulled him back into the nearest room with me. Just as I lost sight of the corner, a grenade flew down the hallway. It bounced off the walls and landed a few feet short of our room, detonating before it had even stopped rolling. I heard the fragments shredding the walls of the next room and sighed in relief.

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him. More important things to deal with.” He said, taking pauses to pant between sentences.

“Well, we’d better find him fast.” I said. The mercs reacted by firing through the walls. Very few of the bullets actually made it through to our room, but Mason and I dropped anyway.

“Explosives?” I asked in a whisper, holding out my hand. My eyes were on the door, so when he placed a cold metal cylinder into my hand I brought it to my face. A flashbang. Not what I needed, but it would have to do. I put my hand where Mason could see it and used my fingers to count down from five.

On three I pulled the pin, and on zero I threw it into the hallway. Before it even went off I stood, checking over my shoulder to make sure Mason was doing the same. I could hear the mercs in the hallway scramble back before the flashbang went off.

Most people don’t appreciate how loud a flashbang really is. The sound of a rifle can set your ears to ringing after a couple shots. The sharp boom of the grenade was easily twenty percent louder, and in an enclosed space it physically hurt to hear.

With my ears already shot, I came out of the room pelting the corner with bullets. It gave me enough time that I could go around the next bend. I turned to find Tapiwa aiming at me with Ross watching the other end of the hallway. She was saying something, but I pointed at my ears and shook my head.

“Where’s Luis?” I asked. No go, she shook her head as well.

So there’d be no figuring out the situation. My hearing would recover in seconds to minutes, but every time we opened fire it would take longer. What did I know? For the moment we were on the opposite side of the building as the mercs. The hallways in between each had a set of stairs, and we didn’t have control of either one. That was the priority. Without access to one of the stairways we were trapped on our floor. Until I knew how many mercs we were up against we needed to be cautious.

I raised a hand and pointed my fingers ahead, hoping they’d pick up my meaning. Tapiwa did, putting her SMG to her shoulder and pressing forward. I followed behind, which was enough of a signal for Mason and Ross to fall in. Approaching the corner, Tapiwa leaned around and immediately pulled back. The gunfire that followed her pounded against my eardrums.

Decision time. Another grenade might push them out of the hallway, but it would definitely delay getting my hearing back. We were probably disadvantaged when it came to conventional gunfighting, too. What tricks did we have? Shooting through the walls was out because the stairs were lined with concrete.

It felt like fingers were pressing on my eardrums. The sensation didn’t have a pattern, and in a second I realized it was the sounds of speaking. At least two members of our group had their hearing back. That was comforting, but still didn’t give us a way out. What did we have that the mercs didn’t? In a flash that line of thinking brought me the answer.

“In here!” I said. We backtracked to the middle of the hallway and piled into the central room. I advanced on the wall and went to the side of the clothing locker at the back of the room. Ross saw me struggling and came over to help by putting his weight into the other side. With a groan we tore it out of the wall, the bolts giving way so it could fall free. The crash was loud and distinctive, giving The Gray a reason to respond. We didn’t have much time.

I threw open the door to the dumbwaiter and looked up. It had been returned to the fourth floor just as I’d asked, which left the pulley ropes danging down the shaft. I probably had time to run the lift down to me, but then we’d be traveling one by one. That meant we had to climb the rope, which would only work because the one used for raising the dumbwaiter wouldn’t have any give. I tugged on both ropes to find it was the right one that would be safe to climb.

And then it hit me that I had a very real possibility of losing Luis. The calm, sensible decision would have been to take my three mercenaries and drop into the flood drains below, like I’d planned to do from the beginning. If Luis was still in the building, that would be leaving him for dead. I turned to look at my employees who were waiting on my word. The real choice was obvious.

“Up.” I said, climbing into the shaft. “Use the right rope.”

Ross came next, followed by Mason. Tapiwa couldn’t fit once I was stalled at the third floor, so I went to work getting us out. Pulling the door to the side, I braced my back against the wall by using one leg to push against the frame. With the other leg I started to kick down the filing cabinets that blocked the exit. It took a few seconds each time because I had to reposition myself for each of the three cabinets, and The Gray was nearly to us.

When the last one fell I hooked my legs through the door and pulled myself into the room, holding my gun at hip level. Once I’d taken a quick look around I turned around and helped Ross climb out. I leaned over at the sounds of gunfire. Tapiwa retreated to the door and was trying to climb in without turning her back to the mercs, but it wasn’t possible. In desperation she threw herself into the shaft and grabbed the rope. She looked up, past Mason, to meet my eyes as they unloaded into her back. I watched her body let go and fall to the bottom.

“Fuck! Mason, hurry. Ross, check outside.” I barked. They knew about the dumbwaiter now. It wasn’t going to work as a way out. As soon as Mason was standing I pulled a knife out of my pocket and started cutting the ropes.

“Quicker.” Mason said, his eyes on Ross.

“This shit’s harder than it looks.”

I drew back at the sight of a rifle below me. They loosed a few rounds before stopping, followed by the sounds of discussion from the floor below. I stepped up to Mason and pulled a grenade from his vest. Pulling the pin, I let it cook for two seconds before tossing it down the hole. It bounced for too long to threaten The Gray, but the explosion cut the ropes. The dumbwaiter screeched on its rails and accelerated towards the ground, smashing to bits with the sound of breaking metal and chipped stone.

“Yo Luis!” Ross called from outside. My head spun around so fast that I nearly threw myself off balance. I pushed past Mason and stepped out to see Luis bracing himself on a door frame, bleeding through his shirt.

“Hell, man. Where’d they get you?” I asked, approaching him.

He was taking in short, ragged breaths and clutching at his abdomen. I didn’t even notice Sango standing next to him until he spoke up. “He got shot once in the belly and twice in the chest. Only the one in his stomach went through his vest, but I think he’s broken some ribs.”

“It ain’t good.” Luis looked up at me and I could see spit on his lips.

“You gonna make it?” A normal person asks that question as a sign of sympathy. I asked it because his answer decided whether or not we’d leave him.

Before he could answer, Ross spoke up. “Yo, what the fuck. Why were you hiding that lift?”

When Mason started to give me a glare, he continued. “The lockers on second floor. The cabinets on third. I bet there’s another exit behind… that fuckin’ stupid picture on first floor. Somethin’ don’t smell right here.”

Sango shifted his weight, looking confused. They were picking a really fucking bad time to bring it up. Even if they were gonna stab me in the back, they couldn’t do it until we were all out of the building. It was a waste of time, but they were too stupid to know that.

“I’m gonna need a doc, I think.” Luis said, scrunching his face up in pain. “Ow.”

That was something, at least. I spoke to the group. “We get out of this alive and I tell you whatever you wanna know. You gonna have a go at me right now?”

“I can hear them. They are coming.” Sango said.

“Fine. What’s the plan, boss?” Ross said, layering as much sarcasm as he could onto the title.

“Luis, we broke the lift. Can you crawl down the walls with the rest of us?” I asked.

“Fuck no.”

It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, since The Gray knew about it. That left fighting our way to the bottom, or jumping out of a third story window. As fucked up as it sounded, I didn’t have to think about it for long.

“Rope.” I said. “Anyone got something we can use as rope?”

“I got some parachute cord in my vest.” Mason said, pulling it out.

“They’re here!” Sango cried. The mercs were calling out orders and spreading across the floor. I walked pass Luis and peered around the corner to the next hallway.

“Mason, watch the other way. Ross, rig a rope as long as you can. We’re jumping.” I said.

“Long as I can? We ain’t got shit other than this.” Ross said.

“Then fucking tie it down. Soon as you smash the window- “ I was cut off by Mason opening up. He fired off three quick bursts at the far wall before stopping to conserve ammo. It was smart, but if the mercs could force him to fire a couple more times his magazine would be empty. As soon as he stopped threatening the corridor, The Gray would take it.

“Soon as you smash the window, we’re bailing. Thirty seconds, Ross.”

In front of me a merc checked the corner by putting his rifle out first. I waited, giving him time to stick his head out before blowing a hole in it. The body dropped across the floor and bled onto my nice white tiling. My arms shook from the excess adrenaline I was running on. I huffed out a series of short, deep breaths that did almost nothing to help my nerves.

My finger twitched towards the trigger with every sound I heard. Time ticked by slower and slower as I waited for them to make a move. Come on, Ross. There’s no way this hasn’t been thirty seconds.

Glass shattered somewhere behind me and I turned to bolt away. Seeing Mason still watching the corner, I yelled to him. “Mason!”

The two of us flung ourselves into the room to catch sight of what Ross had rigged up. The rope was tied to a pipe from the heat register and trailed down the side of the building, where there were likely mercs waiting for us. I approached the window and leaned out to see men with guns running towards a parked car on the sidewalk. Peppering them with gunfire, they were forced to back up.

“I’m going first. Mason, then Sango, then you send Luis down.” Even before I’d finished speaking I was slinging my rifle over my shoulder. I gripped the thin cord with both hands and did my best to rappel down the wall. Apparently it had only been a ten foot length, and I was left hanging just above the second story window.

“Fuck it.” I muttered, letting go. The fall was rough, but the alley was empty leaving me free to stumble back and land on my ass. Ross came through the window next, sliding down the ten feet before running out of rope. I caught him before he stumbled. Sango did much the same, and between the two of us he barely had any trouble.

I held my breath as I watched Luis slowly lean out the window. He put his hand on a piece of jagged glass that sliced his palm open, flinching away from the pain. Fuck, he looked pale.

“Now, Luis!” I yelled. His hands brushed the rope twice before he found a grip that worked. He threw a leg over the side and nearly let go of the rope, only keeping hold by some miracle of the wind. Hand over hand he came down until he found only air, and by that point he didn’t have any strength left.

Those of us on the ground fumbled for position, but none of them tried as hard as I did. His waist landed on my arms, giving me the chance to take the force with my legs. Sango wasn’t on the same page and fell down under Luis’s weight. Together, we set him on the ground where he coughed and sputtered.

After making sure he wasn’t going to die, I looked up for Mason. He should have come right after Luis, but there wasn’t a sign of him. It didn’t take a very intelligent person to pick up on what was happening, but I waited until I heard gunfire to give him up for dead. Without being quick about it, I pulled my rifle sling off my shoulder and gripped it by the barrel. In one motion I swung the butt into Ross’s face. His head snapped to the side and chunks of teeth slipped out of his mouth. It wasn’t the kind of hit you get back up from.

“You stupid motherfucker!” I roared, flipping my rifle around. I put two bullets in his chest, just to be sure. “You’re a better shot than Mason! Could have fucking saved him if you weren’t such a dumbass.”

“Can we go?” Sango asked as he helped Luis to his feet.

“Yeah.” I said through heavy breaths. “Lets fucking leave.”

I put myself under Luis’s other arm and helped walk him down the alley. Every few steps I fired a shot into the air to discourage the mercs from following us. Still, we wouldn’t have long before they came out of the building. I had to work fast.

“Hang in there, Luis.” I said, fishing my phone out of my pocket. He only managed to grunt in reply. With one hand I speed-dialed a number and waited for the ringing to stop.

“What is your emergency?” asked the woman on the hotline in Krio. Our backer was going to be pissed at me for attracting attention, but he could go fuck himself for all I cared.

“Got a wounded man. He was in a gunfight on Thirtieth street, just south of the older Harper building. Need an ambulance.” I was surprised at how exhausted I sounded. Even though I didn’t have a real injury, I was bone tired. I’d even messed up and replied in English, but she seemed to get the point.

“Emergency services are already on their way. Can I get-” I hung up on her.

As we turned a corner to come around another building, I called one of my speed-dial contacts. The phone rang once and went dead, leaving me to wait. The first one was subtle, like the crack of a whip in an otherwise still day. After that they came so fast that I couldn’t pick them apart. One hundred and sixty three dirty bombs, filled with nails and flecks of lead, blew up like a string of firecrackers and tore everything in our HQ to shreds. They snapped and popped in varying pitches before dissolving into nothing.

The screaming started quickly after. We’d lined alleys around the building with bombs as well, and I had a suspicion some of the shrapnel reached the street. I felt a tiny pang of regret, but not enough to make me regret it. The important thing was that we were safe. Everything else could wait.

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Chapter Nineteen

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I picked up the receiver phone and scrolled through the list of texts we’d gotten. Thirty seven people who wanted to buy, and that was just for one day. Some people were ordering for days in the future, and they’d expect their goods all the same. I groaned and set to coordinating people.

Luis and Cambria would be along to help me in a few hours, but they wouldn’t even be awake yet. The sky was still dark, though the city itself was covered with that annoying shade of street light orange. Just like the past eleven days, I couldn’t make myself get a full night’s sleep. There was too much to do, and every part of my body could feel it. I felt like a shaken can of pop, ready to burst at any moment.

Between recruiting, organizing sales, contacting suppliers, threatening suppliers, delivering, and making sure I didn’t starve to death, I was putting in fourteen hour days, easy. The good news? It was working. We were doing a thousand dollars in business every day, and word of mouth was getting me more customers and more middlemen by the day.

“Yo.” Luis said, cracking the door to my apartment. I glared at him, knowing full well he didn’t give a shit. He got a key so he could get in whenever he needed to, not because I wanted him to.

“Seriously?”

“I can’t believe it either. Woke up at five and just couldn’t get back to sleep. Fucking blows.” He said.

I threw the phone at him. “Here, I moved the orders for today to a folder. Go through them in order and put the numbers on the map.”

He muttered something I didn’t catch and stomped over to the wall where I’d spread out a map of the city. A small table in front of it had ordered rows of pins, each with a number tag. He looked at the phone before setting to work.

The pipes in the ceiling hissed as someone above me started running their shower. I’d picked the one bedroom because the living room was large and open, and because rent was expensive. It never hurt to spite our masters when I had the chance. The place was pretty upscale, sporting stainless steel appliances and three large windows that overlooked the city. I dropped the blinds, of course, but I knew the view was there when I wanted it.

My room was designed by some hippie, with a hole in the floor for the mattress and bathroom sinks of stone that had lips above the level of the counter tops. Blue painted piping snaked across the ceiling and wrapped around the light fixtures as some kind of fashion statement. Mostly, they just made annoying noises when people ran their air conditioning or water.

With Luis on map duty I had a chance to place orders. The W’s, who turned out to be at least five different people, had put us in touch with several smaller distributors. With the market run largely by Los Zetas and the Yakuza, we got rock bottom rates on decent quality shit and a promise to trade on our terms. That meant we could keep our identities secret while still getting the goods we needed. I ended up calling four different numbers before I’d bought all the stuff we’d need for the day.

“I think I’ve decided what I want to do about an HQ.” I said.

“Oh yeah?” He didn’t stop putting pins in the map.

“Mmm. Other than a couple of specific things, I think we’d do good anywhere near the center of the city. Part of downtown, the southern section of the business district, I think we’ve got tons of options.”

“Gonna make the call?”

“Soon. Anyway, up for a drive today?”

“I’ve been sticking pins in this map and texting burnouts for over a week now. At this point I’d fucking mow a lawn if it meant I didn’t have to be stuck in here.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like my company.” I said with a grin.

He threw a pin at me which caught the wind by its tag and spun to the ground between us.

“Maybe if you’d let me snort blow in here.” He grumbled.

“I don’t give a fuck what you’re on, long as you’re not fucking up the work.”

He stopped to raise his eyebrows at me. “Really?”

“What, you thought cuz I’m not using that I care if you do? C’mon man. The only reason I’m not hitting something is because I wouldn’t get shit done.”

“Well, fuck. I thought were being all serious now. I should have brought some blow.”

The joking and the small talk made time pass faster. By noon we were pretty much done with the background work, which left only the job of ordering our new goons around. It had taken a while for us to find four people who weren’t retarded among the free agents in Kismal. Anyone truly worth a damn had long ago been picked up by one group or another, which left us the scraps. I’d like to say I was confident in our choices, but they were really only good for taking orders.

Without a way to kill any more time, I pulled out my phone and gestured for Luis to be quiet. The W’s had started to change the code every couple of days, so I’d made a habit of putting the number into my phone. After the operator, the tone, and two rings, someone picked up.

“Mrs. W. Yes, Damian?” This was one I’d heard before. Her voice sounded like a croaking frog.

“We’re ready to run an HQ. I’m going to send you the list of things I want so your people can find a good building.”

“You want a base of operations? I hope you realize that you’re going to get fallout by seizing territory of any sort. Few groups have started to note your activities yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“I know. Just take a look at what I’m asking for, then you can decide if it’s worth it.”

“Alright. I’ll get you an email address by text some time today.”

“Good.” Was all I said.

“Oh, and you should know that my employer is getting concerned about your lack of progress. I recommend that you step up the time table of anything you’re working on.”

“If you agree to what I want we can make a move today.”

She paused for a few seconds. I could hear her moving papers even through the phone. “You’re not in a position to be delivering ultimatums.”

“It’s not an ultimatum.” I said, frustration slipping into my voice. “What we can get away with depends on how safe you’ll make us after the fact.”

“Fair enough. You’ll receive that email soon.”

I threw the phone at my couch and ran a hand through my hair. Dealing with the W’s always raised my blood pressure, but I was getting more irritated with every call. Stupid. Their whole organization was goddamn painful to deal with.

The text came in a couple minutes later, and I was quick to send the list I’d put together. All that was left was to wait until they got back to me. I sat down on the couch and slumped backwards, letting my mind wander.

“You wanna hit someone today?” Luis finally asked, coming back from my kitchen with a soda in hand.

“Gimme one.” He grumbled, but turned back to open the fridge again. After he’d tossed me a can I continued. “Not a hit, exactly. More like a business meeting.”

“Who can’t we just call?” He asked.

“The Rooks.” I said.

“Oooooh, I think I get it now. Sounds fun.”

“Not sure about fun, but it’ll be interesting.”

We lazed around my apartment for another hour, occasionally sending out orders to our guys in the field. Luis pulled pins out of the map every time a sale had been completed. Slowly the number of jobs to finish shrunk smaller and smaller. It seemed to take less and less time every day, mostly because I didn’t have to go do the pickups myself any more. I had a brief thought of the day when I wouldn’t need to do any work at all to keep the business running.

Doing the math, we were going to rake in $1457 in Leone for the day. With about half of that going to our own costs, we were almost at a point where we earned useful amounts of cash. The way it stood, most of our sales were small and poor on profit. But we needed those little sales to attract the attention of bigger players, so we couldn’t just cut them out.

It was strange that I felt so natural selling drugs. When I was off the street, the whole thing was just a numbers game. I had systems for deciding who went where and what middlemen to use for certain jobs, and once made they didn’t really need to be corrected. From there it was just sticking to what worked.

I had never been a big fan of math, and still wasn’t, so I didn’t have a clue why it came so easily to me. Maybe it was because it meant I didn’t have to deal with people, or maybe it was just cuz the job was easy. Either way, I was half asleep with boredom by the time that Mrs. W replied.

There are a number of buildings that will serve. A list will be sent to you before tomorrow.

I handed my phone off to Luis so he could read it. “C’mon, Luis. Lets go hit the town.”

We pulled out of the garage in my new Toyota Sequoia. New to me, that is. The car was a couple years old and looked it, but I’d been aiming for that. Driving a brand new car attracted attention that I wasn’t ready for yet. The Sequoia was reliable and sturdy, which wasn’t something you could say for most Japanese cars.

The old bank came into view as we approached downtown, and without really thinking about it I pulled over to the curb.

“Why’d we stop?” Luis asked.

“Dunno. Just wanted to see it again.”

Scorch marks dripped from the windows on the third and fourth floor where the paint had melted away. By the look of things the firefighters had stopped the blaze from reaching the street, but a distinct line of blackened cement made it seem like the flames had come out the door. All the blood and bodies had been removed, which I guess I’d expected. The building looked like a shell, scarred and empty.

It was strange to me that no one had bothered to fix the place up. I guessed that the fire had done more damage to the supports than I’d imagined. The bank itself meant nothing to me, but it was almost symbolic to see it broken and useless. It wasn’t something I could return to, even if I wanted to.

We’d become so different from who we were before. Two goons and a civilian trying to run a gang. It wasn’t the kind of rags to riches story I’d imagined as a kid, but it counted for something.
I opened my mouth to say something, but Luis was playing with his phone. With a look over my shoulder I merged back into the lane.

The brothel was named Wonder Woman, for obvious reasons. Last I’d heard the leader of the Rooks hung out here during the day. Two bouncers sat on either side of the steps into the building, smoking and laughing to themselves. A flickering neon sign spelled out ‘girls here’ and ‘hot girls’ in Krio across the windows. I wasn’t sure if the workers didn’t realize we could hardly read it in the light of day, or if they just didn’t care.

Luis and I were dressed in street clothes and had left our rifles behind. We carried handguns, of course, but anyone who didn’t was an idiot. The bouncers noticed us only enough to move a bottle of something out of arm’s reach as we walked up to the door. Luis stepped in without a thought. I paused to suck in a breath before following.

It hit my nose first. The raw smell of sweat, sex, smoke, and booze was like molasses in the air. For a few seconds it felt like drowning, suffocating on the disgusting fog. Women moaned in fake voices and men grunted in rooms that lined the whole building. I shook it off and pressed forward, approaching the man at the counter.

He smiled, which caused his chins to fold into his stomach. Tattoos swirled around his head and went below the line of his shirt in a way that seemed stretched. He looked like a local, but there weren’t many fat people native to Sierra Leone. Maybe he’d just been wealthy for too long “Are you two looking for a good time? I don’t recognize your faces. It’s forty thousand for the first floor, one hundred for the second, and five hundred for the third. ”

“Nope. Just want to talk to your boss.” I said.

“Oh, and why would I let you do a thing like that?” He spoke in easy English with only a slight accent. Though his mouth was still smiling, his eyes were carrying an entirely different expression.
“Just let him know that Fourth Street is here.”

There was a twitch at the corner of his lips. The mask fell off his face. “Get the fuck out.”

“I’m not trying to start anything. We just want to talk.” I held my hands up in the air.

He frowned, pausing to consider his options. I could almost see what was going through his head. First he wondered why we’d shown up and couldn’t figure it out. Then he tried to see the play we were making, but he was only concerned about the chance of getting killed. Since he couldn’t see a way for the two of us to kill everyone in the building, he gave up.

“I will tell him you are here.”

I leaned back against the counter as he came around and stomped up the stairs. That left Luis and I to take in the sights and sounds of the whorehouse. The place looked old, with stained wood paneling on the walls and beet-red shag carpeting on most of the floor. A hallway stretched from the lobby to the point where it turned a corner. I watched a naked man pull a woman by her hand out of one room and into another. She looked surprised, like she couldn’t really believe what was happening.

The girls and the ugly men who were fucking them hardly spoke to each other. When I thought about it, Wonder Woman was almost the opposite of Violet’s. Violet’s was about the hunt, finding a specific girl and then taking her. Wonder Woman was about sex as an activity. Here they charged for admission so you could have whatever fantasy you wanted. Most of the girls were sex slaves, so their bodies were about the only factor that mattered.

“He says you may come up.” The fat man huffed as he waddled down the stairs. He stopped halfway down the last flight and gestured for us to follow.

I peeled myself off the counter and went first. The third floor was much less offensive than the first. Most of the space was one open area where people were having sex on couches, tables, and swings. The girls here didn’t look so panicked, or as dead inside. I wondered if that meant they were broken in, or actually getting paid for it. Our guide walked around the piles of people like he didn’t realize they were there, taking us to a door at the end of the room.

For a highly profitable sex trafficking ring, there wasn’t a whole lot about the office that looked expensive. There weren’t even stacks of papers to make it look official. A few pieces of electronics that looked like they were from the cold war sat on a shelf to the side. They didn’t fit at all with the antique-looking globe and dusty old books that sat on a table in a corner. The only thing not littered with junk was the window sill, which gave us a nice view of the buildings across the street. It was like Rashandi was using the place as a storage unit instead of an HQ.

Rashandi was flicking a pen in his hand, idly clicking the button on every other spin. He frowned as we walked into the door and swept his hand at the chairs in front of his desk. Luis and I took a seat and waited for him to speak.

“It is not very often that I am at a loss for words. I pay for your gang to be destroyed and like cockroaches you come back. I thought that you were dead after your fiasco at the port, and I am certain you were aware of this. Now you come into my business, apparently just to talk. Alright, tell me. What do you want?”

“I’m here to offer you a once in a lifetime opportunity.” I said with a smile. “You pay me a thousand dollars a day, and you don’t lose everything you own.”

The whole meeting had been Cambria’s idea. We needed to have control over how Rashandi would react to our offensive, and she figured that if we were the ones to tell him he’d be more predictable. All I had to do was not lose my cool make sure he didn’t get mad enough to kill us on the spot.

“Protection money is the reason I put out the hit on your group in the first place.” He said, staring me down.

“I’m not protecting you from anything. If you don’t pay up, we’ll do the job ourselves.”

He set the pen down. “You want me to start a war with you.”

“Nah. Either option works for me. If you don’t pay, we have an excuse to fuck your shit up.”

“You know, I have heard of your new business. Selling drugs across the city, invading territories with the poor and stupid. It is clever, I like it. But you are thugs, and even clever thugs are only that. There is so much more to this city than violence, than even petty crime. You want to start a war? Fine.”

The fat man shifted his weight behind us. I didn’t turn to look, but I saw Luis reaching for his gun out of the corner of my eye. Rashandi said something in an African tongue I didn’t recognize and the guard stopped. They exchanged hurried words before the man stepped out of the room.

“Don’t try to fight us here.” I said.

Rashandi blinked at me. “Why should I not?”

“LIke you said, there’s more to this situation than just the three of us. You think you’re the only one with secret friends? You fuck with me here and you’re dead. There ain’t anything you care about more than that.”

“Of course if I start a fight now all of us will die.” He said, respecting our weapons. “It is good for me that you need to leave, and I do not.”

He wasn’t smiling or trying to gloat. It was a fact. The way things were, as soon as we walked away his men would kill us. I ran a hand through my hair and then leaned forward, resting my elbows on the desk.

“Like I said, you’re not the only only one with friends.”

“I do not-” He started, only to be interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

At the same time that I’d made a show of shifting my posture, Luis had sent out a text. There were a couple ways we saw the meeting playing out, so we made plans for every option.

“How are you…?” Rashandi asked, turning to face the window.

I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew the threat he was making. The man on the phone was a well known headhunter, someone that Rashandi might have recognized. In reality he wasn’t even within a mile of the brothel. Luis was sending him information from my left.

“And if I let them go, how do I know you will not kill me then?” He asked.

I answered that question for him. “You’re just gonna have to take it on faith. Now call your boys off. In English.”

“Barti!” He yelled. “Get in here.”

The fat man’s footsteps thundered on the floor as he charged back into the room. I turned to see him heft a sawed-off shotgun and aim at my skull.

“No.” Rashandi said. Barti immediately lowered the gun. “Help our friends down the stairs. They will be leaving now.”

Barti glared. He asked a question in that same foreign language.

“English. Now.” I barked.

“Are you sure?” Barti asked.

“I will not tell you twice.” Rashandi said.

“Come with me.” Barti said.

I stood, and Luis did the same. “Just remember that I gave you a choice.”

We followed Barti to the stairs and down to the lobby. The bastard did his best to growl at us, but the effect was ruined every time he gasped for air from his run. I backpedaled out of the door and down the steps, keeping an eye on the windows in case someone popped up to shoot us. When no one did, we turned and jogged for the car.

“Go, go, go.” Luis muttered, looking over his shoulder.

I peeled out with my hands tight on the steering wheel. Taking the first right, I started us on a twisting path to make sure we weren’t being followed. I watched every driver, questioned every car as I drove.

“Fuck!”

“What?” Luis asked, twisting his body to look in every direction.

“Shit, nothing, sorry. I just realized that I brought my new car out to their place. They probably didn’t get the plates, but I can’t really risk it.”

“So wait,” Luis started, pausing to look around. “Isn’t that what we wanted to happen?”

“Yep.” I said. A car pulled out in front of me and I swerved to avoid it.

“So you’re saying we won.”

“Yep. If we’re lucky he’s gonna go crying to Los Zetas, and we’ll have our war.”

He chuckled. “We are in so fucking far over our heads.”

“Yes we are. And we aren’t even done for the day.” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket to dial Cambria.

“You’re not gonna make me organize sales, are you? C’mon, dude.”

“It’s gotta be done.”

I put the phone to my ear and waited. It didn’t even finish one ring before she picked up.

“Oh thank god.” She said with a breathy voice. “I was so scared that I called the mercenary to make sure he hadn’t watched you die. You’re both OK, right?”

“Fine. Everything went fine. Say, got time to meet us somewhere with a spare car? I’m an idiot.”

She sounded like she was panting. “Yes. Sure. Just say where.”

I gave her an address before hanging up. Luis nudged me in the shoulder, and I shrugged in return. There were a lot of things that I wasn’t sure about anymore. What I did know was that I was anxious to get back to my apartment. There was a war to prepare for.

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Chapter Eighteen

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I sat on the balcony of our twelfth floor hotel room and threw my phone into the air. It spun in a full circle before I caught it again, and I was getting pretty damn good at timing it at precisely one flip.

“You know, from up here this place almost looks pretty.” Luis said from the chair next to me.

It did, kind of, with the palm trees that dotted the medians on the bigger roads. From a distance the place almost looked like Miami. A little shittier, sure, but close.

“It’s a big city.” I said. “Kind of weird to think that you’ve been within a few hundred feet of people you’ll never actually see.”

“Crazy. If it wasn’t so quiet at night I’d say there’s too many people.”

“Naw, New Orleans was too many people. Tourists and shit. I hate tourists. Don’t get many tourists here.”

He chuckled. “That’s something I guess.”

The screen door slid open and Cambria leaned out. I craned my neck to see her nappy hair and heavily lidded eyes. “You could have woken me up.”

“That’d be stupid. In our line of work you can’t ever be sure of a good night’s sleep. Might as well take ‘em when you can get ‘em.” Luis said.

“Yeah, Yeah. Are you going to call?” She asked, catching sight of my phone.

“We were just waiting for you. Might as well get it over with.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I want to start selling drugs. I think with a good bump in the beginning we can actually make this profitable. It gives us money of our own, and might get us connections we can use against the man on the phone. Only thing is, I’m not sure how to pitch it to our banker.”

“He’s apparently got ways to kill our family members. Why does he give a shit if we’ve got a little extra spending money?” Luis asked.

“That isn’t how he looks at it, Luis.” Cambria said. “We’re assets to him. You don’t put money into an asset without thinking about it, you ask ‘how can I get what I want with the least expense?’. Giving us more than we need is dangerous for him, and I’m certain he’s smart enough to know that.”

Luis hummed an acknowledgment and grew silent. I kept flipping my phone, trying to think up a good reason to get our way.

“I think I’ve got something.” Cambria said.

It wasn’t a complete idea, so the three of us fleshed it out together. The finished product was something more than passable. That done, I dialed the operator.

“Hello, thank you for calling the Eberth Communications Network.” The voice said in Krio. It repeated the message in English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and two other languages I couldn’t identify. “If you speak Krio, press one now.”

I glared at my phone as the computer ran through its speech. The whole thing took more than a couple minutes, and it really shouldn’t have. I couldn’t tell if whoever wrote the script was just wasteful, or if it was done to discourage people from waiting till the end. After the computer shut up, a tone played for what seemed like an eternity. I sighed aloud when it finally went silent.

“You guys remember the code?” I asked.

“Six four seven one.” Cambria said without hesitation.

I typed the code immediately the phone started to dial out to someone.

“Hello, Damian.” The voice that picked up threw me off completely. For some reason I’d been expecting a woman, but this was yet another man. He sounded like he was exhausted. “My name is Mr. W. What do you need?”

I swallowed my gall and pressed the attack. “We want money to start a business venture.”

“And why would you need to be running a business?” The whole question was one drawn-out sigh.

“It’s the whole reason your boss hired me. If he wanted muscle, it’d be easy to hire mercs better than us. No, we’re valuable because of our presence. You know about how we fucked up the docks. The idea that a couple of random dudes could take down an empire is scarier than the three of us ourselves.”

“I’m failing to see what this has to do with you having an enterprise, Damian.” His accent was British, nothing that would help me identify the group we were working for.

Luis shifted in his seat for the third time since we’d started talking. I gave him a look that hopefully told him to stop.

“Reputation. We want to sell drugs as aggressively as possible, across the whole city if we can. We want to do it and get away with it, so people will be scared to try and fight us. Being scared puts people off their game, plus the mental damage is worse than any amount of explosives we could ever use.”

It almost sounded like Mr. W was scratching his chin from the other end of the line. “Do you have a plan for your structure? Do you even have a budget?”

“I need to know how much money you’re willing to give me first.”

“That makes it sound like you don’t have a plan or a budget.”

“I’m not gonna repeat myself.” I said.

“Then don’t waste my time.” He said. The message was clear: we weren’t going to get money for nothing.

“Wait.” I said, almost growling the word.

“What?”

“What if I give you proof that it works? If I use my own money on our distribution method, and it works, will that count as a business plan?”

“No, but it would be reason enough to fund you.”

I exhaled forcefully. I’d almost thought we lost him.

“Good. I’ll be calling again, soon.”

“I’m sure you will.”

And with that he hung up. I picked up my phone and pocketed it again, growing a grin on my face. “See? This is gonna be easy.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Cambria said.

“Alright, I’m gonna go for a walk.” I said. Why not? It was a bright day and an early morning. I could waste more time being lazy, but I was already running on adrenaline from the phone call. Might as well do something productive while I felt like it.

“A walk? Are you trying something?” She asked.

“Hell yeah. I spent six days buzzing through plans, but we didn’t have the cash for most of them. Now that we do, I may have something that’ll work.”

“Want me along? Luis asked, standing up from his chair.

“You can, but I don’t need any help. Also, I think the fewer connections we have to this, the better.”

He shrugged and sat back down to recline. Cambria raised one eyebrow, to which I just shook my head. I’d have more answers for her when I actually figured out what was going to work.

It was a short, mildly terrifying trip to the lobby as the elevator creaked and jerked on the way down to the lobby. I stepped into smell of chlorine from an indoor pool and made my way to the desk so I could pay for our night.

“Room twelve twenty-nine. Last night and two more.” I said.

The woman at the desk dropped her eyes to the computer, punching in the information for our room. She looked at me, at the computer, and then back at me before speaking. “Sir, your room is already paid for.”

“Damnit.” I spat.

“Is there anything else you need?” She asked, shying away from me.

“No. Thanks.”

The hotel room was dirt cheap, even with the money we had left. Mr. W or someone in their group hadn’t paid to be nice. They were saying ‘anywhere you go, we control you’.

I stomped out the door and started to head in the direction of the nearest gas station. There I bought a burner and activated it on the spot, adding the number to my phone. The next part was going to be more involved, forcing me to travel towards downtown in the hopes of finding what I needed.

Each time I passed an alley I took the time to walk a few feet in and take a look around. Searching the back streets was a good way to tell when you were getting into the seedier parts of the city. The local, gang run government employed civilians to maintain the streets and public services, but the businesses were largely responsible for the paths around them. The closer you got to downtown, the more garbage and junk you’d find.

Graffiti on the wall caught my eye, and I paused to make sure it was what I wanted. A square with a diagonal line through it had become the local sign for drug sales. I’d heard it was useful back when the city started to fall under gang control, but now there were so many of the damn things that most of them were useless. Still, I couldn’t hit up any of my old connections for fear that they’d rat on me. That meant I had to at least check.

I was still wearing my greasy, sweaty shirt from the night before, so no one raised their eyes as I stepped into the open square. It was nestled in the middle of four buildings which all seemed to wrap around the space. Wood and sheet metal had been cobbled together into slanted roofs suspended on posts. People sat under or on top of them, smoking or sleeping or eating some disgusting food.

Off to the side there was a row of people slumped against a wall, all of them rolling on heroin or painkillers. A couple of the people were dressed in ratty street clothing, but most had some sense of fashion. There were enough decently dressed people that I figured it wasn’t just a hobo hangout. Someone here was selling.
“Hey. You looking for someone?” Asked a voice in Krio. I turned to face the sound of the noise and found a woman standing on one of the roofs. She had her hands in her pocket and looked down at me like I deserved to be at her feet. Dumb bitch.

“Not someone, something.” I replied, my language rough. “Got any coke?”

She leaned forward and stepped off, landing in a crouch some ten feet away from me. “Sure. Seventy thousand for a quarter, one hundred and fifty thousand for a gram.”
Those prices were insanely low, even for Africa. Obviously her coke was cut with something, or maybe even mixed with sugar to bulk it out. I agreed to her price regardless. It wasn’t important that the drugs be good when I was doing a simple test.

I left the den and set out east, aiming to skirt downtown. The only thing left to find was a vulnerable scumbag to be my middleman. That meant searching for a hovel of people that didn’t already sell. I had to find someone even dumber, with even less ambition than the lowliest meth slinger in all of Kismal.

There wasn’t a whole lot going on in the section of city I’d wandered to, so I had time to give everyone a look as they passed me by. To be completely honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for. Plenty of suitable people passed me by, but I kept dismissing them for scattered reasons. His eyes were too dead, no motivation. She was obviously a hooker. That dude looked like he was a pickpocket searching for a mark.

It turned out I wasn’t any good at picking people. After a bit I got frustrated enough that I decided to jump the first poor-looking person I found. A woman stepped out of a convenience store and started walking my direction. Her face was dull, but not glazed like the really bad druggies got. She wore ratty clothes and looked over her shoulder in the way that sets users apart from everyone else. I put myself directly in her path and forced her to stop in front of me.

“Hey, interested in making a little money?” I tried in Krio.

Her expression switched from startled to afraid to cautious in seconds. She looked me up and down before giving her reply. “How much, and where do you wanna do it?”

“I’m not talking about sex.” I said with a shake of my head. “I want to hire you.”

“To do what?”

“Not here. Let’s talk off the street.”

I wasn’t really sure how to phrase what I wanted, so what I really said was more like ‘walk with me away from the street’. She got the point, though, and followed me behind the convenience store.

“I’ll give you ten thousand Leone to deliver this and pick up some money.” I said, holding up the baggie of cocaine.

Her eyes went wide at the number. It was about two dollars and fifty cents in US dollars, which was more than most people in Sierra Leone made in a day. I could have offered her much more than that, but going too high would attract attention. If the whole city heard that was I paying big, my gimmick would be ruined.

Once she got over the number, her eyes drew into a scowl. “You want me to sell drugs in Coleda’s territory. I will not risk my life for so low a price.”

“Risking your life is exactly what I don’t want you to do.” I struggled to find the right words. “Your job is to hide these somewhere civilians won’t find them. You tell me the location and a customer will pick them up and leave money in the same place. When you think it’s safe, you go back and retrieve the money. Then we can meet so I can get what they paid.”

When her glare didn’t leave her face, I continued. “I won’t hurt you. I want you to work for me, maybe doing this more often. If you do it right, my buyer will never see your face. If you think you’re being followed or that someone might hurt you, don’t do the drop.”

“What will you do if I don’t get your money?” She asked.

“Nothing. You’ll just never get another chance.”

She shifted her weight from left to right, scrunching up her face in concentration. If she were smarter she could have pointed out a hundred flaws in my plan, but the money spoke louder than her fear.

“How will I contact you?”

I reached into my pockets and fished out a couple bills and the burner phone, dropping them into her upturned palm. She took the phone in her other hand and ran her thumb over it in an almost sensual way.

“It’s yours. My number is in there, but you can do what you want with it. Think of it like a bonus.”

“Alright, I will do it.” She looked like she really wanted to turn me down. “Where do you want me to put the coke?”

“I’ll text you. It’ll be somewhere close, just make sure the phone is on.”

She asked a couple more questions before we went our separate ways. With the charger and the coke also in hand, she went back onto the street that we came from. I snuck through the alleys and came out on another street. All I had left to do was wait for a half hour, so I planted my ass on a bench and watched the people pass by.

I got impatient before the half hour was up. With a text I told her to drop the drugs anywhere behind a building two blocks over. If she was capable enough to send me an accurate description of the hiding spot, I’d consider part one a success. That done, I went back to playing games on my phone.

Your goods are behind the hood of a vent on the right side of the Halal market. That caught me by surprise. Not only did she reply within ten minutes, but her directions were specific. I tried to hold my hopes in check as I stood up to walk that way. With one hand I told her to leave the area and come back for the money in half an hour.

The Halal market on Ghetva avenue had a burly middle eastern man standing outside. I wasn’t sure if he was checking people for the number of virgins they’d earned, or if he was just security, but I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to find out. Taking the back way hardly cost me any time, and in a moment I was staring at the side of the building she’d noted.

I spotted the vent and peeled back the cover. Sure enough the coke was in there, along with some mold that was loving the warm, moist air. I rubbed the baggie on the leg of my pants to get the gunk off and deposited the cash inside. After a look around to make sure no one was watching, I replaced the vent cover and walked away.

Buyer says he’s done. Go get the money, we’ll meet at the place I found you. For the billionth time I trekked back across the same stretch of town. The sun was starting to dip below skyline level, but it was still fucking hot. I was glad to be nearly done with the whole adventure.

She was waiting behind the convenience store with her hands wrapped around her body in an embrace. On instinct I checked the baggie of coke again, but it seemed to be the same amount that I’d bought. I shrugged to put the thought behind me and approached her.

“You got my money?”

“Here.” She said, pulling the bills out of her pocket. Since they were mine in the first place it was easy to count and make sure she hadn’t shorted me. It was all there, every last bill.
I stuffed the money in my pocket and turned to leave.

“Hey. Will you be needing any more help?” She asked. I spun on my heel, having completely forgotten she was there.

“If I need you, I’ll let you know. Don’t message me.” I said.

With that, I left the shadows and joined the people traveling down the street. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my good hand and trudged in the general direction of the hotel. The hottest part of the day was well upon me, turning my walk into a drawn-out torture session instead of a pleasant day’s exercise.

By the time I got back to our room my shirt was soaked. I took it off as soon as I walked through the door and threw it on the bathroom floor. The urge to shower was overwhelming, but I held off as Luis got off the bed to greet me.

“Sup? Where’s Cambria?” I asked.

“She’s buying a new outfit and other… girl shit. Fuck if I know. Anyway, how’d it go?”

“Pretty good. I think we’ve got something that will work.” I gave him a rundown of how I’d spent my day.

Luis listened half the time, and spent the other half staring blankly at the wall. After I’d finished he threw himself back on the bed and kicked his feet with pent up energy.

“So you wasted an entire day figuring out that a crackhead could hide some coke? That’s like, pretty much all they do other than using the stuff. You shoulda come to me, I’d have saved you some trouble.”

I sighed. “One of these days I’m gonna whup your ass, Luis.”

“Anyway, I still don’t see how this all comes together. Fill me in?”

I grabbed the end table and pulled it between the beds. Using my fingers, I drew out lines and shapes to diagram the process. “So, it starts with us. We get drugs from one of Mr. W’s suppliers. Someone on the streets orders from us, by text or by talking to one of our boys on the ground. We hand off the drugs that get dropped off, and the buyer leaves money in its place. Our boy brings the cash to a safe drop off spot, and we pick up the payment. Easy.”

“I get what you’re trying to do here with the guy in the middle and all, but what if some fucker just watches the spot after dropping the money off?” He asked.
“Well, hopefully our agent is gonna-”

“Pfft, agent?” He chuckled.

“Shut the fuck up. Our agent is gonna notice if something’s up and not go in. Even if they get caught, we still have solutions. If we’re careful about picking our meeting places, they can’t ambush us. Places with a lot of people will make it hard for them to jump us, and it gives them away if they try. Plus, we could give the agents a code or something to text us when they’re in trouble. Then we set up an ambush of our own.”

“I’m still seeing flaws here.” Luis said.

“If by flaws you mean ways it could get back to us, no shit. There’s no such thing as a fool-proof way to run a business like this. I’m just trying to bring down the risk.”

Luis used his fists to pound out a beat on the nightstand. “Alright, alright. I can dig it. When do we start?”

“I’m gonna get Cambria’s opinion when she gets back and then call Mr. W. If he pays out, I don’t see why we can’t start tomorrow.”

“Speaking of Mr. W, do you think that guy has a shift or something? I mean, he can’t be awake all day, but the dude on the phone kind of suggested we could call whenever.”

The door lock beeped and clicked open as someone slid their key in from the outside. I turned my neck to see Cambria open the door and drop two bags in the entryway before following them inside.

“I guess we’ll have to find out.” I said with a shrug.

“Find out what?” She asked.

I gave her the short version of what I’d told Luis, and when she asked twenty more questions I answered them all. She kept trying to break down every little part of the process even though I wasn’t yet sure of how everything fit together. My irritation lingered at the edges of my thoughts, but I did a pretty good job of not showing it. I’d have many more people to satisfy if I was going to be in charge of anything.

“OK, I’m sold.” She said.

With my foot I nudged Luis on the other bed. He snorted and then sat up to rub his eyes. “How long was I out?”

“Ten minutes or less. You ready to make this call?”

“I thought you were calling.”

Cambria glared at him.

“Hey, I get it, fine. Lets get this over with.”

I put the phone on speaker and set it on the table.

“Mrs. W here. Hello, Damian.” Spoke a British woman. The three of us shared a look, not sure what to make of that. Were they husband and wife? Was there any relationship there at all? I did my best to let it go before replying.

“Hello. I think we’ve solved our drug selling problem.”

“By problem do you mean you’ve developed a plan?”

“Something like that. What we did is…”

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