“Cliff, get down!!”
The kid stood up against my orders and whipped a gun out from the waistband of his jeans. He started firing on the group of men approaching HQ. I watched in amazement as a couple of them fell to the ground. It wasn’t clear how many of them Cliff actually hit because the boys upstairs were returning fire as well.
I had definitely gone soft, I realized. It had possibly happened before Julia even showed up. At some point, I had stopped carrying a gun on me at all times. I reached for it now, crouched on the floor near the staircase, but it wasn’t there. I didn’t have my holster under my vest like I always used to. Things had been too quiet and too easy for far, far too long.
I looked around the room to see if there was a gun sitting out where I could get to it, but no such luck. My gun was upstairs in my personal room.
Cliff’s gun stopped firing, and I heard him fall before I saw him tumble to the ground. There was blood everywhere, but the lefty’s gun fell out of his hand and slid in my direction. I quietly thanked him as I reached for it. He had been a promising prospect, but at that moment, I needed the protection, and he was lying on the floor of the garage, either dead or dying.
I eyed the garage doors. I needed to lower them so we could go on the defensive from upstairs, but the hail of gunfire made it incredibly dangerous to try to get to the front of the building. I fired off a couple of rounds to try to take a few of them down and clear the air enough to make my way over to the doors to let them down. On my feet, gun in hand, I took a step and fired. I watched one of Ivan’s men crumble to the ground outside. Feeling pretty good, I took another step.
Suddenly, shots rang out behind me. Some Kings of Hell members hurried downstairs with guns in hand. Automatic assault rifles surrounded me. They were actually weapons from a shipment we had intercepted on its way to Ivan a while back. The irony was as delicious as it was deadly.
“Get the doors,” Angelo said as he walked past me.
The guys ducked down behind anything they could to shelter themselves from the bullets raining into the garage. Chase and Juarez climbed into the Suburban and shot through the back window—we had each door, including the rear, insulated with Kevlar just for situations similar to this one.
Angelo caught me watching the guys and jerked his head towards the doors, reminding me to get them down. I jumped into action, ducking as I hurried to the chain holding the doors in place. I grabbed the first one and started to let it down when a black leather gloved grabbed my wrist and a thick Russian accent interrupted me.
“No, that’s not a good idea for you,” the bear said, pulling my arm back and head-butting me onto my back on the floor. He laughed a thick, heavy laugh as he pulled up his gun and aimed it at me.
Just then, he took a hit to the head and toppled down in front of me.
“If you don’t get those doors down, Gage, you’re next,” Angelo called, but I didn’t hear his gun go off again.
“You gotta be shitting me,” I said aloud, looking around for him. I couldn’t see him anywhere. “Angelo!” He didn’t pop up anywhere.
I grabbed the bear’s assault rifle and started popping off guys standing behind the black SUV’s lining the street. They were using the cars for cover. Glass shattered, and a few of the men fell. We were doing something right, because the gunfire was quieting down. I took advantage of the lull in action and grabbed the chain again, unlatching it to let the door close rapidly. A few bullets tinged against the thick sheet metal as it lowered, but one made it in underneath the door before it closed all the way.
My leg was on fire. The pain lit me up. I grabbed my thigh and lost my balance, toppling to the floor. I couldn’t hear anything for a moment other than the rapid pumping of my pulse in my ears.
“I’ve been hit,” I mouthed, unsure if the intended shout ever left my lips.
As the rattling of the garage door and the pop-pop-popping of gunfire returned, I heard glass in the office break. Shit! Someone was coming in that way. The door opened, and another large Russian stood above me with a cruel, sadistic smile on his face. Where the fuck was Ivan getting these guys? Were they cloning these guys over there?
I reached for Cliff’s gun again.
“Don’t worry, little man, we aren’t going to kill you. We’re here to take you to your little whore girlfriend,” he said in his thick accent.
He reached down and grabbed me by my vest, pulling me up off the floor.
“She’s going to be happy to see you. Until she sees what we’re going to do to you,” he said with a satisfied smile on his face.
I put the gun under his chin. “Fuck you,” I said as I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. We both fell to the floor.
I looked around the room. There was still no sign of Angelo. Gunshots still rang out from the Suburban, so I knew Chase and Juarez were alright. I was honestly surprised they weren’t standing in the middle of the street shooting at these guys.
I dropped through the opening in the bay, leading to the pit, where we would normally stand to reach the bottom of someone’s car. The interrogation room wasn’t the only one we had downstairs. We also had an arsenal downstairs, locked behind a cage. No one ever paid it much attention because it was behind a couple of tall tool boxes on rollers.
I shoved the tool boxes out of the way and fished out my key to the arsenal. I grabbed the tear gas and a couple of masks for anyone still downstairs. I took to the stairs again, running up with my equipment. I tossed the gas masks in the Suburban.
“Guys, put these on!” I lowered mine and lobbed a few gas canisters at the guys standing on the street. A few moments later, as I pulled down the other bay door, the gray cloud of gas filled the street, and the gunshots ceased.
Chase and Juarez cheered as they lifted the back gate of the SUV and climbed out. They put arms around each other’s shoulders and laughed.
“Yeah, we did it, man! Good thinking, Gage!”
Their celebration was cut short when they saw the two men laid out on the garage floor—Cliff, Juarez’s prospect, and Angelo, a long-time member of the Kings of Hell MC.
Juarez lifted his gas mask. “No way! No fucking way! Gage, man, we can’t let them get away with this shit.”
I stood over Angelo’s body, staring down at the man who had been like a mentor to me since the day I’d started moving up the ranks. My leg didn’t hurt anymore, the gunshot wound numbed by my anger.
“We won’t,” I assured the knuckleheads. “They won’t get away with this.”
“Guys, how’s it going down here? Holy shit!” It was Ricky, catching sight of Angelo and Cliff as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Yeah, that’s how it’s going down here. How about upstairs?” I started walking towards the stairs.
“We got three bodies in the clubhouse, and luckily there wasn’t anyone on the third floor,” Ricky reported absently, unable to take his eyes off his fallen brother.
I was impressed we didn’t lose more. We were taken completely by surprise. I clapped a hand on Ricky shoulder, snapping him out of his trance. He looked at me, and his eyes widened when he saw my leg.
“Shit, Gage, let’s get you upstairs so we can take care of that,” he said, pulling my arm over his shoulders to help me walk.
“Sounds good. Chase, Juarez, get someone down here to help clean this up, and get someone to clean up the clubhouse,” I barked. “We also need someone to check upstairs and see if the rooms need any cleaning.”
“Already got someone on that one, Gage,” Ricky assured me. “You let the boys handle the rest. We need to get you cleaned up.”
“They have Julia,” I told him while we trudged upstairs.
“We figured that much,” he told me.
“No, I mean they have her. She didn’t escape with Dimitri. Dimitri took her. He probably tricked her into feeling sorry for him or something, and when she went to let him go, he grabbed her and took her with him to Ivan. They probably know everything by now,” I explained.
“Don’t write her off too fast, Gage. If he double-crossed her, that probably just made her more loyal to you as an alternative to being screwed over. Just keep that in mind moving forward.” He sat me down on one of the couches.
Upstairs wasn’t too bad. There were a few of the guys’ old ladies still a little jumpy from the ambush. One of the couches had been pushed up to the windows, where someone had tried to hide behind it. I saw the blood, where I assumed he’d taken a fatal hit and collapsed. There were chips in the brick walls where bullets had rained in like hail. One of the dart boards was toast. The TV was toast. Those were just things, though. Things could be replaced. They were going to pay dearly for the five guys they took from us, and for trying to use Julia as leverage.
“It’s okay, ladies,” I called out to the women cowering at the tables in the back of the bar. “They’re gone!”
Meanwhile, members of the MC swept and cleaned up. One guy pulled the couch down from the window. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I saw the couch clearly, though. It was riddled with holes from where it had taken quite a few shots before letting a couple get through to the guy who’d been hiding behind it.
Ricky came back with a knife, some bandages and gauze, and alcohol. He cut my jeans open around the wound in my leg and took a look at it. I winced as he wiped the blood away to get a better look at my leg.
“It looks like it went straight through, brother.” He reached a gloved hand around the back of my leg, and I winced again as he found the exit wound.
“That’s not too bad,” he continued. “At least I don’t have to dig that shit out, right?” He chuckled.
“Yeah, just get me cleaned up and bandaged, Ricky. Damn,” I snapped.
“On it.”
A few minutes later, with my leg wrapped up and taped together, I sat up and looked at him. He was getting his things back together to take behind the bar.
“How the hell did this happen?” I asked him.
“You already know the answer to that,” he said, giving me a straight-forward, no-nonsense look. “It’s pretty obvious that Dimitri told Ivan where we were.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” I shook my head. “Besides, Ivan already knows where HQ is. I’m surprised he took this long to ambush us. No, how did we get to a point where our rivals are strong enough to come at us like this? How did we get to the point where we aren’t really on top anymore? Do you think I let this happen? Is it because of bad leadership?”
Ricky cocked an eyebrow. “I know better than to answer a question like that, Gage, but if you think that’s the case, brother, do something about it. This is your MC as much as it is anybody’s. If you feel like we need to make changes, now’s the time.”
I thought about his words for a minute. “Yeah, I think you’re right. We need to hold an emergency meeting with everyone who’s here. We don’t need to bring anyone else to HQ today, and we need to make sure our women get out of here safely.”
“Hey, Gage, Ricky, you guys need to come see this.” It was Jorell, standing at the window, looking down.
“More bad news,” I groaned as I got up from the couch and walked over to see what he was looking at.
I hobbled over to stand next to him. Our bikes had been trashed by Ivan’s men before they left.
“Yeah, emergency meeting. Now. Here in the clubhouse, so everyone can be part of it.”