Rough Men (16 page)

“You got something for my friend?” said one of the men in the group. He was holding one of the short-barreled AR-15s and clearly talking to Chris.

“Yeah,” said Chris, “it’s upstairs. You want me to go get it?”

“
Si
.” The man barked something else in Spanish, and two of the other men walked to Chris. The three of them left the room. Will could hear their feet as they went up the stairs. No one said anything while Chris was gone. Will, Jason, and Isaac just stared at the feet of the men who were now in control of the situation.

Noise on the stairs again snapped Will’s head back up, and Chris and the other two men came sauntering back into the
room. Chris had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and the swagger that had turned to fear was back. Chris had lucked out; he was winning. It made Will sick. Not because he was probably going to die soon, but that he’d had the chance—thousands of chances, really—to kill Chris and just walk away. He hadn’t, though. He’d been so sure that he needed to get to the bottom of everything, but there was no bottom. A man with lots of power was going to see to their ends. Will would never get to see Alison again, never get to enjoy the life that he had left and had always taken for granted.

As they were walked out of the house into a pair of waiting black vans, Will wanted to run so they’d be forced to shoot him in the streets. Getting into the van, he wasn’t sure what was worse: not having the balls to run or that they weren’t even bothering to cover their heads with hoods, like Chris had said they’d done to him. Will sat with a banger on either side of him, behind him Isaac was similarly surrounded, and in the row in front of him, Will could see that Jason was as well. When Chris got into the van and sat two rows in front of him, Will could hear him cracking jokes to himself, the idiot not yet realizing that no hood for him this time meant that the real joke was on him too.

Lightning flashed again, and the wind buffeted the still-stationary van, making it bobble right to left as the thunder crashed around them.
What an odd night for a thunderstorm
, Will thought. Storms in late February or early March weren’t impossible, but they were not a common thing, not by a long shot. Hail came with the rain, pitter-pattering off of the van like shot rolling down a tin roof. No one else in the vehicle seemed to notice, so Will tried to ignore it as well. Still, it was odd. A near blizzard two days ago, a thunderstorm this late in winter, and now pea-sized hail, maybe even bigger than that. It was a fitting end to the night, a winter maelstrom still deciding what type of storm it wanted to be, snow or thunder, ice, or lightning.

T
he driver of their van was cursing in Spanish.
Will couldn’t understand the words, but he was clearly not very happy. The weather had not gotten any better since they’d left the southwest side, the rain and hail mixed with occasional blasts of snow. A weatherman would have called it “wintry mix”—cold and warm fronts clashing to create conditions that could be politely described as difficult to drive in. One of the men next to Will was ignoring it, playing a game on his phone, but the other, a boy younger than Alex at the time of his death, looked terrified. Will didn’t blame him.

The van was rocking so much that Will felt as though he were on a ship. The windows around them were fouled by weather; the rain made the snow stick to the van, and then more rain would glaze it into a thick crust. Only the front windshield remained clean, and that was only because the wipers were working at a frenetic pace. Will couldn’t see the speedometer well enough to read it from where he sat, but he would have guessed their speed at no more than thirty miles per hour. There were almost no other cars on the road for them to have to worry about, but Will thought he understood the fear in some of the men and in the eyes of the driver.

The package Chris had secured obviously had some sort of significance beyond what some random little trinket in a bag could have supplied. The crew of gangbangers that had met them at the house hadn’t been sent to stop them; they were still a wildcard. The show of force was a coincidence, likely intended for
the intimidation and probable deaths of Mumbo and Rob. The gangsters were likely as shocked to see them back at the house as they had been to see the gangsters there.

An especially strong gust of wind threatened to spill the van, but the vehicle righted itself, the driver spitting a song of foreign obscenities as the bulky vehicle regained its footing.

They’re going to take us to wherever they took Chris, to a place with bloody chairs and grinning men who smell like death
, thought Will. Where could that be? Had they been headed south on 131, the highway that splices through the middle of Grand Rapids, he would have assumed they were heading to a farm or slaughterhouse. Since it would have been faster to take Ivanrest to the northwest side, especially in this weather, Will decided they were being brought north of Alpine. There were a number of nondescript warehouses out there, the
Grand Rapids Press
had one of its own among the anonymous others. It would be a perfect place—outside the city, but close enough to be there in ten minutes if need be. Passing through the lights adorning the tall buildings of Grand Rapids, Will felt miserable that this was the last time he was going to see them.

How long would Alison wait to remarry? Hopefully not long. She deserved to be happy. Would his death be anonymous, or would they let his body be found? Will assumed the former was far more likely; why give the police anything to work with? There was nothing holding back his tears and his fear beyond a dignity he was only now discovering in himself, a determination to die with dignity, or at least as much dignity as he was capable of if the MS-13 leader decided that he needed to die a bad death.

The wind was really howling now that they’d left the city, moving their van back and forth. Will could no longer see the taillights of the other van traveling in front of them. Their driver was doing a pretty good job, considering. They passed by Alpine, its normally bright retail lights nearly smothered by the weather,
the parking lots that Will could see empty and the almost always clogged traffic nonexistent.

The weather was some of the worst Will had ever seen, but as they passed the first exit ramp past Alpine, it somehow got worse. The younger, nervous man sitting next to Will said, “Shit,” in a thick Latin accent. Just then, through the window, Will could barely make out what looked like a giant tearing off the top of a warehouse, just as a regular man would tear the top from a tin of sardines. The sound it made was horrible, an otherworldly screech. The van swerved, Will assumed to avoid something, and then Jason was smashing the bandanna-covered face of the man next to him with an elbow and shooting the man’s carry piece into the front of the van. The noise from the gun was louder than anything Will had ever heard, and the men around him were covering their ears and shouting rather than attacking Jason. At that moment, as Jason was finding a way to free them, or at least himself, the world went upside down. The same hand of God that had been tearing the top from the building seemed to lift them as well, and then the van was airborne and spinning.

Will awoke confused, and then the fear came back to him.
We crashed.
He began trying to move as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and to the pile of unconscious and possibly dead men around him.

As worried as he was about his brother, his priority was to make sure he was going to be in a safe enough position to try to help Isaac and help himself. Will’s body felt made of aches. He heard a voice begin swearing in Spanish, and then that voice was extinguished as another voice said, “Choke on that, motherfucker.”

Jason
, thought Will, trying to pull enough air into his lungs to call for what he was starting to think of as his old friend.

Will’s eyes continued orienting themselves to the darkness, as well as to the odd shapes that the ruined van and even more ruined bodies were taking on. The gang members were everywhere. The scared kid who’d been sitting next to him had his brains leaking out of his ears and his nose. Already having a rather deplorable day, Will had no problem with rooting around for the kid’s pistol, finding it tucked into the waist of his pants and taking it for himself. He slowly racked it to check the chamber. The gun was a Glock and had not been taken care of properly. It would have to work.

Will began to slide, pistol first, to the back of the van, which, he now finally realized, lay upside down. This helped him make some sense of the scene. The seat he had been in was fine above him, but the roof over it—now the floor under Will’s knees—had been crumpled like an accordion, making the trip to attempt to find Isaac into a series of valleys and hills. One of the MS-13 members groaned when Will placed his hands on him, and Will responded by hitting the man in the throat with the butt of the pistol until he stopped complaining. The wind was blowing snow into the distressed van, and Will could hear Jason dealing with another one of the bangers in his own way, but he didn’t care; he could see Isaac’s shirt, and the shirt was covered in blood.

Next to Isaac, or at least what Will could see of him, one of the bangers was starting to stir. Will, sore or not, increased his pace, the pistol in front of him. Behind him, Will could hear a struggle. That, and hearing Jason say “son of a bitch” awoke something in him. Will turned, the pistol coming up naturally, somehow, and shot the banger holding Jason in the head, dropping him. Will had only fired a Glock a couple of times, and the weird part was how quiet the gun was, almost no noise in the van.
My ears
, Will thought, as he raced—well, crawled—back to Isaac and his bloody shirt.

Isaac was underneath one banger, plus half of another. Will could feel, if not hear, another gun go off near what had been
the cab of the van, but chose to ignore it. He shoved the sawn-in-half MS-13 member off of his brother’s prone body and was happy to see that Isaac was still intact, at least from the waist down. Someone behind Will, in the front of the van, began to scream, then stopped as a sputter of hail attacked the ruined vehicle. When the hail passed, the scream had become a gurgling noise. Will dragged the other man covering his brother from off of Isaac, then began scrabbling at his brother’s wrist to try to feel for a pulse.

Isaac was alive. Twin bubbles of snot and spit were inflating and then deflating under his nostrils, and Will was sure he could hear him moaning.

The sound of thumping came from the front of the van, and craning his neck, Will could see Jason beating another one of the gangbangers to death with the butt of a pistol.

“Get your fucking brother, Will!” Jason was screaming at him, and Will, terrified that he was going to somehow damage Isaac further, began to crawl over the dying and dead while dragging Isaac by his feet. His brother wasn’t stirring, which Will took as a bad sign, but tried to just ignore it. Something grabbed at his leg, and Will jumped, almost screamed.

“It’s just me,” said Jason. “Hold on tight.”

The tugging on his leg grew stronger, and then first Will and then Isaac were out of the van and onto the highway. The wind was insane, but relief flooded Will. They were alive. He looked for the other van, but other than some tracks leading off the highway, it was gone. He gave Isaac a glance, knowing that a day of hauling his older brother around was just beginning, and then turned to Jason.

Jason was bleeding from a cut over his right eye but met Will’s glance with a grin. He was holding an AK-47 that he must have taken from one of the dead bangers and tossed a short-barreled AR-15 to Will, a semiauto with some sort of sight on top. Will fiddled with the sight for a moment. Then,
after pushing a button on the back of it, a small red dot surrounded by a red circle was visibly projected onto a clear, square piece of glass. Will took the safety off and lowered it.

Jason was moving Isaac to a sitting position, then picked him up over his shoulder. “We need to find your brother some shelter.”

“Don’t you think we should just get out of here?”