Sons of Anarchy: Bratva (26 page)

The sound of gunfire had punctuated every moment since their arrival—some near and some distant—but he felt sure some of it was coming from that guest room on the third floor of the east wing.

“Fastest way,” Jax said.

Oleg darted back along the balcony portion of the mezzanine. Down below, he spotted Opie and Vlad, heard Opie shouting for Krupin and his men to throw out their guns and he’d let them live. Then Oleg reached a fire door, and Jax followed him through it. They hustled up the steps to the third floor, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor there.

Jax glanced right and left, oriented himself, and ran to the right without waiting for Oleg. There were guest rooms here, two floors above the lobby.
Stay alive,
he thought, mentally commanding both Trinity and Chibs.

A fire door blocked the other end of the corridor—an entrance into the east wing—and he and Oleg hurtled toward it.

Lagoshin spat curses as he erupted from an open guest room door, crashed into Jax, and slammed him into the peeling wallpaper on the opposite side of the hall. The TsNIITochMash flew from Jax’s grip and skidded along the carpet, far out of reach. Jax still had the bruises to remind him of the last time he’d met the massive Russian, and he didn’t want a repeat. He tried to twist free, but Lagoshin got a hand on his throat, smashed his head against the wall, and started to lift him off the ground. Jax’s back slid up the wallpaper, and his sneakers left the carpet.

Oleg shouted at them and raised his assault rifle, and one of Lagoshin’s men emerged from the guest room. The barrel of his handgun gleamed in the dusty daylight. Jax tried to shout Oleg’s name, but the Russian fired. The bullet ripped through Oleg’s gut and then lodged in the wall. Blood sprayed as Oleg went down. On the ground, he raised his AR-12 and fired, killing the man who’d shot him.

Then he bled. He tried to aim his AR-12, but if he pulled the trigger he might kill both Lagoshin and Jax. Wounded, hands shaking, Oleg pulled the trigger anyway. Three shots, and then he clicked onto an empty magazine. He’d be no help.

Jax wheezed, and his chest burned. As Lagoshin held him aloft, he managed to yank out his Glock, brought it around, and jammed it against the big bastard’s chest. Lagoshin grabbed his wrist and twisted, ripped the handgun from his grasp.

“Teller,” Lagoshin said, buckshot scars on his face gleaming.

Jax’s eyes widened, but he shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Joyce had eventually revealed his identity to the Bratva.

“You’ve been foolish. You killed Putlova, but I didn’t care about that. He was an arrogant bastard. Now I kill you. I kill Sokolov and his men. No more gun business for the Sons of Anarchy.”

Black spots at the corners of his eyes, losing air and on the verge of losing consciousness, Jax pressed his heels against the wall behind him. Fueled by rage and desperation, he brought his feet even higher and pushed hard, pistoned off the wall, and forced Lagoshin backward. The Russian lost his grip on Jax’s throat, and Jax sucked in a ragged gasp of air as he hit the carpet on one knee.

Lagoshin barked Russian profanities and bent to reach for him. Jax dropped onto his side and whipped both legs around, knocking Lagoshin’s feet out from under him. Lagoshin fell hard, his head striking the wall, and landed on the carpet with a thunderous crash. Jax stood as Lagoshin tried to rise, disoriented.

He kicked Lagoshin hard in the temple, then delivered a follow-up to his mouth, but he said nothing. Jax had no interest in taunting Lagoshin. The huge man groaned, then shook himself like a wet dog and growled as he rose to his hands and knees. Jax glanced at the handgun that Lagoshin had torn from his grip. Just beyond its place on the carpet, Oleg sat against the wall with his hands pressed hard to the wound in his abdomen. His eyes were open, but he looked pale, his face slack.

“Kill him,” Oleg rasped, blood bubbling on his lips.

Jax aimed another kick at Lagoshin’s skull. Even as he did, the big Russian launched himself upward, hurling himself from hands and knees into a battering ram. He tackled Jax, slammed him to the carpet and straddled him, backhanded him twice and wrapped his huge hands around Jax’s throat and began to squeeze. The pressure forced a strangled grunt out of him, the last of his air. The pressure made Jax cry out in rage and pain.

In his mind, he saw the faces of his sons. Of Tara and of his mother. Somewhere nearby, Trinity and Chibs were in trouble, but he realized he was not going to be able to help them.

*   *   *

Trinity had fooled herself into thinking they could escape through the window. She’d picked up a chair and slammed it against the glass. If the pool had been full, maybe they’d have been able to make the jump, but they were thirty or forty feet above the rear parking lot. If the fall didn’t kill them, it would mess them up badly enough that they’d be lying there broken and bleeding until Lagoshin’s men came and finished the job. She’d given up smashing the chair against the window after the third attempt. The glass had cracked, but there seemed little point.

Only then had she seen the door to the connecting guest room. She’d unlocked and opened the door, but of course there was one on the other side—one that could only be unlocked from the adjoining room.

“Chibs!” she called.

He had shoved the dusty, stained mattress off the box spring and put it against the wall, an added layer for the Russians’ bullets to pass through. Now he glanced out the door, assault rifle clutched in both hands.

“I can do this all day,” he shouted to them. “You want us, you’re gonna have to come in after us!”

“Chibs!” Trinity snapped.

He whipped around to glare at her. She pushed the floor lamp back so he had a clear view of the connecting door and pointed to it. Holding his gun, she mimed shooting at the lock, and he nodded, a mischievous light in his eyes.

Chibs held up his hand, palm flat, halting her. She frowned, and he sketched his fingers at the air, indicating that she should go out through that room and into the corridor. It took her a moment to realize what he wanted, and when she did, she thought there might have been a look of mischief in her own eyes as well. She relished the moment. Any second that passed with her feeling something other than fear was something to cherish.

She gestured toward Chibs.

He thrust his assault rifle out into the corridor and fired blindly in the direction of their attackers. With the gunfire as cover, she shot out the lock, blowing a hole in metal and wood, tearing the mechanism in two.

The door swung inward. She didn’t even glance at Chibs as she rushed into the next room, spotted the same dusty bed, the same dust motes dancing in the sunlight streaming through the windows, the same sad, faded artwork on the walls. She ran to the door, hauled it open, and ducked into the hall. The Russians were twenty feet along the corridor, ducked into the recessed doorway of a guest room and so laser-focused on the space where they expected to see Chibs firing at them that it was a couple of seconds before one of them noticed her.

Trinity didn’t try to aim. She lifted the gun and fired its last two bullets, then ducked back into the room and threw herself onto the floor.

Bullets tore up the open doorway, splintered wood and drywall flying.

More gunfire, but echoing now from the next room as much as it was out in the corridor. She heard a cry of pain, a terrible grunt, and then the wet, heavy sound of bodies toppling to the floor. Trinity had provided a distraction, and Chibs had taken full advantage of it.

“Clear!” he called from the corridor.

She lurched to her feet and out into the hall, gun left on the floor, forgotten.

In the hall, Chibs relieved the dead men of their weapons. He handed her a sleek assault rifle. The gun felt heavier than anything she had ever carried in her life.

You’re alive,
she reminded herself, and the burden lightened a bit. But only a bit.

Chibs grabbed her arm and gave her a little shake. Trinity snapped her gaze up to stare at him.

“You with me, girl? I need you focused. We’re not out o’ this yet.”

Trinity stared at the dead men. “I’m with you.”

“Quickest way down’ll be the stairs,” Chibs said. “Likely to be some more of these bastards in our path, but my job is to get you out of here.”

“I’m not leavin’ without Oleg,” she said coldly.

He hesitated, and she could almost see him weighing his options. “We have no way of knowin’ where they are. Best thing we can do for them is keep the exits clear.”

*   *   *

Rollie stood in the lobby, head cocked as he listened to the sounds of gunfire. Baghead and Mikey the Prospect were with him—he’d sent the rest of them off in different directions to do what they could—but now he hesitated.

“Which way?” Mikey asked.

Good question,
Rollie thought. They could just hold the lobby, but he wanted to get to Jax before the Bratva did. Like any brotherhood, they might fight among themselves, but if an outsider came after one of them, they circled the wagons. Rollie would give up his life for that principle.

“Front window!” Baghead snapped.

Rollie turned, sweeping his gun hand up and around to take aim at the shattered, jagged remains of the plate-glass windows. He spotted a pair of stone-faced killers just outside, gray in the shadow of the hotel. One wore a white tank, and his arms were wreathed with tattoos. The other wore a black suit and tie.

Mikey the Prospect took a single shot that snapped off a shard jutting from the window frame. The tattooed Russian spun out of view, no longer framed by the window.

“Mikey, knock that shit off!” Rollie shouted, as he and Baghead moved up on either side of the kid.
Friggin’ prospects
. Even Bag hadn’t forgotten his orders so fast.

The black-suited Russian put his hands up but didn’t drop his gun. “You are Jax Teller’s men?”

Rollie winced. He was president of SAMNOV, and Jax was VP up in Charming. He sure as hell wasn’t one of Jax’s men.

“We’re with him, yeah,” he said.

The Russian lowered his hands. Rollie, Bag, and Mikey covered him.

“Then we are on the same side,” black suit said. “I am Kirill Sokolov.”

“Sokolov,” Rollie replied. “The man who would be king.”

The Russian grinned. “If you say so.”

“All right, then,” Rollie said, lowering his gun. “Let’s go get you a crown.”

*   *   *

Opie popped a magazine out of his gun and dug a fresh one from his pocket. The bullet graze on his side had started to seep blood through Rollie’s stitches. The wound would stay closed—wasn’t even that serious—but he had to be careful not to tear it open completely, or blood loss could take him out of the fight.

He glanced at Vlad. “I’m out of ammo after this. We keep dicking around out here, and they’ll outlast us.”

Vlad stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “You want to rush them? We have them pinned down. If we wait, others will come, and we will have greater numbers. They will have to surrender.”

“You know these guys,” Opie said, frowning at him. “You think they’re gonna surrender? We need to finish this so we can help Jax and your guys with the rest.”

Vlad rose up from behind the marble stairs outside the ballroom and took two shots at the open doors, just to remind Krupin and the others that they were still there. Opie slammed home his replacement magazine and chambered a round.

“There are two of us and at least three or four in there,” Vlad said. “I don’t like the odds.”

Opie shot him a withering look. “Neither do I.”

Vlad exhaled, lowered his head, and then laughed softly. “All right. We go on three. One…”

“Two,” Opie said.

He snapped his head up at the sound of quick, light footfalls along the corridor down below. On the grand staircase, he and Vlad swiveled to aim at the advancing figures, only to exhale when they identified the new arrivals. Opie didn’t know Rollie or Baghead well, and he didn’t even remember the prospect’s name, but he saw their cuts and the club insignia on those vests, and the desperation he’d felt a moment before left him. He imagined Vlad felt the same way seeing Kirill and the other Russian there. Five men. Five guns, including two assault rifles.

Opie and Vlad smiled at one another and finished the count.

“Three.”

They rushed down the steps, moved sidelong toward the open ballroom doors. Opie waved to the others, signaled them to approach the other set of doors—which remained closed. Kirill went first, flung open the doors, and rushed inside, shooting as he moved, fearless and a little mad, the way anyone who wanted the job he wanted had to be. Opie caught a glimpse of Rollie following him, and then he and Vlad were bursting in through the other doors.

Gunfire tore up the ballroom floor and walls.

Opie spotted Krupin toward the back, on the far side of the dance floor, where a large section of wall had been paneled in mirrored glass. He strode toward Krupin, images in his head of their first meeting, of the gleeful, arrogant sadism of the beady-eyed little man. Those eyes had fear in them now, and he felt as if a vengeful flame ignited inside him. Opie had tried to put the violence and bloodshed of this life behind him once, but in moments like this he doubted such a thing could be possible. He yearned for a peaceful life, but he would not turn his back on his responsibilities to his brothers.

Krupin’s right arm hung limply, blood soaking through his shirt from the gunshot wound of the night before. Opie shot Krupin four times, bullets ripping through him, shattering the mirrors on the wall behind him. Blood-spattered shards crashed down on top of the dying man, some reflecting Krupin’s shock and pain and some showing Opie a reflection of his own grim features. As the gunfire ceased, only soft echoes remaining in the ballroom, he turned away. He hadn’t liked the look of his eyes in that reflection. He would have expected to see a killer’s eyes, but all he saw in those mirror shards was pain.

*   *   *

Black sunbursts of oxygen deprivation blossomed in Jax’s eyes. His legs pounded the floor, and he smashed his fists into Lagoshin’s side. He tried to force the monster’s arms away, but Lagoshin’s size and weight overwhelmed him. In his fury, the Russian felt none of Jax’s blows. In the rush of imminent death, Jax could no longer feel any of his own injuries, only those hands around his throat and the burning hollow in his lungs.