The Mafia Trilogy (50 page)

“Islay scotch whiskey. Nothing like it. There’s a good quantity of peat in it, giving it a smoky feel going down. Try it.”

Carson sipped his drink and savored the smoky aroma as it traveled up through his nose. “Good shit.”

“Tell me some other trivial facts.”

“A rat can last longer without water than a camel.”

“Wow, didn’t know that either.”

“The total weight of skin in the average adult human is six pounds. Hugo Boss designed some of the Nazi SS uniforms and the original name for a butterfly was flutterby, because that’s what they did.”

“Wow, where do you get all this stuff—”

The lights in the house blinked and went out, cutting him off. Carson dropped his glass of whiskey on the patio table and yanked out his sidearm.

“Is there ever an end to this shit?” Carson asked. “Where’s the power box?”

“In the basement or the garage. I normally know this stuff, but I just got here and thought everything was over,” Greg whispered. “You take the garage. I’ll check on Rosina and do the basement.”

Greg entered the house with Carson close behind. He followed until Greg turned down a hallway.

Rosina stepped out of a room on the left. “What happened to the lights?”

“We don’t know yet,” Greg said as Carson moved past them toward the garage.

“Who is that?” she asked. “It’s too dark.”

“Carson Dodge came over for a drink,” Greg said. “Everything’s fine. Come with me to the basement to check the fuse box.”

Carson moved toward the front and looked out the living room window, both hands gripping his weapon.

No way we’re under attack. It has to be a simple power outage.

He could detect nothing moving outside. The door to the garage was positioned beside the front door. He walked across the window, grabbed a flashlight from the front closet and stepped into the garage.

Automatic weapons fire broke the silence of the night and brought goose bumps to his arms and adrenaline to his stomach.

What the fuck is happening?

He found the fuse box and checked the master power switch. It was in the On position. He yanked it up and down to no avail.

“Shit.”

He reached for his cell phone, but realized he’d left it in his car. A motor vehicle revved its engine outside. Tires squealed.

The Taurus PT145 in his hand was loaded with its ten-round magazine. The rest of the ammunition was in his glove box.

He ran out of the garage and almost bumped into Greg.

“You find it?” Greg asked.

“Yeah. No good. Power’s been cut from the outside. Maybe they knocked down a transformer.”

“I thought the lines to the safe house were buried.”

“Guess not,” Carson said as he leaned to look out the front door’s window. “Whoever it is, how did they find us?”

“Followed you here, maybe.”

“Impossible.” He turned to look at Greg in the dark and could barely make out his head, Rosina standing behind him. “I would’ve noticed a tail.”

“What now?” Rosina asked.

“We wait,” Greg said. “I tried the phones … all dead. If that gunfire from a moment ago meant our guards are down, how much ammo you got on you?”

Carson waved his gun. “Just this. The rest is in the car.”

“We have to get to the car.”

“We could wait and as they approach, pick them off one by one. The dark is as advantageous to them as it is to us.”

“I don’t like this,” Rosina said, a slight whimper in her voice.

“We don’t either,” Greg said.

Carson could feel his weapon slipping in the sweat on his palm. “I’m going outside. I’ll try to get my extra clip and stay hidden behind the car. You take Rosina out the back door and get ready to run for the back fence. Find something in the garage to cut through the fence.”

“Got it. Go.”

Carson slipped out the front door. He ran bent over and dropped to the ground by the right front wheel of his car. An engine idled somewhere down the driveway. Whoever had arrived was taking their time advancing on the house.

Or are they up to something else?

A branch snapped on his left, about twenty yards away and close to the edge of the house. A red light moved up the pavement and stopped on his chest. In under a second, Carson understood what it was and moved away as fast as he could manage.

The bullet came faster. It hit his left hand, the one with the missing thumb, passed through, and ripped open his skin at the edge of his left eye, the bullet falling useless in the trees behind him.

Carson dropped to the pavement. He hadn’t been able to see out of his left eye since his time in India. He’d lost his vision in that eye after meditating and drinking a batch of homemade liquor for three days straight. He ended up in the hospital and almost lost a kidney too.

His hand was numb, but he knew the pain would come soon. The ache in his face near his left eye grew in intensity, the blood running. He remained as still as he could, letting his blood flow onto the driveway for whomever watched.

Getting shot in the face was devastating to most. If the shooter wanted to finish off the job, there wasn’t much Carson could do to stop him. But if the shooter was after Rosina and Greg and had felt his shot to Carson was good enough, it could give Carson the edge he needed.

Scuffling noises surrounded him. He tried to count the number of feet running by, but he stopped at eight as the pain took over. Nausea threatened him. He wanted to curl into the fetal position and wait for an ambulance stocked with pain killers.

Rosina screamed from behind the house. A gun fired. Then another.

Carson lifted himself off the pavement and raised his weapon. The tall silhouettes of the trees surrounding the property and the house were all he could see in the dark. He started around to the back of the house, wobbly on knees that were losing strength as shock set in. Blood flowed freely down the side of his face. He held his wounded left hand near the base of his neck, above his racing heart.

Another gun fired in the dark ahead of him. He heard two words in Russian that sounded like “get her.”

Russian? No way.

He stepped around the corner and balanced himself against the edge of the house, leaning on the wall.

Six men stood with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. One of the men held a large white box in his hands.

A drinks cooler?

The reflected light from the moon glinted off the edge of a long blade.

A sword? What the fuck?

He felt like falling to the ground and lying out flat. Sleep would be good. Rest for a while, think about everything later.

A man kneeled in front of the six men. The man with the sword raised it. Carson understood what they intended to do in that second.

He brought his weapon up and aimed with his one good eye. The gun erupted in his hand, and the six men jumped and spun to look at him.

Carson slipped behind the wall and fell to the pavement, but not before two more bullets entered his right shoulder.

Where’s Rosina? Did she get away?

He fell asleep on that thought.

Chapter 22

“Darwin, this is how we welcome our new soldiers,” Arkady said. “You passed the test in the other room. Now you must pledge your life to us and acknowledge our commandments. Take a seat at the table.”

Darwin wondered if he would be sick again. He’d never been in such a hard place. The men around him looked permanently angry. A team of psychiatrists could spend years studying their childhoods and discover that it wasn’t bad parenting that created men like this. It was raw anger. Their parents were angry and their parents before them.

He stepped forward and stopped. He couldn’t do it with the dagger on the table. Whatever plan they had for the blade had to be substituted.

“The knife has to go.”

The room erupted in a soft murmur as the men whispered to each other.

“What did you say?” Arkady asked.

Dolph stepped away from the door, moving closer to Darwin. At that moment he didn’t care. All he could feel was the power the knife had over his ability to remain calm.

“The knife … get it out of the room. Then we … carry on.”

“We can’t do that. It’s part of the initiation. You need to be pricked. You need to bleed. Don’t they call you ‘the Blade’ in the newspapers? I thought you’d be happy that we brought the dagger.”

Darwin spun and glared at Arkady. There was no way in hell he could hold a knife, let alone prick himself with it.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “You want me to bleed? Is that it?”

Not one to be intimidated, Arkady smiled and nodded his head.

Darwin stepped past him, walked up to Dolph and kicked him in the stomach. It happened so fast Dolph didn’t have a chance to respond. As he bent over, Darwin dropped his foot to the floor and used the forward motion to elbow Dolph in the left cheek.

Dolph’s head snapped sideways and then he crumpled to the floor.

“You see how that’s done,” Darwin shouted. “Hit him so hard and fast that not only doesn’t he see it coming, but you make sure the brain hits the inside of the skull to knock the opponent out.”

His body felt charged, fueled by the white-hot anger coursing through him. He knew that Arkady wouldn’t like what he’d just done to his biggest man, but at the moment he didn’t care. To take down Dolph could be seen as a warning. Whoever came next would be fearless and ready to serve Arkady and that was what Darwin wanted.

“Who’s next?” he asked. “Come on. You want blood—draw mine.”

Arkady held up a hand as the men converged. “Very impressive. I’ve heard that you’re fucking insane and what you just did, my friend, was insane.” He turned to a skinny tattooed man who looked to be in his mid thirties. “Draw blood.” Then he waved his arm.

The Russian ran at Darwin, his fists flailing. Darwin took numerous punches to the face before he raised his arms to fend off the blows.

“You’re not defending yourself good enough, Darwin. Miklos, back off.”

The blows stopped. Darwin dropped his arms, stood straight and opened his eyes. The pain didn’t come right away, but the numbness did. His face felt twice the size. He could taste blood on his tongue.

“You bleed—”

“That’s right,” Darwin cut him off. “Now we don’t need the dagger. Let’s remove it and carry on.”

Arkady nodded to men behind Darwin. The dagger was lifted off the table and taken to the door.

“Wait,” Arkady shouted. The men stopped and stared at him. “Take this lump of muscle with you. He can wake up in one of the rooms.”

It took four men to carry Dolph out. While they waited, Darwin walked over to the table and sat in the chair before he fell. The aftereffects of the adrenaline made him weak.

The others returned and closed the door.

“Lean over the skull and bleed on it,” Arkady ordered. “Get as much blood on the skull as you can. If enough blood covers the top of the skull, then it was meant to be that you are a member of the Bratva. This proves your loyalty as a man ready to die for the Bratva.”

Darwin hovered over the skull, dripping blood from his face onto the top of the dome.

“The skull was once owned by a Toronto Police officer,” Arkady explained. “What I mean by owned is, he used it to look out of, smell out of, and eat his food. We don’t remember where the rest of his body is. That’s not important. Every LEO we have to fight are beheaded and brought here.”

“What’s a leo?” Darwin asked.

“Law enforcement officers. We have a collection in the back of over a dozen, and it grows each year.”

Arkady produced a piece of paper from his back pocket. “I’m going to read the commandments to you as you bleed on the pig’s skull. At the end of each commandment, you will verbally acknowledge whether you agree or not. Agreed?”

“Yes,” Darwin said.

“Number one. No one can present himself directly to another member of the Bratva without a third person arranging the meeting. This third person, for each member, vouches for the brotherhood that are to meet.”

“Agreed.”

“Number two. Never look or act in a mischievous or inappropriate way toward the wife or girlfriend of a Bratva member. If they have been selected by that member, they are off-limits.”

“Agreed.”

“Never be seen with authorities such as cops, FBI, or any other such legal representative.”

“Agreed.”

“Earn and honor rank.”