Tuck's Revenge (14 page)

The concussion knocked them to the ground but
they were alive goddammit. Alive. Those fuckers had not won
yet.

Then Boots yelled, "Fuckin’ bastards. What
are we going to do, Tuck?”

"First thing I'm going to do is get you out
of here and to Glory.”

“The fuck you say,” Boots snapped.

“Yeah, the fuck I say,” Tuck growled and
looked at the older man. “Need you to look after Glory, if they
find her…”

Boots snapped his mouth shut, he hated why
Tuck was sending him away but he understood.

Boots asked where Glory was and Tuck told him
that he wasn't sure where she was at the moment, but he knew how to
find her.

"As soon as I get you to a safe place, I'm
going to war with these people,” Tuck said.

Tuck had Boots and the others into a hotel in
an hour, and he came out of the bathroom with a glass of water.

"I'm sorry, man, about being taken, did
anyone else?”

"All the guys and the entire Council are
fine. They were targeting me. Fucking Steven is playing games with
me. That is why I need you to get to Glory, he will try to find
her.”

Boots looked down at the floor, visibly
overcome with anger. Tuck asked him, "Did they say anything?”

Boots said, "Two men were the only ones I
saw. Asked me if I knew where you were, I told them to go and fuck
themselves, that was it. They tied me up, beat the shit outta me,
and left.”

"Bastards, like I said playing a game.”

"Where is my daughter?”

"I gave her some money and sent her away.”
Tuck then reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper,
which only had the number 364 on it. He handed it to Boots. "This
is a post office box number by the shop in Oklahoma. When I find a
way for you to get out of here, I want you to go to this box and
get an envelope out of it Glory is supposed to send there. It will
be a letter with an address to where she'll be.”

Boots smiled and said, "You're a smart man,
Tuck, thank you for taking care of her. How in the hell did you
ever find me here?”

Tuck explained, "Tortured the bastards who
took you, I believe.”

Boots shook his head and said, "You amaze me,
man. But I'm glad you are the way you are. I thought I was
dead.”

Tuck told Boots, "I need you to lay back and
rest for a while. We're going to sit and wait for the guys to get
here. They will have shit ready to get you outta here.”

Tuck sat patiently staring out the window,
waiting for Rat to show up, they told him it was going to take
hours, but he wasn’t leaving his post. Last time Boots had been
taken, not happening again. Boots asked Tuck if he wanted him to
watch while he got some sleep, and Tuck said, "No, I'll sleep
later.”

To just sit there and display such endurance
after so many hours was astonishing to Boots. But by now he knew
how Tuck was, and knew he wouldn't give up until he got what he
wanted. A car pulled in front of the motel room.

Tuck called Boots over to the window and
said, "Your ride is here?”

"No bike?” Boots snapped and Tuck smiled and
shook his head.

“Yeah, figured you needed a car for
this.”

"Now I want you to get out of here and go
find Glory.”

"Exactly,” Tuck smiled.

Boots said, "Well I'll have to go about
eighty miles to a friendly airstrip, but I can get a plane out of
here to Oklahoma, then have somebody to meet me there with a
vehicle nobody will be looking for.”

Tuck smiled and said, "Make sure you aren’t
followed, old man.”

"Tuck, they've only knocked us down for a
while, but we're nowhere close to being knocked out. We still have
all of our connections and our other locations they don't know
about, so it's far from being over unless we want it to be.”

"Before we go any further, this threat has to
be put down where they won't come back again.

"Tuck, just find this guy in charge and do
away with him and forget the rest. He ain’t worth it.”

"Boots, you're pretty amazing in your own
right.”

Boots laughed and said, "I have my
moments.”

Tuck held out a phone and then clapped him on
the back. “Yeah, when you are done, you are ready to go. You need
to take this number and call me when you get there and I'll know
you're safe. As soon as you find Glory, go to an outside line and
call.”

"Alright, I need to make a call and get me a
plane that's going that way.” After Boots made one quick phone
call, he told Tuck that a plane would be there for him in two
hours, so he needed to go.

"I'll call you as soon as I get there. How
long are you going to be with all this, Tuck?”

Tuck said, "I don't really know, as long as
it takes I guess.”

"Thanks for coming to find me and saving my
ass again and be careful doing this crazy shit.”

"I'm always careful, you know that.” They
shook hands, and then Boots walked to the car and got in. As Tuck
watched Boots backing out of the driveway, he knew this part of the
drama was finally over. Now Boots was going to be safe, it was time
for Tuck to work toward finishing it. He wanted to get this done so
he could get back to usual business.

As soon as he closed the door, he walked over
to the bed. Tuck then sat down, leaned back, and stared at the wall
thinking, waiting for the phone call from Boots. Tuck sat staring.
Never getting up and never taking his eyes off the wall. He would
end up sitting for thirty-seven hours straight before the phone
rang. He picked up the phone and said, "Yeah.”

"I'm here with her now. She told me to tell
you that she loved you, and to hurry home to her. We'll be waiting
on you here when you're done.”

Freedom: the power or right to act, speak,
or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint

Tuck was at the house with Mr. Archer, he had
come right here after he heard from Boots. He was the man who
kidnapped Boots apparently since he confessed, but Tuck was
spending a lot of time sitting looking at him in the eye, Steven
fucking played him again. Archer was one of his minions, a
figurehead to hide his ass. Damn it, he needed answers.

He looked at Archer again and sighed and
played his own game asking questions like, "How much pain do you
think you'll be able to stand" or "Have you ever had a fingernail
pulled off with pliers" or "Have you ever had ten fingernails
pulled off with pliers?”

Then he would tell Archer, "I like pulling
them off slow. I like getting them and grabbing hold of them and
then bending them back before I pull them off. Looks like it hurts
like hell doing it that way.” Tuck did that for two days before he
went to him and said, "My question to you is, are you going to talk
to me willingly, or am I going to have to get nasty and all bloody
again?”

But Archer had to act like a tough guy, like
the good little minion he was, so he would look at Tuck and kept
saying, "Fuck you.”

Tuck acted like that didn't faze him a bit,
but it actually pissed him off. After the two days, Tuck had enough
and was ready to get down to the ugly part. He walked up to the
man, pulled off his shoes and socks then said, "Be back in a
minute.” Tuck walked out of the room and came back with a ball peen
hammer he found in a shed out back. He’d also brought in two large
nails.

"Now this is going to hurt.” Tuck took a
nail, drove it into the top of each foot, and nailed his feet to
the floor. Then he took the ball peen hammer and came down hard on
top of the big toe on the man’s left foot. If Tuck wouldn't have
gagged him beforehand, they would have heard Archer scream over in
the next town.

"Archer, I can only ask you nine more times
this way before I go to the knee caps and then your nuts. And trust
me, you don't want me to crush one or both of your nuts with this
hammer. You feel like talking yet?”

Again, Archer just said, "Fuck you, man.”

So, Tuck stuffed the gag back in his mouth
and crushed another one. Tuck had to admit he was either tough or
stubborn for tolerating it after four toes looked like spaghetti.
"You want to say something besides fuck you?”

The man said, "What do you want to know?”

Tuck smiled and said, "That's more like it. I
want to know where Steven is. You probably know him as
Homeboy.”

Archer said, "I can't tell you that.”

"Well then I'm afraid I can't stop hurting
you.” Tuck reached down and crushed number five. "Damn, we're
already on the other foot.” Tuck crushed the big toe on that foot.
That one was so painful, it made Archer bite the end of his tongue
off.

"Think that hurts, wait until I come down on
one of your nuts with this thing. Got any addresses for me
yet?”

Archer again shook his head, "NO.”

"I'm bored with the toes. I'm going straight
for the nuts.” Then he finished slamming down on the other four
toes on his right foot. By this time, Archer was wriggling like a
fish from the pain, but Tuck went out the backdoor and came back
with a brick in his hand. "Okay, sit up so I can put this under
your nuts.”

Archer wasn't having any of that, and he
refused to comply with Tuck’s demand. Tuck didn't care. He pulled
out his knife and cut his belt in half like it was made out of
butter, then he grabbed his pants and pulled them down past his
knees. Tuck grabbed the brick and Archer by his dick, picked him up
out of the chair. Tuck put the brick under him in the seat of the
chair and then just let him go. He picked up his ball peen and
said, "Last chance, so what's it going to be?”

Gagged, tied up, and feeling it was all
hopeless by now, the man knew Tuck was serious, so he shook his
head "Yes.”

Tuck listened to him for over two hours
giving names, telephone numbers, and even addresses, of everyone
including Steven. When he finished, Tuck asked if Steven was the
boss, or was somebody else in charge. Archer said with some
hesitation, "I am the boss.”

"You're lying to me.” Tuck reached for the
hammer.

"Okay, the head man in charge is Homeboy or
Steven.”

"You mean Steven Portman?”

Archer said, "Yeah, that's him. I am the one
who got his new identity.”

Tuck sat there for a minute. "Archer, I'm
going to let you live for a few more days. I'm going to tie you up
and put you down in the basement, and I'm going to visit a few of
these people. If I find out you're lying to me, I'm coming back
here and finishing the job. So, if you want to recant any of these
names you better do it now, because if I have to come back here
because you lied to me, I'll be pissed when I get back.

"I'm straight with you, man.”

"You know what, I believe you.” Tuck picked
up a pillow from the couch and put a bullet in his brain.

Now Tuck had a decision to make: should he go
after the head man first and take a chance of the rest of them
scattering, or should he take out the minions first and leave the
head man for last? He’d been awake for almost six days so he
decided to sleep on it. As he walked out the back door, he did his
usual and set the house on fire.

When he woke up the next morning, in the
crappy motel his guys were still waiting at, he considered his
dilemma. When he considered the old adage "kill the head of the
snake and the body will die" it made his decision easier. But then
again, the head of this snake was not the one that had done the
evil; it only sanctioned and caused it to happen. Tuck saw a few
different scenarios how this could play out, and he was considering
which would be the best and keep things in his favor.

The first option was to take out the head man
first, and then if he was lucky and moved quick enough, he might be
able to get two or three of the others before they scattered like
the rats they were. The second scenario he came up with require him
to be really lucky, pick off the lowlifes until he reached Steven,
then he would have no backup. But if Steven disappeared and was
never found, he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of
his life, so would Glory.

Although Tuck knew he could analyze the
situation to death but it might be a fruitless endeavor. When one
thing went wrong, all the scenarios would be up for grabs again.
Tuck had one last option in mind; it was the best scenario and the
most dangerous and time consuming. He took out his list of names,
numbers, and addresses he’d collected from Archer, and considered
the chances of getting them all together and then taking care of
them all at once. He could give it a shot.

*****

Tuck waited until the men were awake. He put
it to a vote; there was no other way to do it. The guys needed to
know what the fuck they were getting into. They decided, he would
take out Cleve and Steven while the others took out the rest. Two
fronts at the same place, and neither would fail, they couldn’t,
their lives depended on it. Their plan was set, now to follow
through

They took the address Archer said was one of
Steven’s low men and went with it. When they got to the address,
they waited for someone to come out of the house.

From the exterior, Tuck could see this guy
lived a pretty lucrative lifestyle and had a lot of nice things. A
couple of new cars were parked in the driveway, in front of his
two-car garage. He was well off enough to live in a place where he
had a lot of property around him to keep others from moving in on
top of him. To Tuck, nice cars, a nice house, and a lot of land
said one thing—bit money. He figured he was right on track with his
assessment and after a couple of hours a man came out of the house.
Just from the way he moved, Tuck knew he was dirty. Most people
leave their house and lock the door, walk to the car with a
briefcase or lunchbox and head to work without checking their
surroundings. This guy came out of the house after ten a.m. with
nothing but a fat envelope in his hand. Then he made a point to
check left and right before he walked off the first step. He was
probably a shady character and up to no good. Tuck was sure he had
a gun in his waistband because of the bulge under his neatly ironed
t-shirt.