“Look at that dumb son of a bitch,” Lady E pointed out, chuckling at the man who was positioned at the edge of one of the project buildings. He was left wide open. I shook my head at the sight of him handling his pistol like it was a toy, twirling it around his finger and pointing it at an invisible enemy.
“They all want to be gangsters until real bullets start flying and ripping apart flesh and bone,” Lady D remarked.
We all cast our eyes away from the gun twirler to watch another guy climb into position on an adjacent building’s second-story roof. Like his friend on the ground, he was left wide open too.
The men had no tactical skills and apparently no survival instincts. This specific Haitian crew had a dangerous reputation only because they killed recklessly and often, but did they have any idea what they had initiated today?
* * *
By the timeMecca rolled onto the scene with her men, we were settled and ready for whatever was set off. The scene unfolded like a badly-written movie script, but the unwritten words hidden between the lines was what kept us on our toes.
The moment Mecca turned on her earpiece, the chaos from below was as clear as if we were standing there with her. The sight of the young girl with a noose around her neck was all the ammunition I needed to fuel my desire to kill without mercy and pray for forgiveness later. There had never been a time that Mecca had called on us for assistance that she hadn’t had a legit reason, and the evil we fought always made us appear to be the saints.
Mecca drew on Trench, the leader of the Haitian crew, and the tension in the air weaved through the atmosphere like a seismic event had occurred. I swallowed the quick breath I took and held it for a moment, centering myself.
The clicking of multiple weapons sounded off like haunting echoes on the piss-scented wind, signaling the beginning of the end. Mecca and her four men on the ground and the Haitians had drawn down on each other and the only outcome would be bloodshed… a lot of it.
My mind went blank, emptying itself of all thought. It was preparing for the worst possible outcome before I regained focus and readied myself to take on the role of executioner if necessary.
“Angel, light this motherfucker’s world on fire. Devil, take out the one holding the rope,” Mecca ordered in a low voice.
Immediately after Mecca’s command, Trench’s head was turned into something that had been used for target practice and his men were left open-mouthed and dangerously desperate to figure out who had taken out their leader.
The one who’d had possession of the rope went down next, causing the rope to slip from his hands and release the girl, who was thankfully alive. The next moment threw me for a loop. LoC had put red dots on the most immediate threats to Mecca and her men, but where the hell were the rest of those dots coming from? We had help, and not just Angel and Devil. There were at least ten additional men out there somewhere.
Unlike the Haitians, we hadn’t spotted any of them getting into position, which was a testament to their level of training. I desperately wanted to find the source of our help, but I couldn’t afford to take my attention off my target.
The eyes of this neighborhood, criminals, and residents were on Mecca and her men, but our eyes were on the hostile Haitians. They had their shoulders drawn tight, faces posed in anger, and fingers itching to squeeze triggers, but they weren’t as stupid as we had assumed, knowing they were in the target range of snipers.
Who would be the first to do something stupid and lose their life? The sight of all those weapons aimed at Mecca and her men had me as tense as a tightrope, but my heightened state of alertness remained on point as the red dots from our rifles danced along the restless bodies of Trench’s men, sending a message that didn’t need words.
Time froze when Mecca stepped away from her men to check on the girl who was lying on the ground struggling to catch her breath. The woman was walking through an active shooting range where any slip of the finger, accidental or other, would end her life within seconds. However, she did it with her chin held high and her eyes on the girl.
The tense standoff was stalled in heart-pounding suspense as we watched Mecca help the girl up, walk her back to their SUV, and secured her inside. Who was behind those extra guns? Was it more Black Saints or was it Mecca’s new husband’s men? She had mentioned that he was very protective of her.
She returned to a defensive stance next to her men, and I recognized the murderous expression she cast over the neighborhood. “Marshawn, Shockey, and Torch, lower your weapons,” she ordered her men.
They lowered their weapons, which caused Trench’s men to lower theirs. Confused, the Haitians began to talk back and forth in frustrated murmurs as they struggled to figure out how they had ended up defeated on their own turf.
“Angel and Devil, kill the leaders. Forty-eight hours. I want to see proof.”
Oh shit!
The girl was more important to Mecca than I’d assumed. She was about to bring hell down on these Haitians and our team, along with Angel and Devil, were about to make it rain bullets.
“There is at least one more who forced himself on Tash. I want him alive,” she stressed, assessing the men’s faces and vocalizing for us the reason for the big order she had put in.
Those men had forced themselves on the girl. Rape, in our world, was an automatic death sentence and the knowledge made my task of squeezing the trigger an easy one.
“It will be done, boss,” Angel’s voice purred in my ear.
“You have given me a gift,” Devil replied, sounding like she was about to experience an orgasm at the idea of all the bodies she was about to drop and get rid of or in some cases, play with.
Mecca turned to climb into the back of the SUV but took one last glance back. “Ladies,” was the last thing she said before she and her team climbed into the vehicle.
We understood that the one word was a “thank you” and a request for us to help carry out the order she had just put in. We were patiently waiting until they had driven a safe distance away before executing the order.
“I got him,” I assured, referencing the idiot who was about to take a shot at Mecca’s bullet-proof SUV and start a shooting trade-off that would end with a lot of innocent people caught in the crossfire.
Cursing his forehead with the cross my rifle’s sight had marked there, I eased my finger down on the trigger and observed the way his body gave a few hard jerks before he fell behind the rooftop water barrels he’d been hiding behind.
Six bodies later and without starting a gun battle, we packed up our equipment and left Angel and Devil to do their jobs. We had cleared what we were able to from our vantage points and were leaving them to physically go into the belly of the beast to clean house and find the rapist Mecca had requested personal time with.
On my way back to the vehicle, I remembered all the little details that had confirmed that a team had secretly helped us. Like our crew, they’d been hidden well. We were grateful for the help, but the intrigue behind whoever they were kept my wheels spinning.
A smile came easy when Tywin crossed my mind. Was it him and his dangerous cousins and their men helping us? What would he think of me if he knew I was a lot more dangerous than I was letting on?