In the end, Brock had basically agreed to my plan. I tailed him all the way to the clubhouse, which, thankfully, was set in a deserted lot far from any town, behind a chain link fence. There was a long, low, single story building and an attached garage, with a quonset hut style roof. A few tall lampposts illuminated the parking lot, but dimly.
Per our plan, we pulled up but stopped short of the garage or the clubhouse, left the engines running, and slipped away from the vehicles. There was a stack of wooden pallets among assorted other junk in the lot, and we met behind it, looking for cover.
“What do we do if they just pop your boy while we’re sitting out here,” Brock murmured, barely audibly, as we waited, watching the vehicles chugging away in the cold night air.
“I don’t think they will. Not about him—it’s about me.”
Soon enough a couple of guys in cuts came out the side door of the clubhouse. One of them was carrying a shotgun in one hand, the other some kind of pistol with a long clip.
“We’re already outgunned,” Brock whispered. “Need to decide what we’re doing.”
“Follow me,” I muttered. I crunched my way across the gravel into the open garage. There were three bikes parked, as well as a van. I looked at Brock and held up four fingers, shrugged. He nodded.
We heard some shouting from the parking lot and then boots crunching on gravel towards us. I crouched behind a table full of tools against one wall, held my gun out over the top of it. Brock put himself against the hood of the van, aiming around the side.
The two guys who’d come out to investigate the car came around the corner, illuminated by the lamp post.
I aimed at the one with the pistol. He lined up with my sights, a clearly outlined shadow. I couldn’t have asked for a better target picture. I was perfectly stable on the concrete slab of the garage. It was like firing at a silhouette target on the range.
I pulled the trigger, twice, quickly.
The report of the 9mm inside the contained space of the garage was incredibly loud. He went down, crumpling around the bullets in him, groaning, his gun clattering onto the gravel outside.
Brock shot as well, the report now deafening, but the biker with the shotgun had ducked around the corner for cover and put himself out of Brock’s sight picture. He stuck the pistol-grip around the edge and fired in blindly.
The sound of the pistols was nothing compared to the sound of that scattergun. I heard the shot pinging against bikes, the van, tools. I felt small bites tear into the side of my arm, my boot. I moved up along the tool-rack I was leaning against, squeezing off careful shots into that corner, one, a second, a third. If nothing else, I was keeping his head down.
Brock moved up from the van and shot straight through the side of building, three quick blasts. I heard a miserable kind of grunt and then a sound of something heavy clattering on the ground.
We came around the corner. The guy was down, but weakly raising the shotgun. I kicked it out of his hands, then bent to pick it up.
Grant did the same with the long-clipped pistol the biker I’d shot had dropped.
I bent down to the guy with the shotgun. His eyes were rolling, blood welling up around his hands.
“How many of you are here?” I asked.
He tried to make some kind of defiant gesture. I shrugged and stood up, slinging the shotgun over my back and moving to the door that led into the main clubhouse. Brock tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and he pointed at himself, then around the corner of the building. I nodded, and he trotted off at a smart pace to the front entrance.
I felt nagging pain in my foot and my arm, but I kicked the door open and bulled in anyway.
Inside it looked like a cross between a renfaire merchant and a standard MC clubhouse: a pool table, crossed axes and swords on the wall, various Viking-style round shields painted in different colors, all with the raven skull that was the club’s main symbol. There were large, brown beer bottles scattered around the table.
There was a biker with a gun crouched behind the pool table, but he wasn’t looking. He would’ve had adequate cover if I’d been low, but I wasn’t. I opened up on him, squeezing out rounds as I was coming through the door.
The top of his head exploded. I came forward, around the pool table, up against a ratty leather couch, kneeling behind it. My foot was now barking at me in a serious way. My shoulder ached from holding the gun up, even with my elbow resting against my jacket. I heard other shots from the front of the building. They sounded to me like the report of Brock’s pistol, but I wasn’t any kind of expert.
“I PRESUME THAT IS YOU, DIXON?”
Troy came marching out into view, from one of the rooms in the back. He had one long arm wrapped around Grant, who was dirty and disheveled, a bruise closing one eye, a gag in his mouth and zip tie cuffs around his wrists.
Troy’s other hand held some kind of knockoff AK with a folding stock, currently tied up against the barrel of the rifle, the muzzle pressed into Grant’s ribs.
“One more step, I’ll open him up,” Troy said. His only eye was wild and wide, his voice—normally a powerful, controlled instrument—clearly coming unhinged. It was hoarse. “Put your gun down or he dies.”
“That doesn’t help you,” I said. “And while you’re busy doing that, I get a clear shot. There’s only one way you come out of this alive, Troy,” I said. “Step away from him, put the gun down.” I realized I was yelling, my hearing dimmed by the gunfire.
“I am not quite that foolish,” Troy said. It sounded like he was talking from behind a glass window, or through a poor microphone from some distance.
“This is between you and me, Troy. Put the gun down. Step away. You and me. One to one.”
“No. No. I will not be lured into that.”
Brock came into view behind Troy, not ten feet away, gun leveled.
“If he moves at all, kill him,” I said. Troy seemed to tense up, his finger curling inside the trigger guard of his AK. I was ready to try for an unlikely shot. Brock was like a damn statue behind him, gun resting on the soft cast. The muzzle didn’t move a micron. Mine, on the other hand, was swaying everywhere. My foot was numb; the inside of my riding boot was slick and wet.
Troy’s eye widened. Then he seemed to realize the game was up. He uncurled his hand from the gun he held and his arm from around Grant, who immediately ran away, wisely seeking cover behind some furniture.
Theatrically, Troy lowered his rifle to the ground and stepped away from it, holding his hands out. He was still smiling. I kept my gun trained on him.
“Fine,” he said. “Call the authorities. Take me into custody. Men will come forward to take the fall. I’ll be free in days,” he said with a sneer. “And I will be coming right back after you, Jack Dixon. I’ll start with the man you crippled. Then your family. Your friends. Because this world lacks will, and vigor, men like me can take whatever we wish…”
He was cut off by the sudden report of a pistol.
Mine.
I shot him carefully and deliberately through his eyepatch. He crumpled to the ground, all his limbs gone limp. Six and a half feet of crazed biker cultist hitting the bare concrete floor of the clubhouse all at once was louder, somehow, than the shotgun had been. I moved up and looked down at him.
He’d been dead before he hit the floor, but he looked surprised nonetheless.
Brock holstered his weapon as he came up to me, standing over the body of Jarl Troy. I did the same with mine. Grant let out a string of expletives from behind the couch.
“What the fuck now?” Brock said.
I bent down and picked up the AK with my gloved hands. “Time to make this look right. Better, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Brock said. “I gotcha. They emptied this at us from ambush.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Gimme a second, though,” I said, holding up a finger, before hobbling as fast as I could out to the parking lot to puke.