Chapter 20

 

Floodlights, shining down from the second story balcony popped on, illuminating every nook of the vast building. Edna, Tony, Mama, and Doc Bruce all dived to the polished floor. When Tony glanced up, he saw at least six automatic weapons pointing down at them. A man laughed, and then spoke.

“Shoulda known to leave well enough alone, Dr. B. Maybe you’da lived a few more years before the big C took you.”

“Screw you, whoever you are!” Doc Bruce shouted, his weak voice echoing against bare walls.

“Stay on the floor and we won’t shoot you. I’m coming down.”

The man’s boot heels reverberated through the open room as he tromped down the stairs. When he reached them, he kicked Doc Bruce in the ribs.

“Don’t remember me, Dr. B? I’m your old buddy Slink.”

Doc Bruce’s eyes closed as he twisted on the floor, holding his ribs. When he opened them, he looked up at the man who had kicked him.

“His son, maybe. Slink would be pushing eighty,” he said.

“Eighty-two, to be exact. You had your chance, but you never got the message. Now, your rotting carcass is gonna wind up in the middle of the river, along with your buds here.”

The wiry little man had a shaved head and was dressed in a black jumpsuit. The prominent tattoo on his right hand was that of a bloody dagger piercing a deadly looking spider.

“We’ve done nothing to you,” Mama said.

“Shut up, bitch, and stay on the floor,” Slink said, administering a vicious kick with the toe of his boot to make sure she complied.

When Tony rose to assist Mama, Slink nailed him across the mouth with his pistol. Then, like a cat playing with a group of trapped mice, he began circling them.

“Couldn’t leave well enough alone, now could you?” he said, kicking Doc Bruce’s legs out from under him when he attempted to stand.

“You leave us alone,” Mama said. “We’ve done nothing to you.”

“Well, your business partner Mr. Wyatt Thomas and his blond slut girlfriend did. Now, we’re gonna make you pay for it, and believe me I’m gonna enjoy every minute of it.”

By now, all the spotlights focused on a tight circle where Tony, Edna, Mama and Doc Bruce knelt. Slink continued his rant as he circled them, using his boots as he did. Doc Bruce grimaced and held his ribs, Mama’s busted lip bleeding profusely.

He moved just a bit too close and Tony was quick to react. Getting his leg between Slink’s, he tripped him, rolling him on the floor. Diving on top of him, he began pummeling him with both hands.

Edna got into the act, chasing down Slink’s pistol as it bounced across the floor. Tony quit punching when Edna grabbed Slink’s collar and stuffed the barrel deeply into his mouth. The men with their guns trained on them held their fire, afraid they might accidentally hit their boss.

“Drop your weapons,” she shouted, “or I’m blowing this little prick’s head right off his spindly neck.”

“Do as she says,” Tony said, standing and administering a knee to Slink’s groin.

After helping Mama and Doc Bruce to their feet, he gave Edna a hand with Slink. She had him on the back of the collar, his pistol trained on the nape of his neck.

“You want to see eighty-three I suggest you have your goons stand down.”

“And she don’t mean next week,” Tony said.

Slink didn’t answer. He had a switchblade up his sleeve. With one precise motion, he stabbed Edna in the thigh, and then slammed her to the ground with a twirling karate kick to the chin. He and Tony dived for the sliding pistol at the same moment. It was then that the lights went out.

Automatic weapons illuminated the building with barrel flashes as all hell erupted, the goons on the second-floor balcony shot dead. Tony and Slink didn’t notice, locked in a life or death battle. Neither had control of the pistol, but Slink still had the knife. He was doing his best to carve Tony’s face with it. One of the gunmen ended the fight, knocking Slink out with a makeshift billy club.

“Who the hell . . . !”

“No time to explain, boss,” the man said. “Come with us. Now!”

Body armor covered the two men dressed in black. Bordered by their black face paint, the whites of their eyes glinted in the dim illumination of their flashlights. They had bloused their pant legs into their combat boots and their metal helmets didn’t look American.

Their stubby, tricked-out automatic weapons were still smoking. Though the two looked ominous, something in their foreign accents caused Tony to trust them, not to mention that they had just saved their lives. One of the men began wrapping Edna’s thigh with a tourniquet.

“The doctor is comatose, and you must carry him,” the man told Tony. “And hurry, please. We have no time to spare.”

A black stretch limousine waited on the street by an open gate. It sped away in a screech of burning rubber after the tired and wounded group had piled in the back.

Tony hadn’t ridden in a limousine since his youngest daughter had married some two years before. The interior was roomy and dimly lit. Tony got his first good look at the two men that had saved them.

“I am Sasha. The bald one is Borya. Our driver is Vladimir.”

Sasha was young, probably no older than mid-twenties, his hair and eyes dark and his accent Russian. He had removed his armor and black shirt and spattered blood from Edna’s wound stained his pink Izod shirt.

Borya was busily working on Edna’s stab wound, having already applied a bag of ice to Mama’s busted lip. Doc Bruce’s head nestled in Mama’s lap. Borya was also young and prematurely bald, as his thick-haired partner had said.

“Are we in trouble here?” Tony asked.

“You are safe with us,” Sasha said. “That is all I can now say. Drink?”

“What you got?” Tony asked.

“Your favorite; Dalmore scotch, straight up.”

“How’d you know that?” Tony asked as he took a sip from the expensive crystal tumbler.

“We are following you for two days. Good thing, as Slink almost had you.”

“You know Slink?” Mama asked.

Sasha nodded. “Drink, pretty lady?”

“Bless you, child. I’ll take anything you have short of turpentine,” she said.

“I do not know turpentine, but I have vodka.”

“Perfect,” she said.

Ice clinked as he filled her tumbler. “Then you must have Russian in you.”

“Baby,” she said. “Mama’s got a little bit of everything in her.”

“You okay, Edna?” Tony asked.

Edna was wincing as Borya finished dressing her wound.

“Not worth a crap right about now,” she said.

Borya patted her shoulder. “Please breathe deeply for me. You’re not going to pass out, are you?”

Edna drew a deep breath. “Burns like hell.”

Borya opened a vial of pills and gave her a couple. “I will get you water.”

“Only if you mix it with a little whiskey.”

“Alcohol is not to mix with medication for pain.”

“I’m old enough to be your grandmother, young man. Let me worry about what your pills will do to me if I wash them down with something alcoholic.”

“You will heal nicely,” he said with a grin. “It is a clean wound; hit no bone. Barely missed your femoral artery. You are most lucky.”

“I should have patted the little bastard down first,” she said.

Tony handed her a drink, and she took the pills along with a healthy swallow of whiskey.

“I owe you a big one,” Tony said. “You saved my neck back there.”

“Another?” Edna said to Sasha. “A triple would work for me.”

He grinned as he refilled her glass. Mama saw the blood dripping down Sasha’s face and wiped it with a tissue.

“Your partner needs medical attention,” she said to Borya.

“I am fine,” Sasha said.

“You could have been killed back there. Half your eyebrow is missing,” Mama said, holding the tissue to the wound.

“It is nothing. Please do not worry about me.”

“You saved our lives. I have a right to worry.”

“We were just doing our jobs.”

“Then you need this,” she said, removing a necklace from her neck and putting it around Sasha’s.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Gris gris,” she said. “It will keep you safe, but you must never take it off.”

“I am not a superstitious man,” he said.

“If you do what I think you do for a living, then never take it off. And I mean never.”

Sasha touched the necklace and nodded.

By now, Borya had moved from Edna to Doc Bruce.

“How is he?” Sasha asked.

“Not good.”

A passing semi’s horn blasted as Vladimir powered up an entry ramp to a cross-town. Sasha turned to Tony.

“We are sending the doctor, Miss Edna, and Mama to a hospital in Baton Rouge. You and I must take a detour.”

“Edna, you okay with that? Tony asked.

“Hell no!”

“You have lost much blood,” Borya said. “I field-clamped your wound, but you need stitches.”

“You and Sasha are just babies to me. Don’t matter your age because I just saw you kill half a dozen men without batting an eye. You two are pros. So am I. I’m going with Tony.”

“You heard her,” Tony said. “You okay going with Doc Bruce to Baton Rouge, Mama?”

“I have to stop by the house. Can’t leave my kitties.”

“We have already cared for that, Miss Mama,” Borya said. “You will need to stay somewhere else for a while. Your cats will join you.”

“In Baton Rouge?” she said.

“A safe house on the river.”

“And Tony and Edna?”

“With Borya, me, and Vladimir, they are very safe,” Sasha said. “I promise.”

A cloudy moon shined over Pontchartrain as the black limousine disappeared around the corner, leaving Tony, Edna and Sasha alone in the darkness. Tony nudged a broken shell with his shoe.

“What now?” he asked.

Sasha glanced at his watch. “You have many questions, and I have no answers.”

“Why the secrecy?”

Sasha just shook his head and turned away. The whomp, whomp, whomp of an approaching helicopter interrupted the silence. Lights appeared through the cloudy darkness over the lake as an offshore supply chopper landed with a lot of noise, flying sand and debris. Two men in helmets pulled them into the open cargo door. They lifted off without shutting it.

“Our journey is long,” Sasha said. “Please relax and enjoy the view.”

As Tony and Edna settled into their seats, the big chopper turned south, toward the Gulf of Mexico. The light show coming from the city below was spectacular. Tony had flown in planes, but never in a helicopter. The sensation was a cross between a riding lawn mower and a hot air balloon. When he glanced at Edna, she was grimacing and holding her stab wound.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Nothing another drink wouldn’t fix,” she said.

Sasha handed her two more pain pills and a flask of vodka from a pocket inside his coat.

She smiled and nodded when he said, “This will help.”

“Thanks,” she said, returning her attention to the vista below them. “It's beautiful.”

“Wait until you see the Gulf. It is quite spectacular.”

The chopper soon moved south of the lights of New Orleans, into the swamps and bayous leading to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Where are we headed?” Tony asked.

“Out of state,” Sasha said.

“What are all those lights down there?” Edna asked.

“Offshore platforms. Some are jack-up drilling rigs, others permanent production facilities. Choppers like this one and crew boats supply them.”

“They look like a thousand flickering fireflies,” Edna said. “I had no idea how much activity goes on out here.”

“Me either,” Tony said. “I’ve lived in Louisiana all my life and never imagined there were so many wells in the Gulf.”

“Then you are about to see something you have only visited in your wildest dreams,” Sasha said.