Children of the Knight (72 page)

E
STEBAN
’
S
team was in place. Upon receiving the go-ahead from Arthur, and with dusk casting the ugly pink house into a half-light, half-shadow realm, everyone had slunk to his or her assigned location. They now surrounded the house, putting special emphasis on the two back buildings that housed the drugs. The archers were in place. Some had attached smoke bombs to their arrows, had them cocked, and merely awaited Esteban’s command.

Suddenly, without warning, a bullet sailed from the house and struck the edge of Esteban’s shield.

The boy dropped back down behind the front gate. “Shit!” he whispered to Reyna. “They made us.” He put his fingers to his lips and whistled loudly.

Then all hell broke loose. His archers fired their smoke bombs, but gunfire simultaneously erupted from the house, sending Esteban’s team scrambling for cover. The gunshots had thrown off the archers’ aim, and most of the arrows went wild, striking walls rather than windows, and filling the yard with blinding, billowing smoke.

Esteban looked at Reyna. “It’s like they knew we was coming.”

They watched through the rising smoke as the front door crept open, and the barrel of a shotgun pointed out, straight at them.

“Fuck that!” Reyna exclaimed and stood to her full height, letting loose her own arrow. It sailed through the cracked-open door, and with a grunt of surprise the gun barrel disappeared. But the door remained open. Reyna whipped her head around to Luis, his arrow cocked and loaded with a smoke bomb. “Now!”

Luis leapt up and let his arrow fly. His aim was perfect, and it went straight through the open door into the house. There came a muffled explosion, and suddenly the house filled with dirty white smoke. Reyna ducked back down as windows burst open and more bullets flew at them along with the smoke. Crouching, Reyna took aim again and fired through the smoke and through the front window. A loud “Ugh!” was heard, and the bullets ceased.

“Now!” Esteban called out, and they surged through the gate toward the house, shields raised, swords ready to fight hand to hand. Esteban yanked open the door, and smoke poured out.

Damn, he thought momentarily, his boys sure built them smoke bombs good.

He coughed and spluttered but hung back from the entrance. He motioned the net carriers into place as he heaved yet another smoke bomb through the door. It exploded with a loud pop like a firecracker, and still more smoke poured forth.

“We gotta move fast,” he whispered to Reyna, “’fore someone calls the fire department.”

She nodded and then leapt back as a man burst from the house, blinded by smoke, bleeding from a wound to the shoulder, but still wielding the shotgun. Esteban smashed down on the man’s wrist with the flat of his blade. The man cried out in pain and dropped the gun to the walkway, staggering to his knees.

A woman stumbled toward them through the smoke, her arm wrapped in a bloody cloth, coughing and hacking, brandishing a handgun. The point of Esteban’s sword stopped her in midstep, and she gazed with stunned recognition at him through smoke-burned eyes before tossing her gun to the walkway.

Esteban glanced over his shoulder to a short, skinny boy named Ronaldo, who stood back a few paces, sword in one hand and cell phone in the other. “You getting all this, Ronaldo?”

The boy nodded, dipping the phone to get close-ups of the man and woman as they remained on their knees, coughing and spluttering.

“Anybody else in there?” Esteban asked.

The man shook his head. “Just two out back.”

But the woman glared up at him. “Fucking traitor!”

Esteban flinched but didn’t respond to her taunt. He was done with her and everyone like her. They were his old life. He waved over the net carriers. They tossed the large fishing net over the man and woman, forced them at sword point to roll over, and then secured them within the net like a couple of bluefin tuna.

Esteban and Reyna exchanged a nod and then headed around back with the others, leaving these two in the custody of Luis.

The situation in back was a bit more volatile. The two back houses—more like large sheds, really—had no windows through which to shoot the smoke bombs. A boy named Willie told Esteban that somebody was holed up in the bigger shed, firing out through a small slit in the walls every time they got close.

Huddling together beside the garage for cover, Esteban and his team considered their options. Time was running out.

These hits had been designed to be quick and dirty—slam, bam, in and out before the neighborhood even knew what had happened. Somebody had tipped these people off, Esteban knew. Did that mean the other teams were in trouble too? He couldn’t worry about them, he realized. They had to take these guys out, and they had to do it now.

“We don’t have time for this shit!” he whispered in frustration.

“What’re we gonna do?” Reyna asked, her bow cocked and ready for whatever he ordered.

Esteban looked over some of his old homies, now his fellow knights. He’d grown up with most of them, and most had been in the gang with him. He could trust them, he knew. Would they die for him? Yeah, they would.

“Guys,” he whispered to his team, “we gotta storm that shed. Swords and arrows ready. Frankie, you draw their fire to the side, Willie you toss a smoke bomb right in front of their little ass window. I’m gonna break down that door and we take those fuckers!”

Reyna’s mouth dropped open like a broken glove compartment. “Este, they got guns.”

He eyed her soberly. “You think we ain’t been shot at before? Welcome to my life, Reyna. If this ’hood ever gonna be free, we gots to do this. Now get ready—soon as we bust in the door, fire right into that place.” He tossed her a grin. “Maybe you’ll hit one of ’em in the balls.”

Frightened though she was, Reyna smiled.

Esteban gave the signal. Frankie dashed madly across the back driveway, zigzagging and tossing a smoke bomb right toward the shed. Bullets strafed the driveway, kicking up chips of concrete near Frankie’s feet and forcing him to dive for cover behind the side of the house. The bomb exploded, filling the driveway and backyard with billowing smoke.

“Now!” Esteban hissed, and they were up. Willie dodged the whizzing sounds of bullet fire to lob another smoke grenade right at the tiny crack where the shooting had come from. Like an enraged bull, Esteban charged the closed door at a run and slammed hard into it, just the way he used to hit the opposing players in tackle football games as a kid. The door cracked and groaned but didn’t fall in.

He bounded quickly to the side as bullets pierced the wood of the damaged door. Panting, his shoulder sore and throbbing, Esteban eyed the doorknob. The wood around it had splintered but held.

“Oh fuck it,” he cursed, raised his broadsword high above his head, and with every muscle in his thick arms and shoulders brought the blade down against the knob with a loud
thunk
. The sword sliced clean through the handle, and the knob clattered to the concrete.

Reyna lifted a well-toned leg and kicked the battered door inward, simultaneously firing her arrow. A shriek of pain roared from inside, and Reyna knew she’d made contact. She reloaded, saw movement in the darkness of the shed, and fired again. A scream and a thud could be heard, and Reyna grinned smugly at Esteban, who stood rubbing his sore shoulder.

“Show off,” he muttered and cautiously entered the small building. Two men lay moaning and twisting on the floor. Esteban felt a thrill of accomplishment knowing these guys that he’d worked with as a gang member would now be out of business because of him, hopefully forever.

Ronaldo entered with the phone, sweeping the video eye over bags of white powder on several tables and settling on the two wounded men rolling and groaning and writhing on the floor. Reyna flipped on the lights. One man had been shot through the upper thigh, the other in the right shoulder. She flicked a look toward Esteban and shrugged. “I missed.”

He grinned and quickly took action. “Wrap these guys up and collect all this stuff. We gotta bounce.”

His team went quickly to work netting up these last two and dragging them around to the front along with a net full of drug-manufacturing paraphernalia. Some of the drugs were left behind as evidence and the rest confiscated as a gift to the mayor.

As Esteban and the others reached the front of the house to deposit their load with the first two captives, Frankie pulled out a premade note emblazoned with Arthur’s A symbol. Every team had been given the same note. Each note was exactly the same, and each was to be left with the netted drug dealers.

The note read as follows:

To the good people of this neighborhood—The Round Table and King Arthur hereby deliver unto you some from among your number who have brought death and addiction and misery to this area. You may pass them onto the police and rid yourselves of their heinous influence, or untie them and allow them to continue. The choice doth be thine.

At last, Esteban’s team finished its mop-up and prepared to depart. The captives struggled and cursed from within their fishnets, but none could escape.

“We’re done, here, knights of the Table,” Esteban announced with pride. “Let’s get—” he turned as he was speaking and stopped dead. Many of the neighbors—his neighbors—stood in the street just outside the metal fence gazing in at them. Among them was his mother.

He and the others cautiously approached the people and stood on the other side of the fence, uncertain of the crowd’s intent.

“Hello,
mijo
,” said his mother quietly. “You not bringing trouble here, are you?”

He shook his head. “No mama. You all know these people we got tied up back here and you know what they done to this
barrio
.” He looked out at the young and the old, the big and the small. His people all. “Our crusade is to rid our barrios of scum like this who done nothing good for the neighborhood and only brung bad. I know it, and you know it. But Arthur, see, he be about giving everybody choices. That’s why we be leavin’ ’em here with you. It doth be your choice, mama. You can let my sister grow up like I done, or you can call the cops and have ’em take this shit away. We gotta go meet Arthur.”

When he saw they weren’t making any threatening moves, Esteban opened the gate and allowed his team to exit the front yard and gather on the sidewalk. He and his mother gazed silently at one another. She knew she’d been a lousy mother, and he knew that she knew. She also knew she had a second chance with his sister, and she wasn’t gonna blow it this time. The sound of police sirens could be heard approaching.

“We already called ’em,” said the elderly
abuelita
who had threatened Ryan with the rolling pin at Round Table, “soon as we seen who you had tied up over there.”

Esteban’s mother smiled sadly at her son. “I’m sorry,
mijo
, for everything. It’ll be different now, for your sister. I promise.”

He nodded. Before he could turn away, she grabbed him in a crushing hug and held on. Mortified, Esteban squirmed out of her embrace. “C’mon, mama,” he hissed, “you be embarrassing me and shit!”