Sons of Anarchy: Bratva (2 page)

Opie glanced in the mirror. “Shit. Feds, you think?”

“Just drive,” Jax told him. “If it’s feds, I won’t need this.”

He jacked the slide, slamming a round into the gun’s chamber. Jax had a feeling this wasn’t feds.

Opie floored it, the truck jumping forward with a roar. The gap separating them from the Humvee opened up for a second or two, and then the monstrous black vehicle began closing again. Jax tightened his grip on the Glock and glanced to the left, across the two-lane road and the span of grass and trees and scrub that separated it from Highway 99. “Cut across,” Jax said.

Opie shot him a quick, hard look. “Serious?”

A hundred yards ahead, the ground between the side road and the highway flattened out, and old, worn tracks showed that others had driven across it in the past. A white box truck rumbled toward them from the other direction.

“Right after the truck,” Opie said. “Hang on to something.”

Jax watched the box truck coming along the two-lane road, counting seconds in his head. The Humvee’s engine roared, and it bumped the pickup. Opie and Jax jerked in their seats, rattled by the impact.

“Guess that rules out the feds,” Jax said, bracing himself against the dash with his free hand.

Opie didn’t reply. Jaw tight, he watched the box truck, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, ready to swerve left, tap the brakes, and shoot across the open ground between the faded side road and Highway 99.

The white box truck swerved first—across the lane in front of them.

A setup.

“Son of a—” Jax managed before Opie cut left as planned, tires skidding.

Their pickup slammed sidelong into the box truck, but Opie hit the gas, gunning it for the break in the trees—that tire-worn gap that would put them on Highway 99, give them room to run, put some other vehicles into the mix.

The Humvee hit them broadside, shattering windows and caving in Opie’s door. The engine screamed under duress as the Humvee slammed them sideways and Opie’s pickup skidded along the road and off the shoulder. They missed the gap. The Humvee kept pushing, and they hit a stand of old pine trees with a jerk that bounced Jax’s skull off the passenger-side window. His grip on the gun loosened, but only for a second.

“Down!” he shouted.

Opie ducked his head. Jax grabbed his shoulder to be sure, steadied his hand, and fired through the shattered driver’s side window, blowing out the Humvee’s windshield. The Humvee’s driver reversed, tires spinning as the vehicle withdrew; then it skidded to a halt, and the doors popped open.

Jax knew he ought to be moving, but he wanted to see what they were up against. If they were dealing with a rival club, like the Niners or Mayans, the assholes would have been on motorcycles.
Must be a different breed of assholes,
he thought.

“Cartel?” Opie asked, twisted in his seat and rooting in the back for the shotgun there.

“We’re solid with Galindo,” Jax said, frowning.

“Is anyone ever solid with the damn cartel?”

The question went unanswered. The men piling out of the Humvee and the white box truck were pale and dressed in blacks and grays, all of them carrying guns. These weren’t cartel hitters, and they sure as hell weren’t part of Lin’s Crew. Jax might’ve thought them Real IRA, but he didn’t recognize a man among them.

“Russians,” Opie said.

Jax grunted. “Let’s move.”

They piled out the passenger door, using Opie’s pickup as cover. Jax’s boots hit the ground, and he ducked behind the truck’s bed, gun raised. His temples throbbed with rage, but he pushed the anger away, forcing himself to think. A quick glance over the truck bed showed the Russians fanning out, guns trained on the pickup but not firing yet.

Of course they’re Russians
. How could he have thought anything else? Their dour Slavic countenances were unmistakable. Pale killers, there for vengeance for Putlova’s murder.

That’s why they aren’t shooting yet,
he thought. Putlova’s whole crew were dead and the Russians had no one who could confirm that SAMCRO was behind it.

“They want us alive,” Jax muttered.

Opie had his back to the truck, shotgun primed. “They got a funny way of showing it.”

Jax exhaled. The Russians might want them alive for the moment, but that wouldn’t last. Whoever had ordered this move would be reluctant to expose himself to any unnecessary public risk. Jax and Opie would be tossed in the back of the box truck, driven to wherever the boss might be, questioned, and then very likely executed. It would be hard to convince the Bratva that SAMCRO hadn’t killed Putlova and his buddies … mainly because they had.

“Mr. Teller!” one of the Russians shouted, his accent thick. “You and your friend throw out your guns and come out where we can talk.”

“We can hear you just fine from here!” Opie shouted back.

Jax couldn’t help the hint of a smile.

“This isn’t how you want this to go down!” Jax told them, risking a glance over the top of the pickup’s bed. The Russians hadn’t come any closer, nor did anyone open fire.

“You need to come with us. This is to be a private conversation,” the Russian said, “and this is a very public place.”

Jax looked at Opie, then over at the cars passing on Highway 99. A black Mercedes slowed down—a driver rubbernecking, thinking he’d seen an accident—and Jax realized the clock was ticking. Cops would be on the way. He glanced at the pine trees behind them.

“You’re too quiet, Mr. Teller!” the Russian shouted. “But we will catch up to you, and then there will be bullets. I imagine you’d prefer to keep bullets out of this.”

Opie frowned at Jax. “Gotta buy some time,” he rasped quietly.

Jax nodded. Every option he considered seemed to lead to only two possible results: die or survive and end up back in prison. They could claim self-defense if they shot these bastards, but possessing the guns they would use to defend themselves might be enough to flush his parole down the toilet. His mind reeled, trying to puzzle his way out of it.

Ticktock, pass the time, keep them talking
.

“Who sent you?” he called. “Might make our decision easier if we knew who we were dealing with.”

“Your only decision is bullets or no bullets,” the Russian said, his accent somehow growing thicker.

The wind picked up. If there were any birds in the trees, they’d fallen silent.

Off to Jax’s left, a man in a gray suit sidestepped into view, edging over with his gun raised, trying to get a clean shot behind the pickup. Jax whipped around and took aim.

“Back the hell off!” he roared. “Or the decision is made!”

The man did not move, but neither did he shoot. He kept his gun trained on Jax, who glanced at Opie and wondered how many seconds they had before another Russian moved into view on that side of the pickup. They hadn’t had a long list of choices to begin with, but the list was getting shorter with every passing second.

“Jax,” Opie muttered.

The Russian called his name. “Time is running out. In moments, the decision will be taken from you. My men have witnessed the opportunities I gave you. My employer won’t blame me if you die here on the side of the road. Your children will cry for you, Mr. Teller, but I will sleep well tonight.”

Jax stopped breathing. Anger blinded him for a second or two as images of his boys, Thomas and Abel, swam into his head.

“I will count to five,” the Russian said. “One—”

The countdown narrowed their options to only one. Jax glanced at Opie, found his friend already looking back at him, dark anger in Opie’s eyes that matched Jax’s own.

“Two,” the Russian said.

Opie helped keep him focused, keep him grounded. They had been best friends so long that Opie understood him better than anyone. When Jax has lost his brother and later his father … and when Opie’s first wife, Donna, had been killed … they had relied on each other. Hell, they’d always relied on each other.

“Three.”

“I’ve got the asshole to your left,” Opie whispered.

Jax took a breath, relaxed his grip on the Glock, then popped up from behind the pickup’s bed. In one smooth motion, he took aim at the Russian who’d just brought his children into the conversation and shot him twice in the chest. One of the bullets punched all the way through, fanning bright crimson blood onto the grass behind him.

Simultaneously, Opie stepped back from the pickup, leveled the shotgun behind Jax, and blasted the guy who’d come around the side. The Russian blew backward through the mist of his own blood. The boom rattled Jax’s brains as he ducked behind the pickup again, but then he and Opie were both running into the copse of pine trees. The Russians opened fire, and the pickup rocked with scores of gunshots that plinked metal and shattered glass. By then, Jax and Opie were in the midst of the trees, and Jax had begun to count the seconds in his head. How many until they caught up? How far to the highway, running at this angle through the trees?

Opie crashed between two pines, and Jax raced to catch up.

“We need a ride!” Opie said.

The clamor had died down behind them, but Jax knew that didn’t mean the Russians were departing. They would be in pursuit. He glimpsed Highway 99 through the trees, spotted an eighteen-wheeler, a whining Suzuki motorcycle, its rider all in vivid blue, and a couple of cars racing in either direction. Their best hope was to force someone to stop—no one would willingly pull over for a couple of shaggy guys in biker cuts. Might be they had to jack a car.

And I end up right back in Stockton
.

Shit
. Whatever they were going to do, it would have to happen here. Their only real choice was to outlast the Russians, stay alive until the cops showed up, and then leave it to the lawyer.

Across this section of Highway 99, the trees were thicker. They could get lost in there, at least for a while, maybe long enough to call the clubhouse and get Juice or Phil to come and pick them up before the cops tracked them down.

A way out, maybe.

A bullet grazed Jax’s right shoulder, and he swore as he stumbled. He dodged left and kept running, the skin on his back prickling with the sensation that every inch was a possible target. Opie’d heard him grunt when the bullet tagged him. He turned toward Jax.

“Keep moving!” Jax snapped, and Opie didn’t need to be told twice.

Bullets zipped by, punching the air and shaking tree branches. They broke from the edge of the pine grove twenty feet from the shoulder of Highway 99. A big rig thundered past, sucking gravel and someone’s discarded McDonald’s burger wrapper into its wake. A bullet hit the truck’s broad side. Another took out a window in a Mustang racing along the northbound side of the highway, and the car slammed on its brakes.

Jax thought they might just have found themselves a ride.

Heads low, he and Opie hurtled into the road.

Amidst gunfire and the blare of car horns, they reached the median strip that divided the highway, only to hear tires skidding behind them and voices shouting loudly in Russian. Jax spun, ducking behind the guardrail at the median, and took aim with the Glock as a silver Lexus skidded to a halt on the grassy shoulder they had just vacated.

“What the hell?” Opie said, dropping down beside him.

A guy in an old Volvo shouted and honked as he drove by, maybe not noticing the guns. Opie racked another round in the shotgun’s chamber, and he and Jax both stared at the Lexus. More Russians poured out—no mistaking those icy eyes and granite features—but instead of opening fire on Jax and Opie, they turned their weapons on the men now emerging from the pine grove.

“Check it out,” Opie said, and gestured back to the cut-through between the side road and highway—the gap where they had left Opie’s pickup.

A black Escalade raced along the same dirt track and slid to a halt at the edge of the highway, and more armed men jumped out.

Another big rig roared by. Jax closed his eyes and turned away as grit pelted his face. When it had passed and he turned to look again, the gunfire had ceased entirely. Russian voices rose in warning and anger as the newcomers took aim at the men from the Humvee and the white box truck. The two groups barked challenges at one another, and a huge, bearded man who’d climbed from the Escalade came forward. The man had presence, and the body language of both groups changed as he started shouting at them all.

“The boss?” Opie asked.

Jax nodded. “
Someone’s
boss.”

The bearded man smoothed his tailored charcoal suit and gestured southward. Jax frowned, wondering what he might be telling the other Russians, but then he heard sirens in the distance and got the gist.

“We gotta go,” Opie said, starting to turn. They needed to be in the woods on the other side of the highway and hidden deeply before the cops arrived.

Jax stayed to watch the Russians, who had all begun to retreat. Sensing his hesitation, Opie waited as well. The first group kept their guns out as they backed awkwardly into the pine grove, then turned and hurried back through the trees to their vehicles. Three of the newcomers kept their weapons trained on the fleeing group as the rest climbed back into the Lexus and the Escalade. In moments, all four vehicles were pulling away.

The sirens grew louder, but with the open highway, Jax thought the police could still be miles away.

Maybe
.

“Come on,” he said, leaping the guardrail and running back the way they’d come. He wished he could toss the Glock away but knew how foolish that would be, with his prints all over it and the cops certain to search the pine grove.

A car swerved to avoid killing Opie, the driver laying on the horn.

The two of them ran through the trees, Jax gambling that none of the Russians were suicidal enough to have stayed behind to finish the job when the others had taken off and the sirens were growing louder.

Opie’s pickup remained where they’d left it, jammed against a couple of pine trees, most of the windows blown out. The engine choked a bit as Opie turned the key in the ignition, but then it growled to life, and he threw it into drive, pulled back onto the side road, and hit the gas. They were headed away from the sirens, but Jax was sure cops would be coming the other way. No way they could stay out in the open with windows blown out. “There!” Jax said, pointing to a narrow, tree-lined street on the right.