Sons of Anarchy: Bratva (25 page)

Boots scuffed the ground. They turned to see another Russian coming around the corner beyond the Dumpster. Opie lifted his gun but didn’t need to fire. The Russian threw his arms up as bullets stitched up his back, some of Kirill’s men having come around from the other side.

Jax tried not to keep count of how many men he saw go down. His side was badly outnumbered, but numbers didn’t tell the whole story. Even so, he was glad to have Rollie and the SAMNOV crew on the way. He just hoped they would hurry.

Chibs led the way through the kitchen. They spotted Oleg and Ilia for a second, but then there was gunfire in the corridor ahead, and the two Russians raced headlong toward it. Jax pulled the trigger on the TsNIITochMash, and a barrage of bullets burst forth, the silencer muffling the noise. Then he ran on. He wanted to back Oleg and Ilia up, but he had other priorities.

“Go,” he said to Chibs, who nodded and set off at a run, swinging right and left in search of a stairwell door.

Jax called his sister’s name in the kitchen. Opie checked the walk-in cooler. Then they went into the corridor and started their search. Room to room, watching each other’s backs as they listened to shouts and gunfire echoing through the hotel.

“Wonderland,” Opie said, voice dripping with irony. He winced at the pain in his side but said nothing of it.

Jax didn’t smile. He slammed open a bathroom door and went in, gun ahead of him, calling his sister’s name in a voice that echoed back to him.

The place sounded hollow. Empty.

For the first time, he understood that she might already be dead.

18

Chibs glided
along the corridor, back to the wall. He glanced into a few open doorways, turning and then moving on in fluid motion. His pulse was steady, his breathing calm. During his time as an army medic, one lieutenant had said if they’d monitored his brain waves during combat, the test would show that Chibs was asleep. “Maybe even dreaming.” Every time violence erupted around him, Chibs assumed he was going to die—he just wanted to make the bastards pay before he did.

When he wasn’t in the field, though … it was then that Chibs had trouble. Under fire, he was calm, but when things were quiet, he could feel old anger simmering inside him. Even now, years later, he spent most days with an electric tension buzzing along his spine. He’d been a man without a country, and the brothers of SAMCRO had opened their arms to him. Without SAMCRO, he had nothing.

Jax had made some questionable choices in the past few days, but Chibs had Jax’s back no matter what, partly because they were both SAMCRO and he loved the man, and partly because he knew that if Trinity was his sister, he’d have made the very same decisions.

Chibs stopped at the elevator, punched the button to see if it was working. The button didn’t light up, and he put his ear to the metal door. No hum. Boots pounded somewhere upstairs. Gunfire came from the front of the hotel.

“Behind you,” came a low growl.

Chibs glanced back. Opie and Jax had turned the corner and were following him at a distance.

Someone swore in Russian. Chibs whipped around, saw the man who’d come into the hall up ahead, and took aim. He squeezed off two rounds. One caught the Russian in the arm, just a graze, but the man dove around a turn in the corridor ahead.

“Go, go!” Jax snapped.

Chibs glanced up, saw the stairwell door to his left, and pushed through. Jax had given him one job, and he intended to do it. As the door swung shut, Chibs glanced back into the hall and saw Opie thundering along with his gun, taking aim. Opie fired, and someone swore. Then the door clicked home, and Chibs was alone.

On the stairs, the violence sounded muffled, almost distant. Chibs was dead calm. He hustled up the steps, watching and listening for the presence of Lagoshin’s men. Halfway between the third and fourth floor, he paused and listened to the way his heartbeat thumped inside his head. He might be calm under fire, but he hadn’t gotten any younger these past few years. Running up multiple flights of stairs forced him to catch his breath.

The stairwell had a chalky, dusty smell, with dampness underneath it, like something had crawled behind the wall months ago and died.

Chibs heard a scuff on the stairs above, just around the corner. A huff of breath, followed by a quiet, very human sound. He thought it was the sound of despair.

Gun leveled, he turned the corner. “Not a whisper,” he growled, finger applying pressured to the trigger.

Trinity sat on the steps, tightening a torn and bloody swatch of a man’s shirt around her leg. She bared her teeth at him in obvious pain.

“You try doin’ this and not lettin’ out a squeak here and there,” she snarled.

“Jesus,” Chibs whispered, and it was at least half a prayer.

Gun still out, he went and sat beside her on the steps, got one arm behind her back, and lifted her up so that she stood on one leg and leaned against him.

“Do your best, darlin’,” he said, glancing up at the fourth-floor landing and down at the third. “We can’t stay here.”

A sheen of sweat coated Trinity’s lightly sunburned skin. She breathed slowly and evenly, pain written on her face as Chibs helped her descend one step at a time.

Below, someone came through the door at the second-floor landing. Chibs froze, but the sudden halt set Trinity off balance, and he had to compensate, shifting to catch her. She put weight on her injured leg and hissed through her teeth. Not much noise … but enough.

“Yakim?”

The voice brushed the concrete walls, rising up to Chibs and Trinity. They stood paralyzed, not breathing.
Go away,
Chibs thought. Instead, the man on the second-floor landing called out in Russian, alerting others that someone was on the stairs.

Chibs cursed under his breath and jammed his gun into his belt. He lifted Trinity into his arms and clomped heavily down the steps. She swore at him but didn’t try to fight loose. The man on the second-floor landing shouted again for backup and then started up toward them. Chibs glanced down as he reached the door into the third-floor corridor and spotted the goateed man below, eyes peeking up in the gap between flights of stairs.

The barrel of the man’s gun winked at him. Gunshots echoed painfully in the stairwell, and a bullet chipped at the concrete over Chibs’s head.

“The door!” Trinity snapped.

“I’m trying!”

Chibs bumped her against the wall and door frame, and she cried out, but he managed to get his hand on the knob, drag the door open, and lug her through. He started moving, but she was no slight wisp of a girl, and she knew it.

“Put me down! I can walk!”

He didn’t argue, but when he tilted her onto her feet, he made sure to support her. They moved together, rushing along the corridor with its stained carpets and missing ceiling panels. The Russian stepped out into the hallway, only moments behind them.

Chibs let go of Trinity and drew his gun, turning in one smooth motion. The Russian had an assault rifle. When he pulled the trigger, bullets punched the carpet and the walls in an arc that would have cut them in half if Chibs hadn’t shot him three times. The third bullet went through the man’s throat—no more shouting for help. He opened his mouth and a wet, gurgling noise spilled out.

“Move!” Chibs shouted at Trinity.

She hobbled onward while Chibs raced back and tore the assault rifle from the man’s hands as his throat and chest wounds pumped blood all over the floor. Chibs glanced up at the sound of heavy footfalls from behind the stairwell door and knew that Yakim and others had come as reinforcements.

“Get to cover!” he shouted.

Trinity put weight on that leg again, then stumbled against the wall and slid along it, using it to keep herself vaguely upright. Chibs ran past her as the stairwell door opened behind them. He tried the door to the next guest room, found it locked, and kicked it in just as Trinity caught up, trailing blood that added crimson to the other stains on the carpet. He took her hand and guided her inside, and she staggered toward the dusty bed as he ducked back into the corridor and pulled the trigger on his appropriated assault rifle.

Yakim took a bullet to the knee and went down in a screaming flail, but there were two guys behind him who opened fire. Chibs ducked back inside, then poked his head out again and let off another short burst from the assault rifle.

Grim-hearted but once more strangely calm, he pressed his back against the inside of the door frame. Bullets cut through the wall, and he dropped to a crouch. Trinity scrambled across the floor to lean against the wall nearby. She held out a hand, and Chibs handed her his pistol, only a few rounds remaining in the magazine.

“Help is coming,” Chibs said.

19

The SAMNOV
tore along the pavement toward the Wonderland Hotel, tires throwing up a cloud of dust and righteous fury. Rollie rode in the lead, an icy ball of dread and suspicion heavy in his gut. He’d known Jax’s father, J. T., and though the man had been arrogant as hell, he’d also been a man of honor. Death had come for him far too young. Too young to have had the proper influence on his son. That remained to be seen.

Hopper rode up on his left, gesturing toward the hotel. Rollie had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he’d stopped paying attention to anything but the heat lines rising from the pavement ahead. They were still half a mile from the hotel, but now that Hopper’d drawn his attention to it, Rollie saw the many vehicles parked out front.

Slower than before, he rode toward the hotel with the eight members of SAMNOV who’d been close enough to respond to his summons. Hopper and Baghead, Antonio and Thor, Clean and Bronson, Ugly Jim and Mikey the Prospect. Nine guys—that was what SAMNOV could muster. Enough to cause problems.

Gunfire cracked the air. A gunman patrolled the roof. Two men ran around the perimeter, and one of them took shots at the guy on the roof, hoping to get in a lucky shot.

Rollie pulled his bike onto the dirt shoulder, engine growling as it idled. Thor drew up next to him on one side, and Hopper on the other, while the rest of his club halted behind them, waiting.

“What now?” Thor asked. “You’re not going to get any answers from Jax in the middle of this shit.”

Rollie dragged his goggles up and squinted at Thor in the glare of the sun. “Now we back him up. You think I’d leave our brothers in the middle of a crisis?”

Thor smiled thinly, ready for a fight.

“What about the Russians?” Hopper asked. “How do we know which ones are on our side and which ones are with Jax?”

Rollie thought about that a second, staring at the hotel. Then he dragged his goggles down, fitting them carefully over his eyes. He turned and raised his voice, making sure the rest of his men could hear him.

“Hard and fast!” he barked. “Take out anyone who takes a shot at you. If we get any friendly-fire killings in here, it’s damn well not gonna be one of us!”

He twisted the throttle, and the rear wheel tore up the dirt shoulder.

Cavalry’s coming, Jackson,
Rollie thought.
For better or worse
.

*   *   *

Jax and Opie raced through the lobby, encountering nothing but sunlight and shattered glass. Opie turned left, and Jax turned right, taking aim through broken windows in case some of Lagoshin’s men had gone back inside. Jax felt as if he skated along the surface of a death that yawned wide beneath him, but he and Opie were in the flow now, and there was no time for second guesses.

Gunfire drew them to the west wing of the hotel, which had a couple of floors of guest rooms on top of a trio of ballrooms, two on the first floor and one off the mezzanine.

Jax put his back to the wall, motioned for Opie to halt. On the wide steps up to the mezzanine, Oleg and Vlad crouched behind marble balusters, shooting through the openings at the double doors of a first-floor ballroom. Jax caught a glimpse of a short gunman just inside the ballroom, saw the oily sheen of his skin and the dead fish eyes and recognized Viktor Krupin instantly. The gunshot wound in his shoulder had to hurt like hell, but it hadn’t slowed him down.

He swung around the corner and fired a burst from the TsNIITochMash. One of the bullets brushed by Krupin’s face close enough to dry his sweat, and the Russian dodged back into the ballroom.

Jax ran down the hall, TsNIITochMash at the ready. Opie shouted angrily at him for breaking cover but followed anyway. Oleg and Vlad saw them coming and stood, moving down the stairs, covering the ballroom’s doors. One of Lagoshin’s men showed himself, ducking low as he fired a shot at Jax and Opie. All four men returned fire, and at least two of the bullets struck home. The guy slammed against the door frame and then slid back into the room, leaving a wide smear of blood on the frame and wall.

Alive or dead?
Jax wondered.
Probably dead
.

“How many more?” Opie asked.

“At least three,” Vlad said.

With Jax and Opie on one side and Oleg and Vlad on the other, the men inside the ballroom were pinned down unless they chose another exit. If they came out these doors, they would be in the middle of a cross fire.

“We’ve got to get to Trinity,” Oleg said desperately, glancing back up the stairs toward the mezzanine.

Jax froze. “Where?”

“Follow me.” Oleg moved back to the steps, glancing at Vlad. “Kill them if you can.”

Vlad nodded, smiling. “Send help.”

Oleg did not reply. Jax saw him moving toward the steps and glanced at Opie, who only nodded.

“Go,” Opie told him.

Jax didn’t hesitate. He raced across the killing floor, the space between Opie and Vlad where the Russians in the ballroom would have a clear shot at him from inside. He held his assault rifle ready, caught a glimpse of Krupin, but the man pulled back out of sight, perhaps remembering the breeze on his nose from Jax’s bullet.

Then he was racing up the stairs after Oleg. When he hit the mezzanine, he saw that Oleg had stopped to wait for him in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out at the back of the hotel, toward the empty swimming pool and the overgrown back lot. Oleg pointed out the window, and Jax glanced across the lot. From that window, they had a clear view from the west wing to east. At first he saw nothing, but then he spotted movement in a guest room window, one floor up and across from them. A flash of strawberry blond hair and then a dark figure, a broad man whose silhouette Jax knew immediately—Chibs.