The Mafia Trilogy (52 page)

With the empty gun in his hand, he ran through the men’s clothing racks in The Bay, grabbed a hoodie, rolled it into a ball and headed for the exit doors.

A lone clerk closing his till out for the night looked up as Darwin passed.

“Hey, you gotta pay for that.”

Darwin held up the empty gun as he raced by. “Call the cops if you don’t like it.”

Then he was out the door with a twenty-second lead. Through the heavy rain, he saw a city bus pulling in to pick up shoppers and off-duty clerks.

Darwin slipped the hoodie over his head as he ran for the bus. He chanced a look behind him, hoping his new hoodie would make it look like he was just another mall employee running for the bus. Dolph and the two cops exited the mall at the same door Darwin just came through and saw him right away.

Shit!

He raised the gun and shouted for everyone to step away from the bus. Most of the people who hadn’t boarded yet stopped to look at him. They backed away when he got closer, and they saw the gun pointed in their direction.

He jumped up the steps and grabbed the driver by the lapel, thrusting the gun under his neck.

“Everyone off the bus, now, or the driver dies. Go!”

It took all of five seconds for the four people already seated to dive out the side door near the rear of the bus.

“You, up and out.”

The driver began to protest but the windshield cracked in front of him as a bullet penetrated it.

“What the …”

Darwin ducked and shoved the driver out the open door. He dropped into the driver’s seat, set the gun between his legs and hit the gas pedal. The bus lurched forward as another bullet entered the glass, passing one foot from Darwin’s head and sounding like an angry hornet.

Dolph stepped out from behind a row of cars and lifted his arms. Darwin yanked the wheel to the right to make less of a target of himself and then ducked as he yanked the wheel back left, aiming the large bus at Dolph.

What sounded like a firecracker went off four times before the bus rammed into the line of parked cars, knocking Darwin off the seat and onto the pedals on the floor. He bumped his head on the driver’s metal lunchbox that sat beside the base of the stick shift. For a moment he wondered if he’d lose consciousness.

He shook his head and crawled back in the driver’s seat. Blood ran freely over his right ear.

Did I get shot or is this a lunchbox wound?

Dolph was squished between the bus and a black pickup truck. His face was pressed into the bottom of the bus’s front windshield, eyes not moving, blood covering his shirt.

Darwin had to react fast. Others were coming.

He dropped the bus into reverse and pulled away from the wrecked cars. Dolph’s body slipped to the ground and disappeared.

When he put the bus in drive, the Pontiac 6000 with the two skinheads turned the corner ahead.

He hit the gas and headed the bus toward them. Lights flashed from his right. Mall security raced across the parking lot. A siren blared from somewhere behind the bus.

Please tell me you’ve called the cops.

Darwin pressed the accelerator as he drove at the Pontiac. To his surprise, the Pontiac reversed and spun its tires on the wet pavement toward the exit.

Mall security and the police would box them all in soon enough.

Darwin followed the Pontiac, heading toward the exit. He took the turn too wide, hoping the long bus wouldn’t clip a streetlight. The driver coming the opposite way in the other lane had to pull over to avoid being rammed.

After straightening out, he pushed the bus as hard as it would go along the Queensway in the heavy rain. He needed to get to Arkady’s warehouse and bring whatever authorities were following him there too.

It took under five minutes to get to the warehouse parking lot. By that time, three Toronto Police cruisers had taken up pursuit along with the mall security Ford SUV.

He rammed the fence that secured the parking lot, the bus breaking it with ease. Darwin aimed the city bus at the large warehouse door that the limo had entered through only hours before.

The door buckled and then tore from its mounts as the bus shoved through it.

Halfway down the warehouse, a line of four naked women stood five feet apart.

What the hell is Arkady doing?

Darwin hit the brakes and swerved to miss the women. He couldn’t run down women that Arkady had abused. He knew that’s what Arkady was bargaining for. He had to play into Arkady’s hands. He was after the leader and anyone else who got in his way, not the abused women.

The bus skidded sideways as it slid toward the four women, its wheels slick with rain.

“Get out of the way,” Darwin shouted from the driver’s side window.

He tried to brace himself as he lost control of the bus.

Then the unthinkable happened. Something caught on the back wheels, ceased its slide and made the bus tilt dangerously. The sound of twisted metal screamed as the bus fell onto its side and crashed down with a heavy thud, knocking Darwin into the window he’d just been sitting next to.

The blow to the ground knocked the wind out of him. He tried to breathe and for the first few seconds wondered if he would.

He pulled himself upright, got air moving into his lungs again and started to climb to the top of the bus, now the right side seats.

At least the underside of the bus will act as a shield if the police start shooting at me.

He wondered how many of the four women he’d hit. There wasn’t enough time for him to see if they got out of the way.

He lifted his head through the open door of the bus and looked around quick before dropping his head again. No one took a shot at him.

What if Arkady had everyone pack up and leave after Dolph had taken him to the mall? He decided that they wouldn’t have had enough time
.

A cell phone rang somewhere in the building. Darwin looked over the edge of the door again and saw nothing. No movement, no one attacking the bus. Nothing.

He took a chance and crawled out of the window at the top of the bus.

The cell phone rang incessantly.

He hopped onto the floor and ran to the back of the bus in order to not be seen by the open door of the warehouse. Multiple sirens blared outside and vehicles pulled in front. He knew that half the Greater Toronto Area police would show up. He’d be arrested and once his story checked out, he’d finally get back to Rosina.

From where he stood, he couldn’t see any of the four naked women. Either they were under the bus or they’d gotten away.

He stayed low and ran for the hall in front of him.

A cop identified himself and called out on a bullhorn for everyone in the building to come out with their hands visible.

A quick look in each room convinced Darwin that Arkady and his crew had left the building. Frustration led to anger. How could they leave so fast?

The cell phone began ringing again.

He ran back down the hall until it sounded like it was coming from above. He looked up and saw the phone on the metal walkway on the second floor.

He wiped blood from the side of his face and ran for the stairs. He needed to make sure Arkady was gone before he directed the police to whatever evidence they could gather.

The man on the bullhorn outside announced that they were entering in one minute if the occupants didn’t start exiting.

Darwin climbed the stairs two-at-a-time, turned the corner and ran down the walkway until he hovered over the cell phone.

It rang again.

He picked it up and hit the send button.

“Darwin, the Blade, you’re there. Welcome back.”

Arkady.

“Where are you?”

“Long gone.”

“How? You couldn’t be that quick.”

“Darwin, I thought I told you … I play chess. Everything was a strategic move.”

“What are you talking about?”

The bullhorn sounded outside, giving him twenty seconds.

“I knew from the start that you’re friendly with the FBI. I also knew that I couldn’t hand you over to La Cosa Nostra. I wanted to kill
The Blade
myself.”

“Come and get me then, asshole. Come kill me.”

“I already have.”

Darwin could hear noise like air rushing past an open car window. Arkady was mobile.

“How so? I’m still breathing.”

“Let me check my watch,” Arkady said. “In forty seconds that building will be destroyed, and I’m assuming you’re still standing where the phone was placed. That means you will die along with any evidence you thought you could lead the authorities to. Except, of course, for the Triad member in the back who has been killed by hundreds of cuts to his body by a man known as ‘the Blade
.’
Everything leads back to you. Also, I left you four hookers. In addition to the murder charge and the anger the Triads will direct at you, you’ll have human trafficking charges as well.”

Darwin headed for the stairs. “Why not just shoot me? Why go to all the trouble of that initiation and setting up meetings in the mall?”

“I needed time to get to your wife. This is personal. I knew she wasn’t dead and I aim to be the one to kill her.”

Darwin almost stopped walking, but reminded himself that he had less than thirty seconds left.

The man using the bullhorn outside said they were coming in.

“You don’t have my wife and if you do I will personally put you on the Judas Cradle and cut your fucking body in half and then piss on the remains of your face.”

Arkady laughed. “I’m sending a picture to the phone in your hand.”

Darwin made it down the stairs and ran for the bus. He didn’t have enough time to go out the front of the warehouse and persuade the police to fall back and he didn’t know if the rear had any unobstructed exits. The bus was his only chance.

He pulled the phone down and clicked on the picture. He could barely tell what he was looking at, and then it all came clear.

It was a white box that resembled a cooler of some sort. Inside the box was a human head.

Greg Stinsen’s head.

He brought the phone back to his ear. “You motherfucker. This madness has got to stop. Greg Stinsen was a good man. A friend.”

“Somehow Rosina escaped my men, but we’ll find her. She can’t be far. My men in Jacksonville are only minutes behind her. It’s over Darwin. Die peacefully. At least it’ll be fast. You betrayed the Bratva, so now your flesh will burn. Goodbye. Oh, and checkmate.”

“I’m not playing chess, asshole,” Darwin whispered into the phone as men with assault rifles started filing in the front of the warehouse. “I’m playing checkers and I just kinged up on your side of the board. I’m more powerful than you bargained for. I’m coming for you and every single family member associated with you and all of your men. The Russian Mafia have a new enemy. Remember my name. It’s
the Blade
. Oh, and Arkady, sleep with one eye open.”

Darwin tossed the phone away, climbed up the side of the bus, and rolled his legs around and inside the open door.

“Everyone get down,” he shouted. “There’s a bomb. The place is going to blow.”

He dropped into the bus as something exploded behind him. The bus jerked a few feet, and then another explosion roared throughout the warehouse. The bus jerked again.

He tried to position himself between two seats at their base, but a larger explosion tore through the building. The shock wave hit the bus and knocked it so hard that Darwin smacked his head in the same spot the metal lunchbox hit earlier.

The last thing he saw were bright orange flames as they licked across the roof of the warehouse. There was another larger explosion and then everything went black.

The Scythe

by

Jonas Saul

Chapter 1

Yuri Pavel sat in his palatial home in Toronto, sipped his vodka neat, and stared at the TV as it broadcast the hell falling down upon his territory.

“I will kill them all,” he shouted at the television.

He picked up his plate of
pirogue
—Russian pastry shells filled with spicy pork and topped with a dollop of sour cream—and took a large bite.

“We are live at the scene of yet another raid on the Russian Mafia’s strip club called The Mistress,” newswoman Juliet Lawrence said into the camera, a black microphone in her hand. “Inspector Carl Michaels, what can you tell us about the current raids?”

A strong man with a jutting jaw, standing in full RCMP regalia, with his hands clasped in front, moved closer to the microphone.