Eviction Notice, page 29
“You really like my sister, don’t you?” Chris asked with a smirk.
“She’s a’ight,” Animal said, downplaying it.
“It’s cool, dawg. I actually think you and my sister would make a nice couple. You’re a cool cat, Animal, Dad likes you and I know my sister does so I’m cool with that. Who knows, maybe when this is done it’ll free up some time for you guys to hang out.”
“Maybe,” Animal said and turned his attention to the streets of La Perla. It was something out of New Jack City. Addicts roamed the streets in heavy numbers while the dealers served them out in the open. People stood on corners or sat on stoops, brandishing guns freely and watching the van pass. The van pulled down an alley that was only a half block or so from the building where Cruz was hiding out. They would walk the rest of the way for fear of one of Cruz’s lookouts spotting them too soon. A few seconds later, they were joined by a second van, which had entered La Perla from the other end of town. Nearly a half-dozen men and a woman got out of the vans, dressed all in black and carrying assault rifles. Two men, carrying binoculars and sniper rifles, headed to the roof of the building they were parked behind. Everyone was in position and waiting for K-Dawg’s instructions before they moved in. He knew that this would be their first and last chance to get at Cruz, so he had planned everything down to the letter.
Animal was helping Chris adjust the strap on his bulletproof vest when he saw Sonja coming their way. She was leading the team that would take the point and clear a path for the assassins. Dressed in black and carrying a MAC-11 in each hand, she looked every bit the beautiful angel of death. Sonja’s team was to burst through the wedge and clear a path for the second team to take out Cruz. She glared at Animal for a second, then turned her attention to Chris. “You okay?” She stroked his cheek.
Chris moved her hands. “I’m good, why do you keep asking me that?”
“Because you’re my li’l brother and I’m always gonna worry about you,” she told him.
“Don’t worry, Red, Animal has got my back and that muthafucka is bulletproof,” Chris boasted.
Sonja rolled her eyes. “Let me tell you something, Christopher. This”—she laid her hand on the rifle he was carrying—“is the only thing you can depend on when we go inside, so you better tighten up and get serious about this,” she barked.
Chris was embarrassed because Animal had seen him getting disciplined by his big sister. “Sonja, you out here trying to bark on me like I’m some punk kid who doesn’t know what’s going on? My gun goes off just the same as any one of these other niggaz’.” He looked around at everybody.
“You need to watch that, Christopher,” Sonja warned.
“No, you’re the one who needs to watch it and show some respect. You need to be home wearing a skirt and taking care of Daddy, instead of out here playing soldier!”
Moving faster than anyone’s eyes could register, Sonja slapped her little brother viciously across the face. “How dare you disrespect me like that?” Chris raised his hand like he wanted to swing, but Sonja’s raised machine gun gave him second thoughts. “Christopher, I love you to death, but you know I’d kill any man, including you, before I let them put their hands on me.”
“Fuck this shit. I’m gonna show you just how I give it up.” Chris stomped off, bumping through the snickering soldiers. Sonja made to follow but Animal stopped her.
“Let him cool off,” he whispered to her, leading her away from everyone else.
“I used to change his fucking Pampers and he’s gonna act like he wants to raise his hand to me? I’ll kill that li’l muthafucka first,” Sonja fumed.
“Sonja, be cool, because you were wrong,” Animal told her.
Sonja looked at him like he was crazy. “How do you figure I was wrong? I’m only trying to look out for that ungrateful bastard.”
“C’mon, ma, you slapped that man in front of men who will one day have to follow his lead. That’s like saying it’s okay to disrespect him. I know you’re angry, but think about how he’s feeling.”
“And what do you know about feelings?” she hissed. “You know what, fuck the both of you. I’ve got bodies to drop.” Sonja walked away. Animal wanted to follow her, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Sonja and her brother had the same temperament; it was best to give them their space instead of arguing.
“There’s too much at stake here to bring drama to the table, li’l bro.” Justice walked over, cradling an M16, with a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck. “Keep your head in the fight.”
“Justice, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. That didn’t have nothing to do with me,” Animal told him.
“Looked like you were in the middle of it to me.”
“Whatever, man. So when do we move in?” Animal changed the subject.
“We’re supposed to wait for K-Dawg. Should be any minute now.”
“Our fearless leader is about to get his hands dirty? This I gotta see,” Animal said sarcastically.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than they heard the roar of an engine. K-Dawg came rumbling around the corner, riding a black motorcycle with a sidecar attached. Sitting in the sidecar was a chick whom they had seen around but didn’t recognize as a member of Los Negros Muertes. Her gloved hands gripped the handle of the carbine machine gun that was mounted on the front of the sidecar.
“Where the fuck did you get that?” Justice looked the motorcycle over, paying special attention to the mounted machine gun.
“I had this baby imported especially for today.” K-Dawg patted the barrel of the machine gun. “Everybody check your weapons and your reservations. This is the last ride.” K-Dawg revved the engine of the motorcycle. “Y’all niggaz ready?” he asked the group, but he was looking at Animal. In answer to his question, Animal cocked the two silencer-equipped Desert Eagles he was carrying. “A’ight, into positions and let’s bang.”
Justice and his group went to their van and Sonja and her group started for theirs. She was just about to climb into the passenger side when she realized that her brother hadn’t returned. “Where’s Chris?”
Justice and the others looked around but nobody could find him. “This fucking kid,” Justice snapped.
“Justice, he was a part of your unit; get this shit under control so we can handle business,” K-Dawg ordered.
Justice took out his Boost phone and chirped the lookouts on the roof. “Yo, can you guys see Chris from up there?”
A few seconds passed, then a voice came back: “Yeah, but you ain’t gonna like it.”
“Stop playing and tell me where the fuck he is!” Justice barked.
“Moving in on the target.”
“Muthafucka.” Justice threw his phone against a wall.
“Fuck it, we’ll roll without him,” K-Dawg said.
“Wait, we can’t ride in there blasting and we don’t know where Chris is,” Sonja said frantically. She cursed herself for embarrassing him and making him run off. Sonja wouldn’t be able to live with herself if something happened to him because of her.
“Chris knew protocol and he broke it, that’s on him. Move in,” K-Dawg ordered, and peeled off on the bike.
“My brother’s gonna get killed because of that maniac.” Sonja began to sob.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get him,” Justice assured her. “Animal, I need you to…” He had turned to say something to his little brother, but he was gone.
CHAPTER 41
Chris was so mad that he could barely hold back the tears that welled up in his eyes. Chris’s whole young life had been spent trying to impress his father and prove that he could walk a mile in the shoes left by his late brother, Juan.
When Poppito started to get up in years he trusted the day-to-day operations of his business to Juan. The streets both loved and feared Poppito’s oldest child. Some feared him enough to want him dead, which is what had led to Juan’s murder. After the death of his older brother, Chris had expected to be groomed to take his place, but instead Poppito had passed the mantle to Sonja. The slight didn’t go unnoticed by Chris or the soldiers, and the youngster found that he had to work three times as hard to earn the respect that he should’ve been given. After what Sonja had pulled in front of the troops, he knew that he would have to do something to save face, so he decided to go after Cruz on his own.
Chris knew from one of the maps they had all been provided with for the mission that there was a collapsed laundry room connected to the back of the building where Cruz was hiding. K-Dawg had decided against using that as a point of entry because the entrance had long been cemented over and the only way in was through small boarded-up windows on the back. It would’ve been no good for the all-out attack but it could work for Chris.
Chris wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he hopped the fence that separated the back of the abandoned tenement from the street. The once sprawling yard looked like a modern-day apocalypse, with its mounds of rubble that stood nearly as high as the three-story building itself. The stench of dead animals and human excrement was almost overwhelming to his senses as he picked his way through the debris. Looking up at the abandoned building, he began to wonder if he was making the right decision.
Suddenly gunfire erupted, causing Chris to reflexively drop to his belly, landing just a few feet from what looked like the decomposing corpse of a dog. A wave of bile rode up his throat but he was able to force it back down. He fumbled with his assault rifle as another wave of gunfire rang out. Chris lay there for a full five minutes before he realized that no one was shooting at him. K-Dawg had begun the assault, and instead of being on the front line, Chris was crawling on his belly through garbage.
“Fuck this.” Chris got up and crept toward the structure. What was left of the laundry room, like the rest of the rear of the building, was boarded up tight. Just above the laundry room were several small windows, one of which had the glass broken out. Chris scaled the short building and knelt in front of the window. It was just large enough for him to squeeze through.
Chris lowered himself into what he could only assume was the basement of the building. It was dark so he couldn’t see, but the inside of the building smelled worse than the outside, if that was possible. Shutting out the increasing sounds of gunfire coming from outside, he made his way toward a sliver of light that had to be one of the exits marked on the map. He thought it was strange that the rear of the building wasn’t guarded, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Chris pulled the door open and began climbing the darkened stairwell leading to the upper levels of the building. He made it up three steps before he was blinded by several flashlights. When his vision cleared he saw three men holding the flashlights as well as some very big machine guns. For all Chris’s ingenious planning, he had never taken into the consideration the surveillance cameras that had been watching his every move.
The leader of the gunmen stepped forward with his rifle trained on Chris’s forehead. “We hear your piece-of-shit father put a million dollars on Cruz’s head. I wonder how much he’ll pay for yours.”
“Most likely quite a few pennies more than yours is worth,” a voice called from behind them. The three gunmen turned at once and saw Animal standing at the top of the stairwell, grinning menacingly. They never even got a chance to scream as the bullets tore through their bodies.
Chris took one look at the corpses at his feet and vomited.
“Now that’s just fucking nasty.” Animal shook off the loose chunks of food that had splattered on his boot.
“They were gonna kill me.” Chris gasped, holding on to the wall to keep on his feet.
Animal grabbed Chris and slammed him roughly against the wall. He pressed the hot barrel of the gun against Chris’s chin, searing the soft flesh of his throat. “And I should’ve let them, you dumb little shit,” Animal snarled. “You could’ve gotten yourself as well as the rest of us killed by going lone wolf. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, I just wanted to show you guys that I could pull my weight,” Chris said.
“How, by getting your fucking head blown off? Li’l nigga, this ain’t no video game so there’s no reset button. When you’re dead, you’re dead, and you better learn that real quick before you end up getting yourself or somebody else hurt. Now come on, there’s killing to be done.” Animal started back up the stairs.
* * *
Nearing the lobby level of the tenement Animal could hear all hell breaking loose. Gunshots and the screams of the dying could be heard all around him. The stairwell door swung open and one of Cruz’s shooters spilled through it, followed by a hail of bullets that shredded the door. When he spotted Animal he tried to raise his gun, but the killer was already on the move. Wielding the machete like a samurai sword, he delivered two sharp cuts to the shooter’s chest and abdomen, dropping him to the ground, but he was still alive.
“Finish him,” Animal told Chris.
“But he’s dying already,” Chris said.
Animal pointed the bloody machete at the young man. “Blood on my hands, blood on yours.”
Chris stood over the fallen man and pointed his gun at his head. The man looked up at him with pleading eyes, begging for his life. Seeing the wild look in Animal’s eyes, Chris decided he feared the young killer more than the stain of a murder on his soul and pulled the trigger. The man’s head splattered like a rotten tomato. Chris turned away, refusing to look at the corpse.
“Don’t turn away now.” Animal grabbed him by the back of his neck and forced him to look at the bloody corpse. “You wanted to be a gangsta, so take a good look at what your choice of lifestyle has to offer. Just be glad that you’re on the proper end of the bullet … this time. Now let’s go, kid. Stick close to me and you may actually live through this.” Animal led the way up the stairs.
Through the window in the stairwell door Animal caught a glimpse of what was going on outside. K-Dawg and the team had turned it up on Cruz’s men, lighting up the front of the building like the Fourth of July. From the intelligence they had gathered, Cruz was holed up in an apartment on the top floor, so the plan was to cut off all the exits so he couldn’t escape, which K-Dawg and the rest had taken care of. From the looks of things, Los Negros Muertes had most of the soldiers occupied, so he and Chris would have to deal only with the stragglers left behind to guard the police chief. They soon found that it would be easier said than done, as more men came spilling down the stairs, all armed and ready to die in defense of their leader.
Animal resheathed his machete and drew both guns. “Watch my back and try not to get in my way,” he told Chris as he bounded up the staircase to meet his enemies. Watching Animal in action was like watching Michelangelo paint a masterpiece in blood. Had they been trained soldiers they might’ve stood a chance, but these were street punks and mercenaries hired by Cruz in a last ditch effort to save him from the inevitable.
The idiot leading Cruz’s charge was the first one to get it. He had an extremely large machine gun, which he tried to bring around to spray the crowd, but the stairwell was too narrow so the gun scraped off the wall and slowed his motion by a fraction of a second, which was all Animal needed. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and pulled with everything he had, knocking the shooter off-balance and putting him in a reverse choke hold. As Animal applied pressure to his neck, the shooter’s finger involuntarily squeezed the trigger, ripping through his team with a hail of bullets. The rest of them retreated farther up the landing for fear of being shot.
The man struggled in Animal’s grip as the choke hold got tighter. “Sucks to be you right about now,” Animal whispered in his ear before snapping his neck. The shooter’s body went limp and Animal let him drop to the floor.
“Down!” Chris roared. Animal hit the floor as bullets whizzed over his head and buried themselves in the body of a man who was trying to creep on them from the second-floor-stairwell door. “Animal, these muthafuckas are like roaches, the more we squash the more of them come. Something has got to give if we wanna get to Cruz.”
More gunshots erupted around the corner where Cruz’s soldiers had retreated, causing Animal and Chris to get low and prepare for another attack. A lone solider staggered down the stairs with a far-off look in his eyes. Animal was prepared to fire on him, but before he could, the soldier pitched forward and fell down the stairs. When he landed they could see the smoking holes in his back. A confused look passed between Animal and Chris but it all made sense when K-Dawg appeared, holding a smoking rifle.
“We got Cruz trapped in his apartment. Let’s finish this,” K-Dawg told them and disappeared back around the corner.
CHAPTER 42
The damage Animal had done in the stairwell was nothing compared to the mess K-Dawg and the others had created on the third floor. The peeling brown walls were now red, stained with blood and brain matter donated by the dozen or so bodies strewn throughout the hallway. Most had been killed instantly in the hail of bullets, and those who were unfortunate enough to still show signs of life were finished off by bats and pieces of wood as Poppito’s soldiers made the rounds, bashing their skulls in. The floors were so slick with blood that they could barely walk without slipping. It was a massacre.
Sonja stood at the end of the hallway, giving last-minute instructions to some of the soldiers. When she saw Animal and Chris emerge from the stairwell she rushed to them and hugged her brother. “Thank God you’re alright.” She sobbed.
“I told you Animal had my back,” Chris said, smirking.
Sonja pushed Chris away and punched him in his chest. “You scared the shit out of me. Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again!”
“I’m sorry, for what I said and for running off,” Chris said.
“It’s okay, just as long as you’re safe,” Sonja told him. She turned to Animal and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you so much for saving my brother’s life. I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d lost Chris.”
