David Putnam - The Replacements

Slim Jim said, “You’re insane-that’s Clay’s safe. You just committed suicide assh-”

Drago spun around, the hammer of Thor raised high overhead, ready to strike.

I stepped in front of the two idiot prospects to keep their mouths from killing them.

Drago’s eyes cooled. “Sit them down over there and tell ’em to keep their mouths shut, or I’ll cave in their little pea brains.” He did not bluster. I had no doubt he’d do it.

By the way Drago talked and acted, he didn’t like bikers much. I hoped that’s what was causing his overreaction to the situation, and not that he realized the safe might have been moved. Had the safe been moved even two or three feet, the doughnut, in all likelihood, would not have been used in the reinstallation, as it had not been needed in the first one to begin with.

Drago swung the big sledge in one fluid movement and knocked off the other dial. He went back into the duffel and came out with a unique device, an aluminum rack or frame attached to a huge drill. He looked back to check on me. “Hey, I’m tellin’ ya, don’t watch me, watch those two assholes. They’ll go on you, you give ’em half a chance. They have to. Like I said, they get their asses kicked now by us, or by the gang when they catch up to them. It’ll happen as soon as those two ass-wipes grow a pair of balls.”

Of course, he was right. I understood the primitive and archaic mentality. I just had difficulty comprehending anyone still employing it. I sat on the edge of the desk, facing the two biker wannabes who sat on the floor with their backs to the wall. They kept their eyes on me as the drill’s rpms whined and the bit cut into steel.

Their eyes filled with anger and, in some small way, smothered any hope I had for humanity.

Time did not play fair. It slowed to a pace akin to soldiers, exhausted, slogging along in two feet of sludge, mired in endless miles of mud.

The pitch of the drill changed as the bit broke through. The whine stopped. The lack of noise filled the room with an eerie silent echo. I fought the urge to watch what move Drago did next and asked, “How long?”

“I don’t know.”

My head jerked around all on its own. “What do you mean you don’t know? Haven’t you done this before?”

He smiled. “Hell, no, I’m a stickup guy, not some crotchety old yegg or cheesy little sneak thief who prowls the night afraid of his own shadow. I hate sneak thieves, hate ’em with a vengeance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you never broke into a safe?”

“Cracking a safe. They call it cracking a safe, or peeling a safe, depending on which method you use.”

“How do you-”

“Chill, man. I had twenty-five years to study up on it. Enough time to earn eight college degrees in the subject. I got this. You’d better pay attention to your shit.”

I turned back just as Slim Jim and Roy Boy shot up from the floor in a unified attack. I buried my head in my arms and elbows. Their two cuffed hands grabbed my shoulders beside my neck. They’d been going for my throat and missed as I reacted. With their free hands, they pummeled me on both sides with rock-hard fists of youth. The blows rained down on my forehead and ears and neck with a burst of pain and bright lights. I expected a lion’s roar as Drago counterattacked. Surely, any second, Drago would dispatch them with his hammer. Smash and crush their bodies. Fling them up against the wall like so much human garbage.

But the counterattack didn’t come. The whine of drill started again. He’d warned me, and now I had to take care of my own error. Another biker mantra, “Take care of your own shit.”

The blows continued to fall. I turned numb.

While on the street as a deputy working South Central Los Angeles, I had been jumped twice, once by four suspects and another by five. Four and five were better than two to fight any day. With more in the mix, they got in the way of themselves and even struck one another. Back then I had covered up and picked my shots, making them count, meting out all takedown shots. When two of their cohorts went down hard, the momentum of the gang broke and they had fled.

Now in Clay’s office there were only two, who were younger and more motivated. I had to make a sacrifice. I opened up my right side in order to take a shot with my best stroke, a right uppercut. I made my move. Roy Boy came in with knuckles to my temple on the weak side that shook me to my heels and made the lights in the room flicker. My uppercut was already on the way, a short violent stroke that I put in everything I had left. My fist connected with the bottom of Slim Jim’s jaw. His head snapped back. His broken jawbone radiated through my wrist and up my arm. He went down as though I’d switched off a light. His cuffed hand pulled Roy Boy off balance just enough. I came around with a left hook, the diversion, and followed it up with the heat, a right roundhouse that caught him flat on the nose. He went down on top of Slim Jim.

Mack heard the ruckus and burst into the room just as it ended. He came over and propped me up. My knees wouldn’t cooperate, not entirely, and I had to sit on the edge of the desk. Mack asked Drago, “Hey, asshole, how come you didn’t help out over here?”

The drill whine went on for another long minute, or maybe it was two, as we both waited for his answer. A thudding pain bleated in my eyesight.

Drago shut off the drill and pulled down his goggles. “I warned him twice about these turds. I don’t have the time to do both his job and mine.”

My injuries settled down to a constant throb. My head rang with several bell tones, and I tasted a metallic wetness in my mouth. “He’s right,” I said, “this was all on me.”

“Oh no, it’s not,” said Mack. “We’re a team here.”

Drago scowled, turned back, went into his bag, and came out with a small flashlight he put in his mouth and a long thin piece of metal. He leaned over the holes he’d drilled and probed with the thin shiv, first in one hole, then in the other. “This was much easier than I thought it would be.”

Mack patted my back. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I just had my bell rung, that’s all. I’m too old for this shit.”

“Yes,” said Drago. He dropped his tools and took hold of the two handles. He hesitated and then turned them. The handles moved. A loud clack sounded as the doors swung open.

The large safe was empty. Absolutely and conspicuously empty.

“Shit, we’ve been had,” Drago said.

“What are you talking about?” asked Mack.

“Son of a bitch, who’s watching the front?” Drago ran for the office door as he yelled, “That safe should be filled with guns and ledgers and computer disks.” He made it out the door into the hall with Mack and me close on his heels. Drago said over his shoulder, “They cleared it out for a reason. And there’s only one reason it can be.”

In the big open room, the front door burst open. Three Sons of Satan came right at us with M16 rifles leveled at our bellies. They yelled, “Get on the ground. Get on the ground now.”

I eased to the ground amongst all the debris, trying to take it all in, trying to understand how we had screwed up, how we could possibly get out of this mess.

The fat bikers with guns jumped in close and kicked us. I was slammed down against the crusty rug. Pain radiated up and down my leg from a kick to my hip.

Out the front door, a van had backed up right to the house entrance. The double doors to the van stood open. Two more men stepped down out of the van and into the house. I recognized one from the photos I’d seen. Clay Warfield, the president of the Sons of Satan International. He’d aged and his shoulders had slumped slightly, but he was easy to recognize. He still possessed that crazed look in his eyes, a fire that wouldn’t extinguish until someone cut off his head and buried it ten feet from his body.