Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

Chibs and Joyce had let Jax and Opie ride in the lead, just in case one of them took a spill. Despite the blows to Jax’s head and Opie’s blood loss, they’d made it back to the Tombstone without any real difficulty and guided their bikes into the lot at the rear of the bar. Patrons leaving the last showing at Rollie’s little next-door movie theater stared at the snorting Harleys as they vanished behind the gate. Chibs hoped the darkness had hid the crimson soaking Opie’s shirt and the blood on Jax’s face.

“Got it,” Baghead said proudly as he emerged from behind the bar. He did a little two-step as if to celebrate his achievement, and Chibs wondered just how crazy the guy might be. With Tig and Happy, they had their own madmen back in Charming, but Bag seemed to walk a fine line between good-natured idiot and raving lunatic.

“Brilliant,” Chibs said as they fell into step together.

Bag handed him the bottle as they strode toward the back hallway, and Chibs nearly choked. Talisker single malt, twenty-five-year-old scotch. A rare beast, and surely one of the most expensive bottles of liquor behind the bar.

“This isn’t the sort of thing you give a man to take the edge off,” Chibs said.

Bag shrugged. “Honored guests, man. Jax is VP of the mother charter. You guys get the best. Rollie said so.”

Chibs thought Rollie might shit his pants when he saw how literally Bag had taken this instruction, but he stopped arguing about it. He was looking forward to a little taste of the fine stuff himself.

They went through the back of the building to the crash pad. In the poolroom, Joyce and Thor were playing a round of eight ball while Rollie used peroxide to clean the wound on Opie’s right side. Jax had already washed most of the blood off his face and lay on the sofa with a plastic bag full of ice against his head.

Chibs raised the bottle of Talisker. “If you need a painkiller, Jackie, this one’s a beauty.”

Opie extended a hand for the bottle. “Whatever it is, pass it over.”

Rollie glanced up from his handiwork and sighed. “Shit, man, that’s a three-hundred-dollar scotch.”

“Honored guests, that’s what you said,” Bag reminded him.

Chibs took a sip and handed the bottle to Opie, who slugged back several long gulps.

“Get it done,” he said.

“Let’s give it a bit for the scotch to work its magic,” Chibs said.

Opie took another swig, this one not as deep. “Just do it. We can’t waste time.”

“You’re going out again tonight?” Joyce asked, clearly surprised.

Baghead sniffed.“You deaf or stupid? Opie already took a bullet. If the Russians are getting close to an all-out street war, Jax’s sister is gonna be right in the middle of it. We’ve gotta get her out before that happens.”

“Not ‘we,’ Bag,” Rollie said. “I don’t want you near any part of it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can’t keep my cool. I’ll only make it worse,” Bag replied, waving his prez’s words away as if they were irritating houseflies.

Chibs wondered how long Clay would have put up with the guy. A wild card could be useful, but a loose cannon was always a danger to the club. He hadn’t yet decided which one Baghead might be.

“Stitch him up, Chibs,” Jax said from the sofa.

Rollie stepped out of the way to let Chibs work. It wasn’t the first time a member had been stitched up in this room, and Chibs figured it wouldn’t be the last. Fortunately, that meant Rollie had everything he needed to sew up Opie’s wound. “Turn,” he said.

Opie shifted sideways to present the wound, and it pouted open a little. Chibs has treated his share of wounds as a medic in the British Army, and taken care of more than a few for his brothers in SAMCRO, but the scotch could only do so much. When he started stitching up the wound, Opie grimaced.

“So,” Opie said, taking another pull from the Talisker bottle. “How we gonna take these pricks down?”

Jax sat up slowly, and took the ice pack from his head, steadying himself. Chibs had thought he’d cleaned up more, but now he saw the blood in Jax’s beard and the swelling on his face and jaw. At the church, he hadn’t been close enough to see how bad Lagoshin had beaten Jax. Now his hands twitched with the desire to throttle the big Russian.

“I’m not worried about taking them all down,” Jax said. “They’re already trying to kill each other, so all we need to do is get out of the way. We get Trinity, make sure Lagoshin goes down, and we’re done here.”

Opie grunted, teeth grinding as Chibs sewed.

“From what Lagoshin told you, the only lead we’ve got is the murder of this Oscar Temple,” Chibs said.

Jax nodded painfully. “Which is why we talk to a cop.”

Rollie glanced over at him. “How hard did that Russian hit you?”

Jax stared at him. “I know you have someone on the local PD who’d be willing to give up information at the right price.”

Thor sank the seven ball in a corner pocket and glanced up. “There’s Izzo.”

Joyce snickered. “Izzo, man, you can’t trust that guy. He’d sell his mother for a line of blow.”

“We don’t want his mother,” Jax said. “But he does sound like a man we can do business with.”

They met up with the cop in the parking lot of a defunct home-improvement store just south of Nellis Air Force Base. Jax put his bike up on its stand as the echoes of its engine died on the wind. He sat astride it for a few seconds as the throbbing pain in his chest and head subsided.

After a moment, he dismounted and forced himself to stand up straight.

“You all right?” Opie asked, coming toward him.

Jax cocked an eyebrow at him. Opie’s features were pale and drawn from the blood he’d lost, but he seemed remarkably well for a guy who’d been kissed by a bullet a few hours earlier.

Chibs killed his Harley’s engine and climbed off just as Thor circled round to them. He had led them here and then taken a quick ride around the building to be sure they would be alone. Jax had always liked Thor Westergaard. With his imposing size, he seemed an unlikely candidate for chef, but he conducted himself with a calm, methodical style that belied the motorcycle-club lifestyle. Now Jax could see that Thor brought the same Zen aura out into the real world. They’d never been under fire together, but Jax had a feeling that Zen calm would carry over.

“Where’s your cop friend?” Opie asked.

“Izzo’s not a friend,” Thor said. “But he has his uses.”

They heard tires on pavement and the low murmur of an engine. Headlights illuminated the corner of the abandoned home-improvement warehouse… and then went out. The car came around the building slowly, almost crawling, and Jax and the others stood away from their bikes a little, making sure that the moonlight would be enough to allow Izzo to see them.

The car’s headlights flickered, letting them know the driver had seen them. It neither slowed nor sped up, only rolled toward them until, at last, it puttered to a halt. In the darkness behind the windshield, Jax could see the burning tip of a cigarette. The orange glow flared a moment as the smoker inhaled.

The driver’s door opened. The dome light inside the car did not go on—the man was used to meetings in dark places where he didn’t want to draw attention. He left the car running as he climbed out, studied them as he took another drag on his cigarette, then reached back inside to shut it off, apparently deciding that if they were going to ambush him they would’ve done so already. Jax made a mental mark against his intelligence level, but they didn’t need a genius, just an informant.

“If it ain’t the mighty Thor,” the cop drawled, cigarette hand dangling at his side. “And friends. Which one of you is Iron Man?”