What the fuck does he pay bouncers for?
“My name is Miroslav Petrov –”
“We don’t give a shit.”
Dawn didn’t have a weapon. All of these poorly dressed retards were armed. She could take them all out in half a minute but that meant Jabari would force her to clean up the mess and she didn’t feel like mopping.
“Why are you fucking dressed like that?”
Petrov looks down at his outfit. He looks back at Dawn. Everyone else also looks at Dawn, like she’s insane. Seven people silently try and tell her to knock it off but this is her spot. Only she’s allowed to make a ruckus here.
“Are you –”
“What’s wrong with your fucking shoes, man?”
His shoes were fine. Black leather oxfords. Nothing spectacular. Nothing horrendous. But it’s all about the perspective. Make him self-conscious. Second guess himself. It slows him down. It’s petty bullying but, well, he’s a mobster. No rules here.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Petrov asked, pointedly. He seems completely baffled.
“What’s your fucking problem?” Dawn responds. “You fucking walk in here rolling ten deep like you own the place. Get real.”
The man with the golden grill steps to Petrov, whispers something into his ear. Petrov’s eyes widen.
“As, so you are a, what, patron? Regular?”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is not your business, gozpozha. I would stay out of it, lest something unfortunate happen.”
Dawn opens her mouth but someone draws first.
“Howard, shut up.”
Celine D’Ambrosia steps forwards.
“This is our business, not yours.”
Dawn Howard feels the weight of the universe crash down upon her. And she shuts her mouth.
D’Ambrosia hefts both duffels bags by their straps and tosses them at Petrov’s feet. He bends down and unzips one of the bags and pulls out a stack of cash. Dawn spies Ulysses Grant’s face on the topmost bill of the stack.
Petrov holds five large in his hand and grabs another to make sure. He slides one of the bills from the stack and hoists it up to the ceiling, looking through it to make sure it’s not counterfeit.
He pulls back the red elastic and returns the bill to its brethren. He puts the stacks back in the bag, and re-zips it up. Then he tosses them to his retinue.
<
“That’s three-eighty-five. Like you asked.”
Petrov smiles. Humourless. He’s pulling Celine by the leash, straight into a bear trap.
“Well,” he starts. “With the fluctuations of the market, the rise of interest rates, inflation, those sorts of things…”
“We shook on three-eighty-five.”
“But the cost of doing business is just, astronomical, these days. You understand, don’t you?”
“I’m fine if you walk.”
“But, you wouldn’t want to do that.”
He snaps his fingers and his posse draws. Ten guns, all pointed at the three Montagnards.
“I have your money. And if you walk, we’ll just, well, walk with the money.”
Celine is quiet.
In that negative space, someone else speaks.
“You’re a right fucking prick.” The accent is heavily British. Desmond. “Fuck you! We gave you what you asked for, you Russian bastard!”
And Petrov keeps smiling. He draws his own machine pistol and starts pacing back and forth, spinning the weapon like a cowboy would. It looks far less dignified.
“And so what if I am?”
Desmond is quiet. So is Claire. Celine’s eyes flicker from patsan to patsan. Dawn glances at her, tries to see if the gears in her lawyer brain are turning.
Lady, you were at Sullivan & Cromwell. If you don’t find yourself a way out of this, I’ll do it for you.
“You see, my friend,” Petrov continues.
Oh, fuck me, he’s monologuing.
“You aren’t in Britain anymore. You aren’t in France anymore. You are standing in the United States of America. I am the seller and have absolute power over you, the buyer. I set the price. I can rip your fucking eyes out of your head if I want to. I can take your money and my guns and leave and sell them to this group in Erbil I have been talking to. I can do whatever I want because you’re completely on your own in America. This is not a country like France or Russia. This is solely a business.
“Which means you’re going to fucking pay me.”
Celine is quiet, then she moves herself to the right. Stands in front of the four Janissaries. Claire and Desmond join her.
“We did. Are you going to shoot us?”
Petrov levels his machine pistol at her, but pauses. It sits by his hip.
He won’t shoot.
“If you do, you’re going to hit five hundred million dollars worth of Janissary. You might even kill them,” Celine tells him. “Go ahead. Shoot. We’ve given you our money. Put a target on your head.”
Something thuds on the bar and all eyes shift towards Jabari, the big bartender. Balanced on the polished wood sits an M240 squad automatic weapon. Bipod included; the belt of 7.62x51mm brass hanging from the chamber.
Dawn remembers that! It was a gift from C-SPEAR after the last time a bunch of people tried to invade the bar. A bunch of drunk mercenaries from two different companies. At least that time they were too focused on destroying each other with fists and feet and bottles to target the staff. Who knows what the bratva will do.
Petrov purses his lips. He scratches at his beard with his free hand. He turns back to his goons.
<
<
The one with the grill and striking getup holsters his handgun into the waistband of his trackpants, turns towards Petrov. He doesn’t speak, but instead tilts his head in the direction of the door.
Petrov shakes his head. The other, the obvious second-in-command, leans back in frustration, one of his knees bending. He straightens up but his handgun remains sheathed.
“All I want is what’s mine,” Petrov says. “We made a deal.”
“We did,” Celine replies. “You went back on it. By all rights, we should get it for free.”
“But we have your money.”
“So you leave with the money. We get the guns.”
Petrov thinks.
“What if I want more money?”
“If you fuck me over I will skin you alive.”
“Watch me.”
Aside from the bangin’ drum and bass from below – actually, more of an drum and bass/metalcore crossover now – the room is silent. Dawn steps her way to the front of the formation, next to Celine. If someone’s dying, it’ll be these ten, and if one of the Janissaries has to die, it’ll be her.
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She sights it out in her head. She’ll go after Petrov first and get there before he can shoot, drive a foot through his kneecap and shred him with his own machine pistol. Then it’ll be Gold Teeth, who’ll be her human shield as she picks off the rest of them.
Her eyes close and she inhales through her nostrils.
Clocking in, she thinks. Emergency shift.
There’s no gunpowder in the air but she still feels electricity arc up her spine. She can smell alcohol, so much of it, everything from wine to whiskey to spirits to moonshine to absinthe, there’s the smell of chicken wings crisping in an air fryer in the back filtering through the door and the smell of wood and floor polish, apple-scented. There’s cantaloupe-scented handsoap in the washroom. The guitarist of the act currently on stage is shredding his way through an obscene riff, all overtop of heavy 8-0-8 drums, and the smell of sweat filters up and up through the cracks between the windows and frame. The vocalist is screaming his lungs out, his voice warbling underneath a heavy layer of distortion and fuzz. Helps soften the blow, make it more palatable.
Petrov widens his stance. He’s ready for a shootout.
The bell above the door rings. It’s silver, the way it rings is different than brass, the sound it makes higher in frequency and pitch and tone. No matter.
“¿Qué carajo está pasando?”
Bubblegum and cotton candy.
Oh, come the fuck on.
Dawn’s eyes snap open and flick over to the door. Standing barely within the threshold are two figures.
Out of all the fucking times.
Her phone aches in her back pocket. She just had to make a phone call half an hour ago. Meet me at the Osiris! We can hang out if you’re not sick anymore! What a fucking catastrophe.
Two of the bratva move towards the intruders. Dawn hears the click of weapons being un-safetyed. Two handguns. Sophia wields a P330, her Sig real sour. Jacob has his own, an M1911 that he never uses. Carvings and engravings span the entirety of the weapon.
“¡Back the fuck up!” Sophia yells, pistol packing, never lacking. “¿Who the fuck are you guys‽”
Jake’s lucky. He doesn’t have to say anything. Between the two, either one is overdressed or one is underdressed. Jake’s in jeans, a grey zip-up hoodie atop blue flannel, and a blue and silver windbreaker, the logo of some NFL team on the back. The Detroit Lions. A grey canvass shopping bag around his shoulder, something reasonably heavy within. Why Jake likes American football is beyond Dawn, much less his team choice. Barbaric sport, says the woman with four digits to her kill count. Sophia wears a grey fur coat down to her ankles, a black dress that flutters around her ankles, shining black combat boots made to stomp someone’s head in, and about seven thousand dollars worth of jewellery from bracelets to necklaces. It’s just too much.
Did she wear that all day?
One of the patsan rushes Sophia and she turns her gun around and cracks him square across the nose with the butt, the magazine of the weapon shattering nose bone and cartilage and resetting his nasal bones at a forty-five degree angle and he stumbles backwards with blood streaming from both nostrils and all over his black tracksuit.
“¿What the fuck is your problem?”
She is fired up today!
Petrov suddenly realizes that he’s in a pinch. Sure, he still has eight gunmen, alongside himself. But while his target used to be an unarmed lawyer he’s trying to extort, he’s now staring down the barrel of either an M240 light machinegun or a pair of Janissaries with their handguns pointed at him.
He looks at his lieutenant. Gold Teeth just shakes his head. Motions at the duffel bags filled with money.
<
He grabs both of the bags.
“Fuck you,” he spits at Celine’s feet. “We’re taking your money and our guns.”
“We made deal, you fucking prick!” Desmond shouts.
“Fuck your deal!”
“Fuck you!”
“How much?”
All eyes turn towards Celine, even the evacuating bratva. Dawn glimpses at Sophia, sees her swaying gently side to side. No, not swaying. Grooving. In tune with the music in the background. Drums, guitars, synths, vocals, all morphing into something Dawn can’t quite quantify. Can’t just say ‘mid’ and leave it at that. Sophia’s dance moves need work. So does her lip syncing.
This constant cloud
Is watching over me
I wish I had the time to make you see this through
Petrov freezes.
“No. Fuck you. Fuck this.”
“Fourteenth floor.”
The bratva all freeze up. Petrov turns back around. He runs his hands through his hair, slicked back. He’s mid-thirties. Patches of grey are in his beard, patches of red too, but his hairline is rock-solid. His eyes are a brownish green, a sort of hazel. He’s not bad looking, per se. Just his vibes are horrendous.
Dawn figures he has insane tattoos underneath his all-black getup. If Celine flays him alive, she might need to take a look for inspiration.
“The Horizon tomorrow. On the fourteenth floor, there’s going to be an exchange of invisible money. Profits from drug and weapons trafficking, prostitution, skimming. You name it.”
“How much?”
She’s lured him back in. That’s Sullivan & Cromwell for you.
“I cannot say for sure. At least ten million dollars.”
Petrov freezes. Dawn swears she sees his pupils turn to dollar signs and back again.
“Thank you for the tip.”
His soldiers restart their exfiltration of the Osiris.
“Wait, wait!” Claire says. But the bratva don’t stop. They all file out the door, Gold Teeth last, bumping into Jacob along the way. He grins at him before leaving. Jake watches him until they leave his direct sightline.
Claire takes two steps forwards before Celine’s hand stabs out and latches onto her wrist. Claire tugs and pulls and shakes but Celine doesn’t let go.
“Wait until they’re gone.”
“They’re taking our money and our guns!”
“If you follow them, they’ll kill you and then take our money and guns.”
Claire scowls but holds still. Celine locks her down until the rumble of SUVs and a six-wheeled truck vanish into the night. Only then does she let go, and Claire scampers out into the night where the wind wracks at her hair. The bratva’s vehicles are long gone; the only cars sitting on the street now are an Audi and a Corvette and a 4-door Lexus. All rentals. C-SPEAR rents out a fleet of sports cars and compacts; their only real vehicular asset is that enormous Range Rover with all the weapons inside.
Everyone else in the room exhales at the same time.
Jake and Sophia holster their handguns. One has his holster underneath his hoodie at the small of his back. The other has hers on the outside of her thigh underneath her dress. She has to pull up the hem of it to her waist, and in the process shows off the obscenely expensive garter and stockings she’s wearing underneath. Totally by accident.
Dawn hears the clink of glass on wood and she turns. Jabari the bartender is halfway through making a rum and coke, and when he’s done Dawn steals it from him.
“That’s not for you.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
Jabari exhales through his nose, puts his hand on the M240. Glares first at Dawn, then redirects his stare towards Jacob and Sophia.
“I should kick you two out right now,” he says, his baritone threatening. Jake reacts by not reacting, he just takes a seat on an open barstool next to Dawn. Sophia puts her hands to her heart and gasps.
“What did we do?” she asks.
Jabari points to the big sign above the bar.
NO FIREARMS ALLOWED
except for mine
He had it installed after the whole mercenary kerfuffle incident. Eleven people died because of blood loss. Americans. Nobody important. But it made it so that the Osiris is only open to reservations and ‘members’. And friends of members, apparently.
“We helped you out!”
“I don’t make exceptions,” Jabari warns. “Except…”
A bright smile returns to Sophia’s face.
“Only because you’re so pretty.” He finishes up a second rum and coke and slides it over and Sophia snatches it off the bar with a grin. He flashes her a grin, well-practiced, devastatingly effective in certain scenarios.
The bell over the door dings again and the bartender’s eyes flash towards the three Montagnards. No smiles to be found now.
“What the hell were you thinking? Bringing them to my place?”
Celine looks at him sideways. “They weren’t going to shoot up this place.”
“And that’s why you brought them here?”
“You used us as human shields!” Xiuying adds.
“I stood in front of you,” Celine replies.
So that makes it totally okay?
“There were four Janissaries here. They weren’t going to do anything,” she adds.
“They ran away with your money and the guns you were going to buy,” Farrah tacks on.
But Celine probably has some explanation, right? Something smart.
She pulls out her phone and tosses it to Dawn. It’s already opened, a GPS app on screen. There’s also two headphones displayed, rapidly speeding away from the Osiris, the same direction as the bratva left. Dawn looks at Celine. She flashes a smile, polite, one that her eyes don’t echo.
“I know where they’ll be.”
Dawn passes the phone to Jake, who doesn’t have much of an external reaction. Then over to Xiuying, who shows it to Farrah, and they both start giggling at it.
In hindsight it’s simple. Bluetooth headphones as makeshift GPS trackers. How obvious! Of course, there’s another matter.
“Let me guess. You want us to get them back?” Dawn asks.
“We’d be in your debt.”
“You’re running up a fuckin’ tab.”
“You can keep the guns. I just want the money.”
“We have enough guns.” A bunch of trafficked Uzis and Galils from some pilfered warehouse in Azerbaijan or Dagestan is a net-zero to C-SPEAR.
“Well,” Celine replies. She starts towards the door, where Claire is waiting, arms crossed and a look of frustration etched onto her face. Farrah tosses her phone back and the redhead snatches it out of the air. She gestures with it towards Dawn. “We are in town for a few more days. Damascus is still too hot. If you require something, we can assist.”
“Just the three of you?” Farrah asks.
“Hey, we’re pretty bloody good,” Dez responds.
Farrah nods skeptically. Not good enough to avoid getting your pocket picked by some vodka-drunk mobster.
“Get the hell out of my bar!” Jabari the bartender yells, and Celine waves him off. Dez slaps something on the countertop and rejoins the group at the door. They leave and slide into the four-door Lexus parked outside, before vanishing around the corner.
She takes a look at the piece of paper Desmond left. He said something like “Fancy lad told me to give this to you,” before he left. The ‘language,’ if it’s that, looks like arrows, recreations of shapes roughly pressed into clay tablets thousands of years ago. She puts it back on the bar and Farrah quickly swipes it up.
And Dawn, finally, takes a sip of the rum and coke in her hands and then nearly coughs it back up. It’s too fucking sweet. Whoever ordered this must’ve been a sugar freak, some low-level software engineer not paid enough for the good stimulants.
God, what a stupid fucking night. And it’s not even halfway done yet.
I was the one, who toooooore, yoooooou, doooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwn
I was the one, who toooooore, yooo~oou, dooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwn
At the other end of the bar, the two tall servers re-emerge from the kitchen, DeShawn and the new hire. The son of some cold storage labourer. Darius, his name was. Sophia has laid her heavy fur coat on the back of a barstool and his properly grooving to the last part of this song. Dawn can’t figure out if the subject matter warrants the singer’s vocal intensity – he’s belting out this last part, voice breaking through the fuzz and distortion and sounds of his band members.
A thought crosses her mind. Crosses half the city, arrives at the regional headquarters of Southern Seas Trading Company.
I wonder how Tecumseh is doing tonight.