ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES (21 page)

Meanwhile, Jake had decided to wait out front.  He enjoyed these assaults, but he also knew that he’d pushed his luck far enough for the day.  He had soldiers for good reason, and he wasn’t about to stick his neck out any further than necessary. 

He glanced at the still smoldering Stryker in the middle of the street.  Its destruction had rattled him.  But he wasn’t about to let on to anyone else that the thought had passed through his mind that it could have been Ava, or worse yet,
him
inside that vehicle.

And as darkness settled upon the day, Jake sauntered inside the hotel to smoke a few cigarettes and drink at the hotel’s bar.  He found a bottle of tequila – one of the few bottles that hadn’t been shattered by gunfire – and sat down in a bullet ravaged bar stool. 

Sitting there at the bar, several dead hotel defenders lying on the floor nearby, Jake tallied up his losses.  First there was the Stryker armored vehicle.  That would be difficult to replace.  Steel Will had also been killed in the loss of the Stryker.  That was okay, Jake reasoned, since Steel Will’s main role in the organization had been to operate the Stryker and oversee several of the neighborhoods.  A manager for Will’s domain would be relatively easy to find, and without the Stryker, Jake didn’t need Will. 

Several of the armored SUVs had been taken out too or were damaged beyond repair, but those were easily replaceable.  Jake had lost his best sharpshooter in the Kill King, and that was a blow, but sharpshooters were replaceable too.  So far the tally of killed and wounded on his side was 26, and his men were still getting a count on enemy casualties although it really didn’t matter to Jake.  He had won – whatever the cost to either side – and that was all that mattered.  While some of his most loyal men had been lost in the process, he could buy more easily enough.

Jake was still drinking and reveling in his victory when a white SUV pulled up outside the hotel.  Jake noticed it through the bar’s smashed and shattered windows. 

It was Ava.

Jake pounded back the glass of tequila that sat before him, lit another cigarette, and stood to go outside and confront her.

Ava had been working late at their main bank branch, running numbers with the bank president on how the “Banks for Bullets” program they’d rolled out was proceeding when she’d received word of the attempt on Jake’s life and the planned reprisal attack.  She’d promptly cut their accounting session short and had her driver take her straight to Little Havana and Gonzalo’s hotel.

When she arrived, it looked like something out of a movie.  One of the Strykers was thoroughly destroyed.  There were burned out SUVs scattered around the street and dead bodies everywhere.  The hotel itself looked like it’d been in a war.  All the windows were smashed or shot out.  Trails of bullet holes lined the building’s front façade and large hunks of stucco were blasted away.  The building’s main entrance had been obliterated, leaving a gapping hole where the front doors used to be.

Ava was glad she hadn’t been present for the battle itself.  What would she have done?  Would she have shot at the hotel or shot at Jake?

She recognized some of the men milling around outside and knew that while things looked bad, and that the losses likely severe, Jake must somehow have pulled out a victory.  Her stomach churned and she wanted to tell her driver to turn around and take her back to the condo, but she knew she had to put on a brave face and act the cheerleader for Jake’s victory.  She hoped that maybe he’d been killed in the battle, but just as the thought entered her mind, she saw him stroll outside what was left of the hotel’s main entrance, stepping over the body of a dead man who lay prone across the building’s front steps.

Her driver parked, got out, and came around to open the door for her.

She stepped out of the SUV and walked over to where Jake was waiting for her.

“About time you showed up,” he greeted her.

“I was at the bank,” Ava said flatly.  “I heard about the attempt on your life.”

“Assholes,” Jake spat.  “Last time they try something like that,” he sneered, turning and nodding at the demolished building behind him.

“You should have consulted me before…” she looked around her and gestured, “…before you did all this.  Looks like it cost us a lot.”

Jake ignored her comment and concerns.

“Come on,” he said, stepping up close to her and taking her gruffly by the arm.  He stiffly led her back up the steps and inside the hotel to the elevator. “I want to show you something.”

They rode in silence up to the penthouse suite.  As the elevator door slid open, Ava saw the man who had escorted her up this same way for the meeting with Gonzalo.  He now lay on his back, dead in the hallway, several bullet holes in his chest.  She followed Jake to the open penthouse suite doors where they stopped just outside. 

“They put up one hell of a fight,” Jake said.  “I kind of get now why you didn’t want to deal with this when we were taking the city,” he glared at her and then pushed her roughly inside the suite.

“Take a look,” he said, pointing to the conference table where Ava and Gonzalo had so heatedly, so passionately, so voraciously reacquainted themselves not long ago.

“There’s the big three you were so scared of,” Jake said, clueless as usual.  “Seems like I could do what you couldn’t,” he continued, satisfied with himself and enjoying finally having something to rub in Ava’s smart little face. 

Ava could barely stand it.  Here was Jake – the big boy, finally gone potty all by himself, and he wanted to show mommy what he’d done.

She wanted to smack that smug little grin off his face so bad, and it took everything in her being to resist the urge.  Instead, she just stared unflinchingly at the conference table, the center of which was no longer adorned with a glistening silver urn of fruit, but instead with the heads of Rico, Pepe, and her lovely, her sweet, her wonderful Gonzalo.

She bit into her tongue so hard that she broke skin, but she remained silent.  She just nodded. 

Jake turned to face her directly.  He was still grinning foolishly.

Ava’s fists clenched and re-clenched, wanting to go for her lucky guns, but she kept her arms stiffly at her sides.  Several of Jake’s most loyal men milled about the room and she knew she’d never make it out alive even if she did manage to take down Jake.

“You see,” Jake sneered.  “I take care of business.”  He nodded towards the head-adorned table. “I was thinking that maybe I should nail them to the front of the hotel as a warning to others around here thinking that they might be able to pull the same type shit.  You see, you might be the brains…” he grabbed Ava, pulling her up close to him, “…but I’m the brawn.  Just remember that. And it didn’t take a fucking brain surgeon to figure out who was behind all this,” he glared at her. 

Ava’s breath caught and she was sure she that she was as good as dead.  Jake had finally figured out that she was working with Little Havana.  Even though the attempt on Jake’s life was all her stupid, wonderful, Gonzalo’s doing, she was finally going to pay for their transgressions.  Why couldn’t he have just waited?  It made her so angry.  She had asked Gonzalo to be patient.  It was such a simple request.  All he had to do was wait for her to finalize everything.  She was so close.  Everything was ready.  If he could have just held off for a few more days.  But no; he’d gone and tried to do it all himself.  He wanted to make things right with her, to compensate for the past and take care of everything.  And now he was dead, and soon she would be joining him. 

“I thought I could trust you to keep things straight here,” said Jake.  “But you left these fucks here to cause trouble.  Their little power play almost cost me my life.  But I’m better than that.  Better than them.  Better than you.  Now
I’ll
be calling the shots…
all
the shots,” he smacked her hard across the cheek.  It snapped her head sideways, but she took it.  She licked away a trickle of blood from the side of her mouth as she watched Jake walk away from her and over to the table.  There, he addressed the three heads.  “You fucked me up once!” he yelled, pointing at them.  “But you won’t fuck me up again!”

Ava stood stunned, not from the blow, but from Jake’s arrogance and once again his stupidity.  He thought it was only Little Havana out to take him down.  He still had no idea that Ava had been involved with them in any way other than a strictly business sense.  Jake thought her only connection with Little Havana was her naivety at thinking their two organizations could peacefully co-exist within the same city.  Jake was still clueless regarding her real relationship with Gonzalo and Little Havana.

This gave Ava hope.  It meant her overall plan could still very well be intact.  Without Little Havana at her side, things would have to be adjusted, but not much.  Their demise, while horrific to her personally, might actually make her job simpler.  With Little Havana dealt with, Jake might relax and let his guard down, thinking his biggest competitor out of the way.  Not only this, but several of Jake’s most loyal generals – Kill King and Steel Will – were now out of the picture as well.

And while the loss of Little Havana decreased Ava’s available manpower, she had an idea of how she might regain the advantage and complete the plan that had begun to form months earlier, and until just minutes ago, she had hoped to finish with her one true love. 

Now her love’s once beautiful head sat with lifeless eyes, staring at her from the center of the same table where he had made the most passionate, most beautiful, most meaningful love to her she’d ever experienced.

CHAPTER 17

Monday morning dawned bright, but I’d already been up for hours.  I hardly ate any breakfast I was so amped up with nervous excitement.  I didn’t even wait upstairs for Bushy’s arrival, deciding instead to sit outside.

Will joined me just as Bushy drove up and got out of his SUV.

“What the heck happened to the car?” he asked, walking up and looking at the loaner he’d provided with a frown.  He inspected the flat tire and damaged front fender from where tire pieces had beat it to hell, and then he moved to finger several bullet holes in the front of the car.

“Jake had some unexpected guests on Friday,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know,” Bushy nodded. 

“Kind of caught us in the crossfire,” I nodded at the damaged car.  “Sorry.”

“Well, at least you made it out alive,” Bushy shrugged.  “We can talk more about that later though.  In the meantime, you ready to head down to the marina and take a look at your boat.”

“Sounds good,” I nodded.

I didn’t see that there was much more to discuss regarding the Jake matter.  Bushy probably just wanted our notes on how the whole thing went down, which was fine.  Will and I had spent a little extra time over the weekend adding to our description of the event just to be on the safe side.  We wanted to make our available information as detailed and as valuable as possible in hopes of getting top dollar, or in this case, as much insulin as we could for our efforts.

We made the short trip to the marina largely in silence.  Bushy drove.  He didn’t seem like he was in much of a mood to converse, and in the week we’d known him, we’d already come to the conclusion that he wasn’t a man of many words.

We arrived to what a year prior had probably been a quite lovely looking marina.  Unfortunately, there weren’t many recreational boaters left after the flu’s passing, and those who did remain certainly didn’t have the time or the resources to expend upon sailing around south Florida.  Therefore, the marina – and many of the boats docked within it – had cruelly been left to the elements. 

Several of the docks running between the rows of boats angled sharply into the water, distended and distorted by strong storms and lack of maintenance.  There was a nice variety of boats both large and small, and a good combination of engine and wind powered ships.  However, most of the vessels we passed were in various states of disrepair.  Many showed heavy rust stains, some were partially submerged or listing badly, and others were sunk completely with just their highest points still protruding from the marina’s shallow waters.  Gentle waves now wiggled mast rigging and antennas, the ghostly grave markers of the millions of dollars of once fine boats that now lay below. 

Much of the water nearest the docks was littered with floating debris.  Life vests, ringed life preservers, foam coolers, ropes, plastic bottles of all shapes and sizes, and all sorts of other trash bobbed soothingly in the morning calm. 

The briny smell of the ocean and dead fish wafted through the air.  It wasn’t a nice smell, but it fit, and I breathed deeply nonetheless in an effort to absorb the essence of the sea.  I likened it to the scents of the city – vehicle exhaust, garbage, the smell of cooking food – they weren’t always the best smells, but they fit the setting and put you in the right frame of mind for the particular environment.

“Looks like this place has seen better days,” Will casually observed as we walked.

“Still a few good boats around,” Bushy retorted shortly. 

We kept walking along the main dock that ran between the off-shoots of multiple rows of boats until Bushy hooked a right and led us onto a smaller dock that ran between two rows in particular.  Towards the end of one row was a large and still very clean and well-maintained looking boat.  It was what one might term a “yacht.”  The thing was immensely intimidating for landlubbers non-skilled and largely unfamiliar with ocean-going vessels.  Upon seeing it, I immediately began rethinking my plans.