Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

3

John Carney saw the redhead coming from fifty yards away. Not that he was a perv or anything. Hell, he hadn’t been on the prowl for twenty years, not even after his wife, Theresa, had left him back in ’04. Carney’d had a girlfriend or three, but always someone he’d met through friends. No online dating for him, and he certainly wasn’t going to pick up women in bars.

Bars were off-limits if he wanted to keep his fifteen-year chip in his pocket. Sober life might get boring at times, but boring was preferable to dead.

The Summerlin Gun Show had seen a dip in business the past few years, but he continued to set up out of loyalty to Oscar Temple, the fellow who’d run the thing from the beginning. This year Carney’s loyalty had paid off—the first two days of the Summerlin show had brought booming business. Americans had been growing paranoid about their right to bear arms being curtailed or taken away entirely, and any time that happened, business picked up. Nothing helped gun sales like talk of gun control.

They were in an open field on Oscar Temple’s ranch, just at the western edge of Summerlin proper, spitting distance from Red Rock Canyon in one direction, and not too far a drive from downtown Las Vegas in the other. Ground zero for tourists and easy enough to find for gun enthusiasts.

The redhead didn’t look like your typical gun enthusiast. And now that she’d come a little closer, he realized she wasn’t precisely a redhead. More of a strawberry-blonde. Lovely hue.

She moved through the crowd like a shark, barely browsing the tables and tents as she studied the faces of the dealers more closely than she did the weapons they had for sale. Sunshine turned her hair into a reddish-gold halo. Her bottle-green tank top and tight, faded jeans showed off a shapely figure, but Carney noticed the confidence and determination in her walk more than the fullness of her breasts or the swing of her hips. At fifty-five, he certainly wasn’t beyond appreciating a lady’s attributes, but he’d always appreciated a formidable woman—even if she looked like she was barely more than a girl.

The strawberry-blonde stopped at Hal Burlingame’s table, rapped on top of a glass case to get the old man’s attention, and cocked her hip as she asked him a question. Her smile was a mask of sweetness that appeared only as he turned toward her and vanished just as quickly when she had her answer.

Burlingame turned and pointed to the rows of gun dealers.

Only when the strawberry-blonde turned and spotted Carney—and smiled that same masquerade grin—did he realize Burlingame was pointing at him.

He frowned in puzzlement as the young woman strode toward him. Customers were perusing his wares, and a guy who’d been asking him why he didn’t have a Barrett M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle for sale had started complaining about the government’s infringing on his rights, but Carney ignored them all.

The cute little thing sauntered up to him, but the saunter didn’t fool him. This wasn’t a girl who sauntered.

She turned her right hand into a finger pistol, and pointed at him as if she might shoot him with it.

“You’d be John Carney?” she said.

Even in those four simple words, he heard the Irish accent, and it took him back. His parents had been from Carrickfergus, just up the coast from Belfast, and he still had a bit of a brogue himself.

“I’d be him, yes. What can I do for you, miss?”

Lass, he told himself. If he still had any of the old Irish left in him, he’d have called her lass.

Her smile was deadlier than any of the guns at his table.

“Mr. Carney, a friend told me that you could help me, and I surely hope he was right. A lot’s ridin’ on it.”

For the first time, Carney noticed the two men moving through the crowd behind her, cruising without shopping, just as she had done. They were hard men, almost as young as the Irish lass, with flinty eyes and thin lines for mouths. Cops? he wondered. Or the opposite?

The urge to warn her bubbled up in his chest, but then he saw that she’d noticed him looking past her—seen the flash of alarm on his features—and seemed unconcerned.

So they were with her.

His brow furrowed. Whatever this girl was, she carried trouble with her. She carried the charm and the painful beauty of his heritage on her every word, and he knew right then that she wasn’t worth it.

But he nodded anyway. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She looked around in a way that made it clear she hoped to speak to him without being overheard. The jackass looking for a .50 caliber sniper rifle had wandered away, mumbling, and so Carney led her to the back of his booth, the rear corner of one of his tables.

“I’m told you can introduce me to Oscar Temple,” she said.

Her pale skin shone brightly in the sun, and the light splash of freckles across her nose only added to her beauty. But when she mentioned Oscar, he saw the hard set of her jaw, and the confidence in her eyes slipped just like the mask of her smile, revealing fear and desperation. The mask returned an instant later, but Carney had seen behind it.

“What’s your name, love?” he asked.

“Caitlin Dunphy,” she said, in a tone that told him she was lying and that she didn’t care if he knew it.

Carney swallowed hard and glanced around, worried now about who might be watching. Even the flinty-eyed men who were obviously her backup were not openly looking at them. Don’t do it, he told himself. You’re legit, John. Pure legit.

If Caitlin Dunphy wanted his introduction to Oscar Temple, there would be nothing legal about whatever conversation followed. He ought to stay far, far away, tell the girl he couldn’t help her.

But Oscar had been very good to him over the years, and he’d want whatever business the girl was bringing his way.

And, God help him, John Carney had never been able to say no to an Irish girl.

Even in its early days, the city of Charming, California, had been uniquely suited to become home base for a motorcycle club. Most locales would have been less hospitable, troubled by the reputation biker gangs had for chaos, violence, and criminal pursuits. Once upon a time, gold rushers had settled into agriculture and the lumber business, founding a small community based on true pioneer spirit. After the San Francisco earthquake, scores of city folk relocated in search of a simpler lifestyle, but it wasn’t until the end of World War II that these different factions melded together and built a piece of true Americana.

The people of Charming had two philosophies. One was, Live and let live, reflecting the pioneer spirit of the original settlers. The other was, Don’t shit where you eat. Maybe not in those words, but with the same effect. Charming did not like chain stores or shopping malls. Most of the real estate developments were homegrown—their investors from Charming—and most of the businesses downtown were mom-and-pop operations. Through the tumultuous second half of the twentieth century, Charming had changed very little, and that was just how folks liked it.

SAMCRO had been in town for more than thirty years, running Teller-Morrow Automotive Repair nearly as long. The original partners in the business—John Teller and Clay Morrow—had been two of SAMCRO’s First Nine, and when the Sons of Anarchy became involved with the illegal gun trade, T-M was the legitimate front for those operations. For years the chief of police, Wayne Unser, had looked the other way, and the locals considered the club upstanding members of the community.

That had been getting harder and harder over the past couple of years. Chief Unser had retired, and the entire Charming Police Department had been eliminated, with local law enforcement falling to the county sheriff. Now SAMCRO had gotten involved in the drug trade, and its relationship with Charming had begun to unravel. As president of SAMCRO, Clay Morrow had been grasping at the frayed strips of that unraveling bond, but for every one he managed to tie back down, two more tore loose.

It had really begun to piss him off.

Clay sat at the head of the enormous conference table in the Chapel. Chain-link fence topped with barbed wire ran the perimeter of the auto-repair yard’s property. In the middle of the yard were the garage, office, and clubhouse. With the bloody-scythed reaper carved into its meeting table, the Chapel was the beating heart of SAMCRO, and by extension every Sons of Anarchy charter in the world.

“Where’s Juice?” Clay asked, shooting a dark look at Bobby Munson, the rotund, bearded, graying Elvis impersonator who had become the conscience of the club. For years, Clay had considered Bobby one of his greatest assets, had trusted him for his cool head and his ability to see all sides of an argument. Recently, those same traits had become inconvenient for Clay, and now he felt the urge to blame Bobby for everything.

“You saw the damage to Opie’s truck,” Bobby said. “Juice is figuring out the repairs, making sure the guys know—”

The Chapel’s door opened, and Juice ducked his head in. He gave the same shy, apologetic smile that seemed a fixture on his face and slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Sorry,” he said, rubbing a hand over the bristle of his buzz-cropped Mohawk and the tattoos on either side of it.

To Clay’s left, Jax straightened up and nodded at Juice. “Sit down.”

Clay cast a sidelong glance at Jax, saying nothing. The boy had been feeling his oats lately, developing the swagger of a man who thought he ought to be holding the gavel instead of wearing the vice president patch. But Clay had calmed things down between him and Jax after they’d gotten out of Stockton, made a side deal that would ease Jax’s way out the door when the time came, and had paved the way for SAMCRO to get into business with the Galindo cartel. The kid would be out of his way soon enough.

Still, Clay didn’t want Jax getting too comfortable giving orders.

“All right, let’s figure this shit out,” Clay said.

He gripped the gavel, clenching his jaw at the stabbing pain in his arthritic hand, and banged on the table to bring the meeting to order. All eyes were on him, and he took a moment to survey the club members seated around the room. Jax and the sergeant-at-arms, Tig Traeger. Bobby and the Scottish-born Chibs Telford. Opie and Juice. Happy and Kozik, both of whom had patched back in from other charters. Miles, who’d been patched in as a full member while half of the club had been in Stockton.

Opposite Clay, at the far end of the table, sat Piney Winston. One of the three living member of the First Nine, Piney had cofounded SAMCRO with John Teller and had been the one who’d sponsored Clay at the beginning. Now the old man sat with his oxygen tubes up his nose and his watery eyes and gazed at Clay with seemingly constant doubt and disapproval.

Jax getting cocky was something Clay figured he could deal with… but Piney had started to become a problem.

“Short and sweet, now,” Clay said. “Jax?”

The VP glanced around the table. “You’ve all heard parts of this already. Me and Opie were on our way back from the cabin. Humvee hit us from behind. A truck boxed us in, drove us off the road. One look at Opie’s truck should give you an idea how that went.”

“You’re still breathing, Jackie,” Chibs said. “That’s a piece of luck.”

“Any landing you can walk away from, right?” Kozik added.

Tig leaned over the table, eyes narrowed. “We’re talking about Russians, yeah? Looking for payback for us taking out Putlova and his girlfriends?”

Opie gave a nod. “What we figured. They wanted us alive, though. At least long enough to bring us to whoever gave them the order.”

“We didn’t play along,” Jax said. “The shooting started, and then the other Russians showed up.”

“What other Russians?” Piney rasped. He’d been frowning from the moment the gavel had gone down, but for once Clay didn’t blame him. Opie could take care of himself, but no father wanted to hear about Russian Mafia shooting at his son.

Jax and Opie told the rest of the story, trading off details. There wasn’t much to tell. A couple of minutes later, the table fell silent for several seconds, until Jax turned expectantly to Clay. Exactly what Clay had been waiting for—that moment when Jax acknowledged who held the gavel.

“This stays at the table,” Clay said. “I know you all thought we’d settled our Russian problem for a while. So did I. Now it looks like the Russians may be having a turf war.”

“Do we bring Galindo up to speed?” Jax asked, scratching thoughtfully at the blond scrub of his beard.

“On what?” Clay said, scanning the table to make sure they all understood his reply. “We don’t know shit at this point. Chibs, if this is gun-trade business, could be our friends in Belfast heard something.”

Chibs had been born in Scotland but grown up in Belfast and had done stints with the British Army and the RIRA before some ugliness forced him to leave Belfast. He still had enemies in Ireland, but the old connections remained in place—unpleasant as they could be.

“I’ll reach out to Connor Malone,” Chibs said. “See what he knows.”

“We should talk to Lin, too,” Bobby said, that perpetually worried look on his face. “If the Russians are making a new play, could be Lin and his crew already know.”

“I’ll give Lin a call,” Jax said, nodding.

“Do it,” Clay instructed. “Report back.”

He glanced around the room. The Chapel was sacrosanct, everything discussed at the table considered private unless it was voted otherwise.

“These assholes may be nothing to worry about,” he said. “A bunch of Bratva dogs fighting over table scraps, hoping their masters in Moscow notice and carve them off a bigger piece. They keep shooting each other, that oughta distract them from worrying about who put Putlova in the ground. Just the same, keep your eyes open, watch each other’s backs until we figure out who’s giving the orders on either side.”

Clay scanned their faces again, making sure nobody else felt the need to weigh in.

“All right, then,” he said, banging the gavel. “Adjourned.”

Jax left the others in the clubhouse and went outside, swinging the heavy door shut behind him. The air grew close when they were in church, jammed in that meeting room. There were a lot of guys, now, and that was good—it made the club strong.

As he strode to his bike, he dug into his pocket and tugged out his cell phone. Calling Lin might be a waste of time—the Russians wouldn’t have asked permission from the Chinese before they started their civil war—but it was possible Lin had heard something. If the Russians killed each other off, that was all for the better, but Jax worried about collateral damage.

He reached out to Lin.

Footfalls scuffed the parking lot behind him and Jax turned, still skittish from the attack that morning. He must have looked ready to fight, because Chucky held up his hands—what was left of them—in immediate surrender, just to make sure Jax knew he wasn’t a threat.

As if Chucky Marstein could ever have been a threat.

“Whoa, Jax. It’s just Chucky.”

“You think I wouldn’t recognize you?”

Always nervous, the bald, goateed little guy seemed more agitated than usual. “No, no. I thought maybe you’d gone, ya know, rabid or something.”

Jax cupped the phone in his hand. “You came out here for a reason.”

“Sorry, yeah.” Chucky rolled his eyes at his forgetfulness. “You’ve got a call in the office. Lady sounds pretty upset. Urgent-like.”

A frown creased Jax’s brow as he started walking toward the office. “You get a name?”

“No,” Chucky said, catching up to him, “but if it helps, she’s got some kinda accent. English, I think. Maybe Irish.”

Jax slid his phone into the inside pocket of his cut, Chucky completely forgotten. He stepped into the shade of the office and saw the phone on the desk, old-fashioned corkscrew cord all tangled. His mother, Gemma, had inherited his father’s share of Teller-Morrow, and most days she could be found in the office. Jax was grateful she wasn’t there now or she would have been the one to answer the phone. During his time in Belfast many years past, JT had gotten involved with a woman named Maureen Ashby. Jax had a half-sister whose existence he’d only discovered when he’d made his own trip to Belfast. Any woman with an Irish accent calling the office of Teller-Morrow and getting Gemma on the phone would not be well received.

Jax picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Can you talk, Jax? I didn’t know who else to call.”

Maureen was a woman with sharp edges, but he’d gotten along with her well enough while in Belfast. She reminded him of his own mother, though Gemma would have crucified him if he’d ever said it aloud.

Hearing Maureen sound this desperate and afraid made Jax very nervous.

“What’s up?” He glanced back at Chucky, alarm bells going off in his head. Only one thing could have made Maureen Ashby lose her cool. “Something happen with Trinity?”

“Girl’s gone missing,” Maureen said. “Off the radar. I’ve left her twenty messages. Haven’t heard from her in more than two weeks and now—”

“What do you mean, two weeks? She lives with you.”

“Not for months she hasn’t.”

“Hang on,” Jax said, growing more frustrated than worried. He turned and ushered Chucky from the office. When the little guy had gone, he sat down at the desk. “Start from the beginning.”

“There’s no beginnin’, Jax. She’s off with them Russians, and I figure if anyone can find her, it’s you.”

Jax pushed a hand through a thick scruff of his blond hair. “What Russians?”

Given the events of the day, just asking the question made him nauseated.

“Five months ago, it was. A whole Russian delegation shows up—Mafia bastards—wantin’ to do business with Brogan, Dooley, and Roarke—”

“The Russians didn’t come to Belfast uninvited,” Jax interrupted.

“Do I bloody care if they were invited?” Maureen snapped. “They were here doin’ business, that’s all I know. Roarke had a friend among them, as much as Roarke has friends.”

A dreadful calm settled over Jax, the same feeling that always descended on him when things took an ugly turn. It felt like sinking into quicksand and simply throwing his hands up, letting it drag him down, knowing that once it had swallowed him, things would only get worse.

The Irish Kings—the ruling council of the Real IRA—had entertained a visit from some faction of the Bratva. It made a sick kind of sense. Jimmy O’Phelan had been the RIRA’s man in California, handling the illegal gun business and the relationship with SAMCRO. He’d tried to cut SAMCRO out by directly approaching the Russians, but he’d gone completely rogue, making a mess big enough that the Kings not only gave their blessing for him to be killed… they rewarded SAMCRO for carrying out the hit.

Now, if Maureen knew what she was talking about, the Russians had made an appeal to the Kings after Jimmy O had been killed. Jax needed to know more—needed to know how that visit had gone and what it meant for the relationship between SAMCRO and the Irish—but Maureen hadn’t called to talk business or the politics of criminal enterprises.

“One of the Russians—a strong-arm fella named Oleg Voloshin—he followed Trinity like he was in orbit around her.”

“You think he took her?” Jax asked, grip tightening on the phone.

“I know he did, Jax. Trinity fell for Oleg. She thinks she’s in love with him… and if I’m honest, I didn’t mind so much. I’ve loved my share o’ men who didn’t exactly follow the letter of the law, and Oleg—he’s a sweet lad for a hired gun. Trinity went off with him about four months ago, but she kept in touch, called me regular until a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t heard a whisper from her, and it’s got me scared out of my wits.”

Jax leaned back in the chair, staring at the office door Chucky had left open—staring at nothing.

“Listen,” Maureen went on, “I know there’re other things we need to be talkin’ about, but right now—”

“You’re worried,” he interrupted. “I’m worried myself. But getting out of the country’d be next to impossible for me right now. Going to Russia—”

“Who said anything about Russia?”

“I thought Trinity went back with Oleg.”

“She left with him, yeah, but your sister’s not in Russia. She’s in America. Last I knew, she was in Nevada.”

Jax spun toward the desk, digging up a pencil and a sheet of paper.

“Anything else you can tell me about where Trinity’s been staying, or about this Oleg guy or his people?” he asked.

Maureen rattled off what she knew, which was precious little, and Jax scrawled down anything that sounded promising—which wasn’t much. Only when he hung up the phone did he sense the presence of someone else behind him.

He turned to see his mother, Gemma, staring at him with a familiar, disgusted curl to her lips.

Gemma sneered. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”