Lex Talionis, Part Twenty-nine
Hacienda Huesca
Riuwiee, Abanhfleft
“Hey, sis, have you noticed that things have been kind of, I don’t know, quiet on every front there ever is?” Mateo Pena asked his twin sister Amelia as they lounged around in the mansion which Amelia had inherited from their uncle Guillermo Huesca. Their uncle had been the leader of the large and powerful Huesca Cartel at the time of his death at the hands of a fellow cartel leader, and Amelia had been named as Huesca’s heir and successor to the “family business.”
“No, Matt, now that you mention it, things have indeed been very quiet as of the moment,” Amy replied as her mind began going over the past few days. “After we crucified that Crow Darko right in front of the Corsairs’ HQ and the Huns helped the Hand clean up their own turf from Corsair influence, nothing else seems to be going on. About the only really noteworthy thing that’s happened is that United of Riuwiee is top of the Capital Islands Premier Division right now and that the Pridnestrovians are tightening the noose around Puloko over in Nordskania.”
“Hmm, that is indeed quiet from what we’ve been used to,” Matt said, sipping a glass of Famous Grouse scotch.
“I really hope that this doesn’t mean that the Crows are backing out of this war, though,” Amy said, almost to herself. “If the Crows are really serious about this war then they would have, should have responded to their guy getting nailed by now. They’re the ones who declared war so they should be the ones doing everything to see it through to the bitter end. I’d really hate to do every little piece of dirty work in this bloody war.”
It was right at that moment that Pena’s two trusted associates, Justin Mendoza and Nicolai Mendez, walked into the lounge in a sort of hurry. “You two look like you’re both bursting to tell us something, mate,” Matt said with a grin.
Justin and Nicolai immediately rushed to the minibar and poured themselves drinks. Only after they had taken a few sips and gulps did they come out with it. “Hey, Amy have you heard the news?” Nicolai asked. “They say that the Crows are pulling out of everywhere else and they’re going back to Jugoskania because of reasons known only to them, and it looks as if they’ve invited their Corsair friends to come with them.”
“Aww,” Amy said in an obviously fake simpering tone. “Just as I was beginning to have some fun with those crazy assholes, they come and leave me hanging. So, what’s the word on the street on those fools?”
“All right, now this isn’t everything at the moment, obviously,” Justin said, picking up the narrative, “but according to the friends of our friends, the Crows are planning on going back to their roots. You know how they used to be this sort of paramilitary organization or thing formed to kick the Muslim invaders or whatnot from their island, that sort of thing. Looks like we got them beat, Amy. They’re falling back to their homeland and their holy cities and they’re falling back on their past glories to restore some faith on themselves.”
“Oh, are the Crows going to go back to their homes and act like they’re the big boys that they thought they were before they went up against the Huesca Cartel?” Amy said in a tone which one would usually use to talk to babies or toddlers. “Are they going to act all macho and paramilitary because they couldn’t beat the mighty Huesca Cartel? They’re pathetic, that’s what they are,” Amy added, this time in her normal voice. “They go off starting a gang war and then when things don’t go their way, they immediately pack up and run for home. I suppose this is probably the first time that they’ve gone up against any group that’s not remotely afraid of them, and that’s why they’re not sure how to respond now that the jig is up. They’ve become so used to being top dog in their place that they thought that it would carry over to here, but we’ve proven them wrong. We’re not bowing to their will, and that’s what’s got them scared out of their wits.
“They should already know by now that if you want to dish it, you have to know how to take it,” Amy continued, drinking more Famous Grouse. “The Crows think they’re on top of the world by being masters of cruel and unusual punishment, but then we showed them that we can match them and their brutality point for point—nice touch on making that guy go through the whole Passion of the Christ thing, Nicolai—so now they’re running away? I thought those Jugoskanians were made of much stronger stuff than that.” Amy let out a harsh barking laugh which made the others laugh along but only sycophantically.
“So the Crows want to go back to being paramilitary?” Amy asked once she had finished laughing her mirthless laugh. “Well, we ain’t afraid of any paramilitary bullshit. And if they think running back to their holy cities with their tails between their legs is going to save them then they’ve got another thing coming. Speaking of which, how are things going with our friends in Jugoskania?”
“Ah, now that you’ve mentioned it Amy,” Nicolai said, “something interesting has come up in Otavice, boss ma’am. Apparently, someone set fire to some old abandoned place which, as it turned out, was being used by one of our local affiliates in the place as their headquarters. At least thirty people were reported to have died due to the fire, although they say that some were suffocated by the smoke and others had jumped outside to save themselves only to end up ‘splat!’ as they were too high for any sort of safe landing on the ground.”
“Anybody we know died in that fire?”
“Just one person, really, Amy,” Justin said. “The others were all locals from the local affiliate who wanted to be part of a gang other than the Crows or didn’t want to convert to Orthodox, that kind of thing. Anyway, our guy’s name is Richard Reese.”
Mateo Pena did a double take. “Damn, son!” he said. “Ricky Reese is dead? How in the world did that happen?”
“Well, the Crows smoked him out, isn’t that obvious?” Justin asked in reply. “The Crows, the Corsairs, and those Redvali newcomers from the Avgaria Cartel, they all played a part in Ricky Reese’s death.”
“But still, man, Ricky Reese is dead? Damn!” Matt ran a hand through his thick red hair and shook his head. “Wasn’t he that fat blubbering and blundering kid back in the day?”
“Yeah, the one and the same,” Nicolai replied. “Didn’t we have a lot of fun pushing him around, Matt? How the hell did he end up working for us?”
“Obviously, he’s a geek,” Amy said. “And he knows a lot of shit on how to run an operation like ours smoothly and without any bumps on the road. He’s what, Maricel’s representative in Otavice? They’re both logisticians, mind. He basically knows a lot of shit.
“So, Ricky Reese is dead,” Amy said finally. “I’ll have to inform the brothers and sisters of this development. We will need to bring him back home and hold a proper funeral for him as befitting his status as one of our own. We’ll also have to take out someone from the other side to even things out between us. But, I have to admit, we also can’t be all about just reacting to their moves. We have to do some stuff ourselves, take things into our own hands. We have to pick up the initiative and take this fight right to the Crows’ holy land, even though I’m sure that that is exactly what they want. They tried to do the same to us and they failed miserably even though we lost a good troop in Maricel back then.”
“I agree with you on that, boss ma’am,” Nicolai said as he sat down beside Mateo Pena. Maricel Ocampo, one of the “logistic organizers” working to insert Huesca assets into Anglatia and Jugoskania in particular, was Nicolai’s sister and had been killed by crucifixion at the hands of the Corsairs who had raided the Huescas’ Barangay Kaluwalhatian clubhouse as part of a renewed offensive against the cartel. It was due to the involvement of the Corsairs that the Huescas had called upon their new allies, the Huns, to run the bikers out of the city, although if the rumors that the Crows were offering to pull the Corsairs back to Bathgate were true then those were two threats to Huesca superiority in the Fleftic capital city eliminated in one fell swoop. “I’d love the chance to boil one of these Crows up in a pressure cooker. I might even eat a chunk out of him or her, depending on who we capture. Shit, I might even send them a picture of me going all Hannibal on their broiled friend.”
“All right, man, now I’m growing a little bit more afraid of you,” Matt said as he stood up to get away from Nicolai, who raised up his hands as if to say, What did I say?
“But how are we going to do that, Nicolai?” Justin asked from the minibar, where he was reaching for another bottle of Famous Grouse, the previous one having already run dry. “Like we said, the Crows are pulling out of Riuwiee with their Corsair cohorts, and unless we nab one of them while they’re on the run, the only way we’re going to get our hands on a suitably boil-able Crow is if we go to the source, Otavice, and we know how tightly they’ve got that city sewn up. Yeah, we got lucky last time getting Bisera Haralampieva and her friends out of Dodge, but that was because they weren’t at war with us yet, not openly, anyway. We can’t ask our local affiliates in the area to do it for us; they’ve been forced to relocate after the Crows toasted that place where Ricky Reese was just unfortunate to be at. The Crows have gone all-out paramilitary; how are we going to avenge Ricky boy?”
“See, that’s the thing, my friends,” Amy said, putting down her glass and picking up her tablet computer. “You’re all beginning to think like the Crows. You’re thinking of going after the enemy where they’re strongest, not where an attack will hurt them the most. We need to think about this before going ahead with the whole thing. Their so-called City of Devils can wait at the moment. We’re going to make Otavice sit and rot and get bypassed like what the Americans did to Rabaul. I’ve got my eyes on something else, something special, and it’s going to happen somewhere which will really hurt them.” Amy then showed the others the place where she had planned the big surprise for the retreating Crows, and they all nodded their heads in appreciation of the simplicity, the obviousness, and the sheer audacity of Amy Pena’s idea.
