Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 29

[Sorry all, been a time frame, hopefully I'm back into it]

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Turnabout is Fair Play

            Wolfe stared at the complicated drawings, guard rotations, and security systems all over the Singh mansion.

            “So, all I have to do is defeat the initial security system, avoid a good forty guards, and then go defeat Gurgit Singh, who is an actual absolute badass?”

            Fern nodded heavily. “It’ll be hard, I know, but there isn’t…”

            Wolfe barked out a mirthless laugh. “It’ll be near suicide, without something else. I’ve never actually charged an enemy stronghold before, you know. I’m not that dumb. A group on a mission, sure. But when we went after the Cobra’s head, um—”

            Wolfe snapped his fingers, trying to conjure the name.

            “Klaus,” Shel muttered.

            “Right, that guy. When we went after him, Shel tricked him into coming out after me. The closest two I’ve done like that were going after Damian the final time, where I had inside help and nearly died, and going after Chester… where I also nearly died. I’m not good enough to pull this off, not like this. We need a better plan.”

            “Well, I can turn off the security once you get the laptop to—”

            “And the fact that there are almost fifty innocents, mostly women, inside the mansion? Any of which might scream or yell or tell what’s going on?” Wolfe asked exasperatedly, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms.

            “If we don’t stop them now, they’ll surely come for us as soon as they learn where I’m at, assuming they don’t already know,” Fern said. “I already spent over two years in the clutches of those monsters. I don’t want to spend more time there.”

            “Wait… wait wait wait,” Wolfe said, holding his hand up palm out, his mind going a mile-a-minute. “They might come after us already? Once they know where you’re at?”

            “Maybe?” Fern said. “I mean, I stole a bunch from them, once. But if they learn where I’m at, Nathan will likely learn.”

            “And then he’ll come for us as well,” Wolfe said, musingly. “I’d rather face him later, when he doesn’t have a ton of allies.”

            Or face him never, that would also be great. But I seriously doubt that’s happening.

            Wolfe was silent for a moment, contemplating his own thoughts. He knew the plan was here, but the specifics, and the details, eluded him for the moment.

            Fern was staring at the etched table they all sat around, and Shel and her companions were all staring at Wolfe. But he ignored them, thinking it through.

            “What we need, then, is something that would cause the Singh family to come out from behind their walls, right? Someone that would get Gurjit Singh to stop hiding and come out and fight… but wouldn’t necessarily bring Adam or Nathan in.”

            Fern glanced up. “Yeah, that would be good, but how?”

            Wolfe drummed his fingers on the table. “The families are still mostly independent, right? They don’t just turn to Adam for everything?”

            Fern was slowly nodding, her eyes as animated. “Yeah, they still handle almost everything themselves, why?”

            “Well, I was having a thought… but it might mean we can’t ever go back to the Rat Arena.”

            “I could miss it,” Shel said.

            “I don’t think I’d ever go,” Fern responded.

            “Well, here is my plan then…”

***

            It was broad daylight, and it made Wolfe nervous. He had conducted most of his life under the cover of darkness, and knowing he was about to engage in the kind of activity “the man” frowned on, in broad daylight, in a major city, was giving him near as much anxiety as Fern ran around with.

            And, for reasons of her job, Shel wasn’t here. Instead, Derek and two of Miriam’s surviving enforcers were here to help him out. Derek had one of the new automatic rifles that they had picked up from Adam’s warehouse, and his two companions each had a heavy caliber pistol.

            He was staring at an empty parking lot, surrounded by a chain link fence, with one entrance in. A single man, a white guy that had so much acne scarring that Wolfe could make it out from across the street and down a bit, sat in a lawn chair, gently watching what was happening. He was so out of it he hadn’t even picked up on Wolfe yet.

            A voice crackled into his ear—Fern. “I see the limousine, maybe a minute out. The van is still a couple minutes away. You should have a good window.”

            “Looks like we’re doing this,” Wolfe muttered.

            “Hur-ray,” Derek said, giving Wolfe a brilliant smile.

            “Ha-ha.”

            A minute later, a limousine slowly drove up to the gate, turned in, and parked.

            “Now?” Derek asked.

            Wolfe nodded his head. “Yeah. But get your masks on first.”

            Derek nodded, and he and his two goons—who reminded Wolfe vaguely of Pete and Harry, from his old days, thick men with a stare that said the thickness ran upstairs—all pulled ski masks over their heads.

            Derek clutched his rifle, and the two goons lifted their pistols off their laps, but kept them below window height.

            “He’ll just… get in the car?” Derek asked.

            “He remembers me,” Wolfe replied with a cold satisfaction in his voice. “He’ll do what I say.”

            Derek nodded.

            “No more talking. It’s go time,” Wolfe said, his voice conversational even though his stomach was tight with anticipation.

            He drove into the parking lot, not screeching, but casually. The man in the chair at the entrance raised his hands, but Wolfe kept going, pulling his F-150 up to the side of the parking lot. The man in the chair got up and started lazily walking over to Wolfe, probably assuming that Wolfe was just a local worker bee trying to park for his job, or perhaps one of the nearby eateries.

            Wolfe dropped the window just as a hugely corpulent man, swarthy, with black hair and a thick black beard, heaved himself from the back of the limousine. He was dressed in a tailored suit that had to cost half as much as a car and still sat badly on his huge frame. He pulled a tiny, thin, mousey girl with auburn hair and a bruise on the side of her freckled face from the car behind him. Something about her walk and face told Wolfe she wasn’t American born and raised—perhaps she was eastern European.

            Wolfe leaned out, his trusty Edge pointed at his target: Gopal Singh, cousin of the head of the Singh crime family, god-gifted of Asmodeus, Gurjit Singh.

            “Hello Gopal,” Wolfe said conversationally, his tone so normal that no one had reacted yet despite the gun—no one except Gopal, who paled, his face going slack.

            “W-wolfe,” the man stuttered, his demeanor entirely different than the blustering, cocksure fool that had challenged Wolfe in the arena a year ago. “W-what do you want?”

            Derek pointed his automatic rifle out past Wolfe as other men stepped from the limousine.

            “None of that, boys, or you all die. To answer your question, Gopal, I want a lot of things. But for the moment, I want for you to get in the car.”

            “You’ll kill me…” Gopal whispered, his face somehow paling further. He had released the girl, who was pulling away from him, her own eyes flickering back and forth between the two different guns pointing from Wolfe’s car.

            One of the thugs poked his own hand cannon out the back window as the man that had been watching the entrance to the parking lot came up beside them.

            “You might die, but I won’t be the one that kills you, promise,” Wolfe said, his voice deadpan almost to the point of disinterest. “Nor any of my people. At least not directly or intentionally. But if you don’t move, I promise I’ll shoot you dead here and now.”

            Gopal finally let go of the girl, who scrambled back into the limousine.

            Then, after a moment, his eyes fell. “Okay. Guns down, men.”

            No one had actually pulled a gun, but the men with him relaxed fractionally as Gopal walked toward Wolfe’s F-150. One of Derek’s enforcers got out of the vehicle, then had to help Gopal to climb up into the back seat.

            The other one kept his pistol pointed at the huge deckbearer—you could never be careful enough with a deckbearer, who only took about two-and-a-half seconds to summon their decks. Wolfe could remember Gopal’s rat deck, although he wasn’t sure the tub of lard was still using it.

            Wolfe faced one of the guards. “Tell this guys cousin, your boss, that if he wants his family member back, he needs to give me the Gate to the Infernal set card. He’ll understand what I’m talking about. If he doesn’t do it, I’m going to put a bullet in this waste of food. I’m giving him twenty-four hours. And if the cops show up, well, first Gopal here will still feed the fishes, and two, I’ll release a ton of information I have on the Singh family operations to the same damn pigs that showed up.”

            Wolfe no longer thought of police in quite the same way he had before, but he was pretty sure that using the put-down on them would make him sound more serious to these men.

            Wolfe pulled his Edge back in and started the car, conscious of Derek covering the men with his rifle. No cars had stopped around them, and nothing seemed amiss about the day.

            And the Van with the Rat Arena workers still hadn’t showed up.

            “We clear?” Wolfe asked.

            “You have time but don’t dawdle,” Fern replied.

            Dawdle?

            Wolfe pulled out, circled the parking lot, and carefully drove out into traffic, heading back to the Hellmouth Institute.

            “Wait,” Gopal suddenly said. “You promised you weren’t going to kill me!”

            Wolfe glanced into the rear-view mirror. Gopal was perspiring everywhere, and shaking slightly.

            By the Divine, I did a number on this guy when I beat him to death in the Arena last year.

            “I’m not going to,” Wolfe replied.

            “But, you just told my men that if Gurjit doesn’t give you the—”

            “I lied to them,” Wolfe replied. “I know Gurjit won’t give me the card. But I think he’s going to try something else. But I’m not going to kill you, or not directly, at least. You have my word.”

            “You just admitted lying,” Gopal said petulantly.

            “Toche, douchebag,” Wolfe said, irritated. “In the deck of crimes we’re collectively responsible, that ranks extremely highly, I’m sure.”

            Gopal didn’t respond.

            “What are you going to do if Gurjit does give you the card?” Derek suddenly asked.

            Wolfe blinked. “I… I hadn’t even considered that possibility. But if he does… well, then I’ll hand ol’ fatty there over and call it a day. Maybe I really could do things without a body count, like our mutual police friend wanted.”

            “Think it’ll happen?” Derek asked.

            “Not a snowball’s chance in the Infernal Realms,” Wolfe replied as he turned onto the ramp, headed for the freeway that would take him home.