Bad to the Bones(64)
Following a few brothers outside, Knoxie punched Ginny’s number for the hundredth time. He didn’t expect much to be different this time, and sprang to attention when Ginny answered.
At first it sounded like she was laughing. Knoxie assumed she was goofing around with Bella. But once she started talking, it became obvious she was really sobbing her heart out. “Knoxie! You’ve got to come! They’ve taken me to the bath house! I’m in a changing room or something and they’re preparing me for surgery.”
“Okay, calm down,” Knoxie lamely said. He was really at a loss. “We’re on our way, but don’t let any of them know that, of course.” He didn’t know how bright Ginny was. “Try to hide that phone somewhere where you can get it later. Tell me, where is the bath house?”
Ginny gave him instructions to the torture chamber. She was blubbering and confused, but Knoxie thought he got the general picture, especially when she told him the word SAUNA was written in big purple letters on the outside of the building.
“Where’s Bellamy?”
“She was in my bunk house when they took me. I don’t know if they’ve found her. Oh God, you’ve got to come!”
Ginny’s voice faded away as someone apparently snatched the phone from her. He thought he could hear a woman saying, “There’s no help for you now,” before the phone went dead.
Knoxie murmured, “Hang tight, little girl. We’re coming to get you.”
He had to sprint across the parking lot to another building where Ford was preparing his IED. Ford kept a bunch of different ones on hand depending on his predicament. Ford’s eyes darkened with rage when Knoxie told him about the Nurse Ratcheds practicing Nazi surgery on Bellamy’s sister.
“Listen,” said Ford. “Do me a solid and leave Riker to me. I’ll cover you so you can get to your old lady and her sister. But if Riker makes it to the gate, I want to be there.”
Knoxie nodded. He had an aerial map of the compound permanently embedded in his head. With his current level of fury and loathing of the ashramites, he could make it to Wang Cho House before anyone went on the alert.
The men flowed on their rides down the winding mesa road, away from the Citadel hangar. For the first time rolling together with his brothers, Knoxie felt the power and muscle of the club resonating within himself. His whole life he’d done things alone. Even in the SEALs, a member of a powerful unit of men, he’d been a lone wolf going on solo ops. Now, he had the horsepower of his entire brotherhood at his side, and he knew failure was not in the picture.
Why was he altering his life so massively to save one girl from certain doom? Knoxie wasn’t normally the knight in shining armor type. His outlook was usually more in line with “you got yourself into that mess, you can get yourself out of it.” But something in Bellamy had stung him. Maybe it was his twisted youth, being smothered and warped by the hypocrisies of his father’s religion. He saw a different but equally hypocritical pseudo-religion take hold of poor Bellamy, that was it. It was too late to stop the same thing from happening to Bellamy, but he could cut it off at the pass.
He had blown it with Nicole. A woman had the right to expect more than a 1940s bachelor’s quarters house. That little dive in the worst part of P&E had only two bedrooms, so his kids had been forced to share one. Rats were so abundant in that neighborhood it sounded like his attic crawlspace was a bowling alley. His next-door neighbor was habitually brawling in the middle of the street. Finally, a pounding had left him brain-dead so he sat there staring on a bench in front, barbecuing on a Weber, a spatula in his hand.
Nicole had every right to want more, and so did Bellamy. Knoxie thought he was sticking to his artistic guns by committing to his tattoo art, but the fact was, it didn’t generate enough income for a family. Thanks to the sadistic medical practices of the cult, Knoxie couldn’t expect to start over again with Bella, but a family didn’t need children. A couple was still a family, even without a dog. But through working for The Bare Bones, he sure could find a nicer house for her.
The sky was azure after a series of storms, and Knoxie could smell sunshine on chrome as the club roared up to the delivery gate. Knoxie’s skin crawled to be nearing the guard house that was the site of memories he had hoped to repress. The knot of five bikes paused at the top of the rise and checked their cells.
Four-thirteen PM. Knoxie looked at a vulture that wheeled soundlessly over the guard shack, a creepy omen. Tuzigoot spat a stream of chewing tobacco onto the red sand. Turk hummed tunelessly. It sounded like a One Direction song, and normally Knoxie would’ve made a crack about it. But the tension was so thick you could cut it with a two by four. All five men jumped a little when their phones chimed simultaneously.
DONE, read the text from Ford, just as a little puff of smoke appeared on the western horizon, accompanied by a delayed boom. Knoxie knew from his SEAL days how to estimate the size and distance of Ford’s explosion, and he felt confident as he scooted down the hill that it would be a large enough distraction.
Sure enough, the explosion had flushed three daimyo out of the guard shack. The three purple soldiers ran openmouthed up the rise on the other side of the road to view the explosion as Knoxie breezed on through the gate. One of them took a half-hearted shot at him, but they were probably more concerned with the explosion, or even the approaching motorcycle gang, than with a lone rider.