Concrete Jungle

by Onkwehonwe Kashatstenhshera

A cartel hitman, an ex soldier, a wayward gunmen with no cause, an ex KGB agent, & a familiar family oriented coke addicted thug find their way to sunny LS finding themselves around similar scum. Immoral car salesmen, low life bangers, king pins, & hackers. When an eventual rift in the friendship divides their destinies, alliances shift & none of them will ever be the same again.

92. Capture And Rescue

Paul eyed Lady Joker who had just insisted on him calling her Dede. He was still getting used to his surroundings. He looked down at his t shirt. It was gray and it had a picture of Yellowstone National Park and a bear on it. "I noticed the bear tattoo so I figured you wouldn't mind. A carnal of mine..." She had sadness in her eyes as she spoke of it thinking of the violence of 2014-2015. How her varrio had been destroyed, many homies killed, homegirls, herself included, raped or killed or sometimes both.

She was still mourning the death of Ernesto in her own right. "They call you Oso on the street anyway, don't they? There was a camarada, who was big like you."

She then warned him, "You're at war with the same people my varrio was and we lost. The Lords have more power on the calles than we do. Ernesto and his son, the last people to war with the Romans. It's pointless. They'll kill everything you care about. If you have a girlfriend they'll kill her. Family..friends..."

"I'm different. And he might have IAA help but so do I. He saw what I'm capable of. Him and his boyfriend got lucky. The chink and the mayate are going straight in the Lannahechee River when I get done with then. I'll make sure they go in their precocious little river."

"That river is precocious to the Natives around here though. They were on our side like you. Like Adayh."

"It IS sacred and precious's but not for the reason these punks think. They just want to keep their little institution going. They just want to keep their interstate drug travel going. We're gonna rip them apart. They underestimate me and I want them to."

Look. You helped me once and I saved you cause I'm a strong swimmer. But you should leave it alone. He's dangerous."

"He's never fought a motherfucker like me. Even in the motley crew I was like the baby brother of the group. But I learned from all of them over the years. I've adapted. And at the end of the day, i'm the youngest. And the fittest. Neto's my carnal but he has that plate in his head and when he was snorting yayo he wasn;t at his best."

"He's clean now..." Lady joker stated. "For his son. We keep in touch me and his novia."

"Then there's Mai. She's IAA but she's burned now and she's been fucked up in her fair share of fights and Neto wants her dead. she probably will be between him and the Tiny Psychos that want her dead. Ivan's the most dangerous so far just cause he's the oldest and he has the most dangerous contacts high up. But he's not getting younger. I aint turning against the crew but what I am saying is I'm the youngest. I learned lessons of war, hand to hand combat, shooting strategies. Even Neto's knowledge as a Mexican soldier is invaluable. Between an IAA agent and Army vet and a KGB agent who also served in the Chechan Civil War, plus an Irish mobster with bomb knowledge, I'm more than equipped to go to war with him."

"But what is it worth though?"

"He tried to drown me. It doesn't really matter anymore at least between me and them what's been done. There are no more words to be said between us. When I see them we'll let the guns do the talking."

"Maybe some day..." She pushed him down into a laying position. "But that day aint today. You aint in no shape to walk down the street much less fight these fools..."

"They've fought other men. But they've never fought a bear clan warrior. Not really. They might have weapons but they don't have the medicine I have behind me. Spiritual medicine you know?"

"Maybe but this is a city with Voodoo. Even when I was a Catholic mama used to warn me to stay away from that shit. But I know our ancestors worshipped the moon and stars. They might have backup from the spirits too is all i'm saying."

"But we're on our home turf...they can't use the smallpox trick twice. Even if I never win, i'd never let them win."

"He's taken down people that have been in the area with a lot more soldados than you have."

He shot her a look that said that she did not have a clue as to how many soldiers or warriors for that matter, his preference, he had. Money talked and bullshit walked.

"Have you ever seen a bear?" He asked her. The question threw the city born Chicana off.

"No. Por que?" She knew he knew enough Spanish to comprehend the word for 'why' to speak Spanglish to him. Cause of his time in Bohan, she equated his Spanish equivalency to what a Puerto Rican from that borough would be but she noticed that while his Spanish had some words that was spoken in Caribbean countries, he had a Mexican accent and used many slang words from that which she attributed to neto.

"Can I tell you something about bears?

"Si.."

He laid on his side with his left side down and his right side up. "They're solitary animals. They like their space. They live in a magic circle. They don't mind if you're a mile away. If you get inside their circle, they'll maul you. If a bear was to strike your face, it would take your whole face off your skull. Your nose, your lips, everything. And you would die from it."

"There's something else about bears not many people know. If a bear gets hooked on the taste of human blood, they go on a rampage and he has to be destroyed. That's why you should never hug a bear..." He fell asleep in mid sentence fully clothed and without a blanket though there was one near him but he had fallen out before he could.

The way he had phrased it made the ex chola smile a bit. Maybe he had been trying to scare her the way she was him to dissuade him from warring with the Roman Boyz and the BSU but he had said what he had to her and she had thought he was trying to scare her but then realized when he told the story that he was not saying anything to threaten her. Instead, he was talking of his own nature and perhaps, what would one day be his own fate. He was a warrior and she could see his aura, strangely enough. It was bright white where his mind was but black near his solar plexus.

Her family, despite the Catholicism, had also dealt in limpiras and she could see he was spiritually complex. Still, she believe he needed a cleansing. She would do one for him while he was laid out.

It seemed no matter what force they used on the guards of the black site. They kept seeming to have reinforcements. Some of them likely from Macana Bay but Ivan couldn't say for sure. He looked at the government agents as they came forward. Paul cooked a M67and lobbed it towards the guards. he saw a Merryweather bird.

Ivan fired hitting striking the a Merryweather agent in the chest and despite having level 3 body armor. He was hit in the chest and stomach and though it held out first. The rounds went through the armor finally as the man bled. He fell to the ground with a deflated left lung.

The guards screamed in agony following a bang that was a result of the M67 and they hit the shipping container in the southeast corridor. Mischa roared with rage and he fired the rounds striking one of the Merryweather goons in both legs. "Khvatit s vas vashey fashistskoy tyur'my, khuyesosy!"

(You've had your facist prison long enough, cocksuckers!)

The man fell on his ass roaring with agony as his blood decorated the floor. Mischa stomped on his wounds. He got the man screaming. He was still in his prison jumpsuit but they had long since shot his restraints off. Packie had set up some C4 near the eastern side. He hit the detonator and Paul's head shot up looking at the explosion of the container and he saw one of the agents skulls flying up in the air. The skull smashed into two.

Neto let the fire serpent cook the ribs of a country corn-fed looking Merryweather agents. The rounds went through the armor and Paul cried out, "Fuck! You see that distance?!"

Packie chuckled as he got another bomb ready as the chopper came back around. He tossed it to the chopper and he detonated it and he saw the fire and smoke and the spider webbed windows of the choppers cockpit. The chopper hit the ocean with an explosion and Neto whistled and did a grito as he got up on one of the containers but Ivan did not see how he got up there.

"Orale!" Neto roared in respect to Packie blowing the chopper down. "The choppers up there! Come on!"

"All right...were gonna blow the rest of the fuckin charges up after we get up there. We just got a few more. How about you and O get jailbird here to the chopper. Me and N can finish setting these up!"

Neto fired and struck three of the IAA agents trying to come around. "You assholes...there's another..Buzzard coming for you..." He groaned. He had been struck in the left knee and it had been blown out. "Your boat won't be enough to get you the fuck out...they'll blow you sky high."

They got up to the chopper and the remaining prisoners continued to fight it out with them down there and a few were trying to find the lifeboats. They fired it up each putting on their headsets for noise. They began to fly out of there and as the six men looked below at the gunfight below.

"Some of em got away in a boat!" Packie called out.

"Never mind those people we're not here for them. They're on their own but they have more of a chance now if they just get to Cuba than they ever would have at escaping here on their own. If they escape, it's better if they get caught than us. We can't let them have any security footage. In three minutes we're going to blow the place sky high."

A few of the prisoners were trying to swim away. They were sure to freeze to death or get captured but Ivan got the sense that some of them thought they had no chance to escape and would be better off letting the IAA recapture them and put them back where they were. Ivan turned to Packie, "Now! You can detonate it!" The Irish American did just that.

The explosion of the USS Guarma went up like a Christmas Tree in Star Junction. It also made the firefight between the inmates who were still onboard and the IAA and Merryweather agents a permanent stale mate. It looked like more of the inmates were dying and it was understandable since they didn't have body armor but they were brave just the same.

Were. He thought darkly. His father looked down at the ship. "There were good men on that boat. Wrongfully convicted..."

"There was nothing I could do..." Ivan warned. "Time was of the essence and we had to get you out of there. I've known for years where you were. I found out on the day I lost a friend of ours.

"We got company!" Neto called out as a barrage of rounds from a pursuing Buzzard came after them. A few rounds narrowly missed Neto's face as it tore through one end and out the other and the seats were now on fire from the bullet holes. Paul got hold of the rocket launcher aboard. Ivan fired the rounds from the buzzard as he turned it around and began to fire at the attacking chopper but he cried out, "We have another bogey at three o'clock!"

Paul aimed for the chopper as the chopper came but he didn't fire as he was trying to factor in the wind. "Fuck..." He muttered. "Be pretty fucked up to get killed in a rescue to get your dad out just to get shot down!" Packie called.

"Who brought the Irishman along?" Demanded Mischa. "He's a fucking buzzkill..."

"Coming from some gulog dancing Ruskie that's a fuckin compliment, amigo!" Packie shot back. "You ask anybody what country they'd probably feel safer and freer in between Ireland or Russia we know who it'd be."

"You've never even been to Ireland, dickhead!" Snarled Ivan.

"Shut the fuck up, Packie..." Paul called. "And grab that other launcher! We got more than one of these motherfuckers after us!"

Packie shouted back, "Fuck you I aint your fuckin junior, boyo! You don't tell me what to do."

"Packie, I used to be the weakest link in this group..." Paul stated. "And there was a minute towards the end of our original Motley Crew that I wondered if Mai was. Cause she doesn't have the guts to do what's nessecary half the time. But now that honor belongs to you."

"Whatever!"

Packie fired first and the shot from the MK153 clipped the side of the chopper and it went down since the chopper was only two hundred yards from them and trying to shoot Ivan with their own .50's at the chopper. It went down a smoking firey blaze in the sea. Paul aimed the LAW 80 out of the right side. "Fuck the feds!" He roared and he fired the missile which missed just barely.

"Not where he is! Where he's gonna be!" Cried Neto.

"It was just one shot, perro I got it!"

Mischa fired his M4 out the window and he tried striking the pilot from the chopper. Twenty rounds hit the front window of the cockpit and spider webbed it but by some twist of luck he hadn't hit the pilot. He did manage to hit one of the men who had tried to fire a missile launcher back at them and they had only narrowly avoided being shot down themselves. Paul fired the the next missile as he loaded the HEAT warhead and prepped it again. He fired and struck the chopper. The tail of the chopper was hit and the orange and black mixture of smoke and fire mixed with exploding steel and the bird plummeted to the water.

Paul was hit with a few rounds in the chest and he staggered back in the choipper nearly falling. Luckily the body armor had saved him and there had been a fresh vest onboard when they had taken off but he had the wind knocked out of him. Neto opened fire with his Rifle and struck the soldier with the armor in the chest and stomach with fourteen rounds. The armor held at first but then Neto saw the dark red as the next six rounds of the fourteen he had fired went through.

There was another helicopter coming towards them. "Fuckin maritime laws! I wonder how those putos in the Agency are gonna spin this one to the media!" Neto barked.

"The IAA';s days are numbered..." Ivan snarled. "Once we get back to the mainland we go after them."

"We should talk about this more later!" Paul called back. "Right now we got Uncle Sam's pawns after us!" Ivan fired the .50 and saw the bird in front of him starting to smoke and he continued to let him have it and he fired another missile and finished the bird.

"We are gonna be in a world of shit!" Packie cried out.

"Is he going to be a problem?!" Growled Mischa.

"Just stating the obvious ya fuckin old fart! You don't know who I am but me and my family used to run Liberty City!/"

"When was that?" Demanded the Russian ex KGB agent. "Back before I was imprisoned? Before the fall of the Berlin Wall?"

"You were in a black site prison and I don't fuckin know you. You should dial back on the attitude and show some grattitude ya fuckin commie!"

"Now I know who you are. Your brother Derrick McReary was with the Provo and he saw combat in the Troubles. I knew him. Back then. I helped him get to Europe. You must be the youngest brother."

Packie was silent. He simply watched and observed the Russian sleeper. It was like looking at a time capsule even though Packie had been a teenager and later a young adult during the Cold War.

"He's the only McReary brother..." Ivan replied. "Guineas killed his sister. Derrick was shot. So was his brother is a crooked cop and his second oldest is in prison for life."

Neto listened to the conversation between his father and son. He observed but didn't speak. He saw another chopper coming. "Buzzard! Two o'clock!" He fired at the chopper with his own SAM-18 and he struck the chopper head on and it hit the cockpit of the opposing chopper. They kept flying. Finally, they got to the mainland flying just over Vice City. There was another chopper that they would switch to.

They touched down at a helipad in Ocean Beach and they got to the city and there was a dark gray Moonbeam. They got inside the vehicle and Ivan left a bomb from Packie with a two minute timer. Ivan handed him a change of clothes. "We're going to have to change your appearance. The government wouldn't even acknowledge they had you in their custody."

They torched the vehicles they had been using. Suddenly, Ivan got a call from Lester. "This is not a good time to talk right now, man. I'll talk to you soon."

"You've got company. There are SAS agents after you and they're dressed like Red Stick PD."

"SAS? The fuck are they doing out here? I know they can be out but what the fuck are they doing?" Demanded K:or. He shot a look at Neto, then at Packie and Ivan and lastly, Mischa.

Mischa finally answered. "There are prisoners of war...Pakistani nationals...Chechan...many who have opposed the power of the British Empire. They launched attacks in the UK. They were caught."

"Packie! You're the one on escape. You said you had a guy who could get us a Slamvan.." Ivan reminded the Irish gangster. Packie nodded. "He is! He'll be waiting at a car park on the top level with the van."

"Where?" Ivan inquired. "K:or you've been spending a lot of time in the swamps out here. Where do we go?"

An Ri was wearing a ski mask and carried a Type 56. He had three more of his own men with him. "We got the SAS on our arses, Padraig! If you fellas are going to take this van and get out of here, I suggest you go now."

"Who the fuck are you, guero?" Neto demanded.

"That's An Ri. The King..." Packie replied. "He's helped me back in LC. Old friend of my brothers that's all you need to know right now."

"I know who you are..." An Ri told Neto. "You always did make a better Zapatista than Sicario. They're our natural allies."

"What about the chopper?" Demanded Paul.

" It's at a helipad in East Baton Rogue. The neighborhood is called Redfield."

They heard the screeching of tires.

The men got into positions ready to defend against the fake police officers who had basic vests on. Packie fired his AK and let his shots be the first and an SAS agent was riddled with rounds and the rounds finally got through the level three body armor. The man fell with four bloody holes in his uniform, the blood looking like grape juice. Neto fired from around the left side of the parked gray Willard he was using for cover.

He hit one of the SAS agents and managed to hit the man in the left and right leg. "You're going back to macana bay!" Barked one of the RSPD clad English agents.

"You got the southern accent down, bud!" Ivan shouted back at him as he fired at the SAS agent.

Neto was glad they were at least already cinceaking his identity. He spotted none other than Kyra who was with the SAS. He fired and struck the Britisj national in the chest. She managed to get to cover but returned fire with her G36 and five of the rounds hit Neto in the chest. The armor held but the fifth round went into his right shoulder. Kyra looked at Neto and she was able to recognize him even under the mask due to his skin tone height and build.

"You're going to regret this!" She barked. Neto moved between cover. He ran to the British national and head butted her. He drew blood. "I was gonna keep it a secret but that';s for pistol whipping a vato with a plate in his head..."

Despite her nose bleeding, she retrieved her Walther P99 and fired five shors but Neto had antincipated it. A round narrowly missed his right ear. "You've been shot already!" The SAS agent growled. "That armor won't be able to take another hit. So I don't have to overpower you. I can just kill you."

"You won't do that! You want to know who sent us! Next time you wanna knock me out puta? Make it a tranq dart. Not a rifle to the back of the head."

"Are you begging, Mr. Sante Muerte?!" She shot back. "I rather like that...I'd love to hear you beg for mercy more! Duely noted! I'll be the animal control and you can be the animal i have to put down in Ohio."

"That wasn't a tranq dart, pendeja! They shot him!" Neto shot back. "And you look more like that chango than me,esa!"

Micha fired the Ak he had picked up on the ship trying to hit the woman. The glass sprayed all over as the front window and the back left window was spotted the man who had been wounded by Neto and he fired the C7 hitting the already bleeding SAS agent. "You're not supposed to be on American soil!" Barked Packie.

He came towards the wounded Afro British woman. "Keep your fuckin hands up!" Packie growled. As Neto tossed a smoke grenade to his three o'clock, Kyra, glared defiantly. "We know you put them up to this!" Screamed the woman. "You'll all fry for killing my team mates!"'

"This has nothing to do with the SAS! Get the fuck outta here!" Growled Neto as he unloaded his magazine into four SAS agents.

'Terrorism always concerns us!" She barked. She fired and managed to strike an IRA member in the chest and the stomach. The man fell coughing blood. An Ri fired at her sending ten rounds at her but she had ducked down. Ivan then realized that was why the Afro-Anglo spy was here. She was here for An Ri and the rest of them were in the way but he knew that if she had managed to grab up all of them it'd be one hell of a payday.

Packie growled, "Shut up!" He hit her with the butt of the rifle in the chest. She was winded by this and wheezed and he told Paul, "Hey cuz get her backup piece!" Paul did not touch or look at the British agent but he took the Walther. "Pretty funny to see you using a gun Germany made."

"Quality is quality..."

"Enough of this! Cut her throat or we can take her with us..." Mischa insisted.

"Yeah..." Paul replied. "But your two countries kill each other at Soccer stadiums..." He chuckled.

"I think we should take her with us. Take her in alive..." Ivan suggested.

"Just let her go home..." Neto suggested.

She grabbed the butt of the rifle and gave Packie a kick to the left knee. It was only due to her slipping on the ground a bit that her kick was a bit off so his knee was not broken but he was in pain. "I already know who the others are. Let's see if you are who you say you are..." Packie was grabbed by his ski mask and she started to peel it off him but he gave her a jab to the belly followed with a left knee to her ribcage.

"The real cops are here!" Paul howled to the others as he unloaded on the police cars with his freshly loaded magazine. "Shouldn't you be at Rusty's getting donuts?!" Paul growled.

Neto hit one of the real RSPD officers in the chest and back as he fell the man was a Caucasian man with silver hair despite being in his late twenties and he had a scar on his face from his basketball days. "I FUCKIN HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE PIIIIIIIIIIIGS!" Netio roared in a way that reminded them each of Trevor Phillips however unintentionally.

Paul was backing up Neto now to hold off the cops as was Mischa. "Please tell me we have transportation besides cars! There are going to be road blocks everywhere!"

"There is!" Ivan shouted to his father as the two men fired from the cover of a dark red Feltzer. "But it's still a few blocks from here."

Meanwhile, Packie and Kyra were exchanging blows but she gave him a hard right to the face followed by a left roundhouse to the gut. "You hit like my fuckin sister, bitch! Even my dead ma hits harder than you!" He head butted her and managed to hit her in the belly with a left jab trying to even the fight a bit more.

"I'm going to enjoy pegging the five of you personally at Macana Bay..." She threatened more for psychological factors than anything.

"That bitch is insane!" K:or yelled to Neto and Packie. "How do you know this psycho rapist,homes?"

"Long story, carnal!" Neto yelled. "She aint good gente."

"I knew THAT, fool!" Paul growled as he fired the C7 hitting a squad car just as they pulled up. "I'd rather kill mounties but I guess you toothless faggots will have to do!" Paul roared as he fired a twenty round burst and he struck both of the officers. The driver was an African American and his partner was a Cajun. The rounds hit the passenger before he could get out but as he slumped to the ground he returned fire with his service pistol screaming i\n agony and rage as he fired back.

Five rounds were sent the Mohawk's way but he jumped for cover behind a mauve Stallion that had a flat tire on the back right. He reloaded in cover. The driver had managed to get the shotgun and he fired striking one of An Ri's soldiers. The man luckily had body armor but the shotgun blast still knocked him on his ass. Mischa managed to get behind the cop and pressed his Walther P99 to the back of his head and he squeezed the trigger. Then man' s brainstem was exposed.

Paul fired and struck the wounded Cajun officer in the left arm with another burst and it seemed that his arm was being sawed into by rounds. He moved it up his chest and neck.

Packie jumped Kyra from behind and punched her in the back of the head and drove a knee into her back. She let out a yowl of rage and pain and drove her right elbow into the Irish American gangster's face and broke his nose. "FUCK!" He cried as blood spurted from his injured nose. "I aint...letting you take our King..,.." Packie groaned. She gave him a kick to the side of the face cutting his right side of the face as well as the already bloody nose.

"You don't have a choice..." She stood on his chest with her left boot. "What kind of Yank joins the IRA?"

"You ever hear that one Irish joke, lass?"

"Which one? There are a lot of them."

"What do you call an Irishman who doesn't cuss? A mute. What do you call an Irishman who doesn't drink? Dead."

This earned a slight amused smile from the Afro British agent. "This is a world of gangsters not spies' sweetheart. What do you call an Irishman from Liberty City?" He brushed a bit of blood from his broken nose turning his pale left hand red. "Doesn't matter where he's from. An Irishman is an Irishman."

He got his cell phone turned on and he managed to hit the button and it detonated a parked lime green Admiral, 2009. The explosion was enough to knock her off her feet. She got up light headed and grabbed the Walther. The weakened agent grabbed her P99 as she didn't think she had enough hand eye coordination at the moment to use a rifle.

She aimed at Packie's head as he lay there. She aimed between his eyes and pulled the trigger. Her hand was grabbed just as she fired and the round narrowly missed. An Ri hit her in the back of the head with the AK. He then aimed at her as she fell out of consciousness but only after An Ri kicked her in the face again to knock her out. He aimed the Type 56 at the agent but Neto stopped him. "We don't have time for this. Let her live. This pura is gonna report back to the BSU. it aint their problem but it's hers and she can make it theirs. There's still cops and agents dressed like them."

K:or nodded. "It's not worth it. You kill her we have the British after us too."

"I've already done more than that, boyo. She should have kept her fuckin twat away from gangster shit.."

"It looks like she fucked you up pretty bad, Packie..." Kor told him. "When are you gonna learn martial arts or boxing? You're the leader of one of the most powerful families in LC especially in the 80's. Being good with guns is one thing but

It wasn't an attack on the BSU but it had been an attack on what was supposed to be a secure black site.

Ivan aimed his own Kalishnikov at Kyra. He let off a ten round burst and at least three did hit her in the back where her vest was but the rest went wild. Except for the last two which struck Packie with one round on accident in his left shoulder. Kyra smiled seizing the moment and bombarded him with a one two combo followed by another and she kicked Packie in the stomach as he fell to the ground. "Who sent you and funded you for this?" She demanded.

Packie remembered he had a switch blade. he swung it at the woman slicing her across the left side of the cheek leaving a three inch gash. She bled profusely but let out a scream and followed up with a kick to the chest, a roundhouse and as Packie hit the floor winded, she kicked him in the back of the head., He got to his feet and tackled her despite his own face now being bloodied and swollen.

"You are not going to take me as a hostage..." She hissed.

Packie shot back, "And you aint getting tgus mask off of me!" He went to stab her in the throat but she grabbed his arm, his right arm. "Not this time, Patrick..." She smiled.

She broke his arm and he screamed in agony hitting the ground. She kicked him in the side of the face, in the back, the buttocks and stomach and every time she would kick she would back up, He had tried to reach for her boots and try to get her to fall but she had given him a kick to the chin which was now busted open and bleeding due to Kyra's shoes.

Paul helped Packie to his feet,. "Careful ya fuckin idiot my arm is fucked!" Growled Packie.

"Your arm is fucked huh? Is that your medical opinion?" Despite helping his cousin to his feet, the sarcasm, it seemed remained.

"You don't get paid enough to die for the city!" Ivan shouted as he now has his Spas 12 ready and he fired three shots hitting an officer of African American descent standing at five eleven.

They hauled ass down the street. "That fuckin limey whacked me like a pinata, Pablo..." Groaned Packie.

"What the fuck is the SAS doing in this shit hole?" Ivan asked.

They got to the van, a dark blue Burrito. "Get in!" Paul shouted and Packie, Mischa Ivan and Neto got in. Neto rode shotgun while the rest rode in the back and Paul drove. Kyra aimed her G36 and let off a burst which narrowly missed Ivan and it hit his father twice in the right arm and a third round entered his back and exited the chest.

"Give me the hostage, Neto..." Kyra warned as she aimed her G36. "Plate in your head or not, I will be more thurough.,"

neto noticed that she had blood from her lip and a cut above her right eyebrow but Packie was by far more banged up. Paul was nervous as well despite not saying it. He hadn't interacted much with some of the allies of the BSU or the IAA as he usually dealt with the latter by himself and the former in war. He wondered if she was spying on him on behalf of the crown. the more he thought about it, the more he realized that all of them, even Paul who had been seen as the weakest link due to his age and lack of military age was now strong.

Kyra fired her H&K trying to hit Paul. He stayed ducked down but the sparks of the shots hitting the vehicle reminded him of lightning striking a rod.

He put the wounded Packie and Mischa in the back of the van. "Stay in the fuckin car, Packie! Your arm's no good!" He fired after Kyra but ran dry before it could hit her. He ducked. She tossed a grenade to his side of the van where he was and K:or ran for cover behind a beige Slamvan and he braced for impact. When the blast didn't come he opened his eyes and stuck his head up a moment. He was temporarily blinded and realized it had been a flashbang. He stayed put not knowing what to do. He then realized the fallacy of that, not knowing if she was coming or the RSPD had him in their sights.

He rolled under the vehicle he had been next to, waiting for his vision to come could hear rounds all around him, including the truck. As his vision started to come back, he started to roll out the other side and as three rounds hit the truck in its front left tire and its back right, he got out just in time as the truk went lower with the rounds hitting the tires.

Ivan and Neto had also been blinded by the flashbang but luckily so had all the cops that had been within shooting distance.

Packie tackled the bleeding woman. "I aint letting a fuckin chick kick my ass!" He barked. "Especially not a fuckin limey!" He hefted the empty shotgun with his good arm and struck her from behind intent on using it as the limb he couldn't use but the irony was that he needed to hold it to use it. He hit her in the side and then the back near the shoulder blades as he hit her from behind. "JUST FUCKIN GO! ALL OF YOUSE! GET ME OUT LATER OR I'LL MEET YOU AT THE SPOT!"

He drove a knee into her lower back and she turned to him, meeting him with a left roundhouse to the gut and he barely managed to catch it. In her mind, she was surprised that Packie had honed in on her nationality rather than her specific ethnic heritage. She was slighty relieved and slightly intrigued. She had faced racism in Britain before especially from Anglo women and since she was mixed she was looked down on by virtially every Nigerian family except for the ones where they had Afropean ancestry like her.

But the racism in the UK or Ireland was somewhat different from how it was in the states but no less , she found it intriguing that he would consider himself true Irish. In Ireland he would be seen as a Yank or at least he average Irish American would but Derrick had been embraced like a son come home. he was essentially an Irish Malcolm X aside from being a grass in the sense of being embraced by his homeland when others hadn't.

An Ri had been a target of the SAS since the 80's. By now, the man had ex wives and kids even grandkids as well as a current wife and some of them were believed to be connected to their fathers activity. Still, to gain that type of acceptance among Irish nationals was rare and Packie had been a gangster most of his life rather than a revolutionary. he didn't even seem the revolutionary type to her but maybe that was the point.'

She gave him a spin kick and her right heel caught him in the chin busting his lip open. He tackled her with his shoulder slamming her against the wall but she followed up with a knee to the groin and a jab to the side of the face and she kicked him in the ribs and he fell wheezing to the pavement. "I suppose there's a first time for everythig, Mr. McReary..." She smiled as she got her gun and put it to the back of his head. "You can consider what you did to be a success. Except that we now have a prisoner."

'

She took his phone from his back pocket as she shoved him forward and hissed, "You won't be blowing up vehicles or people with your little toys, Patrick. Take you bombs away and what are you? A sorry excuse for a gangster who's been topped by his cousin and gets his family killed. Face it, Patrick. You're nothing more than a coked out degenerate. And you might get respect where you're from by all fifteen of you that are left. But your enemies in the underworld and in the espionage world know you RAN like a coward to LS five years ago. You can't change that no matter how many mafiosi you kill."

"When you ever shoot anybody as high up as the five families bosses you can tell me a thing or two but until then get back in your fuckin office cubicles you pencil pushing bitch!"

Packie was forced forward. "You're going to the same prison you just helped an enenmy spy escape from. I wonder about you, Packie. A Libertonian working with An Ri? Where is he?"

'

"He;s gluing your fuckin ma's eyes shut..." He shot back. She pistol whipped him and he fell over. He lost consciousness and she had to wake him up with smelling salt. "What could you do to earn the respect of one of the most internationally wanted men in the United States or Britain?" She demanded, "You're going to tell us everything,. And if you mention my mother again I'll start to get creative with your bollocks. Even Israel wanted him due to his alliances with Palestine. You don't striuke me as the type. Is this a play to get your brother out of prison?"

"I aint saying another fuki word till I get a lawyer Officer Limey Redcoat bitcj."

Paul, meanwhile held off the Red Stick Police Department back taking short bursts from the right side of the vehicle but round after round came back at him and glass and fiberglass rained on the parking lot like it was the Pacific Northwest. He took a shot in the chest from a Remington 870. He spotted the cop who had done it and waited for the officer to try and take a shot at Ivan before Paul, wincing, crawled to the other side of the car he was taking cover behind. "You're gonna respect the law in Red Stick!" Growled an African American officer in his early forties who stood six feet tall and was slender but muscular.

Paul saw him take the shot at Ivan and narrowly missed the Russian's left temple by only centimeters but he felt the trajectory. "O'serroni law!" He shouted back firing and striking the man in both legs. He saw the left leg get a compound fracture as the round struck his shin. The right leg took four rounds in the calf and the officer fell to his knees. "You're just their lapdog!"'

He was already moving when the wounded cop dropped his shotgun but fired at the car again. He blew out the back right window this time as the shotgun blast went through the window and hit the other window. "Fuck!" K:or cried out as some glass managed to get down the back of his pants as the glass rained over the small of his back. Neto zeroed in on the cops left knee firing and struck him there blowing it out with the FX-05 Xiuhcoatl shredding the cop's patella with five rounds.

The officer fell to the ground, not getting up again and he squirmed in the worst pain he'd ever been in but it was not likely to last long. A caucasian officer with blonde hair and blue eyes a Hungarian American whose family had originally moved there from Carcer City forty years ago, fired an 870 at Neto striking him from behind in the back. He ducked down just as she pumped and fired the 870 again and narrowly missed a headshot.

Had it hit Neto, it would have hit him exactly where the plate in his head was from where he'd been shot before. K:or zeroed in on her and fired the rest of his magazine into her starting with the chest just to stun her since he didn't tjhink he had enough time to adjust for a headshot with absolute accuracy in the split second he had to beat her to the punch with the shotgun. Neto was crawling on the ground from the first shot trying to catch his breath. The rounds met their target and the officer took four rounds in the stomach just below where her vest protected and the next three hit her in the chest where the vest did cover.

She was crying out from her injuries and now K:or had the chance to take a shot he wanted. He fired the C7's last few rounds into her throat and as he ducked down into cover as return fire came back his way, he let the pig suffer her last moments in despair as one round had struck her large external carotid artery, as well as her basilar artery. He couldn't see the exact areas she'd been hit in her neck but he knew from the way she was convulsing choking and groaning she was done.

"Fuck!" Cried a cornfed Caucasian officer with brown hair and blue eyes standing six foot one with broad shoulders. "Sylvia!" He cried as he fired as K:or but the Mohawk gunman was already strafing between a parked marigold Glendale and a blood red Cavalcade.

"Just Sylvia?!" Growled Neto. "What about the family name?! You want her gravestone to be incomplete?"

Neto who recognized a redheaded woman with blue eyes as somebody he had seen showing titties before in New Arcadia during the last mardi gras he had been in New Arcadia. "What the fuck...K that puerca right there showed her chi chis at Mardi Gras!"

"Did she have nice tits?" Ivan shot back.

"Fuck you! I'll kill all of you!" Barked the cop as she fired her M4 and sent ten rounds their way. "Last titties you'll see! You're gonna be blowing drag queens in Sudan!"

"Sudan?!" K:or played intentionally dumb. "I thought they killed drag queens there? Very strict fundamentalist country!"

"Shoot that smart ass!" The cop screamed and an African American cop, a woman of twenty five sent a barrage of rounds to where she had last seen the Kanienkehaka man's sillouette and she poured nine rounds into the broad side of the Glendale. Unfortunately, for her, he was behind the other car. He returned fire and managed to hit her in the right arm with four rounds and five more in the vest. She cried, blubbering in pain on the ground but she opted to stay down.

"Let's get the fuck out of this shit hole!" Ivan barked. "Our ride is here!"

They piled into the Slamvan but K:or asked, "Where's Packie?"

"I..." Neto started to answer. "Shit! She's got him!" Neto saw Kyra, though her face was bloodied, she shoved a much more beaten Packie forward. Ivan growled, "Go get him! We're leaving in two minutes!"

Mischa helped An Ri into the back of the van, seeing that the IRA gunman had taken five rounds himself and two of them had hit him in the back but had missed his organs and his spine. "Go get him...lad..." An ri coughed. "You're..his blood."

"Hang on..." Mischa and Ivan kept pressure on the wounds. There were two IRA members left alive as well and they were punching a hole in the RSPD's center with one carrying a PKM and the other had an AR-18. "I'll be all right..." Growled An ri as he coughed up blood. "Just..take some of Packie's phone bombs...clear us a path..."

Neto rained hellfire on the RSPD and the N.O.O.S.E agents who were coming in but only after throwing three home made smoke bombs forcing the beat cops back. K:or and Neto got to where Kyra had shoved Packie in the back of a silver Cavalcade where three men in black suits that resembled that movie about the aliens in Liberty City and a group of secret agents that tracked them but they also took Packie. Kyra saw Neto and K:or behind her and she flashed a smile at the former. K:or and Neto both fired at her but she shut the door stil smiling and the rounds did not get through.

"The bitch has bulletproof glass!" Neto cursed. K:or observed the Afro Brit waving at the two of them and then blowing a kiss with an evil smile. Packie was tazed and had a bag placed over his head. "You and I are going to get to know each other a lot better, Patrick. And you willl tell me where your King is..."

As they sped away from the scene and the two jumped in the back as Ivan opened the door, they got in. "They got Packie..." K:or reported.

"We'll rescue him later! We need to get out of this state and recooperate and come up with a plan."

"It was me they were after..." Lamented An Ri. "They're going to break that lad just to have him not know where we're going. I was right under her feckin nose..."

"She killled a couple of our boys out there..." Stated an IRA member with a thick Limerick accent. "She deserves to rot in hell..."

Another with an accent indicating he was from County Armagh declared, "We'll send her there. Her and anybody with her. Let's make sure there are some UVF fuckers to set on fire with her..."

"Shut up,

"Ivan's right. Your jefe's right we gotta get the fuck outta this state for now and get rid of this ride...get on that chopper and get outta here..."

They drove two minutes before they poured gasoline inside the van and Ivan lit it on fire as they ascended the stairs making it up to the helipad. "We'll get you medical attention in New Austin..."

Three Days Later

They were all resting and laying low in Liberty City as a result of the actions taken but they didn't pick any borough that any of them were known to frequent. Since Packie was too well known in Dukes and formerly too well known in Algonquin,he was in Broker and Neto had made his mark on some parts of Liberty City but he was most influential in Bohan now as well as Alto Island. For K:or, he was too well known in Broker and Bohan. Ivan, in Broker as well but also in Staunton Island once. His disuiqses made this less of an issue.

For now, the Island was where they were. They laid low in an apartment that didn't belong to them in North Holland next having switched over. The King was recovering as were the rest of them but K:or knew Packie had to be getting worse treatment. Ivan had asked Lester to look into any chatter from US intelligence agencies or British. Even Israelis and he would let them know as soon as he found something.

"You don't gotta embrace him as your brother or cousin, homes. You worked a long time to wash the guerito out of you. I don't know what it was that got you to go to LS to start carnal but whatever you had back in LC must have been something wrong to have you come to the west side."

"I never originally wanted to move there..." K:or revealed. "I always wanted to visit don't get me wrong but I never planned on having to move out there. I was probably gonna meet that pendejo, Latard but if I just hadn't moved out there I wouldnt have wound up behind bars. In my own stomping ground whether it was Canada or LC, I managed to avoid getting arrested cause I was smarter than most out there. There's a lot of dumbasses in Bohan. But out west I was outta my element so no matter how much respect I might have once earned doing dirt in the pen when I switched to your side officially...the respect I earned in LS wasn't worth the time I lost. The time I was around fake friends. Unless I start to see it all as part of making me who I was. But you still can't get back lost time..."

"What...you're saying you'd have rather stayed in Teranto? Or Liberty City?"

"Yeah in a way...but I know that the way thibngs are in both cities aint how it is everywhere and even when it is a certain way where I grew up...that shit is just a facade. Theres no real love no real solidarity. Not for most people. And not in the kind of brotherhood the gang life gets you. being a warrior is the only gang I've ever really truly belonged with. And tats because the word isn't supposed to be a gang and neither am i. A warrior is a noble calling but now I gotta put my money where my mouth is."

"We got a ways before we're done, hermano. The purpose you find in being a warrior and how for years you didn't care to make a difference between the two? The gang and the real thing? Maybe thats because you had gangsters in your cliqua but you also had warriors othert people like you who belong being guerreros not gangsters. It's like me with the cartel and the Army and La Onda. Y Los Aztecas. In a lot of ways I didn't see a difference either cause it was all about being a soldado one way or the other."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying fool..." Neto began. "You being a gurerro is a noble cause like I said. Not many gangsters could be a warrior and you've done both. But in that place in your head where you do separate the two...make sure not to get so noble in your warriorhood that you forget being a gangster. Living on a rez or somewhere out in the countryside with your tribe is one thing. Living in the city is somehing else."

"There's plenty of us that are urban, Neto. Between T Town, Mount Royal, Skentati and Liberty City that's a lot of urban Mohawks..." He then asked, "Are you saying because I wanted to get rid of the oxy trade?"

"Yeah. Lots of pandilleros want to be legitimate. But you got a lot of gavachos addicted to oxy. But even if you refused to give it to your own gente..."

"Hold on..." Paul started. "When it's our own I make sure I only give them actual prescriptions and only if we confirmed that they have a level of pain that they can do it."

"Yeah, I know, man it's the same thing you did with getting all those gavachos strung out on oxy like I said but realistically even if you never intentionally gave the shit to a Native addict, there's no guarantee one of those white boys didn't take some of those pills from your stash and trade it. You know how they are. But it's not just about you not wanting to create more addictions on the rez than there already were..." K:or nodded.

"I saw the error in injection sites pretty fuckin quick even if I did keep the oxy going, I'm not about to normalize methadone clinics. It's better to just shut down any and all meth operations there."

"Well you can do that out where you are but I can't where I am. Too much of a demand for it out west. All I'm saying is you gotta make sure the Warriors under you...whether you try and make them legit businessmen and women or you make them just successful drug dealers or you get them out of the drug trade entirely...whatever you do you gotta make sure that if they turn away from the trade they got another way to earn a living."

"The mob in this city. They managed to mostly at least officially be drug free and have a rule against their members using and dealing. They understood that any junkie is a potential informant. If they can infiltrate every level of society" The speed in his voice slowed down. He knew they couldnt nd neither could he but in the twenty first century there was still a lot of ways they could make money legal or illegal. He knew the chances of running Unions at construction sites was a long way off even with the reputation his tribe had as ironworkers.

He would still deal in the cigarette trade. Maybe even weed but no more would they deal hard drugs. "We can't innfluence elections yet. We don't have that kinda pull but we should. If the chiefs and council would stop shaking their own down people could get ahead. We're gonna have to rely more on Mexican help too even if we do go legit. But..we don't have to rely on drugs or prostitution. I'm putting an end to that in any and all turf we got."

"You're gonna want to run that by Shep first..." Neto suggested. "And you're gonna want to make sure you're in town when you suggest it. But even if you can pull that off in T Town a place with as many methheads as there are getting the crews that hustle for us in Liberty City, your other pot on the fire the Lords, they're still gonna deal yayo."

"Yeah but they've said they wanted to go legt and actually be a positive organization in Liberty City for a long time. Lord Manny Escuela wanted that but he wasn't much better. We could make the LC chapters go legit someday but I know it won't happen overnight. I'm gonna have to rely on Ten Speed for that. If he can't handle it even if he can't well..then that'll be that for Liberty City. I'm done trying to do shit in Liberty City too."

"You gotta make sure the Lords and Damas are stable, ese. They don't all got the options of joining a Warrior society to make their lives better. For a lot of them the Lords is the closest thing they're gonna get. You CAN make it happen but it aint gonna be easy. And if you don't got enough feria for your RW cliqua to get out of the drug trade, they will turn on you."

"Shep has gone with a few of my ideas even when they haven't panned out. There was this half baked hash hustle we both tried and it made us some money for a while but then it went up in smoke. No pun intended. But I don't know. He's wanting to be independent from his dads faction of the Dubs and his dad would want there to be a drug free policy which is why Shep might not do it. Even if he otherwise was leaning towards it I don't think he'd do it if his dad wants it."

"That's why you gotta convince him to put aside his bullshit with his padre. Who the fuck does that fool think he is? I'd love to be able to talk to my jefito again but I can't. He's got a dad still alive and breathing and he won't talk to him? You don't. I don't. Shit, Mark and Lee don't."

"Listen..." K:or said. "I get that you made peace with them but I didn't. Even the Vagos arent hitting them as much. But if you want to maintain that fine balance,..being cool with me and also cool with them it's better if you don't bring therm up around me. I got no common ground with them. At all. They think we're coastal elitists you and me. And because we weren'r born inside the lower 48, even though we both got ancestral ties, they go by borders so they still see us as a Canadian and a Mexican. They don't care about what we really are. They're still basing it omn their own fucked up perception of us. They think we're foreign. Native to Canada or Mexico but not the states. Even though the Jay Treaty and Pickering treaty says different. So they THINK we're both the turds you find in a left or right coast toilet. And we KNOW they're just bums from shitty flyover states. They're not connected to the Lanahachee like Adayh. They got no sense of environmental responsibility. You know why there are so many boars for me and Bottles to divide meat from? Because originally these Poh Boy shitting inbreds valued their shitty wild pigs that gave Old Yeller rabies over species that were from here. The boar is an invasive species. And THEY are invasive species."

"And Ivan and Packie aren't?"

"They're settlers. But they're not colonizers compared to those punks in BSU. They're at least actibley trying to fuck this country over. Which is good for us."

"Packie, maybe..." Neto suggested. "But Ivan? I don't know, wey. I fought some Israeli soldiers when they tried to kill us. But Ivan's from Russia and that is a Zionist country. We can't trust him."

"So is Canada. So is Ireland now even if the IRA isn't. So is Mexico, Neto. You and I are fourth world, bro not third world."

"Yeah but that aint the point, ese. Russia was behind the creation of Israel and Israel tried to train the government to kill Zapatistas."

"You haven't been active as a Zapatista in a while, man..." K:or told him. "You've been pretty much all about the drug game for a while. You've even been at home more often than you've been doing anything with that."

"Right now sending feria down south is the only thing that's safe right now. I can go there but I gotta do it at a time it won't raise suspicions, wey. I KNOW I gotta get down there. But the only way the hermanos y hermanas down there still have the plata to be able to afford cuetes to use on the Federales, is this shit here. It's an ugly cycle, I get it bro. But we're dealing the hands life dealt. I aint forgot a thing. But right now I got enough enemies that are looking to take a shot at me all over this country and Mexico. I had to get this done first. plus that shit we did is gonna have the intelligence agencies running around like headless chickens as they try and decide what lie to tell the media."

He paused and then added, "Now that this happened, even those IAA and Merryweather putos that got a contract to take you and your ruca down are going to be prioritizing finding Mischa. They're gonna be checking the corpses and trying to see what left they can get even after the explosion to prove Mischa is dead. But with that bitch from the SAS stealing Packie she'll have her hands full with that. Otherwise I might think she was gonna say something to the BSU about what just happened on that ship."

"If they don't know now they will soon enough..." K:or replied. "And until they can confirm it themselves they'll assume nothing when it comes to Ivan's dad. They're gonna have IAA all over the place looking for him. And right now even though we helped him..." He sighed. "It's not good we helped him. Packie's with them and there's no telling what he's told them. Even if we were just in on it we're as guilty as they are now. I ight have left my phone back in Teranto to make it look like I was there using it but if somebody is careful enough they'll find the truth. They'll want to make us give Ivan up."

"And they're gonna make Packie give up An Ri. Which could be just as bad either way.." Neto nodded. "We might have to take him out ourselves if we can find him."

"I don't think we can..." K:or said. "For one thing we don't know where Mai is with this. He's the last McReary and he did look after me when he could when I was younger. Him and Dwayne Forge. Plus he could blow this whole thing with Ivan up too..." He then looked at Neto who was glaring. He tried to gigure out wy and then it hit him. "But if rescuing him is impossible or even if we do and he turns out to have compromised us we gotta kill him along with everybody else there."

"I know you're just being tactical cause of the shit Tanaka taught you but fuck the McReary's bro. They didn't lend a hand when you me, Mai or Ivan had our lowest points. He did a few jobs but so what? I say you make the McReary family extinct."

"Sometimes I want to..." He admitted. "He was in town when I got to town but he still didn't watch my back to make sure I didn't get set up my the Locs. And he was in Strawberry too the first time he came out here. Most of towners, especially white guys wouldn't go to Strawberry once they knew where that was unless they were brain dead wiggers that had a death wish. But he went there and he made a friend with a Vago from out there and he still didn't at any point think to offer some advice. He may not have known we were cousins I didn't but he was the leader of the Irish mob..." He then sighed. "But if we leave Packie to get waterboarded and killed we're no different than Mai. Maybe you're good with that. I aint."

"I got my issues with that puta too..." He said. "She killed Nata. And she's still gonna pay the price for it. No matter what the BSU say."

K:or looked out the window as the sunlight hit the left side of his face. He looked out on the horizon contemplating the fate of his second cousin who despite being second cousins, e had known him since the early 2000's. In a way, after he had killed his own father at fourteen, and he was twenty eight now, he had now roughly now Packie the same amount of years as his father before Paul ended him.

He couldn't say he loved the bastard. He was a cokehead degenerate and a drunk, proof that trash was trash no matter which side of his family it came from. He was also a peon for the mafia for the longest time and while Paul had rolled with him many times when doing deals with Elizabeta Torres in Bohan he would go but he never went along on anything where the Commission gangsters were concerned. They wouldn't have accepted him even as an associate most likely due to his age.

Possibly his race too, he wasn't certain. He just knew that the mobsters Packie worked for were at a much higher income bracket than he had been. But now, years later, he had surpassed them and he knew with the setbacks of his brothers dying and his last brother being in prison for life, he would be the last McReary. His ma was dead, his sister, Derrick. All that really remained was Francis and he didn't count.

Paul had always made himself scarce and hid in Elizabeta's bedroom on days when that pig had come by. He didn't want Liberty City Police knowing about his precense in the city back then. But even though he couldn't say he saw Packie as a carnal despite their common ancestry through his maternal side, he wasn't willing to let him get killed and he knew the interrogation tactics used on him wouldn't be easy. He might have to bust him out. Unless by some miracle they released him which he doubted since in the process of them trying to arrest An Ri, he now found himself on the SAS's radar as well as the IAA but Paul had learned from Fred that the McReary's had been under the IAA's surveillance anyway due to their IRA ties through Derrick.

Paul had to admit if there was one McReary he had liked when he had known him just briefly when he came back to the states,he felt bad he was dead or at least he had when it happened. He didn't know why whoever shot him didn't also shoot Francis but he had always hated what he had heard of Francis. But despite not seeing him as the compa that he now did Neto after years of not even seeing Packie or so much as a phone call, it didn't seem right to let them execute him especially since he had come along on this rescue mission for Ivan's dad in the first place.

Paul wasn't sure how much longer he was going to subject himself to being in the motley crew. He wanted to leave it but for now, with the war with the BSU and the IAA on, he figured it wouldn't be smart to jump ship just yet and with Dawn about to have their baby any day now, the protection afforded through his ties to more gangs than just the Red Warriors through the motley crew ensured no harm would come to her either. At least, he hoped. He hadn't wanted to leave her side for the attack on the ship and now he had a sense that she was in danger. They all were.

Ivan had put them at risk to save his father. He was the part of the motley crew he couldn't trust. He trusted Neto but the more he thought about it, on one hand, he didn't want anything to do with the Romans and he would kill them all the next time he saw them, he didn't like that Neto was on somewhat neautral terms with them. It was like he had lost his edge. It was like he had forgotten how it was in the pen.

Admittedly neither of them were incarcerated any longer but Neto was part of a prison gang still. Even if K:or ever succeeded in leaving that shit in his own rear view mirror, Neto couldn't as long as he was with La Onda. He was in too deep and K:or feared this was making him forget his duties as a Zapatista. K:or had been talking to Bobby and the others back home more and getting involved in the community. But now, he wanted to just get the fuck away from LS.

And Liberty City. He was getting on the first plane back to had exacted revenge on Mai and now he just needed to tie up some loose ends as far as that went. G Bone was doing life and had confessed to all those crimes but he was still breathing. And even though his threats to G Bone had happened when he and his boys shot up that house and K:or pursued him, everything he told him he would do to Janea was said away from any technology that could have heard him as far as he knew but he didn't want to chance it.

It could get him greenlit if he did by La Onda even since some of the Vagos had been arrested which K:or had not intended on as he had intended for G Bone to snitch strictly on the Ballas, Families and the Da Nang Boyz but since the Vagos had also fired a lot of shells off on multiple occasions trying to kill Mai and her friends, they could be and were charged accordingly due to their own proximity to the crimes.

They could still send a wila and get him bumped off. Instead, Owl Child would, while wearing a disguise and using an alias, visit the prison. K:or paid him 250 g's cash in hand to do this. He didn't trust banks even though he wired money sometimes, he never kept the bulk of it in banks. He still had it secure but he didn't trust banks and never would.

That was being set in motion. Even inmates in protective custody were given thirty minutes of exercise as long as they weren't deemed a threat. That was the best place to possibly have somebody kill him. He wanted to see if there were any Southsiders on that tier or former Vagos who had been declared "All bad" inside for one reason or another. Many dropouts just messed up because they got too many disciplines from the other inmates for breaking the house rules but others turned out to be child molesters and snitches.

He would try to make one of the more decent vatos do it. He also wondered if there was anything he could do for Gerry McReary. The man was, after all, a lifer now but there were ways around didn't feel much inclination to help the mick bastard now that he was behind bars but he remembered that once upon a time he was helped by the McReary Family. They'd never let him crash at the spot.

They usually just gave him money so he could get a hotel. He didn't mind and he understood since Maureen McReary was alive back then. He would have to talk to Packie again and see what he wanted to do.

In the meantime, the training of the Warriors had met with some progress. Using drug addicts who had long since gotten clean and worked the steps including Jean, Sheppard's father, the Chief of Chiefs and Warrior of Warriors. The big time head honcho. Some thought he had softened up with age but it was that he picked his battles. He meant to talk to Jean more often.

But he had to be careful how often he did since Sheppard hated him. K:or had also told him that eventually this too, must pass. They did not agree on that point but even though that wasn't going well, he used him to get the younger members to see the value in walking the red road. Paul had slowly but surely started to cut back on the weed. He realized now that he had to. He couldn't ask the Warriors do to something he wouldn't.

Even the training with the drones was going well. They'd brought in some of Neto's Aztecas who were in Mexico as well as South Bohan but were not under any particular Ondero's guidance or command. He would help him change that but in the meantime, though it was slow, Latin American's were growing in Canada. They too, and even a few of his Zapatistas had trained in the last weeks with these drones. Three of said Aztecas had died but Neto had insisted that it was needed to learn what they could do different.

Mostly, after that, however, since the Madrazo Cartel was under a new regime with Martin's son at the head of it, he used their men as bullet fodder as Neto had quietly instructed. Of course in order to justify the use of their men, Neto had purchased a large shipment of heroin which would be sold on the streets of Los Santos and Linerty City. With time, perhaps also New Arcadia and the Sunbelt states but only after the Zero War was finished.

Their training with the drones was almost complete. Even Ace had been doing good. He got his thirty day chip. What's more, he was put in rehab in South Bohan so he could see what Kor's old stomping grounds were like with the understanding that if he used heroin again he would have eyes on him and those eyes had permission to take him out then and there.

This, he achieved through his dealing with Ten Speed and now that he was out on the street, he was able to do more with the Lords. He warned his Lords and Damas to stay very incognito with Ace. To not even directly look his direction but to also never be more than across the street from him or have the ability to see him. He was making sure they got a little bit of extra feria that way and he paid for some of it with the Florida pill mill hustle they'd brought to Canada and on the southern side of the US border.

Ace had continued going back and part of why he wanted him to go was so he wouldn't see some of the same people he had shared a heroin needle with. He would have to try and cop from a stranger if he copped at all and he wasn't going to. His own paranoia, or perhaps his own desire to get clean kept him in rehab but he was going to relapse sooner or later. All addicts did but he wanted to make this the exception. If the Nation of Islam could have an effective anti drug program when they were so unbelievably ignorant with the shit they believed, he could too.

He would be allowed to come back after completing another thirty days. The fact that his enemies from the deep south didn't attack or try and take him was an indication that Danyen was a sufficient captive for now but he didn't know how or even if he would be able to successfully rescue him. If he did, he might have to kill him.

He didn't trust Ace around the oxy hustle and rightfully so. But he could still help with their weapons deals. he had handled himself against the Angels too and the weapon he had used was the only thing to survive his house burning down. He took that to be a sign that him having that weapon was good medicine. For him it was the pipe tomahawk. For Ace it was the harpoon. For Neto, as far as weapons like that went he had one he had used in his days with both the army and the cartel but he hadn't used it since he had come to the United States. His Macuahuitl. They hadn't made those in years but he had one.

He had made this one from the design since the actual weapons had been destroyed in a fire in the 1880's in Madrid. On top of that, there was also his weapon made not out of obsidian but rather out of flint. Chert was readily available across the Mayan area and was a close second when it comes to materials used for making ancient Mayan weaponry. It is less sharp than obsidian, however, but it is a bit harder and therefore more had a chert atlatl.

The weapon provided several advantages in combat. Its design allowed for a more efficient transfer of energy from the user's arm to the spear, increasing the projectile's he knew that he wouldn't be able to count on his best compa in a war against the enemies in the deep south unless he was able to score a significant victory without Neto's help. Then, maybe he could be pursuaded but then again he was already a father and K:or was weeks away from being one himself.

The importance of the atlatl can also be seen in the hunting habits of the Mayans. It was an easy tool to approach their prey from a safe distance, assuring that they wouldn't be attacked when they were hunting dangerous animals like jaguars.

Then there was Task with his bow and arrow. He had no idea what his new friend Adayh used for a weapon as far as up close and personal.

Even Danyen was an expert in poison darts. Something Dawn also knew but she knew the indigenous martial arts started by Shep's tribe which included a tomahawk style of martial arts known as Ochitaw which Jean was the one teaching them.

Ten Speed, as far as he knew, despite being Kanienkehaka on his mother's side, the side that mattered in their culture, did not know much about traditional weapons. Rather than a war club, he would use a baseball bat though he claimed he had an autographed Swingers bat. A switchblade rather than a traditional flint knife or tomahawk.

K:or knew guns were essential to warfare but overeliance on them could be detrimental. They were the main weapon even in modern warfare but there was also drones being used now and more and outside of things like drones or cyber warfare, guns were still the go to tools of warfare in most of the world and would continue to be so in major US cities with a lot of ghettos, gun dealers and drug problems.

But it was still important to him that they move past being a gang. What Jean had intended for them mostly as a prison gang that moved to the streets and Jean had gotten himself put in prison. Shep texted K:or to meet him at a restaeraunt in downtown Teranto. He began to drive out there. The text said they had some business to discuss about expansion.

"I run the crew over at Pierre Noir. That doesn't change. My piece of shit dad...he'll be running the original chapter out in Winnipek. You would run the one in Winnipek. No more just being a striker, brother. You can be a chief. You're doing good work training our younger guys how to use traditional weapons. And insisting upon drug tests was smart too

"You want me to be the leader?"

"You already pretty much are. You showed me up in leadership skills,brother. You showed me I was slacking but I try to always ride with MY Warriors. And even Jean noticed it, man. There's a lot of potential in the eastern provinces. You know it. I know it. Plus you got a kid on the way with Dawn. You need all the money you can get. And I need one of the territories taken off my hand so it aint a headache anymore."

"You're asking me for a pretty big thing, Shep. It's not just asking for a ride to the store. It's a huge responsibility. I'm not saying no but...I got some people I'd need to talk to before I say yes. I know it may not seem like the leader way to check with that many people..."

"No..." Shep interjected. "K:or that's exactly what being a fuckin leader is. My dad was a fuckn dictator back in the 90's when we had to be cool with the Dead Beats because HE said so and it was those IC rapist dickheads fighting them. Not a good start to the Native rebellion against the Angels of Deadbeat army. He finally got his head out of his ass but he was a drunk and he used to beat my ass when I was a kid. He also beat on my mom. Because that's just the type of motherfucker he decided to be and then he got himself locked up where he belongs."

"

"I do need some time to sleep on this and talk to a few people then, like I said and I'm glad I got your blessing. Can you give me four days? I'll have an answer by then. But that's how long I need to think."

"If you say no, I'll just hold onto the eastern turf but I admit you can do a lot more good on top than you can being under me still."

"What about the Angels?"

"Those faggots aren't going anywhere. Look...dad may have worked through his bullshit in prison and he may have even turned his life around. But just because he'sgot all his own childhood bullshit worked out doesn't mean the rest of us suddenly stop having the scars he created. My mom forgave him before she passed away. They were both alcoholics, K:or. Just like your dad. And she drank cause that asshole broke her heart. He drank too but I guess he sobered up in prison and now he's writing a book about the Red Warriors. Talking about the battles on the streets and the rez and the brothers that were in prison where it started. How they modeled it after a biker club. These Canadian cucks are treating this asshole like he's another Cookie Wilson,..." He growled recalling reading Green Rage Black Redemption.

It seemed to K:or that Shep thought his father might also be looked up to for generations to come and that was inevitable as the man that founded it but he knew who the real Jean Proudfoot was and he had wanted him dead for years.

Ivan

"I know where the mother of my child and my daughter is. They're safe and they are away from men like me. Men like you..."

"Whatever, nigga you just another white boy that played a sista to the side."

"Let's say that what you say was true. Isn't that my nature to assholes like you? So what is your excuse for pimping your own women on the street? Not even non affiliated girls. You think I didn't know Sugar was one of your hookers at the same time she was stripping?"

"You outta pocket, homie..."

"I don't give a shit. You've gotten with women from Eastern Europe you've sampled them. Did I ever once call you on that?"

"Nah but now that you talking about it now how the fuck is YOU gonna sit there and act like your crew is better than me? Better than us? Ya'll pimp your own wo,men too."

"I never said we didn't..." Ivan reminded him. "But you don't see me going out of my way to say how much I love Russian women even as our organization makes money from brothels. You on the other hand act like you do. But you're the same age as me and you fucked Imani at one point too. You also cheated on every woman you've ever had a relationship with no matter what color they are..."

"So you do got some hate for black people afterall..."

"I hate the ones that try to kill me the same as anybody else. I've had many independent crews in Broker take shots at us. Back in '08 it was a violent year out there..And I do find the hypocrisy distasteful. For starters we don't honor women in the Bravta. Women can and have been FSB but nobody takes a woman seriously in the Markovich Family or most other families. Unlike the Ballas we don't pretend to love any women other than some of the ones nin our lives. Maybe a wife if she is not a cunt. And sisters and mothers and aunts. But what we do in the streets of Broker and here is no woman's business. I don't make those rules either."

"Seems like ya girl Natasha got some power with her brother running shit."

"There are very few exceptions to that rule..." Ivan replied. "It's kind of like when you have an occasional Baller or a Loc from, the greenside when they have a token white boy in their crew. Let's face it., You might like white women yourselves but they are not the ones known to be soldiers."

"Hey we never had none of them in our set..." Stone said with a bit of speed picking up in his voice. "Other hoods like Rolling Heights, South Side Ballas, yeah they could be but it aint in my hood. We more likely to have a token Ese on the set than a white boy."

"Well, that is our rule. The word Bravta means Brotherhood, remember when I told you this?"

"Sorta.." Stone admitted. "I was halfway through a blunt when you told me though..."

"Well that is the key word. Brotherhood. Not sisterhood. They have more than enough. If you truly respected the women in your gang you wouldn't have them hooking for you. Or even the strippers."

"Hey that's not on me. That methed out motherfucker from the desert started that shit. I don't even go to that club no more they got some whack ass music."

"hey..." Ivan admitted as he hit the blunt. "I have personally fucked every stripper that currently work at that club or who did back when I first got to town. But I don't fill their heads with dreams and I don't tell them they're going to be rich. Whether they do or don't depends on their own strength. But...even having the Ballas as soldiers. I have worked with women who were highly trained assassins' as well as dedicated soldiers. But a duty to ones country is not the same."

He then added, "By the way you think you're the only ones who hate the police? In Russia when the police come to talk to you they take you to Siberia. With the cold and the rats. You think whatever prison you did out here in the desert where it is hot in the day and cold at night is bad? Try a Russian winter. On top of this, like your community we are not quick to trust people in the mental health industry."

"That's cause it's a scam. Black people don't get nothing out of it. You think I don't see the square niggas around here working a nine to five? They broke and miserable. Maybe my job is dangerous but I'm living like a king in the streets. Shit I am a King. Kind David. In a place Davis the rules is different for succeeding. That's what they can't understand out in the hills. But some of these niggas around here that don't bang or do nothing wrong still lost friends to the streets. They go to therapy but what good does keeping the shit alive do?"

"Well for different but similar reasons we distrust them as well. Usually when somebody in that profession comes to your house it means they want to put you in an insane asylum."

He leaned forward. "So what you saying with Sugar?"

"I am saying that because of what I told you before i have a complicated stance on sex. It is meaningless to me. Women tell us to make love to them. Instead of fucking them. The difference between the two only exists in their mind."

"The fact that you here and not home says a lot about how shit's going with you. Man, you in your motherfucking forties with kids by different baby mamas and you here talking to me instead of being around your son."

"I have protection details around our home. It is better right now if my enemies know I am not at home."

"Unless one of them gets throiugh and kills your detail and kidnaps your girl. Or kills her and your son. Just cause it aint ever day up in Vinewood Hills don't mean it can't happen. And you got just as much beef with most Loc hoods these days but you got a neighbor up in them hills. He's boys with Trevor Phillips. Has been for years. About the same amount of time as you been in LS."

"That's quite a few years..." The wounded Russian stated scatching his goatee. "What about him?"

"Well, that's the motherfucker bitches like Mai did licks against our set for back in the day. I really hope you aint have shit to do with any of that.."

Ivan had never confirmed his own role in those gunfights. "Maybe you aint know but you know now. That motherfucker Trevor Phillips been hitting us and the vagos not that I give a fuck about them but everybody wants a piece of that bitch. Plus I did some looking into shit. That Indian you been fighting with the one that's got blood relatives in the pen repping purple?"

"Just the one and he's down bad at the moment. They have him in ad seg against his own will for protection."

"But he's got a deal with TPI when he's out west it might be from back in the day but shit. You could easily help take all them guns off that fool since he's not even banging. He's the weakest link on the BSU side. Eitther him or the fed. Shit it might even be the Asian mothafucka with a chip on his shoulder. You can't let Trevor do what he's doing no more this mothefucker wants to be a CEO just like bitch ass Frank Clinton that's the nigga that's down the street from your ass when he's home."

"I know who he is and I have even seen him but I have never interacted with him. He seems to be done with that life."

"That aint gonna stop niggas that remember him from the corner and got a score to settle. I've had some niggas try and roll up on him in his own crib a few years ago for the shit he did to undo the truce between purple and green. They got pulled over by one time and told em to raise up or go to county."

"FC has a lot of protection..." Ivan stated. "It isn't wise to make a move on him."

"Aight but Trevor is a problem. I got homies from the west side of 'Central and they grind but living is expensive so even when niggas ball they end up broke cause if your only hustle is the baseheads you done. You want to keep having Covenant Ave backing you up you gotta cut all ties to Trevor. He might be a outta towner but he's dangerous. He's gonna make shit hard for everybody and he still gotta catch some hot ones for all the kush that bitch took off us.,"

"So you want to kill Trevor?"

"I wanna be the nigga running the Vanilla Unicorn. That motherfucker aint even from LS and he damn sure aint from the hood."

"Maybe not but the way he behaves and Lamar Davis behaves isn't that different. This is why they are friends."

"Yeah that nigga's in PC just cause of all the Ballas and Vagos that wanna smoke him. He'll either spend the rest of his days living in the pen or somebody's finna stab him.I still respect that motherfucker more than G Bone's bitch ass. Snitch motherfucker even got some of my homies rolled up by one time. "

"So you want me to start attacking Trevor Phillip."

"What's the problem with it? cause I don't see it. He's fucked over people that were allied with him. Niggas can hate me all day. Them Va Ho's too but it doesn;'t change that I'm real and I stay loyal to my hood. It aint just about getting people to fall in line for war, either. Niggas in the hood look up to me cause they know I'm a hustler. There's a lot of homies that had keys to the car in the pen. Butt they made bad choices. This shit aint for everyone.,"

"We'll bring down a lot of heat from law enforcement taking that meth head on. And sure, it's Blaine County but that is still enough lawmen to kill or capture any given one of us. If we go after him it needs to be in one fell swoop so he doesn't have time or money to rebuild.

"You raise a good point..." The Russian expat nodded. "But I don't know exactly where the man is."'

"He aint at his spot in Sandy Shores?" He exhaled with stress in his brown eyes. "I swear, dog. Can't rely on these niggas repping the flag in Blaine County to get shit done for nothing. They went through all that trouble paying off the pigs to look the other way just to get their bud hustle jacked by a methead in his fifties and the heads he hired but he made a lot of fuckin enemies that day, g. He gotta pay. Plus a couple of white dudes and that punk nigga from Strawberry rescued that bitch Lamar. All them bodies and they still couldn't drop him. All these bodies and niggas can't go to the store without getting lit up. I pay the cops to look the other way too but I swear they did something too. They got a lot of hardware. These Bussies..." He spat, naming another derogatory term for the transient straight edge gang.

It was derived from the already used term by other enemies of BSU calling them short bus. He had a lot of influence even as an old man but the truth was he wasn't able to get everybody from the set to fall in line especially a lot of the dudes that came up with him and in some cases, some of the younger generation who did't know him as well and in some cases, at all.

The other insults like Sub, Bullshitter, and short bus were popular and had gained a lot of traction in the early 2000's as they had tensions with other gangs in Waston. "I'm going to help you with your BSU problem as well as anybody from New Arcadia in Davis. You're going to have to rule the streets with an iron fists and sometimes that means making inhumane calls. Remember the green light the Chicano Mafia put on African American drug dealers and gangsters?"

"I was there, dog. I wasn't beefing with every ese like that but I've had enemies from different hoods and there were some Vagos we were cool with we hated Atecas but I know you cool with one. Then the Vagos fell out with us but even then I aint beefing with every Vago. Not no more. From Davis or Rancho sure but I don't give a fuck what they do at Del Perro or Murietta Heights. Aint my business aint my problem but them ese's on 155th street are a problem. But right now, these motherfuckin bussies are causing static on the streets."

"Enough. Shut up and listen..." Ivan insisted earning a glare from the OG but OG's recognized OG's and he had some clout to his words. "I'm suggesting you do the same thing the cholos did in the 90's. Put a green light on anybody from New Arcadia. Of any race. If they show up in Davis you kill them. As a matter of fact, maybe it's best you make your boys follow at will at any and all cars that come through here that you don't know. I'm going to supply your soldiers with body armor too. And some newer weapons."

"But this all come with a catch right? We gotta back you up in another fight. But I aint really in a position to say no. Not now anyway. We need em both."

"No tricks, old friend. The payment will be whatever you find on the bodies of BSU members. We're going to set a trip for the so called Militia. Use the guns and armor on them."

"I thought about reaching out to some of the homies on the green side..." Stone admitted. "I aint trying to do it right away. I gotta do everything I can to keep this shit in house. But that's a little hard to do when you got bumpkins from Narcadia coming up in our hood starting shit. So you right, Ivan. Any white boy we don't know that don't know nobody in the hood gets lit up. Same goes if they're black or Latino but we gotta try and get a green light on white boys cracking. At least the ones from the BSU. Even teh chapter here in town. They might be from LS but they aint from Davis. They need to be afraid to come through here like they used to be."

Ivan chuckled. "I happen to know where two of them are staying just up the street. They're posing as a couple. A gentrification type of couple looking to move to the neghborhood. Then the streets don't get gentrified anymore than it already has. Who knows, Stone? Maybe you can roll it back to how it was in the 80's and 90s. It was a better time..." He admitted. "But you can get that same notoriety from back then and I will help you. Let's go pay them a visit."

"Word. But we also gotta go after that Trevor motherfucker, man. I know you Bravta mofuckas be shady as fuck so I don't think it's a big deal for you to turn on him. Plus he turned on motherfuckers he worked with. "

"If we kill him...there's going to be a serious vaccum in the gun trade as well as the meth. It'll leave us an untapped market. All his customers in the Grand Senora desert. We could split the profits 50/50. You would get your weed operation in Paleto Bay and we would manage the market in Sandy Shores. We won't leave his customers hanging."

"Yeah that's true. Even though that dudes straight up snake, he got a lot of friends. We kill him, one of his homies might come for your dome. You still down for all that? Trevor's a differnt monster..." He blew smoke from the blunt and added, "Bad as we both think this motherfucka down south is bad, that aint nothing to the hell that would get raised when we chip Trevor."

"Trevor would have some allies and soldiers loyal to him after death but I don't think you're right about that one. Those homeless Bums Stand United are connected to some powerful people in the government. You know that. Before that, they were all punks. They became masters of warfare with time and experience but most of them have never served. They fought their fellow countrymen. On the streets. Even when they did fight back, they never got any real true edge over their enemies until their leader and an IAA agent fell for each other."

"You should still expect one of them to still come and try and cap you for what you did to their boy. Making the fed get that blood on her hands? Shit..."He chuckled. "We talk our shit to each other but talk TO me before you ever get the urge to kill me if I ever piss you off."

"Nobody is going to kill you. But you might want to tell your solkdiers to ease up on the drinking and substance abuse. They aren't true soldiers. Some of them are some served but most didnt and you mostly have a bunch of ghetto amatuers shooting at people who have hit the shooting range often."

"My boys get practice shooting at moving targets on the streets, homie. We don't need to shoot no cardboard targets."

"So what do we do if we see any those peckerwoods from Narcadia?"

"You shoot em you blow em up and you do whatever Ivan tells you and shows you, aight? And if you can catch em slipping Ronnie Queen they ass. Show em that new age tech bro bitch shit aint welcome in the hood."

"

Eagle Bay

G Bone had been settling in the last couple of weeks, adjusting to his new had a cell mate, a Samoan American who stood six foot six and was aged thirty four, and had curly black hair, almond brown eyes, a wide nose and almond shaped name was Keola Graham. His name on the streets had been Kilo often short for Kilo Gram. He was doing twenty five to life and had been an OG in the Others car until he made the mistake of exchanging a hug on the yard with a Vago he had befriended through a job they had both worked at. The Vago had ended up being stabbed by his own gang for it and later some of the younger homirs from a different set in Playa Del Seville who didn't know him, a BG who was twenty, had come at Keola trying to kill him. Keola had successfully fended him off, however.

G Bone was doing pushups and wondered why his room mate hadn;'t returned yet but he'd heard that he had been in some trouble and he was brought back with his left arm in a cast and he had two black eyes with a cut on his forehead. "You better behave, Kilo..." Growled the guard, a tall lean mean looking Caucasian with thick brown hair and brown eyes of Polish American descent. "My nightstick's going up your ass if if you don't..."

"Now you can nurse your boyfriend back to health..."

After the guards departed, he checked his face and G Bone provided him with a mirror. When he'd been arrested for different stints in LS County jail before he was doing hard time like now, especially the last time he had been incarcerated there, the guards had beaten him 'd knocked out two of his teeth including one of his wisdom teeth and one in the front. For the second one, he had dental surgery to fix it. It had been painful for a long time. That had been seven years ago,

"Man, shit's fucked up, dude. Pigs used to do me like that when I was up in the Bounty jail. Niggas worried about the inmates and sho you right but the guards are way worse. If LS County jail is supposed to be gladiators then the pigs are like the guards with the thumbs up thumbs down for living or dying,..."

"Nah, bro...that's the Emporor that does that."

"Word. Same shit though you knew what I meant. Look...I aint trying to stick my nose where it don't belong but what you do to get thrown up in here, dog? I don't just mean PC I mean how you get to the pen?"

"I was a big homie back in Cypress Flats. SOP you already know. Some of my brothers they would have hated you just cause you were a Baller and some o the homies even beefed with Usos that repped the other side in South Central. But only some of the homies in the Flats ever run across people from Strawberry. Me, I never did. I always had to keep my eyes out for other Family hoods, cause we were cool with some of the brothers but not all of em. And then the Vagos and the Psycos. We got along with the Da Nang Boyz but not the Psychos. So yeah I know I was supposed to hate Ballas cause we're affiliated with the Locs but that wasn't what SOP was started on it was just to protect usos from Ese's and anyone else that tried us. But like I said you can't hate what you never met. There's never been a Baller hood where I'm at."

"I can't even imagine there not being a Baller hood. You know...I left that life behind cause I had to but...it's kinda funny. I renounce that way of life but it still makes me who I am cause whether or not I like it or not being South Side Baller got me locked up. Now, I look at it like my old life is over. It has to be. One way or another. And I can just roll over and die in my sleep and not get up or I can at least praise God as long as I'm alive..."

The Samoan continued, "I'm in here for a double murder. Two Tiny Psychos tried to bang on me. On Dry Dock Street. They pulled their straps. I shot both of em and they shot me. I wasn't supposed to have a gun. And I could have got off on self defense if I'd have been straigt forward with the cops but I wasn't. I fled the scene, I tried to get rid of the burner and I had three holes in me. I was lucky to live..."

He breathed hard thinking of his own pain as well as G Bone and Paukl's which had now been transferred to him. He wanted to tell G Bone what he had been asked to and who had done this to him. He sat down. "I'd ask to go to the nurses but they aint about to take me after he just did that. Motherfucker has long pockets, man..." He growled cursing himself for cursing.

"Shit. Cypress Flats don't sound that different from Strawberry. There was some Tongans in Strawberry that repped for the Locs but they had beef with a lot of people. They had problems with all kinds of hoods out there. There was times I seen em and we were expected to get down on sight but there was cops there. So neither side wanted to pull out straps but other homies have died fighting them."

"What sets did they beef wit again?" Asked his cellie.

"They got beef with Marabunta of course., They were killing Central American families. They had beef with my hood too. Weasel hated those motherfuckers. He was somebody I hated on the outside."

"I gotta lay down, brother. For a bit. When I wake up maybe we can check out the bible or..another book. Just shoot the shit but I need to rest my eyes..."

"Hey, I seen enough concussions to know you aint supposed to fall asleep, dog. Do I need to get the guards I mean they gotta take you to the hospital..."

"What are we gonna do?" Chuckled the Samoan. "Call the cops?"

He closed his eyes. "If you think I'm gonna fall asleep and die then we can keep talking, bro."

"Aight you can shut your eyes. But keep talking to me, bruh. I seen enough people die on me and I know one of is finna die before the other ut shit we gonna be in here till we old and gray right?"

The ex gang member from the beach nodded with his eyes shut. "Yeah, man. Unless the good Lord sees fit to give me a heart attack in my sleep."

"Yeah, I guess that is another way to make parole..." G Bone joked. This earned a laugh from the man. "Man, it hurts to laugh too. One of those guards...man..." It was at he tip of his tongue to say it but he was too tired and too wounded. He had been in fights and jumpings before as well as race riots but he didn't like to think he had ever lost a fight truly and he didn't count getting stabbed in a riot by Marabunta Grande.

"So what you do to get up in PC, g? It's one thing to catch two bodies in the hood but to get up in here you had to dime somebody out or something. You did something your people aint like..."

"I'm not a chomo if that's what you're asking..." The preacher convict stated. "But...the shit I did that landed me in hot water with my set...I'm gonna have to save that one for another day, brother. That guards night stick was like a truck. That motherfucker must have played baseball or something."

"No offense bro...that's what my hood was taught to think about the Tongans. They got caught selling child pornography, man. The Tongan Locs. I might have hated the Vagos especially in the pen but these fools had child molesters in their shit. I mean the Ese's act like it's only niggas not checking paperwork but the Tongans aint either if they let chomos in..."

"There's a lot of dirty motherfuckers like that in the hood..." He replied. "That's why I'm worried about my own kids out there. I aint there to protect them."

"Me too, bro..." G Bone sighed as he looked at the floor of his cell. "Janea hates me now...the hood hates me but...I worry about people from my own set moving on her. She can hate me and she can tell our son daddy aint shit but I lost."

"My family hated me for the longest time when I got that life sentence but they forgave me and even though I used to worry they'd stop visiting, that everybody would stop visiting just like people do all the time with lifers, and even people not doing that much time, but now I got faith. And they been coming to see me every visiting day but now..."

G Bone eyed the Samoan waiting for him to finish. "What?"

"I don't want them to see me like this."

"Hey at least they want to see you, bruh. My family don't even want to see me I mean my kid might have wanted to but my baby mama aint letting that happen. They aint gonna like seeing you all banged up but they know by now what the life is. Shit. Maybe ya'll could sue em..."

"Yeay, maybe. But..i had it coming..." He sighed. "I wish I could do my rec time that's gonna mess me up while this arm heals up."

"I aint going to the yard without backup and since we cellies that's you and me. I'll watch your back if you watch mine..

"Nothing usually cracks off in here, brother...: The Samoan jailhouse

"East Side

He looked up at the ceiling of his own cell. "How do you keep from losing your mind, dog?"

The Samoan grinned but inside, there was a flicker. "I try to not even think of my own sins. I picture the days of the bible you know? Back when people knew for sure there was a God. And if you were a murderer you just got put to death. They didn't lock you up in a cage like an animal. Not like now."

"I feel that..." G Bone nodded. "I want to dedicate myself to God too, bro. I aint becoming no Muslim and I was always Christian but something about the church kept me away

Buddha was alone with one of his homegirls. He was kissing Mikayla who was by now the mother of one of his children. He also was kissing and including the other woman he had a casual relationship with Jayna who also had two daughters

"Remember the first time you hit the big pen, homie?" Asked Bottum. "Shit homies give me problems cause of who I dated or cause I'm a bitch but I remember when I did mine. Did a steady four years..."

Buddha nodded. "Back in 2007. Shit was cracking off on the yards all the time in those days and i was there for a nickle and two weeks. We had a lot of fights with the Ese's that day. We lost a lot of brothers, back in 2010 but we took a lot of fuckin Vagos and Aztecas with us..." He explained. "I aint done the kinda time the Eng brothers did both here and back in Cambodia but I'm no buster either, man. And shit was just as real in there if not realer. Sometimes we fought it out with the woods. Spent the rest of that year on lockdown..."

He sighed. "You know in Cambodia they don't even celebrate Christmas like that?"

He came in blazing striking the half Puerto Rican and half Vietnamese gangster with six rounds dropping the Da nang Boy OG.

Jade fired and struck another DNB. "Fuck you! You shot up thew homies. We're back for you, bitches!"

Another hit him and Jayna let her Ak-101 rattle as she fired a barrage of nineteen rounds and well.

"You're rolling with the Eng brothers?! You can die with them!" Barked Clayton as he sent a barrage of rounds with his own AK-47. "Fuck all ya'll!" He barked. "THIS IS FOR T MART!" He struck four Psychos and two were killed instantly as the seven rounds struck him in the stomach and two of the seven rounds hit the man in the vertebrae in the center, though the first 7.62 slugs the seventh had hit him in the right side of the stomach but the round lodged into his spine as he fell.

"Fuck the ENG brothers!" Screamed a Vietnamese gangster named Jessica Pham otherwise known as J Fam and she was five two inches and of a light beige complexion wearing a sea green miniskirt and a blue midriff top patterned like a bandanna fired a Uzi striking two of the Psychos as well.

Johnny Eng roared with laughter as he let his Type 56 sweet as his lowrider hit the corner and three of the DNB's fell with rounds in the back.

The Bloodfeather were also there. "Your little femme fatal killed a lot of our men at the docks! there was Bi Ho's there too! Somebody's gonna die!"

A blast filled the air and sent the Da Nang Boyz to the ground. A Bloodfeather had thrown it and it had caught four of the Vietnamese gangsters in the blast and the dark gray Tahoma they had ducked behind., "Was that a fuckin grenade?!" Cried Clayton as he fired from cover behind a parked royal blue Oracle that was taking rounds and had already shot out the front and back tires.

The Bloodfeathers had two of their soldiers hit in the return fire but the combination of them with the Psychos was a overwhelming force against the Da Nang Boyz. "Where's Khoi now?!" Growled one of the Bloodfeathers, a man standing five foot seven with jet black gelled hair and he wore a red floral design silk shirt under a black sports jacket."

"Yeah!" Growled another Bloodfeather. "Fuckin Miao bitch!" Growled a Psycho of Chinese and Cambodian descent.

Most Hmong people in Southeast Asia are descendants of refugees who fled to Vietnam and Laos from Guizhou and Yunnan province in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In the southwest dialect of Guizhou (plus Yunnan), "Miao" means cranky, unreasonable and a little bit stupid. Here are some examples that I have heard in daily conversations:

苗得很 an unreasonable fossile 苗老火 bad-tempered Miao people 这个人有点苗 this person is a bit of stupid/odd

However in Western Hunan and Eastern Guizhou, "Miao" is a neutral term that doesn't carry any derogatory meanings. Most Miao people in Hunan call themselves "gho Xong"(果雄) instead of Miao or Hmong. A linguist friend of mine claims that 果雄 and 古湘 are homonymic and interchangeable in ancient times, gho Xong is supposed to be meant ancient Hunanese.

One thing need to clarify is though 苗 (Miao) was written as "猫" (with a dog radical on the left) in some Chinese dynasties, this character didn't mean "cat" when being used to address people. As a matter of fact, other than "猫", there were a lot of ethnic minorities' names which were coined with a dog (犬) or worm (虫) radical, such as:

Davis

Los Santos County

San Andreas

K Low and the boys were already strapped up. He got a ping on his phone as they drove in his wine colored Hermes. "Come on...this is the only way they'll answer the door in this neighborhood."

They knocked on the door and were clad in uniforms from the Los Santos County Sheriff's Department. A twenty one year old graduate of University of Los Santos majoring in anthropology balanced with a love of rock and roll.

"Is there a problem officer?" He asked. There were three other BSU members who were at their laptops. "We recieved a credible tip you're involved in online scams. We also know you have torrents to get on the dark web..."

"You got a warrant, officer? I thought the FIB was the ones..." K Low had already withdrawn the Walther which he had seen Grisha with. He fired it directly into the man's forehead and as he dropped and hit the floor he put an extra round in his face for good measure. the two homegirls came in blaing one with the 20 gauge, the other with a handgun. The other BSU geeks were hit before they could get from their computers.

They checked the back rooms to see if there was any guns that these punks were sitting on. To their delight, there was. "Hold up, g. Don't shoot up all they laptops. Take that one it still works. We can see what these bitches got on their hardrives..."

"Man how you know about computers, S? Weren't you doing a bid when the internet modernized?" Asked K Low.

"That don't matter stupid! Damn you smoke too much bud, nigga. They got computers on the inside, motherfuckers be getting jobs, even fuckin degrees in there."

"It don't matter..." The homegirl said. "We need to go.'

32B26 Hip:33 in'

The Da Nang Boyz were losing ground with each passing moment and the Psychos punched a hole in their center, a barrage of SMG and Assault Rifle fire cutting them down the middle. Ivan aimed at the DNB member of Puerto Rican and Vietnamese descent and let the rounds from his AK-107 hit the man in the right ribcage and three rounds sawed into his left hip bone. The soldier from the other side fell in the street and he got behind a parked silver Comet which had already had its tires shot out.

The dying Original Baby Gangster coughed up blood and he had it on his chin. "I aint gonna make it, guys...they got me..."

"Homie! Hold on!" Cried Clayton as he got to his side. "Stay with me, bro! You're stronger than this shit, cuz! Just hang on! Da Nang Boyz are too g to let some bitch ass AK slugs from a Bi Ho stop em."

He kept pressure on his homies wound seeing no alternative as there were no others. "I need some motherfuckin help over here, man!"

"We can't get across to you, C! They got us pinned the fuck down! They're all over the hood, man!" He fired some blind fire from around the left side of the dark blue Oracle that was a bit beat up. He did manage to hit a Psycho but he was not one of the better shots in this hood and he had a Mac-10 and he let off twenty two rounds.

The Eng brothers got behind the gangster having moved with the silence of a shadow. The man on the left kicked him from behind in the back of the legs. The other, before the gangster could say anything, he slashed his throat and as he did, he pulled the man's vocal cords out. "You're a pathetic excuse for a homie..." Sneered the one with the knife. "Your homie's right. He's bleeding out. Just like you. We shot one of your piece of shit big homies and a ride to the hospital might save him. Now he's gonna be on the other side and so are you. All cause you wouldn't help."

"The fuck you talking to a corpse for, man? He's dead. He can't hear shit."

"The eyesight is the first to go when you die..." He replied. "And the last is the hearing. khnhom theanea tha kaun tauch nih ban lyy avei del khnhom niyeay . khnhom chea mcheasa kar meulkheunh chongokraoy robsa keat . ning saamleng chongokraoy robsa keat ."

(I guarantee this little faggot heard what I said. I OWN his last sight. And his last sounds.)

He turned to the other gang members. He pulled the pin on an M67 "bonte anak skal khnhom! chng tow kraw khlang nasa!"

(But you know me! I want to go out with a bang!)

The grenade landed on top of an adjacent wine colored Glendale. The blast blasted the car and the fire was engulfing the vehicle and had also hit four more Da Nang gangsters. "We made our point! Let's get the fuck outta here, man!" Cried Buddha as he let his rounds strike two more who were running down the street and firing over their shoulders but he managed to hit both of them in the back.

"What's your hurry? You too much of a punk to shoot it out with the pigs?" Demanded Johnny. "You gonna run away? Maybe snitch on us?"

"You're insane! I aint snitching on nobody, homie!"

"He's not a snitch..." Ivan confirmed and added with a warning, "And while I may have known your family for a long time, I have to insist. Nothing better happen to Buddha. It's good you're back. pi kouk ryy bratesa chasa . muoy na . khnhom min khval te . bonte preahpoutth ban damnaerkar chhout nih asa cheachraen chhnam . vea minmen chea pheap chea anakdoeknoam da laitakhchaoh noh te bonte keat ban roksaa avei del kampoung damnaerkar nowknong tikrong dauchchea Cypress Flats del chea kanleng del anak trauv ban houm ptth daoy sa trauv ."

(From prison or the old country. Whichever. I don't care. But Buddha has run this set for years. It hasn't been perfect leadership but he has kept things running in a city like Cypress Flats where you're surrounded by enemies.)

Buddha;s mouth dropped open. "When the fuck did you learn Khmer? I always thought when you met up with these fools ya'll spoke English."

"It doesn't matter!" The yiounger Eng brother declared. "We're shooting it out with the pigs and then we'll be back in the hood."

"You really want us to fight the one time, bro? Are you serious?!" Demanded Buddha.

"I'm serious as a bullet to the head. Which is what you're gonna get if you don't get ready to help us mow down these fuckin pigs. We're gonna set an ambush for them. Khmêr Krâhâm style."

"This is not a goddam cold war proxy battle. We still have to be discreet to not get uncle Sam's eyes on us."

"You fuckin serious? You? The iron fist of the Bravta and champion of the Markovich Family, some would even say you really run the show and that Grisha is just a symbol at this point."

"We will talk about the status of my family later. ENG. GET IN THE FUCKING CAR! WE'RE OUT OF HERE!" Ivan roared something he had never done in front of the Asian gang. Buddha turned to the older gang member and ex KGB agent. He nodded in thanks,.

"Relax, comrade..." Johnny mocked in a cheap imitation of a Russian accent. "We will give you some Vodka so you can chill out. Then light the piggies on fire. Hahahaha..."

They could hear the sirens. "Mr. Eng..." Ivan began as he aimed his Makorov at his forehead. "I'm not going to ask you again. Get in the fuckin car. We are not fighting the police. You want to stay here and go to prison or the morgue be my guest but I think your homies should have a say in whether they stay and fight or go home."

"Motherfucker wd don't have time to draw straws so nobody leaves!" Barked the younger Eng.

Just then Johnny burst into laughter. "I am joking with you, comrade. Of course we will run from the Cossacks."

They headed to their vehicles despite the DNB's firing at them and they exchanged rounds with their rivals but nobody managed to hit anything except each other's vehicles or parked vehicles. Most of the neighborhood gangsters, including Clayton were having to retreat due to the cops.'

As Ivan drove the dark red Burrito he snarled at Johnny. "You almost got us killed you asshole. And unlike you I really mean killed. I will never let them take me in alive and if something happens to me, my

My actions as of late has drawn me and my family under the FIB's radar. They would very much like to arrest me. Now with what business i conducted in Las Venturas they're going to. But we made sure we're no

Johnny Eng chuckled. "Buddha, how much time have you done in the pen alltogether? See I wasn't in the country when you got jumped off the porch if I'm doing the math right."

"Six in total. Four in Boilerbroke, one in juvie and one in LS County. Why?"

"So you're a light timer but you're still an OG?" Sneered the older Cambodian.

Buddha was attempting to flank the rivals as the Eng brothers drew their fire, as did Ivan and the Markovich Family members present. "DNBK mothafucka!" Roared Johnny as he fired his AK-74 and he struck three more members of the gang Mai's father had helped start. "You bitches lost T Mart you lost Romeo!" Barked Buddha. "You're done!" He fired from a 7'oclock position as he saw the wounded mixed gang member who Ivan had already mained still returning fire small burst by small birst with an Uzi which he only blindly fired from cover intermediatley. he had managed to wound two of the TPGs with his last magazine before reloading.

Buddha fired ten rounds and struck the sunglases wearing DNB member in his already broken hip and this staggered him and he fell collapsing in a writhing world of torment. Buddha had also hit him once in his Loc Down shades and the glass had cut into his left retinae as well as shooting his eyeball out of its socket while the right eye only got some of the glass in the eye and it cut his eyelid.

The rival lay in a puddle of his own blood whimpering in an intelligable series of sounds. He was going into shock. Buddha pointed the barrel at the eyeball hanging from a tendon and with a squeeze of the trigger, the eyeball was obliterated and a burst of blood and singed eyelashes and the eyelids cut by the glass as well.

"Nah! That bitch got the homie! Shot him in his fuckin eyes!"

"You're a dead man, Buddha! We're gonna cut you to pieces, faggot!" Vowed Clayton as he fired angrily at the gang members who had taken cover behind the vehicles that had been parked mixed in with the ones that no longer had owners.

"You're worried about the wrong Psycho!" Roared Johnny as he tossed a Molotov cocktail into the open window of a DNB gang car which had been pulling up to reenforce their homies. The front and back seat went up and the four had not even managed to get the door open when the blast took all four of them, their flesh burning and peeling away, their hair also singed, gave off the characteristic stench Ivan knew well.

The Eng brother then went back to his Kalishnikov and he rattled the front seat of a mauve Greenwood and he hit both the driver and the front seat passenger but the DNB's in the backseat who it seemed, were two homegirls. were just barely unscathed by the rounds but they had a few lacerations from the glass shards flying everywhere.

Clayton grabbed his dead homie who Ivan and Buddha had both shot and carried him into a passenger door on the right hand side and he shoved his homie's lifeless body in the door before slamming it shut. "

"Hey, homie we need that seat for the living, man!" Cried one of the Vietnamese gangsters.

"We don't leave homies to die in the street!" Barked Clayton. "Anybody got a problem with it can suck on my AK! He's getting a Christian burial, man..."

"Chết tiệt một lễ chôn cất theo đạo Cơ đốc. Đây là cái chết tiệt! Hãy hỏa táng và hút tro của anh ấy một cách thẳng thắn như 2pac!"

(Fuck a Christian burial. This is g shit! Let's just cremate the homie and smoke his ashes in a blunt like 2pac!)

"Fuck you, motherfucker..." Clayton shook his head. "You think his family is just gonna go for that? You're a moron."

"We're his family,motherfucker..." The other shot back. "If his blood family cared so much they would have never let him jump off the porch."

"He's a fuckin Christian! He's getting a proper Catholic burial. Last rights and all. You say some other shit again I'll blast your stupid ass myself!"

"Hey, I aint the fuckin enemy. The Psychos are. They did this shit and you wanna fight me now?!"

As they stayed low at the hotel suite, Buddha was tipsy after having a few too many. "We did that shit for the homies tonight, g...we lost a lot of homies up against the Cum Stains."

"With their two most deadly guns out of commission, they're not much of a threat anymore..." Ivan pointed out. "And when we have their heads on a plate too, your clique will be the ones running things. We could make you the biggest gang in the Flats and get knock everybody else down to competition for who gets to be second best."

"You know...when you first got to this city, I'd already lost homies to the game but I'd lost a few boys that were close from when we were in high school. You saw what a family we were and you saw that we were up for anything in the name of the almighty dollar. Trevor Phillips, Lester Crest, Martin Madrazo, Simeon Yeterian,we worked for whoever but these streets all got somebody claiming it for themselves. But you knew some of those same homies I lost after you got here."

"This is the life we chose. Maybe for some of us the life chose us but nowadays, I don't think it matters too much. I'm playing the cards life dealt me and if I get accused of being a cheat or a liar, that's good. At least I'm alive for them to say it."

"Homie, I appreciate everything you did for all of us. Sly, Mugs, we were all fucked up in the streets but we didn't know any other way. And I've done time inside for this shit ya know?"

"You never had a felony on your record..."

"I've only gone to county jails, not prison. So yeah I'm about it on the inside too but aint so deep in it I can't see nothing else. Ask anybody inside and they'd still rather risk the streets and getting shot compared to the pen. I didn't need to do extra shit just to earn stripes. And the longest I ever spent inside is two years but if you combine my days from different stints it's really like I did four years. Shit didn't matter. We program in the county jails too and shit cracked off in there all the time."

He took a drink. "I killed that motherfucker today. Or maybe you did...hard to say which slug finished him but he went down blasting. I gotta respect that."

"WE killed him,"Ivan replied. "And he needed to die as it was. This was a long time coming. The same for the score I have to settle with Mai. And her father. I know it could potentially start world war 3 if an ex KGB agent killed two IAA legends. Burn notice or not, APB out for their arrests aside, the ageny wouldn't like it if they were killed. Luckily, there's still enough crime in San Andreas for plausible deniability Killing or capturing big fish like the Thu family would be a great PR victory and a blow to their enemies.

in

This was why it needed to look gang related and the fact that Mai had screwed over so many street gangs out here, it was a possible scenario. Even the job she had done for Trevor Phillips and Lamar Davis was reason enough for the Asian American spy to have to look over her shoulder not just for tangos, or counter surveillance anymore. But for homeboys with automatics in tricked out rides. '

"Hey..." Buddha pushed one of his younger homies who was smoking a blunt. "You know why we don't look at DNB as a real fuckin Cypress Hills clique, man? Why we're real? Why the Vagos, the Families, the Da Nang Girls and the Samoans aint real?"

"Why?" Asked a few homegirls in unison.

"Cause we aint dick riding some LS gang. We're in East Beach. Cypress Flats. We're our own shit. But everybody else out here is either banging Aztecas, Vagos or Families. If there were Ballas out here it'd be even worse but we all kept them out. Funny how these other crews repping shit that started in South Central or East LS? Fuck that. We're the only purely Flats clique that stands on its own shit. Don't need to be some Asian or Samoan copycat. Shit, even the fuckin Ese's right? They're our enemies but at least like us they know who the fuck they are. They're dick riders too though cause they're out here and they bang LS shit but at least they cal themselves what they are. Either local varrios that got put on and accepted by their big homies in the pen. After we push the Trannies from 21st, and the Dung Stains and Ass Tecas out, they'll be our last enemies left. Save the best for last and burn em all down."

"You're ambitous, Buddha. Be careful that your ambitions don't become delusional."

"What's that supposed to mean, fool? I might not be from the first generation. Not the set or even being a fob. I'm first generation but I kept a lot of soldiers alive man. At least until 2013. shit went to hell with that. That Viet bitch you were roommates with. But check it out...I might not be the wisest big homie or the oldest but fuck man these motherfuckers want to keep that Khmer Rogue shit going. I know you did what you had to during the cold war but come on, I learned more about that from big homies that were there."

He paused, took a breath and continued, "They didn't teach us that kinda history at my school and when I was coming up the Eng Brothers was a name that carried respect in the streets. But once I knew what this motherfucker did in his own homeland...I can't trust somebody like that. Maybe I lost some homies to the streets along the way. People you knew. But we weren't getting smoked as much as the Da Nang bitches. I sent one of their boys to the dirt today..." He took a hit of his blunt but then added, "The only thing me and them got in common is we ride with our soldiers. We don't hide behind computers like a bitch."

"Yes, but don't underestimate cyber warfare. They're not to be taken lightly."

"Yeah I leave that shit to you. bro..." The TPG shrugged. He took a bump of cocaine through a Benjamin. "I don't like the shit the Eng brothers do. Maybe that's why they say to not meet your heroes."

"We're nobodies heroes, Buddha. None of us."

Buddha shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Doesn't take a hero to win a war. But at the same time you don't really have to be a monster."

"One of your homies was named Monster, remember?"

"Yeah I guess. But that's about as much of a Monster we can handle. I thought the Eng brothers were hood heroes. Turns out they're just barbarians,

4th Ward

Illinois Street. That was what the sign said as the two brothers cruised in a dark green Peyote. The song Saturday by Big Krit played as King was smoking a blunt with blueberry flavored swishers but Lil King had declined for the most part within the first half hour of driving around. "Fuck this shit, bruh. Get us back home. We got enough."

"What? The old you wouldn't have never said that..."

"You wasn't there when mama got hit, dude. I was."

"You think I aint lose her too, nigga? Come on..."

"Nigga, plenty of niggas in our family end up in the motherfuckin pen. You aint see her get shot, man...that shit.."

"What the fuck..." King pulled the slide back on the Beretta. "There's unk right there..."

He pointed out a group of five male blacks plus two more who seemed to be OG's. Sure enough, talking to Cheddar and Big Joe was their uncle. "It's bad enough he killed pops just cause he was sprung on mama. Now he's over here getting guap with the ops? Nigga fuick that."

"You sure it's him?"

"Yeah I'm sure! Look at him!Pops would have never fucked with niggas from the 4th ward...I'm smoking all these bitches right now."

"I gotta know it's him first, I can't see..."

King got his cell pgone out and zoomed in with the camera and took a picture. He could see their father laughing and joking with Cheddar and Big Joe. "It's him..." He insisted.

He got another gun out of the glovebox. This one, a Beretta Px4 to go with the M93R. "You still got your burner baby bro?"

"Yeah..but .."

"Aint no yeah buts. This nigga smoked pops. I don't know what bitch smoked mama back in LS but you aint make it right. You better be ready to make this shit right or i'ma blast you myself."

They came across the street as Lil King pulled back the slide on the glock 19. He put a bandanna over his face though bandannas in New Arcadia didn't mean shit. It was just a way to disguise but he could feel his chest and his anxiety rising as his heartbeat thudded. It wasn't just the fact that they were about to do a 187. "I'm down but can't we get better straps than this? Call some homies from the hood they can get dracos over here."

"There aint time. We got them slipping just be ready to dip when we do what it do..."

They crossed the street crouching. They were both glad it wasn't daylight but just the same they were outnumbered and stopping here was a unintentional detour. King knew the city like the back of his hand but the blunt he'd been hitting since he got in the car, he had forgotten where they were going and got caught up in the music.

"Look, I ain against fronting you some bricks to stay afloat but you know what it is if we don't got our cut..."

"You don't gotta worry about that..." The 9th Ward turncoat OG insisted. "I'm always punctual about mine, dog. The pen teaches you them skills. We got lights out and shit. This aint nothing I aint did before."

Cheddar folded his arms. "Yeah but you aint got no respect in your own hood no more cause of the shit you did. So we all you got."

One of the 4th ward soldiers, sneered at the 9th ward OG. "Yeah that;'s the problem trusting a nigga that goes against his own hood. What's to stop you from turning on us?" The gangster who asked this was a dark skinned black man with medium length dreads that he tied back wearing a white t shirt baggy blue jeans since as of 2018, skinny jeans were dead and he wore a pair of white and black Eris sneakers.

His answer came instantly. "I aint never turned on the niggas my hood a lot of them cats turned on me. And I aint do what I did outta treason, homie. It was love."

"If that's what you call love I'd hate to see what you call hate..." Chuckled Big Joe. Lil King and King had them in their sights. They both opened fire and caught the first 4th ward sokdier in the back. He staggered withdrawing his own weapon, a Glock 22 but even as he had body armor on, three more rounds hit him in the same spot and two went through.

Lil King saw the man writhing in the street as the round had lodged in his spine. With a final pull of the trigger at the man's back, he finished him off.

King managed to hit Joe in the left leg with a round grazing the left knee cap as well as a round in the right hip. "Fat bitches sink ships, nigga!" Growled King as he let the Beretta's spark like a madman gunslinger in a western. Eight, nine ten shots rang out even as the 4th ward started busting back. Two rounds also managed to hit Cheddar in the chest five times but luckily for him, it held as he had kevlar too.

Their uncle was hit as King kept firing and as the two handguns clicked empty and Lil King had ducked behind a parked dark red Cavalcade but as the rounds hit the windshield and the front left driver window and the back seat window and a round from the 4th ward also hit the right front tire and the SUV sank a bit lower.

"Is he dead?" Cried Lil King as he fired blindly from cover.

"Nah that bitch is still breathing!" He saw that their uncle had been hit but couldn't tell where but his shirt was soaked looking like he had spilled wine during communion on himself. He ducked behind the derilict building and returned fire as he breathed heavily.

Cheddar returned fire with a 9mm Browning and a shotgun blast filled the air and the passenger window in the front seat exploded sending glass everywhere raining down on the young New Arcadian and the glass cut the back of his head the most. Lil King could feel the blood in his hair but he couldn't focus on it now. The 870 was fired again and another of the tires fell.

"Come on, bruh let's go! We gotta get him another time!"

They dove into the Cavalcade and King screamed out the window, "You a BITCH unk! Hiding behind grimy ass 4th ward yuckmouths!"

Meanwhile, a dark gray Voodoo that had been stolen from a local, was creeping slowly up the street to where they saw a Caucasian man with blonde hair that was partly dyed red and he looked to be in his early 20's. He was pounding a beer back outside the ale house. Since they were in open carry state, the BSU member carried a handgun in a holster that was concealed under his brown leather jacket. He had a septum piercing and three rings in each ear. Mardak made eye contact with the man as the windows rolled down in the old school car.

The masked gunman aimed his AK-74 out the window of where he was, on the right hand side in the front seat. Daniel was driving but he also had an MP7 that he was spraying out the window over the roof of the car using just his left hand to hold it while he kept his right on the wheel. In the car with them were two of the homegirls. She fired two Makarov's out the window sending five shots from each pistol towards the BSU members.

Though they had not been wearing colors like one would in LS and any tattoos the first man had was covered by his jacket, they'd had to identify them strictly by phone. Thanks to Ivan's intel, they were able to just figure out who was who through an app he'd had them use that would let them find their phone. This was basically the Trackify app but on steroids. Ivan had made his own little tweaks to it over the weekend. The idiot hadn't picked up his phone but their reconnaissance over the last several months had gotten them time to get pictures, always in disguises of their own, of the newer BSU members or those who had gotten out of jail for fighting as well as out of state members from places like Waston and Blackwater.

Tavit marched inside with two men carrying AKM's behind him and he carried a Molotov cocktail. The blonde Jesus look alike or rather to be more accurate, the Cesar Borgia look alike, smirked slightly. "Inch'pisi amot'. Ays vayry karruts'vel e 1815t'. Bayts' nersum gtnvogh ays yerjanik mardik yndmisht darrnum yen nra patmut'yan mi masy: Pompeyi nman."

(Such a shame. This place was built in 1815! But these lucky people inside get to be part of its history forever. Like pompei!)

He threw the cocktail in the middle of the room. A series of screams went off as the glass burst and several of the patrons went up in flames. Several people tried fleeing but Tavit's men opened fire on those trying to leave chopping them down like terrified screaming trees both local and tourist alike fell.

Three were killed outright while four more lay in agony twitching and screaming, others only whimpered. He began to make more cocktails. The blast of a shotgun was heard and he fell over crashing into one of the tables and smacking his head hard. Dazed, Tavit got to his feet. The bartender had fired the shot. "Son of bitch!" Growled one of Tavit's goons as he let the bartender have it with a barrage of twelve rounds. The rounds also hit some of the shelf alcohol causing the place to go up

They spotted some absynthe bottles which Tavit took two of. "Be careful, boss those are more explosive than others."

Tavit laughed at his guard. "Payt'uts'ik? Yes sa khmelu hamar yem yndunum, ynkers. Ch'e? vor menk' ale tan mej yenk':"

(Explosive? I am taking this for drinking, my friend. We are in an ale house are we not?)

They left the building leaving it to burn. One of the other guards, a caucasian man with an ugly five o clock shadow, gray eyes, and a black blazer over a maroon shirt and gray cargo pants, grabbed the fire extinguisher he saw and took it with him, intent to let the building burn.

As the flames went up and they left the building they could see five members of the 4th ward coming towards the sound of the automatics as well as the building being burned down in their neighborhood. Daniel covered them with the PKM and cut through the local goons.

He struck the first man, a dark skinned black male with dreadlocks that were on the shorter side, jet black hair and bulging staring eyes of about the same color, and a narrow frame as he was underweight standing six feet and a hundred and seventy pounds, fired a Beretta of undetermined model from the position the Armenians could see, but one of Tavit's goons, the man who had shot the bartender, was struck twice in the neck and three times in the chest as the 4th ward hustler fired from a crouched position in cover behind a white 2001 Landstalker.

The local gangster took some shrapnel as the return fire came back from the AKM's but they had to reload as they had just shot an ale house full of people even though the rest were burning alive inside. He still managed to get into cover but not before a round from a Mararov struck him in the left forearm. Courtesy of the Armenian woman who let off round after round having reloaded herself since the initial volley from the drive by. They had been here to hit just one BSU target, Edwin "Ed the Sped" Dechaump, a man from Treeport and they had hit him.

Tavit resumed with his own AK-74 and began peppering the 4th ward gangsters with rounds and he hit one of the men, a gangster with light skin and freckles and a mini afro wearing a designer hoodie with dollar signs but in silver rather than gold and it was over a green hoodie. He stood five nine and despite his height, had played basketball rather well in high school.

He fell as ten of the rounds struck him. Two in the right hipbone, three in the waist two in the abdomen, one in the right arm just inches below the elbow, and two in the right side of the chest with the last round hitting him in the armpit. The black gangster caughed up blood from his wounds as he fell sideways in the street. He had his head on a pole from a handicap parking sign.

The other 4th ward gangsters started running and Mardak sawed down one of the fleeing gangsters but the other rounded the corner just in time to save his own ass but not before one round hit him in the small of his back on the right side. The sirens were getting closer now and the Armenians jumped into the car tearing off down the street.

As they listened on the police scanners, they were able to turn towards the direction of the Lanahachie river passing a Burger Shot. Daniel fired out the window. He took two in the chest falling from the ride and he hit his head in the street below. "Bro! Get in!" Cried Mardak. The Armenian got to his feet but Tavit could see the police had him dead to rights. A plain clothed officer in a black jacket and gray cargo pants. Before he could make it, Daniel was shot from behind in the back and he fell to the ground as he eyed his own wounds.

One had gone through. Tavit aimed his own Rifle at the police officers but then he lowered it. "We have to go. We have to live to fight another day...so will he if they take him in and he doesn't resist the police..."

"You want us to leave him?! He is our flesh and blood! What would mayrik say?"

"Your mother has been dead a long time. As far as you are concerned I am mother and father."

"There's no way they're going to treat him well. He may not even be alive by the time the police get to we don't rescue him now we have to shoot him. It is a mercy killing. Plus he will not be able to tell the FIB what he knows about our operation beyond what they already know. The BSU will make a move to somehow get him out of custody and when they do that, that is when we will strike. The Roman family will want to torture him."

Tavit was silent as they sped off but he finally broke the silence. "No. We will not kill him. We had the chance. And we can't shoot the cops or he would be hit too..."

"What are you after, father?" Asked Mardak.

"The Red Stick PD and NAPD. They are mostly chornies these days but in their heyday when they were respected, they were a good ole boy police force. But that can work against you or for you. For all the damage Ivan has done to this city, it will have to be noted that we had a chance to fire on the police and didn't. The RSPD may not stop pursuing us but that is their job. But they know that at least in this city, we are not cop killers. I have instructed all of our soldiers on the street to do the same. If a police officer arrests one of us or is there to arrest us we go with them."

"But the Roman Family. The Roman Boyz have the pigs here in their pockets."

"They have influence but not like they did a few years ago when they first got back into town. And that FIB slut is now a private investigator. Which means, she's fair game. I won't pretend it won't be dangerous if some of our men get arrested. The women, I am ordering back to LS. It's too dangerous for them to be here. The police out here might just take exception to Armenian girls dressed like cholas. Their corruption is noted. But I've been talking to some of the law enforcement out here. I can bribe some of the Red Stick if our soldiers are brought in, they are to be respectfully silent and ask for a lawyer. No resisting. "

"You let Daniel get arrested and I was ready to shoot him..."

"Yes, what is your point?"

"We both understand sacrifice in war. We do it every day with the Vagos but we know who everybody is from CB for the most part. We don't know everybody in the BSU and all their allies. But with my way of sacrificing, there would not have been a chance for Daniel to tell the police what he knows. Or the Roman Family. Now that the police have him there is a chance of that."

"That is the point. I did not set out this morning looking to use my son as bait for the big fish but when opportunity presents itself you do not they bring him to our enemies, and they will, we can take them off the board and rescue Daniel. If this does not work we will do it your way but it will not be you who does it. I brought all of you into this world and I will take him out if it saves the greater part of our organization."

"Would this ever happen to me, father?"

"No. You are the one who will inherit my empire when I you will maintain it. Daniel and Israel are both street thugs at best. You are the only one who understands there is more to war than just bloodshed and more to business than cocaine deals. You wouldn't allow yourself to be captured in the first place."

"I am not so sure he wanted to be captured."

"Maybe not on purpose but his loyalty was already starting to falter. Do you not remember?"

"I am not going soft on you, father. But we just buried one brother. I am in no rush to do it again. But Daniel seems dead set on making sure we both outlive him..."

"If that is how it ends, then that is how it ends..." Tavit replied with no emotion to his voice. "We are still going to try to get your brother out but just know that even if we fail, we can call it a win. It will be a good chance to find out what he has told them so far,.:

"If we do not think he stood solid we will have the chance to end it in there."

"Yes but if we get that kind of heat on us,it will already be too late. There is always the chance Daniel could cooperate with NAPD because he got left. But if he has talked we will do damage control."

So now, their phone number would pop up on their phone when they got close enough. The two Armenians sped off down La maison Pernod.

240 Bourbon Street

Ivan

Between their newborn and the business he had to run on the streets plus the traveling and breaking his father out, they hadn't had much time to themselves. He grabbed the Russian by her top bun as he drove into her from behind earning a cry as her sweaty white back was slick and started to get her black bra which was still on but had the cups off to the side, "Da...da,...!"

He growled as he thrust into her. He smacked her on the ass hard with extra oomfh as he caressed the Russian born ice queen. He shivered as he probed deeper into her wanting womanhood, her folds embracing his length and warmth. He wished it was different but it seemed that Ivan was not sure he loved her. Sex had long ago become ruined for him and because it had been so casual it had robbed him of any true sense of intamacy. Sure, he thought he loved Sugar before and he did love Natasha but he wasn't in love.

He couldn't be. How could he have a healthy marriage? His father's marriage to his mother had been a lie. Even though Ivan had cared about his step mother in the years he'd kown them she couldn't replace his real mother and Ivan was not sure his father had even loved his mother. Sur, they had said they did but they were spies. Spies faked love all the time. He had felt loss when his stepmother died but he was not her flesh and blood.

With Paige and Henry, they were her flesh and blood and so it had been hard for them.

He decided he would get them involved in killing the cop who had killed their mother.

But for now, he had the love being a battlefield to contend with. He lifted the Russian woman's legs into the air and he pumped harder into the Russian woman. Her wet entrance was soaking the endowed Russian's manhood.

"YA HOCHY BIT' SVERHWHO."

I want to be on top.."

He shook his head. "Not a chance..." He drove deeper into the brunette and though she wanted it cowgirl, she squealed as he drove into her. Sometimes he wondered if sex and an ice cold exterior was all they had in common. That and his new son. He took a sharp breath as he pounded deeper into the Russian woman's cunt.

She cried out as her tits bounced up and down. Ivan got a call on his cellphone. It was from Grisha. "I'm not ansering that..." He growled, keeping his eyes on her bouncing brests and her jiggling ass. The call wouldn't stop. She stopped him and he got the phone. "What is it, Grisha?" Demanded ivan.

"I need your help in Liberty City. Listen, I am meeting with the men from Covenant Avenue. They will be getting a going away present because we need more money for our soldietrs incarcerated."

"What about the soldiers of the Markovich Family in the Siberian prisons?" Demanded Ivan as he got on Interstate 5 and got ready to drive to Grisha. "Listen, meet me in Liberty City. We have problems in Hove Beach./ Remember that asshole who thought he would come into our city and take over?"

"You still haven't dealt with that problem? Pursuaded him in it's in his best interest to go back home?"

"«Net. YA i moi soldaty, my poluchayem vsyu vozmozhnuyu informatsiyu o nashikh vragakh, no eti glaza i ushi povsyudu? Oni ne svobodny, drug. No ty — khirurgicheskiy instrument. Inogda eto neobkhodimo vmesto tupogo instrumenta."

No. Me and my soldiers, we get what intel we can on our enemies but those eyes and ears everywhere? They are not free, you are a surgical instrument. That is needed sometimes instead of a blunt instrument. )

"What would you have me do?"

"Meet me in Broker. My sister's pussy and your brat will be waiting for you when you get back."

"Brat? That's your nephew. Chto, chert voz'mi, s toboy ne tak, brat?"

(What the fuck is wrong with you, brother?)

"I don't like kids. I told Natasha i would not be in her sons life just because we are siblings. If he's related to me it is best he is as far away from me as possible."

"Somebody needs a hug it sounds like..." Ivan cracked.

"Get off the phone and get dressed. Let her be a wife and mother. That reminds me,when are you getting married?"

"We can talk about that when I get to Broker..." Ivan insisted before hanging up. He sighed. "Your brother is in Broker. I have to go see him."

"If you find him..." Natasha lit a cigarette staring at the Bravta member getting dressed. He picked out a pair of chino black pants and a striped white and violet silk shirt and a brown leather jacket. "Tell him come home. To Los Santos."

"This isn't home, Natasha..." He replied. "Not really. We are here for now and it is convieniant for your family and me but Broker was more of a worthy American home than out here. I don't respect the passive aggression of the west coast."

"We came to America to get away from the problems that were wrong in Russia, Ivan. Hove Beach was supposed to be an immigrant sanctuary for us but you and Grisha men like you make it like back home. At least out here we have space. And beaches and palm trees. Nothing like Russia and nothing like Liberty City."

"We can talk more about this when I get back."

"What about your father? Does he have a new identity yet?"

"You don't have to worry about that. He's somewhere safe and sound."

"I'm not. I do not worry. I use brain. We have enemies from Los Santos to Liberty City. But we should retire,"

"You're going soft on me, Natasha?" He chuckled. "The struggle doesn't stop. The proliteriats still need a fighter for them."

K Low and Stone were checking the merchandise from Grisha. "These gats are nice..." whistled K Low. Grisha had with him, two bodyguards. "Yes. You reqyested the AK's from the Motherland. Top of the line."

"Good...them AK's from this country just aint the same..." K Low nodded.

"We know. America should stick to their 5.56 NATO rifles..." Agreed the Markovich boss. He beckoned the OCB member to the crates and handed him a handgun. "This is a PK0-.45 semi-automatic pistol chambered in .45 ACP the company is preparing to launch a 9 mm version called the PKO-9. Featuring a proprietary aerospace-grade aluminum frame and a stainless steel slide, the recoil assembly is set above the barrel to lower the bore axis for reduced felt recoil. Other features include a single-action trigger, drift adjustable sights and a grip safety. These pistols will ship with a flush-fit seven-round magazine and an extended 10-round magazine."

"Damn..." Stone whistled. "It does all that? Look I aint picky, blood a gat is a gat so long as them bitches work and don't jam. I been teaching my boys to clean their guns. Ivan was always on my ass about that."

One of Grisha's soldiers showed him another rifle. "Feel free to test these ones out..." Grisha told them. He placed a Hi-Point Firearms 1095TS 10 mm Carbine in K Low's arms.

"This ones nice. What's this one, g? I see you got the dracos..."

"If you want to have a chance at defending your own turf in Davis you need better weapons than them. I found two of the .45 ACP models to be utterly reliable when I tested them a couple of years ago. This year, Hi-Point will be ramping up the potency of its carbines with a new 10 mm version that accepts a 10-round single-stack magazine. The 17.5" barrel has a threaded muzzle with a sight rail for optics and a lower rail for accessories. The rubber cheek rest, recoil absorbing stock and smooth trigger will all contribute to more comfortable shooting sessions.

He grinned wickedly saying, "Whoever you have with one of these, should have a good vantage point."K Low squeezed off three rounds and two missed but one hit a beer bottle. "Yo on some real shit snipers aint my style but I know some people that served in Afghanistan on the set but I'm better with a chopper."

"You won't win wars using only automatics a street thug would use. You have to think bigger. We have been dealing with your organization since the early 90's. The Bravta has changed in that amount of time. But how much can the Ballers say they learned?"

"The Caligula niggas that's fuckin with our hood is gonna get what's coming. Yo...see where the fuck Ant and Twitchy are at. They were supposed to be at this thing..."

Stone looked at the weapons. There were other weapons he'd never used before because they were new but even their old school equivilant would have been above his paygrade when he was trying to get his hustle on.

There were even shotguns in the weapons crates and while they weren't exactly separated from street warfare, much like Uzis, they even had some military who used shotguns though not often. The shotguns were 20 gauge Mossbergs.

Grisha lifted up his own jacket and showed him one of the handguns that was among the guns in the crate. The Ballas handed over the briefcase full of money and now men from both organizations were helping the Ballas.

"I am leaving town but Ivan will be watching things while i'm away..." Grisha explained. "You now have enough weapons for a small army... and that;'s a good thing since a small army is also what you're up against."

"That's a sweet strap, homie...how many slugs does that one hold?" Asked Stone.

Ivan had a Walther PPQ M2 Q4 TAC Pistol. "Fifteen to seventeen depending..." He replied.

"We appreciate you, dog. Hey you ever need some extra muscle for any of the shit ya'll got going on but let a nigga know!"

"We will be in touch again..." Grisha agreed. "But it should always be out here. Paleto Bay where you've made names for yourselves. I don't want to go to Davis anymore than you want to be in Vinewood.." He stated frankly.

"You got a problem with Davis?" K Low scowled.

"No, But I think you would agree that no matter how rich or poor somebody is, they are comfortable with what they know. There are people in Davis right now that might want to leave the streets forever but this way of life calls you back. You couldn't fault me for preferring Vinewood or even Hove Beach more than here, yes? You must prefer Davis even though your city is falling apart."

"I know, g. The city's in flames and it's cause of these Short Bus niggas."

"You know you could stop all of this if you gave up Ant. What purpose would keeping two liabilities alive serve?"

"All due respect..." Stone started, "We fuck with ya'll on the money thang but you settle shit in your crew your way and we do it our way. I aint abandoning a homie just cause some bitch ass Creole nigga thinks he know what's up in Davis."

"Suit yourself. In any case, you have the weapons to rid Davis of the vermin. The rest is up to your men."

As the Russians left and both sides breathed a little easier that an exchange went down with no

He bid the Ballas farewell and was soon off in his Landstalker with his security detail and they drove east.

"

đặc công

She sat in Trevor's trailer. It was now mostly herself, and her father at the trailer. Trevor wasn't around as much as it seemed he was trying to turn TPI into a real corporation. Khoi was out getting supplies that they would need for operations in the future. Luckily, Mai had been spending less time in the trailer and more time in the desert. She was on the back of a quad headed for Mt. Chumash. She had her mother's advice in mind,. "You have been lying and fighting and spying for so long you don't know what is true have to get back to source. Quiet your mind someplace you will not be disturbed."

She had spent a lot more time in the sun and though her family came from the jungles of Vietnam where there was sun, there was not deserts. But she was in Southern San Andreas. Some had said places like this was the real San Andreas. She inhaled thinking of her anxiety over being burned and how she couldn't even get word to any Da Nang Boyz to have G Note stabbed. He was already in protective custody and on top of that, she couldn't stick her head up technologically or literally.

The gangs were having it out in the streets of Cypress Flats, Playa Del Seville. The violence between the gang her father had constructed with a few other Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodians plus those Filipino brothers and the Tiny Psychos was escelating. And it wasn't like the rivalry both gangs had with the Aztecas and Vagos went away but now it seemed that even though both Asian gangs were being attacked by the Ese's, retaliation for previous attacks especially the shit she had done for Trevor Phillips to get those drugs as well as the killings she had done with her fathers gang instead of the motley crew.

There had been a few racial incidents between Mexican and Asian inmates inside the jails as well over it. She had no idea why G Note decided to snitch. Maybe he had thought that by snitching the killing would stop. Except it hadn't but she knew he had seen more than his share of homies who had died as a result of the lowrider heist. Lamar Davis was in protective custody as she had known for weeks but she didn't know how he or G Bone would survive. Somebody would be bound to get them. She didn't want Lamar dead even if he was dumb.

He had still paid her. But there were simply too many people with reason to stab him who were in county and he was lucky he was in had physically assaulted a guard to show that the ad seg was involuntary and he had gotten himself more time added to his sentence. She had als heard on the streets and more or less confirmed that because of the participation of Neto and Paul in the stash heists, they had to pay their friends in the Mexican Mob a million dollars to not get a green light but Neto's had been bumped down to 500,000 because he had killed Ballas and he had done it to earn for the Aztecas so the only southsiders he had screwed over were Vago varrios they didn't get along with.

At the time, it could have gotten them killed as Neto had not been made yet in those days but he had also kicked the money up to the OG's in prison paying his dues as it was where as Paul despite having been an associate of the Aztecas through Neto, had been as Neto put, a mayatero. It was percieved since he was from out of town and friends with Lamar Davis and the Families that he was no good. It was because of the damage he had done to the Vagos back then under Trevor's orders on top of the gang warfare in the streets with the Vagos.

Despite this, Paul had paid up and there was no issue after that. She wondered if those idiot cholos could be bought off to remove the green light not only against herself but her father too? She doubted it since her father was the OG of a gang they'd hated for decades but it was worth a shot and that was what the IAA were expected to do buth thenm she remembered as her father said, "We're not IAA anymore..."

Her mother handed each of them their rifles. "But you are both spies and nothing can change that. Nếu họ nghĩ rằng họ sẽ giết chồng hoặc con gái tôi, họ sẽ tìm ra lý do tại sao việc tôi ngừng chiến đấu sau chiến tranh là điều tốt. Tôi đã đi theo con đường của Phật và Đạo. Nhưng kẻ thù đang ở đây. Ở một nơi và thời gian khác nhưng vẫn ở đây vì em. Tôi không thể ngồi yên nhìn hai người cãi nhau nữa."

(If they think they're going to kill my husband or my daughter, they're going to find out why it was a good thing I stopped fighting after the war.I followed the path of the Buddha and Tao. But the enemy is here. In a different place and time but still here for you. I can't sit back and watch you two get banged up anymore.)

"Mẹ, mẹ đang nói gì vậy?" Inquired Mai.

"Lần tới khi bắt đầu giết chóc, tôi sẽ đi cùng bạn. Cha của bạn có thể là IAA. Anh ấy có kể cho bạn nghe tôi đã làm gì trong chiến tranh không? Tôi được người phương Tây gọi là đặc công."

(The next time it is time to start killing I am coming with you. Your father may have been IAA. Did he tell you what I did during the war? I was what the west called a sapper.)

"I knew you fought but no...I didn't know you did that..."

They began to head to the Flats driving in Mai's newly repaired Kurama. "I don't expect us to be able to take the streets back from our enemies that easily..." She said to Khoi. "We can make our precense known on the street to a point but we still have law enforcement on our asses. We're taking a risk now just going back there."

"There is no way out of this without risk. You know...when I took the job with the agency...I always knew I could get burned and I had to think several steps ahead of the agency and this isn't easy. I trained Tanaka to be what he became. So did other handlers. We created a monster. The IAA is more powerful because of the blood sweat and tears you and I both put into it. But Karen and Bernard, they want to police the entire world. Same with the others."

"You seem more concerned with them than Devlin..." Mai observed. The Hmong veteran nodded at his daughter. "It may seem like Devlin and all those who are with his faction are the most deadly people. Devlin's an asshole I learned that years ago before I moved back out here but Karen and Bernard are still more evil than they are."

"Maybe you just don't know your friend as well as you think..." His eyes narrowed.

"What are we supposed to do here?" Trevor demanded. He had his PKM ready for action. "Trevor Phillips Industries is at your service!" Trevor growled. He brought the PKM up and began opening fire on the Psychos. "You call yourselves PSYCHOS?! YOU HAVEN'T SEEN A PSYCHO!" The rounds cut through four male gang members and three women. The first was a man in a Pounders jersey and a Pounders hat and baggy blue jeans,. The hat was turned sideways. The rounds hit him in the stomach dead center and the rounds made short work of his spine.

The 22 year old collapsed in an unnatural looking position.

The next gang member was a TPG OG who had just got out of prison from an eight year bid. The rounds hit the man in the left side of the face and blew his chin and jawbone off his skull and left brain fragments embeded in the street. He had been about thirty years old.

The third gangster to bite it was a woman of about twenty one years and she was hit in the waist and as she crumbled her body was folded as the high velocity 7.72 rounds went into the shin bones causing dual compound fractures and it tore through her ankles like they were nothing.

The rounds drowned out the sound of her screams. The next barrage hit a TPG woman in a white crop top and silver pants with hoop earrings and a high ponytail. She was five foot three and had shades on but seven rounds grouped together into her breasts. She was writing in misery on the ground in the fetal position. She had been nineteen years old if a day.

The next was a Vietnamese American woman whose family had immigrated to San Andreas not so unlike Mai's own except that her grandmother had been a nurse for the ARVN while her grandfather had been among those fighting. She wore a gray bandanna patterened shirt and she wore a silver bandana around her neck. She also wore a Panics cap on backwards and though she and other TPG's hated Ballas and wouldn't allow them in Cypress Flats so in that part of LS it wasn't a problem. Gang members wore different colors now.

But some of the homies had given her shit for wearing a Panics jersey since it had Baller colors and even Vago colors in it. She had taken three rounds in the right arm and her wrist had a bone sticking out due to a round from Sun Kang's dual handguns struck her. She cried out in tears of agony and got to cover crawling weakly behind a dark blue Tornado.

The fifth, a home girl wearing a black wife beater and gray khakis with Eris sneakers that were black and white. She was aged 20, and stood five two. The rounds hit her in the side, specifically, the ribcage on her right as well as the lungs were punctured and even if none of the 7.62 rounds had hit her in the lung, the splintered bones from her ribcage would have caused lacerations and puntured it anyway. Mai saw that she was a Hmong homegirl too but banging for the Psychos. She was suffering on the ground couging blood and wheezing.

The sixth Psycho was a woman of mixed ancestry, specifically Korean and Vietnamese, a woman standing five four and slightly overweight by forty lbs. She had a tattoo on her upper right arm that read VK for Vago Killer on the left side of her neck was an FK and a DNBK on her shoulder. On top of that, she had the 213 area code blasted on the right side of her neck and a tear drop tattoo below the left eye.

She took ten rounds in the face and it obliterated it splitting it down the middle starting with the nose. It went into his mouth with two rounds exiting the back of his neck after having gone through her spine. She hit the ground but was already dead before she did.

The last TPG was struck in the right knee, the groin and the chest with a total of fourteen rounds. Mai let her M4A1 spit rounds and she saw some armed Psychos coming up the street with a mixture of shotguns, SMG's and handguns. They returned fire and struck Mai in the chest and she rolled under the van to not get shot int the head.

Khoi let his M29 ring out and he hit one of the gang members in the chest and left knee and as the man fell over still trying to fire his shotgun from the ground, Khoi let a four round burst hit him in the right eyeball. The Dragon Circle gangsters came in letting their own Uzis mixed with a few shotguns and at least three soldiers with Type 56's. They let their rounds strike the Psychos. Trevor got a pipe bomb ready as he saw a house at the end of the street. The explosion hit three of the five of them in the blast radius. The other two Psychos fired from their porch scattering in opposite directions.

The first Psycho, a homegirl who carried a Skorpion, fired an eleven round burst and struck Trevor in the chest but luckily the Canadian had a vest of his own on. As did Mai and her father. Mai spotted one of the wounded gang members, who had been hit by Khoi trying to fire over his shoulders as he ran, and he was crawling on his stomach after taking three rounds in the back.

Trevor felt two rounds hit him in the right shoulder and another hit him in the right hip. The meth kingpin ducked to cover behind his truck. Mai stood on the wounds of the man her father had shot. He was a twenty three year old Cambodian and Filipino gang member standing five foot five and he had a gold necklace and black chinos with a white shirt and a crucifix necklace, silver in color.

"You have one chance to come out of this alive. I know Buddha was behind T Mart's death. Where are the Bloodfeathers that helped him?" He growled, "I aint telling you shit...you shot me..."

"I didn't..." She corrected. "He did..." She beckoned to her father. "We know Buddha and the Eng Brothers had a role in his death! Don't fuck with me, bitch!" She growled.

"G...Gah...get off...!" He cried out. "They stay in San Uriel, all right,...now please..."

She did as she promised. Trevor obliterated his skull with a squeeze of the PKM and twenty rounds sawed the poor bastard from his pelvic region all the way to the top where his neck met the chest. The rounds pulverized him.

"I said I wouldn't kill him!" Mai growled.

"You didn't break your promise. You didn't kill him."

"This lunatic is right..." Khoi warned her. "You don't leave loose ends like that. have I taught you nothing?!"

"This isn't the time or the place!" She shot back. "Besides, you didn't get all the Vagos from when I was a kid!"

She could see that stung but it was the truth. He had only gotten partial revenge.

"That's not the same and you know it. You were a child!"

"We're all somebody's child, dad. And just because the people you and me killed were older than I was when I got shot, doesn't make it any less painful for other people. We have to consider the collateral damage. The innocent casualties that get killed in real wars and gang wars."

"The Bloodfeathers have had a sizeable presence in San Uriel for a long time. Even though the Bloodfeathers come from the Bay a lot of their leaders and their soldiersd expanded to LS. People might not like to include the Bloodfeathers as a street gang since they're Chines and they used to be a tong. they may not live in the East Beach area like DNB and the Psychos but they're just as much a part of that warfare of Asian gangs..." Khoi explained.

"This isn't about a war..." Mai insisted. "This is about doing what we can to avenge our friends and that's about all I can do being burned. Until we get that resolved, Until we get up and running it'll be hard to take back what streets we lost.."

Khoi was silent and stared at her for ten seconds before saying, "The clique lost three blocks to the Psychos and the Bloodfeathers. I have not been able to go back since T Mart died and we went on the run. The Bloodfeathers were given special permission from the Eng Brothers to share those corners they took from our 're selling to the fiends that live in alleys around there. We will have to dislodge the Bloodfeathers from our neighborhood. We'll use our brothers from the Dragon Circle Bloodfeathers are big out here but they are not multi national like the DC's. They can put up a good fight but we can put them out of buiness."

"I don't need to kill all Bloodfeathers for what just a few did. But I do want Stone dead. he was there too. You said so yourself and even with that, i don't want to have to kill everyone from Covenant Avenue. Just Stone. You may not think I know how to tie up loose ends but I kill only when i need to. And nobody needs to die besides Stone to get justice for T Mart."'

"If you think the Ballas won't retaliate for killing somebody who joined the gang in the 1980's in High School...that's a big time OG. Even your friends from the south would think twice about killing him. They may not be afraid to go after Ant and Twitchy Rick but they're just highly respectes soldiers that could be considered OG in a year or two. Depending on how they see it. But if they're OG then Stone is a triple OG.." Warned Sun Kang.

"The payback could be heavy but we could always make it seem like somebody else did it. I paid a lot more attention to your playbook than you think. We have to point this some other way. I don't need to do that for any Davis or Strawberry Family gangs but it's better if 21st Street gets blamed for that. We'll still make it look like somebody trying to cover their tracks. Maybe we can also pin it on a Davis barrio too. They've been at war with each other since the 90's."

Khoi nodded. "If you do, spray a 155th Street tag. It's more believable..." He suggested.

"Or..." Trevor began. "You can blame it..on a Baller neighborhood Covenant Avenue doesn't get along with. May not be as much as Mexican gangs and the Families but I know the boys in violet aren't all one big happy family. They got beef with the Ballas from Rancho. Plum Avenue Dogs hate the OCB. So do I. So it would be perfect."

"Why do you want to blame it on the Ballas?" Inquired the ex IAA agent narrowing his eyes at the gun and meth kingpin. "Mai can't pretend to be one of them as easily as she can a Vaga."

"Because like the best murders it should be by somebody close to you. I'm always in favor of keeping it in house..." Chuckled Trevor wickedly.

"Plus are we really going to act like there aren't Asian Ballas too?" Asked Sun Kang. "My tong would never tolerate such disloyalty and cultural confusion as the Bloodfeahers have,. We have no issues doing deals with the Ballas and even the Vagos in the past. But since the Davis Ballers have allied with the Bloodfeathers, there may not even be a reason to differentiate. Plus they're backing the Psychos play?"

"We scored a huge victory today. It's a start for getting them back for what they did to T Mart but we didn't get anybody but an OG that wasn't there. High ranking and high respect or not, all we really did was rattle their cages..." The Lotus admitted sadly. "Buddha's still alive and the Eng Brothers still have two out of the three."

"One of my biggest regrets..." Khoi sighed, "Is not killing the Eng Brothers back when the war first started between our organizations. I had a chance to cut the head from the snake. I didn't take it and that makes me partially responsible for every life those bastards have ever taken whether innocent or not. None of us are innocent in all this and I know in a way, many of those men and women from the other side but the Eng brothers are barbarians. Rabid dogs that should have been killed."

"That's two different neighborhoods..." Mai shook her head.

---

Трахни меня (fuck me) or Выеби меня

Жестче (harder) or быстрее (faster)

Хочу тебя (want you)

Делай все что хочешь (do whatever you want)

5.

9. Осуждаю

А твой папа по другому делал

North Korea. You can see the curves in their ribs and vertebrae and the way their skinny arms and legs curve into elbows and knees.

Rockford Hills

Ivan sat at the mini bar with his father and the bandaged up older man laid eyes on his son and daughter for the first time in decades. "My god you two have grown...Jesus Henry you gotta shave now!"

"Dad!" They both hugged him. "This meeting was set up under an alias so nobody knows we're here. It's what is typically done when a politician is in town as it is."'

They were in tears seeing him for the first time. There was a lot of talk as they sat at the table as a family for the first time in years. Luckily the presidential suite had it set up. There werre steaks and caviar. Ivan and his siblings discussed plans to also bring their children along to play together and meet their extended family. ivan even wanted to locate Sugar and bring her back here at least for the holidays.

He wanted for his daughter to meet her grandfather once before he died. For now, it was just them, almost like it had been back when life had been good and mom was still alive. Lately, Ivan had been thinking about his American birth and upbringing up until he was in his mid teens and he found out the truth about who he was. He had considrered himself just another American kid when he had been growing up in the capitol, playing sports and above all speaking English first especially back then when the cold war scare was prevelant.

"Out of all the things that have happened since I've been gone...I'm glad to know I'm a grandpa..." Mischa said with a smile as he downed his Vodka before digging back into the caviar. "I have missed this. Truly. You don't know how bad the food is at Macana Bay..." Ivan saw him stop himself from saying something that Ivan would have understood and maybe on some level Paige and Henry would too but they weren't accustomed to the violence he was. And the torture, both physical and mental. He could see the scars on his body.

He knew each scar was a story, a story he wanted to know and didn't want to know. It was insane, how his life had turned up. He had been a normal kid before that revalation. A normal kid named John. Now, he would most likely get killed if he was lucky by the IAA or Merryweather or by any of the number of law enforcement agencies that were going to want answers about that shootout in Red Stick.

Ivan also knew Paul had a friend out there who had rescued him from drowning but he didn't know if she would be useful to them. He was sure that if Paul trained her and she knew even a fraction of what some of the women in the BSU or Natasha herself did, she could become an effective urban fighter very easily but he doubted the fruits were ripe for that and even though she had helped the wounded Kanienkehaka, she seemed to be done with la vida loca herself.

Ivan downed his shot but chased it with a swig of Sprunk to wash the harsh taste out. "I can't tell you all of the details of my being here..." Mischa explained to his other two children. "Maybe one day when i'm older and past the point of any conviction or otherwise..."

"Okay, dad I cant hear things like this you know what position that puts me in. Didn't Ivan cue you in on what I do?"

"He did..." Mischa nodded as he took a glass of water after a drink of E Cola. He had called it on the Vodka at three shots wanting to take it easy. "But it can still be useful to have a US senator. They illegally imprisoned our father. They assasinated our mother. Paige, you were almost going to follow in our mom;s footsteps."

"She wouldn't have wanted it. You remember how it was...two years before mom was killed and you were captured. Ivan and me..we didn't always agree over the years. He went back to Russia and I didn't see him for years. I always thought that if I was a politician I could get you out the legitimate way."

"How is...Agent Ruthers?" Asked Mischa. Ivan swallowed. That was the name of the FIB agent who had more or less figured out that their parents were KGB back in 1987 and had let them go when he learned that despite being agents of rival governments at war, the fact that they had been trying to stop nuchlear war and go for a deescelation between their two countries was the only reason he didn't arrest them.

When the Berlin Wall came down two years later, they came home to try and reunite with their families under assumed names. That was when they had been ambushed. "He retired... I haven;t looked into him after that..." Ivan admitted. He hadn't given enough of a shit.

Ivan turned to Mischa. "I promise you we will get the pig that killed her..."

Paul

"We need to talk. It's about family."

"I am busy, my very young friend. You have an empire to run on the streets of Liberty City and you find yourself the king there instead of Neto. Because of friendships you made out here. But i have my own business to attend to with my other family."

"You get the fuck over to Vespucci Beach NOW goddamn it. Or you and me are gonna have a problem."

"Lower your voice. I don't know who you think you're talkig to kid but you better keep it respecgful as I have. You don't want to see my ugly side."

They got to the beach. "What is it?" Demanded Ivan.

"We have to get Packie out."

"It's a bit late in life to be taking pride in your Irish side now isn't it?" Ivan chuckled.

"Hey, I love my mom and as much as I hate to admit it, yeah Packie was like a brother growing up and even though I was never as close with the other McReary's, there was still a sense of familiarity I couldn't figure out. But Packie...shit you should be wondering about if he's gonna talk. What he'll say. If that bitch from the SAS got him imagine what happens if she turns him over to the IAA?"

"So what are you suggesting here, K:or Redwood? What would you have me do?"

"We need to do our best to find out where the fuck he is. He knows too much. I'm not saying I don't trust him but I know what the IAA does and everybody breaks under torture. You have no idea what they may have done to your Rakeni even if they already got information out of him and the Cold Wars over. He knew way too much."

K:or sighed. "I don't like this but it's what he'd want and if you know your own dad has been fucked up being a prisoner of the Evil Empire for almost thirty fuckin years, man. That's a long time to be in a state or a federal pen much less the Black Site those pieces of shit kept him in. Thirty years in Macana Bay, Baba Yaga. I've been inside off and on a little here and there but I love being able to walk around whether it's LC or the woods. I liked LS but I didn't like how it aint a walking man's city."

The Kanienkehaka Warrior stared out at the ocean. "We gotta find out where he is. If there's no way to rescue him..."

Ivan nodded. "Say no more. I know what to do. And now, I think because of the training you have done with Tanaka and Owl Child as well as me and Mai and Neto, i'd say the life you've lived in the Motley Crew has prepared you for doing what you have to do."

He nodded. "It'll be no harder than it was blowing up Aila or shooting Rakeni'ha..." He said with a sigh. "If it comes down to that...if it becomes impossible to bust him out, I'll do it myself. I wouldn't say we're exactly family. Before, in Bohan they thought I was just another Sorta Rican kid from the projects out there and they thought I was a Lord. It's fine. I was around them enough. But he IS a relative. So if it's either busting him out the way you did your dad, or shooting him or letting them continue to torture him until he breaks and then the SAS and IAA come after us and I didn't even do anything to that fuckin limey. She's on one side of this thing I'm on the other. But now both might start bothering us up north in Pierre Noir even just because we're against the BSU."

"Yes, but we do have in our little Mtley Crew, wuite a few people who are dangerous to the authorities. It may come to that. As for what you once had to do to your own father...I understand. I respect that you did what you had to to protect your mother."

"it's a fucked up thing to respect me for. I didn't ask for it."

"Nevertheless you have it..."Ivan insisted. "You know,...while it is true we would have to put him out of his misery to spare him torture if rescue becomes impossible, we can still try and get The King to help us with rescuing him. He was, after all captured helping me. And I am obliged to return the favor. I do not like owing anybody, K:or. He helped get my father out and since An Ri was there to help us and Packie blew up that princess for him, I would say the king of Sinn Fein owes Packie a debt..." He had a smirk on his face.

"What's funny?" Demanded K:or.

"Nothing I was thinking...we should do as much as we can to get Packie out of there. If nothing else because he deserves a chance to get rid of his brother. The policeman."

"Francis. I haven't thought of that motherfucker for a while. Yeah, I think anyone other than Packie icing him would be a bit wrong. All right..."

Ivan sighed. "Neto can check in with Lester Crest in person since he is in East LS and Neto has bought a house out there. I will reach out to An Ri and see what the IRA can do to assist. But I can also see what my friends in the Epsilon Program can do to help."

"Chris Formage?"

"I might as well ask the man who would have the most ability to find out where a recently captured suspected terrorist caught on foreign soil by a foreig n agent in the SAS is,him. As for you..." Ivan scratched his goatee. "As much as I am not on good terms with her, would you try and see if anybody on the streets has seen or heard from Mai? I would like to at least know if she's alive. The police have cracked down heavy on her father's gang and now she and him have been in the wind. If she's making a break for the south again, we need to find out. We need to know if she is in the state or not.:"

"I'm gonna ask Owl Child. See what he can find out without setting off any red flags but only if he can do it without setting off red flags. But I don't know which way will get us what we want."

"If we do this..we can kill whatever British or American agents are in our way but for the time being i would hold off on killing Kyra. I would caution the same with Neto."

"I don't talk to limeys, Ivan. Got no reason to. Can't stand the ones that visit Canada either. Anyway...I never even met her. No reason to talk to her."

"But you are an oponent of the English crown in Canada. That does make you her enemy."

"Maybe..." He shrugged. "If you say so. We'll try not to hit her then but they could already be putting the screws to Packie. He was pretty banged up when she took him in."

"Neto can try and use whatever military connections he has to see where they've taken him. If they have proof he killed the princess on American soil both the IAA and the SAS are going to want to talk to him. It's a strange jurisdictional issue when you think about it too but really it just pissed off two countries who were already enemies of the IRA."

"Yeah but those guys are prepared to die. So am I to protect my people. From where I grew up to PN."

"It's admirable, droog..." Baba Yaga nodded as he took a sip of beer. "In any case, on top of leaning heavily on Packie they will threaten to go after Gordon Seargant with the law or worse too. Plus his nices through Gerry's previos marriages."

Paul nodded. "You're right.. shit...they'll use Gerry against him too. He's doing life and he's joined the Vanguard but he's not invincable. Nobody is. They can easily reach him inside which makes him more vulnerable than us."

Ivan put a reassuring hand on K:or's left shoulder and even though the autistic Kanienkehaka hated being touched unprompted without permission, he didn't say anything this time especially sincre he'd known ivan five years. He just didn't like white people touching him either. "Between your resources and the rest of us, we can find him. The only thing is we're down a man since he is captured from our primary crew and Mai is mia and I'm not sure she would help us even if she could. You know...if the police catch her for the crimes they want her for she could put all of us away forrever too. We better hope whoever is hiding Mai continues to do a good job until this internal war within the IAA is over. If she gets caught,we have the same problem Packie does."

K:or nodded and he kept a stone face but he was sad on the inside thinking of how he had thought she had been like the sister he never had only for her to have been fucking them all over from the start. Ivan turned to him. "I know despite finding out she was a fed you don't hate her entirely..." Ivan told the younger gunman. "But if we do have to take care of her...I think you, me and Neto should have a serious conversation between men. About who should kill her if it has to be done."

K:or was disturbed internally but luckily he was not facing Ivan but he had him in his peripheal. "Yeah..." K:or said in a low and soft tone. "But Neto has to be there. Aint a call for just us. It'l just come down to which one of us has the best reason to..." Ivan nodded.

"You're the only one she hasn't completely fallen out with..." Ivan stated. "She may not have known the Families were going to betray you but with all her ties in the drug game she could have picked up chatter and warned you something was coming. She has bugs all over the Chamberlain Hills projects you know. She put them there herself and the funny thing is, the LSPD would love to have mics and cameras in the homes of these assholes. They'd put their whole set away forever. Just collapse CGF by arresting everybody if they get enough of them in a gang sweep, the set will fold."

Paul couldn't help but wonder if on some level Ivan wanted to take over those projects., He knew that to do it it would have to be through the Ballas by proxy or perhaps the Aztecas were more demographically feasible but he wouldn't put it past the Russian agent to have such ambitions.

K:or turned to Ivan. "You know..she has surveillance on me. And she was the one that called the police saying where I was gonna be the day I got shot by Flash. She was fucking us all over from day one. I hate that bitch."

"That is why I think it might be a good idea for you to it. Then again, we may need somebody detatched to do it. But you've managed to not let her know you know yet. You have learned great patience and self control. You've gone from acting like everybody's crash dummy to thinkin like an OG."

"Yeah, but you and her have fought each other too."

"The same can be said for Neto..." The Russian reminded him. "There is the most bad blood between them. We each have a reason to kill her. But whether you are just bait while one of us comes from behind or you do it yourself, you have the best chance of catching her off guard."

"Sghe fucked over a lot of people with those lowrider heists. And she did a lot of dirt with me with those garbage trucks..." Paul still regrettted ever killing vagos for the Families or Trevor Phillips even though he had also killed Ballas. But they had also been trying to kill him but he still had not even spent all of his money from that. He hads stashed it. And it had stayyed there when he did his bid.

"Yes and the fact that she did it once again on the say so of an idiot like Lamar Davis when she is the daughter of the founder of the Da Nang Boyz is even more reasons Ballas and Vagos will want her dead. On top of my brothers in arms in Cypress Flats."

"I need some time to think this over..."

"No problem, droog. We still havem't run it by Neto yet. And we need to see what the King will do. He is an old friend and associate of my father's from the 80's. They met only a few time in 1987 but they were natural allies against a capitalist and imperialist system. He is a man of honor. If it was an ordinary soldier it might be too risky to try a rescue and he would be stuck at the same solution as us. But he was fond of Derrick McReary. He would not want the last free McReary brother on the street dead or captured. He sees potential in him."

"Sure, coked out idiots from Dukes are exactly what the IRA needs..." He rolled his eyes.

"He came a long way as have you. we have all adapted tactically. Besides, even as a man who has had to do what he had to do to survive since sixteen..maybe even a bit before that, I may seem detached but I still value family. That's why I did what I did. Risking life limb and freedom to get my father out."

"Well, that's where we're different, Ivan. You did all that to get yours out. Mine was a piece of shit. So was Packie's./ Neto, I can't call it but they got killed and now he is who he is. And Mai might not ever admit it since her and her mom and dad love eac other but they're both piece of shit parents even if she's never going to admit it in a thousand years."

Ivan shrugging rubbing his chin and his goatee with an introspective look to his expression. "That is why we're the Motley Crew. Our differences are our strengths. Think about it. You've been in inner circles for the Lords as well as the Families and even the North Holland Drug Crew and your dealings with the McReary Family. And the Vagos and Aztecas. Look at your own gang up north. It's almost like living in Canada and Liberty City prepared you to work with anyone just like I do. You were that way before. You could be that way again but with a detached outlook. We have to. We're pushing heroin on the streets of LS and we're naking sure our own crews don't fight each other."

"You might be right. But it's gonna take some planning to get him out. We don't even know where she took him."

Ivan turned to Paul. "Redwood..." He began. "We could get Gerald McReary out of prison. There are ways around a life sentence. Just like there are ways around a fifty year sentence for rackateering. The bottom line is this. You're not a McReary in name but they occasionally dealt with you back in 2006 when Gerald needed petty shit done.

Paul nodded. "He'd send Packie or have me as a go between with the North Holland Hustlers. He didn't want to deal with them directly and as it turned out I wanted nothing to do with the Pegorino crew. So it was fine."

Cypress Flats

Budda sat in his house with music playing but not loud. He had a headache. The Eng brothers had stressed him out. He got some relief from the aid the Markovich Family showed occasionaly but in his mind it wasn't often enough.

He exhaled a cloud of smoke. "I miss the fuckin the homies."

He began to kiss Mikayla. The homegirl had been arrested by LSPD on a bullshit charge and she had spent a few years inside. It had been attempted murder. Her ex, who had been a member of the Families and when she had found this out after they'd already had sex when she noticed his tattoos, she lit him up. If she hadn't been inaware of the fact and hadn't done anythin she might not have been able to return to the hood. The only instance where doing that was okay was if she was just offering a bit of as to set uo a rival which as a 21st streeter he was.

Since she had shot him, she was in good standing and had clout in prison. Then there was Lace Breezy, a member of the Bloodfeathers. She was of Korean descent, origially named Chae-Yeong Edwards since she had been adopted and was of Korean and Chinese descent but she had been raised by a Samoan family in the Bay Area that happened to live in an area the Bloodfeather controlled.

Now they were both all over him and Buddha relished it. He contemplated his street nickname and the man he was named from. Buddha had said that life was suffering but that while we are on this Earth we should have joyful participation in it.

He felt Chae Yeong's right hand on his dick from the outside of his dickies and she began to stroke the Cambodian's manhood as Mikayla smiled, continuing to kiss hadn't had a good threeway in a had a tattoo on his back that Mikayla's nails traced along that were closer to his shoulder area. It was a statue of a golden Buddha on his back.

He disrobed the two Psycho homegirls as his right hand unsnapped Chae Yeong's bra. He had opted to not do any cocaine unlike other times he'd gotten laid. He wished Cherry was still around and he assumed that Baby Face was dead or on the run but these days, he was thinking the latter was the case.

Alderney City

He had taken a day off and luckily for once, he had a free weekend. Everybody was adjusting to their new life but Croak hated it the most. They all had new names now and fake ID's. Croak was now named Raymond Keene. Grizz was now Byron Keene. And his wife was Aisha Keene and their daughter was Layla Keene.

"I don't understand why the fuck we gotta keepmoving, pop?"

"We might be in the clear of South Side Balla, we might be outta Strawberry. But that don't mean nothing. Witnesse, anybody who snitches can still get found out. Even across the country."

"Just be real with me, pop is they coming for us?"

"When I was in the game...sometimes people a state or two over, maybe a city would have to get got, we went after people from outta state or who left the state. I came to Liberty City once back in '91. Spent a good four months there. Aint like living there full time but I was stil there in a day LC was considered in its prime. But that was always cartel related. The Colombians, the Mexicans, they supplied us and when they found out there was an informant, it wouldn'tr matter if it was one of our soldiers or theirs."

He sighed. "The way the BGA is in Dockington is more how I envisioned how it's sdsupposed to be. The BGA could have had a lot more clout on the yard but their Black August bullshit, taking out guards on top of enemies aint smart. Homies inside acted like it was just cause Onda and the AV had more control through the drug trade and the guards they could pay off. I'd have probably donebetter if I'd been sponsored into the BGA out east. But that life is bullshit, son. Some outta staters figured out how to play the game and they came out on top. I'd rioll with them if I'd have been out here. Who knows?"

Croak shook his head. "Man, fuck these east coast niggas. I wanna go home."

"You know what's at home. Just because of me. The only way you'd be able to stay in good with your old homeboys is to gun me down. You wanna smoke somebody? Kill me. Then ya'll can go back to South Central and be yourselves. For a day or two. Shoot me, bitch. You motherfuckin C Food wannabe. You came from a Ballas nuts, boy."

"Nigga fuck you!" He swung on his father and hit him in the left side of the jaw. He staggered back and the gangster grabbed his own Glock 22 and clobbered Mark upside the head but Mark caught his wrist befopre he could withdreaw and he slammed his son against the side of the wal,. "You don't love me no more, lil nigga?! Well that breaks my heart. But you gone respect me."

Croak swung again but the man grabbed his arm and parried and threw a left hook into his son's gut. He was trying to not use full strength but his son was scrapping hard. "I HATE YOU! FUCKIN SNITCH MOTHERFUCKER! YOU THE REASON WE CAN'T GO HOME!" Croak tried to kick him but Grizz threw him to the ground following up with a kick to the side of the face.

"I'm your pops but you ever put your hands on me again I'll treat you like another nigga on the street."

"I am gonna kil your ass you oussy motherfucker!" He barked but the pistol clattered to the ground. "You don't know what I went through omn the inside, punk! You just a YG! You aint do no hard time!"

Croak tackled him swinging wide blows at his chest and stomach trying to knock the bigger and stronger man to the ground despite not having as much muscle, he was faster than him. "Fuck this fake shit!" He barked. Grizz grabbed him on the fifth blow and threw him against the side of a Red Buffalo. His back crashed into the passenger side mirror and he hit his head as he fell backwards with glass from the

"Jesus fuckin christ ya fuckin psychos what the fuck are you doing to my car?!" Demanded a Caucasian male with tanned skin.

He aimed a .50 Desert Eagle at the two of them. "Oh what you think I'm afraid to die you want some too?" He aimed the Glock at him.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Fuckin chill!" A bald man that looked related to him got between them. "Are you fighting your fuckin dad?! What's wrong with you bro? Thats so beta."

/

"This is between me and my son..." Grizz insisted. "Look, how much would it take to make this go away? For the damages..." He pulled out a wad of cash. "I'll cover the damages."

"We need to get the fuck outta here. You and me are gonna get a drink..." The man stated.

"Look, we just had a disagreement,..."

"You two need to chill..." The other man with paler skin said. "Why don't you take him and I'll take him to a bar."

"Aight..." Grizz groaned in pain. "Just not the one I work at. Please..."

"We'll go to a nicer place...what';s your name?"

"Bruce Kibbutz. You work out?"

"Yeah. Not as much as when I was in the pen, but yeah."

"i feel ya homie! I've been arrested. I always used to say you're nobody if you don't get arrested. Haters are the fuckin motivators. Ya know? Including the cops."

"So you're from out here?"

"I'm from Liberty City, bro. How about you?"

"Vice City."

"Fuckin SWEET! I go there all the time! Got a boat. We go down there every winter."

"Why does your name sound familiar?" Asked Grizz.

"Bro you never heard of Brucie Kibutz?"

"I guess I might have when I was on the internet. About five years back. But uh...I was serving some time. Prison called Winchester."

"Hey, no judgements here, bro! You should meet my boy Niko he used to be red army. You remind me of him."

"I tried to join the Army once..." He was fine with letting this stranger think he meant the actual Army rather than the BGA. "I guess I didn't have what it takes."

They went to the bar and Brucie began ordering them shots. "You're workong too much, amigo!"

After about a half hour of drinking, he explained a bit to him about what he was doing for a living. Sometimes, the best lies were half truths. He told Brucie that he and his son had once worked for a notorious kingpin out of Washington Beach who ordered murders from the hotel pool like he was ordering coffee. He explained that that kingpin had then been arrested along with a lot of his boys.

The fact that he and his son had the foresight to get out of Vice City and go north had some from his old hood thinking they were snitches. Now he was just slinging beers in a blue collar neighborhood. In a way, to him, being a bartender wasn't that much different from being a drug dealer. It was still a substance and people weren't supposed to drive under the influence.

He smirked looking down at his empty shot glass before Brucie ordered him another. "It's funny, man. Being a bartender is a lot like being a parent..."

"Yeah? How's that bro? When I'm ready I'm gonna have some fuckin kids. Just gotta find the right bitch that's with the program."

"You remind me of some of the fools from my old neighborhood. They had that view. They had to be dimes. Models, all that. But maybe your standards are too high. Cats from Kingtown got that same view of women, dog. Only thing is, they expect honeys to be on top of their game but they aint owning shit themselves. That's what's wrong with my neigborhood, Bruce."

"Crab in a fuckin bucket. Let your haters be your motivators, bro! You hit the gym, or do some burpees you could have that fresh outta prison look cause right now you got arms but you're fuckin fat."

"I thought you said haters be your nmotivators?" Inquired Grizz with a scowl.

"Yeah but i'm helping you. Help me HELP me make you into a fuckin ALPHA."

"Why you want to be my workout instructor, man? I aint with that gay shit, now don't get it fiucked up."

"Because every MAN needs to unlock his fuckin potential. Do you know what you can be?! BE...GENETICALLY DIFFERENT...

Grizz had a feeling this was a man he was going to be in touch with for some time. The more he thought about it now, the more he wanted to check to see if he was all right. "Hey, man you check in with your cousin? How's my boy doing?"

"Just a sec. I'll text it to him. I'm fuckim glad they're off drinking separatley. Mori's a dick."

"And you want him around my son?"

"You and your son were gonna try and kill each other. that's what it looked like.,"

"I'm from south..." He started to say.

"Huh?"

"I'm from the south. That's just how we get down in the hood sometimes. We weren't gonna kill each other."

"Hey you didn't fuck up MY ride just his. So it's probably better that you didn't go with Mori, bro. He loves that car and he's pissed he just hides it. He's ex IDF bro! It's good you paid him."

"Yeah well it's the one language everybody speaks."

"But bro. You were gonna kill each other. Maybe you didn't mean to and maybe he didn't but you were throwing each other into the street. Back in Broker I saw people get killed like that all the time. That's just five buroughs living."

"Well this aint my neck of the woods..." He replied. "And it aint LC either, exactly. Alderney's close but different. I thought about moving to LC and I know the part of AC we're in aint all that but we were never gonna live on Prawn Island/I knew there'd be too much of thje same shit we were trying to leave behind in Vice City if we went to Algonquin or Broker. We can still go there and we can stay at hotels in the city but we aint living out there."

"Yeah but bro working in a bar, bro?!"

"I'm lucky to even be outta prison, man. I served my time, and I'll do anything to stay outta the pen at this point."

"I feel you, homie! Look, if you need a car, I sell them. That's how we roll. You can't live in Alderney without a fuckin car, bro!"

"Why you helping me out?" Asked Grizz. "What's in it for you?"

"I got a lot of problems and a lot of haters. When you're at the top people want what you got. They're jealous of the cars they're jealous of the babes and they're jealous of the bling. But thats because they're a bunch of fat broke losers. I had this homie, remember I told you I had homie in the red army? Well he retired from the guns so I got an opening. I've had a few others help since then but they'e fuckin unreliable cause they're outta town."

"i'm outta town..." Grizz emphasized as they pulled up to his apartment. "And I'm out the game, dude. I can't go back to prison."

"Nobody who rolls with Brucie is going to prison."

"How do you know who i am?" Grizz demanded. "Where do I know the name Brucie Kibbutz from? I know damn sure it wasn't no magazines talking about how you roll or worjoutr pictures or any of that shit. And I damn sure didn't buy a car off no janky mothafuclkas like you."

"Whoa you gota chill. Are yoy on fuckin steroids?"

"Hell nah,."

"If you're not you should."

"Hold up. Now I remember you. Was about...nine years ago. I ordered some Bull Shark testesterone off ya ass. Back then I was heavy into doing calesthetics."

"That's fuckin alpha, bro!"

"That 'Alpha' got me in fights. Got me thrown in the hole,."

"Oh shit...you're that guy. Fuck...yeah I was surprised somebody in prison wanted a shipment."

"We couldn't get it in legally you already know,..." Grizz insisted. "Had to pay off the guards just to get it snuck in. So yeah I worked out like a motherfucker on that stuff. But I was in the HOLE. Wasn't shit else to do BUT burpees and pushups and situps."

"If you want the Bruce to make it up to you, gimme a call."

"I'm done with Bull Shark testesterone. Nah the best you can do is for exactly what a murderer by proxy is good for. You got contract work."

Brucie nodded in agreement with his assesment but clarified, "I still got haters and sometimes haters can be the biggest motivators. But other times they're so desperate to see you fail that becomes their mission in life. I'm fine with them hating from a distance. But they think they can take what i have? That's when they gotta get dealt with."

He then at an abrupt pace from his last words, asked, "But it can't look like it's me who did it. And it doesn't always gotta be death. Sometimes a warning is enough. Sometimes a broken leg."

"And you need me to be the executioner while you play judge and jury, is that it?" Grizz inquired.

"Judge and jury? No I'm the fuckin aggrieved party, bro! If this was Mori with this problem he'd be having a conniption. But he thinks he can handle his own business but I still broke his fuckin nose."

"I don't know, man it looks like family drama I'm not supposed to get in the middle of,dude. I got my own family to look after."

"You're saying you don't need the work?"

"Nah, I'll take the work. But only if it's not killing anybody. I'll break a leg if it comes to that. I know how to do damage without killing."

20 Minutes Later

"That was your dad you were throwing down with?!" Mori was surprised, it seemed.

"Yeah, we aint close like you and your brother."

"What? 'Close like you and your brother' yeah like a fuckin tumor. Brucie is family but we all know who top dog is in the family. I know it. he knows it."

"You think that just cause you older you always right and young people are wrong? Cause if you do you the same as my pops."

"Being an alpha has nothing to do with age, bro. Listen. You stick by me and i'll show you how real players roll especially in places like Liberty City."

"Hold up, ya'll two just roll through LC any time ya'll want?"

"Fuck yeah! What better city to flex your wealth in than the greatest city in the world?" Croak wanted to say LS was the greatest city but the truth was he'd never been to LC before and despite their cover story, they had never been to Vice City either. He imagined it didn't have anywhere near the amount of gang bullshit as back home. But he couldn't represent where he was really from.

"I could think of a few but I feel you. Star Junction does look pretty packed,."

"You seriously only been on the Alderney side of the river? Shit. Man we gotta show you what a REAL city is like,bro! AC is cool but it's only cool for Alderney. It's got nothing on Algonquin. Broker too. And Dukes. You'll love it out there."

"So what's the deal around here, g? I know you got boys on the trap out on these corners out here and in LC too. How i get plugged in with them?"

"Whoa whoa, fuck that you're rolling with the alpha dogs now,kid! Drug deals are for fuckin losers. My idiot brother got mixed up with some Lords some years ago and they were in the drug business. When you're rolling with the Kibbutz family, you make your scrilla off legit hustles. And even when they aint legit, like if it's a drag race, that's still showing your face and risking your ass for the big dollars. Drug deals are beneath you."

"Homie, I'm from..." He started to say South Central. "You know I'm from down south and we hustle, man. It aint no pride in this shit you know? We aint too good to do what they say aint right..."

"Talk to Uncle Mori! We'll fix it up. There's a titty bar near here. You gotta see it...gotta get localized, man!"

"I feel you but it's an adjustment. I mean shit...I aint ever seen snow before."

"Well you're in Alderney City now, City is cool me and Brucie go there all the time but you can't be on spring break all thje time. I mean we only go south for the winter."

"So you a snowbird, huh?"

"Damn right! Winters in LC and AC are a bitch! When you got money you don't gotta put up with that shit anymore."

Croak shook his head. "I don't know, man. I aint never seen snow and I kinda wanted to. There's some mountains outside LS that get snow all the time, man. But we never went there."

"LS? Who said anything about LS?"

"Ah..I mean I been out there but not the mountains. Didn't see snow there."

They pulled up to the Honkers on Roebuck Road. "Just forget all the bullshit with your family. I lived in Israel, okay? There was no snow. It's overrated bro."

"Yeah, maybe but I still wanna see for myself."

"Well, it aint winter yet but for now we still got the same snow you could get in Vice City year round like my tan, bro!"

Croak didn't know what to say so he laughed. "What's funny?"

"I just aint think of it. Ass and titties is the cure to my problems"

Meanwhile

Dennis and his former wife and the mother of his children were on a date. Something he hadn't done enough back in the 90's. She had ordered the halibat with potatoes and carrots with a glass of wine. Dennis ordered a steak with mashed potatoes, medium rare though he didn't mind well done steak, he liked it medium rare. He washed it down with an E Cola, reluctant to partake in alcohol. Even marijuana, which he had used to cope with stress over the years.

"It's..." He began, "Been too long since we were..."

"I know..." She put her left hand on his right hand. "Aisha..." He turned to her. "I know adjusting to the new names is hard but...I don't want that Russian motherfucker after us. Or the Locs or my old homeboys."

"It is, tough.. Dennis..." She was still not used to the new name either. "For years...I wanted to give up on you. I thought they'd never let you out."

"Look...I know I was gone for a long time..."

"Long time? You went in a young man and came out middle aged. And now we're on the run..." She exhaled. "I'm sorry it's just...my mama named me what she named me and now I can't talk to my own parents anymore. That includes the kids. They might be grown but I don't want them leaving home just yet..." She put her right hand on his left.

"I know it aint easy. i didn't want to meet my son through a glass window. 92 was a crazy year. You know...! You were there.."

She nodded chewing and then swallowed. "it was. But it wasn't worth it. Look...I know you thought it was gonna be a revolution but it wasn't. We lost."

"I know. It was pointless and a mistake I made cost me all them years. I've been trying to do better. Reading more. I think about all I did and I know I don't deserve to be breathing free air. Cause yeah I was wrong to take that white guy's life just cause I was pissed about the LSPD beating people down and killing them. But what about all the Families and Aztecas i laid out back in the day? I aint get charged for that. I shot some fools just a few days before the riots. So even if you believe i served my time or the state feels I earned it, I know that aint true. Really, I shouldn't be getting out I should be on death row."

"Don't say that, Dennis. Look..you're not the only reason our son turned to gangs. Part of it was my fault too and with my daddy dead he didn't have any male role models in the house..."

"I know and I'm sorr..."

"Just listen. You might feel like you're the reason he joined Carson Avenue Families and maybe in a way you are. At least why he chose green instead of purple. We lived in their hood but we weren't that far from a Ballas hood so he could have jumped off the porch with them instead."

"I know he has good in him still. When I got shot he stopped his homies from killing me. That move could have got him shot by his own 'boys' and he was lucky he wasn't but once they found out I was snitching inside and it hit the streets, I knew they'd kill me and anybody who ever knew or loved me if they could get to me. And it wasn't just the BGA Families and Ballas wanting me dead. The Aztecas really wanted me dead for the shit i did back in the day and some of them who were looking for me would want me dead even more knowing I talked even if it wasn't them. They see me as a hypocrite and maybe I am."

"You afraid of Ivan's friend, Neto?" She asked.

"Nah. And I've done a few jobs for Trevor Phillips with him and Mai here and there but we never said much to each other. We knew what set we were both from but we left it at the door to make ends but he was Ivan's roomate. Even if there is a greenlight on me from the Aztecas I don't think Neto's coming after his soldiers might not care and they'd have done it but he's never even thought of it. It's Ivan who knows me."

"Ivan's not gonna find us as long as we lay low and don't get into trouble..." She insisted as she sipped her wine. "The thing that's hard if I'm being for real, it's the name change. It's like I'm living a lie and every lie I have to tell to cover up the last lie it's like I gotta make them all part of this false memory that we come from Vice City."

"You know..inside...ad outside...all these things I am or was raised to be, all the things I was and used to be, Ballas, Baptist choir singer, BGA, homeboy, brother, father all that shit..don't get me wrong you guys are my world but when the words finally got out in the streets I was snitching on a big homie from the pen, everybody wanted me dead. The Ballas from Strawberry looked bad by having me work for them all them years without knowing I told. But. When your life is thrown to the breeze like that, I realize, even our names, our religion, opur family name too, our race our country, our neighborhood we spend our whole lives living and dying for some shit that aint 's all taught to us from when we were babies."

"I believe in God, baby. I still do. We got our family reunited and we got a second chance. I don't know if it's the God of the bible but I been trying to learn more about different spiritualities out there,. But somebody's been watching out for us. Despite all the hardships we've gone through over the years you just don't get out of South Central alive without somebody looking out for you."

Packie

He woke up in a world of hurt and yet it had not been through any means that had been done to him by the SAS agent since being captured by her, the fight enough had been enough to cause a lot of pain but he knew his agony was just beginning when the limey bitch got back. He needed to find a way to get out of there before the bitch got back but for now, he was tied up. He wondered where An Ri was the moment. He knew it was going to be about the fact that they were after him but on top of that, with busting Ivan's dad out of prison, the overlap of attention was not good.

He hadn't exactly been careful. Sure, he had managed to stay out of prison and stay alive after the Bank of LC and he was pretty much the sole surviving McReary that was on the streets and alive but as of late, the well part of alive and well didn't apply. He thought of his brother still on the inside, and ma and Derrick rotting in the grave.

He didn't want to have to turn to Gerry or get him involved in the shit he had going on with the IRA. Gerry had been transferred but that stabbing he participated in an attempted murder and that had squandered any chance he had of ever getting out even if he did live the next fifty years. He hadn't thought about it as far as asking others to help.

On the one hand Ivan definitely owed him one and if he ever saw the sun again and had a chance to draw free breath, the Russian had better live up to his end of the bargain and help him get Gerry out of prison. He knew Gerry deserved to spend the rest of his life \in prison. Or be dead. The same was true for him but since they weren't and the original thing that got Gerry locked up was a bullshit charge.

"You aint facing reality, kid..." Derrick stood before him. "You gotta save yourself. Tell her what she needs to know, Packie. Don't let her put you through anymore than you already been through."

"So what...you want me to rat? Like you did? Wasn't An ri one of the ones that looked out for you and Aiden and Bucky over there? Now you want me to grass on your friend...Jesus, Derrick. Even from beyond the grave..."

"Truth is, I deserve to be here, Packie. And An Ri,...that man aint no king. He was me brother in arms. But you're my blood brother, need to face the truth. Gerry's inside cause of me. I was an idiot. Smacked outta my mind. And as much as you want to blame Niko for it, I was the one that ratted Gerry out. Me own baby brother. You know it. I know it. Gerry didn't fight those charges cause he knew he should have killed me years ago the way he did da...but he couldn't."

"So what do you want, Derrick? I can't hook you up with any smack from where you are."

"Smack...that's exactly how I would have died if Niko had pulled the trigger and shot Frankie instead. Think about it. Is it really worth you killing Niko? Or even Frankie? I was a fiend, Patrick. I didn't come back whole from Ireland. You ended up leaving LC and you would have done that even if Ma didn't die. With Frankie dead and me dead from an OD, there would have been nobody to look after Ma in her last years."

"Yeah I know..." Packie weakly exhaled. "I tried to get outta town and take a break from LC and Alderney. That's why I went to Vice City. Even Australia. I finally travelled, Der. You could have been with me if you hadn't been such a fuck up. I left town. Not long. But then ma died."

"But with Francis around, there was someone to look after her for the rest of her days. Even if that wasn't long. She's here with me now, Packie. I'm looking after her here...dad...dad is also here..."

"Derrick...?"

"But you can stil look out for Gerry on this side. You know what you gotta do, Packie. Tell the SAS agent what she wants to know."

Fuck you, Derrick. i still got one brother left even if he aint a full McrReary...I aint gonna be a grass to get Gerry out.

If he made it out of here, he would see if Paul would be willing top pull some strings to get Gerry out. He had a heavy doubt that he would. When he had known them in the 2000's he would have helped them in a heartbeat but this was the new Paul. This Paul had been hardened by a Canadian prison, plus west coast prison gang politics, betrayal on the streets of LS and the death of his girlfriend plus multiple friends.

But it still seemed like a better idea than trying to appeal to Ivan for help even though he had busted his old man out. It was a 50/50 chance that Paul would help and while Ivan had a bigger chance to help, he felt on some level Ivan wouldn't be there to help. He hadn't known the Russian that long so to speak even if he knew of him in Hove Beach when he had been there but they had both left and returned to Liberty City at different times that year.

And now, he had just busted a long time Macana bay prisoner and enemy spy from a black site. He doubted any way Ivan had to break Gerry out would be as legal as Paul potentially could through that one IAA agent he was talking to the Blackfoot Indian guy, Crow Child or whatever his name was.

"I used to blame Frankie for putting Gerry behind bars..." Packie softly groaned, still banged up and with no liqour or booze, he had nothing to kill the pain. "But he was keeping us outta jail. Much as i hate him, he was the one that kept us outta prison that year...Gerry knew enough about him if he ever tried taking him down...the fact he didn't play that card..."

He coughed and taste metal in his mouth. "Goddamn it, Derrick...you fuckin betrayed this family..."

"You gotta do what's right by Gerry. You can bargain to get him out. Or at least for yourself. Don't be stupid, baby brother. The UK might not have a death penalty but they will put you to death for what you did to the princess. If the SAS, any of em ever caught Rory he'd be in prison for life. But you? You killed the princess with one of your own devices. You weren't there in the Troubles, Packie. You didn'ty see how many people died on both sides."

"I didn't live in Ireland like you did..." Coughed Packie. "But it's on my list of places to go. I was afraid to use the money from the bank of LC heist to go there cause of the shit you did in Northern Ireland."

"That's Belfast. You could have gone to the independent Ireland. You still can. But here's what i know. An Ri told me a bit about the traitor Irish. From Ulster,.They've always been that way. All the way back to the 1600's. You think you're a son of a free Ireland? You're a grass. You're like the Ulstur boys helping the limeys." He spat at his brother. "Get he fuck outta here, Derrick. I aint grassing like you. Even if they kill me."

The door opened and an Afro British woman stepped inside with a sadistic smile. Derrick sighed as he saw Packie staring back at her, the light behind her blinding to his sore eyes. "You should have listened, boyo..."

New Arcadia

She had the former Agent Trueblood dead to rights and it hadn't taken much to get a hold of the BGA dropout. She had arranged it. "You don't have to do this..." Agent Trueblood insisted. "This won't bring your friend back!"

"Neither will trying to go about my day like the motherfucker that melted his face isn't still breathing."

"HEY! TALK tO ME!; Barked the youngest Roman. "It's me you want! Enough blood has been shed. Let me...let me make some calls. Make some arrangements. I'll get it so I can take her place..."

"Why would I do that?" Chela demanded with deriscion in her voice. "This causes you a lot more pain than killing you would..." She began to pour gasoline on her. "And you're going to watch, puto! I might not be able to get at your other novia but I got the one you have the most emotional investment in. I guess I'm not a would be Emporor so I don't have gold to melt. So miss FIB bitch is going to have to settle for gasolina."

"If you do this..." Mark growled. "There will be no place on Earth you can hide from me."

"Me vale madre!" She growled back at him. "You already killed the man i loved. You killed a lot of comaradas. And you're such a bitch you gotta rig every war with help from federales instead of winning it on your own."

"Neto won't let you get away with this either."

"Neto lost his spine! He let the IAA take the fight out of him. Ernesto went out a lot more chingado than Neto. I used to respect el mero mero but if he's still in a ceasefire with you motherfuckers then I was wrong."

Alison began to whimper as Chela readied her lighter. The redheaded woman crab walked to try and get away though she knew she wouldn't get far.

THWACK.

The sound of wood hitting skull filled the air and Allison's eyes widened upon seeing the Samoan man behind Chela who had just taken a swing at her from behind with a wooden baseball bat. The chola was bleeding like crazy and she hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. "Scrap bitch!" Ulu barked before he swung the bat at her again hitting her in the upper part of her back. She cried out as the pain shot through her upper body.

He hit her again and again and again. Until all that remained of her skull was matted and bloodied hair and skull and brain fragments below him. Ulu cut Allison free. "I been tailing this scrap across state lines...lok I wasn't here. And neither were you..."

"This..I can;t..this is insane..."

"You might wanna think about relocating, girl. This place don't agree with you..."

Meanwhile, on the news it was announced that Martin Tincho had been engaged by police including state troopers and the FIB once he got back to his home state. The FIB had coordinated with the branch in Ariza and a combined force of FIB from New Arcadia and Ariza as well as state troopers had engaged him in a high speed chase. He had gone out shooting, with the same firearm he had used on Marrick who was now recovering after his surgery.

Tincho managed to shoot four police officers from his hometown as well as two FIB agents before he went down. He had no intention of ever returning to the pen. They had made their move on the Roman family post Ernesto but they had failed.

She was shaken up now and just wanted to get the gas off her and get a change of clothes, a shower and some rest. Marrick had coded on the operating table but they had managed to save his life. He would need a bit of physical therapy and would have months to go through it. Even though Tincho and Chela had been stopped, the Ballas, Armenian Pride and the Psychos had continued to infringe upon the hoods of New Arcadia, defiant and determined to cause as much trouble in their city as they were in Davis.

Neto arranged to meet with Lee. They needed to discuss what had gone down.

"This isn't a good look. For anybody. And your homegirl went off the fuckin rails!" Barked Lee. "How do I know you aint taking advantage of Mark being inside? You trying t fuck us over, asshole?!/"

"Chela didn't pick her phone up the entire time she was outta state, fool. We tried her four times."

"Just four times?"

"We didn't have a reason to think she skipped town. But i know she did damage. That's why I want to make it right."

"How?"

"Well it may not be something you want at the moment but Mark would have accepted it and I think Marrick would too. If I'd have let them just do what they came to do in the neighborhood, this could have been stopped before it started. Then again, maybe not."

"What are you talking about?" Demanded Shen.

"Pop the trunk..." The Mexican veterano insisted. Lee did as he asked with his shotgun in the man's face upon seeing who he was. "What the FUCK?!"

Twitchy Rick lay in the trunk with a broken jaw and he had been tied up and gagged as well as drugged with ketamine. "He's alive but the in one piece part couldn't be helped."

"You're saying this scrawny shit gave you trouble?"

"just a little. People don't take kindly to you telling them to get in your trunk willingly. But I managed to get him outta Davis without even having to kill any of his homies. They shot at the car, I shot back a few warning shots but all in all everybody went home. Except him."

"Oh he's got a new home now..." Lee forced the Baller OG from the trunk. "This doesn't exactly fix the damage Chela did in our city but this does demonstrate a spirit of cooperation. Course if you had just given him up in the first place..."

He added, "But there's bad news on your end too. Somebody Chela him to death. Now I know a lot of your hermanos want Allie dead for the people she locked up before she moved here and even what she's done since. I'm not gonna try and waste time saying don't go after him. We won't touch him but you can always kill him when he gets back to Cypress. Problem is now through Mai and through me he's an ally. I'm gonna ask you as a favor to me not to go after him."

"You're putting me in a bad position..."

"What do you think one of your soldiers going postal and making moves with a guy from an out of state prison gang under your nose. Tincho was also somebody you served time with."

Neto nodded. "i didn't tell him to do that but he must have wanted revenge for his compas Marrick killed. And you're right we did look out for each other on the inside. But I know that when you shoot at cops like he did that many of them...he knew he wasn't coming outta that alive. He made a stand and it was his last.I'll send his feria to his sister. He has a brother and a sister in the city that never did any time. And Chela..." He shook his head. "The only reason I'm gonna agree to what you say is that I might catch Ulu on the streets. She got killed in your city and she did some damage out there but Ulu had nothing to do with any of that. If one of you killed her, this might be hard to believe but if she attacked you in your hood and tried to kill Allison, and got taken out it's war. Soldiers die. But Ulu did that based off a grudge he had against Los Aztecas from months ago. The Sons and the Aztecas had it out."

"Well we owe him. I don't care if you take him out but Mark is gonna have some grattitude and Allie would be fucked up behind it."

"What about him?" Neto inquired as Lee put the Baller OG in the trunk. "You gonna deal with him yourself, wait till Mark gets out or you gonna let Marrick take care of him?"

"I don't know. He's not up for that yet. I'm gonna keep him somewhere until we decide what to do with him. We might just use him to get his brother to come out of his Ant Hill on Covenant Ave. Whatever happens with them, this shit has gone on too long with them. We got the cartel toi deal with. That's bad enough on its own. We don't need more problems from prison gangsters , disgruntled cholas or Ballas. Even with Ivan I don't think that's all the way over."

"It's not. He's using Armenian Pride as a loophole but he doesn't even have to lift a finger since Tavit and Mardak are loose cannons and the Ballas...they got somewhat more of a rep on the streets for fighting New Arcadians. The losses they took out there should have made their respect go down and in some ways it did but in others, let's just say OCB has the rep as the most dangerous Baller set in Davis and that's partly because they're shooting it out with them. They aint gonna win killing that many of your soldados either. Not really. Once enough dead gueros pile up the juras will shut it down. They'll still look at BSU as suburban kids."

"You've known me long enough to know people misjudge our brothers. From here to Waston. The cops don't like BSU in most of the cities we're in. They might prefer us to skinheads and drug dealers but they still consider us criminals. But you're right it's an unwinnable war on their part."

"They don't care. They'll drag it out forever. Like Afghanistan. They're the Afghans in this case, homes. You got the fact that you're drug free and many of you never did time on your side though. But you won't be able to keep up a war with OCB. Even with all you've done you knocked off a lot of the big homies that's true but they're still recruiting at high schools."

"You think we don't have kid shooters in Narcadia?" Lee cocked his eyebrows.

"You do but you're not stupid enough to use them. Not since you were kid shooters and even back then you were better than them foos in the projects shooting. Ant, Stone, they got no problem recruiting middle schoolers too. Plus gangbanging isn't as fundamental in New Arcadia as it is in LS. And that's why it'd e normal to me, shit it'd be normal where I come from to send a teenager to blast somebody but I know with what you've dealt with so far, you were kids fighting other kids and fighting adults growing up. You'd consider a teenager a liability outside of Buck. But most of your members are in their twenties. It's smart. But Ballas will use any age."

"Maybe..." Lee shrugged as he shut the trunk. "I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. We haven't had to deal with that much. That's more of a problem for Marrick..." The thing left unsaid was about how Lee had killed a child on accident with Mai when they'd fought here. "And other fools from the wards. Plus the ballas got deep pockets through their pimping. The BSU on the west coast are doing damage in a different way than anybody wanted. They're working on even stricter gun laws because of Nick's chapter. Every San Andrean BSU that dies from a Baller is gonna have heavier heat from the law. It's fucking up the ecosystem."

"That's why what you're doing now is a step in the right direction. I'm gonna try and get word to Mark but he's been dodging everybody. If he won't do anything, Marick will. He'll probably get halfway through his physical therapy just so he can get back to killing Ant that much sooner."

Lee shut the captive in the trunk and got in the car. "Jesus, fuckin christ..." He muttered as he started it up. "If he wakes up and starts making noise, just break his jaw..." Lee told Jimmy. Jimmy nodded with a grin. "It'd be my pleasure."

Meanwhile

Tavit, Mardak and Daniel loaded into a gray slamvan. They'd been staying at one of the fancier hotels in town and Tavit had greased enough palms that on his own suite he was able to have armed security without another look. Tavit was clad in a white suit. The fanciest dressed of the three. He wore suede bucks and an AK-101. His messy blonde Jesus hair was hidden under the mask. Daniel wore a New Arcadia Sinners jersey and gray jeans and blue Eris sneakers.

Mardak was dressed intermediate between the two. He was clad in a black sports jacket and a silver silk shirt and black slacks with steel toed brown boots. His mask was a Devils mask while Tavit wore a skull mask and Daniel wore a luchador mask. They were cruising casually through the 3rd ward. They were just coming through there via the 17th ward.

They spotted the stash house. Yet another stash house they could take. They watched from the distance with binoculars as they parked on Juliana Street. "Inch' yes du tesnum?

(What do you see?)

Mardak looked. As they had seen before, there were members of the Sunbelt BSU who had picked up a stash of something. He saw two BSU members in a Mule, brown in color. "These idiots are transferring that truck from point A to B. We will topple Nero when his city but it will be him, not me who is playing the harp as the city burns."

He had sent word to the homies looking to earn more stripes would start first with just stores. The truck began to leave and after that, two vehicles were behind it in a single file drivng. "Looks like the homie got some explainint to do when UI come back...

Daniel aimed both Uzis out and opened fire on the Roman Boy soldiers. He let the rounds strike the four men, one of which was a Creole man wearing military green camoflayge with a gold chain and silver grill teeth and long dreadlocks. The rounds hit the man in the liver and as he fell to the ground, three more rounds hit him in the left eye socket and part of his nose sending shards into his brain.

The 3rd ward gangsters began to return fire with pistols and a window opened in a shotgun house just off Main street and an AK-47 was fired out of it. One of the AP soldiers went down, hit in the stomach and in the pubic bone while the second was shot in both calves.

They stormed the house and they looked inside to see some of the shooters were white. "BSU..." Tavit grinned. He opened fire on a few of the techie BSU members who mostly worked with computers and did cyber slinging. He swept them up in a barrage of rounds and their computers sparked as the 7.62 rounds ruined them as much as the BSU members themselves.

He recognized three of them were from Los Santos. A blonde haired man with curly hair and a stud piercing in his nose and upper lip wearing a Three Doors Down T shirt and black jeans. "You tell Nick...anybody from Los Santos who works with the BSU is going to meet the same fate."

"I'll tell him... Vowed the wounded BSU member. Mardak chuckled. "This Sub is going to piss his pants."

In lS, Armenian Pride had been one of many gangs that had problem,s with the LS chapter of the BSU. Sub, short bus, bullshitters, even some of their African American rivals called them Bussies. He had heard that one in both Los Santos and New Arcadia. "He's already been told. This will be enough of a message for him..."He fired a barrage of rounds into the dying man's larynx.

"i don't remember inviting you to this party..." Patrick the Iceman was in sight. The man they were here for. He lunged at Tavit and stabbed him three times in the chest. "Those dipshits you shot made my job easier!

Mardak came from behind and hit the serial killer with the butt of his H&K. "You have no job! You kill housewives in Waston for fun!"

"WHY DOES IT ALWAYS COME BACK TO THAT SHITHOLE?! MY BEST WORK IS OUTSIDE THAT STATE!" He roared as he got up from the floor, wounded but enraged at the blood running down his head. Daniel came from his right and hit the serial killer in the face with his left hand and Uzi but in the process, though he heard Iceman's nose break, he also hit him in a way that fractured his own wrist. "Shit!" He cried.

They could hear cars pulling up outside and doors openning and the sound of more 3rd ward gangsters. There was also 17th ward gangsters. He grabbed his knife again and swung at Mardak but the armenian dodged. He opened the fridge and grabbed the ice out of it and threw the ice tray in his face and ice cubes landed all ovber the floor and so did Patrick.

Daniel was tackled by Patrick and the Iceman managed to stab the youngest of the three in the stomach twice. Daniel staggered back wounded but he still had his other Uzi. He fired a burst off and out of the eight rounds he fired, three hit the Iceman in his foot. "SHIT!" Patrick growled. Daniel; hit him again and this time he was out. Mardak carried the unconscious serial killer to their ride.

Daniel followed close by but as they came out of the house, they were greeted by a barrage of rounds and Daniel took two rounds in his right shoulder while Tavit caught one in the left hit just before he ducked into the cover of the car and they floored it. Daniel was the last to get to the car but as the rounds followed him, despite his body armor, he fell as a gangster from the 3rd ward of Creole descent with brown curly hair, amber eyes, one of which had a q shaped scar under the left from a prison shank in Sudan.

The twenty two year old had Daniel dead to rights but he turned around on his back and fired what was left of the automatic. He riddled the gangster with rounds in both legs but did not kill him.

He tried to limp his way to another car but he was having a hard time with his own injuries. Another round from a 3rd ward gangster with a beanie and a black wife beater and black jeans with a red belt and gray Eris sneakers standing six geet tall and aged 24, fired his Glock 22 but Daniel managed to fall into cover behind a parked silver Admiral.

He tried to break the window to steal it but a round broke the window before he could and he felt a sharp pain as he was hit from a shotgun blast. Two familiar Irish Americans came forward, Link, carrying a Desert Eagle and Jimmy had a shotgun of undetermined type. "Bird shot..." The redhead grinned as he looked at the downed gangster. "They got Patrick..." Link informed Jimmy,.

"They're probably taking him straight to East Vinewood. We'll get him back. besides even if he isn't we got a prisoner..." Jimmy smirked at the fact that Danyen had also been a compatriot of Paul or K:or but had been captured and he figured they could use that before long. But with Daniel, they could more immediatley find out what they needed. Danyen had been somewhat cooperative but he hadn't told them everything. He had offered to help but he refused to fight Paul but would try and talk him down.

As the gang members appproached the fire station, they had three Molitave cocktail. Soon all the ytucks were in flames

He threw the first in the front end and he tossed it. Several of the FDNA came out attempting to put it out but Tavit sawed them down with his Assault rifle.

ink aimed his .50 directly at the wounded Daniel's heart. Even with the body armor on, at this close range he knew the slug would go through. "You're done. You should have learned to shoot a real gun, asshole!" He then knocked the already wounded man unconscious and he put him over his shoulder. "Call Lee..." Jimmy turned to Link. "We got another prisoner."

Unlike with Danyen, Paul had not intentionally left him behind but he had been captured in a different part of the battlefield. That was war. But this guy? He was a wannabe cholo and now he had just been left behind by his own family. They knew a bit about the Armenian family that ran AP, mostly their father and his oldest son and of course, another had been killed by them. As they tied up and gagged the AP gangster, Jimmy thought to himself, This guy could help us at least end the war with them. Either as a ransom back to his old man in a trade or he can inform on his own gang. I would if they left me.

4 Days Later

Patrick tried his best not to scream but the Armenians had already sawed off his left foot. Tavit grinned like a jack o'lantern and held his foot up to the serial killer. "What is that expression? Put a foot in your mouth?" He forced the serial killers own foot down his mouth. The blood was spraying everywhere and two Armenian Pride gangsters held him down and Mardak began to cauterize the wound.

This earned an angry growl that turned into a scream. The words of what Paul had said happened to a man who screamed when being tortured had reached the serial killers ears and he respected the savage nature of what Paul had done to his enemies. He wondered if there was truth to that. He also wondered if Paul himself could hold up to torture without screaming.

Patrick screamed, unable to control it and cursed himself for being unable to stop himself. He wondered if killing his tormenters and getting them to scream would reverse the idea of his spirit being their slaves in the afterlife? He would find out if they didn't kill him. "YOU FUCKIN ARMPITS ARE GONNA GET A STICK UP YOUR ASS SO FAR IT COMES OUTTA YOUR MOUTH!" He roared but they tortured him with heavy metal to drown it out.

Mardak punched him in the face once in the left cheek and once in the chin. He had a pair of brass knuckles and he knocked out four of the serial killers teeth. Three back teeth and one of his front top teeth.

"I used to read the newspapers, watch the stories, even the documentaries about you..." Tavit began addressing the Waston born serial killer. "They built you up to be such a terror. The man who did not stop at killing men women and even unborn children. Just like that Michael Johnson asshole in the AV saw that James Landon was nothing but a punk when he went to prison and put his head on his stomach...I am seeing the same with you."

"Untie me then, you Armo piece of shit..." Patrick challenged with a bloody smile. "Even with one foot I'll be wearing you as a skin suit. And you know I would. That's why you NEED these faggots here. To help you keep me tied up. You know what would happen otherwise."

Mardak laughed at his words. "Even if that is true, think of it more as though you are little more than a wild animal. And we are the zoo keepers. Any caution on our part is common sense. You might be a punk but a punk can be dangerous under the right circumstances."

"Mark my words you little dollar store cholos. When I get out of these ropes and I wil get out of them...unless you shoot me in the head right now...I'm gonna do what the Turks couldn't. I'll finish what they started on your family."

"You know who stopped our genocide?" Smirked Tavit. "Us. We didn't have to wait for the United States and Britain to free us from our oppressors the way you Jews can."

"That's funny, coming from Armenian Jesus. You fight a bunch of Muslims, you got a Christian majority country and the guy you worship is a jew. I rejected my heritage and God a long timne ago. you're not a real killer unless you kill somebody you love. Don't you remember what I did at that synagogue? The chosen people are nothing to me. There is nothing waiting for you on the other side but a void. Nothingness. The only mercy is to be enveloped in it. Death is the true God. He comes for all. But unlike your butt buddy on the west coast, I don't claim to be death. I'm not. I'm simply his humble servant."

"You aren't much of anything now...you're going to tell us where those other motherfuckers in the BSU are. Their exact routines. Their hideouts. Or we take the other foot. Then your hands. And after that I get real creative. You would be surprised at how long we can keep a piece of shit like you alive and still make your life a living hell."

"I'm gonna tell you something you've probably never heard before but have probably wanted to hear your whole lives. You look like spics. But you know. Armenian spics. Okay? Now you can take off the wife beaters, hair nets and khakis and go back to just being walking carpet immigrant from turks or even Armenians. At least Mexico gave us tacos...what did you give the world?"

"We're going to give them the Iceman on ice..." Mardak shot back. They started in on his other feet.

"It doesn't matter what you do to me. What Lee is going to do to your son is going to make what you do pale in comparison."

Tavit sneered. "Daniel was weak. He got caught in a simple snatch and grab. It was meant to be. I have lost two sons. One to you and the other to his own incompetance."

"Now see that's side, dad!" Patrick smirked. "If I had just gotten my hands on your Danny boy before the others got to him, you'd still care about him the same way as your other child I snuffed out. Course, you'd be putting flowers on his grave but you'd still love him."

Tavit grabbed the hacksaw. "I did not lack love for my son. But if he is dead there is nothing I can do and if he is alive, the Romans will either try and have him tell things about our operation and if he is compromised he is no good to any of us alive. This is war. If he betrays his family, his family has a right to leave him to the wolves. But if they don't do that, they will call us to try and ransom him. That won't work either. I won't pay a dime for him. But we can go through the motions and I will send my men after theirs in the drop and kill them."

"What happens when they get you?" The Ice Man looked directly at Mardak. "You're a tough guy. And I have no doubt in a prison fight you could..ooh!" He shivered. "Really fuck me up! But I already killed your youngest brother..." He then looked at Tavit. "Your youngest. Or were you not proud oh him either? Is this one the only one you're proud of? Because..." He started to laugh. "When my own followers get here, and they will find me, they're only gonna have one son left. We just went through this game back in New like to think you'll die before your son but the Militia will make sure it's Mardak who dies first so that you have nothing."

"I still have my health..." Tavit chuckled. He handed the hacksaw to his eldest. "Here. You take his other foot. The Ice Man has put his attention on you. It's time you put your attention on him..." He took the buzz saw and began to saw off the Ice Man's other foot and this time Tavit took the blowtorch to Duk' bakhtavor yek', vor menk' khmum yenk' ts'avi hamar: We will take a break for the night but tommorow we start on your hands. See if you are more cooperative then. We want the men who sent you to kill my son in the first place."

(You are lucky we have a drink for the pain.)

"And your son wants to be alive but we can't always get what. we want..." Smiled Patrick with an agonized smile but twisted just the same. Mardak punched him in the stomach winding him. Patrick wheezed trying to catch his breath. "Just kidding, brother...calm down...he doesn't want anything...I made sure of that..." He continued with his twisted laugh and Mardak drove a knee into his ribcage on the left. "Every bit of pain you feel...that is for Iz."

"Iz...? As in Isabel? Isn't that a girl's name...?" Mardak hit him with a left blow in the nose and broke it. "My father has the reputation that none of us have topped, you are right. But we are up and coming. I think they will keep Daniel alive. And we will find him and burn anybody involved in taking him."

With that, Mardak picked the saw up and began to saw through flesh and bone and he grinned and gritted his teeth at every motion as he sawed into the bastard's ankle. He loved the sound of the Ice Man's screams. Tavit was recording the screams. "This is a kodak moment. Father and son quality time..."

"i could not agree more, hayrik..." Mardak smiled as he saw the saw bring more of the Ice Man's blood and bone to open air. "This is going on the internet...how the most notorious serial killer of the twenty first century was brought down by concerned private citizens."

They sawed until he passed out. They cauterized the wound like before and they took the two feet and put them on ice. "We're going to show the IAA we're not fucking around. They send a serial killer loose to terrorize Los Santos just to win an interstate gang war. If we disable their weapon, they'll see..."

"Why does he think we're in bed with Neto?" Asked Mardak.

"Because of the Southside alliance. An alliance we never wanted but was forced on us since we were outnumbered in the prison system. But we started because of gangs like Cerco Blanco giving us problems. I've lost a lot of good friends over the years to them. But they were the strongest group in prison. It made sense."

"It killed Daniel to not be able to fight CB's in there. But he got his share of bloodshed on the streets. He was always street smart but they got him...papa...are you sure you won't let me send some soldirers...just a few of us to go and find him?"

"We don't know where he is. We will find out later. I'm not saying no. I am saying not now. But when we get Daniel back he still will need to get a violation for his stupidity and getting caught in the first place. When we get him back we will have to find out what he told them. It might serve us better to keep him there or return him there. Use him to cause misinformation among the enemy."

cauterize it. As he screamed as Mardak went to work sawing through his remaining foot, Tavit took a swig of alcohol and warned Patrick in Armenian, "Du indz Hisus anvanets'ir: Duk' arrajiny ch'ek', ov asum e sa."

"I don't know what that fuckin pig latin means. ENGLISH!" He roared.

"You called me Jesus. You are not the first one to say this. If you read the bible and study the likes of Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost you'd find that Satan is not the king of hell. He is a prisoner just like the rest of us. He's the one who sends you to hell. Satan was already there. Mr. Iceman...welcome to the first day of the rest of your eternal punishment.."

He smirked and then took his cigar and pressed it against his bleeding foot. Patrick held back from screaming with great restraint but his face turned as red as a tomato but with the blood loss he was pale. He then grabbed Patrick's left hand. "Long sleeve or short sleeve? This is what African warlords ask before taking an arm."

He cut Patrickj's hand off when he didn't answer.

North Vinewood,

Los Santos

Three Days Later

They had not been able to get to Daniel. They had presumed him from dead. Mardak had checked the obituaries in New Arcadia Parish as well as all hospitals with any gunshot wounds admitted that resembled where Daniel had taken a few rounds. There hadn't been so far but there had been a number of their homies that had been confirmed to be AP after they died once the NAPD ran their details through the police computer. But they had their objective. Patrick smirked in front of them both with a mouth full of bloody insults.

"Would you like to hear an Armenian joke?"

"Sure. Humor me..." Spat Patrick. "It will be what I remember you by."

Mardak continued. "Before I do, maybe some background into our fatherland, yes? It deals with 2 friends who live in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan. One of them is originally from a small city/village called Aparan. People from Aparan sadly have been subjects to A LOT of jokes in Armenia for some odd reason. I guess you can say it's like the Armenian equivalent to "Florida man." They're viewed as gullible or unintelligent. Having been there I didn't notice anything wrong with them personally. They were simple and nice people. But anyways, I digres."

"You're overexplaining. Get to the fuckin joke."

"There is a man from Aparan and a man from Yerevan. The man from Yerevan says, "Hey man, I've always wanted to go see Aparan, where you were born. How about we go there together one day? So that man from Aparan says, "No it's fine. There's really nothing much to do up there. A bunch of people acting stupid, that's all."

The man from the capitol says, : "Oh c'mon, it can't possibly be that bad. I'm sure it's just a stupid stereotype. I mean look at you, you're nothing like that. Let's just go!"

The man from Aparan says, "Fine, if you want. But don't say I didn't warn you."

"So both friends drive to Aparan and they see a man in the middle of a field rowing a boat.

The man from Yerevan pointed out, : "Hey, what the hell is that guy doing?"

His friend says, "If only I knew how to swim, I'd head over there and ask him!"

Patrick laughed. Mardak also chuckled. "You are an Armenian at heart, no?"

"No...I'm just thinking about what I'm gonna do to your family when I get out of here. Besides...there could NEVER be a funnier Armenian joke than YOU.'

Mardak retained his smile but he took the wrench he had already used to hit him on the knees with a controlled amount of force. "You are just like the Night Slasher, you fool. He got caught in East LS by a bunch of people in the neighborhood and they jumped him and he got caught. It is the same thing with you. We have caught you but we are not going to waste tax payer dollars."

"You expect me to believe a felon dipshit that got caught like you has ever paid taxes?" Snorted the Ice Man. "I'm a goddamn repeat offender and even I've paid more taxes than you lazy immigrant shit bags..."

He hit him in the face with the wrench causing a cut on the left side of his jaw. He grunted in anguish rather than screaming and he turned on the Armenian with bloody eyes. "As far as anybody's concerned...other than your half assed soldiers it's mainly down to you two as far as the top dogs go. But you go ahead. You slit my throat because if you don't I'm going to get out of here and ruin everything you ever loved."

"Daniel's a dead man...your brother?! Even if you take me out there are plenty of fuckin psychos besides me on this side of things..."

"The only side of anything you are going to see is the wrong side of daisies, my friend. I really do think they need to make a Vinewood movie about you. They've already made a show about you..." Tavit announced to the Northeastern born serial killer. "And at least half the murders on that show are based on your real kills. But imagine if they made a Vinewood film about ALL of your kills?"

"I'm listening..."

"Confess to me all your murders. I know a meticulous man like you knows exactly how many souls he has harvested. Confess to me. I can't promise you a salvation when you die. I am an atheist. I could be wrong but i do not think so an I think you are the same way. But a Vinewood movie that wins awards will make you truly immmortal. Bring back the movie business. Everything is in tv shows and even those dreadful serial killer podcasts you inspired. Is that all you want your fame to mean my friend? Serial killer podcasts? Perhaps a made for TV movie on Lifeline?"

"Don't you DARE think I'd ever let my life story be on some FUCKIN COOZE CHANNEL!" Barked Patrick. He then flashed a manic grin at the Armenian gang leader. "I'll play along, Fake Jesus. I'll give you my confession..."

Mardak gave one of their soldiers an order in Armenian and he grabbed a notebook and a pen. "Start with your first kill and the timeline of it. We want dates. Thet only way we won't kill you is if we get a movie rights deal out of it. We will keep the whereabouts of wherre you are from the authorities until the time is right. When they put you on death row you willl get some degree of civility, my slasher friend. But only in the way of a good last meal. But the fact is this. You are going to die. Nothing you say or do will change that..."

"We ALL die..." Patrick began but Mardak punched him in the face breaking his nose. "Do not interupt my father."

"But you can have a say in what your legacy is. We can kill you here and now. Or we can give you back to your IAA handlers and they would either throw you in the deepest hole or they would kill you themselves quietly. You can end up a corpse unable to tell his side of the story. Or you can live your last days as a king. As much as a serial killer can expect. You will give the locations of the victims after that. Also written down. Any victims who have not been discovered. The interviews you will get with big names in the media will get you a certain level of fame. They will remember who you are at least one hundred years after you are gone. This is better than most of us can hope for..."

Patrick was weak from the blood loss but the Armenians cauterized the wounds and Tavit ordered that he be given some rest under close guard and fed and his wounds tended to. Two, three days passed and the handless and footless serial killer had tried to attack them still but it didn't take him more than a day to figure out that without his hands and feet he was at their mercy. Every night that he slept, he had both feet hanging above his reach on a hook above him.

He had covered his serial kilings in the northeast and then the southeast followed by everything he had done in New Arcadia and Sunbelt. Their scribe wrote everything down faithfully in english and on his own time, copied the writings into Armenian and Russian as well as Spanish from the homies from Armenian Pride that associated with other Vago barrios.

He even was asked about his upbringig when he was young. When he resisted telling them, they tortured him again. When his feet had begun to stink after a day or so, Tavit, being the sick bastard that he was, put his feet in a freezer. He would freeze the feet and put them up on the hook every night. He wanted to attack the guards and get a gun but not having hands or feet made him unable to use anything. He was trapped.

As they took a break and he was given help with eating, being fed Clucking Bell for now, he was given a sip of Hepsi. It was easy enough for him to grab his food with his bandaged stumps to a point but usually it was easier to let the AP members hold the chicken pieces for him with gloved hands. Mardak was enjoying some of it himself, though not usuallly as fond of fast food as his brothers were, or American food for that matter, he had come to appreciate some of it.

He took a sip of his Root Beer and then with serious eyes, addressed the last thing he had written. "So...you killed Ernesto Santana's daughter."

"Yeah. And Lee Shen killed his son. The world can blame Marcus Roman for it all they want but he didn't do it. Maybe it doesn't matter. His soldiers are a reflection of him, either way. She was just one of many, amigo..."

"It would be if we turned you over to what remains of the Aztecas."

"Ernesto was out bad when he died with his own organization and even though not everybody in New Austin Onda tried to kill him, he still had a green light from the San Andreas boys. He was a corpse no matter what. His daughter was collateral and his son? Brains or no brains, he was a soldier."

"He still had enough friends in his organization that they wouldn't like the way his daughter was killed. A woman who helped people. Even if she was somewhat complicit...even if she wasn't innocent...you killed a woman that was loved out there. The Aztecas would rip what was left of you and your serial killing cronies that have also infested my city. They think they're going to pull another Vinewood Hills murder like back in 1969. That is not going to happen. We have you."

"Just one question. Why turn me over to the law when you said before I was going to die? Especially after what I did to your brother. Why the change of mind? I thought I wasn't worth tax dollars."

"You're not but you can make it back in the millions in box office we would make."

"So you're just another idiot douchebag in Vinewood that wants to be a moviestar?" Chuckled the Ice Man. "Pathetic. Where's the heart of being a gangster, Mardak?! You've made it plastic."

"This is Vinewood, Iceman. The streets are far from Vinewood's studios but never too far. Even North Vinewood has a rough element."

"Oh I know..." He grinned with a wicked beam. "And when I get outta here it's gonna be even more of a shit hole when I get done with it..." He laughed maniacally. "I was helping them kill Vagos before. And Aztecas. I'd..do it for fun...but now because of you Cerco Blanco is going to be the default gang around these parts."

"We'll be taking care of them too..." Mardak shrugged. "They're not the problem they used to be. And as much as the cops love to fuck with our soldiers and our operations, they hate Cerco Blanco more. They hate them."

"Ocho Street is going to mop the floor with you..." Patrick growled. They'll wipe out any of you I don't kill..."

He had just named one of the cliques in East Ls who despte being a different CB varrio than the ones in Vinewood, they didn't live that far from each other. It was a fifteen minute drive on average.

Alderney City

He was glad to be off work. It was three in the morning and he was walking back. He hated walking through the neighborhood. Sometimes just like back west, people tested you out here too. There were drugs everywhere. It was like they never even changed cities. He wished he could just take the money he had and run away again. Maybe actually go to Vice City this time.

Down there, maybe just maybe they could go byu their old names. He wanted to keep his family together but he didn't want to ruin their lives by having them pay for something he did. The streets were filled with the usual drug dealers on the corner as well as hookers. He sighed. In some ways it was better than LS. It was different in so many ways but on the other hand, they were in a neighborhood that was no safer than Davis had been.

Mahesh Avenue may as well have been Strawberry Avenue and Flauson Avenue. At least the Chinese food in the neighborhood was good. A lot f other spots were too. He supposed Alderney wasn't all bad but he was home sick but he knew he couldn't go back and he needed to shove that thought down. He had heard on the news about San Andrean headlines and a Weazel News story had talked about Mai Thu and how she was an IAA agent that was now burned.

She might not even be alive anymore but he recalled doing jobs in the past with her and Ivan and now at best she got to be a fugitive. At worst she would be a corpse. As he walked, he thought about Sugar and hoped she was all right wherever she was. She deserved a fresh start but he wasn't so sure he did.

He was only hanging in for the sake of his family and the idea of putting it all back together. He wanted to make up for lost time. "Oye, puto!" Growled a baratone voice. He looked to see a man in a gold and black sweater with a hoodie. He was of Puerto Rican descent. He then recognized these men. They were some of the punks he had seen before around there. The ones he fought off.

He rushed at him but he was six inches taller than the young gangster who was clearly high off of speed. He could also smell alcohol and the pack of wolves surrounded him. He swung a blow at the tall white guy who he had never seen before because he was the closest in height to him. The white Puerto Rican grabbed him and threw a left jab to the ribcage. "Amor de Caballero!" He growled. His friend, a man no more than nineteen perhaps, with a slicked back modern style pompadour kicked him in the left ribcage and followed up with a wild punch that nearly missed but connected with his chin.

Grizz head butted him. A flurry of punches followed by kicks bombarded him as he felt the gravity drop him to the ground. "What now you punk motherfucker?!" The big man was punching him in his gut and face while the others just kicked.

Dennis got up in a rage and hit the black SL member in the face with a hard left hook to the nose and he saw blood and knew it was a solid hit. The man staggered back but didn't fall. Grizz tackled him and got him on the ground.

"Try this shit, maricon!" Growled the Puerto Rican and Mexican teen as he stabbed him in the back having pulled out a pockey knife. It was a six inch knife. He stabbed the middle aged OG in the back once, twice, three, four times.

As he fell collapsing at the sharp pain and as he coughed up blood from being stabbed, the blonde haired SL racked his M9 and aimed at the fallen Grizz's face.

"You in the wrong hood, motherfucker..." Grinned

A shot was fired but it wasn't from him. It did hit him, however. The next shot was aimed at the one who had initially rushed him tonight. The Glock 19 made short work of him before he could do anything.

The African American SL managed to get his .380 out of his waistband and discharged a shot but the round hit the concrete. The four shots hit him in the abomen. First in the solar plexus, then just below the left breast bone area, then the stomach and lastly the waist. The gang member fell.

The stranger fired striking the kid who stabbed Grizz three times in the back and he saw the wounded teen limping, barely conscious. He was going to put an extra round in the back of his head but he felt a pair of arms grab his gun. The man drove a knee into the groin of the gang member and put the barrel against his chin and squeezed again.

He blew the man's Adams apple all over the hood of a beaten up beige Perenial. He went to once again try and shoot the stabber but he saw movement to his left. He fired a shot at one of the retreating gangsters and hit the man in the right hip.

He realized what had happened. A few of them had guns but not all of them and now the ones that didn't have them were fleeing no longer wanting to fight now that there were two against the rest of them but the second man had a gun.

"I've got you, man...hold on...shit...we both need to get clear of this area. I'm not trying to be selfish. I know you should be in an ambulance."

"Ambulance drivers..." He wheezed. "Cost money..."

"I would have paid for it. But maybe this way is better. Do not try and talk. You have a punctured lung. That straw will buy you some time but you will need surgery."

"They were fucking with me...before...I got the best of em last time. But this time...I guess they wanted to put in work on me..."

"Put in work?"

"Yeah. You know...kill..."

"Is that an expresion in this city? I've been around different neighborhoods in Alderney City. I live just up the street from there."

"Nh man..I'm not from around here...it's a Vice City expression..." He lied.

"oh I see. In Liberty City and out here there's a lot of names for killing somebody in the ghetto. I just learned what a buck fifty means in this city..but yes..you don't sound local."

"What's your name?" The immigrant asked.

"Dennis...who are you..?"

"My name's Niko Bellic. I'm a luxury cab driver."

"Man,..I always tried to be proud of my culture even if I came from a broken home but...there weren't role models for us...but now...it's fucked up but I know there's niggas back where I come from that would have left me to die in the streets. And then you...Russian cat come in and save me.."

"I was raised to help whoever needs it. Besides, I am an American citizen too. Maybe not for as long as your family has been in the United States but isn't that what America is supposed to be about? A chance for a new start? It's a start I wouldn't have been able to have back home. So since we are country,en and we live in the same neighborhood, it's the least I could do..." He then added, "That being said I have a past. I've done some things in Liberty City that weren't legal. Here too before I turned my life around. When I first got to this country, maybe I would have watched you die if you got stabbed in Broker or Bohan but I don't like punks that gang up on people."

He noticed Dennis's face. "Dennis, man! Keep talking to me we're almost to the hospital.."

He pulled up into the parking lot just as the dying ex Baller passed out. "Shit! I guess I have to carry this big motherfucker inside. Thank God we're already here!" He lifted Dennis out to the best of his ability and carried him the way he'd carried other soldiers in battle. He lowered him to a chair. "SOMEBODY FUCKING HELP US,MAN! HE'S BEEN STABBED!"

---

That's all for this chapter. It's a long chapter but I wanted to get this wrapped up. it will be over soon but there will be a sequel that will not be nearly as long but wrap up what needs to be wrapped up.

I had to cut short a lemon that will probably have to be next chapter but this story will be between 95 and 100 chapters but possibly 95 if i can wrap up what can be wrapped up for this chapter. I had a typo even in this authors note it's 11:30 at night and I'm just wrapping this up just like I just updated A World Without Fear. Trying to get this and that finished in the next couple of months. Anyway as for the fictional basis (Forgive the type with regards to the Beauregard Town i misspelled it and accidentally deleted a word and now i forgot what French translation i had decided on when I looked into it.

Things don't look good for Ant's brother now that Neto handed them over to the BSU. As far as what happened to Patrick the serial killer not only will he survive this he will be even more ruthless than before and this torture is a place he can constantly go to in his mind to make himself more brutal.

And I thought it would be funny to have Grizz and Croak run into the Kibbutz family members but to have father and son split up one with each brother. And Dennis/Grizz got to meet Niko too but under very bad circumstances. A lot more chaos will unfold all over LS as far as gang retaliations and massacres but for now I'll leave it at that.

auHe is based on Beauregard Town in Baton Rogue.

La maison Pernod is based on the Absynthe house in the 4th ward of New Orleans,

La maison Pernod

240 Bourbon Street

Till next time.