Big Daddy Sinatra_Bringing Down the Hammer Page 15

  Amelia turned back around, and Mick kept driving. But Amelia’s heart was hammering.

  “They didn’t give us any details,” Charles said. “It was very vague. He betrayed his country, they said.”

  “Not they,” Jenay said. “Dutch didn’t say shit. President McKenzie was saying all of this.”

  “But isn’t he the one who wants Hammer back in his administration,” Mick said.

  “He did want him,” Charles said. “But he had to clean up his act remember? When Amelia wasn’t killed, and then was released, things changed. And maybe he knew he couldn’t use him anymore. So he turned on him too.”

  “But my release wasn’t Hammer’s fault.”

  Charles and Jenay knew that they were claiming Hammer was the one who kidnapped her, but they didn’t even go there.

  “We don’t even know who released me,” Amelia said. “Did he say?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Charles said.

  “What do you mean?” Amelia asked.

  “They know who released you, Mill,” Charles said. “They weren’t going to tell me, but that was probably another reason why things changed. They know who released you.”

  “But who?” Amelia asked.

  A man rose up from the very back of the van where he had been in a concealed position. “Me,” he said to them.

  But as soon as they heard that voice, Mick slammed on brakes and turned around, pointing his loaded gun.

  Charles pushed Jenay’s head down and grabbed the gun that he had to keep in the van before he went on his White House excursion, turned around quickly too, and pointed it.

  But Amelia knew that voice, and she turned around too. But when she saw Hammer Reese sitting on that far back seat, she jumped from her seat. “Hammer!” she cried and ran to him.

  Hammer pulled her in his arms and held her even tighter than her brothers had, with his eyes tightly closed, as if he was having a cathartic moment with her.

  Jenay sat back up.

  Mick, his gun still pointed, looked at Charles.

  Charles continued to point his gun in Hammer’s direction, too, but he nodded for Mick to make the switch.

  Mick got from behind the wheel and, along with Charles, made his way toward Hammer and Amelia. Jenay got behind the wheel. She looked at Charles through the rearview. Charles nodded for her to drive. And she took off.

  There would be several more minutes of Hammer holding Amelia before they finally stopped embracing, Amelia sat beside him, and Charles and Mick could ask questions.

  And they had plenty.

  “I see how you hid in plain sight,” Mick said, as he and Charles checked out Hammer’s homeless man attire. “But how did your ass get in this van? And you weren’t here all along.”

  “No,” Hammer said.

  “Then how did you get in?” Charles asked.

  “I got in when you and your wife got in,” said Hammer.

  Jenay glanced at him through the rearview. “When we got in?” she asked.

  “That’s right. I knew Mick and Amelia would be distracted by the two of you getting in. I quietly got in too. All the way back here, but I timed it perfectly.”

  Jenay smiled and shook her head. She knew it was too early for her to be happy that Hammer was alive and well and back with Amelia, but she was happy. And never for once believed the lies they were telling on him. Treason? Hammer? She didn’t believe it.

  “Is that why things changed,” Mick asked, “because you found Amelia?”

  “Or did you place her there to begin with?” Charles asked.

  Amelia looked hard at Hammer. “Tell us what’s going on, Ham.”

  Hammer exhaled. “The president wanted me back in his administration as CIA Director. The only problem with that is that he already has a director, and that director, General Krane, is not interested in getting fired. So Krane starts this misinformation campaign. They ran an agency bait and switch on my guys.”

  “Meaning?” Amelia asked.

  “They enticed my men with money. Most didn’t bite, but those who showed some interest, fuckers like Targe Montalis I later found out, they roped them in with promises of death row sentences or life without parole sentences if they didn’t do exactly as they were told.”

  “So it was the CIA, on the orders of their director,” Amelia said, “that blackmailed Bone Crush and all of those men into doing what they did?”

  Hammer nodded. “Yes. Only it was rogue agents at the FBI, working under the orders of the CIA, that oversaw everything. Because remember, the CIA wasn’t above threatening those agents into doing what they wanted them to do just like they threatened my guys. We’re talking human beings here, not super humans.”

  “But why would they want Amelia out of the picture?” Charles asked. “That will only help your chances at confirmation if she, and her past, wasn’t around. That’s why Targe was saying you set that whole thing up.”

  “He was saying that because he was being told to say it,” Hammer said. “And it wasn’t the CIA that tried to take Amelia out. Krane didn’t want her out. He wanted her in to discredit me.”

  “Then who?”

  “It all started when the administration found out that Amelia’s operation was open for business again. The CIA hired Bone Crush and all the others to open it back up, but the reason was of no interest to the White House. It was back up and running, which would mean the end of my confirmation. That’s all they knew. So they put a plan in place quickly, with the bait and switch, and the order was given to shut it down by any means necessary.

  “Including Millie’s death?” Charles asked.

  Hammer nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “But the CIA director needed Amelia alive, and they needed drama around her family,” Mick said.

  “Right,” Hammer said. “They couldn’t pull anything over on you,” he said to Mick, “because that would involve too many variables and mob entanglements. It would be too much. But they knew Charles was clean. And that’s why they went after his family instead of yours.”

  Jenay looked at Charles through the rearview. He looked over at her too.

  “But when I got wind of what was happening,” Hammer said, “I fought back. That’s why I had Amelia kidnapped.”

  They all looked at Hammer. “You?” Amelia asked, stunned.

  “I had to,” Hammer said. “To protect you. To keep you away from your own government.”

  “But my family would have protected me,” Amelia said. “Charles and Mick would have protected me.”

  “Damn right,” Charles said.

  “Not from the government, you couldn’t,” Hammer said to Charles. “Only I can do that. And I did. Just in time, too, because Targe almost ended it all.” He took Amelia’s hand and squeezed it.

  “But you didn’t take Targe out,” Charles said.

  “No because I needed him to think that those guys in that van that nearly ran Amelia over, worked for the government. But as you saw at that papermill, the government did it for me.”

  “But why did you let them drug me?” Amelia asked. “Why didn’t you just tell me what was going on?”

  “Because I couldn’t risk being anywhere around you,” he said. “I had to stay away from you. They were gunning for me after everything fell apart, and they would have loved to get you too. I had them keep you sleeping because I knew you were capable. I knew you would try to take out every one of those fuckers and escape. Only you’d be escaping right into the arms of the government that wanted you expired. I had to stay away from you.”

  But Amelia was shaking her head. “You still could have told me.”

  “Let me back up,” Hammer said. “Before I knew what was happening, and before I knew what they were really up to, they sent a crew to Charlemagne.”

  “To take you out?” Amelia asked.

  “To take me out, yes,” he said. “But I took them out instead.”

  “So that’s where those dead bodies at your house came from?” Charle
s asked.

  “Yes,” Hammer said.

  “You missed one,” Mick said.

  Hammer shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Another crew was there the first time you guys showed up, waiting to ambush me too. I was in hiding, and I took them out after you left. That last guy you talk about was the last one they sent. A trained assassin. He was waiting to ambush me too. You guys took care of him for me.”

  Charles nodded. “We met with Targe after that. He tried to snitch, to win some favor for himself.”

  “I know that too.”

  “But why didn’t you come out of the shadows when you had Amelia dropped off in Jericho?” Charles asked.

  “Because the fact that Amelia lived meant I was now expendable to the administration. They knew I wasn’t going to let them try to kill my woman and get away with it.”

  “Thus, the treason charge,” Charles said.

  “The treason charge,” Hammer said, shaking his head. “Yes.”

  Charles exhaled. “These people we put in charge of our nation. Shady as hell!”

  “And even worse than that, Charles. But I have my spies too. And when I found out you guys had an audience with the president, I knew it was time for me to come out of the cold.”

  “Did any of this go all the way up to the president?” Charles asked.

  “Did President McKenzie know what was going on in his White House? It’s doubtful. He just knew it was being handled. How it was being handled wasn’t his business.”

  “We’ve got to expose this,” Amelia said. “We’ve got to . . .”

  But then Charles’s cell phone rang. Jenay looked at him through the rearview. Assuming it was probably one of their children, she told him to put it on Speaker.

  Charles placed it on Speaker, and then answered. But as soon as the sound came up, he heard gunfire.

  “Hello?”

  “We’re under attack, Dad!” It was Donald, and he was screaming from the top of his lungs. “We’re under attack!”

  Mick immediately hurried up to the front of the van.

  “Where?” Charles was asking his son. “At the house?”

  “Yes!” Donald cried.

  Mick moved Jenay from behind the wheel and got under it himself. And he sped off.

  “Who’s attacking you?” Charles asked. “Who’s attacking you?”

  But all that could be heard was more and more gunfire.

  “Donald?”

  “Donald?”

  “Donnie answer me gotdammit!” He nearly stood from his seat. “Answer me!”

  But there was no answer. Just more gunfire.

  “They think I’m there,” Hammer said.

  Charles looked at him.

  “They think you went to DC to take them off my trail,” Hammer said. “That’s how they think. They think I’m at your house. They’re there for me.”

  Charles was outdone. His children were caught in that avalanche of gunfire and he was the one who left them there! He was stunned.

  Mick was stunned, too, but he drove as fast as he humanly could. And even faster.

  Jenay made her way back to Charles. She was so terrified for their children she could barely walk. She was as stunned as Charles was.

  When she got to him, he pulled her into his arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Go now!” Brent yelled.

  Tony ran toward the back door with Donald. Bonita was in his arms and Ashley was by his side. But Tony needed his kid brother to understand the magnitude. Gunfire was unrelenting in the front of the house, and it sounded as if they were sitting ducks in a hopeless situation. But Tony was a man of faith. It was never hopeless.

  He hurried to Donald, grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around, as they stood at the back-exit door of the house. “Listen to me, Donald,” he said to him. “You’ve got to protect your sisters. You hear me? At all costs, you’ve got to put them first and protect them.”

  “I will, Tone.” Donald was so nervous he was shaking.

  “God will take care of you. All of you,” he said, looking at his terrified sisters too. “Just run and keep running. Don’t look back, you hear me?”

  “We won’t, Tone,” Donald said.

  “Dad will never forgive you, Donald, if you don’t protect his daughters.”

  Those words snapped Donald out of his state of panic. He was still terrified, Tony could tell, but he was determined to get it right too.

  “Go,” Tony said, and prayed as they ran out of the back door and toward the woods. And then he ran back up front, picked up the gun he had discarded when he stopped Donald, and returned to the front of the house where his brothers, Brent and Robert, were doing all they could to beat back the gunfire.

  The van pulled up on the backside of the property, and Mick and Hammer got out and ran. Charles looked at Jenay. His heart was pounding. But he knew which one had to be in charge. “Amelia,” he said to his sister, “look out for my wife.”

  Amelia nodded, with her gun in hand. “You take care of business,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  But just as Charles got out of the van, Ashley and Donald, with Bonita in his arms, came running toward them.

  “Daddy!” Ashley was crying in relief.

  “Dad!” Donald was crying in relief.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” cried Bonita.

  Charles ran to them. Jenay tried to jump out of the van and run too. But Amelia held her back. “You can’t!” she yelled. “He’s got it.”

  And he did. He was so relieved to see that they were at least okay, that he didn’t even take time to hug them. “Get to that van!” he ordered as he grabbed Bonita out of Donald’s arms, and Ashley and Donald continued running toward the van.

  Charles ran too, with his youngest child, and Jenay was standing and waiting to take her from him.

  Charles looked at Donald. “Get behind that wheel and get them out of here,” he ordered.

  Donald nodded. He was looking stronger, and more mature than Charles had ever seen him. “Yes, sir,” Donald said.

  “Charles, be careful,” Jenay said to him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to her, closed the door of the van, and then hit it. And Donald took off.

  Charles took off, too: to the action.

  It was full blown. But he could hear that all of the gunfire was up front. Charles saw how Mick and Hammer had run into the house, to assist his sons with the gun fight. But Charles had to see what they were up against.

  He stopped and listened. All of the gunfire was coming from one direction: the front left side of the house.

  He therefore hurried over to the right side of the house, kept his body and his loaded gun backed against the wall, and made his way toward the front. When he carefully peeped around the house, he saw the enemy. Four men, all dressed like fucking commandos, firing with major weaponry at their ready.

  But then he saw a change. Two of the four broke off, and they began running toward the left side of the house, while the other two provided them cover by firing in rapid succession. Charles knew what that meant. A backdoor attack was about to take place.

  He ran back along the right side of the house and peeped around, his gun at the ready. And as soon as he saw the two men turning that corner and running toward the back door, he stepped out and fired. Once and then twice. Taking both of them out.

  Then he ran along the right side just as Mick ran out. He’d heard the shots fired in the back of the house.

  “You okay?” Mick asked Charles.

  “There’s only two left,” Charles said. “Both on the left side. You go around the right side,” he said. “I’ll distract them on the left side. And then you take them out.”

  Mick Sinatra was unaccustomed to taking orders from any human being on the planet, but he took them from his brother. “Got it,” he said.

  And as he ran toward the front of the house from the right side, Charles ran around front from the left. And when he was certain Mick was in place
, he suddenly began firing at the commandos out front. They saw him, and were about to fire back at him, but Mick, as Charles knew he would, took them out.

  And then the only shooting that could be heard came from inside their house.

  And then that shooting stopped too.

  By the time Hammer and Charles’s sons ran out of the house, Charles smiled as he and Mick began walking toward them from different directions.

  But Charles was just relieved. And grateful that something that could have gone so wrong, didn’t.

  “You’re all okay,” he said as he walked. “We’re all okay.”

  But as soon as Charles pulled out his cell phone to call Amelia and tell her to bring his wife home, the van was already coming back. it turned onto the long driveway and began making its way toward the house.

  Mick and Hammer walked over to Charles, as they watched the van arrive. “That’s good timing,” Hammer said.

  “Right on time,” Charles said.

  And that was how it felt too. Like it was all right. Like everything, somehow, was going to be alright.

  When Jenay and Amelia got out of that van, they didn’t walk to their men. They ran.

  Ashley, with Bonita in her arms, and Donald ran right along with them.

  And as Jenay fell into Charles’s arms, and Amelia fell into Hammer’s, it had been a long time coming. Too close a call for comfort, but they were hopeful it would get back to normal now.

  And as the whole family began to head inside, sirens suddenly were heard in the distance. Charles looked at Brent. “Now they come?” he asked him.

  “I’m so used to you telling me to not get law enforcement involved when it comes to the family,” Brent said, “that I forget to call them.” The fact that he was too busy shooting and defending his family’s home didn’t help either, he thought.

  But everybody, from Charles on down, found a way to laugh.

  EPILOGUE

  A barbecue that turned into a dance party. In the backyard. Charles and his brood. Mick and his brood. Amelia and Hammer and their young son. Trevor Reese and Carly Sinatra, and even Tommy, Reno, and Sal Gabrini and their families, were there. Everybody eating and dancing and all of the children playing. But as a testament to the kind of influential families they were, there were ten different nannies, a slew of drivers, bodyguards, personal assistants, and limos, were there too.