Morally Ambiguous (Lo longer being updated)

Chapter 7

My chestnut hair, cut short and gelled, flopped lazily into my eyes as I stood up and looked around. The gaping hole in the side of the building was letting in a draft, chilling me to my bones. Like a wounded animal, the building groaned under the strain, metal beams barely holding the wall up above the wound in its side. My entry hadn’t really left me much room for error, or much need to be cautious. If there was anyone who could survive the impact or the blaze, I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to put them on the ground.

As the ceiling creaked and support struts collapsed, I hopped over my mangled car’s near non-existent chassis and inspected another Mafioso’s body. I had no respect for the dead, at least not these ones, as I pressed my smart black dress shoes into his bicep. One swift pull and I’d yanked his sub machine gun from his cold, dead fingers. An old Czechoslovakian Skorpion, hardly the Chicago typewriters I’d pictured. Lonely days at home forced you to watch any crap that was on TV, and the best of a bad bunch were the old Mafia films. Trilby hats, Tommy guns and pinstripe suits. Disgusting, thieving bastards, I thought as I spat at his corpse. I ripped a couple of Skorpion magazines from his jacket and climbed over fallen rafter to reach a doorway into the main garage office.

I opened it surreptitiously, cautious of what they might have had waiting for me. To my surprise, it was nothing, a blank empty corridor leading into a smoke filled, hazy room. Still, you can’t be too careful. I ducked down, keeping low to the ground and my back to the wall as I crept towards this dingy room. I could hear frantic shouting from inside, but it was in a foreign tongue. If they knew I was here, and also knew Italian, it was the sensible thing to do. I seemed to pick up about six voices inside, all sounding slightly upper class. As I rounded the door into their little spot, I took in my clouded surroundings.

It was an old school gambling den, ashtrays littering a poker table at the far end of the room. Still burning cigars lay smouldering on the green felt, alongside a pile of much more valuable green. From the haphazard way the cards were sprawled out on the table, it looked like they were drunk, possibly even hopped up on drugs. All the more easily taken down then, I smirked to myself. A slightly chubby, almost comical looking guy, sat at the head of the table, obviously the boss, or don. Everyone else in here mattered little to me, I just needed this particular piece of criminal scum alive. Glock pistol in my left hand, and the Italian’s Skorpion in the other, I prepared for a dramatic, almost cinematic, entry.

Two tables were up at my end of the room, providing ample cover for this little exchange of fire. Head low, I ran across and slid into cover behind a table far at the back, the Mafia all turning to look at what had just interrupted their discussion. As they scanned around, puzzled, dumb looks on their faces, I stood up straight and tall from behind my table. A swift kick and the table flipped onto its side as the Italians all un-holstered their side arms and took aim. I already had them in my sights, and my trigger finger was bloody itchy.

The spray of SMG rounds lit them up and scattered cards around the room, floating on the light breeze. Two mobsters took a multitude of hits and lay back in their chairs, lifeless. The other four pushed their poker table over and copied my half covered, half firing stance. Bullets whizzed past my face, splintering the wooden furniture behind me and their sound gave me an almighty, thudding headache. I ducked down from my firing for some brief respite.

Two pills down my gullet and I was back up and noticed movement to my left. One of them wanted to be brave and play the hero. He’d sprinted into cover behind the thin metal door and was firing blind around the side. “Nice idea, shitbrain!” I shouted sarcastically, before peppering the door with pistol rounds. A loud clang sounded out as his head dropped into the sheet metal, before sliding down to the floor. A small pool spilled out across the dirty carpet. Three down, two to go and one to kick the crap in to.

I inserted a fresh magazine into my pistol before popping up from cover. One had their leg extended just out from their cover, a bad move for him. One well-placed jacketed hollow point punctured his skin and fractured his shin, causing him to scream out in pain. He wailed like a banshee as I took aim at the other bodyguard, shielding the Don with his body. His head was poking out too, and a hollow point found its way into his skull. Crimson painted the wall as he dropped to his knees in front of his horrified and distraught boss. He reached into his pocket to find his own personal weapon.

I checked mine, but I had nothing left. We weren’t exactly give much ammo in the force, understandable really. They weren’t particularly fond of us shooting up gangs instead of bringing them in for questioning. Three magazines had already been expended in this short period of time. And that was just my pistol. Three clips of Skorpion ammo too had been buried into flesh or wood. I looked around desperately for an option and found one smouldering on the table between us.

In one swift movement, I vaulted my piece of cover and slid under the next one, sliding an ashtray from the sticky cedar wood as I went. My left hand grabbed a cigar from within and my right lobbed the ceramic, ash covered plate straight into the Don’s crisp clean jacket, smothering him in soot. The cigar changed hands as I sprinted across the two meter gap between that table and his gaming table. I pushed it back onto its four legs as I jumped into the air.

My legs dangled behind me as my ribs cracked into the felt, slightly tarnished and sticky with alcohol. It stung like a bitch but I continued my slide across the money laden expanse. The Don stood, awestruck at my acrobatic display. For a borderline alcoholic, nearly tripping on painkillers, I most definitely had a few tricks up my sleeve. His gaze widened as I grew closer and closer to his stomach, and he scrunched his eyes and tenses, expected my impact into him.

And impact I did. Like a cannonball, my shoulder barged into his fat, it quaking and wobbling like a bowl of jelly. Grimy, stinking, criminal jelly. His body folded up around me as the force threw us both into the back wall, and he almost gained the upper hand. His right arm clamped around my neck, a headlock that was near to choking me out and making all this futile. But I had an ace up my sleeve, and not just one of his poker cards. I produced the cigars tip, glowing faint orange, from the palm of my hand.

Whimpering, crying and howling like a spoilt child. Somehow he’d managed to fit all of those expressions of pain into one short burst of about seven seconds. The cigar seared into his flesh, smoke rose into the air as it burnt a red mark onto his skin. His writhing around in pain on the ground subsided as I withdrew the burning Cuban cylinder, but I added a little more pain in with a left hook to the jaw. He shuddered from the fist to his jaw and half closed his eyes. My fingers forced them open once again.

“You gonna do the talking yourself, or shall I beat you into it. I don’t really have a preference to be honest, one’s more fun but the other is quicker. Your move lardo, what’s it gonna be?”

He spat at my feet and turned his head away, like he was being asked for change by a beggar.

“Alright you arrogant bastard, I thought as much. I’m kind of in the mood for the fun way anyway. Don’t worry; you can pick your splinters out later.”

He looked up at me, confused as to what I was talking about. I think it dawned on him as the slightly rotten wood of a chair shattered across his forehead.