Page 119 of Resilience

“Complicated as in the Perro shit?” Chris asked. He wasn’t related to any of the older Bulls and hadn’t even been a prospect back then. But those years had become club lore, and Julio Santaveria was like a monster under the bed to those who hadn’t experienced it firsthand.

“Not the same,” Maverick said, “but in the ballpark, yeah.” He cleared his throat and leaned in. “Look. Mexico was chaos right after we ended Santaveria. He left a huge vacuum down there, and a bunch of assholes he’d choked out came out of the cracks and starting fighting over the Perro bones. Eventually things calmed down, and it looked like they’d made a truce, but what really happened is somebody is climbing to the top of the heap, and the competition is shrinking.”

“Dora Vega,” Apollo supplied. “La Zorra.” When Mav made a gesture clearly throwing the subject to Apollo, he kept going. “Dora has big resources, a powerful will, and a stomach of steel. This chick is systematically subduing or subsuming the other cartels, from old names to upstarts. She’s got a couple of serious rivals left, which is my call on why she ordered full-on artillery from the Russians, but it’s obvious that she’s the force to reckon with down there. It’s also clear that she’s got every bit the power Santaveria had if not more—or will soon. Niko wants his alliance with her to stay strong, and Dora wants a pipeline into Canada that goes straight up the coast. And she wants it now.”

“Guns south and drugs north,” Caleb’s tone was somber. “And we’re on the hook for the whole distance?”

“Maybe not,” Eight said. “According to Niko, Dora’s done some research of her own, and she likes the look of the Horde in SoCal.”

“They ride straight, though,” Fitz said.

Dex let out a dark chuckle. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Missouri Horde ride straight now and probably won’t ever work dark again. They were never built to be hardcore outlaws. But the Horde in SoCal were Scorps back in the day. Those guys have got to be going crazy on the straight road. You know they’re not making any bank. What, selling custom bikes? Come on.”

For the first time in the meeting, Eight grinned. “A couple of ‘em do stunt riding for Hollywood, too, don’t forget.” The smirk on his face and the snark in his tone made it clear what he thought about that, and most of the patches laughed. “Anyway, point is, maybe SoCal jumps down off the high road and gets pulled in with us, and they can handle the southern segment of the run, bring it to Eureka, and our new charter can handle the northern segment. If we work this right, we could get all the Bulls out of Mexico on these runs. I think that’s worth some bullshit in Eureka.”

Sam felt like he was the one in deeper than he could swim. So much of this discussion was based on things he knew only as stories, or didn’t know even that well. He’d kept his mouth shut and simply listened, trying to gather as many details as he could so he could work later on understanding them all as well as he could.

But he had one question he needed an answer to before he could begin to understand how and why all this would work. “Can somebody lay out what the routes would look like? If that’s not a stupid question.”

Fitz answered him. “It’s not stupid, Sam. It’s complicated. In general, if it all works out like we want, it’ll look like: we pick up from the Russians, as always, and move it to Laughlin. Laughlin carries it to the Horde in SoCal, if the Horde is in, and the Horde moves it south. If the Horde’s not in, Laughlin takes it into Mexico, like they’re doing now. They flip the cargo and turn around, take it north to Eureka, where whoever we’ve got up there takes over and moves it to Canada. That’s in general. Shit changes a lot, and sometimes Niko will have cargo going to him, but those are the routes we’re trying to lay down.”

“Thanks, bruh,” Sam said, once the map made sense in his head.

“Okay, fellas,” Eight said. “We’ve had our little chat. I hope y’all got what you needed to off your chest.”

As if sensing that Eight was about to be undiplomatic, Maverick took over. “What it comes down to is we owe Niko. We almost lost millions of dollars of his cargo, and it doesn’t matter that it happened in Laughlin. There’s no use pointing fingers at them, because they’re us. It was a Bulls fuckup, period. We had a spy in one of our houses, he was there for a while, and Niko’s confidence in our partnership took a hit. On top of that, he handled the problem at the root of all that, a problem the Bulls weren’t able to solve, at least not quickly enough. If we decide we really don’t want to do this patch-over, then let’s understand: the vote would be to break with the Volkovs. That might be the right move, but let’s not pretend that isn’t dangerous, too.”

Looking at his father, Duncan asked, “The Nameless are not good guys, right?”

“No, they are not,” Maverick answered. “They terrorized Humboldt County for a long time. They don’t have that kind of power these days, but yeah. When weed was king, they played dirty.”

Duncan nodded. “Okay, so maybe there won’t be a lot of blowback if we disappear them. If we do that thing you talk about, the nice patrol, or something—”

Mav smiled. “Charm patrol.”

“Charm patrol, right. Maybe we can make things better there. I mean, we don’t get shit from the cops here in Tulsa, because we play nice.”

“On that point,” Eight cut in, “I got no interest in digging into this right now, but it has to be said at this table that we have room in Tulsa because we play nice and we don’t cross City Hall. Also, we pay. We don’t give ‘em a reason to get in our way. I don’t give one ripe fuck how righteous you think your cause is, or how careful you think you are. I don’t care if you’re an officer. I don’t care if you’re the goddamn SAA. The next fucker, or collection of fuckers, that puts down a civilian without clearing it first at this table, I’m gonna have their motherfuckin’ patch. And if you hurt the club with that bullshit, I will have your motherfuckin’ life.”

He was, of course, talking about Hunter, as everybody at the table now knew. That had been a few weeks ago, and as far as Sam knew, there was no blowback from that at all. The report was he’d died in a car wreck. He’d been buried. End of story. Eight had had his rant at most of the people involved already, Sam included, but they hadn’t had a formal meeting until now.

“Is there trouble about that?” Sam asked—and then clenched; he hadn’t meant to speak.

“Not. The. Point, Sammy,” Eight growled.

“I’m not going to apologize, Eight,” Apollo said. “It’s on me, I set it up. And I was not about to ask permission to deal with the fucker who raped my daughter.”

“You think you wouldn’t have gotten it?” Eight demanded. “There’s nobody at this table who doesn’t love Athena and wouldn’t kill that bastard with their hands.”

“I think it doesn’t fucking matter. I wasn’t asking permission.”

“Then you shouldn’t have used the barn.”

Apollo was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded. “You’re right. For that, I apologize.”

As if that alone was all Eight had needed, he took and released a deep breath, rocked his head back and forth like he needed to loosen the muscles of his neck, and said, “About the Nameless, I like Duncan’s point. Maybe we don’t go in big and loud. They didn’t do us wrong, so they don’t need to be a message. They just need to get out of the way. Maybe we just take the fuckers out quietly and fill in the space they leave. Then we can do charm patrol and be the good guys in town. Yeah, it’s starting from scratch again, but maybe we’ll be the heroes this time. Maybe that’s the play.”

Jay slapped Duncan’s arm. “Good one, bruh.”

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