Lethal Blue Ch 03

In front of Bronson Riddick stood the remainder of what was left of a once proud crew now with just five men remaining. Just five!! Bronson stood before them looking down at his feet with his arms folded.

JIMMY CHEN: 32 years old, half Asian and half white. He had an unpleasant scar on the left side of his face and looked like just to kind of man you expect to be in the cocaine trade.

CLAYTON RADCLIFFE: a steroid assisted weightlifter and Bronson Riddick's right hand man. By far the biggest man in the crew weighing in at 265 pounds. Like Riddick he too was bald. He wasn't known for his intelligence and served mostly as a debt collector and intimidator. Nobody knew his age but most people would guess him to be in his mid fifties.

PHIL LARSEN: The oldest of the crew at 65, he was healthy for his age.

BOBBY D: his real last name: Dayco. Everyone called him Bobby D.

JASON MOSCATELLO: the youngest of Riddick's crew at just 21, a wanna be gangster. He was good looking with high cheekbones and a full head of movie star hair. He did well with women and had big dreams of one day replacing Bronson Riddick.

Bronson slowly raised his head looking at them all disapprovingly:

" Gentlemen...." He began.

"...this crew, the Red Scorpions, the crew that I built from the ground up, the crew that moves more than a hundred million dollars of cocaine a year in this city....."

Bronson had to pause before continuing as the reality he was facing was almost too painful to bare

"... am I to understand that this crew, MY crew is slowly being whittled down one man at a time by a skirt? A FUCKING SKIRT?"

All five men knew that Bronson was talking about Julie Koop. The name alone made even the coldest gangsters slightly tense with fear. Her reputation in the criminal underworld was well known. Her ability to fire a gun with an accuracy that would make Wyatt Earp tremble in fear was legendary. There was something inherently terrifying about being on the receiving end of a gun that powerful. Even a hardened criminal had a secret fear about coming to learn that Julie Koop have been hired to end their life, although none would ever admit to that. There are plenty of stories of men absorbing a bullet or two from a smaller calibre weapon and living to tell about it, but the reality of being struck by a bullet that big was terrifying; it was a guaranteed death sentence.

"... I don't know who's paying that bitch to take us out, and I don't wanna know how many thousands of dollars she's made slowly reducing this once proud drug cartel to nothing more than a small girl guide troop, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her send the six of us to the crematorium!"

Bronson paused for a breath or two as he looked out at the twinkling lights of the city across the river. The night was dead calm with absolutely no breeze. He mellowed his tone slightly.

" ...last year she took out four of my men in one night.....our men. Rocky, Mikey, Frankie, and Slade. She had the balls to walk into one of my warehouses and take out all four of them in one night. In one night!!!! Can someone please explain to me how we're losing to Julie Koop???"

Bronson had to catch himself, he was losing his cool in front of his men. He cut himself off and quickly looked off into the distance for a moment or two before returning his gaze to the five men standing in front of him.

"How do you know it was her?" Phil Larsen asked.

"....ballistics Phil. Straight up ballistics. We found a bullet embedded in a pillar, it was a slug from a .44 magnum. I'm surprised it didn't go right through and keep going. Do you know anyone else who uses a hand gun like that?"

Bronson began slowly pacing back and forth and then stopped once again looking at the five men standing in front of him. Behind them the twinkling lights of distant skyscrapers and the familiar sounds of city life: traffic on the bridge deck above, distant police sirens and close by the sound of a homeless man pushing an empty shopping cart along a concrete sidewalk. It was moments like this that Bronson wondered why he didn't live in a beautiful spread in the country, maybe a sprawling ranch with some horses; whimsical dreams of retirement like this often went through his head.

Clayton spoke up:

"She's known for having perfect vision, 20/20. Supposedly she once shot an apple off somebody's head at 500 feet!! That's impressive!! She could pass a bullet through your chest before you've even seen her!!"

That statement caused Bronson to stop in his tracks.

"Right"

Clayton Radcliffe was no stranger to dodging gunfire. He had done a tour of duty in Iraq and knew what a bullet sounded like as it whizzed passed him faster than the speed of sound; he had no fear of death. Of the remaining members of the Red Scorpions he was without question the toughest and the one to be feared the most.

Bronson looked back at his men

"Gentlemen, we need to start taking this threat more seriously, get out there on the streets and tap into the circuit. Find out everything you can about this woman, and more importantly find out whose hired her to make us all extinct. Someone has decided that the Red Scorpions need to cease and desist, they want what we have. They want our territory and everything that comes with that and they've decided to hire Julie Koop to make that a reality for them. Now get out of here."

The five men nodded grimly and made their way to their cars driving off into the dark night all except Clayton who stayed behind to talk to Riddick. They were close friends and had been for a lot of years.

"You hitting up my party tomorrow night?" Bronson asked him.

" Fuck yeah. There's going to be women everywhere, right?"

".... You better believe it. I've got a $10,000 bottle of wine sitting in my wine cellar. I've been looking for an excuse for a while to pop the cork , I think it's about time."

The two men looked at each other briefly without saying anything. The looks on their faces seem to suggest that they were a little deeper in thought than usual.

"You know Clayton, we're not quite as young as we used to be. Considering our line of work we uhhhhh-"

Clayton finished his sentence for him:

" we should be dead?"

..."yeah."

There was an even longer pause before Bronson spoke again. At 58 years of age Bronson had been thinking about his own mortality as of late. He had never expected to live this long and recently had been feeling as though a dark cloud was slowly forming above him. Was his number up?

"Should we be worried about Julie Koop?" he asked feeling as though he already knew the answer.

"Naaaa. That bitch? She doesn't stand a chance against the six of us."

That statement from Clayton Radcliffe did nothing to calm Bronson's nerves. He was thinking about the four associates of his that Julie had effortlessly killed in his warehouse but said nothing.