Page 29 of Gold Rush
Goldie got the call that Hippy and Haze were ready to go, and Mims was waiting in the van in the alley. All they needed now was the distraction.
Cosmo was on the phone with Taran, who had the task force that were now sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for the BBC to raise their heads again, to swoop in and take the human traffickers down after the money was gone.
Everything was in place. Everyone knew their roles.
Goldie knew, if they could get these men, then the BBC was next. If they could possibly get more neighborhoods involved, more people to take their power back from the corruption of those policemen, then things might finally take a turn.
The worst thing in the world was to feel powerless against oppression and aggression. To feel like fighting, but unable to because you don’t have the army they have. You don’t have the weapons or the strength.
Goldie had felt that all through his youth. The powerless feeling of being a target and having no recourse. These people were trying to take back some of their power, and Goldie was proud of each of them.
Abs grabbed his hand and said, “They’re ready.”
“They are. Are you?”
As those pretty eyes of his narrowed in intense hatred, he gritted, “Let’s get them.”
The entire group started up the street to the building where the pimp and his minions were located. Mims kept a close eye on him all day, and Dane hadn’t stepped foot outside his door. Of course, he didn’t. It was a day before the drop. Saturday night, when the men of the pub would usually be performing but had pushed off opening the doors until eleven. Until then, they weren’t performing bartenders they were warriors, out for a cause.
When the crowd stood in front of the building, everyone started yelling for the pimp to come out and face them. The people who’d lost their kids to him were front and center of the crowd, screaming the loudest.
Finally, he came out, and like they suspected, all his guards and buddies were flanking him. “What the fuck you all want here?”
Goldie, Abs, and Cosmo moved up, and Cosmo said, “You hurt our friend, tried to kill him with a hotshot. You gonna deny it?”
He laughed, as did his buddies. “This junkie? He came begging me for some dope. I gave it to him! Is it my fault his eyes were bigger than his veins?”
The crowd went insane and lunged for them, and on cue, the goons took out weapons and started to flash them around, keeping the crowd back with the threat of opening fire. Like they’d all grown steel on their chests, they kept surging, and Goldie set his hand on his own weapon, ready to fire back if those assholes hurt even one person in that crowd.
He, however, was not the one who pulled his weapon. Abs pulled out a gun he’d had on him and walked right up to Dane, sticking the gun in his face, even as all the guns were suddenly turned on him.
“You think you can just take anyone you want? You think you can hurt anyone, use anyone, get them addicted to drugs so that they can’t fight back? You think you own people? How the fuck do you dare think it’s okay to own people?”
Goldie was by his side, pulling his own gun, but then he heard it behind him, a chorus of clicking that could only mean one thing.
At least half of the crowd of thirty people were holding their own rifles, handguns and even one had an assault rifle.
The tension was suddenly at a peak and Goldie worried his actions could get a lot of people killed. Cosmo must have felt the same, but he seemed to know what to do about it.
“What are you gonna do? Kill these good people? Tax paying, hard-working people? And you, the scumbags, are going to get off? If you live through it?”
Cosmo pulled his own weapon and stood by Abs, pointing it at Dane’s head. “If I shot you right now, no one would blame me, and I’m guessing all these good people would back me up that it was self-defense.”
“You’d be dead!”
“Maybe. But I won’t die before you.”
That seemed to shake Dane up a little. He smiled nervously and said, “You might.”
“Try me.”
Abs lifted his chin and said, “I guarantee you won’t get a shot off before the rest of us.”
“We want you out of this neighborhood,” some of the crowd hollered, and that got more hollering the same, and soon, it became a chant. Goldie felt his phone vibrating, and he took it out to see that the guys had gotten all the money, so he smiled so they could back off.
First, however, he said, “I think they’ll be leaving sooner than they think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dane screamed over the chanting of the crowd, but even that noise was overwhelmed by the sound of sirens closing in on the street.
