Free Levon's Trade (Levon Cade Book 1) by Chuck Dixon Page A

terms than theirs.”

27
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    He’d been tazed before. The trick was to go limp early. Possum up.
    His thoughts were coming back together. The muscles in his legs and arms starting to answer to his brain. The burning in the joints was subsiding. The crushing fatigue was still to be overcome.
    Fuck that. Fight through it.
    Levon was in the back of a van and it was moving at speed. Two figures were trying to turn him on his back. Arguing in Ukrainian. He opened his eyes.
    Danny and Van. The blond twins. Danny was pulling Levon’s wrists together. He jerked an inch-thick tie-wrap tight around them. Van was crouched at Levon’s feet trying to join two tie-wraps to bind his ankles together.
    Danny was telling Van that he got his done first. Van was bitching that he couldn’t get the two bands to connect.
    Levon brought a knee up and drove the heel of a work boot into Van’s face. A snap of gristle. A spurt of blood. With the same motion he brought his joined hands up to drive deep into Danny’s crotch. He grabbed a double handful and twisted hard. Danny howled.
    Maintaining his death grip on Danny’s genitals, Levon rolled, carrying the now shrieking man with him. Danny was atop him, providing cover. Van was backed against the rear doors of the van, rising to his feet. A hand to his nose to staunch the gout of blood running into his mouth and over his chin.
    The van came to a violent, slewing halt. Levon and Danny, joined by Levon’s grip, went airborne and crashed against the cage mesh separating the rear of the van from the driver’s cab. The driver was unbuckling. Levon head-butted Danny in the mouth. He felt the other man’s jaw separate with a pop. Danny shrieked in his ear with a gush of fresh blood and broken teeth. Levon relaxed his grip on the man’s junk and yanked an automatic from the holster in Danny’s belt.
    More shouting. The driver and Van. A new weight pressed atop Danny and down on Levon under him. Van was in the fight.
    Levon levered the end of the pistol against flesh and pulled the trigger again and again. The weight came off him. Van leaped back crying out, holding both hands to a spreading stain on his thigh. Danny, shuddering, rolled off of Levon leaving him drenched in blood. The van filled with the smell of hot piss.
    Lying supine, Levon stabbed the automatic toward the driver’s compartment and emptied it through the mesh. A grunt followed by an abbreviated bleat of the van’s horn.
    Van was trying to get at his own handgun left-handed while maintaining pressure on his thigh. Levon was up and charged across the confining space to shoulder-check the man into the back doors with all his weight. Levon dropped upon the unmoving Van who was going white, bleeding out. Blood pooled in the recesses of the van’s floor grid making the surface greasy slick.
    Levon yanked a black Sig Sauer from Van’s waistband. The man was shivering with the chill that blood loss brings. Levon crawled over him to drop the latch on the back doors and climbed out onto the road.
    The van was on the verge of a two lane with nothing but saw grass and pines visible either side. Levon used the butt of the Sig to break the driver side glass. He reached in over the slumped form of the driver and slid the gear shift to neutral. With a shoulder to the door and a hand holding the wheel to the right he nudged the van rolling onto the grass. He stepped back and allowed the van to continue down the slope and into a swale filled with black water. It settled in the mud with water up to windows. The water downflooded through the break Levon made in the glass. The van sank further in an explosion of escaping air until only the top of the roof was visible. Big white birds rose from the surrounding shallows to flap away toward the trees.
    Levon was covered in a spray of blood already growing stiff and tacky as it dried. He pulled the buckle from his belt revealing a spade-shaped blade. The razor sharp edge sliced through the tie