Chapter 4

The rest of our trip down the peninsula was rather mundane and boring since we could not find anything to feed our need for an adrenalin rush. Nevertheless, through intense concentration, we were able to maintain our cover and hold to the illusion of being simple tourists. It was with some glee that we finally turned around and headed home.

Dammit, I doubt that either one of us could face a real vacation. The simple fact is that we are addicted to action. I couldn't help wondering if this might be another facet of our DNA change similar to our barrier skin or our added strength.

It was with considerable relief that we finally pulled into Phoenix and turned in the RV. That was no vehicle to innocently park anywhere in the LA metropolitan area. Hell, if we did, we would be lucky to find the shell left after letting it sit unprotected over night. The RV was safe in Phoenix under my family's protection, but we would never dare trying to keep it in LA.

It was nice to catch up on all of the family's activities. Liz's pregnancy was progressing very well as one would expect, and the baby was due in approximately three more months. Johnny could hardly wait to meet his new sister, and he had trouble understanding why his mother didn't just deliver her and get it over with.

Meanwhile, Mary was now interested enough in boys to have developed that teen girl's radar eye for who was cool and who to avoid. She had a boyfriend whom she spent more time with than any other boy, but she was not serious about keeping him. Mostly, she was just using him as a learning tool. He felt the same about Mary, so there would be no hard feelings when they finally broke up.

Mary would be graduating from high school pretty soon, so there was some question about whether or not she would attend a university. So far, Jenny was the only one of the family to have graduated with a degree, and she was not using hers, so Mary wondered if the effort was worth it. Well, we would see how things worked out.

After spending a couple of days in Phoenix, Jenny and I were in a hurry to return to our self-imposed task of clearing as much crime from LA as we could manage. We discussed the matter between ourselves and decided to see what we could do to clean up the mess in South Los Angeles. The gangs were much more solidly entrenched there than they had been in Crawford, so we were not even sure that it was possible. One of our worst problems was that the gangs had a lot more members than we had been fighting. We didn't know if we would have to change tactics to accommodate that level of opposition.

As far as we knew at the moment, we were immune to the normal means of death used by the gangs, such as knives, guns, etc. We postulated that the only things that could kill us were electrocution and suffocation, and those methods could not be used in a normal street fight. There was no way that we could kill every gang member, so we decided to continue what we were doing and see how that worked out.

The gangs we proposed to fight were much more sophisticated than any we had met before, so we had to be careful. About all we knew at the moment was that there were two major gangs, the Sharks and the Tornadoes. The Sharks were mostly Hispanics with all grades of skin color, and the Tornadoes were mostly Blacks with less tolerance for color variations. High yellows were too near White to be acceptable. The other thing that we knew was that the Tornadoes were heavily into drug sales. The Sharks also peddled drugs, but not as intensively as did the Tornadoes.

By asking the right kind of questions and reading between the lines, we worked it out that the Sharks were more into the protection racket, and the ones a shopkeeper needed the most protection from were the Sharks. We happened to walk into a convenience store looking for a Dr. Pepper each when we encountered four Sharks making that point with the owner of the establishment. It turned out that they had just raised the rate for protection, and they were simply pointing out why he should pay.

There was no doubt that the shopkeeper needed protection, but we were there to render it. He was being held upright by two Sharks while two others were pounding on him. Hell, much more pounding and the poor man would not be alive to pay the new demands. Jenny and I stepped behind the two men pummeling the shopkeeper and drove a fist into the kidney area of the nearest Shark.

They collapsed immediately to the floor, and we turned to the other two Sharks. That was when we realized how to identify a member of the Sharks gang. Each of the four men wore a white tee-shirt emblazoned with the image of a Great White about to take a bite out of whatever was just in front of it. One of the Sharks released his hold on the shopkeeper and pulled a knife while the other one held on to the original victim. In fact, his grasp was all that was holding the victim on his feet.

The Shark with the knife growled, "Get out of here, you stupid Gringo. This is Sharks business, and we don't like interference."

I said, "Put away that knife before I make you eat it, you stupid pollo." Calling him a chicken was kind of weak insult, but I was not at my best with Spanish while I was facing a knife. I was afraid that he might use it on the shopkeeper. The idiot's companion did compound the insult by laughing at my choice of words.

The man with the knife said in Spanish, "Shut up, Jesus. Don't encourage the gringo."

I said, "I don't need encouraging, amigo. You can't possibly hurt me with that puny knife."

"Oh, yeah? Take that!" He jabbed at my abdomen with his knife, and there was no crossguard on it, so it slid back in his hand and cut his fingers very badly. Blood spurted everywhere and generally made one hell of a mess. The man dropped the knife and tried to staunch the flow of blood, but he was in desperate need of emergency care to do that.

"Jenny, please call 911 to get medical care for this man and his assailant. Not only does this one have badly cut fingers, but he is about to have some broken bones." Turning to the other Shark, I said, "Gently release that man and I will let you escape any pain. Tell your gang that he is now under my protection, and I will not tolerate any further injury to him, his family, or his property. Fail to do that, and I may let you keep your life."

I knew that these were provocative words, but I had to establish dominance at the beginning or the gang would ignore me. Mainly, at the moment, I was trying to save the life of the shopkeeper and his family, and I wanted to shift the gangs' attention to me.

The remaining Shark dropped the injured man to the floor and pulled a gun, the ubiquitous 9 mm automatic. Before he could pull the trigger, I covered the muzzle with my hand so that the bullet was trapped in the barrel when it was fired. That was a disaster as far as the shooter was concerned! This gun was cheaply made from inferior materials, and the whole mechanism exploded when the bullet could not escape the barrel.

The result tore the shooter's hand to shreds. He was going to bleed to death if we did not do something fast, so I tore off the sleeve of his shirt and made a tourniquet from it. Jenny had not yet finished her call to 911, so she added this latest incident to the list of injuries. The dispatcher had been a little dubious about the call, but she now believed that help was needed because she heard the sound of the exploding gun. She promised to dispatch medical aid immediately. Jenny reminded her to send the cops, too. I broke the elbows of the Shark with the knife while we waited for the cops and the medics.

We waited until the cops arrived, and they tried to arrest us when they saw what had happened. I let them handcuff Jenny and me, but I certainly was not going to jail as the cops wished. I explained what had happened, leaving out the part about blocking the pistol barrel with my hand, but they were not going to believe me. Finally, I got pissed off at the stubbornness of the cop questioning me.