The Presence of Evil

by J. T. Patten

  Halliday worked her way around, starting in the tree line. Flashlight in her left hand, she lifted the first sheet, holding her breath. The dead Middle Easterner had clearly been killed up close and personal judging by his bloodied and swollen face. The next two nearly made her gag. In her heart of hearts, she knew Drake Woolf was alive, because she’d never met anyone else who could kill like this. As much as it sickened her, her heart glowed with a twisted sense of relief even though there were four more covered bodies.

  It was the body of the big man that gave her more pause than she would have expected. Tresa didn’t know his name, but by the rough size and her memory of him exiting such a vehicle in Georgetown, Tresa was nearly certain the crispy corpse was the same fellow she had seen with Havens. Seeing his burnt remains twisted her convictions. Certainly, what he and the team were doing was illegal, and they had knocked her out as part of their escape—also illegal. But they had loaded her SUV with their weapons and let the FBI take credit for thwarting an attack. More than part of her respected their work and their mission. It was evident that the big man had lost his life stopping these terrorists from entering the secured facility, to protect America. To keep Americans safe. She was hunting the hunters. The good guys.

  “Pretty slick,” Scullen admired, behind her.

  Tresa turned to see the other special agent pulling on something attached to the burned van wreckage.

  “Paste on,” the state police officer replied.

  Halliday walked over to the half circle of men.

  Scullen pulled a smoked white laminate off the van. “I used to see this in Mexico along the border. Auto thieves would put different-colored skins on cars they stole so a vehicle description wouldn’t match.”

  Tresa squeezed in to inspect the finding. “It’s black underneath. Damn.”

  “Black or blue. Looks to me like a midnight blue. Light has to catch it just right out here.”

  FBI intersection camera surveillance had lost the van days ago. The task force had simply changed the color of the Transit. “Son of a bitch.”

  Scullen trained his attention on Tresa. “Whatcha pinballin’ up in that head of yours? Bad guy car or other bad guy car?”

  “Looks to me like the guys had a disagreement. Maybe one group was stealing nuclear waste material and the buyer took them out. Could be an ambush from either vantage. Middle Easterners, but with no terror event, I think I have all I need. Doesn’t really match the attacks that we’ve seen across the country in past days.” Tresa shrugged, feigning closure.

  “Uh-huh,” Scullen drew out. He leaned in to Halliday out of earshot of the others and whispered to her, “If I wasn’t standing in mud, I’d say my boots were in bullshit.”

  Ignoring her fellow agent, Tresa addressed whom she believed to be a facility security lead. “Sir, did your gate guards report a vehicle leaving the premises?”

  “They did,” he confirmed matter-of-factly, offering no more.

  “But they didn’t stop it?”

  “Uh, no, ma’am. They did not.”

  “And is there anything you can share about that encounter? Did they ram a gate? Shoot at the gate guards? Do you have any identifiers on the suspects or vehicle?”

  “That is still being determined. It appears there was some confusion.” The site officer stuffed his hands in his pockets, licked his lips, and acknowledged his peers who had now heard the story for the second time. The music didn’t sound any better. “Apparently, the guards were informed to let the vehicle pass, due to an emergency.”

  “Do you have video surveillance?”

  “Uh, no, ma’am. We don’t have that either.”

  “Do you not keep video footage of the gate?”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am. We do.” He coughed. “It was turned off.”

  “I see.”

  “But they did say there were two men, one reclined in the passenger seat. It was moving out pretty good. Black Jeep Cherokee.”

  “Could it have been blue like this one?”

  The man leaned in a bit to inspect the color of the Ford. “I’d say that’s fair.”

  “And would it be fair to notify authorities of a dark-colored Jeep Cherokee within”—she checked her watch—“a couple hundred miles? With a focus on thirty miles of nearby hospitals, clinics, veterinary hospitals?” She scrunched her face, looking for a little help from the boys playing law enforcement.

  One officer in a tan uniform patted another officer in a black uniform, or as the theme of the evening went, “potentially dark blue” uniform, and suggested, “Can you get on that, please, Wendell?” He snickered. Perhaps because the other officer’s real name was Joe.

  “Thank you,” Halliday acknowledged, not realizing they had little intention of doing anything. “My bet is on a small clinic that you wouldn’t expect to have lights on at this hour. And I’d like to do it before they see us coming.”

  Chapter 10

  “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Sean mumbled as the young hood rats approached the vehicle just outside the clinic in what might be considered by some an “up and coming” neighborhood. Even if up and coming meant leveling the area in five years.

  “Roll down your window, Sean. Tell them it’s past curfew and they have midterms to study for.” Drake panned left to right and back again in a much more crowded back parking lot than they had expected.

  “Dude, don’t make me laugh.” Sean flipped his head toward Drake’s window. A hooded figure approached in the darkness. “He’s on your side, Drake. I’d like a Whopper, onion rings, and a shake.”

  Woolf rolled down the window to a black Ruger 9mm pointing at his head.

  “Get the fuck out the car,” the man ordered, his voice deep and slow.

  “Can’t,” Drake replied. “Need Doc Wentworth. This guy’s got a compression wrap on that’s tying him to the seat. If he moves, he dies.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if he dies. If you don’t move, you both die. Ain’t no Doc Wentworth here. Get out the car, man.”

  Others circled the Cherokee, their hoods cloaking faces in a rather symbolic death ritual.

  Havens leaned toward the window with a grunt. “Hey, pal, no disrespect, but go inside and get Patches right the fuck now.”

  The thug leaned his head in the car for a better look.

  Drake grabbed the gangster’s dangling chain and twisted it in the blink of an eye around his right hand while poking the man’s throat with a blade.

  The man didn’t flinch. “How you know Patches?” he asked, still making eye contact with Sean.

  “We worked together.” Havens’s voice was tempered. “Get us in, and I need you guys to lose this car. Get us another one as fast as you can. Patches will pay you five grand. Tell him Fritter is here. He’s not expecting us, but we called to make a reservation a couple days ago in case we needed him. Now we need him.”

  “He’s got one of my homies in dere now. You wait,” the street soldier warned.

  Havens turned to Drake. “Bro, get ready to throw this truck into reverse, and kill this motherfucker right now.”

  Drake’s tongue clicked three times. He revved the engine and honked the horn with his elbow giving all quite a jolt of surprise.

  “Wait, wait!” the thug yelled.

  Havens caught movement to his right just past the hood of the SUV. The hooded knights west of Martin Luther King Jr Blvd in Savannah’s more impoverished of neighborhoods parted. Another large figure emerged from the darkness, carrying a red aluminum baseball bat.

  “Malcolm!” the new player on the scene shouted. “If I tell you and your boys to stay outside, that doesn’t mean shaking down my other clients. Get the fuck away from that car.”

  “He stuck, Patches,” a noticeably taller hood informed the former Special Forces medic. “White boy’s in dere holdin’ his head and won�
��t let ’im go.”

  A few others tried not to laugh.

  The former 18-Delta special forces medical sergeant, who retired as Sergeant Major Augustus “Doc” Wentworth, approached the passenger-side door to see who was next in the reputed safe-zone charitable clinic. “Shit. Back away, boys. Go inside and get your guy then get out of here and go home. No more shoot-ups tonight. Feel me?”

  Out of the grumbling and shuffling rang out a few faint yes-sirs.

  “You goddamned right, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  He opened Havens’s door to assess the initial damage. “You all right, man?”

  “Yeah, good to see you, Doc. Hey, can we keep one or two of those guys who may want to earn a little side cash taking this Jeep up to Augusta? We need to ditch it but need to give ourselves some air gap.”

  “Y’ain’t gonna get none of my boys killed, are you?” Patches asked, his concern genuine.

  “No. I don’t care if they take side streets or the highway. I just figure someone will be trying to surveil the vehicle. Maybe you have someone with a clean record? I can give you a title.”

  “Shit, you at Victory and Burroughs, my man.” Patches laughed. “Hey, Chicklet,” he called out. “You with your brother?”

  “Yes, sir, Patches.”

  “Boy, why you got that boy out here so late? You ain’t got school tomorrow?”

  “We ain’t got no school tomorrow, Patches,” a higher-pitched voice replied. “It supposed to snow real bad.” The young man laughed.

  “Don’t you pull that shit with me, child. You sixteen yet, Nibbles?”

  “No, sir, Patches.”

  “Okay, perfect. You driving.”

  “How much you got for these boys?”

  Drake replied, “I’ve got five K we can give ’em. If you need more, can you spot ’em and add it to the invoice?”

  “I ain’t no ATM,” Patches rebuked. “’Sides, that’s too much for these boys. You give ’em that much, they’ll buy dope to sell.”

  “Hells yeah,” a voice in the crowd confirmed.

  “Shut up, Darrius.” Patches called back to the teens, “You boys get two hundred each. Rest of you all get a hundred to keep your mouth shut.” Patches peered across Sean, ducking into the car. “Malcolm, you get five, since it’s your crew. You make sure that lil’ kid get to school at least three times a week, you feel me?”

  Malcom was still held by Drake, knife pressed to the skin. “That’s coo’, Patches, and you get this white boy from stickin’ me no mo in my throat?”

  “Fritter, have your boy let him go, and let’s get you inside. What’s your name, buddy?” he asked Drake.

  “Mr. White’ll be just fine, Sergeant Major.”

  “Ummm, hmm. Get your shit that you need outta that car after you help me inside. Goddamned spooks in Savannah keepin’ me up now. You know I charge double for overtime. I ain’t no CIA SAD anymore takin’ a government paycheck. I’m runnin’ a social hospital, I am. Can’t tell from out here, but behind these walls is state of the art.”

  “Yeah, Patches,” a thug chimed in, “you all Mayo Clinic patchin’ up these foos everyday an’ shit.”

  “Mayonnaise Clinic with these whitey,” a voice joked from the back with a laugh.

  “Oren, get. And don’t be usin’ those words round me, hear?”

  “Sorry, Patches.”

  “These boys are good kids. Almost all of them have righteous African and sub-Saharan African ancestry here. More than anywhere else. Got no jobs though, and crime’s going up. If you all have some folks lookin’ for you, they ain’t coming in here.”

  Havens gritted as Doc lifted him from the car with two armfuls but not even a hint of effort on the older soldier’s face. “That’s why we came to you, old buddy.”

  “Shiiit. You came to me ’cause I know what I’m doin’ and Uncle Sam knows I ain’t askin’ no questions. And don’t say it’s because you saved me. I knew that sumbitch had a gun.”

  Havens just laughed, and Drake followed along wondering just how many shit holes Sean Havens had actually been in over the years.

  Chapter 11

  “Special Agent Halliday, looks like we may have gotten lucky.”

  “How’s that?” Halliday asked while staring at a map on her mobile device.

  “We were able to get a couple pictures from signal cameras. Looks like they headed down Route 17 over the river toward Savannah.”

  “How long ago?” Tresa spread her fingers on the screen over Savannah then closed them to see how far they may have gotten without a stop.

  “That was over four hours ago.”

  “Four hours.” She huffed at the futility. “Anywhere after that?”

  “Can’t say. We reached out to Georgia State Police. Once they crossed the state line, we don’t have that access.”

  “Of course not,” she mumbled to herself. “Which is exactly why they did it.” Those assholes. “Okay, let me see if we can get someone on our end to check camera feeds.” She manipulated the map some more. Where are you guys going now? Halliday thought they would cross the border if they were pursuing another terror suspect or evading. Clearly, from the past weeks and what she knew of Warren Drake Woolf, they were based out of the National Capital Region. You drove here, probably so you could bring your weapons, which means you need to also drive them back northeast, so where are you headed? Unless you stopped for medical help in Savannah. “Trooper? When you reach out to Georgia, find out where gunshot victims tend to go in the city if they don’t want police to find them. See if any of those doctors or clinic owners are affiliated with the government, military, mafia, military contractors, anything like that.”

  Just within earshot of Halliday, and knowingly so, an officer snickered. “If Tommy Lee Jones looked like that in The Fugitive, I’d do him.”

  “Maybe she’d like the man with the wooden arm,” a trooper added.

  “Oh, yeah. She looks like she could use a wooden arm. Maybe she’d lighten up.” He turned to Tresa. “Hey, Mrs. Fed, anything else you need us to do? Get you coffee, donuts? I can’t imagine any one of these ragheads is hoping you catch whoever shot them. Personally, I hope you give ’em a medal.”

  Halliday strolled over to the officer as slowly and delicately as it was possible for the confident Amazonian to do. “Can I see your car keys?”

  “They’re in my car,” he sneered.

  She leaned in and breathed into his ear. “Can you show me which one is your car and take me to it?”

  He nervously looked around at his peers. “Sure, I’ll show you my riiide.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” She smiled. Tresa reached up and lightly touched his arm.

  “You go, buddy, I’ll let your wife know you’ll be late,” an officer called out, which was met with a raised arm wave.

  The two walked about fifteen yards from the others, and Halliday stopped abruptly. “You know, when you take a sheep away from the flock, a wolf pack makes easy prey of it.”

  “It sure does.” He salivated, testosterone surging.

  “Shut up,” she barked, stepping into him. She gave him a slight push.

  His demeanor melted in an instant.

  “But,” she interjected, and poked her finger into his chest, “if you take a wolf away from its pack and a badass cougar sees that lowly dog removed from strength in numbers, that long-fanged pussy will just tear the shit out of that little yelping ground bitch,” she spat, stepping into the officer again as he retreated another step back. “So, find your own way back into whatever town you came from, bitch,” she warned, turning away, “or I’ll have you arrested for obstructing a federal agent. Tell my partner I’m headed to Savannah. Have him text me any clinics. And, officer”—she turned—“I’ll tell Tommy Jones you said hi. I could tell right away that you liked boys. You just kinda carry yourself
that way.”

  Chapter 12

  Drake Woolf was still pacing when Patches exited his clinical chamber to the waiting area, which was more like a college student’s living room filled with mismatched, donated, and scrounged furniture.

  “I thought you’d be crashed out after cleaning up,” the medic mulled aloud to Drake. “I know I slept like a log after an extraction. Truck, helo, shit, I could have dozed on a horse. I needed my downtime to shake it all off.”

  “Yeah, I’m not tired. I prefer to stay busy. Thanks for letting me shower off and giving me a taste of thug life,” Drake jested, looking down at the black sweats, and raised his hands to show the full splendor of the black hoodie that Patches also provided.

  Patches sat on the armrest of a heavily worn leather or pleather overstuffed sofa. “Glad they fit. I keep plenty of spares. I’m sorry I kicked you out of the room. I know you were trying to help your friend. I just needed to focus on him and not you. Your hands calm down?”

  “Yeah. Just wearing down the edge. So, how’s Sean?”

  “He needs to get to a hospital. GSWs are patched. They’ll hold. I’ve got him on an antibiotic drip right now and some fluids. But that wrist is bad. He’s going to need a specialist. The break is angulated, there’s a lot of small fragments, and he’ll need more sophisticated fracture fixation. Pins at best. Probably plates and screws. Surgical drains. At best, three months of healing and therapy just to get functionality. Could be a year for maximum improvement.”

  Drake squinted at Patches then laughed out loud.

  “Guess he’s not as good of a buddy as I thought.”

  Drake shook his head. “Sorry. I figured about the wrist. I’m still laughing at how you completely switched your speech from street to head of Johns Hopkins surgery.”

  Patches gave a knowing nod and smiled. “Hearts and minds, brother. Man needs to blend in to his surroundings. I don’t even know the real me anymore,” he admitted with a light chuckle that reflected more the comedy of life than real humor.