by J. T. Patten
Drake slid on the police jacket and helmet, fired up the ATV and its emergency lights, and bolted out through the exit with no nods, waves, or slowing down. It was back into the shit before his face peeled off or he became a pool of Jell-O in the road. A killer he was, nuclear scientist he was not. The Man from Orange focused on what was within his power, and that was dealing more death before he, himself, succumbed to radiological poisoning.
Within minutes of screaming emergency vehicles passing Drake in the opposite direction, he found an area to duck into and assess his target. Between the phone of Oz, the hacked device data from Dexter, and the signals intel from Mojo, Drake was fairly certain that he had captured and tracked the correct signal for Two-bags. Woolf zeroed in on the location transmission depicted on his mapping display and determined that the gang leader was driving only a few miles away. The area, however, looked fairly commercial, which would pose a problem for an outright assassination in broad daylight. Rest assured, most police presence was attending to the parade scene.
Still, Drake knew he needed to divert or follow Two-bags to a more accommodating location. How that would happen, he didn’t know. His thoughts moved to the last moments he saw Dexter. How did this all happen and why?
At that moment, he recalled what Dex had said about checking the voice memo. Nothing is as it seems. Drake opened the partitioned segment in his device to view Dexter’s applications. He selected the Voice Memos with a time-stamped note from the morning. Woolf rotated his head around to ensure he was still in the clear from prying eyes. Fear gripped his insides from what he could hear in the seven-minute message. Drake took a deep breath and pressed play.
Chapter 94
Drake fought the urge to play the message again. He had work to do. A lot of work to do to finish his business in the city and head for Syria. As the tears rolled down his cheeks and pooled in his eyelids, he located Two-bags’s position. Drake wiped his eyes and drove off, his wide open-mouthed smile catching the cool air as he sped along.
Dexter had much to say. The priority was Two-bags, then locating the actual radioactive material in the junk area of the parking lot, and finally finishing business in Two-bags’s theater where the gang would be preparing for war. After that, he would plan for the Middle East.
Woolf made a series of turns, winding him further into the west side’s more economically challenged neighborhoods. Checking his tracker, Two-bags was on the move not far ahead.
The day was cool, and the streets were fairly empty in Lawndale. Those who were out on the corners and storefronts or sitting on sidewalk steps had their eyes to the numerous helicopters flying around the lakefront area. Many of the young thugs, according to Dexter’s message, would be at or heading to Two-bags’s gang hideaway. All except Two-bags, who was still making his runs before it was time.
Drake watched the target’s dot slide from Central Park Avenue to 15th on the map. Looking up and ahead, he saw the white BMW make the turn, ironically making a turn again onto S Drake Avenue.
How poetic, Drake thought as he saw the street sign.
The fact that the driver had just rolled through stop signs gave Woolf an idea and opportunity.
Drake flipped the emergency lights on with his thumb and sped up to the slowing car. He figured that it would be a dangerous approach, but he had few options. Fortunately, he had multiple weapons and spare mags. Woolf slid one of the handguns from the small of his back to his lap before dismounting. He checked the magazine just to make sure and that there was one in the pipe. Drake cocked the weapon, palmed in his hand, as he dismounted and approached the vehicle.
Drake stepped up to the driver’s-side passenger door and knocked on the window. The window didn’t move.
Drake knocked again.
The driver’s side rolled down.
Drake remained in his position along the back-window frame of the door. “License and registration, please,” he called out.
“Come up here, officer. I can’t hear you so well,” the voice called out.
Drake could see the man’s face in the side mirror. Woolf had wanted a quiet area off the beaten path, yet realized it benefited the hunted, as well.
Fuck it. “I’m just looking at these holes in the passenger door. Looks like someone shot at you. Are you all right?” Woolf played.
“Huh?” The man stuck his head out and around.
Woolf swung the weapon out and extended it within a foot of the man’s head and pulled the trigger, the muzzle lined to the temple. The driver’s head bounced, and life sprayed out the forehead to the ground. It dangled out the window, dripping on the asphalt below.
Drake backhanded the weapon into the tinted glass, shattering the window, but the plastic tint coating held it in place. He fired a round into the back seat, unsure of the damage he inflicted on the passenger. The response was a burst of returned fire.
Drake dropped to the ground and replayed the pop, pop, pop then pop, pop, pop in his head to ensure he had the count. He reached up again to the window, which was well-torn but still covering top to bottom, and smashed at it again, trying to draw more undisciplined fire.
Two rounds popped off, then gold.
The passenger’s gun came out of the window.
Like a viper, Drake struck at the weapon with his open left hand.
The semiautomatic weapon fired as Drake grabbed the burning hot metal and the slide jerked back, the accessories rail cutting his thumb with the recoil. He lost his grip, but so had the passenger.
Done, motherfucker. Drake sprung up, and an unexpected round smashed into the side of his helmet, knocking him backward into the bloody head of the driver. FUCK!
Drake dropped again as two more rounds cracked off. The sound different this time. A revolver. He knew there was just one person in the back, but obviously they had a backup weapon.
Woolf unbuckled his helmet and threw it into the broken passenger-side window.
The pops continued even as the helmet sailed backward and back out the window from the bullet impacts.
And then Woolf heard the music of roundless clicks as the cylinder spun in dry fire impotency.
Drake rose and calmly reached into the passenger side, unlocked and opened the door.
“Yo, yo, yo,” Two-bags shouted. “I’m cool. I’m cool.”
“Get out of the car,” Drake ordered, his tone measured and cool.
Two-bags turned to the door.
“This way,” Drake clarified. “Slide out. This way.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming. I surrender. All good, know what I’m sayin’. We all good. I’m cool.”
As Two-bags’s feet hit the ground, Drake asked, “Are you shot? Bleeding?”
“Yeah, man. On my side, but it’s cool. Just get me to the hospital, an’ we all good. You just call an ambulance, and I won’t give you no troubles, know what I’m saying?”
“I don’t give a fuck. I just don’t want blood on the outside of the car any more than there is.” Drake looked around at the few buildings surrounding him that weren’t boarded up. Only a few faces were exposed behind windows. Some stood along the corners of the buildings, a safe distance away. Woolf kept Two-bags in the car; the gun remained pointed at the gangster. “This lot where you kept the busses. Is it guarded?”
“Naw, man. E’rybody’s out today.”
“Is it locked? Chained?”
“Naw, man, it’s our turf. No one gonna come round there and steal no junk. Hey, you need to call me the ambulance so I don’t motherfuckin’ bleed out an’ shit, know what I’m sayin’? You popped me right on my side.”
“Get out. Get on the ground. And don’t touch the side of the car with your hand.”
Two-bags did as he was told. He put his hands behind his head, as if he’d done this before. But he’d never been arrested by the Man from Orange.
“How many
people are waiting in your little theater or whatever it is?”
“How you know about that shit?”
Drake kicked the thug in the ribs.
“All of ’em. I told all of ’em.”
“How old are they?”
“Fuck, man. How I supposed to know. Niggas be all ages.”
Drake kicked him again, cognizant of the growing eyes in windows and slowing cars that chose not to turn down the street where the blue lights were still flashing.
“Kids?”
“Man, there be little Gs. I don’t know.”
“Well that means I can’t blow the place up like my brother intended. Also seems to be against what my new doctor friend Patches would do to wayward kids. But you’re not a kid.” Drake extended the handgun to Two-bags’s head and pulled the trigger, not waiting for a response.
Woolf yanked the dead security chauffer out of the car, flopping him to the ground, and discarded the police jacket over their bodies. Looking at the light spray of blood on the side of the car, he was content enough that spatter was better than smear and headed to the empty lot location.
Chapter 95
Halliday and Havens stood by Jay and another agent at the emergency response staging area, staying clear of the first responders and keeping an eye out for Drake Woolf. It had been an hour and still no word from Drake.
“Still no word from your techie on Drake’s position?” Halliday asked. Her arms were crossed, her brow rigid. She looked like a pissed-off mom waiting impatiently for a kid who was late from the playground.
“Nope. No word. Drake disabled the location tracking. He’s using a secure channel to mask his signal, too, so we can’t even use big brother’s eyes and ears. We just need to wait.”
“It’s not?” the agent with Jay responded on his cell phone to another conversation. “Indian spices and pepper oil?” He rolled the mouthpiece outward and turned to Jay and the others. “It’s not radioactive. The WMD powder. They don’t have a full report but it’s a hoax. It’s spice powders and something like a mace pepper oil.”
Havens and Halliday looked at each other in disbelief.
“Why?” Havens asked rhetorically.
“Where’s the real WMD?” Halliday asked.
The agent was back on the phone. “Jay, they’re requesting available resources to head over to the Venezuelan embassy.”
Jay shrugged. “What embassy? The Venezuelans have an embassy in Chicago?”
“Civic Opera House.” The agent added, “They have a floor in the building. Two containers marked Radioactive Waste: Store for Decay stolen from the university were found within the doors of the Venezuelan embassy. Police got a call about that and a bomb in Lawndale at a theater. CPD is responding to a call on a gang and sending over SWAT and EOD. But they need help making sure the opera house has some help to secure for hazmat and to start an investigation. Power is completely knocked out in the building.”
Sean turned to Halliday. “Power’s knocked out where WMD mysteriously appears? Still wondering where he is?”
“I think our work’s done.”
“Our?”
She gave a sheepish grin.
“Let’s lose the raid jackets and your service pistol in a Bureau truck. I’ll have Mojo see if we can get into the FBI system and backdate a lost or stolen report for your weapon.
“And then?”
“We walk across the expressway, and I show you the Weather Mark Tavern. We eat and get drunk. You head back to DC tomorrow, and I go break the news about Lars to my daughter.”
“And Drake?”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up when we least expect it.”
* * * *
Sebastian Haggerty leaned in to his laptop, squinting to read his last line item on the program proposal to justify the budget. His elbows rested on the leather pad, which covered only a third of the large oak desk. He revised the document, adding another capability of the task force that would enhance the domestic program, especially if it reinvigorated the full capacity of the prior Intelligence Support Activity unit, but reestablished under the umbrella of the National Security Agency. And his direction.
Sebastian turned to sip his tea and glance at the continued coverage of the Chicago terror attack. He looked around his home office searching for the television remote control so he could better hear the breaking details of the Venezuelan embassy being involved with the now-recovered radioactive materials. The story was hours old to the intelligence community, and he had already received the intel through a secure National Security Council alert.
Sebastian stretched his legs, swaggering to the overstuffed leather couch where he found the flipper and turned up the sound. The sweet sound of success, he thought as he sat back at the desk to proofread his work before sending it to the director.
A small text box had appeared in the middle of Sebastian’s laptop screen. It was outlined in a thick red border with the header “Birddog Secure Messaging.” It had a beige lock symbol in the corner. A text appeared:
“I have taken back the control of operational funds, which I see you have transferred into personal offshore accounts.”
Every few seconds thereafter, the message disappeared and a new one emerged.
“Tsk. Tsk.”
“I have made screenshots and will forward to the FBI, DSS and the NSA Inspector General.”
“The Task Force will remain. Autonomously. In support of the NSA, CIA, and the FBI.”
“$1M still in your accounts. Will add $1M annually for your continued cooperation.”
“You WILL ensure that Mena and Dexter receive memorial wall stars at Langley.”
“Mojo stays with us but at Fort.”
“I’m alive. Stay clear and give top cover and you stay out of jail and alive.”
“Now delete the proposal and don’t draw attention to yourself.”
“D.”
Sebastian held his breath throughout the rolling real-time transcript.
After a few moments, when the messages stopped, the screen box disappeared. A Windows prompt emerged, stating, “A fatal error has occurred. Would you like to reboot your system? Press to continue.”
Sebastian slowly closed his laptop and walked out of the room while dialing his handler at the British Secret Intelligence Service, affectionately known as MI6.
Chapter 96
St. Patrick’s Day didn’t stop in the city. Whereas Sean and Tresa were able to belly up and get a seat at the bar while there was still calamity going on outside, five hours later, they remained eating burgers, pretzel bites, and drinking beer like old war buddies.
Halliday slurred her words after the last shot. Havens was outright shitfaced, and waving his bandaged hand like an Irish pirate saying “argh” was only getting old to those around the two but was still hilarious to Tresa and Sean.
“Yer a good-looking guy, Mr. Havens.” She pushed on his shoulder and held his gaze with a hunger for what wasn’t on the menu.
Sean dropped his foot off the stool to keep from falling off. “I’d do you, too, Halliday, if it wasn’t for this.” He held up his empty ring finger and pointed to where a band could be.
“You’re not married? That’s good.”
“I still am.” His head swayed back and then rolled to the side. “Right here.” He thumped at his heart. “I will always be married to her. Christina.” Sean gave Halliday a push with his arm. “And I know you still like our boy.”
Tresa laughed and turned her face away. She covered her mouth then reached for the pint of Harp. She pounded the beer then slammed it down on the bar. “Fuck Drake Woolf. He can…just go to hell.”
Sean put his arm around her and leaned in. “Don’t say that. He’s a good man.”
Havens struggled to keep his eyes open. “And you’d be good for him, too. If you don’t arrest him.�
�� Sean burst out laughing. Tresa followed suit.
“And you, Mr. Havens,” she added, still bursting with laughter. “Careful or I’ll cuff you.”
“Me? I’m not a killer, I’m a pirate!”
“Argh!” she yelled, falling into Sean. Seconds later, Halliday remained with her head on his shoulder. “I think he’s crazy. I’ve never seen such rage before. Sometimes he’s so connected then the next minute he’s like there but not there.”
“Marcus Aurelio’s said—”
“Aurelio’s? Aurelio’s is a pizza place. You mean Aurelius?”
“Quiet. As I was saying, Marcus Aurel-ius the guy from Gladiator said something like, ‘How much worse is the anger than the causes of it.’” Sean tossed his hands up. “Right? Is he bad? Or, is what caused it bad?”
Tresa took another drink. “I think I love him and I don’t even know him.”
“You should tell him. Drake. Not Marcus Aurelio’s the pizza gladiator,” Sean slurred.
“I can’t. I don’t even know his number. And he hates me.” She reached to the bar where her phone was. “Ow. Shit. My phone’s burning up. Like on fire.”
Sean reached across his body to grab her smartphone with his good hand. “Whoa.” He looked at it, pulling it back and forth to focus. “Your battery’s almost dead.”
“It was just halfway charged a little bit ago.” She raised it closer to her face, talking into the screen. “Drake Woolf, where are you?”
A person’s phone rang behind Tresa. Then the bartender’s. The people to their left and right. Soon, the whole bar was a symphony of bell tones, vibrations, and rings playing over the Irish tunes. Tresa looked at her phone. It went black. Then reappeared with a screen wallpaper selfie of Drake Woolf and their backs and the bar behind him.
“Click, click, click,” she heard and turned just as a gentle hand lay on her shoulder and the lights in the bar went out.