Shock and Awe

by Hervey Copeland

  El Juez unlocked the sliding door with his free hand, and very carefully started to push it open. He was surprised at how effortlessly it slid along the bottom track and the absence of any noise as it did so. He had feared that it would make a proper racket and alert the guy.

  When there was enough room for him to push his hand between the frame of the door and the door jamb, he flicked open the lock on the screen door. The whole operation had taken less than three seconds, and it was now only a matter of opening both doors and stepping outside.

  As far as he could tell, the guy in the backyard had not noticed anything. El Juez filled his lungs with air, then held his breath and in one quick motion threw both doors open and barged outside.

  He had been correct in his assertions that the guy hadn’t noticed him unlock the door, because when El Juez all of a sudden seemed to appear out of nowhere, the mysterious visitor jumped and let out a shriek. That someone would come rushing out of the house had apparently not been something he had anticipated.

  But El Juez didn’t stop to contemplate on these things, and instead he rushed toward the guy and placed a hand on his shoulder and with considerable force, pushed him up against the brickwork face first and rammed the gun into his neck.

  “Keep quiet and don’t make any sudden movements,” El Juez said in a low but still very commanding voice, simultaneously as he scanned the area to make sure that none of the neighbors were watching what was going on. They weren’t, or at least he couldn’t see any.

  The guy tried to move away from the wall and turn to face his assailant, but El Juez pushed him back again and increased the pressure of the gun.

  “I said don’t move dammit! You try that one more time, and I’ll put a bullet in your skull. Do you understand?”

  He tightened his grip on the guy’s wrist, and the guy nodded nervously and managed to utter a feeble ‘yes’.

  El Juez took a step toward him, and put his mouth right next to his ear.

  “Are you alone?” he asked.

  The guy nodded.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So there is no one waiting for you in the car, who might come and start looking for you if you don’t return within the next few minutes?”

  “No, I swear. It’s only me.”

  El Juez gave the area another quick scan to see if anyone was observing them, but he couldn’t see anything. Still, he was experienced enough to know that the longer they stayed out here in the open, the more likely it would be for someone to poke their head through the curtains, see what was going on and call the cops.

  So he turned around again and quickly patted the guy down to make sure he wasn’t armed.

  He wasn’t.

  “Ok, inside the house,” he said and started pushing the guy toward the sliding door. The other man was thin and a few inches shorter than him, and not very powerfully built, so El Juez had no difficulties controlling him. But even if he’d had, the gun would have persuaded the visitor not to put up any resistance. Weapons had that effect on most people.

  El Juez jostled him over to the opening, pushed him inside and ordered him to sit down on the couch. The guy did what he was told, and El Juez closed the doors and pulled the curtains shut again. The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds.

  Once that was done, he grabbed a chair from the kitchen, positioned it in front of the couch and sat down and faced the guy. The hand holding the gun was steady and the weapon was aimed at the guy’s chest. And unless the individual sitting across from him was extremely dim-witted, he understood that any sudden movements would have disastrous consequences for him.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing sneaking around this house?” El Juez asked.

  The guy was young, probably no more than thirty and looked absolutely petrified. His eyes were darting nervously around the room, and there was sweat running down his forehead. El Juez could see that his shirt had big dark stains under the armpits, and to El Juez, the guy looked more like a trapped animal than a serious threat that had the potential to cause him any harm.

  “Please don’t hurt me mister. I’m a reporter with the Phoenix Star,” the guy said in a voice that was trembling noticeably. “I’m here because I wanted to have a word with the owner of the house, regarding a murder investigation that he has been implicated in. When no one answered when I knocked on the door, I figured I’d have a quick look around before heading off. That’s all. I swear on my grandmother’s grave that I wasn’t trying to break into the place or anything like that.”

  The guy was sitting on the edge of the couch, upper body leaned forward and gesticulating wildly with his arms, as if that would somehow make his words seem more convincing.

  But the arm gestures had no effect on El Juez, other than stating the obvious, the guy was shitting himself. He also realized that the person in front of him was telling the truth, primarily because the guy didn’t strike him as a person who would tell untruths. He had an honest face, and he didn’t display any of the obvious signs that liars exhibit when they are in the process of pulling the wool over the eyes of their victims. El Juez was very good at reading people, and the overwhelming feeling he got from this guy was that he was being truthful.

  And secondly, he believed the guy, because it all made perfect sense. The target had been interviewed by the police last night and was currently being treated as a murder suspect. But for some reason, the police had to let him go and somehow this journalist had been tipped off about it and decided to follow it up. Every aspect of it made perfect sense.

  “Do you know where Mr. Brunner is?” El Juez asked, his voice calm and collected.

  The guy shook his head and swallowed hard.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you know how to get in touch with him, or where he might be hiding?”

  “No, I haven’t got the faintest idea where he might be.”

  El Juez sighed and paused for a couple of seconds. Then he shook his head and gave the guy a tired smile, and casually squeezed the trigger of the gun in his right hand.

  Two loud bangs escaped from the silencer attached to the end of the weapon as the bullets that had made the noise entered the young man’s chest region.

  “Well, then you are of no use to me mister,” El Juez said in Spanish, as he watched the shocked look on the face of the man that he had just sent on his way to the other side.

  And El Juez could tell that the guy realized that he was about to die. There was nothing that he or anyone else could do to change the outcome of the events that had just been set in motion. There would be no miraculous escape from this situation.

  El Juez leaned forward and placed the gun on the coffee table separating the two of them. Then he leaned back in the chair and watched without any particular interest as the blood kept gushing out of the journalist’s chest region. You have no more than half a minute left to live, a minute tops, he thought as he watched the journalist desperately trying to stem the flow by placing his hands over the new holes in his body.

  As it turned out, it actually took a minute and a half. At least that was as long as it took for the guy to stop moving. By that stage he had collapsed on the couch and was lying on his back, staring with unseeing eyes up at the ceiling.

  El Juez spent another few minutes looking at him before he got up and walked over to the dead man and retrieved the wallet and cellphone from his pockets. Then he returned to his chair again and went through the content of the wallet.

  Apart from the guy’s driver’s license, which was issued in the name of Michael Hicks, there was nothing of interest there. The handful of ten and five dollar bills that were in there didn’t interest him, and he left them where he found them. He placed the wallet on the table and picked up the cellphone, an Apple Smartphone. He pressed the button in the top right hand corner and saw that he needed a pin code to get any further.

  It doesn’t really matter, he thought as he placed the phone next to the wallet. There is nothing stored on tha
t device that is of any interest to me. All that matters is that I get to the target, and that I make him pay for what he has done.

  El Juez stretched out his hand and grabbed the gun. Then he shifted his position in the chair, sneezed a few times and began waiting again. Hopefully you’ll be here soon Mr. Brunner, he thought and finally let his eyes find something else to look at other than the dead body on the couch.

  And when you arrive, I’ll be right here giving you the treatment that you deserve.

  Matt pulled over to the curb, eased his foot off the gas pedal and felt the car come to a stop. Then he just sat where he was and looked over at what had been his home for the last couple of years. He had driven past it twice already and parked three houses up from it on the other side of the street. And as far as he could tell no one was there.

  The only thing out of the ordinary was a black Toyota parked halfway between his house and his neighbor's. No one was inside the vehicle, and whoever had parked it there could be visiting any number of houses.

  Matt removed the key from the ignition and leaned back in his seat and stared at the house. He was wondering why he hadn’t just parked in the driveway, opened up the garage door and started loading the few cardboard boxes into the car and then driving away. It would only have taken him a few minutes. After that he could have been on his way to some safe and isolated place, where he could wait this thing out until the police apprehended the real killer, and he could go back to his old life. But despite how hard he tried to convince himself that there was nothing wrong, there was this little voice inside his head that kept telling him to proceed with caution.

  He lowered his gaze and saw the digital clock above the car stereo showing that it was a quarter past eight. He had left the hotel in the city about forty minutes ago. The taxi had dropped him off where he had left his car last evening. And much to his surprise, no one had tried to vandalize it or break into it overnight. It was a scenario that had played out in his mind on the ride over.

  He had been lucky, and he hoped his lucky streak would continue for a little while longer, at least until he had managed to get the hell out of the city.

  In the last twenty four hours he had seen his financial assets miraculously increase by a hundred thousand dollars, been released from police custody and found his car undamaged after having been forced to leave it on the shoulder of the road in a less savory area of town. Yeah, he’d say he was on a roll here, all things considered.

  But still this little voice kept telling him to be vigilant and not rush things. That maybe there was someone keeping an eye on the house who wanted to do him harm, who wanted him to pay for something he hadn’t done. He was after all suspected of having killed one of the top honchos in an extremely violent drug cartel. And he had every reason to be on his guard. If the cartel had somehow found out about him, they wouldn’t hesitate to try to exact their own form of justice.

  He put the Phoenix Coyotes baseball cap that had been lying in the passenger seat on his head, and pulled it as far down over his face as he could get it. Then he got out of the car. The twenty-two caliber that he kept in the glove compartment was tucked in between his pants at the back and covered by his t-shirt.

  He wasn’t sure if the cops had searched his car or not, but he suspected that they hadn’t. If they had, surely they would have confiscated the gun. Matt found it slightly strange that they hadn’t gone through the vehicle, considering the circumstances. Nor had they bothered to impound the car. Maybe they had intended to do that later on, but been prevented from doing so when Osborne had entered the picture? It was the only logical explanation he could think of.

  He locked the door, turned around and started walking away from the house. He could of course have headed straight for the driveway and entered through the front door, but he wasn’t comfortable doing that. Not as long as he was unaware of whether anyone was keeping an eye on the house or not.

  When he arrived at the end of the block, he turned left and continued toward the street running parallel to his. There he made another left turn and kept walking until he was outside his neighbor’s place, directly behind his.

  The owners, a young Mexican couple who were working at the Wal-Mart store down the road, always left early in the morning, so he knew the house was empty. Once again he turned left and began making his way up their driveway.

  He walked with determination and didn’t stop or look around to see if anyone was observing him. When he reached the fence at the side of the house, he scaled it in one quick motion. Then he was on the other side and could see his own fence about thirty yards away.

  He stood still for a few seconds, his body hunched forward and knees slightly bent. He knew that the people who lived here didn’t have a dog, so he wasn’t worried about getting mauled. But he did worry about prying eyes in the surrounding houses. The last thing he needed right now was for a nosy neighbor to call the cops and report a potential burglary in progress.

  Matt took a deep breath and exhaled slowly and began moving toward the fence at the back. When he got there, he grabbed hold of the top of it and poked his head above the pickets. Through the bushes in his backyard, he could see his house, and as far as he could tell nothing looked out of the ordinary. The curtains in the windows were drawn shut, just like they had been when he had headed over to James the previous evening. And neither the patio door nor the laundry door showed any signs of having been forced open. Everything seemed normal and quiet, but even so he had that uneasy feeling that something was not right.

  He let go of the picket and crouched down in front of the fence, and took a few moments to calm his nerves. He knew he had to get over to the other side, open that laundry door and grab his personal belongings that were currently inside the five cardboard boxes in the garage. He couldn’t leave without them. There were important documents and certificates in there that he needed to take with him.

  Just get it over and done with he thought, then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. And before you know it, you’ll be on your way out of this city and hopefully heading somewhere safe, at least a whole lot safer than this place.

  He took one more deep breath, stood up and heaved himself over the barrier and found himself behind the bushes that stretched halfway from the center of the fence in either direction. Then he removed the gun from the back of his pants and held it tightly in his hand. He was crouched down facing the house and tried his best to remain calm, but found it difficult to do so.

  The images that were bouncing around inside his head did very little to ease his nerves. And the beating of his heart was almost as loud as the sound of the air going in and out of his mouth.

  Come on get a grip on yourself buddy and let’s get it over and done with, he told himself. The longer you put it off, the harder it’s going to be to get your ass over there and collect your stuff.

  He spent another twenty seconds or so willing himself to get going, before he eventually got up into a standing position and started making his way along the fence toward the end of the bushes. The adrenaline was racing through his system and kept him on edge. And in his head, he was thinking about what could happen when he opened up that laundry door.

  He made it out of the bushes and started running up toward the house. And for a few brief moments he was back in Iraq, running toward the safety of a house on the outskirts of Fallujah after his team had been ambushed by insurgents.

  They had been ordered to apprehend an enemy commander from an apartment building next to an elementary school. It had been in the middle of the day in June, and it had been hotter than a sauna on fire. He had been wearing a thick uniform and personal body armor, and had been out in the open since eight o’clock that morning. His entire body had been covered in a thick layer of sweat, and he had been on edge for the last fourteen months, constantly wondering if the next bullet was meant for him. Wondering if he was going to meet a violent death in this shithole that the US government had decided to ship him off to. It was
not what he had in mind when he had walked into the recruitment office three years earlier.

  And that’s when all hell had broken loose. They had been less than a hundred and fifty yards away from their target when the insurgents had seemed to appear out of nowhere and sent a barrage of high velocity rounds in their direction. The enemy had been hiding up on the roofs of the buildings that lined the road, behind corners and inside the apartments. And their only mission had been to kill as many of the hated American occupiers as possible.

  Stevenson and Richards had been hit straight away, both having received head-shots and departed this world even before their bodies had hit the ground. The rest of them had run for cover, while returning fire, or more correctly spraying bullets in all directions. It had been more like a shootout at the OK Corral than anything else. And as he had been running for cover, bullets ripping up the dirt underneath his feet and ricocheting off the walls of the buildings, he had been both terrified and calm at the same time.

  Deep down he had known that he would probably die there and have his dead body mutilated and the incident captured on film for some malicious propaganda purpose. But still, he had been hoping against all odds that he would be the lucky one who managed to make it back to base in one piece.

  He felt the same way now as he was running toward the safety of the side of the house. The voice inside his head telling him that any second now bullets from inside the house, or one of the neighboring houses would be coming his way. And whoever was holding the weapon would be able to accomplish what the Iraqi insurgents had failed to achieve during his two tours of duty in that country.

  Matt covered the twenty yards between the fence and the house in less than four seconds, and threw himself behind the corner of the house. He pressed his back up against the wall, let his head rest against the bricks and closed his eyes. His heart was hammering away inside his chest and he was clutching the gun with both hands, aiming it at the ground, but ready to lift it up and start returning fire if anyone started shooting.