by Joseph Lewis
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
When Tommy Albrecht moved his team forward in KC, and when Jamie put his gun to the fat man’s head in Chicago, it was only 3:30 AM PCT in Los Angeles.
The building in Los Angeles that Gavin Reilly had monitored was dissimilar to the building in Chicago in that it was newer. It was in a lousy part of Long Beach near the water front just off the industrial corridor. Its colors were a dirty gray on the outside with a very plain tan or beige color scheme on the inside. It was similar in that men had to be buzzed in from the outside, walk up three stories to a computer kiosk of sorts, where the customer would then browse through a series of pictures to select the boy he wanted, just as Graff had done.
Once inside the third floor, the set up was the same, though O’Connor didn’t know it. A long hallway with doors on either side opened to what O’Connor thought to be bedrooms. A similar control room like the one in Chicago was on the right near the third floor landing.
There were some customers in the building, and two of the three guards were sound asleep when Pat O’Connor pulled his gun out and forced the sleepy guard, a short, squat balding man, to the floor in Colin Chapple’s room.
Colin sat up in bed and watched in fascination, not quite believing it was happening. Rather, he thought the whole thing was staged as some sort of sex game before he was raped by the man with the gun.
After O’Connor had Jack Andrews on the floor in similar plastic ties that Desotel had used in Kansas City and like Graff had used in Chicago, and after he had duct taped Andrews’ mouth shut, he pulled off his jacket revealing a navy t-shirt. He pulled a Velcro patch off his left breast that revealed an FBI logo and removed a similar Velcro patch off his back shoulders that revealed FBI in even bigger, brighter yellow letters.
“Kid, I need your help,” O’Conner said. “I’m a Sheriff Deputy working with the FBI. My team is outside waiting for me, and I have to get them inside and secure the guards and get all you boys home safely. Will you help me?”
Very leery, nervous, and still not quite believing what was happening, yet ever so slightly hopeful, Colin nodded but didn’t move from his bed.
“Do you know how the front door works to let people in?”
Colin nodded again, but didn’t move.
“Well . . .” O’Connor started. “Kid, we have to move. Right now, I’m assuming the other guards are asleep. I don’t know how many other men are in the building, but I think our spotter said two, maybe three. So, will you help me or not?”
Colin got up off the bed, walked over to the guard bound up and lying on the floor, and slammed his foot down on the back of his head driving his face into the floor. Then he went to the doorway, looked both ways, and ran to the control room with O’Connor following and pushed the buzzer, allowing Charlie Chan and Paul Eiselmann into the building. Then he and O’Connor went to the door that opened to the third floor hallway and let the two men in to join O’Connor.
“How did you know where the buzzer was?” O’Connor asked him.
Embarrassed, Colin turned red and said, “Jack brought me in there a couple of times for, you know. I watched him buzz guys in.”
Chan went to work filming and collecting evidence as Dahlke had done in Chicago, downloading the contents of the computer kiosk and the various electronic gadgets in the control room to Chet at the Sheraton. He checked in with Chet letting him know what he had found, so he could pass it on to Dahlke in Chicago so they could trade their intel. Eiselmann and O’Connor huddled.
“We think the other two guards are still sleeping. You could start on one end, while I start on the other. We get the guards squared away and free the kids.”
“What about any assholes who might be with the kids?”
O’Connor thought about it for a minute and then said, “You and I get the assholes first, then the guards. Start on that side of the hallway at that end,” pointing to the end farthest from the control room, “and I’ll start on this end.”
“Can’t,” the boy said.
“Why?” Eiselmann asked.
“Only one key.”
O’Connor sighed and revised the plan once again. He would enter the room with Eiselmann standing guard just outside the door and ready to help if O’Connor needed it.
“We let the kids stay in their rooms?” Eiselmann asked.
“Um . . .” Colin said.
“What?” O’Connor asked.
“I’ll get the kids and move them to one or two rooms. That way, we’re together and ready.”
“Ready for what?” Eiselmann asked.
Puzzled, Colin looked first at Eiselmann, then at O’Connor and said, “To go home.”
Paul Eiselmann nodded and smiled at the boy and said, “Right you are, Kid. Everyone goes home.”
The three of them set to work quietly and efficiently. Inserting the key; opening the door. If there was just a boy, Colin would wake him gently, whispering into the boy’s ear and then move him to a room towards the end. If a customer was with the boy, then O’Connor would bind and gag him with plastic ties and duct tape, while Colin took the boy to the end of the hallway.
In less than twenty minutes, the boys were in two rooms, and four men were bound up and gagged and locked in the rooms they were found in. With Chan watching the third floor and with the master key taken from Jack Andrews in hand, O’Connor and Eiselmann went down the back stairs to the second floor to take care of the guards.
* * *
Fitz rapidly went through various scenarios and possibilities and finally settled on a bull rush. As the Camaro slowed to enter the garage, Fitz got up from his sitting position and stripped off his scraggily wig and green military coat and left them in the middle of the alley revealing the FBI T-shirt he had worn underneath it. He ran across to the garage door at an angle so as not to be seen by either man. He waited by the entrance and as the door started down, sneaked himself around the corner behind a white van that sat in the right side parking slot.
The garage was dark, dirty and dusty with oil stains on the cement floor. It was also bigger than he had originally thought, taking up what seemed to be most of the first floor of the building. A couple of cheap frame and drywall unused offices faced each other. The glass in the windows was either broken or removed, and neither had doors. There were stairs on either end of the garage that Fitz assumed went up to the second and third floors. The outside door that he knew to be unused stood closed and padlocked behind a pile of old tires, oil drums and other accumulated debris. Two other vehicles, a ’98 dark blue Grand Prix, and a ’94 silver Chevy Lumina were also in the garage. Fitz loved cars, especially fast ones, but these were nothing to admire, and he didn’t have the time to admire anything at the moment. Basically, he recognized these as pieces of shit he wouldn’t be caught dead in.
He slid along the back of the van and waited until the door rolled down completely and until he heard the car doors open and the two men shuffle out of the vehicle. One man laughed at something the other man had said.
Fitz allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness and then he stepped out and yelled, “FBI, hands where I can see ‘em.”
Neither man moved except to turn around at the sound of his voice.
“I said-” he never got to finish.
A tall, skinny guy who was on the passenger side reached for his gun but was blown backwards by the shotgun blast to his chest. As Fitz jacked another shell into the chamber, the driver pulled out his gun and fired two shots. Fitz ducked, but not soon enough. He was hit in the shoulder and was spun around and down behind the passenger side of the car. Lying down where he could see the other man’s legs and feet, Fitz fired.
The shotgun sent a blast of pellets in a cluster the size of a softball shattering the man’s lower shin, and in the process, blowing his foot off leaving only a bloody stump. The man landed in a thud screaming, but another shotgun blast to the side of the man’s head ended his screams as quickly as they had started.
Fitz’s ears
were ringing. Sound was muffled like he was under water and had cotton packed in both ears. If anyone had come to his or to the two asshole’s rescue, he’d never know it. His left arm was useless, which was sort of okay since he was right handed. Yet, he was bleeding badly.
He picked himself up off the floor, moved first to the passenger, felt for a pulse, and not finding any, picked up the man’s gun and shoved it into his belt. He moved to the other man but didn’t even bother with the pulse because most of the man’s head had disintegrated into a gooey mass of bone, blood and brain matter. He picked up that man’s gun, too.
Both Jamie and Pete had heard the gunfire and knew that if they could hear it on the third floor, there was little doubt the guards on the second floor could also. If they weren’t awake before, they would be now.
“Fitz, what’s happening?” Jamie asked.
“Two down, but I’m hit. Shoulder,” he shouted in answer.
“How bad?”
“Trouble hearing you . . . my ears are all fucked up,” Fitz yelled. “My left arm is bad. Bleeding.”
“Fuck!” Pete muttered more to himself than to Jamie.
“Pete, I gotta go . . .”
“Be careful. Those guards . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” but Jamie was already moving through the door leading down to the rest of the building.
“Skip, I need you in the front. No one, and I mean no one, comes through that door. If he, she or it doesn’t identify themselves as FBI, you shoot first and ask questions later. You understand?”
Dahlke licked his lips and nodded solemnly.
Pete placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine. You breath nice and easy, short, shallow breaths. Aim waist high.”
Dahlke nodded again then ran back up the hallway to the front door. He stood ten feet from the door and looked around, feeling exposed. Brett came out of the bedroom carrying a chair and set it on its side where Skip stood.
“Get down and use this to steady your rifle. It isn’t much protection, but it might help you aim.”
He ran back into his bedroom and pulled the pillow off the bed and brought it back to Dahlke.
“Don’t know if this will help or not. Up to you.”
He ran back to the room once more, picked up the .45 and ran down the hallway where Pete stood half in, half out of the bedroom where the red-haired man lay bound and gagged on the floor.
“What the fuck are you doing out here? Give me that gun!”
“No. I’m keeping it for protection,” Brett answered calmly, coolly.
“You’re a kid. They see you with a gun, you become a target,” Pete yelled through clenched teeth.
“I’m a target one way or the other. At least I’ll be a target with a gun,” Brett answered.
“Fuck!” Pete said pounding the wall.
“Those guards are awake, and they’ll either be coming this way or going down to where Jamie went. He’s going to need help.”
“Don’t tell me my job, Kid!”
“Just sayin’ . . . this door is locked, and anyone coming through it has to unlock it. I’ll shoot first, just like that guy,” Brett said, jerking his head in the direction of Dahlke. “But, that other cop is going to have a shit storm coming down on him, so you better get moving.”
Pete started to say something with his finger pointing at Brett, but thought better of it. Quickly, he ran through the options and came to realize there weren’t any. Two guns on the backside of the building were good, and the fact that the door locked behind him was even better. The kid could handle a gun, but still, Campbell’s soup cans were a hell of a lot different than men with guns. But the door was locked, and both Jamie and he would be armed.
He frowned at the boy, turned and said to Dahlke, “Skip, I’m going to help Graff. You have the front door. I’ll have the back door,” he said as much to Skip as he did for the benefit of the boy with the gun, “but I’ll be on the first or second floor. Got it?”
“Yup, just go!”
Seething, Pete shook his head once and cautiously opened the door, listening for any sound or footfalls. He looked back at Brett, then moved onto the third floor landing and shut the door quietly behind him.
* * *
In their years together in SWAT, O’Connor and Eiselmann had developed a silent hand-signal system they had modified into a kind of shorthand, bred by their close friendship. They entered the second floor assault style, one behind the other, with Eiselmann leading low to the right, and O’Connor entering high to the left. Pat kept his hand on the door, so he could shut it softly behind them.
No one other than Pat O’Connor and Paul Eiselmann were in the hallway. Listening for any sounds out of the ordinary, Pat signaled Paul to move ahead and to the left side, while he would trail slightly to the right.
The first room they came to was an empty and darkened kitchen. The only lights were the digital time on the microwave and on the oven. They moved onward and came to the first door. O’Connor signaled to Eiselmann to try the doorknob on a count of three. Eiselmann did, and the knob turned easily. He pushed it open, and the two of them entered the darkened room swiftly and silently. The bed was made, no one was present and there weren’t any signs that the room had been used. Both looked at each other and almost simultaneously sighed in relief.
They moved down the hallway, and the next two rooms were the same as the first: dark, empty and unused. Knowing that at least two guards were still asleep, they had four doors left to check. They gripped their guns tighter, took a deep breath and Eiselmann reached out cautiously, and slowly turned the doorknob.
It was locked.
He showed the key to O’Connor, who nodded. Eiselmann inserted it as softly as he could, and the door unlocked with a soft, yet audible click. He opened the door quietly to the sound of slow, heavy breathing. O’Connor nodded at Eiselmann and turned facing the hallway in a crouch.
Eiselmann moved to the side of the bed, clamping one hand down on the mouth of the man sleeping, waking him up, while shoving his gun into his cheek just below his left eye.
He bent low and whispered, “You make one sound, and I’ll blow your fucking head off. You understand?”
Now wide awake, the man nodded cautiously so as not to have the gun go off accidently. Keeping the gun in his face, Eiselmann took his hand off the man’s mouth and used it to grab the man’s hair, yanking him up and out of the bed, forcing him to the floor. Paul bent low and in a whisper, ordered the man to put both of his hands behind his back, which he did. Then using twist ties, bound the man’s hands and feet, and duct taped his mouth shut. It took Paul less than five minutes. He locked the room behind him and joined O’Connor in the hallway.
Three doors left and behind them, one or more sleeping guards. Hopefully, sleeping guards.
* * *
“Fitz, I’m on the landing just above the first floor . . . I’m coming to you. Do you copy?”
“Yeah. All clear down here. Better watch your ass though,” he answered hoarsely.
Jamie backed up against the landing wall and looked up towards the second floor. He was exposed if anyone should come down. He needed to move and move quickly.
“I’m coming now, Fitz.”
He came down the landing with his gun out, head on a swivel looking both below and above him. The air smelled of gunpowder, oil, dirt and dust. There weren’t any lights and the little that filtered in from under the garage door was negligible.
“Fitz, where are you?”
“Your twelve o’clock, twenty yards on the other side of the Camaro. I saw a light switch to your left on the wall as you come off the last step.”
He found three lights and flicked on the first, which turned on two lights on the far wall over the van and the Camaro. He didn’t turn on any others, thinking that he could find Fitz and use the darkness in the rest of the garage to their advantage.
Jamie covered the ground quickly, yet cautiously. He rounded the front end of the Lumina, th
en the Grand Prix and saw one of the guards lying on his back in a syrupy pool of thickening blood. He had to step over the other man to find Fitz, sitting down against the side of the van, listing to one side.
“How you doin’ Buddy?” Jamie said as he knelt down to check Fitz’s shoulder.
“Just ducky! Gonna play a couple rounds of golf when we get back,” he answered through a cough.
He had lost a lot of blood, and he had to get help in a hurry.
“Pete or Skip, call Chet and find out the ETA on the posse.”
Pete heard him in the earpiece as did Dahlke but didn’t answer because of his closeness to the second floor door. Dahlke responded by saying he’d place a call right away. Distracted, Pete didn’t hear the door open. Not just one, but two guards came through the door, and one placed a gun to the back of Pete’s head, cocking it, while the other one took Pete’s gun from him. Pete raised his hands, and one of the men shoved his face into wall, kicked his legs apart and frisked him, but found nothing.
“Let’s go back upstairs and see what’s happening,” a man whispered into his ear. “But first, how many guns up there?”
“Fuck you, Pervert,” Pete spat.
The man with the gun wrapped it hard on the back of Pete’s head while the other one punched him twice in the lower back in the area of his kidneys.
“No matter, you’ll go through the door first. You’re gonna be our Kryptonite, Mother Fucker. You’ll get the first bullet while we take out whoever’s left.”
Hoping that the two guards didn’t know about him being wired, and hoping that Dahlke would listen and understand what was about to happen, he said, “As long as you two guys get shot, I don’t care if they take me out. They can pull the trigger on you two and keep on shooting until the well is dry for all I care.”
One of the guards grabbed Pete roughly by the back of his jacket and shoved him up the stairs.
“Just get your ass up there and don’t try to be a hero, or I’ll be the one to cap your ass. Got it Mother Fucker?”
“You two are so brave . . . you fuck eleven and twelve year olds. You two guys are so tough. I’m real worried.”