by Brian Shea
Khaled observed as the agent canvassed the parking lot. He was methodical. His movements were slow and deliberate. He appeared to be very perceptive. Khaled continued to watch as the FBI agent began taking pictures. The agent caught Khaled off guard. He pointed the camera out toward the street, taking photographs in arcing fashion. Khaled was delayed in his reaction. The telephoto lens swung in his direction. He tried to raise the newspaper to shield himself from the camera. In the process he spilled the hot coffee on his lap, causing him to jump up and yelp in pain. What American coffee lacked in taste it made up for in temperature.
Khaled attempted to regain his composure. He looked down at his pants. His face no longer exposed. He held out hope that he had not drawn the agent’s attention. Or worse, been photographed. He remained head down and patted at the wet coffee with the newspaper in a futile effort to blot the stain.
After he’d taken a reasonable amount of time to attend to his spill he looked up. He caught the agent as his gaze shifted back to the bank. He had been looking in his direction. Did he see me? Khaled could not answer that question and that bothered him greatly. Plaguing him further was the thought that this agent may have photographed him sitting across the street from the bank. It would mean nothing to them now, but in three days it would matter. He contemplated trying to get the camera from the agent, but Khaled quickly dismissed the thought. It was not worth the possible exposure. Too risky.
The phone in his pocket began to vibrate. Only a select few had his number. Khaled answered it on the second ring.
“Hello, my friend. How are you?” Khaled spoke in a manner that would sound genuine to anyone eavesdropping in the area. He also chose to speak English during these conversations because it lessened suspicion in the post-9/11 world.
“Status?” The voice on the other end was cold and direct.
“I can pick you up. No problem. Yes, of course, Monday will work for me. How does 3:15 sound?” Khaled sounded elated. And part of him was truly excited. His long journey finally had brought him to this point.
The cold voice said nothing. Khaled heard the click, indicating that the phone call was over.
The bus arrived. It slowed to a stop a few feet beyond where he stood. Khaled smelled the all-to-familiar odor of diesel fuel as the mechanical hiss of the hydraulics lowered the bus and the doors swung open. He entered and walked to the rear. He took his seat as it lurched forward. Northbound into Hartford.
J’s Pizza was a take-out and delivery-only style restaurant. It sat near the corner of Russ and Lawrence Street in an area of Hartford known as Frog Hollow. It was a predominantly Hispanic section of the capital city. Most of its residents hailed directly from Puerto Rico. Khaled’s “friends” had bought the establishment several years ago and had selected this neighborhood because they could blend in. Their olive skin and dark hair gave them the appearance of possibly being of Hispanic descent and working in Frog Hollow had almost guaranteed that people would assume it. Khaled’s “friends” kept to themselves and spoke very little to the few customers that entered their store.
The pizza was nothing more than a generic frozen brand. The kitchen area was not visible to customers. It consisted of two very cheap ovens. The sign on the door read: “Cash Only.” This simple marketing scheme kept away most customers in this age of debit and credit cards. Nobody carried paper money anymore.
It didn’t matter what the store sold in pizza. It always generated roughly $45,000 annually. That number, by design, was $14,000 less than the national average. Khaled’s “friends” had these businesses all over the United States and the money rarely came from customers. Khaled did not get too involved in the financial matters of his benefactors. He knew that it was better not to ask questions.
He entered J’s. The chime of the door opening alerted anyone in the back of his arrival. He walked past the counter and through the heavy red sheet that hung nailed to the doorframe. This makeshift door covered the kitchen area from view.
There was a back room adjacent to the freezer. Khaled knocked. He heard the creak of a chair and could see the shadow cast under the door as he was examined through the peephole. Several locks slid out of their secured position, an indication that his identity had been verified. The door opened. Silence enveloped the hushed conversations that were taking place in the room prior to his arrival.
The air was heavy with cigarette smoke. It looked as if low hanging storm clouds had settled into the small poorly lit room. Two men sat at the table. Both nodded weakly to Khaled as he entered. The man who had opened the door returned to his seat without saying a word. Khaled sat. This was a serious time and the four men at this table all knew what lay ahead.
“Is everything ready?” Khaled asked in a confident manner.
“It is. We received the items made by the Technician. I believe that he still has eight of his ten fingers,” the heavier of the men said with a slight chuckle in his voice. The joke was a feeble attempt. And further wasted on Khaled because he knew that the fat man had never actually met the Technician. Khaled was the only one to have ever had a face-to-face encounter.
Khaled did not acknowledge the fat man’s joke and continued with the business at hand. “I will need the money and car now. As soon as this is done I will be leaving for my next location.” Khaled had not always displayed this level of confidence, but in the years since Sonia’s death, he had created a new persona. He had earned a mythical status among the Muqawama. He had become known as the Dust Devil.
“Where will you go?” Asked the heavyset man.
“I thought that it was explained to you. I only speak to the One. You are but a small part of my support network. You are a pawn. A piece to be used and discarded. That is all.” Khaled’s eyes hardened as he spoke. All the men in the room suddenly looked uneasy. It was not wise to upset the Dust Devil. Everyone in their circle was aware of the consequences.
“Your car is out back. The Technician’s package, as well as the additional items that you requested, are in the trunk’s spare tire compartment area. The money is set under the rear passenger seat in a green backpack. I did not count it. I was told that you would know how much?” The fat man’s fear was evident. He swallowed hard after he spoke. A bead of sweat formed above his thick eyebrows. Khaled took pride in noting this.
Without another word, Khaled stood. He eyed each man in the room. The eye contact held long enough to convey the unspoken message. The fat man slid the car keys across the table. “Good luck,” he said. The fat man breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief as Khaled picked up the keys and made for the door.
Luck has nothing to do with it, Khaled thought to himself as he exited the building.
He sat in the older model blue Honda Accord and took a moment to acclimate to the car. This vehicle was selected for its commonality and therefore it would be unrecognizable. He drove off into the night. Khaled, the Dust Devil, had much to do before Monday came.
10
Declan finished counting the cash in the partially finished basement of his small house. He used the laundry area so that the children didn’t see. No need to have the unwanted conversation of trying to explain a big pile of money to his little ones. It took almost an hour to count by hand.
The partially carpeted floor of the laundry room was covered with stacks of money. Each stack was labeled with a sticky note denoting the different sums. He placed the money into three vacuum bags. Declan used his wife’s food sealer to remove the pockets of air. A Sharpie marker was used to label the plastic exterior with the amount of cash contained inside each one.
Done. He sat on the floor and stared at the total. Relieved, but sickened at the same time. He was conflicted but took solace in the fact that no one was killed in the process.
Val was sitting on the floor of the living room playing a sensory activity game with Laney. His littlest organized the colored shapes into patterns. Declan stood quietly and watched the two. It gave him peace to take in moments like these. It re
minded him of why he had taken such a huge risk with the armored truck.
He decided not to interrupt. Instead, he walked outside to the fenced-in backyard of his house and surveyed his property. He looked at the homemade pirate flag atop the playscape. I’m a modern-day pirate, Declan thought. And with that, an idea popped into his head.
Declan grabbed a shovel from the shed and proceeded to dig in his wife’s flower bed. He uprooted her flowers and created a space, roughly four square feet. The dirt was removed and set aside. The hole was hollowed out one foot deep. Declan placed the sealed packages of money into his makeshift safe. $60,000 dollars in twenty-dollar bills did not look as grand when sealed in plastic. He kept the remaining $27,000 accessible in the house. He returned the displaced dirt and scattered the leftover earth along the fence line. He stood back, evaluating the quality of his work. Buried treasure. The sign of a true pirate.
He added a finishing touch by giving the entire flower bed a light watering. A good spot. During his time in the Narcotics Enforcement Team, Declan never dug up a yard on a search warrant. The money would be safe. Maybe I should mark it with a big X? He laughed at the thought, as he stood dirt covered and with shovel in hand.
The remaining cash was needed for some immediate finances. He had to get his mortgage current to stave off the foreclosure. Declan’s t-shirt, purchased at Goodwill, was stamped with a construction emblem. He wiped some more dirt and dust on the shirt, the sweat from the dig adding to the effect. He looked the part of a day laborer. Declan had always been gifted at blending in. Hook, one of his spec ops buddies, had jokingly called him the Chameleon because of this ability.
Declan took enough cash for the four months of missed mortgage payments plus penalties, totaling $6,140. He held the money in his hand for a moment before putting it into a manila envelope. He scribbled his first initial and last name on the front, adding some mathematical calculations accompanied by dates and amounts, the calculations totaling $7,000. Declan figured that this would be typical of under-the-table work and should not draw suspicion from anyone at the bank during his transaction.
Declan drove his wife’s minivan to a bank on the other side of town. He decided that it was a good idea to let his Corolla sit for a few days before taking it out in public. Declan arrived at the bank and purchased a money order listing his mortgage company as the payee. He called his lender as he walked out of the bank, telling them that the check was on its way for the full amount of missed payments. The customer service representative was very cheerful as if the money was going straight to her pocket. She told Declan that the payment promise had been noted on his account and that when the money was received the account would be out of delinquency.
He hung up the phone and leaned against the side of the dark blue minivan. A weight lifted from his shoulders and for the first time in many months, he felt like things were going to be okay.
11
Nick leaned over Izzy’s shoulder in Darryl’s cramped cubicle. They’d been watching and re-watching the surveillance footage. The video camera that provided the best overall angle for capturing the incident in its entirety was positioned on a light pole between the bank and the neighboring gas station. It looked down into the parking lot at a forty-five-degree angle. The camera did not have much in the way of a zoom, but the quality was clearer than most.
The first time Nick watched the robbery in the normal playback mode, he too was amazed at the speed that the suspect had moved. Izzy was right to nickname him Flash. Beyond the speed was Flash’s precision. Slowing the replay mode enabled Nick to see that Flash had a total economy of movement, expending no unnecessary energy in the attack.
Nick had been considered a good operator during his time as a Ranger, but he knew that he had nothing on the skill set of Flash. He was mesmerized watching him move on the computer screen in front of him. He’d seen skills like this before in some of the Delta guys that he crossed paths with overseas, but the thing that stood out most to Nick was that Flash did not shoot the two armed guards. He had incapacitated and disarmed them in a matter of seconds without inflicting any major injuries on the pair. Nick was looking at someone who was operating at a completely different level of skill than anyone he had encountered before.
Nick had Izzy pull up the ATM camera footage. The angle cut out Flash’s entrance and exit from the bank’s parking lot but picked him up when he was about six feet from the guards.
Nick watched the monitor intently as Flash raised the gun, causing the sleeve of his shirt to pull back marginally. Izzy noted the black markings of what appeared to be a tattoo. She had already enhanced and enlarged the image. It was printed and rested atop of a stack of papers strewn across Darryl’s desk. The image was clearly identifiable as a scorpion.
“Can you run that through our tattoo database? Maybe we will get lucky and it will be some local gang thing.” Nick said this, knowing that Izzy had already done it. She was good like that.
“I sent it over to Greg at Digital an hour ago. He’s working it and will let me know if something pops,” Izzy said, referring to Greg Cranmore, of the Digital Forensics Unit. Izzy dabbled in the tech world and would be considered a whiz by a layperson’s standard, but Greg was a master of that domain. Both Nick and Izzy had utilized the benefit of his expertise in the past with great success.
“I assume that the other tattoo on his neck has also been sent over?”
“Of course. You know how I work,” Izzy said with a grin.
“Can you figure out what type of gun that is? It’s hard to make it out, but it looks like a small caliber revolver,” Nick said as he squinted at the paused image of the gun.
“Wait a minute!” Izzy said as she brought the image on the screen back several frames, looking for something specific.
“Look at that!” Izzy exclaimed, pushing her chair back to allow Nick to move closer to the monitor.
“Look at what?” Nick hated missing something, but he didn’t notice anything of value on the flickering screen before him.
“Look at the end of the barrel. Do you notice anything out of the ordinary?” She was teetering on the border of giddy.
“Damn. How’d I miss that before?” Nick mumbled, massaging his temples as he noticed the capped muzzle of the gun. Nick now realizing that it wasn’t actually a gun. It was most likely some type of starter pistol.
“The gunshot the guards heard was actually a blank. This guy went up against two armed guards with an inert weapon and seconds later walked away with eighty-seven thousand dollars in cash. Who are we dealing with Nick?”
“I have no idea, but whoever the Flash is, he’s got some serious training in his background,” Nick’s tone betraying his awe of the man on the video. “Let’s eat. I need to clear my head for a minute and get some fresh perspective.”
The two told Darryl that they would be back later before setting off down the Silas Deane Highway in search of some good food. Nick had lost track of time and darkness had set in. Lunch would now be dinner. They saw the neon sign of a Mexican restaurant and pulled in, just as Nick’s phone began to ring.
“The police just left, and Patrick is in his room.” Nick’s mother said with the frustrated anger of a parent fresh from disciplining a child.
“What did he do this time?” Nick placated, trying to figure out which time period he was dealing with.
“He crashed the car into a fire hydrant and walked away! Who does that?” She responded. Nick could hear the exasperation in her voice as if this was really happening.
“I will be home soon. Did you find the controller?” Nick said, hearing the familiar sound of the television kicking on in the background. Nick hung up, giving a discontented sigh. Izzy was the only person that he had felt comfortable enough with to share this piece of his life. She smiled in a way that softened the awkwardness, making him feel as though this conversation was normal.
Nick picked up his phone, making an important follow-up call.
“Hi Margare
t, it’s Nick. Can you stop over? I got stuck on a case tonight that will keep me tied up for a couple more hours.” Nick had few resources to assist him and they were rapidly depleting as his mom’s health status declined. Nick’s next-door neighbor, a retired librarian, had come to relish visiting with Nick’s mother. Over the years, the two routinely enjoyed a glass of wine in the evening as they discussed the ups and downs of life. The visits were more frequent before his mother’s mental health had taken a more serious downturn. Now, Margaret usually only came over on Nick’s request, but even that was becoming harder, with more excuses than acceptances.
“Sure, Nick. I can do it tonight. I will stay until she’s asleep, but I think it’s getting to be the time for you to get some professional help.” Margaret said this with no hint of condescension, but with genuine compassion. “Sorry, I don’t mean to preach, but you work a lot and it might be better for her.”
“Thank you, Margaret. You’re a saint.” Nick clicked off, suddenly more tired than he’d been a few minutes ago.
“Food will help. Maybe a margarita or two couldn’t hurt either.” Izzy laughed, bringing Nick out of his momentary slump. The two made their way into the crowded restaurant, taking up a table in the bar area closest to the back wall covered in artwork depicting symbolic images of Mexico. The noise of the neighboring patrons seemed to drown out the disarray in his head that had surfaced from his mother’s recent phone call. Nick focused his attention back to the task at hand. Who was Flash?
12