[2001] Public Enemy Zero

by Andrew Mayne

  The greeter was still choking Mitchell and bringing his teeth in to bite him. Mitch’s hands grabbed at the shelves, trying to find something to use as a weapon. He felt a heavy box and grabbed it. He slammed it into the side of the greeter’s face as hard as he could. The greeter didn’t relent. Mitch hit him again just above his eye, splitting it open. Blood poured down his face, but he didn’t stop.

  Mitch brought his knees up to his chest and kicked out at the man. He kept his legs pressed against the other man and kept shoving. He finally slipped out of his grasp.

  Mitch scrambled backward on the floor on his backside and looked for something else to use as a weapon. The teenager crawled toward Mitchell’s foot. Mitch kicked him in the face.

  The greeter jumped at Mitchell again. This time Mitch pulled himself to the side by grabbing the edge of a shelf. The man hit the tile next to him. Mitch used his free hand on the shelf to pull himself up. As he leaned on it, the shelf came loose and fell on top of the greeter, sending a pile of toolboxes on him.

  That wasn’t going to stop him. Mitch looked at the box in his hand; it was for a kitchen fire extinguisher. Mitch pulled it out of the box and yanked the safety free. He sprayed the other men directly in their faces, covering them in a cloud of white powder.

  Mitch found his bucket of stolen merchandise and ran to another section. He found some rolls of black electrical tape and shoved them into his bucket. He stepped out into the aisle and saw the ponytailed cashier approaching. Mitch pulled out the paintball gun and shot her twice in the face and ran back to the automotive section. Five more people were coming from the other side of the store. They were 30 yards away and gaining.

  Mitch looked around for another weapon. There was a stack of motor oil to his left. He set down his bucket and pulled the fish knife from his waistband. He started stabbing holes in cans and throwing them between himself and the people running at him. A heavy man wearing a football jersey ran over one of the cans and his heel slipped on the oil. He lost his balance and pulled down a display of 2-liter soda bottles with him. A tall stock clerk jumped over the oil spill and came charging at Mitchell.

  Mitch grabbed a can from the display and just hurled it at his head. The can hit the man in the cheek, but he kept running. Mitch threw another can at his head and missed. Desperate, Mitch slid the whole display of motor oil onto the ground, covering the closing gap between them. The man’s foot slipped on one of the cans and his face slammed into the pile with so much force a can popped open, spewing oil like blood splatter.

  Mitch could see other people getting closer. He wouldn’t be able to fight them all off. He ran toward a pair of double doors in the back of the store.

  He entered a long storeroom. He felt a shudder as he remembered what happened in the department store. Mitch wanted to block the doors but didn’t see anything to use, so he ran down the aisle, pulling large boxes onto the floor behind him.

  Halfway to the exit, he could hear the double doors open behind him. His pursuers struggled through the boxes. To Mitch’s right he saw a fire ax and a fire hose. He reached for the ax and then noticed an electrical power box. Mitch set down his bucket and used two hands to slam the ax into the cable above the power box.

  The lights went off. He could hear footsteps and snarling getting closer. Fuck. Mitchell realized that they didn’t need sound to find him. They could still follow his scent. He was blind. They weren’t.

  Mitchell held the ax ready to slam it into anything that came close.

  Damn it! He knew hitting someone with the blade would kill them. Self-defense or not, that would be murder. Mitchell turned the ax around so the blade was under his hand. He’d use it like a club but not a bladed weapon. Concussions were fair game.

  Mitchell heard a box crunch near him. He swung into the dark and felt the handle connect. Something fell backward. He heard something to his right. He swung again. He heard a crack and felt a spray of blood hit his face and open mouth. He spat it out.

  Something grabbed his ankle. Mitchell brought his foot up and slammed down on a hand. He could feel the bones crunch under his heel. He felt around and grabbed the bucket.

  Mitchell slid around the back wall, periodically jabbing the ax handle into the darkness. He felt it connect again. Something clicked behind him. He stopped for a moment and then realized it was the back exit. Mitchell bolted through it and almost dropped the ax. There was a police car in back of the store.

  Mitchell froze until he heard footsteps behind him. He shoved the door closed. Fists slammed against it from the other side. Mitch picked up the ax and slammed it into the middle of the door just below waist height. He ignored the cop car as he tried to shut the door.

  The ax lodged in a wedge-shaped gash. Mitch pushed down on the end of the handle until it hit the ground. Hands behind the door found the release and pushed the door open. The ax slid backward a few inches and then came to a stop when it hit the metal railing that lined the walkway behind the door.

  Mitch looked over at the second cop car. It had to have been empty. Nobody was trying to kill him. He hopped over the railing and landed on the hood. He had the impulse to slash the tires but decided it wasn’t worth losing time.

  Mitchell took his bucket and ran back toward his boat. He could still hear the dispatchers and police officers on the scanner talking but nothing about the store. He considered that a good thing. But he was nervous that he hadn’t seen the two cops anywhere inside the store.

  Mitchell ran two more blocks and found his boat where he left it. He threw his stolen booty into it and kicked off from the canal. He gave the engine a start and headed back to the marina.

  On the way back, he realized that in fact he had seen the cops. He understood why his nut kick hadn’t had any effect. The stocky greeter was one of the cops. When Mitch kicked him in the testicles, he probably kicked him where he had his gun hidden. The other cop was probably disguised as one of the stock clerks, most likely the Hispanic one who kept coming.

  He felt good about narrowly averting a close call with the cops and also for not doing permanent damage to the man’s balls. No matter how sore Mitchell’s throat felt, he knew he couldn’t blame the man for trying to kill him. What did make Mitchell upset was the fact that if the cops were waiting for him to show up, how come none of them had any kind of protective gear like a gasmask on them?

  For sure if they did, Mitchell would be in custody or dead right now. But if they still weren’t taking him seriously, he was even more worried about surrendering.

  For all the effort he just went through and the bruises on his neck and rest of his body, Mitchell was glad he was going to take some extra steps to protect himself when he surrendered. The crazy James Bond shit Mitch had planned probably wouldn’t work and would only get him killed, but at least he wouldn’t go down easily if all hell broke loose.

  42

  Mitchell brought his johnboat in back of the Highlander and tied it to the dive platform. He looked around the marina. The lights had gone off in the super-yacht he’d seen earlier. Other than the lights from fixtures on the docks, the only other light came from a small building at the front of the marina. In an upscale marina like this one, he could be certain there was a guard sitting inside in front of a bank of screens that showed different camera angles from around the harbor. It was also a certainty that he would make periodic rounds.

  Mitchell debated whether or not to change the boat lettering while he was in the marina. The last thing he wanted to do was try to cut off the lock on the main cabin. The sound might not carry all the way to the guard, but he might hear it when he walked his rounds. Thinking of the truck stop the night before, Mitchell had the added risk of there being people asleep on any of the boats around the marina. When he worked at a marina, he met several colorful characters who lived on their boats and yachts year-round.

  The lettering could wait until he was safely away from there. He used the Wi-Fi network to look at a Google map of the area to figur
e out where he wanted to take the boat. Thirty minutes north of him the Intracoastal ran into a bay with a bunch of small islands like the one he had been on. He could take the boat up there and park it behind one of the islands that night and change the name and registration numbers.

  Before he took the boat out of the marina, assuming he could get to the key, he needed to look for a GPS antenna. On a boat that cost over $300,000, it was a given the owner would install a security system that would tell him if it had been moved more than fifteen feet from where it was berthed.

  On most boats, it would be mounted to the canopy. The Highlander didn’t have one. It was just an open cockpit. Mitchell climbed under the covering and searched around under the inside of the sides of the boats. He couldn’t find anything that felt like a unit, but he found two cables that ran from the cabin to the back of the boat under one of the locked covers.

  One of them was probably the antenna for the alarm system. The other was probably an electric cable control for the back hatches. He pulled on them both. One of them let out several feet of slack. That was most likely the GPS cable. Installers tended to roll the slack up into coils and zip-tie them inside of a well in case the owner wants to move the unit. Mitchell cut the cable and looked at the cross section. It looked like what he thought it should. Before leaving the harbor, he’d do another pass through the interior and take a look at the electrical system.

  With the alarm system out of the way, Mitchell was ready to cut the lock. He gathered all the gear from the johnboat. He set the flashlight he was using on the floor and put a metal grinding disk in the angle grinder. To keep the lock from flopping around, he taped it to the hatch.

  He plugged the extension cord into the grinder and then poked his head out from the covering to see if anyone was near. The dock was empty on either side. He couldn’t do anything about the security cameras, so he just went for it. Mitchell leaned out over the edge and plugged the cord into the outlet on the pylon nearest the cockpit.

  He ducked back down and pulled the covering back in place. With any luck, nobody would notice the sound. With slightly less luck, they wouldn’t know where the sound came from. Worse-case scenario: He could hop into his johnboat and go find another island.

  He’d seen an angle grinder used to cut a lock but had never tried it himself. Mitchell gripped the grinder and held it over the lock. He was about to find out real quick if observing was the same as doing.

  He turned the grinder on and touched the spinning disk to the lock. The cockpit was filled with an earsplitting sound while his legs were showered with sparks. Mitchell squinted as they bounced into his face. He cursed himself for not getting eye protection or earmuffs.

  After a few seconds of abuse, the lock gave up and fell open. The small space under the cover was filled with the smell of burnt metal. Mitchell’s ears were ringing but he could still hear the sounds of dispatchers in his earbud as they responded to the latest crisis he caused at the Super Center.

  Mitchell grabbed the lock and then jerked his hand away from the heat. Dumb move, he told himself. He used the edge of the jacket he had taken off to pull the lock away. Mitchell opened the hatch on the cabin and shined his flashlight inside.

  On his left he could see a panel of green lights that showed the systems that had power. He flashed the light around and saw a sink, the head, and the U-shaped couch at the front that also served as a bed.

  Remembering back to the marina he worked at, he pulled up the carpet beneath the hatch. There was a small door that opened to the bottom of the hull. Mitchell reached down there and felt a box the size of a thick wallet. He yanked it free. It came out attached to two cables. He was looking for the key but found the GPS alarm system. He unplugged it and tossed it aside.

  Mitchell reached his arm back down again and found a plastic bag wedged between some cables. He pulled it out. Through the plastic he could see several keys. One for the hatches, one for the ignition and another one that unlocked the lockers that held the dive gear and the reason he wanted to steal this boat in particular.

  Mitchell made sure the johnboat was firmly fastened to the stern and then made his preparations to leave. He leaned out and undid the line at the stern. To avoid being seen on the dock, he climbed into the cabin and up a hatch and unfastened the line attached to the bow.

  He looked out over the marina. It was still quiet. He paid careful attention to the scanner. On that frequency, Mitchell would have heard a police car dispatched to the marina. It would also let him know if they had alerted the Marine Patrol.

  Mitchell gave the dock a push and sent the bow of the boat in a gentle arc away from the dock. He climbed back into the cockpit and peeled away the front of the covering. He slid the key into the ignition and gave it a turn. The powerboat started with a powerful roar.

  He looked around the marina but nothing stirred. With his right hand on the throttle and his left on the wheel, he reversed the boat and slowly pulled it backward out of the harbor. When he was clear of the last boat, he nudged the throttle forward and slipped the shifter into forward. The vessel moved away from the docks and Mitchell and his latest prize faded into the night in search of a quiet place where he could finish his home improvement project on the boat.

  Fifty miles away from Mitchell, the man called Mr. Lewis had his own shop project. He set a briefcase on the hotel room table next to a bag of things he’d purchased at a drug store. The Discovery Channel played in the background.

  The briefcase had been with him his whole trip from Virginia onboard a private aircraft. Any prying eyes that had a look inside it would have had a lot of questions. But Mr. Lewis wasn’t in the business of answering questions, at least not truthfully. His job was to stop people from asking them or at the very least make them ask the wrong ones.

  He opened up his case and pulled out a few parts and some tools. He took apart a hand-held cutting torch and used the pieces to make something new. He took a can of spray-on suntan lotion and drained it into a wastebasket. He then used a Dremel tool to saw it neatly in half.

  He took a break for a half-hour to watch a documentary on snow leopards. He then returned to his work.

  He used some epoxy on a few parts and then used a drill to make several punctures into the top half of the suntan spray canister. Two hours later it was finished. It was obviously a rushed job by his standards. It was put together with the minimal amount of craft needed to make it looked plausible. The device was just a prop for a larger piece of theater.

  With the addition of Mr. Baylor’s “bow,” it would look like a plausible device. The CO2 cylinder attached to the valve from the hand torch led to a small valve that extended outside the thin aluminum cylinder. The valve opened up to a small chamber lined with very thin gauze. Two screws would hold in place a glass cylinder like the kind used to store a blood sample. A third screw, this one a thumb screw, would break the glass cylinder when it was twisted. The open valve would blow a blast of compressed gas into the chamber and blow whatever was in the glass cylinder into the open air, quickly filling every corner of whatever room it was in.

  Prop or not, it was still a lethal device when the “bow” was added to it. Mr. Lewis wanted to make sure that he was well clear after he planted it.

  He placed his tools back into his case and put his leftover materials into the plastic shopping bag to be disposed of away from the hotel.

  He sat down on the bed and sorted through various ID badges and chose the one he wanted to use when he got the call to proceed. The advantage of working for the people that he did was that most of them weren’t forgeries.

  43

  When Baylor arrived at the Super Center, fire engines blocked the streets while hazardous materials teams under the direction of the DHS were in the process of sealing off the entire building. Baylor watched the scene from next to his car as large pieces of plastic were wrapped around the entrances, exits and air handlers.

  The unfortunate people who were inside at the time wer
e being held in sealed trailers parked near the garden center while men and women in blue and yellow hazmat suits with different agency names written on them went about the process of containment.

  Since Baylor was on the scene in an advisory capacity, his access would be determined by the DHS director. Fortunately for him, the director knew of his political connections. Getting access wasn’t going to be a problem.

  The real challenge was going to be trying to contain the story. He needed to make sure that attention wasn’t directed to where he didn’t want it. His work for the country was too important for that.

  A rental car sedan like his pulled up next to him. A man got out dressed in slacks and a blue polo shirt. Slightly receding hair, middle-aged, he looked like any of the dozen other government functionaries running around the scene. At his waist was an ID badge that said he was with FEMA.

  Baylor nodded to Mr. Lewis and went to his trunk. He took out a locked box from a suitcase and opened it. Inside were three small glass cylinders. He carefully removed one and placed it into the folds of a towel he’d put in the trunk for that purpose.

  Mr. Lewis took the wrapped object and sat inside his car and finished the assembly of the package. Baylor shielded him from view and watched as he worked. The spray canister was a stroke of genius.

  Mr. Lewis finished sealing the glass vial inside and then wrapped the canister in the towel. He finally turned to Baylor and spoke.

  “You have a preference?” Baylor looked at the Super Center. It would be tempting to have Mr. Lewis plant the canister inside, but too many people had already been on the scene. He also didn’t know what kind of coverage the surveillance cameras had. He trusted Mr. Lewis’s sleight of hand but wanted to avoid anything that could even bring up the idea that it was planted.

  It was one thing to have the press start spreading conspiracy theories; it was something else to have different federal agencies suspicious. From experience, he had no doubt believing that they would accept the narrative he created, no matter how many gaps and leaps of logic, if all the puzzle pieces looked like they were part of the same picture.