“Jim…I don’t know how much time there is. Kids are going to die, a lot of kids, and I think that it’s getting ready to happen right now!” Jim shook his head. John asked, “Do you want another rampage like we’ve seen in the past several years in schools, malls, movie theaters, and university campuses? Jim, what’s about to happen here is going to take the body count for mass murder to a whole new level. I’m not talking about ten or twenty. I am talking about hundreds perhaps a thousand or more. We have the inside track here. I can stop it, but in order to do that I have to know when, where, how, and who.” Jim took a cigarette out of his top left pocket and put it behind his ear and asked, “Okay, okay…how the fuck are we going to do this?” John said, “I’m going to have Sara put the girl into cardiac arrest and rush her out of the ER for surgery.”
Jim laughed and said, “But she’s not going to surgery, and you will stop the event immediately?” “Yes, then I will have Sara and Karen push her to an ambulance entrance, and I will load her into my truck.” Jim coughed and said, “Then it’s the Eagle’s problem?” John nodded. “And when other agencies start looking for the girl?” Jim asked. “She got away.” Jim let out a laugh of derision, “Oh yeah, a kid just had her foot blown apart and cut off, and she got up and walked away.” John said, “Just work with the girls. I’m going to give Sara the signal, then I have only a matter of minutes to get my truck, the girl, and head for the lair.” “And what about me? What do you want me to do?” “I want you to bug out with Chris and come to the lair.”
“Chris doesn’t know who the Eagle is. Is this how he’s gonna find out? And what if he freaks and goes to the cops?” “He will be fine. It will fill in a lot of blanks, and I have a feeling the Eagle is going to need you both to stop this plot.” Jim took the cigarette from the back of his ear and stuck it in his mouth and said, “Why is it that the hair on the back of my neck is standing on end? You’re going to do it again. I’m not going to get to retire. I swear to God you are going to get me killed.” Both men knew that Jim was only being calm because if he lost it in present company he would out everything he knew.
He nodded, and John walked back to the ER, looked at Sara and nodded slowly then vanished. Sara marked the time on the oversized clock in the ER room and then looked over at Karen who had gotten next to her and said, “In thirty seconds, you’re going to crash the kid’s vitals, and we are going to wheel her out for the OR.” Karen said, “She’s not going to the OR, is she?” “No. She is headed to meet with the Iron Eagle.” Karen smiled as she pulled out a syringe and pulled down a vial of medication. Sara looked over at the clock and whispered, “Now.” Karen injected a small amount of liquid into Debbie’s IV, and she went into cardiac arrest. The alarms and bells on the monitoring equipment were going off, and Sara called a code blue and yelled, “Karen, get the end of the gurney. We have to get her to an OR, stat.” Karen started to push Debbie out the double doors of the ER room, and several doctors started to follow. Jim stepped in front of them and said, “I’m sure Dr. Swenson and Dr. Faber can deal with this. You are all witnesses, and I need you here with my deputies until you have been debriefed.”
Sara and Karen were long out of sight and, though there was anger from the doctors and nurses in the room, the cops trumped them.
The black Silverado was parked near an ambulance entrance. Sara gave Debbie a second injection, and her vitals stabilized. They transferred her to a wheelchair and then out the entrance and into the truck. In all the commotion, they were able to load Debbie, and in a flash, the Silverado was on its way to Malibu. Chris and Jim were standing in the ER, and Sara called Jim over and handed him a small satchel. Jim looked at her and whispered, “What’s this?” “Just give it to the Eagle. He will know what to do with it.”
Jim barked out some other instructions to his team, and he and Chris left. Jim saw Karen and Sara in the hall near the ambulance entrance and asked, “What of the girl?” Sara smiled, “She is in room 3008, or at least that’s what the hospital log will show.” Jim looked around and said, “You better wipe the surveillance cameras clean, Sara. One of them had to have picked you two up putting the kid in with John.” “John told me he would take care of it.” Jim smiled and said, “I bet he did. I fuckin’ bet he did!” He turned to Chris and said, “Okay, temporary FBI man…you’re with me.” Chris looked at his watch. It was five p.m. “Where are we going?” Jim laughed as they walked out to his cruiser and said, “Oh…it’s a surprise. A really big mother fuckin’ surprise.”
The music was playing as students and teachers began to arrive at the Anchor Store at the Northridge Mall. Homecoming banners and well decorated windows and walls glistened in silver and blue streamers and white and blue balloons. There were several huge banners that read, “Welcome to Homecoming, Regents,” as two bands played on each level of the converted store. Terry Folder and Cathy Hines were working the entrance tables. LAPD school police had set up several metal detectors at all of the entrances and had cleared the building. Students were beginning to file in, but it would be several hours until all of the students would arrive and LAPD worked the detectors to make sure that no one had any weapons.
Several mannequins were littering the exits of the store and had been moved by police when they did their sweep an hour earlier. Jerry Pinskey was hiding in a small dumpster off the main delivery exit watching the police do exactly as he had planned for them to do. He laughed as one of the units was moved over near a pile of clothing and other debris and whispered to himself, “What a bunch of fuckin’ rubes. Those bombs are going to set this place ablaze as I fire down on the crowd of cowards.” He watched and waited, in no rush. Anyone who could stop him was dead, and no one knew his plot. He started to pull off a pair of coveralls he had on to reveal nice street clothes. He opened the container and stepped out, leaving the coveralls behind and said, “Well, I must join the party. I wouldn’t want to miss anything.”
Chapter Eighteen
“John Swenson goes in…
the Iron Eagle comes out.”
The sea was unusually rough for September. A tropical storm moving up from Baja had turned the sea angry. While it was sunny and warm on the coast, off in the distance out over the Pacific there were dark clouds and a gentle wind blowing on shore. John stood in the foyer of the lair, looking out over the wild waves and listening to the sound of the crashing surf and said to himself, “It all seems so appropriate. This strange weather and angry sea in the face of disaster.” Jim’s voice rose from behind him and said, “It does seem appropriate for the evening, doesn’t it?” John didn’t turn he just said yes and walked over to the bar and got a bottle of water. Jim walked over and put the satchel down on the granite counter and said, “I was instructed to give these to you.” John nodded and walked back over and sat down on one of the couches. “Where’s Chris?” John asked. “I dropped him at the main entrance to the house and told him to wait in the living room, that you would come for him.”
“So you came in through the tunnel?” Jim nodded and got up and walked over to the bar and poured himself a glass of scotch then walked over to one of the chairs that looked out at the sea and asked, “Where’s the girl?” “Sleeping.” “Does the Eagle have any other guests?” John nodded. “Coach Trent Hameln from Rosedo High School.” “And what the fuck did he do?” John took a drink of his water and said, “Aided and allowed the rape and brutality of young boys.” Jim sipped his scotch and asked, “Does that warrant a visit with the Eagle?” John nodded and said, “He also abused young girls at the school for decades. Hameln and Dell had a deal. Hameln agreed to keep Dell’s homosexuality and sex with young male students a secret so long as Dell kept watch while Hameln molested and eventually raped and sodomized the girls.” “Huh…convenient deal…how many girls?” “Hundreds…no one ever came forward out of fear from what I got out of Dell. I have the confession from Dell on tape.”
“The Eagle hasn’t tortured a confession out of
Hameln yet?” Jim asked, sipping his scotch. “There’s been no time. I picked him up near his home early this morning. He also knows about the plot to kill other students that these kids have been hatching.” “Really…well that’s fuckin’ interesting. Did you get that from Dell?” “No. The Rubio kid before he died.” “So you tortured and killed the kid?” “No…the kid died as the result of a rape and sodomy overseen by none other than Dell and Hameln. The kid died from sex with Dell because his internal wounds weren’t properly healed.”
Jim stood up drinking down the last of his scotch and said, “How did the kid die from anal sex?” John said, “He had a bleed, a hemorrhage that the Eagle didn’t see until the last few minutes of his life.” Jim shook his head and said, “Well, it’s six p.m. What do you want to do?” John finished off his bottle of water and said, “Change clothes. You go get Chris. We need to get to these two prisoners fast or else.” Jim nodded as John disappeared down the hall in the direction of the holding and operating rooms. Jim watched and said, “John Swenson goes in…the Iron Eagle comes out.”
Jim pushed open the secret door into the living room where Chris was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the sea. Jim coughed a little to alert him of his presence and said, “Your presence is requested in here.” Chris stood up and asked, “Where does that door lead?” Jim looked on at him and said, “That’s really up to you, man. It could be heaven or hell. For the majority of people who pass this way…it’s fuckin’ HELL!” Jim pointed to the open door, and Chris walked through and into the foyer of the Eagle’s lair.
Trent was awake and alert when the Eagle entered the operating room. Dell’s body had gone from rigor mortis to flaccid; his arms hung at his sides, and the white of his remaining eye was now pale gray. Trent screamed at the sight of the Eagle who didn’t react. “Tell me what you know about the school rampage plot,” the Eagle asked. “What plot…I don’t know what you’re talking about? Who the hell are you, where am I, and what the hell are you doing with me like this?” Trent was nude and restrained, spread eagle on an operating table. “Oh, Mr. Hameln, I don’t have time for games and neither do the children and faculty from your school. I know your secrets. I know what you did to hundreds of young girls at the school you work at.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, and I don’t know what you think you know, but you better explain yourself.” The Eagle reared back and struck him right in the groin. The Eagle looked down at the grimacing unable to breathe face of Trent and said, “I don’t have time for this, Mr. Hameln. Tell me about the plot to kill students at the school.” Trent remained tight-lipped, and the Eagle grabbed a scalpel off a steel tray next to the gurney and drove the blade up under Hameln’s scrotum and pulled up on it, splitting his scrotum skin between his two testicles. Hameln screamed and blood began to pool on the gurney between his legs. The Eagle left the scalpel inside him and picked up a remote and turned on the cameras. Trent looked around wildly, seeing his nude body on the screens and the blood pooling between his legs. The Eagle grabbed a clear vial with a white powder in it and shook some of the contents into his palm and rubbed it on Hameln’s mouth and lips. Trent started to scream as the compound began to smoke on his face.
“Lye, Mr. Hameln, that’s what I put on your mouth. Lye, a bitterly painful and burning chemical.” Trent was screaming obscenities as the Eagle poured the solution into Trent’s open wound. The scream that Trent let out as the lye hit his scrotum was so loud Jim and Chris heard it in the foyer. Chris stood up and asked, “What the fuck was that?” Jim was sipping his second glass of scotch and said, “Nothing…nothing that you won’t get used to hearing.” “What the hell is going on here, Jim? That sounded like hell.” Jim laughed as he lit a cigarette and said, “You are not far off, kid.” The sun was setting, and Chris looked at Jim’s profile in the setting sun. The smoke billowing out of his nose and mouth made him look evil, and Chris told him so. Jim laughed, taking a big hit off the smoke and then a drink of his scotch and said, “Hmm…evil. What embodies evil for you, Agent Mantel? What is it that keeps you awake at night? What demons forbid sleep from coming upon you on those sleepless nights? Evil. I look fuckin’ evil to you? You haven’t seen the face of evil. I used to think that I had seen all of the faces of evil, but I was wrong. Evil comes in all kinds of packages, Mantel, not all of them bad…but when evil that’s good comes calling…hell comes with it.”
Chris sat with a bottle of water looking at the boiling ocean as lightning flashed out in the distance. There was another scream from the darkness, and Chris asked Jim, “Am I in mortal danger?” Jim took a drink of his scotch and said, “We are all…always in mortal danger, son. Some are just closer to it than others at any given moment.” There was another scream resonating out of the darkened hall into the dark foyer, and Jim was looking at Chris. The cherry tip of his cigarette was the only light until a flash of lightning lit up the room, and in that instant Chris looked into Jim’s calm, cold eyes, and Jim looked into Chris’s eyes of fear. He smiled and said, “Sit down, kid. He will come to you when he’s ready for you. You might as well take a breath and relax. The Eagle assists death, which comes for us all sooner or later.”
Chris looked down into the black hallway but said nothing. He just sat down in a chair across from Jim in the darkness, the smell of scotch and cigarette smoke heavy in the air, and waited for whoever had called him to this place and for what purpose.
The ping of a ball peen hammer resonated off a small anvil that the Eagle had placed between Hameln’s legs. The Eagle said to him as he pushed a shot of adrenaline and another stimulant into Hameln’s IV, “Crushed one. Are you going to tell me what you know of the plot, or do you want to taste your left testicle?” Hameln was crying as the Eagle raised the hammer again, and as he did, Hameln screamed, “Homecoming…homecoming…the fuckin’ faggot kid Rubio was in a fight with some of my players, and he told one of them that he was going to kill us all, and that there is a plan to kill everyone in the school at homecoming.” “Where’s that player now?” the Eagle asked in a calm voice. “Dead…he’s dead and cremated for all I know. He told it to Brian Donaldson and some others a few days before Brian was murdered.”
The Eagle asked, “And Donaldson told you?” Hameln nodded his head weakly, sweat was dripping down his face, and his eyes were full of tears.” The Eagle asked, “And you did nothing?” Hameln spit on the ground and said, “You don’t deal with high school kids, do you? They talk shit all the time. They make threats. It’s all part of the game. I wasn’t about to make an issue of something some little faggot told one of my players in the heat of a fight.” The Eagle was still holding the small hammer in the air over Trent’s one good nut and asked, “When is homecoming?” Hameln was catching his breath and said, “Um…what day is it?” “Sunday. The first Sunday of September.
“It’s tonight…homecoming is tonight.” “At the school?” “No…at an Anchor Store that was closed down at Northridge Mall. The mall donated the store to the school for the dance and homecoming party, so the faculty and school police could oversee the students better. Rosedo has a huge gang problem, so it is a more controlled environment. There’s no way they can do anything. The LAPD school division will have metal detectors and all kinds of security. There’s no way that Rubio or anyone else is going to bust in with guns blazing.”
The Eagle raised the hammer and brought it crashing down on Hameln’s other testicle, and it popped like a grape, sending blood and flesh onto the Eagle’s plastic face mask. Hameln let out a hard scream and then blacked out. The Eagle twisted the scalpel that was still inserted into the sack, and with a flick of the wrist emasculated Hameln. Arterial spray was pouring out of the open wound. The Eagle didn’t bother to stop it. He allowed Hameln to bleed out on the table then wheeled all of the corpses to the incinerator and threw them in one after the other. He threw in their personal belongings as well and pushed the start button, and the unit came to life, ridding t
he world of more scum. He turned his attention to operating room two and Debbie Atwater.
Jade Morgan had positively identified the remains of Tim Elliott as well as Alan Marks who she had picked up from the hospital earlier after Marks had decided on a suicide shootout with John and Chris. She had her orderly put the bodies in the cooler and was going to notify the next of kin when Jessica Holmes walked into her office. She sat down with a couple of backpacks and some pieces of paper and said, “These things were with the bodies.” She handed the pieces of paper to Jade who looked them over and said, “They look like usernames and passwords for some website but not one that I’ve ever heard of.” Jessica opened the two backpacks and said, “There are two laptops here. Why didn’t law enforcement take these?” “Who the fuck knows, Jessica? I’ve stopped asking myself those questions. I spend half my time doing police work and the other half as a medical examiner.”
Jade took the two laptop cases and noticed that they both had two blinking lights on the side of them; one was red and the other blue. Jessica looked at the lights well and watched as Jade slowly began to slide the lock on the first laptop to open it. Jessica yelled, “STOP!” The scream startled Jade who almost dropped the computer on the floor. “What the fuck, Jessica?” “Don’t open the laptops.” “Why the fuck not?” Jade was pissed, and Jessica looked at them closely and said, “What do you know about these victims?” Jade was frustrated and said, “Nothing, Jessica, not a goddamn thing. What does it matter? There might be next of kin information on this Alan Marks kid.” Jessica looked at Jade and said, “Call John…I don’t think these are regular laptops. I think they are more than that, something a lot more dangerous.” Jade looked at her like she had three heads and said, “What the fuck? Is your fuckin’ minor in criminology?” “Yeah…that’s one of the prerequisites to get into your line of work.” Jade just shook her head and called John.
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