Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  Lynch left the house to pick up some pizza, flicked on the radio to WBBM to get the news just as a reporter started recapping a church sniper taskforce news conference.

  “A taskforce spokesperson revealed today that an arrest is imminent in the Confessional Killings. Members of the taskforce have developed evidence linking the shootings of Helen Marslovak and Thomas Riordan to the police shootings of four black activists in 1971. The activists were part of a group called the AMN Commando, an offshoot of the Chicago Black Panthers that was formed after Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed in a police raid. Marslovak and Riordan are both related to persons tied to that raid. The taskforce believes that the current shootings are in revenge for the raid and is close to naming a suspect.”

  They were teeing someone up to take the fall, which must mean they were ready to make their move. It was all going down tomorrow.

  Lynch’s cell phone rang. Caller ID said Starshak.

  “Hey, Captain.”

  “Lynch, you heard from Cunningham at all?”

  “Not since the wake.”

  “Something stinks. Couple of feebs from the taskforce were just in my office, had some OPS puke with them. They tell me they need to talk to him. They tell me he’s gone missing. And when I start asking questions, they pretty much tell me to go fuck myself. Then I hear this news conference crap. I think they’re looking to pin the church shootings on him.”

  “You call his place?”

  “Yeah. Answering machine.”

  “Check with his CO?”

  “He didn’t show today. OPS has been over there too, talking to everybody.”

  “He got any family?”

  “Ex-wife. Called her. She’s freaked. Feds have been to her place with a warrant, tossed it pretty good.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Hearing some other shit too, Lynch. Shit about Johnson and questions she shouldn’t know enough to be asking. You keeping your nose out of this? It’s getting ugly.”

  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want an answer to, Captain.” Lynch paused a moment. He’d been pulling at this thing ever since he teamed up with Ferguson, looking for a way to end it that didn’t wind up with another batch of body bags. Whatever that was going to be, he was going to need help he could trust.

  “But Cap, keep your phone on, OK?”

  Back at his mother’s house, Lynch updated Ferguson and Chen on the call from Starshak.

  “Admirable,” said Chen.

  “I was thinking evil,” Lynch said.

  “I do not concern myself with ethical distinctions. I was commenting on the plan. Clearly, they also have identified Manning as the next target. They have kidnapped Cunningham and are holding him until Fisher takes the shot. They will take Fisher out, kill Cunningham, plant his body, and in doing so, given your association with him in recent weeks, discredit what you have given to the press.”

  “So Cunningham’s dead?”

  “Not yet,” said Ferguson. “Too hard to disguise a time of death these days, and they’ll want all the forensics to match up. Short-acting sedatives, stuff that passes out of the bloodstream quick. They’ll take Cunningham off his meds in the morning, keep him in soft restraints, walk him right into the scene, and kill him there. Probably already be a fair amount of Fisher’s blood splattered around, so Fisher will go down as one of their boys, probably Cunningham’s last victim. That’ll tie everything in nice and tight.”

  “But what about the press? They’re already on this,” said Lynch.

  “Contradictory evidence is already being planted, I assure you,” said Chen. “I assume you are being painted as a patsy. The story will be that Cunningham used his connection to you to plant this fairytale about your father and the Hurley murder, and that you, in your grief, failed to analyze the data objectively. Instead, you inadvertently provided Cunningham with information that helped him in his quest. They will recognize your previous heroism, talk of you in sad, glowing terms, order a psych evaluation, and then retire you due to mental health issues. Just another crackpot with a conspiracy theory. Your suicide will follow in short order. Whether and how long Ms Johnson lives will depend on which story she chooses to pursue.”

  “And you know all this how?”

  “It’s what I would do.”

  Lynch looked at Chen. No expression.

  “You saying we’re screwed?” Lynch asked.

  “Not if we screw them first,” Ferguson said.

  CHAPTER 59 – CHICAGO

  Weaver stood at the end of the table, leaning on his hands, staring down at the big aerial photo of St Mary’s and environs. Damn, he missed Fergie. Weaver’d never been a long-gun guy, didn’t know the sniper mindset. Fergie would look at this mess and see something. Also he wished he knew where the bastard was. Fergie and Chen on the loose, maybe on the other team, that was not a problem he needed. No time for that now, though. Things worked out tomorrow, then he’d run their asses down.

  “You got anything, Uri?”

  “When I take a long shot, it’s usually across a lot of sand. Give me a target in a city, and I’ll take an alley and a knife every time. But a few things. He likes to stretch it out, right? Every time so far, he’s been a lot farther from the target than he had to be. And every time, he’s hit them as soon as they are out of the building?”

  Weaver nodded. “I don’t know if he’s showing off or if it’s part of this religious crap, but he has been pushing the envelope. And he’s been taking them fast.”

  “This Manning, she lives at the other end of this block,” Uri running his finger up the photo, “up the street from the church. So he has to be expecting her to exit the front of the church and walk north up Sheridan?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “First we set a limit. That first one in Wisconsin? You sure about that?”

  “Chen’s sure, which is pretty much like God being sure, at least about ballistics.”

  “Better than nine hundred meters through a twenty-plus crosswind with a weapon most people can’t hit shit with beyond five hundred meters. OK, so figure he’s going to be out at least five hundred and at most a thousand. Push it to eleven hundred just to be safe.” Uri measured out a piece of string, pinned one end to the front of the church, and drew two circles on the map, one at five hundred meters, the other at one thousand one hundred meters. “He’s going to be between the first and second circle.”

  Uri pointing at the photo again. “We have this building right across the street, what’s that, three or four stories? Blocks any kind of shot due from due east. But tweak the line just a shade north, and you got this cluster here.” Uri tapped a couple of high rises on the west side of Lake Shore Drive. “If he gets on the roof there, maybe an upper west-facing floor, it looks like he’d have a line. You’re getting close to one thousand meters out there, though.” The Israeli stuck a pin in the map, marking the location. “So that’s one spot to watch, it is pretty much the only good option from the east.”

  Uri looked at the map for another minute.

  “The front door is on the east side of the church, so anything west is out. He’d have to wait for her to walk to the end of the building before he had a shot. That leaves obliques to the north and south, up and down Sheridan. The church is almost built right out to the sidewalk. If anybody coming out takes one step down, then they have to turn either south or north. Manning lives north. He likes to take them through the heart, and that’s going to be a lot easier if the target is facing him. So that gives you these couple of blocks here.” The Israeli ran his finger between the circles where they crossed Sheridan. “Same thing with the south, just to be safe. From the south, he’d have to shoot her in the back, though. That would mean he would be in this area here.”

  Uri took a yardstick, penciled lines to the buildings that had line of sight to the church door and that were in the right range bracket. Looked up when he was done.

  “Twenty-two possible buildings. Hard to say how many
windows exactly.”

  Too many, thought Weaver, but no need to let the troops see him sweat.

  “OK,” Weaver said, “so where do we put our guys?”

  “We need a line to him. Either we put shooters in the church, or we get teams spread out up and down the west side of Sheridan. Put the radar units in the first hides on either side of the church, network everybody in so we all get the data as soon as he takes the shot. How many long guns have we got?”

  “Seven, but only five that have done the deed for real.”

  Uri went back to work with his string. When he was done, he’d marked five buildings with blue Xs, with two of the Xs circled. “Put your top five in these, with the radar units in the two spots I’ve circled. You’ll have at least one top shooter with a line to any position he can take, usually you’ll have two shooters, sometimes three. Put your two virgins here.” He tapped a building just northwest of the high rises out at the thousand-yard mark. “If he shoots from out there, they’ll only have two buildings to watch. They can pre-sight nearly every window, and the roofline. They’ll have a narrow range to watch and they’ll be inside two hundred meters. Even a virgin can’t miss from two hundred meters.”

  Weaver nodded. “OK. Tomorrow, you place the teams.”

  Uri left the room to talk with the troops. Weaver worked on his other problem, where to keep Cunningham on game day, where to park the van. That would be his command post. Looked at the map. One of the buildings Uri had circled was Manning’s place. Less than a block to the church, private parking in the back that let out into the alley, so out of public view, a straight shot up or down Sheridan to most of the spots they’d ID’d as possible hides for Fisher. A thousand yards might be a long shot, but it wasn’t much of a drive.

  Manning’s place was perfect.

  CHAPTER 60 – CHICAGO

  Lynch pushed out the door of the Walgreens and headed back to the house. Had enough small arms to overthrow a banana republic, but they were out of toothpaste. Needed to think anyway, so he walked up to the drugstore on Cicero. Halfway back across the parking lot, a fit looking guy in his sixties, buzzed gray head, walked up next to him.

  “You Lynch?”

  Lynch didn’t say anything, just nudged his jacket open, switched the bag to his left hand, got ready.

  The older guy gave him a little smile, held his hands away from his body. “Little nervous, huh? Don’t blame you. I’m a friend of Cunningham’s, from the old days. We need to talk. So how about I give you a lift back to your mom’s place?”

  “How do you know about my mom’s place?”

  The older guy shrugged. “Had to find you, it’s public record, no real stretch.”

  Lynch looked at the guy for a minute, liked the vibe he got, but pulled out his 9mm anyway. “OK. You drive. You don’t mind if I just hold on to this, do you?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Lynch followed the guy to the far end of the parking lot. The guy got into a tan Corolla, Virginia plates. Lynch jumped in.

  “Sorry for the cloak and dagger shit, jumping you in the parking lot like that,” the guy said. “Brian Jenks, late of the USMC, currently an advisor to various folks on sniper and counter-sniper ops. I was Cunningham’s CO for twelve years.”

  Lynch shifted in his seat, got his back to the passenger door so he could hold the gun on Jenks from across his body.

  “You’re the guy who told him about the Dragon?”

  “Fisher? Yeah, few days ago. Then yesterday, I get these Fed types all over me, all over a mess of guys. Questions about Cunningham. Any Muslim sympathies, something about him being Nation of Islam, even hinting at some Al-Qaeda crap. Guy’s a Baptist. Always has been. But they are tarring his ass with a big brush, and that pissed me off.”

  “It’d piss me off, too,” Lynch said. “Not enough to drive half way across the country, though.”

  “It wasn’t just the Cunningham shit. I’ve been working with some propeller-heads for damn near a year on some new counter-sniper tech. Real advanced shit. Combines audio and radar input to exactly – and I mean to the inch – pinpoint the source of gunfire. I’ve got two prototypes ready to ship out to Afghanistan for testing. We get these tweaked and in production, we’re gonna save a lot of Marines. Army pukes, too, I guess. Then I get the call from Cunningham. I start hearing noises in the shooter community, somebody way up the food chain snatching up every trigger jockey he can get his mitts on. Then these Feds start nosing around. And now my prototypes get hijacked by some three-letter types – CIA, NSA, who the fuck knows. National security is all the explanation I get. I figure those units are headed here.”

  “And you’ve come to babysit them?”

  “I’ve come to see what the hell is going on. This ain’t the way this sort of thing is done. It’s gotten way too high-profile.” Jenks turned, looked at Lynch. “You’ve heard of black ops?”

  “Been getting an education the last few days.”

  “This Fisher guy, from what I hear, he was with a group that’s so black it would make the inside of your asshole look well-lit. These guys just do not like attention. Now they got FBI guys working on their frame job, they got three-letter pukes putting their heads up to hijack hardware. The game just ain’t played that way. Somebody is both real fucking desperate and real fucking powerful.”

  Lynch decided that, if the guy wanted to kill him, he could have just popped him in the parking lot instead of saying hello. That, and what he’d said so far matched up with what Lynch had heard from Cunningham. And it wasn’t a bad time to make a new friend. Lynch put his gun away.

  “The powerful part?” Lynch asked. “Let me run a name past you, you tell me if it fits. Hastings Clarke.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah, OK, Jesus has more clout, but Clarke is up there.”

  “He’s in this?”

  Lynch nodded. “Long story, but this all goes back to a local clusterfuck in 1971. It’s how Clarke got his start, got his Senate seat.”

  Jenks was quiet for a while, then “You still in this? What I hear on the news, they’ve handed the whole deal to the Feds, lotta noise about how maybe they can’t trust Chicago PD on this thing.”

  “I’m not on the books, but I’m still in it.”

  “You got any assets?”

  Lynch thinking for a moment, then deciding what the fuck, his neck couldn’t be out any further.

  “Couple people that used to work with this Fisher. They’ve been on this for a while now, trying to take Fisher out on the QT. You happen to hear about a big firefight downstate, a week or so back?”

  “Anybody gets popped with a long gun, I take an interest. I saw that, I thought it smelled funny.”

  “That was Fisher setting up his old team to buy himself some breathing room. Head of that group is this guy Weaver.”

  “Tech Weaver? I know him. Nasty son of a bitch.”

  “One of his guys, Ferguson, was on-site for the shootout. Didn’t like the way it played out. He ratted out Weaver who, I guess, was getting a little far outside the lines even for this sort of thing. Weaver got canned, and this Ferguson got put in charge. Ferguson’s walking back to his hotel here two days ago, and four Israelis tried to punch his ticket.”

  “Sounds like Weaver got his job back.”

  “And I bet I know from whom.”

  “So you’re with this Ferguson?”

  “Yeah, him and some chick named Chen.”

  “Little Chinese sociopath?”

  “That’s her. You know her too?”

  “Scares the shit out of me. OK, here’s how I can help. Bag in the back, it’s got a radar detector in it. We’re working on this radar thing, and I figure if we’ve got one, then somebody we don’t like is going to have one someday. So I do a little tinkering on my own, completely off the books at this point, and gin this puppy up. They get my units in place and turn them on, this is gonna tell you where they’re at. Also, got one of the old audio-only Boomerang units. Won’t
give us the detail the new ones do, but when somebody starts shooting, it will get us close, ten meters or so, depending. And it’s passive – no radar, so there’s no way to track it.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  CHAPTER 61 – CHICAGO

  Back at the house, Lynch made the introductions. Now Lynch, Ferguson, Chen, and Jenks sat around the dining room table looking at the same map Weaver’s team had been looking at, coming to most of the same conclusions. Decided the best place to be was on top of the taller building directly across from the church. Gave them a shot at any place Weaver’s people might set up on the west side of Sheridan.

  “We’re going to be out-gunned,” said Ferguson. “Once the shit starts flying we got zero time for confusion. So here is how we designate locations. Church is zero. South is negative, north is positive. First building south is negative one, second is negative two, etcetera. Floor, if you have it, is the second digit. East side of Sheridan starts with E, west side with W. So if you see something three doors north on the second floor on the west side, it’s west postive thirty-two, if it’s south, then west negative thirty-two. Got it?”

  Everybody nodded.

  “So study the damn map. Get every location down cold.”

  More nods.

  “Now,” Ferguson said, “timing. How long is it going to take you to spot those radar units, Jenks?”

  “Once they turn them on, less than a minute.”

  “They likely to have them on ahead of time? Give us a chance to get sighted in early?”

  Jenks shook his head. “These are prototypes. Run off a battery. And one of the bugs we’re trying to work out is the system has a tendency to lock up if you leave it running too long. They got the same intel we do. You gotta figure they’ll have eyes in the church. I figure they’ll spool em up once Manning gets in the confessional.”

  “Should give you enough time,” Ferguson said. “So, once Fisher takes his shot, first thing we do is take out the radar units. You sure they gotta be outside?”