Operation: Healing Angel

by Margaret Kay

  Garcia grabbed Rae Ella and pulled her to the car. He pushed her into the back seat and crawled in over her as Wilson jumped back behind the wheel and sped the rest of the way down the alley.

  “Rae’s hit,” Garcia yelled over her steady stream of curses. “Right upper shoulder.”

  In the camera’s view, Shepherd saw Garcia checking over her wound. There was blood and what Shepherd assumed was an exit wound in her back.

  “Nearest hospital is two miles north of your location,” Madison’s voice came across the speaker in Shepherd’s office and through the comms in both Garcia and Wilson’s ears. “Take a left at the end of the alleyway and then a right at the next stoplight.”

  “Roger that, Xena,” Wilson’s voice replied.

  Shepherd already had his cellphone in his hand. He typed out a text message to Manning, advising him of what just went down. “Notifying Manning now.”

  “Get her patched up and on the Lear as fast as you can,” Cooper ordered.

  “If you need the Undertaker, let us know and we will pull him from his mission,” Shepherd added.

  “Hang in there, Rae, we’re getting you to a hospital. But you gotta tell me what you know right now. Who had him killed? And who was responsible for that attack on us just now?”

  “Williamsboro,” she said. “Goddamn Williamsboro.”

  “Who’s Williamsboro, Rae?”

  “A mythical head of the biggest drug distribution group in this town.” She panted and winced in pain. Then she sobbed. “Beck was a good person and Williamsboro had him killed.”

  “What do you mean, mythical head, Rae?” Garcia demanded.

  “It’s not one person. It’s a triad of men, dangerous, powerful men that go by the collective name of Williamsboro. They run everything in this town, pot, narcotics, prescription drugs sold on the street, everything. Not a single drug is sold in this town without their blessing. They were responsible for getting the drugs onto the base and they were responsible for Beck’s murder.”

  “Who are they? Point us to a person,” Garcia pled.

  “Jeff Whittier at a boxing club by the name of Gloves on the west side. Scumbag extraordinaire. Beck just discovered who he was before he disappeared. He’s not one of the triad, but he can lead you to them. Beck was going to surveille him when he went missing.” She breathed out hard. “Fuck! This hurts like a motherfucker!”

  “I’ve got you, Rae,” Garcia said.

  “We’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes,” Wilson said.

  “Do you know how they got the drugs onto the base? Do you have a contact name of someone on the base for us to look at?”

  “No, but I think Beck was getting close.”

  “Arriving at the hospital now,” Wilson said.

  “We’re dropping off,” Shepherd said. “Razor, one of Manning’s teams will relieve you there and guard Rae until you can get back to her. You and Wilson go after Whittier but keep us informed.”

  “Roger Big Bear,” Garcia acknowledged.

  Shepherd terminated the feed. He picked his phone up again and dialed Ops. “Have someone get on looking into Jeff Whittier and the boxing gym, Gloves, mentioned by Rae Ella Easton on that feed. I want a full report on him transmitted to Garcia and Wilson ASAP.”

  “Already on it,” Madison replied.

  Cooper also had his phone in his hand. “I’m notifying Delta Team what just went down.” After he finished tapping out his text, he spoke again. “Time isn’t on our side. Those ships sail at zero seven hundred tomorrow morning.”

  “I know,” Shepherd said. “And SecNav wants this case wrapped up before those ships sail.”

  Diana had a full patient schedule. She only had fifteen minutes in between patients to eat lunch. Her mom brought her a sandwich from the deli next door. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have had anything to eat. Had she been at home that morning, she would have packed a lunch. “Thanks, Mom, You’re the best.” She gave her mom a hug and then took a huge bite of her sandwich.

  “I meant to ask you; how did your date go Saturday night?”

  “It was cut short. Sam Shepherd fell and was in horrible pain, so I left to treat him.” It was not too far from the truth. It just omitted a few key details. She felt bad that she didn’t tell her mom that she was staying at Sam Shepherd’s place. She hadn’t even told her that the two of them were together.

  “Oh no,” Peggy said. “Is he okay now? I know you were at school, so you didn’t have time to really talk yesterday, but I didn’t understand why you cancelled his appointments.”

  “I brought him in for x-rays on Sunday.” She relayed to her mom the new diagnosis. “Home exercise to strengthen him to walk on his own is what is needed now. I’ll still do a house call to adjust him, drawing the bones of his spine back from pinching off the spinal cord, but he doesn’t need the care he had before.”

  “That’s fantastic, Diana.”

  “Yes, it is. I am shocked in this case that his bilateral pars fracture went undiagnosed this long. I shouldn’t be. I’ve seen this too many times. But the good news is he should see a rapid lessening of his symptoms now that he is receiving the proper treatment.”

  “I’m glad. He is a nice man,” Peggy said. Then she dropped her voice to a barely audible whisper. “And on the other end of the spectrum, we have Ben Rosenblum. He’s in the waiting room. Diana, how soon will his appointments be winding down? His manner has bordered on abusive.”

  Diana’s stomach clenched. Her mother rarely complained about any patient. She could normally defuse or handle anyone ill-mannered, so the fact that she was asking about Ben meant her interactions with him had to be intolerable. “We will not accept bad behavior from any patient. Is it to the point I need to tell him to find another provider?”

  Peggy sighed loudly. “You know I hate to ever do that. I have given him the benefit of the doubt that he’s in pain, so that is why he is being an ass, but I’m beginning to think it is just his normal personality. That is why I am asking, when do you think we can reduce the number of appointments or provide full resolution of his issues?”

  Diana finished her sandwich as she considered it. “I’ll have a better idea after we treat him today. He’s not holding the adjustments well. As far as the physical therapy, I don’t think he is doing his exercises outside of his appointments to further his own recovery, which isn’t unusual. Sometimes, the patients just don’t.” Unlike Sam, she thought. “I’ll talk with him,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Peggy said.

  She led her mom from her office and back into the waiting room. Ben Rosenblum sat slumped in a chair. She put a smile on her face. “Hi Ben, are you ready?”

  He struggled to pull himself to his feet. “I was ready fifteen minutes ago, when I got here.”

  As Diana led him to the treatment floor, she thought about what her mom had said. Sam Shepherd was a nice man. Yes, he was. And knowing her mom had fond feelings towards him would make it easier to tell her that they were involved…when she was ready to share that news.

  “Ben, I am sorry that at times you have to wait when you arrive. Just as I give you my undivided attention, often for longer than planned, I do the same for other patients. If you find waiting fifteen or so minutes too long, I suggest you find another provider who adheres more firmly to a timetable. I will not be offended if you do.”

  Ben Rosenblum gave her an outraged stare. He recovered his expression. “Perhaps I will start to call before I head over to see if you are running on time.”

  “That would be acceptable,” she replied. “Shall we get to work?”

  Romeo

  Shepherd was again online monitoring the operation when Garcia and Wilson arrived at the boxing gym, Gloves. Madison and Brielle put together what they found on Jeff Whittier and the gym in record time. He was viewing the information right after it was pushed out.

  Rae Ella hadn’t been exaggerating. Jeff Whittier was a major scumbag. His priors included arrests for possession of a c
ontrolled substance with the intent to sell, solicitation of a minor, pandering, possession of stolen firearms, and even a couple of assault and battery charges. Only a few of the charges had ever stuck, and those were pled down to misdemeanor offenses. He was the poster child of the system failing to punish the guilty.

  “This guy is a model citizen,” Garcia remarked harshly after reading the bio on Whittier. “It doesn’t state it, but I’d bet my son’s college fund that he intimidated witnesses into recanting their stories to get this many felonies downgraded to misdemeanor charges.”

  “You already have a college fund?” Brielle, who was also online, asked.

  “Yeah, set it up before he was born,” Garcia said. “I should give you and the Birdman the number to my financial guy.”

  Shepherd had to chuckle to himself. Yes, things had changed dramatically in his people’s lives over the last few years. Who would ever have predicted Razor would be talking about a kids’ college fund? “Let’s stay on task, people. Do you have a plan, Razor?”

  “Yeah, Taco and I are going to go in and confront this scumbag as new suppliers moving in on their turf. He’ll play dumb to our faces but will run right to Williamsboro when we leave him. We’re going to plant a wire in his office, clone his phone, and tail him when he leaves the gym. One way or the other, we’ll get the intel we need. I sure wish we’d kept the remainder of Charlie Team here when we were dropped off, could use them about now.”

  Shepherd was thinking the same thing. This was one of those cases that became a lot more than it was thought to be at the onset. “I can have Manning assign one of his teams to assist you.”

  “No thanks,” Garcia said. “I’d prefer to play this our way.”

  “Your call,” Shepherd said.

  “FYI, Big Bear, you’re probably going to get a call from Manning complaining about me,” Garcia said. “I may have threatened the team that relieved us at the hospital.”

  “May have? What did you say, Razor?” Shepherd asked.

  “It was something along the lines of a warning to keep a good watch over her or I’d track them down and kill them if anything happened to her while in their care,” he replied.

  Shepherd chuckled aloud. “Not sure how that could be construed as anything but a threat.”

  “You had to be there, Big Bear,” Wilson said. “It was all in the delivery, could have been taken that he was joking.”

  “I can only imagine,” Shepherd said. He knew he’d be getting that call from Manning.

  The cameras on each of them went live. Garcia’s was concealed in a bandana around his head, and Taco’s was in the thick black frames of the sunglasses he wore on top of his head. They both looked the part, scumbag biker thugs. Razor must have helped dress Wilson in the getup, Shepherd thought. They both looked dangerous.

  “Heading into the gym now,” Garcia said.

  Shepherd watched the camera feed as the two men approached the front door to the gym with the boxing glove emblem on the large glass picture window of the gym. Inside, rows of punching bags and four regulation sized rings filled the room. There were a few men working out on the heavy bags, otherwise, the place was vacant, and the only sound heard was the thud of boxing gloves hitting bags. No one resembled their target, Whittier, a white supremacist look-alike with tats on his neck and a shaved head and a crooked nose that looked like it had been broken a few times.

  “Office is probably through there,” Razor said, his head swiveling to the left where a short hallway broke the solid length of the wall. In the hall was a door to the men’s locker room, a closet with cleaning supplies, another single toilet room, and a door that led into a stairwell. Stairs went up into a lit ceiling or down towards a dark basement. “My bet is the office is upstairs.”

  Shepherd watched them mount the stairs. At the top, they pushed through a door and were in a large office with Jeff Whittier seated behind a desk smoking a cigarette that was pinched between his thumb and index finger. A bank of monitors was behind the desk, giving them the view of the gym floor from several angles, the locker room, and the stairwell.

  “Most people knock,” his southern accented deep voice said.

  “We’re not most people,” Garcia growled. “Got a business proposition for you and you’re gonna wanna listen real close.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Whittier demanded.

  “Your new partners,” Garcia said.

  Through the camera feed, Shepherd saw Whittier twitch. He was reaching for a gun.

  Garcia and Wilson drew their weapons, closing in on Whittier’s desk. “Uh-uh,” Garcia enunciated. “Let’s see those hands.”

  They were both up to his desk. Shepherd knew one of them was planting the listening device.

  Whittier raised his hands chest level.

  “Our employer is moving into the area and would like to bring you on as one of our distributors.”

  “I think your information on who I am is wrong. This is a legit gym.”

  “Yeah, and my mother is a damned virgin,” Garcia said. “We know who the fuck you are.”

  “You don’t know shit,” Whittier remarked casually, not intimidated.

  “Your current partners are about to be removed from the game. Take that to the bank. The question is, are you going down with them or setting up a new shop with us?” Wilson asked.

  Whittier eyed them cautiously.

  “At this point, it’s your choice. Tomorrow, it won’t be.”

  “You can go fuck yourselves,” Whittier spat. “And fuck your employer.”

  “Why is it always the hard way?” Garcia asked Wilson with a shrug. “Okay, have it your way. We’ll be seeing you around.”

  They left the office. Garcia had his Glock in one hand, his phone in the other. Whittier dialed his phone. “It’s me. Two assholes just paid me a visit, came into my damn office with guns on me.”

  “Successful,” Garcia broadcast. He’d gotten Whittier’s cell phone paired.

  “We’re taping the conversation,” Madison advised.

  “I don’t know who the fuck they were, never seen them before,” Whittier replied to the question of who they were. He relayed what was said.

  “Don’t panic. They’re probably baiting you,” the male voice replied.

  “They said you are about to be removed from the game. Do you think he knew more than he admitted to?” Whittier asked, his voice on the verge of panic. He may have played it cool when Garcia and Wilson were in the office, but now he was on the edge.

  “Shut the fuck up. Don’t say anything about that on an open line!” The voice warned.

  “These assholes weren’t local cops. They weren’t Feds either. I can sniff one out a mile away, you know that.”

  “Too bad that nose doesn’t work with informants. The bartender’s buddy wouldn’t have gotten as close to us as he did if your nose had been working,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “Sit tight. We’ll deal with those two dead men. I’m sure they’re the same ones who just shot up the alley behind the Spot.”

  “What? When did that happen?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Were they moving on Tubbs?” Whittier asked.

  “Jesus fucking Christ! Would you stop with the names on the open line? Meet us at the warehouse later as planned and make sure you don’t have a fucking tail.”

  The line was cut.

  “Did you get all that?” Garcia asked as they pushed through the front door of the gym and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Shepherd had a bad feeling. “You were made in the alley. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were followed from the hospital and as you went into Gloves. There’s a bar across the street. Go get a drink and watch the front of Gloves and your car. I’m going to place a call to Manning and have one of his units pick you up.”

  Garcia let fly a string of curses. Through the camera, Shepherd watched the two men swerve off their course, heading for the car. They went to the dingy neighborhood ba
r and received startled stares from its patrons as they entered. They got a couple of beers from the bartender and took seats near the back of the small room, both with their backs against a wall.

  “We got a partial trace on the call,” Madison reported. “It pinged to a cell phone near the base.”

  Shepherd dialed Manning. He answered and went on a tirade. “Fucking Garcia. You need to put that psycho on a leash! Do you have any idea what he did at the hospital?”

  “Are you through? Tell your pansy-ass agents to use their critical thinking skills. Garcia’s not going to track anyone down and kill them, least of all your agents. He’s been made. Made contact with Whittier, got his phone paired and a bug planted in his office. We got a call on tape. The signal to his boss’ cell phone pinged near the base. I need one of your field teams to pick my men up.”