by John Chapman
They went to work. First, Kasey grabbed her drag bag containing her Sako M10 sniper rifle, her shooting tripod and sniper assault pack, and threw them in the Equinox. She didn’t want to forget them. Next, Kasey went into their master bedroom closet and stopped cold; she would miss her heels. She never got to wear them enough, but she did have a thing for them. That train of thought led her to a sad place, angry at the world for disrupting her and Mark’s life. This condo was the smallest place they had ever lived together, but it held so many great memories. Like any couple, in their years of marriage Kasey and Mark had good times and bad; but they had never been happier together than since they moved to Ohio. This condo represented that to Kasey for some reason and she was going to miss it. She allowed herself wallow in it for a minute then realized she had to stay focused on the mission or she would let everyone down. Kasey squared her shoulders and got to work.
Mark had invested heavily in Arcteryx and Crye uniforms and cold weather gear for them both. They spent a lot of time on the range or on SWAT callouts in the cold and he always said, “This sucks enough without fighting your own gear. Buy it right, buy it once.” She grabbed every piece of uniform and cold weather gear she could find. It was a substantial amount but she realized it might be a really long time, if ever, before they could get more. Kasey also suspected their operational tempo and new lifestyle would be hard on uniforms. She packed all of it. Next, Kasey packed both of their Bibles out their nightstands and set their home defense BCM rifle on top of one of the bags.
When she was finished, Kasey had two large Eagle deployment bags stuffed to the gills with boots, uniforms, coats, Bibles, family photos, underwear and toiletries. After she lugged them out to the garage and made them JR’s problem to load, Kasey went to the shelves in the garage and grabbed her and Mark’s Mystery Ranch bug out ruck sacks, and all of the loose pouches and plate carriers she could find, and put them in the “stuff wherever it will fit” pile next to the SUV. Next, Kasey grabbed two large totes full of AR15 magazines. They were very heavy, and she asked JR to strap them to the roof. Again, she suspected they would need them, and they wouldn’t be making anymore for a while.
When they were done the Equinox looked like something out of a circus. Every cubic inch was stuffed with something, with barely enough room for the three of them to squeeze in. JR and Kasey talked about the route they would take to get to the range in Alliance. There was no way to get there without getting on I-76 but they planned a way to minimize that, sticking to back roads as much as possible. Within 30 minutes of arriving JR locked the safe and opened the garage door. After Kasey had pulled out and the door was closed, the three of them said a prayer and hit the road. After going less than a mile Sarah said, “I have to pee.”
Chapter 4
Liberty Avenue, Ward 5
Alliance, OH
Dylan Nowak hadn’t been in a gunfight, but he’d thought about it some. It wasn’t that Dylan wanted to shoot someone; in fact it was quite the contrary. He just knew the odds of being able to avoid a gunfight during his career while working as a cop in post-industrial Ohio were pretty small; especially for a cop like him who actively sought out dope dealers and violent criminals. Dylan knew that if he sat on his ass and never aggressively investigated anything he would probably be alright, but he just wasn’t built like that. What it really came down to was Dylan had 5 children at home, and was determined that he would stack whatever bodies were necessary in order to get back to his kids.
Dylan knew he was lucky to be a Patrolman for the Alliance Police Department, because he could go to pretty much any training he wanted to, for free, at the Department’s range. The range hosted most of the big name firearms and tactics instructors throughout the year and Dylan took as many carbine, pistol and patrol tactics classes as his shift commander would allow. At least once a month he was at the range for several days working on his gunfighting skills.
During his 5 years as a policeman, his drive to pursue criminals had landed Dylan in more than his share of hot water. His name appeared constantly in the local newspaper, usually as the subject of some indignant community organizer’s tirade against the inherent brutality of the cisgendered male dominated police state. People cursed Dylan’s name in the bars, heroin shooting galleries, and flophouses of Stark County; usually by people who were on probation, parole, or supervised release because of his police work. Even some cops disliked Dylan, sometimes because he made them look like the lazy active duty pensioners they were.
That’s not to say Dylan was perfect. Sometimes, especially when he was a new guy, his enthusiasm to separate criminals from society overran his understanding of the procedures designed by his Department to ensure the details of the law were indeed followed. He had been unsuccessfully sued a few times, but the Chief of Police always backed his guys when they were in the right. Because of all this Dylan’s relationship with the community, especially the more economically challenged parts of it like Ward 5, was strained (to put it nicely).
However, despite the pain he caused in the collective asses of the Chief of Police, Mayor, and City Counsel, Dylan had something they all knew the City desperately needed. He was a natural gatherer of intelligence. Despite his reputation in the community, hood rats, street dealers, and addicts talked to Dylan. Usually more than they should. He had the gift of gab which, when combined with his instinctual understanding of how human networks functioned and a good memory for names, made him particularly dangerous to those seeking to break the law and get away with it.
For example Dylan had recently been developing information on a new criminal organization in the area known by his snitches only as the “Bookie Organization”. While he wasn’t sure yet how the gang had gotten its name or who was controlling it, he was sure the Bookie Organization was a very real group of criminals who worked together to distribute dope. Massive amounts of prescription opiates, heroin, fentanyl and carfentanil were being distributed throughout Stark County, including in Alliance, by the Canton based Bookie Organization. In fact, the latest micro-spike in opioid overdoses, over and above the already historically high rate, seemed to coincide with the first rumblings Dylan heard about the Bookie Organization using carfentanil, a synthetic opiate designed for use in elephants, as a cutting agent for their heroin.
Dylan hadn’t been able to develop much specific information about the Bookies yet, but no one else in the county on the law enforcement side even seemed to know they existed. The Bookie Organization appeared to Dylan like a big dirty iceberg floating through the sea of cultural decay and learned dependency most of Stark County had devolved into. Not much was visible above the surface, but he knew it had be big and dangerous beneath the waves.
This lack of information had led to Dylan’s current situation: sitting in his marked patrol car in the middle of Ward 5, watching a known “hub” drug house on Liberty Ave near South Street in Alliance, looking for someone he didn’t recognize. A pill user named Brenda who he arrested yesterday told him her boyfriend got his pill deliveries from Canton every day at this house. He figured if anyone he didn’t recognize came out of the house it would make for a good investigative stop. Maybe he could identify someone tied directly to the Bookies. It could be a thread to pull on if nothing else. Dylan sipped his coffee and texted with his wife while he waited.
While all of Alliance had suffered decline in the now 20 year-long slow-motion collapse of the area’s industrial economy, Ward 5 had become the physical manifestation of the city’s economic and societal decay. All manner of illegal vices and other symptoms of a broken culture radiated like a starburst from Ward 5’s four square miles of once vibrant single family homes on tree lined streets. Of the city’s four electoral wards, Ward 5 was the most densely populated, economically depressed, and violent. While containing about 30% of the city’s population, Ward 5 accounted for over 70% of police services.
About 30 minutes after Dylan parked to watch the house, a red Nissan Sentra pulled up and a black guy
got out, then walked up to the door. As he climbed the porch steps Dylan saw him use his right hand to grab a bulge on his right hip and hitch up his sagging pants. Bingo!, he thought. Dylan just observed a reason to Terry Search the guy. He watched the subject go inside and come back out 3 minutes later, then get in his car and leave. Dylan got behind the Nissan and initiated the traffic stop. Ten minutes later Dylan had one Raymond Hilton, a 25 year old man with an address in Canton, Ohio, in custody for being a felon in possession of a handgun and possession with intent to distribute of 13 grams of individually packaged 1-gram bags of Heroin and 39 prescription pills. The $7800 in small bills Dylan found in Hilton’s pocket would help support the distribution charge. Hilton was handcuffed in the back of the patrol car while Dylan sat in his driver’s seat and worked on the tow report for the Nissan on his in-car computer. Dylan had Hilton by the short hairs and they both knew it. They also both knew Hilton would eventually answer Dylan’s questions about the Bookies in an effort to avoid a long stay in prison.
As Dylan was about to Mirandize Hilton and start the delicate dance of interrogation, his patrol car died and his computer blacked out. Dylan was stunned for a second. He’d just finished the tow report but hadn’t saved it yet. That was a lot of work. Dylan sighed and turned the ignition key but nothing happened. No click of the starter, no lights on the dash, nothing. What the hell, he thought. He noticed the in-car radio was dead as well, which was never supposed to happen; it was wired directly into the battery. He figured the alternator was dead and had drained the battery, so he keyed up the mic on his portable radio and called dispatch. Nothing. Dylan grabbed his cell phone out of the center console and speed dialed dispatch. The call wouldn’t connect. He looked and saw the little circle with a slash where his signal strength should be, meaning he had no cell signal at all. He couldn’t figure out what was going on so he got out of the car and looked around.
Doors were opening all up and down Liberty Avenue, and people were walking out onto their porches. The lady who lived in the house where Dylan was parked asked him, “What up Nowak (for some reason everyone referred to him by his last name, even the public)? Why da power out? Its cold up in dis house without no heatin’!” “Your power is out Malinda?” asked Dylan. “Hell yeah it out.” Malinda said, “I callin the power people to complain. I paid my bill an errything.” Malinda tried using her Obama phone to call, but she couldn’t get it to work. Dylan left her to it and walked to the rear of his car.
Dylan wondered what the hell could cause everything to shut down like this. The power going out, his car dying and electronics not working all at the same time were obviously connected. Dylan remembered his training on EMPs but he thought those were caused by nuclear weapons going off, and he hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual on the horizon or in the sky. Besides, his cell phone wasn’t dead, it just couldn’t connect to a tower. He was stumped. He sat back down in his cruiser for several minutes and just thought. The neighborhood that was normally teeming with noise and movement was eerily quiet. No rap music brought tidings of easy money and baby mamas as it bellowed from open windows; no 20 year old electric furnaces could be heard wheezing away attempting to keep sedentary bodies warm who should instead be at work in the middle of a weekday. No $600 cars with rusted through mufflers could be heard lurching through the hood. The only noise Dylan could hear was the periodic raised voice of some upset soul complaining that the racist Trump must have shut off their Obama phone or how the white man was trying to freeze them all to death.
Dylan slowly came to a decision. Whatever this event was he didn’t think it would be fixed quickly. He had to get off this street before people started to realize this was a serious situation, and began testing him. If they realized he couldn’t call for help things could get ugly. He was about 15 blocks from the station and decided he would walk Hilton to the station and figure it out from there. He stood up and looked around.
Dylan walked to the back of his patrol car and opened the trunk. He took off the exterior armor carrier he wore on patrol. It was only a soft armor carrier, and he wanted level 4 plates and his rifle mags for this walk. He didn’t know exactly why he felt that way but Dylan always followed his gut. Besides, the minute he walked out of sight of his patrol car a clock would start ticking until someone worked up the balls to break into it and set it on fire. He threw his Velocity Systems plate carrier over his patrol uniform, checked to make sure all three mags in the pouches were loaded, and grabbed his rifle. He charged his rifle, closed the trunk and gathered up the gun, dope and money he had taken off Hilton, shoving it in a cargo pocket in his uniform pants. Dylan then got Hilton out of the back seat. Hilton, seeing Dylan’s rifle and different armor asked, “What the hell dude?” Dylan said, “First, I’m not your dude. My car is dead. We’re walking to the station.” “That don’t make no sense. Have another car come get me.” Hilton demanded. “I ain’t bein’ walked to jail like no dog on a leash. It’s cold up in here!” Dylan replied, “Shut up. You have the right to remain silent. Do that.”
Dylan had to manually lock all the doors after figuring out the electronic lock button didn’t work, forcing him to play the convict shuffle with Hilton as he tried to control him and walk around the car. That accomplished he had to do that same thing to Hilton’s Nissan. Finally, Dylan was ready to move. He took a firm hold on the handcuffs holding Hilton’s hands behind his back and started walking. Dylan planned on going north on Liberty until they reached Milner St, then skipping west to the alley that paralleled Liberty and turning north again. He reasoned this would allow them to move with the least amount of exposure.
They hadn’t even reached the corner of Milner when the first round snapped overhead. “Shit,” Hilton exclaimed as he ducked and almost fell over. “Let me go. They ain’t gonna let you walk outta here. This place gonna explode.” Dylan lifted Hilton’s arms up by the cuffs and said, “Run.” He kept a strong grip on Hilton’s cuffs and pushed him forward. They reached Milner Street and turned the corner. Dylan slowed them to a walk and looked around. Behind him on Liberty Avenue he saw three young males watching them intently. He didn’t see any weapons, and shoved Hilton back into a jog and turned the corner into the alley going north. As they were rounding the corner Dylan looked back at the young men and saw one of them take off running north on Liberty Ave while the other two moved to follow him.
Dylan knew he was in serious trouble now. It didn’t matter if the kid who ran north on Liberty was going to get in front of him in an effort to trap him, or if he ran to get more people to do the same thing. Either way Dylan was sure he was being enveloped. After years of technology, organization and the law allowing him to be the hunter in this urban jungle, he now had no ability to communicate or travel quickly. Dylan was now the hunted. As Dylan’s mind focused on the primal fear he now felt, Hilton decided to act. Hilton stopped abruptly causing Dylan to collide with his back. As Dylan recoiled off the criminal’s back, Hilton mule kicked him squarely in the abdomen just above his wedding tackle. Dylan went down like a bag of cement dropped from a roof.
The unexpected attack caught Dylan completely by surprise, mainly because in his mind he had started to view Hilton as an ally. After all they were both running from people shooting at them. Such was not the case. Hilton was a savage; raised by his culture from birth to be a predator and exploiter of the weak. His only motivation was personal gain and individual power. He knew that these Alliance hood rats weren’t shooting at him, they were shooting at this cop. If he could get away from the cop he would find help and shelter among them.
Hilton turned around and began kicking Dylan as he lay on the ground, intending to soften him up so he could run. Instead his boot must have connected with Dylan’s head because the cop went limp. Hilton jumped on Dylan and managed to get the keys off his duty belt. It took a couple of moments but Hilton was able to unlock one of the handcuffs binding his wrists then bring his hands around front and get the other hand free. Hilton tossed the cuffs a
side and dug into the officer’s cargo pocket looking for his dope and money. Grabbing a handful of both, along with his favorite “Glock fo-ty” the cop had taken from him, he quickly stuffed it all in his pocket. He took the clip (as he thought of it) for his Glock out of the officer’s pocket and loaded it up and stuffed it in his pants.
Hilton stood up and began to walk away but realized he could use that rifle the cop was wearing. It wasn’t an AK but he had seen people shoot ARs on YouTube, and figured he wanted one. He bent back down and started wiggling the rifle off Dylan’s body where it was slung on its Blue Force Gear VCAS sling. As he was about to pull the rifle free, Dylan woke up. Dylan didn’t wake up slowly; he regained consciousness suddenly, with the startled fear of waking from a bad dream. He opened his eyes and through the blood in them saw Hilton on top of him with Dylan’s own rifle in his hands, trying to get it untangled.
Dylan panicked and lunged up, grabbing the rifle with his left hand and slamming Hilton in the face with it. Dylan clawed for his pistol and after a moment of struggling to shift Hilton’s weight was able to draw it. In one motion Dylan rotated the Glock 17 up and started shooting. His first round struck the rifle, showering his face with fragments. Dylan kept pulling the trigger as he extended the pistol toward Hilton. The second, third and fourth rounds connected with Hilton’s abdomen and chest, and his fifth round exploded from the Glock just as Dylan’s Surefire X300U light touched Hilton’s chin. The near-contact shot entered the roof of Hilton’s mouth and burst out the top of his head. Hilton collapsed on Dylan, who struggled to get out from under the now dead man. Dylan felt like he was being suffocated. He was finally able to roll Hilton’s lifeless body off of him and untangle his rifle. Dylan managed to get to his feet, but immediately got dizzy. He walked in a tight circle trying to clear his head and promptly slipped on a deep smear of blood, falling poorly and disorienting him even more.