Campanelli: Sentinel

by Frederick H. Crook

“All right!” the other shouted once he rose from the prone man’s chest. “Everybody out!”

  The half dozen other customers at tables or booths were slow to react to the man’s order. That was until the big man yanked Tamara over her counter and, with a large right fist pummeled her into immediate unconsciousness. The violent act drove the people to their feet.

  “What the hell is goin’ on out here?!” Donny, the cook yelled through his rectangular cut in the wall. “You let her go!!” he boomed once he saw the limp body of his boss be pulled uncaringly over the counter. He reacted by grabbing the largest knife he could find, but was frozen in place by what he saw in the younger thug’s hand. It was not the pistol in his right, but something he had retrieved from within his dirty and faded blue jacket.

  It was a grenade and the pin was dangling from his teeth. At the sight of it, the patrons of Tam’s Place fled, forced to run toward the violent pair to get out.

  “What the hell you doin’?” the captor demanded of his young partner as he slung Tamara Billingsley over one hefty shoulder.

  “Gettin’ everyone out, Andy,” the young one explained as his eyes locked onto the knife in the cook’s hand. Maris bumped into him on her way past, but his concentration remained unbroken. As if the man were constructed of fire, the young girl screamed and whirled away, shaking her hands in mindless fright and disgust. She followed the last of the brunch crowd outside.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” Andy asked as he took a few steps toward the front door with their prize.

  The young one turned to brag proudly about how he had obtained the incendiary grenade, but before he could speak, something struck him hard in the chest, startling him into taking a step backward. Looking down, he saw the great knife that had just been in the hands of the cook sticking out from in between the open folds of his jacket.

  “Mark!” Andy howled, pulled his own handgun from his belt and brought it up to return the cook’s favor.

  Mark was suddenly weak and cold. He stared into the surprised face of the cook that had just murdered him, but could not seem to lift the heavy handgun. Instead, it dropped onto the floor and, as Donny fell out of sight to evade Andy’s gunfire, Mark drew his last breath. Before he fell onto the unconscious customer he had pistol-whipped, Mark’s left arm flung the grenade toward the kitchen area. It fell short and bounced off the ceramic wall tile and tumbled to the floor behind the counter.

  “Shit!” Andy shrieked. He forgot about trying to kill the cook and sprinted to the glass doors. Tamara’s limp body bounced violently with every one of the big man’s strides. He blew through the doors and, as Andy left the sidewalk and made his first step into the street, a loud “Whump!” shook Tam’s Place, shattering every window in the ancient building.

  Without looking back, the lifelong criminal arrived to his beaten old vehicle and tore the driver’s door open. After tossing Tam inside clumsily, he jumped in and slammed the door. He dared a glance toward the building he had just left as he pressed the button to ignite the engine. Leaving a trail of oil and tire smoke, Andy caught a glimpse of the bright yellow fire that Mark left in his wake through the broken out window frames.

  As a dozen onlookers watched, Andy wheeled the creaky car around the corner and accelerated south along Michigan Avenue.

  ***

  “Frank!” Sebastian shouted over the speaker and the intermittent undulations of the audience. “Stay close to me. You too, Marcus,” he ordered and waved at the pair to follow.

  With a quick glance to his large partner, Frank fell into step with the OCD Chief, Mayor Victor Jameson and his security entourage, consisting of five men similar in stature to Williams.

  “…and I am here to tell you, friends…that I am with you! The Lord is with you! And with your support, brothers and sisters…I would like to announce my candidacy for mayor of Chicago!”

  The crowd noise reached a crescendo that immediately forced the bio-electronic implants of anyone in Daley Plaza to compensate. Surprised by the announcement, Frank looked to Marcus, laughed and shook his head. Williams merely smiled sardonically and went back to scanning the crowd.

  Mayor Jameson and his pocket of security men suddenly picked up the pace. The two black suited men in the lead took to the stage from the rear, hopping the steps in one bound. Jameson followed, coming into view of the reverend’s supporters. The plaza instantaneously erupted with rounds of booing and catcalls.

  Earl Sebastian and the rest of the official entourage blanketed the stage. Steve Enos seemed unsurprised by this development. He simply eyed the new arrivals to the spectacle and sauntered to the back of the stage.

  Outwardly nonplussed by the reaction of the angry mob, Mayor Victor Jameson waved and smiled as he jogged the last four paces to the podium, where he relieved the HV preacher of the microphone.

  “Well, that’s very interesting, Mister DeSilva,” Jameson annunciated the insult of bypassing the religious title, “but I’m afraid that you won’t qualify to run next term!”

  DeSilva smiled and crossed his arms. “Oh, really?” no one heard through the continued verbal assailments from the attendees.

  Campanelli, Williams and Sebastian inched their way toward the podium to join their mayor. Like the security detail that the mayor had brought with him, Williams’s eyes pierced the crowd for any signs of assault.

  From the slightly higher vantage point, Frank took in the sight of the crowd. They did not seem quite so intimidating when viewed from this new angle. He could make out the entire ring of riot police and, looking back the way he and the entourage had come, he saw many of the uniformed officers that had been milling about the entrance ramp had followed the detail, creating a ‘V’ shaped void. The people that they moved were unhappy about it, protesting loudly. One man threw something at one of the officers and was promptly taken down to be arrested.

  Oh, shit, Frank thought. Here we go.

  “It may interest everyone here to know,” the mayor went on, pushing his voice to a near shout to be heard, “that as much as this man has drilled into everyone’s head that your police department has not been effective against human trafficking, he has been, in reality, a key player in the criminal network responsible for it!”

  The plaza erupted in hateful cries of disbelief. From the mayor’s right, a man in the crowd threw his “Jameson: Stop the Migration!” sign at the stage, forcing the bodyguard there to deflect it. Its post snapped upon impact with the guard’s forearm, but fell harmlessly away.

  DeSilva dropped his hands to his sides in feigned shock and turned to the audience, his chin dropped and eyes widened.

  “We have evidence and the confessions of several individuals belonging to the Ignatola crime family, implicating this man!” the mayor shrieked and pointed at the HV celebrity. “He is the owner of several illegal aircraft that have been instrumental in the human trafficking!”

  Frank could see that the riot control officers were beginning to encounter trouble with the people. Their light blue helmets and clear plastic shields bobbled vigorously, making streams of the reflected light of the sun.

  “We will prove it, folks!” the mayor went on. “We are placing you, Maximilian DeSilva, under arrest!” he yelled and dropped the microphone to the stage floor.

  Sebastian moved to DeSilva and grabbed his arm. Frank stepped quickly to assist, placing his hand to his belt to retrieve his handcuffs.

  The next thing Frank knew, he was knocked flat. The air had been emptied from his lungs by the blur that was Marcus Williams, who screamed, “GUN!”

  Gunshots from very close by spit into the air and echoed briefly from the surrounding buildings. The screams of the DeSilva faithful filled the plaza, diminishing any noise that they had made earlier.

  Flat on his back, Frank struggled to draw in breath. Bereft of oxygen, the occipital lobe of his brain had great difficulty in deciphering the signals sent to it by his lenses. His field of view narrowed, lost focus and darkened. His chest flared i
n pain both from the impact with his partner and the absence of air. As he slowly, mercifully dragged breath back inside his lungs, Campanelli brought his upper body onto his left elbow. The darkness retreated and he was able to make out the lonely podium. Beyond that, a disorganized mass of humanity scurried in every direction.

  Campanelli sat up and noted that the mayor and his five guards were gone. The void that had been created behind the stage was now contested ground, hard-fought by the riot police. In the distance beyond them, DeSilva and his bodyguard were getting into the limousine.

  “Marcus!” Frank tried to shout, but he could not hear it. The effort took much out of what he had regained in his lungs and he was certain that he had made no sound.

  He turned his attention to his left and found Chief Sebastian on his knees, bent over an object that Frank’s eyes could not describe. Blinking away tears that distorted his vision, Campanelli could see that the object was a person.

  Frank fought to regain his feet and he stumbled past the podium to find that the prone person was Marcus Williams. He was bleeding from high on his chest, near the collarbone. Sebastian was applying pressure with both hefty hands.

  The ground of the Daley Plaza immediately in front of the stage was empty now, save for a mass of policemen wrestling with a bald young man in a torn white DeSilva t-shirt. Beyond this group, the occasional attendee or police officer lay flat on the ground. Frank surmised that these people had been trampled by the fleeing mass.

  “Are you all right?” someone somewhere said.

  From further up Washington and Dearborn Streets, the people retreated. The shouts and screams continued.

  “Frank!” the voice repeated urgently.

  Captain Campanelli turned to see that it was Earl Sebastian speaking. At some point, Frank had dropped to his knees next to his partner.

  He nodded in reply to the question and leaned closer to Williams. The man was breathing and his eyes shifted about. Finding Frank’s face, they settled on him.

  “Somebody took a shot at the mayor?” Frank asked, immediately regretting the stupid question.

  Marcus’s eyes blinked and his head gave a tiny nod.

  “And you jumped in front of it,” Campanelli concluded.

  Williams nodded again.

  “Jackass,” Frank judged as he patted his partner’s head, sweeping the man’s brown hair back into place and failing. Marcus smiled thinly, seeming to agree. “Anyone we know?”

  Williams mouthed the word ‘no’.

  Sirens screamed and wailed from every direction, but one prevailed beyond the rest. It announced the arrival of an ambulance. The glass of the Daley Center reflected the flashes of red light emitted by the vehicle.

  In a moment, Campanelli was asked to move by an EMT.

  “Take care, partner,” Frank said as he stood and stepped back. “You’ll be okay,” he added weakly, unconvinced by his own words.

  Dazed, Campanelli watched the medical staff remove Williams’s ruined jacket and shirt without moving his body. Piece by piece, the bloodied cloth was discarded to the surface of the stage. The undamaged bulletproof vest followed, dropped to the wooden surface with a dull thump.

  “Where’s DeSilva?” Sebastian asked from his side.

  Frank turned to the man, and noted the arrival of many uniformed officers, including Deputy Chief Alonso. All of them appeared slightly disheveled, as if they had fought hard to reach the scene of the crime. He supposed they had, after all. Campanelli turned to see that the great white car had vanished.

  Without answering the question, Frank leapt from the stage and discarded his façade of ‘cool’, breaking into a westward run toward Clark Street. Accessing his car via implant, he hailed it.

  ***

  Within the Daley Center’s parking garage, the dark blue police cruiser’s computer complied to its master’s call and set itself to ‘Condition Three’. Its emergency lights sent brilliant streaks of electric blue to smear the gray concrete walls as its engine ignited in a mechanical snarl of exhaust. The car backed from its parking space, making the tires shriek against the shiny concrete. As the car slipped along its path to the exit, the cameras guided it around parked cars and the garage’s walls and support beams.

  The twenty-one year old cruiser had been through almost every foot of the subterranean garages of Chicago in its day and thusly had every detail mapped in its computer memory. Despite this, the car fishtailed at the final turn before entering the exit ramp that would lead it to the ground level of Clark Street, cracking the corner of a taillight and inflicting a gash into its rear bumper cover. A mechanic had overlooked a hyperactive brake sensor on the left rear wheel, resulting in a premature locking-up of that hub which initiated the planned slide too early. Making a note of this, the automobile surged up the ramp in a sudden blast of acceleration, smoking all four tires against the slippery smooth surface.

  The cruiser erupted into the muted sunlight and immediately detected a multitude of pedestrian obstacles. It slowed and gave its sirens extra amplitude, adding to them several blasts of the authoritative horn. The car merged onto Clark and located its driver.

  Frank had found the DeSilva limousine on the GPS. It was heading south on State Street at a high rate of speed. Seeing his cruiser exit the garage like a submarine breaking the surface of the ocean, Campanelli turned toward it. The car lit the street with blue flashes and screamed its arrival as it came to a stop at the curb. The door popped open as he came close enough and the car swallowed the detective in one gulp.

  “Head south on Clark, now!” Frank bellowed as the seat restraints locked into place.

  The car surged forward, restraining itself enough to avoid impact with pedestrians. The cruiser weaved a path through the mass of humanity and, once it reached the intersection of Clark and West Madison and the pedestrian traffic thinned, the car to accelerated to pursuit speeds.

  Frank watched the traffic and the satellite display. DeSilva’s car was quickly approaching the District One Station, having just passed through the intersection of State and Ninth.

  “Dispatch, this is Unit Fifty-one-sixty-two,” Campanelli called out to the dash radio. “There is a limousine, white, heading south on State Street on its way past District One. I am in pursuit, but I’m on Clark Street just passing Van Buren.”

  “Unit Five-one-six-two,” the female dispatcher replied. “Acknowledged.”

  “I’m sending the tracking link to you now,” Frank added and thought the command to do so. The information and location of DeSilva’s car was relayed to the dispatcher’s computer terminal.

  “Got it, Detective Campanelli,” she confirmed. Alert tones followed her voice. “All units within the vicinity District One Station. Sentinel priority pursuit. A white limousine is approaching the station on State Street, southbound. See dash displays for tracking info. Intercept.”

  ***

  The great car’s internal combustion engine howled laboriously to get past the delivery truck and the taxi that had been travelling side by side for much of a block. As skillful as the driver was, there had been no way to get around them given the raised concrete islands dividing north and southbound lanes, the parked cars on the right and those going the other way.

  Maximilian and his bodyguard, Enos, sat and watched the news on the miniature HV set. The attempt on the mayor’s life had been thwarted by an overzealous and oversized police detective.

  “It appears your man was not as good as advertised, Steve,” DeSilva said with annoyed deliberation.

  “Sorry, sir,” Enos replied tightly. The assassin had been handpicked by Enos for his military background, but he had been stopped by one more skilled than he.

  “…the downed detective, whose name is withheld for the moment, was struck in the upper chest by the bullet meant for Mayor Jameson,” the anchor stated as the recorded video was run continually on a loop. “This follower of Reverend Maximilian DeSilva’s Church of the Divine Intervention was the shooter, seen here b
eing arrested by police.”

  The arrest of Enos’s man had been captured in vivid detail. The man appeared insane as he fought with four officers. His face had turned beet red with strain and the DeSilva t-shirt had been prominently displayed in the tussle. The anchor went on to describe the escape of Reverend DeSilva and Mayor Jameson as video of the two men showed them running from the stage in close proximity, apparently oblivious of each other.

  Enos paused the transmission and began reversing it.

  “What?” DeSilva asked as he grabbed on to a handle above the door. The limo had suddenly rocked as the driver weaved it through traffic.

  Steve Enos found what he was looking for and zoomed in the view. He pointed at the face on the screen. “That’s Campanelli, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” DeSilva agreed. “That was his partner that stopped the bullet. We got one of them, at least. Hopefully, those other two idiots have done their job, so we will have leverage on the good Captain waiting for us.”

  Just as these words escaped Maximilian’s lips, the great car decelerated with stomach churning efficiency. The seat restraints for both men slapped into place, keeping them firmly set into the plush leather surfaces.

  The limo driver had attempted to go through the red light at the intersection of Fourteenth Street, but a driver of a westward automobile reacted to his green light all too quickly, putting the nose of his ancient sedan in front of the white leviathan, which outweighed it fourfold. The limo driver swerved to his right.

  The little car’s right front corner disintegrated in a cloud of metal and plastic as it was flung away from the offending limousine. The driver of the small car had been too surprised to react, even if he had seen the accident coming. Only the fact that his upper torso had been forced into the passenger side saved him from the impact with the light post on the southwestern corner of the intersection.

  “Goddamn it, Terry!” DeSilva screamed from the back seat. There was no reply. “Terry!”

  The driver of the limo had been shocked by the violence of the crash even though he had seen it coming. The air-filled restraints at the door and dash and the retracting steering yoke had done their jobs well, but the jarring collision and sudden deceleration had darkened the young man’s vision and had taken his breath away.