“I doubt Scalese will take her there. He isn’t planning to exchange anything; so if he brings Ellie here at all, she’ll stay inside one of their cars in the North lot. Frankly, that’s where she’ll be safest anyway,” he said, thinking that was the last place he wanted her to be. Linda looked at him, and it was clear she didn’t like the idea. “Don’t worry,” he added. “I’ll get her back, Linda.” He turned toward the others and added, “That’s the mission. Everybody got that?”
“Isolate, rescue, and destroy?” Koz asked nonchalantly.
“Yes, but before you do, we need to know if they have Ellie in one of the vehicles. Be prepared to take out their personnel who come in on foot, on my command. Otherwise, everyone stay crusty, observe and report. Ernie and I will take up a position northeast of the picnic area, where we can cover it and the trails coming in from the North lot. Ace, you and Vinnie do the same on the south side, where you can move north and support us, or go back south to support Chester, depending on how Scalese positions his men. Questions?” he asked as he looked around from face to face.
“Who’s this Scalese?” Koz asked.
“Tony Scalese. He’s an underboss in the DiGrigoria crime family, a big guy with weight lifter shoulders and a bigger mouth, and I’m told he likes to use a knife.”
“Then, I expect you’ll be taking one of ours?” Vinnie smiled.
“I expect I just might,” Burke smiled back.
“For the record, are there any Rules of Engagement?” Ace asked.
“What I expect to find out there tonight are middle-aged city hoods wearing street shoes and sports coats, armed mostly with semi-automatic handguns and shotguns, maybe a few automatic rifles, and commercial two-way radios. I expect them to come walking up the trails with big flashlights, swatting mosquitoes, stumbling over tree roots, and getting whacked by branches.” Bob paused to look around the table and saw his men smiling and shaking their heads. “I know, I know, it hardly seems fair, does it? You’ll know them when you see them. When you do, put them down, hard, and with ‘extreme prejudice.’ Head shots, if you can. They wanted a war, and they’re about to get one.”
Vinnie turned toward Ernie Travers. “You got any problem with that, Mr. Chicago Police Detective?” He asked. “You do understand what he’s telling us to do, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, I understand,” Travers answered. “I’m fine with it, and I suspect the brass downtown will be fine with it too, except the ones on their payroll.”
“God, don’t you love a Chicago cop?” Koz laughed.
“This one happens to be an MP Full Colonel, in the Reserves anyway. Back in the day, he ran some of the POW stockades behind us in Iraq, so he understands what we do. I’m sure Scalese is bringing his whole crew tonight. He thinks it’s only Linda and me, maybe a few friends and crazies, and he’s out to send a message. Unfortunately, for him, he doesn’t know about you guys.”
“I doubt he knows about you either, but we’ll be sure to send flowers,” the Batman said.
“Don’t get cocky. We could still be outnumbered two or even three to one in places. They’re out to kill us, and they’ve shown no hesitancy to do exactly that so far. Tonight, however, we have them on our ground, in our kind of war, and we’re going to kill them first, kill all of them. If anybody has any problem with that, stay here with the airplane.”
“Negatory, Sir, we’re all in,” came the unanimous reply.
“Good, and I don’t expect them to have any night vision gear or any trained shooters. That’s our game, not theirs, and they’re going to pay for it.”
“What about their command-and-control?” Chester asked.
“Scalese will be 100% in charge of his people, and I doubt he’s very good at sharing or delegating. So far, all I’ve seen are cheap, commercial, Motorola ‘walkie-talkie’ radios, and no night vision optics. Once we take out their communications, they’ll be like a bunch of overweight Boy Scouts stumbling around in the woods, blind and lost.”
“That should be no problem, Sir. I brought one of our tactical jamming units,” Chester piped up. “I’ll scan the commercial channels. When I pick them up, we can shut down their radios and cell phones. They’ll suddenly find no bars.”
“Perfect. Nothing like finding yourself in the deep, dark woods with a dead radio to shake up a city boy. Look guys,” he concluded, his eyes moving from face to face. “Don’t underestimate them. They’ve already killed three people, plus my wife...”
“Angie?” Linda asked in shock. “My God, they killed Angie?”
“Jeez, why didn’t you say something?” Vinnie asked.
“Now we understand,” Ace said with a solemn nod to the others. “You can count on us.”
“We’ll talk about that later. Our primary objective tonight is to get Linda’s daughter back safe and sound, put them all down, and have no casualties on our end. They’ll be easy to spot. Keep your cover, be aware 360, and stay in contact. There’s no reason to get up close and personal with them. We’ll take them all out in the woods, in the dark, or in the parking lots with the long guns. That’s my plan. If you see anyone else out there, especially a cop, that’s a fight we don’t want. Report and back away. Anyone else you bump into who is carrying a gun, put them down hard. In the end, none of them are leaving here alive. On a personal point though, Scalese is mine. Everybody got that?”
At 10:55 p.m., the Parker Woods Forest Preserve North parking lot was empty. It sat at the end of a long, curved service road. There was a chain stretching across the entrance, padlocked to two stout, concrete posts, both of which bore large red-and-white signs that said “No Entry after Dark.” The parking lot formed a gentle arc along with the tree line, thirty feet away. It was freshly paved and striped, and featured a string of tall, sodium vapor streetlights. Even though the park itself was closed, the lights remained on all night. They did a fine job of illuminating the paved parking areas, but the eerie, yellow-white cones of light they cast ended at the tree line. Beyond that, the dense woods lay in complete darkness.
Traffic on the surrounding roads was light at that hour. A small convoy of two Lincoln Town Cars, a Continental, and a Mercedes, led by Tony Scalese’s pale gold Lexus turned off Route 53 at the Irving Park Road interchange and headed east. Scalese drove and Jimmy DiCiccio sat in the front passenger seat next to his boss, with his own .357-Magnum Colt Python revolver and Scalese’s prized Lupara double-barreled sawed-off shotgun lying in his lap. It was handmade in Sicily and measured only eighteen inches long. Tony's Uncle brought it back with him from the Old Country. The Lupara had been the weapon of choice for close-in killing and settling grudges in the hills above Palermo, Messina, and Catania for more than a century.
In the back seat of the Lexus sat a very unhappy Lawrence Greenway, a thoroughly terrified Patsy Evans, and Linda Sylvester’s daughter Ellie. Patsy had her arms wrapped around the little girl, holding her close and as far away from Greenway as she could. Scalese glanced in his rear view mirror and saw Greenway staring out his window, chin up, detached, and pretending not to care. That was fine with him, Scalese decided. He spent most of the late afternoon on the telephone calling in various crews of “made men” from Salvatore DiGrigoria’s organization, exercising IOUs, making promises, and renting a few others, and the five cars carried eighteen of the best gunmen in Chicago. Nine, plus him and Jimmy DiCiccio, were headed for the North lot, while seven more headed for the South lot. Scalese smiled. All were stone-cold killers, and that smartass little prick Burke would never know what hit him. Tonight, the “telephone guy” would find out what it felt like to go to war against a freakin’ real army.
When they neared the North entrance to the Parker Woods Forest Preserve, Scalese slowed and reached for the Motorola Talkabout two-way radio sitting on the console between his seat and DiCiccio’s. He keyed the mic and called one of his Lieutenants, Eddie Fanucci, three cars back. “Yo, Eddie, it’s me. You keep drivin’ east and circle around to the South lot, like I show
ed you on the map. Junior, you follow him. You other two morons follow me,” he said as he turned off into the North lot service road. He heard a string of, “Gotcha, Tony,” and, “Yeah, okay,” as the two cars continued east. “You got ten minutes to get your asses down there and get in position,” Scalese added. “Then we all move in.”
“Yeah,” “Right,” “Got it,” and “Okay,” he heard back and smiled to himself, thinking, “This is gonna be good!”
Bob Burke and Ernie Travers lay in the woods near the northeast corner of the picnic area, less than two hundred yards from the North parking lot and one hundred feet from the picnic pavilion. They were nestled in the bushes between the two winding, gravel trails that came in from the North lot. Bob had an unobstructed view of both trails and the woods beyond, while Ernie faced the other way, watching the raised, white-painted pavilion and the open area around it. Underneath the thick ghillie suit, Travers looked like another bump on the forest floor, while Burke lay under one of the camouflage poncho liners. In the dark forest, one of Scalese’s men could’ve stepped on either of them and still not known they were there. Travers wore night vision goggles, and they all had body armor and a tactical harness loaded with ammunition, water, and a Beretta with silencer. Bob carried one of the new SCAR assault rifles with a night vision scope and noise suppressor. Travers said he was not very good with a rifle, so he chose the Benelli shotgun. “Being an old Chicago cop, you can’t beat a 12-gauge for crowd control, can you?” he said as he loaded shells into the receiver, and finally jacked one into the chamber. “The Chicago Police Department — bringing you peaceful conventions since 1968.”
They lay there for ten minutes, until Bob Burke heard Chester’s first report on the tactical radio net.
“Ghost, Chester, I’m picking up chatter on one of the commercial bands. I make it five, I say again, five units, using first names like Eddie, Tony, and Junior. They aren’t using anything close to proper ‘radio telephone procedure;’ so they aren’t cops, fire, or the Feds.”
“10-4, sounds like our guys.”
“They’re dividing their force. I say again, dividing. Sounds like two cars are headed around to the south lot, while the base group of two or three is coming in as you expected.”
“Ghost, to ya’ll. Everyone copy that? Looks like they split their forces. That’s their first mistake, over.”
“Ghost, Koz. Now wait a damn minute, ain’t that what Bobby Lee done at Chancellorsville, and that sure weren’t no mistake.”
“That guy ain’t Bobby Lee,” Vinnie broke in.
“When did you start to read?” Bob laughed. “Ace, you and Vinnie drop back and support Chester on his left. When they leave their vehicles, give me a head count. When they’re halfway to the SUVs, we’ll cut their communications and neutralize. Then fall back here.”
“Roger that.”
When Tony Scalese found the North parking lot entry road blocked by a heavy chain hanging between two solid-looking concrete posts and a sign that read, “No Entry — Park Closed,” he simply ignored them. He bounced his Lexus over the curb, through the grass, and around the right-side post. The other two cars followed as he returned to the service drive and continued into the empty North lot. He parked the Lexus in front of a sign, which read, “Picnic Pavilion” with an arrow pointing toward the first trail. The other two cars pulled in next to him. Their doors opened and his men got out, laughing and stretching. Most carried one or two large handguns, but one of his men had an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle balanced casually across his shoulders, while two others carried sawed-off shotguns, like their boss.
Johnny G. pulled his pants up over his ample gut and shouted toward the woods, “Okay, you assholes, come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Yeah, Tony, where are these stiffs?” another man joined in as he checked the load in his big, chrome-plated, “Dirty Harry” .44-caliber automatic. “I got a pinochle game to get back to.”
Dressed in suits or sports coats and slacks, they all wore white or pastel-colored dress shirts open at the neck, with chains and gold "bling" hanging around their necks, and leather street shoes. The clothes were more appropriate for a Saturday night at the Italian-American Bocce Club in Cicero, than a walk in the woods, as they would soon find out.
Scalese opened his car door and joined them. As he did, he heard Greenway open his rear door too. Scalese’s head snapped around. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Doc,” he told him. “You’re stayin’ right here, all three of you; and Jimmy’s stayin’ here with you.”
“Anthony, why did you bring me along, if you had no intention of allowing me to help?” Greenway asked indignantly as he swatted a mosquito. “I have better things to do with my time.”
“No you don’t. When I’m done with your friend Burke, you and I have some unfinished business, Larry,” Scalese told him as he reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a stiletto knife, watching Greenway’s eyes as he flicked the blade open and held it up. As the light from the lamppost reflected off its razor-sharp edge, the doctor blinked, obviously surprised to see a stiletto in Scalese’s hand. “What?” the big Italian asked him. “You thought the one you used on Burke’s wife was the only one I owned? As you can see, that one has a beautiful sister.”
“Tony, I don’t know what you think…” Greenway began to stutter.
“Shut up! So it’s ‘Tony,’ now, and, ‘what I think?’ You can get back in the car and ‘think’ for a while; ’cause when I get back, I’m going to use it to cut you up for fish bait, Doc.”
Scalese turned toward Jimmy DiCiccio. “You stay here and watch them, Jimmy. Nobody leaves ’til I get back. Nobody.”
“You got it, Boss,” DiCiccio replied as he held up his .357-Magnum Colt Python revolver and motioned casually for Greenway to get back inside and close the door.
Deep in the woods between the trails, Bob Burke and Ernie Travers lay hidden, waiting.
“I haven’t dressed up like this since the Advanced Course at Fort Gordon,” Travers whispered.
“Bet you never wanted to, either,” Bob answered as his radio earbud came alive.
“Ghost, Koz. I have three cars in the North lot — a Lexus, a Lincoln, and a Continental — and I count twelve, I say again, twelve Gumbahs getting out of the three cars. It looks like two are staying with the Lexus, one inside and one standing guard outside, but the other ten are walking toward the trailheads. The one in the lead looks big, and he has one of those Motorola walkie-talkie things. I suspect he’s your man, Scalese.”
“Roger that. Any sign of the little girl?”
“Negative, but I see a couple more heads in the back seat of the Lexus.”
“10-4. Keep me advised. Ghost out.”
The men in Scalese’s other two cars slowly gathered around in a small circle, waiting impatiently for him until he walked over. “Jeez, Tony,” one of them said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "I hope this don’t take too long, I really gotta pee.”
“Keep your big yap shut, and spread out,” Scalese snapped with cold, humorless eyes as he realized they continued to call him “Tony” and it was beginning to chafe. Well, in a few weeks it would be Boss, or even Mr. S. “Alright, those two paths lead to the picnic area. Johnny G, you take your five down that trail over there. The rest follow me. We’ll meet at the Pavilion. Oh, one last thing, if you melon heads look around, you don’t see Gino Santucci or Peter Fabiano here, do you?” he paused as he looked around from face to face. “They’re in the hospital, both of ’em. That bastard Burke put ’em there. He busted ’em up, good, so don’t think this is gonna be easy. But when we find him, nobody touches him. He’s mine!”
With his Lupara dangling in his right hand and the Motorola two-way radio in the left, Scalese turned and set off through the ankle-high grass toward the trailhead with five men following him. The other group veered off through the parking lot toward the second trailhead one hundred yards further to the east. There were large signs at each trailhead
with arrows that pointed toward the ‘Picnic Area.’ When he reached the edge of the woods, Scalese signaled both groups to stop. He picked up the Motorola, keyed the mic, and asked, “Eddie, you guys ready?”
“Yeah, Tony, we’re at the entrance to the South lot. I see two big Ford Explorers parked in there. What you want us to do?”
“Take ’em out, and anybody else who’s down there. That’s what I’m payin’ you assholes for. Now, go!” Scalese ordered as he lowered the radio and signaled for both of his groups to start walking down the two trails.
His earbud whispered to Bob Burke again. “Ghost, Chester. South lot, I have two incoming cars. They stopped at the entrance, but now they’re heading for the SUVs.”
“Chester, Ace here. I’m tracking them too. When they stop and get out, I’ll take the group in the lead car. You take the rear car. We’ll start on the edges and meet in the middle.”
“Ace, Chester. Roger that. Age before beauty, I’ll wait for you to engage.”
“Chester and Ace, figure four Gumbahs per car. Once they’re on foot and closing on the SUVs, Chester, you commence action by jamming their radios, then you both fire at will. We’ll wait on your command, and then open fire up here too. Got that Koz?”
“Roger that. I’ll take out the guard on Chester’s command, and then engage anyone else in the parking lot.”
“Linda, Ghost. You stay behind Chester. He’s the best shot in the unit. Ghost out.”
It had rained earlier that evening. The grass around the parking lots and the thick bed of plants and mulch covering the forest floor were still wet, but the trails themselves consisted of a thick layer of coarse gravel. When heavy men in leather-soled street shoes walked on it, the gravel crunched beneath their shoes.
“Goddamn, Tony, these are the new shoes I got in Naples last year,” one of his men said as he hung back in the thick, wet grass complaining. “I didn’t know we wuz goin’ on no freakin’ nature hike.”
Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers) Page 33