*****
Ally took one last look at the satellite image of Marv’s house. The veranda around the back of the house looked like the best option. Or rather, it looked like the least worst of several choices. As a dozen competing thoughts raced through Ally’s head, she had one large instinct organizing it all: ‘I am probably going to die.’
Ally had no idea whose house this was, nor did she know how many people were inside. But she knew that The Executioner was there. And that was all the motivation that she needed.
Walking casually with her 9mm held loosely in her hands and with four extra fully-loaded magazines in her back pockets, Ally stepped on to the veranda. Immediately she saw the wide-open sliding glass door.
“Keep moving forward, keep moving forward,” she told herself under her breath.
Stepping into the living room with her gun held up, she surveyed the scene, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. Tim was slumped over sideways on the couch, blood still slowly flowing out of the deep wound on his head. Rich was face down next to the coffee table, completely motionless with no sign of life.
Positive that neither of these men were The Executioner, Ally again told herself ‘keep moving forward,’ this time completely silently.
Then she spotted the iron bar, sitting on the couch. She recognized The Executioner’s weapon of choice immediately. Ally knew she was close.
Ally moved on quietly past the kitchen. As she walked down the hallway she heard sounds coming from Marv’s office. Ally formulated her game plan for entering the room: they immediately surrender or they die.
Ally stepped into the doorframe, neither quickly nor slowly. She looked down at The Executioner as he was about to shove the final file folder into his courier bag.
The Executioner should have been more surprised, more frightened. But, looking up at Ally’s gun, he felt oddly tranquil as he lifted his hands slowly in defeat.
“How many more? How many others in the house?” asked Ally quietly.
“The two I killed in the living room, me, plus the boss Marv,” answered The Executioner, surprising himself with the calmness of his answer.
“Where?”
“Marv?” The Executioner nodded in the direction of the large safe and added nonchalantly “I put him in the safe. He’s not dead yet.”
As if on cue, a metallic scraping sound came from the safe as Marv, sitting on the roll-out tray on the bottom of the safe, shifted his position.
Ally was having problems sorting out the surreal situation.
“There’s a person in there? How did you fit a person in that safe?”
“I knocked him out, and then I jammed him in there. There’s space. He’s not that big,” said The Executioner, matter-of-factly.
“Why did you kill the two men I saw in the other room? Who are they? And why is your boss inside a safe?”
The Executioner, kneeling with his hands in the air, figured that he was basically now begging for his life, and he needed to answer questions in a way that would change Ally’s perceptions of him as swiftly as possible.
“I killed them, basically, because they wanted to start kidnapping and trafficking women. And I’m…”
“That’s a lie. You want me to believe that you have a conscience now?”
“I don’t…,” said The Executioner, stumbling over his words. “…I mean, have you ever heard of me targeting female runners? Even just once? And look…I’m now killing my boss for the same reason I killed the others. I don’t think he’s getting any air in there. And these bags…one of these bags is going to Blue Team, the other is going to a woman in Vietnam, and….”
“Stop. Just stop. What do you mean, ‘Blue Team’?”
“I’m working with Blue Team,” said The Executioner.
Ally couldn’t speak. She felt a numb shock slowly spread over her body. She tried to process what was happening.
“You are not Blue Team. You are a murderer. You prey on the people that Blue Team tries to help,” said Ally. In her head, this belief was 100%. But her words, as they came out of her mouth, were not entirely confident.
“I’m not Blue Team, but I work for them. This bag…” stammered The Executioner, “this bag is going to Blue Team. This guy, my boss…he keeps his records for his entire operation on paper. It’s all here: names, payments, arrangements, contracts, I mean….whatever. He’s insane. He doesn’t trust computers, so he writes down everything by hand – whatever you are looking for. If you are looking for the guys who hunt runners overseas, if you want to know who helps them over there, and who in the government protects the overseas debt collectors here at home, it’s all in this bag. You can’t see the address; it’s a secured privacy shipment. I don’t even know where it’s going. It’s the shipping tag that Blue Team sent me. I don’t know…”
“Shut up. Shut up!” Ally snapped, cutting off The Executioner before he started to ramble any further. “You are not on Blue Team. I know because I am Blue Team,” said Ally, lying confidently. “I’ve been on Blue Team for years. You are not one of us.”
“I have been since a few days ago. I’m not a member or whatever, but I’m helping. I contacted them. They list ways to message them on their website if you have information. I told them what I could get for them. I don’t know if they believed me, but they emailed me a code for a secure mailing address. I… I need to…or you, you need to contact them, you need to call them and ask.”
Ally’s hand did not waver at all. The gun remained pointed directly at The Executioner’s face. He was now positive that he was begging for his life.
“If you move your hands, I shoot you,” said Ally as bluntly as possible.
“Please, the bag is going to Blue Team. I swear. Call them. They’ll sort it out.”
“I am Blue Team, I would know about this immediately. You’re…”
“I don’t know why you don’t know,” said The Executioner, interrupting Ally. “I don’t know how your organization works. But before coming here, I sent a long message to the address on the Blue Team website. It’s about 20,000 words. It explains how the system works. All the tactics we use. I name as many names and give as many locations as possible. You all probably know a lot of it already. But there is something else you and Blue Team need to know. You don’t know it, but you need to…”
“Then summarize it. As quickly as possible,” shot back Ally.
“OK. The boss, Marvin, the guy in the safe, he’s not making money off of runners anymore. The expenses overseas are huge. But we have been working anyways. Marv has been subsidizing me and other debt collectors. And Marv in turn has been compensated by the big domestic debt collectors who are basically paying us to kill debt runners to intimidate the rest. I got suspicious after I looked at the numbers – what they were spending on my expenses and what I delivered to them. It wasn’t profitable. We created such an environment of fear that people mostly quit running, and the runners already overseas decided to come home. We create the fear, the debtors – these students – they stay in America out of fear, and the loan and collection industry keeps their prisoners. But Marv wants to also traffic in women overseas on the side. When he told me that was when I started to change my mind about this line of work…”
This made far too much sense to Ally. She almost believed him.
Ally tried to think through this information as she fumbled to open a secure line on her phone to her operations contact at Blue Team. They answered immediately and she started to quickly describe what was happening as The Executioner did his best to hear what was being said at the other end of the line. He knew that his life depended on it.
Ally sat down in Marv’s chair as the conversation turned more into a battle in which each side tried to interrogate the other. Hearing only one side, The Executioner had no better idea what his fate was, but it was clear that Ally was being told a lot about something that had been kept from her. And it seemed to The Executioner as if Ally and Blue Team had a very bad relations
hip.
Ally ended the call unceremoniously and sat silently, staring blankly into the distance.
After a short silence that seemed far longer than it actually was, Ally asked “What’s in the smaller bag?”
“Cash. A lot. The bundles are all 1000 Euro banknotes. Marv said probably about eight million Euros total.”
“So you’re here to rob this guy and the paperwork you’re sending Blue Team is just, what, an afterthought?”
“Scan the address label with my phone. The bag with the money is going to an old lady in Vietnam.”
“Right. Your overseas money launderer?” asked Ally accusingly.
“No. The mother of this guy’s girlfriend – or his wife, whatever. Marv’s girlfriend, she has nothing without him – and she has no idea about what sort of operation goes on here. She has an old mother and two little kids in Vietnam. This money is going to them. I doubt this guy has life insurance, and if he does it doesn’t cover him in LA. And knowing him, he sure as hell didn’t make his girlfriend a beneficiary.”
The Executioner was now really worried, as it seemed like the conversation she had with Blue Team didn’t do much to placate her.
“So you’re a humanitarian now?” she inquired sarcastically.
“No. I just want out. And I’ve been collecting as much info as I could on how this all works.”
“I’ve heard enough,” said Ally. “Quit talking. I need to think.”
Ally continued to sit silently. She was having a problem with such a huge change in her perception of The Executioner. He was basically a whistle blower who was burning down the building on his way out. She accepted this. But she still didn’t know what she was going to do, despite what Blue Team had asked her to do.
“How long have you been planning on doing this?” asked Ally.
“I don’t know. It was sort of a gradual decision… I’m not sure.”
Ally did not react. She continued to think.
“Can I ask a question?” inquired The Executioner.
Ally nodded.
“How did you track me here? Was it through Marv or one of these guys? Did you even know that I was here? Not that it matters now, but I’m curious… It’s always been the other way around, with me tracking down people.”
“Do you tell all the runners how you caught them?” asked Ally in reply.
“I tell them if they ask. But they almost never ask. I don’t know why.”
Ally thought about the answer. And she knew that delivering it would be satisfying.
“OK. It was quite simple. Mick gave you to us,” said Ally.
“Mick told you?”
“Yes. My friend Mick told me. Not your friend; mine. He told us you were going to Canada. And he even sent us a nice close-up picture of your face, as we didn’t have one. We sent it to the Canadian Border Services Agency. They give the Insurrectionary Anarchists info occasionally in return for us never stepping foot in Canada. You tripped the facial recognition system on the way in and out of Canada. And then there were some stalkers waiting for your flight to arrive here in Los Angeles. The service is not cheap when you arrange it with such short notice, but they are obviously good at following people. However, we didn’t know that it would take so long for you to get from Vancouver to Los Angeles. We were about to give up on your arrival, especially considering the fact that you made a land border crossing. If you had driven to LA, we would have had no way to follow you. But then there you were tripping a notification as you went through security at the airport in Chicago. You have no idea how angry Blue Team is going to be when they see one final bill from an unnecessary operation.”
“Yeah, I also pay people to do all my tracking these days,” said The Executioner. “I should have gotten into the tracking business…”
Somehow, The Executioner was not surprised. He was never a good judge of people. And Mick could now be added to the list of people that he had thought could be trusted.
“So that’s the story of how you got caught,” stated Ally bluntly. “But now back to business. How long will it take for the drone to come for the money bag if you call for it now?” asked Ally.
“I need to use my phone to check.”
“OK, go for it. Slowly. Do anything quickly and I shoot you in the face.”
The Executioner fumbled to open the courier app on his phone and apologized, “Sorry, I almost never use this service.”
Finding what he needed, The Executioner scanned the label on the courier bag and was given an estimated pick-up time.
“Twenty-three minutes.”
“OK, send for it,” said Ally. “Will it come to the back veranda? The pick-up drone?”
“Yes, they say that it just needs open sky above the pick-up spot. No trees or electrical lines. That’s it. That’s all the instructions say.”
“OK, we’re going out to the veranda. Again, you move too quickly in any way whatsoever, I shoot you in the back.”
“One final thing: can I put a note in the bag? I need to tell Marv’s girlfriend that he’s dead and to not return to Los Angeles. It would be dangerous for her. I don’t know what the fallout for this will be.”
Looking at Marv’s desk, Ally noticed pens, pencils and paper everywhere.
“What’s with the pens and paper? It looks like a museum for a 20th century office supplies hoarder,” said Ally.
“Like I said, he’s old-fashioned. He does everything on paper. He has no files or data.”
“Well, that was a good tactic until it wasn’t,” observed Ally.
The Executioner said nothing. He waited for Ally to speak again.
“OK, write a quick note,” said Ally. “But I’m going to read it before you throw it into the bag.”
The Executioner, back in the living room, was feeling unsettled as he kneeled next to the two dead men with his hands held behind his head. After nearly twenty minutes of kneeling in the living room while waiting for the drone, he asked Ally “What did the guys at Blue Team say to you about me? What did they tell you to do?”
“Well,” said Ally, “Blue Team and I have…”
Ally was about to finish her thought when she was interrupted by the arrival of the drone. Buzzing quietly, the quadcopter smoothly swooped down and stopped to hover as a clip swung down and attached to the metal loop on the courier bag. And with that, an unknown amount of cash rose into the sky and flew towards Los Angeles international airport. Neither Ally nor The Executioner were too worried about it. International courier bags filled with cash were guaranteed to reach their destination without being checked. The couriers just figured that it is drug trafficker money and were, as a result, too scared to touch it.
“No, wait,” said Ally, “First, I have a question for you: what about Elizabeth?”
“I’m sorry? Who?” asked The Executioner. He genuinely didn’t know who Ally was talking about.
“My friend Liz. The woman you had murdered in Mexico. My partner. My best friend.”
“I’m sorry about your friend. The guys I paid said they would be unarmed and that they wouldn’t hurt anybody too badly,” he said, his desperation showing in his voice. “They were supposed to nab Mick and leave behind any friends without hurting them. I’m sorry… I figured he would just be hanging out with some harmless pot heads who could be shoved out of the way. I didn’t know you and your friend would be there. I didn’t know that you all would be armed. I didn’t know these idiots I hired would be indiscriminately firing a Kalashnikov.”
Ally didn’t reply. She stared to the side away from The Executioner as she thought through what she was going to do.
“What did Blue Team tell you to do?” asked The Executioner again as he looked over his shoulder, not quite able to see Ally.
“They said…to let you send the money, or to let you keep it if that’s what you wanted. They said for me to let the drone take the bag with the documents as well, but I’m going to have a look at the documents for myself first.”
�
�And what about me? I made a deal with Blue Team.”
“Yeah,” said Ally, “you have a deal with them. They said to say thank you and to let you go.”
“Alright…so? Are we done?” asked The Executioner.
“Yes, we’re done,” said Ally as she grabbed a couch cushion, pushing it against the back of The Executioner’s head and firing her gun into it.
The sound was louder than Ally had expected.
The Executioner fell forward. But to Ally’s surprise, he put out his arms to break his fall, still conscious with a bullet hole in his upper neck. Quickly dropping the makeshift silencer pillow, she put her knee into The Executioner’s back and forced him down onto the ground. Pressing his face firmly into the floor, Ally pushed the barrel of her gun against the side of The Executioner’s head and fired two shots into his brain.
Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom Page 37