by M. P. Lodi
Jackson moved over and partially lay on her, with his head nuzzled in her neck and left arm around her body. He hugged her. “I wouldn't worry. However, from now on, I think...” Jackson moved closer to her ear to whisper, “I think we shouldn’t talk about Noah and Em. To play it safe. The FBI called and wants to speak with us about him and Emily. The situation is getting serious, and we can be charged if we don't help them. I have my lawyer intercepting the calls for now. If you want to speak about either of them, only do it when we take a walk in the gardens.”
Jen pushed his head off and got up. “Hey, I want to go for a walk. Come with me, please.”
Jackson smiled. “Let me put something on. It's a little cold outside. I was nice and comfortable.”
Jen crossed her arms in front of her and shook her head. She gave him a look that he better hurry it up. She then went to her suitcase and took out something for herself.
Ten minutes later, the two of them walked along the wall separating the two estates. Jackson's father had bought two adjoining estates on the south shore of Long Island in South Hampton, but rarely used them. Usually he just had guests stay at the estates, at least one of them. The other was almost never used.
As they walked, Jen looked around as if to see if anyone was close to hear. “Now we can't even talk in our own home? What happened to the expensive security sweeps?”
“I didn't get a chance to sweep this place on time. Counter-surveillance was in Texas, not here. We had to hire out help in New York and make an appointment. Since we never came here, I didn't have it done yet but we do have an appointment tomorrow. Then we can speak safely and we only have to walk in the cold today. It’s not that bad out. What is it, like 40? Warm for this time of the year in New York.”
As they walked near the tree where they met, they both smiled. Jackson grabbed her, gave her a long hug and kissed her. She looked up into his eyes and saw the love. Her Northface jacket kept her all snuggly warm. Her head was exposed and her nose and ears were turning a little red. She forgot to grab her scarf and hat.
Jackson had that way of looking right into her soul. It was the way his eyes crinkled a bit on the sides. After the kiss he nodded to the four foot wide trail up ahead and looked down at the rock where Jen left a letter for Emily. It was about a foot from the wall separating the estates. They both started walking again.
Jen said, “You saw the news last night. Days ago Noah sent envelopes to hundreds of houses with $500 cash in each. There were also letters that said they took it from drug dealers and are giving it back to the people. It’s like he's running for office or something like that. What the hell is going on?”
“Noah's going to be in the news more and more, I suspect. Just imagine Batman mixed with Robin Hood, and you get how he sees himself. I'm hoping Em is holding up OK. Sending your Aunt and her mother to Asia right after their European trip was a great idea. Keeps them out of the loop. Neither has asked about Em. They don't know a thing across the world,” he said.
“Good.” She nodded.
He kissed her nose. “After Asia maybe we'll send them to Africa. I'm glad they're having so much fun that they forget to even check their cell phones for messages from us. They had us both worried for them that one night. Maybe we were a little paranoid.”
He put his arm around her shoulder for a few seconds. Then, after a quick kiss to her cheek, grabbed her hand as they walked.
As they completed a lap around the huge property, they reached the tree again, and both stopped walking as they looked at the rock. It had been one foot from the wall, now it was about three feet from the wall, as if someone wanted them to look and notice it had moved during their walk. Jen looked up into Jackson's eyes, and they both looked all about. No one was around. Jackson walked to the rock and picked it up on one end, exposing an envelope in a clear plastic bag. He looked at Jen, who was elated and grabbed the letter quickly, then glanced around again to make sure no one was watching. She took off her gloves to open it in a hurry. She liked to tear open envelopes from the side, making the envelope a mess.
She said happily, “They took my letter.”
She removed the note from the envelope and saw it was written in Seclan. She stood there reading as Jackson watched her. He let the rock down and moved to stand next to her to try to read with her. He was becoming an expert in Jen and Emily's own little private language, so Jen knew he could read it almost as well as she could.
Jen finished, looking stunned. Jackson glanced at her face before taking the letter in both of his hands to finish reading it.
“Oh God, please keep them both safe,” Jen prayed softly. “They kidnapped the childhood mafia friend of that CEO who conspired to have you and your father killed, and who nearly killed us all. She said that 'he will never bother us again'. They're also robbing drug dealers and giving the money to the people. Noah's not handing out his own cash. We didn't think he was.”
Jackson finished reading and folded the letter, placing it back in the envelope. “It said to burn this and all letters from here on out. We'll do it in the fireplace in our room.”
“I'm scared now. Really. Whatever it is that they're about to do is big she said, and it’s in a couple of days. Em said she's scared.”
Jackson folded the letter in half and put it in his right pocket of his blue jeans. “Em said it's about to get real ugly. Everyone will know who her man is, for good or ill.”
“I thought they already did as of this past week. ‘Noah Hood and his Ark of Vigilante's’ I think one articles on the net said. It went viral on Reddit. At least ten employees sent it to me from different sources on Facebook and Instagram.”
He grabbed her hand again, and the two started walking back to the house. He turned to her. “Life is about to get even more interesting, I'm afraid. We'll know for sure in just a few days.”
Jen put her hands together as they both walked, and whispered, “God, please keep Emily and Noah safe.”
Joshua
Not a cloud in the sky. It was approaching 0900, and the air was crisp as Mike and Joshua watched the home of a target drug dealer. They had it under surveillance for several days this past week. This was going to be the last job on drug dealers before the funeral. The location contained a secret stash for drug dealers, with the main occupants working other 9 to 5 jobs. While they were away at work, the drug pushers would arrive via the garage and off-load money collected from their people in various neighborhoods.
The group usually kept a handful of people at this location just to keep up appearances of the home merely the residence of a couple. The man worked at a brokerage firm in Manhattan, and the wife who drove a school bus for handicapped children in Brooklyn. Decent cover for this middle class neighborhood.
Joshua and Mike both sat in the back of the ATT van that they had stolen. They had removed the GPS tracking device from the vehicle and installed a cell phone jammer. Not many people look too closely at ATT service vans, and earlier when Mike climbed the pole to attach a listening device to the line of Mr. Felix Hernandez, no one even looked their way. That line turned out to be dead. No land line was in use for this house at all. Many people didn't have land lines, instead using their cell phones only for their house phones.
The block was an ordinary one, and the house was an unassuming two-story home with a driveway. The house was made of brownish brick and was one of the few on the block that had not been turned into an almost landless two story mini-monstrosity. They were in Howard Beach, Queens, on 82nd street. The perfect location for a Colombian drug lord to hide money and anything else. It was deep within mob territory, the Italian Mob, not the Colombian.
Intel provided by Noah's contact tipped him off to this and other locales to hit. The Colombians thought it was smart to hide money under the nose of others, far from their own base of operations in the Bronx. Especially since they had their own internal battles that made the news. Their logic was that it’s best to hide money where it’s not expected. It was a ta
rget too tempting for Noah and his men.
Joshua knew the Sarge had all sorts of friends at all levels of the military and Intelligence agencies. Before all of the troubles, his security firm in Tennessee paid consultation fees to former agents of various Intel agencies. Large amounts of money too. Money has a way of opening people up. His firm had to be re-formed legally under a different name in the past few weeks after all of the publicity and what the Sarge did back in Texas.
It was now being run by a former special ops man who served on Seal Team 6 years earlier. Noah had no direct contact with him, and for good reason. As long as the man ran a real company, the FBI would be paying him a visit for information. Noah had to keep it as clean as possible without any ties to him.
Joshua believed Noah had someone he was working with within the NSA at their new facility in Utah as well. He had hinted as much to Joshua as to how he got this target to hit. Joshua was good at reading people, and Noah gave him the impression that he was actually working for or with certain elements within the US military. Little hints, like a twinkle in his eye at a particular comment, and other clues brought Joshua to this conclusion.
The workings of that NSA facility would make most Americans puke in disgust if they ever truly found out how much they were all being watched and listened to. Every credit card purchase was recorded too, and the new Omni-Watch program that had just begun would make Orwell's fictitious Big Brother envious. 1984 had arrived in the United States, and the people cheered it on under the guise of a 'Patriot Act'. The totalitarian crew in DC often chose names that had nothing to do with the sinister acts done by such agencies that were made legal with secret courts that the public had no access to.
What most Americans didn't know was all communications done inside the US – and much done outside as well – was all recorded, collated and dissected by programs put in place by Intelligence services. This was started long before the so-called Patriot Act. Joshua and the others had been amazed when Noah had them simply go on YouTube and search ‘ATT spying’. Everything was public, hidden in plain sight. The people have been watched increasingly ever year, culminating in the 'Patriot Act'.
The most amazing thing of it all was since we still technically live in a free democracy, most looked the other way. Only a few brave souls were out in the open voicing their opposition to the dictatorship being set up in the U.S. People like Ron Paul, Alex Jones – with his infowars.com website – and precious few others who were determined to let everyone know what was being hidden from them in plain sight.
And here they were, about to hit a house where it was believed millions of dollars in cash was being hidden. It was a house that was in a middle-class neighborhood, where the occupants kept to themselves, never bothering anyone. Noah and his crew would never have suspected this place existed if it weren't for his contacts. Then his own men watched the home carefully for days, verifying the strange visits early in the mornings, believed to be flush with cash. Barrels full, the Sarge estimated.
Joshua looked at Mike. “Charlotte and others are saying we shouldn't do that Funeral Op. I'm starting to agree. Too much, and way too soon. The country isn't ready for such an act. It's too extreme at this moment in time, even if the target is those Westbranch asses.”
Mike nodded his agreement. “I hear his girl is working on him too. It's one thing to rob from the wealthy drug dealing scum, take out a mobster here and there and other lowlifes, and cause an all-out mafia war It’s a whole other thing to kill a civilian who technically hasn't committed any crime. Now we just have to convince the Sarge to abort that op.”
Joshua checked his watch. “This happens all the time. When you're isolated you can think the strangest things collectively. You see how hyped we all got to becoming damned terrorists ourselves. That's what the media would have called us. We would have had our sympathizers, but it would have been bad. We have to convince the Sarge. He values all of our opinions. He'll listen.”
“Everyone's ready. They have just two inside. It's a go. Let's move,” Frank said on the radio.
Joshua and Mike both heard, and immediately clicked on the cell phone Jammer. Cell phones let the government know exactly where you are and enable them to listen in on you at any time, with or without a warrant. This jammer would stop all communication instantly, helping to isolate those inside. They got out of the ATT van. They walked to the house, passing the front door and heading to the side.
In the back, Frank was observing the house with a heat sensor and knew exactly where the two occupants were. Before calling Joshua to move in, Frank waited for the two men to be in the living room, away from their make-shift security room with video camera that covered outside the house.
Caesar cut the glass of the door in the back of the house. Charlotte hopped over the small fence from the house next door and stood next to Caesar as he removed the piece of glass from the window pane of the door and reached in to unlock it. The next-door neighbors were out of town for a week, and this was the perfect time to make their move.
Caesar opened the door and quietly walked in. Charlotte was right behind him. A UPS van pulled up, and Noah exited the vehicle in a brown UPS uniform, box in hand. He approached the door and knocked. One of the men inside quickly went to the front door, as the other grabbed an Uzi.
Charlotte and Caesar were already standing at the doorway to the living room watching when Caesar yelled, “Freeze motherfuckers!”
The smaller man with the submachine gun started to turn around with it, only to be riddled with bullets by Caesar's silenced machine gun. The other man at the door froze completely, then slowly raised his hands in the air.
The smaller man was dead before his body hit the ground and fell head-first into a sofa. It almost looked like he was sitting on his head.
Caesar said, “Open the fucking door,” as he pointed to the front door.
Caesar took up position to the man's left as Charlotte watched the doorway into the kitchen, even though they knew no one else was in the home.
The man still didn't move and Caesar wasn't having any of it. “Don't know how to listen, do you?” The Colombian backed up a step as Caesar shot. The man fell to the floor. He would no longer be breathing from this day forward.
Caesar opened the door for Noah, who came in with the package and acted as if he were on a real delivery. Noah stayed at the front door and handed the box to Caesar, who took it.
Noah said, “There's a neighbor watching. We have to be fast, and I have to leave to keep this looking good. Back the van into the driveway, and load the money when you find it. I'm going to go get rid of the UPS truck.”
Caesar said, “Will do, Sarge. Like taking candy from a baby.”
Charlotte announced, “I'm going to let the guys in,” walking to the side door to let the two ATT men, Joshua and Mike, inside.
As Mike and Joshua walked into the living room, Noah waved to them and closed the front door, heading back to the UPS truck. In his hand he still held the electronic signature pad of an authentic UPS carrier..
Charlotte said, “That fucker had his cell phone in his hand. Check to see if he got a call or text off.”
Joshua shook his head. “He 100% didn't. That cell phone jammer in the van is good for half this block. No cell phones could be used once it’s turned on.”
Caesar looked puzzled and turned to Joshua. “Hey man, you buy that commercially over the net? Or is that jammer high grade security equipment?”
“I got it from Noah. On the net there are lots of companies selling them. Just Google ‘cell phone jammer’. You'll see. If you have the money you can buy almost anything.”
Charlotte looked around the room. “I'll start on the basement. You guys take this floor and upstairs. We need to find the money and anything else of value before their next check. That means we have less than 53 minutes. Let's move it.”
All of them scrambled and started searching.
Noah
“Mr. Abruzzo, you've been my gue
st for many days now. How are you enjoying the accommodations? We haven't spoken for at least two days. Have you missed me?”
“Fuck you, asshole. You think you'll get away with this. I'll have your whole family killed.”
The room smelled like a damp and cold basement, with hints of blood and dirt and maybe a little dried up paint. Throw in some shit and piss too.
Noah walked in front the massive X-Frame that Charlotte had built in the sub-basement at 143 Pine Street. It was sturdy enough to hold any body type, even someone of Noah's size. Charlotte once tried to get Noah onto that X-Frame, but Noah swore there was no way he'd ever be able to get hard if he were unable to move. That had been when the two were briefly attached. Now the X-Frame held Angelo securely.
Noah walked over to a table covered with all of the implements of torture he and the others could think of. There was a saw, blowtorch, knives, hammers, nails, a nail gun, lots of tape, different ropes and some vials with liquids in them. The vials were Charlotte's specialty as of late. She fancied herself a student of poisons and had five good ones that could inflict all sorts of horror on a man's body at different levels of severity.
Not that Noah would use any of these items. They were mostly for show, although Noah was willing to do anything needed to this man. It was this man who had ordered the deaths of Jen, Emily, himself and his best friend, Jackson. It was also this man, along with his buddy in federal prison, who had Jackson's dad murdered.
“Angelo, can I call you Angelo?”
“Fuck you, big man. I need my medication; I have high blood pressure. You want me dead, then don't give it to me.”
The door leading upstairs opened and seconds later in walked Charlotte, pausing to stand beside the table.
Angel said again“ I need those pills.”
Charlotte looked at him after picking the pills up “You're already feeling ill, ‘like you can't breathe. You’re probably getting a headache, too. What a shame. Here is your blood pressure medication that can keep you alive.”