by Mack Maloney
O’Flaherty had been in a Drive, Shop ’n Go before. As their name implied, they were little more than junk food heavens and a place to gas up. Why would one person visit five in less than an hour?
Especially someone who fit the description of the guy they were looking for best?
O’Flaherty checked it, rechecked, and checked it still again. But each time he came to the same conclusion: same guy going into a handful of DSG stores in less than an hour.
That’s when he made the call.
“We think we’ve tagged him,” he said into the disposable cell phone. “How quick can you guys get back up here?”
* * *
Ahmeen Dujabi had worked at the Drive, Shop ’n Go in East Newark for nearly a year.
An emigrant from Lebanon, he had no valid passport, no visa, no green card, nor any other kind of legal immigration documentation. Nevertheless, Dujabi had been promoted to night manager at the Drive, Shop ’n Go just three months into his tenure. He was making nearly $50,000 a year in salary now. With another $25,000 in overtime, a lot of money for someone who didn’t have to pay taxes, he was wealthier than 90 percent of the people who walked through the front door.
There were risks, though. Dujabi had been robbed 14 times in those 10 months, shot at twice, hit once, and he’d also been stabbed. It got to the point where he could spot a robber as soon as one came in. They had that certain look about them.
However, he never expected to see two soldiers in ski masks walk through the door.
It was just after midnight. Both men were heavily armed. Dujabi saw one M16 clone and a large-caliber rifle, a gun that could literally blow him away. The two men were also wearing body armor and strange, somewhat dated helmets. And one of them was gigantic.
They strolled in very casually, but their guns were up in Dujabi’s face in an instant. He knew these were no ordinary criminals.
“You speak English?” the large masked man asked Dujabi.
The clerk was so stunned at their strange appearance, he couldn’t talk.
“You speak the language?” the large one screamed at him again, putting the barrel of his gun right between Dujabi’s eyes.
Again Dujabi tried to say something but couldn’t. He began nodding furiously instead.
“Are you … Immigration?” Dujabi heard words finally spill out of his mouth.
Suddenly the big man’s gun was making a dent in his brow.
“Why? You got a problem there, sa-hib?”
Dujabi clamped his mouth shut and opened the cash register drawer. He took out several hundred dollars in small bills and pushed them across the counter at the two armed men.
But the gun muzzle just went deeper into his forehead.
“We don’t want your filthy money,” the large man said, throwing it back into Dujabi’s face.
In a flash Dujabi was looking at a crude pencil drawing of a man with bad hair, bad skin, and very criminal eyes.
His own eyes went wide open ….
“So?” the large man said. “He’s a friend of yours?”
Dujabi tried pushing the money on the two men again. But this was an act of desperation; he suddenly knew who these two men were. News traveled faster on the Al Qaeda network than on the U.S. media sometimes. Dujabi had already heard about what was happening out west. Could these people be the Crazy Americans, too?
“You know him?” the big man thundered at Dujabi again.
But Dujabi was now too petrified to move.
At this point, the smaller of the two masked men vaulted over the counter and, bypassing the cash register and the money safe, went directly to the small bank of video monitors, the heart of the store’s TV surveillance system. It was hooked up to an elderly but still-functioning videotaping machine that handled huge cassettes good for 24 hours or more. The masked man unplugged the player, grinding its megat-ape to a halt. He then took two previously filled tapes from the bottom shelf and, with the machine under his arm, went over the counter again.
Still the large man had his gun on Dujabi’s brow.
“Where’s your green card?” he screamed at Dujabi again. “Where the fuck are you from?”
Now the smaller of the two armed men tried to tug the larger one away. “Let’s go,” he said calmly.
But the large man would not move. “He knows this guy!” he was screaming now, shoving the drawing of Ramosa into the clerk’s mouth. “He probably knows a lot of things!”
“We got what we want,” the smaller man said. “Time to go.”
But the large man would not budge. “One bullet and we’ve got one less asshole in this country,” the man said. “Our country ….”
Meanwhile the smaller man’s attention had been sidetracked by a case full of cell phones just below the cash register. He broke the glass with the butt of his rifle and took a dozen of the disposable phones stuffing them into his pockets.
Dujabi was distracted by this for a moment. When he looked back at the large man, he saw him pulling his rifle’s trigger.
The blast was so bright, it burned right through the retina in Dujabi’s left eye. He was rendered half-blind in an instant. The bullet, not fired into his skull but beside his ear, made him half-deaf as well, the concussion bursting his eardrum. Then the butt of the huge rifle hit him in the jaw, breaking it. He went down like a sack of bricks, fracturing his elbow on the hard cement floor. Then the large man picked up the cash register and threw it at Dujabi’s head, cracking two vertebrae in his upper back. He began losing consciousness.
But still the large man’s voice was ringing in his good ear. “Consider yourself the luckiest mook in the world,” he said.
The last thing Dujabi heard before he passed out, though, was a strangely reassuring sound: that of a police siren, pulling into the store’s parking lot.
* * *
Police sergeant Ernie Capp was the district supervisor for the East Newark neighborhoods near the Parkway.
He was about to go out on a 6-13—a lunch break — when he got the call from his anticrime unit. They, too, had just called in a lunch break and had pulled into the local Drive, Shop ’n Go to get coffee. In the process, they’d interrupted an armed robbery.
Banks turned his patrol car 180 degrees and started driving very fast toward the convenience store. He was about five minutes away.
He asked the reporting officer for details. It sounded weird from the start. Two men, heavily armed, were exiting the building when the anticrime cruiser pulled into the parking lot. They let loose their siren immediately, but the men calmly walked to their van, stashing their rifles and booty behind the front seat. The two anticrime cops immediately went for their firearms — but then a strange thing happened.
“They were the ghosts, Sarge,” the officer reported, this as the supervisor was still traveling at high speed to get to the scene. “You know, the guys in that secret war against the Muslim.”
“You can’t be serious,” the supervisor replied.
“They told us everything,” was the explanation. “Whomped the Arab clerk a bit, too. But—”
The supervisor had had enough. “Just hold the suspects until I get there,” he told the officer.
But then came the very unusual reply: “Well, we can’t do that sir ….”
“Why not?”
“Because we let them go,” the officer said. “They had places they had to be. That’s what they told us.”
The supervisor couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you crazy?” he screamed into his microphone.
“Sarge — these guys are heroes!” the officer came back. “We can’t arrest them. They’re trying to save us from the terrorists ….”
And then he added: “But don’t worry, Sarge. We got an autograph for you, too ….”
* * *
Ten miles down the auxiliary road off the Parkway was a place called Jack Jill’s Truck Stop.
It was comprised of a diner, a gas station, a diesel pump, a small lounge, and a 13-un
it motel. Open all night, like most of its clientele, it was badly frayed around the edges. Jerry Shakes was sitting at the bar, waiting for a friend. He’d downed two beers an hour since arriving here earlier this evening from Portland, Maine. He had to set out for Pensacola in the morning, but because he was a trucker, night was frequently his awake hours. He always tried to work his schedule so he would make it to Jack Jill’s around this time, when he knew his friend would be available.
Shakes and the bartender had watched TV most of the night. It was nothing but news all over the box, so they wound up staring at the footage of the strange helicopter above Milwaukee over and over again, interspersed with breathless breaking-news reports on rumors of terrorists exploding nukes in as many as five major cities.
Secret war? Terrorists running amok? Dirty bombs about to go off somewhere in the United States? It seemed pretty crazy to Shakes, watching it all in this hole in the wall, with the commerce of America speeding by out on the Parkway, at approximately 70 miles per hour.
“Here she comes!” the bartender finally announced. The door to the bar opened and a fiftyish woman walked in. Her name was Tiffany. She was still attractive for her age, in a truck-stop-at-one-in-the-morning sort of way. She and Shakes had been meeting like this, twice a month, for three years.
He greeted her warmly. She thanked him for waiting — she’d been out visiting with her “other friends.”
That didn’t bother Shakes. He’d got over being fussy years ago.
“Drink first?” he asked her.
She smiled and grabbed him by the shirt collar instead. “I’m fine. Are you?”
That was that. Shakes paid the bartender, giving him a hefty tip. The bartender threw a room key to Tiffany. Shakes followed her out the back door.
Stepping into the parking lot, Shakes took in a deep breath. Exhaust fumes, marsh air, and spilled diesel — that’s what he was used to here. He almost thought to talk to Tiffany about the crazy stuff on TV but stopped himself on their short walk to her room. Why fuck up a good evening? he asked himself. Might not be many more left.
They got to her room, a very small space at the end of the row. A bed, a TV, and a bathroom were just about all that could fit inside. She tried the key — but strangely, the door would not open. She tried again. Still no luck.
Shakes put his ear to the door. He heard noises inside. The TV was definitely on, but he could hear voices as well.
“You sure this is your room tonight?” he asked her.
She checked her key number against the door. Both were 13.
“This is my place,” she confirmed. “My lucky Thirteen. My stuff is in there.”
Shakes was just drunk enough to hit the door with his shoulder. It didn’t budge. He hit it again and was as surprised as anyone that it burst open.
He’d expected to see some dude like him banging some broad like Tiffany. But he was in for a surprise.
What he saw was two guys in black uniforms, ski masks pulled up over their heads. They were wearing body armor and carrying very large weapons.
And strangely, they were watching TV ….
Their rifles were pointing at him and Tiffany in a flash. But somehow Shakes knew the men weren’t going to shoot them. These guys seemed more intent on watching something on the TV screen. And the screen itself was segmented into eight different little screens, like a bunch of security cameras.
“What are you guys doing in here?” Shakes asked them. “You cops? You on a stakeout or something?”
“Just don’t move,” one of them said. “We’re just using your TV for a minute.”
That’s when the other guy pointed at the screen. “There!” he shouted. “See it? There he is again. There’s his car again.”
“Bingo!” the other one yelled, writing down what appeared to be a license plate number from whatever they were watching on the screen.
Then they turned back to Shakes and Tiffany.
One just put his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anyone you ever saw us,” he said.
With that, they fired their weapons into the machine they’d hooked up to the TV, blowing it to pieces. Then they climbed out the window, the same way they’d come in, and were gone, just like that.
Tiffany just looked at Shakes, pale but relieved. She began yanking on his shirt collar again.
“On second thought, darling,” she said, “let’s go get that drink ….”
* * *
The brothel was located in South Baltimore, not a part of the city tourists usually flocked to. There was a time when this place catered to the most powerful people in the state of Maryland: politicians, police officials, businessmen. These days it was a refuge for small-time hoods, Mafia wannabes, and the locals. It had downsized, in both prestige and prices.
It was located in a three-story brownstone, admittedly the nicest building on a deteriorating block. Neighbors were used to seeing activity in front of the building. Taxicabs and the occasional limousine showing up all hours of the day but especially at night, discharging passengers, who always hurried into the building, heads down, collars up.
This night was no different. It had rained earlier, so the street looked somewhat clean. The house was full; all 12 rooms were in use. The waiting area was also crowded, even though it was almost 2:00 A.M. Soft jazz music wafted out of the sound system. Somewhere, a TV was on. Occasionally laughter or even a groan of delight could be heard coming from an upper room.
All this was suddenly shattered by a scream.
It came from the top floor, and it was a cry not of passion but of fright. In years past, the house would have had two bouncers on hand for things like this. But tonight there was no security.
The scream came again — and then gunshots, fired into the ceiling, as it turned out. Now came a stampede of feet. Hitting the floor, hitting the door, customers barreling down the stairs. Gunshots were bad for business. No one wanted to be caught here, not if bullets were flying somewhere in the building.
In Room 5, on the third floor, a man was sleeping alone. Or at least he was trying to. He’d been living here for several weeks, a convenient halfway point between matters that had to be attended to up in New Jersey and those in Washington D.C.
He was woken by the gunshots, not the scream. He felt the floor under his bed rumble as the exodus of customers en masse began. He rolled off the mattress and made for the crappy dresser in the corner. He had a pistol hidden in the bottom drawer. The commotion outside his door was reaching deafening proportions. The man could not tell where the gunshots had come from, but the panic they’d set off in the building would surely bring the authorities to this place.
And that would not be good for him. Even though, technically, he was a cop himself, the last thing the man in Room 5 wanted at this moment was to have to speak to a local law enforcement person.
Make that the second-to-the-last thing.
For when he reached down to get his gun he was suddenly aware of someone standing next to his only window. How strange this was — no one was there a moment before. Now a huge shadow, in full body armor, including a helmet had appeared — carrying a gun the size of a howitzer.
Captain Ramosa looked up just as the heel of the boot came down on his temple. He was thrown across the room. Somehow the light got turned on and he was astonished to see in its very bare glow not just one but two men in military gear in the room with him.
Suddenly one of them was right in Ramosa’s face. He lifted up his ski mask and at that moment Ramosa knew he was finished. He recognized this man, his angry features, his gigantic stature. They had met before — back in Manila. The man was from New York, a place called Queens. And of all the Crazy Americans, he was, hands down, the craziest.
“Remember me?” Hunn hissed in his face.
* * *
It had taken them just seven hours to track down Ramosa.
First came the lead from the jakes, then the taking of the surveillance tapes. Then they needed a place to watch
them — the crappy motel room had to do. Seeing Ramosa on the tape interacting with the clerk Jubadi told the tale: they’d had a whispered conversation and the clerk gave Ramosa a set of cell phones. It also confirmed the ghosts’ suspicions that the employees of at least five DSG stores — and probably many more — were Al Qaeda operatives. No doubt, Ramosa and Palm Tree had shared a coffee at one and that’s where the mysterious napkin drawing had come from, something so precious Palm Tree had decided to hide it inside his PDA. The surveillance tape also picked up Ramosa’s license plate number from a previous visit to East Newark two days before. With this information in hand, Hunn made a call to a special number that he didn’t let Ozzi see him dial. But the DSA officer knew it was probably to the mysterious Bobby Murphy or one of his associates. Turned out Ramosa’s car was a rental and all cars let out by this rental company had transponders in them. Like black boxes in airplanes, the transponders tracked the rental cars anywhere they went. In less than five minutes, the person on the other end of the phone call tracked the rental to South Baltimore, parked right in back of the brothel. From there, it was just a matter of Hunn and Ozzi getting to Baltimore, finding the cathouse, getting to the top of the building, and firing shots into the roof. Their aim was to see who came running out of what rooms and who didn’t.
And that’s how they caught Ramosa — and in that amazingly short amount of time, considering the fragility of the system they’d set up in the first place. But everyone had done their job, had gone the extra mile, and had paid attention. As a result, Hunn and Ozzi had managed to track down one of the most dangerous Al Qaeda operatives in the world — something the government might take months or, more likely, years to do … if ever.