by J B Black
Randall settled back in one of Rusty’s leather easy chairs to keep an eye on the laptop screen for the arrival of Reb Rogers. While he watched the screen, he reached into the black nylon bag, took out a suppressor, and attached it to his pistol.
CHAPTER 42
Rusty Gordon’s Residence
Seaside Tower Condominium Complex
Seaside Beach, Alabama
Sunday, April 18, 2010
8:00 p.m. Central Time
Randall was growing restless sitting in the easy chair waiting for his quarry to show up. It had been a long day and the long plane flight didn’t help matters. A short time ago he had taken a stimulant to sharpen his senses. He had been in Rogers’ next door neighbor’s condo since around seven o’clock that evening and he was beginning to wonder if Rogers would be coming back to his condo anytime soon. His patience was running out.
* * *
Rusty regained consciousness shortly after Randall had started his video surveillance of Reb’s parking spots in the garage and the breezeway outside Reb’s condo door.
When he had first come to, he’d shaken his head as though to clear the cobwebs and then he looked first at Randall and then at the rest of the room trying to take everything in.
Randall said, “I see you’re still with us, old man.”
Rusty glared at him and, although he had a gag in his mouth, Randall was pretty sure he said, “Fuck you.”
“I’m terribly sorry to have to inconvenience you like this, old man.”
Randall glanced at the laptop’s screen to make sure that Rogers hadn’t shown up in the garage or at his door and then looked back at his captive.
“I’m going to remove the gag from your mouth,” Randall said, as he picked up his pistol. “If you make a ruckus, I will kill you. Do you understand me?”
Rusty nodded his head vigorously.
Randall removed the cloth gag from Rusty’s mouth by pulling it out and down at the same time, leaving it hanging around Rusty’s neck for future use.
“Goddamn, that hurt,” Rusty said.
“Sorry about that, old man,” Randall said.
“Stop calling me an old man, you asshole, my name’s Rusty.”
Randall pointed the pistol at Rusty’s face.
“Rusty, you’ll keep a civil tongue in your head if you know what’s good for you,” Randall said. “For your information, I’m a Brit and when we call someone old man it’s the equivalent of you Yanks calling someone buddy.”
“So, what’s this all about?” Rusty asked, his eyes glued on the gun pointed at him.
Randall set his pistol down and said, “I have some business with your next door neighbor, Reb Rogers, and you and I are going to wait here, patiently, until he gets home.”
* * *
Finally, Randall saw a vehicle pull into Reb Roger’s parking spot on the Camera 1 view. Randall watched the driver get out to make certain that it was Rogers. He looked at the photograph that Hassan had sent him and, sure enough, it was Reb Rogers. When he looked back at the Camera 1 view, he saw that another man and a woman had gotten out of the vehicle, also. He watched as the three of them walked off in the direction of the elevator moving out of the view of the camera. He looked at his wristwatch and noted that the local time was ten minutes after eight.
Randall knew that once they got off the elevator, Rogers and his companions had to walk past Rusty’s condo to get to Rogers’ condo. Randall’s plan was to watch out of the peephole and when Reb passed by the door, he would open the door, step out in the breezeway, and take his shot. He had planned to only have to deal with Rogers, but two more people made no difference to him.
Randall took out his phone and hit the speed dial for Hassan. Hassan answered on the first ring and Randall said, “I thought you’d like to know, he’s here.” After ending the call, he set his phone down on the coffee table next to his laptop computer.
Randall stood up from the couch, stretched, and went over to where Rusty was sitting and none too gently got the gag back into his mouth.
After picking up his pistol from the coffee table, Randall went to the front door and unlocked it. He leaned over, put his right eye to the peephole, and started looking out the peephole for Rogers and his companions to walk past.
Randall heard the elevator ding when it arrived on the 12th floor. A moment later, he heard the two men talking and then he saw the two men and the woman troop past the peephole on their way down the breezeway to Rogers’ condo.
Randall moved the pistol’s safety switch to the fire position with his thumb. Very quietly, he turned the doorknob until it wouldn’t turn any further and then he gently pulled the door open as quietly as he could until it was all the way open. He slowly turned the doorknob back to its closed position and released it.
Randall took a deep breath and stepped out into the breezeway. He pivoted on his right foot, turning toward the three people down the breezeway, while bringing the pistol in his right hand up to a two handed firing position.
Randall’s concentration on acquiring a target picture of the man who was unlocking the door of the condo next door was so intense that he was completely taken by surprise as something collided with him on his right side just as he was about to fire his weapon.
As he staggered to his left off-balance, Randall turned his head, saw that it was Rusty who had slammed into him, and realized that the old man had outfoxed him by silently sneaking down the hallway of his condo and then bull-rushing him at the last second. He instantly regretted not binding the old man’s feet.
As Randall fought to regain his balance, his right arm extended and he decided he’d better take Rusty out of the action so that he wouldn’t have to deal with him any further. He shot at Rusty, hitting him in the leg.
Regaining his balance, Randall turned his attention back to Rogers and his two companions.
CHAPTER 43
Megan Gallagher’s Home
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
9:10 p.m. Eastern Time
Megan was sitting up in her bed leaning against the upholstered headboard. Up until a few moments ago, she and Hassan had been having sex and now she was smoking a cigarette. Hassan lay stretched out on his back next to her, recovering from the paces Megan had put him through in her quest for multiple orgasms.
Hassan’s phone rang. It was Randall Wilson. Hassan put the phone on speaker so Megan could hear. Randall told Hassan that he was calling to let him know that he could watch a real-time video feed of the kill zone on Randall’s darknet website.
Hassan asked Randall to hold on a second as he and Megan jumped out of bed and ran downstairs where they then accessed Randall’s website on the computer in Megan’s entertainment room where they could watch everything on the large screen TV.
After Randall hung up, Hassan and Megan talked excitedly about the prospect of being able to actually watch as Randall killed the notorious Butcher of Lashwan.
Ten minutes went by with no activity whatsoever on the large screen TV monitor and their initial excitement wore off.
When five more minutes went by and there was still no action, Megan wandered off to the kitchen to get something to drink.
They were both sitting on the couch, no longer watching the TV screen, lost in their individual thoughts, when Hassan’s phone rang again. He answered on the first ring and heard Randall say, “He’s here.”
Hassan and Megan looked up at the large screen TV and saw two men and a woman step out into the breezeway on Camera 2. Megan quickly recognized that one of the men was Reb Rogers. As Megan and Hassan continued watching, the three people got larger as they walked toward Camera 2 and then they were beyond the camera’s range.
A moment or two went by, then, on the Camera 3 display, Hassan and Megan could see the back of the heads of the three people as they came into the range of Camera 3 and then walked on down the breezeway with their backs to that camera. Both Hassan and Megan held their breath as they
waited for something to happen.
The three people stopped after a short distance and turned to their right. One of the men had his keys out to unlock the door and then he dropped his keys.
Hassan and Megan watched as first one of the men and then the other man and the woman all turned toward the camera with guns drawn and began shooting. The audio pickup on the surveillance cameras was excellent and Megan put her hands over her ears trying to block out the noise of the gunfire.
The shooting stopped. Hassan and Megan watched as the three people ran back down the breezeway toward the camera and then they were off camera again.
As Hassan and Megan listened they could hear one of the men say, “Who sent you?”
CHAPTER 44
Seaside Tower Condominium Complex
Seaside Beach, Alabama
Sunday, April 18, 2010
8:30 p.m. Central Time
Reb heard the sound of Rusty colliding into Randall and looked back down the breezeway just in time to see Rusty being shot. Reb dropped his keys and reached for his gun holstered inside the waistband of his trousers on his right hip.
Jake’s peripheral vision had picked up the movement in the breezeway as Randall exited Rusty’s condo and, instinctively, he reached for his gun. By the time Rusty collided into Randall, Jake had drawn his gun, and, by the time Randall shot Rusty, Jake got off three shots in rapid succession. Jake’s first shot hit Randall in his center upper chest area and Randall staggered backwards from the impact of the jacketed hollow point round. Jake’s other two shots hit Randall in the upper chest, also. As the impact from those two rounds knocked Randall further off-balance, he started falling over backwards.
By then, both Reb and Honey had drawn their guns, aimed, and fired one shot each as Randall was falling down.
Reb’s shot hit Randall in his right upper arm, shattering the bone and causing Randall to release his grip and drop his gun.
Honey’s shot caught Randall in the lower abdomen.
Jake ran over to where Randall had fallen, keeping his gun aimed at him the whole time. There was a widening pool of blood under his body. As a precaution, Jake kicked Randall’s gun a safe distance away from his hand.
While Jake was dealing with Randall, Reb and Honey ran over to where Rusty was lying outside the door to his condo.
“What the hell is going on down there?” they heard someone say from the breezeway on the floor right above them.
“That you, Dave?” Reb yelled.
“Yeah, is that you, Reb?” Dave Foster yelled back.
“Yeah, Rusty’s been shot in the leg and it’s bleeding pretty bad.”
“Apply pressure to the wound and I’ll be right down,” Dave said.
Reb knelt down and put pressure on Rusty’s leg wound to stop the bleeding and Honey ran into Rusty’s condo to look for something to use as bandages.
In the meantime, Jake stood over Randall pointing his pistol at his face and said, “Who sent you?”
Randall looked up at Jake and sneered. Then his body twitched, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his body went slack.
Honey came back out of Rusty’s condo with an armful of towels just as Dave showed up out of breath from running down the stairs instead of waiting on the elevator.
Jake nudged Randall a couple of times with his foot before turning to Reb and saying, “This asshole’s had it.”
Dave dug a combat application tourniquet out of his first aid kit. He placed it in position above Rusty’s leg wound and, after a couple of turns of the windlass rod, managed to stop the bleeding. While he was doing that, Reb pulled the gag out of Rusty’s mouth.
Rusty said, “Goddammit, that hurts. Hurry up and cut my hands free.”
As Reb was cutting the plastic zip tie that had Rusty’s hands secured behind his back, Rusty whispered, “Listen up, everybody. That asshole set up cameras out here in the breezeway and he has a laptop in my condo that he was using to watch you guys. Watch what you say, he was using the cameras to live stream video to some website. He called someone earlier and gave them the website address. When y’all showed up, he called them again and let them know you were here. If those cameras have audio, and I bet they do, they can hear everything we say.”
Reb and Jake started looking around for the cameras and found them attached to the wall just above Rusty’s door. They took them down and turned them off.
Dave stood up and announced, “The bullet went all the way through. I’ve got the bleeding stopped and I’ve got it bandaged, but we need to get Rusty to a doctor.”
The west elevator bell dinged. When the elevator doors opened, Billy Morris, who had been watching TV when he’d heard the gunshots, came out of the elevator with his gun pointed down the breezeway, ready to fire. He quickly took in the situation and lowered his gun.
“What the hell happened?” Billy asked, as he approached.
“Ambush,” Reb said. “Rusty’s been wounded and we need to get him to the hospital in Foley.”
“Let’s get him downstairs to my patrol car,” Billy said. “I can have him at the emergency room faster than an ambulance can.”
* * *
Reb, Honey, Jake, Billy, and Dave were seated in the waiting area of the emergency surgery drinking vending machine coffee when the young emergency surgeon came out to let them know how Rusty was doing. They all stood up as he approached.
“Your friend, Rusty, is doing well. The gunshot wound was a through and through and did minimal damage. The first aid you performed helped prevent a large amount of blood loss and that helped.”
“Can we see him, Doc?” Honey asked.
“No, he’s in intensive care—just as a precaution—I gave him a sedative so he would get some sleep,” the doctor said. “He should be feeling up to seeing his family and friends during visiting hours tomorrow.”
“When do you think you’ll be discharging him Doctor?” Reb asked.
“Because of his age, I want to hold him a couple of days for observation. If all goes as I expect it to, I’ll release him on Tuesday, after rounds.” With that, the doctor turned and went back the way he’d come.
“Nothing more we can do here,” Reb announced. “Might as well head back to the condo.”
CHAPTER 45
Megan Gallagher’s Residence
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
9:40 p.m. Eastern Time
Megan and Hassan were sitting on the couch—in stunned silence—watching the TV screen. Cameras 1 and 2 had gone blank and Camera 3 was still displaying a parked vehicle. Although they had not seen it happen, they had heard a man say that Randall Wilson was dead.
Megan turned to Hassan and said, “What do we do now?”
When Hassan just sat there without saying anything, Megan put her hand on his shoulder and said, “Hassan, what are you going to do next?”
Hassan looked at Megan and said, “This ends now. When you first came to me with your idea about capturing Reb Rogers, and videotaping him confessing that he was the Butcher of Lashwan and then beheading him … it all sounded so easy at the time.
“And I must admit, that had we been successful, the propaganda value of showing the video on the Internet would have been a glorious call to those wanting to wage jihad—the Butcher of Lashwan slain by true believers.
“But, twice now, Reb Rogers has beaten the people I’ve sent to kill him.
“So, to answer your question, I am going to cut my losses and wish that I had never heard of the Butcher of Lashwan.
“You’re just going to quit?” Megan asked.
“If you want to put it that way, so be it,” Hassan said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Hassan, please, don’t tell me you’re going to give up that easily,” Megan implored.
Hassan looked at Megan with a look of consternation on his face and said, “‘That easily’ you say. Megan, Reb Rogers has, in all likelihood, killed five men, by my count.”
“How do y
ou come up with five?” Megan asked. “There were the three on Friday night and then Randall Wilson, today. That’s only four.”
“My friend in Pensacola that provided the three jihadis who went after Reb Rogers on Friday is missing,” Hassan said. “The jihadis must have talked and Rogers probably has killed him, too.”
“Goddamn it, Hassan,” Megan shouted, “Reb Rogers isn’t invincible. You just have to come up with a better plan and use more competent people.”
Hassan thought about what Megan said and realized that, in hindsight, perhaps she was right. The plan could have been better and the personnel could have been better. First, there had been the failure of the jihadist cell from the Mosque in Pensacola. Hassan really hadn’t been so surprised when they had failed. Although they had received some training in the terrorist training camp Hassan had sent them to in Libya and trained regularly at the hunting camp in Pensacola, it was expected that their intended victims would be unarmed and helpless civilians who were not expected to fight back to defend themselves. It really had been unfair of Abdul Aswad—or himself for that matter—to send the three unblooded young jihadis to go up against a trained soldier like Reb Rogers and expect them to succeed. It had really been a case of wishful thinking to believe that they had stood any chance of success.
On the other hand, he had had every reason to believe that Randall Wilson would succeed in killing Rogers. Wilson had been battle-tested in Afghanistan, Iraq, and France. He had been a ruthless, professional, cold-blooded killer who knew his business. But his luck had run out on this assignment.
Hassan considered the wisdom of continuing to go after Rogers in advance of the upcoming air show attack. The two attempts so far had resulted in the loss of valuable resources he could hardly afford to lose. The quick and easy propaganda victory he had envisioned with the video of Rogers’ confessing to being the Butcher of Lashwan and his subsequent beheading were a fleeting memory. Hassan could only imagine what Faisal al-Waheed’s reaction would be if he learned what Hassan had done to jeopardize the plan to attack the Pensacola Beach Air Show in July.