“No, he took it off one of them,” Greenfield laughed, “One of those monster .357 Magnum Desert Eagles, which he proceeded to empty into their bikes and then tossed under one of the nearby cars.”
“Sounds like they got what they deserved,” Sharmayne said.
“Oh, they got a lot more than that,” Van Zandt laughed. “A couple of them are still in the hospital.”
“So, you’re looking for the guy in a white truck?” Pendergrass asked.
“Us? Not really, and I don’t think the bikers are, either,” Greenfield said. “They were hoping to press charges on him and get off the hook for the B&E and theft, but no way that was going to work with the damage we found on some other vehicles in the lot.”
“We kept threatening to find the guy with the truck and have him question them if they didn’t come clean,” Greenfield said as he turned toward Bob and cocked his head. “That’s the only way we finally found out what really happened. No, those guys are headed back to Charlotte as soon as the last one gets out of the hospital, and I don’t think we’ll ever see them or the rest of their bunch down here again. By the way, how did you get your window broken?”
“Me? Oh, I put a fence post through it,” Bob answered. “You know how stupid a city boy can be around a bunch of farm equipment.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Van Zandt said as he and Greenfield started walking away laughing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Fayetteville
As Bob followed the two Fayetteville detectives toward the parking lot, he pulled out his cell phone and pressed the second key on his speed dial.
“Ace Storm Door and Window Company,” a pleasant female voice answered. “We’re retired now, and we don’t do nuthin’ anymore ’cept lay around and get fat — or at least one of us does. But Y’all leave a message and we’ll call back.”
“Ace, this is the Ghost. Give me a call.” Since Army Master Sergeant ‘Ace’ Randall and his Air Force ex-fighter pilot captain and now wife Dorothy had retired from their respective services, Bob convinced them that staying on at Sherwood Forest as his Chief of Staff and Main Squeeze would be a lot more fun than opening a horse ranch in Wyoming.
Less than a minute later, Ace returned the call. “Wuzzup?” he asked. “Something good, I hope, because I’m beginning to feel positively domesticated.”
“Round up the Merry Men, anyone who wants to play, and tell them to be in the conference room at 1700. The Geeks too, but tell them I’ll meet with them at 1630 in their ‘war room.’ You’d better tell them that’s 4:30 this afternoon, or they’ll never understand.”
“What about our guys from the unit, do they need to bring anything?”
“I don’t think so. Our arms room at Sherwood is pretty well equipped now, probably better than theirs, and I think they’ll find all the toys they’d want inside.”
“Copy that, but what’re we looking at?” Ace asked. “A little ‘dustup’ with the turkeys who’ve been causing the trouble on post?”
“Could be.”
“When the guys hear that, it’s gonna be standing room only, because we owe somebody a ton of payback.”
“Roger that, and payback’s gonna be a bitch.”
“Again? I can hardly wait,” Ace said.
“One more thing. I want you to ramp up the security at Sherwood a notch — all the electronics, and bring in the private contractors for building and perimeter security. I want to circle the wagons and hunker down a little.”
“You think they’re going to screw with us, too?”
“You never can tell. Like my grandfather pounded into my pointy little head, ‘Listen up, dumb ass. Never forget the 6 Ps —— Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.’ ”
“Copy that. He’s an affectionate old bastard, isn’t he?”
“Still is,” Bob said as he rang off and slipped his phone into his pants pocket.
Detectives Harry Van Zandt and George Greenfield had just gotten back into their dark blue FPD Crown Vic patrol car when Bob called over to them. “Hey guys, since you are two of Fayetteville’s ‘finest…’”
“The only two,” Van Zandt shot back.
“What do you think about the three of us taking a ‘field trip’ down to the Muslim Student Center and seeing if our pal Henry’s home?”
“Why?” Van Zandt replied. “Seeing him sitting there behind his desk, all safe and smug, is only going to piss me off for the rest of the day.”
“Me too, but I so enjoy seeing the animals in their native habitat. Don’t you?”
Greenfield chuckled. “I heard all about you Burke. You don’t give a crap about their ‘native habitat;’ you jes like pokin’ ’em in their cages with a real big stick.”
“Me? You know how people like to exaggerate. You comin’?” Bob asked them.
The two cops looked at each other and Van Zandt answered, “Oh, hell yes! But you go first. We’ll follow you and hang back a bit… you know, be there for ‘crowd control.’ ”
The Muslim Student Center was an old converted fraternity house, a large, rambling, three-story brick building located across the street from the campus. The College bought it on the cheap and then spent in excess of three million dollars to renovate it and convert it into offices, meeting rooms, lounges, a TV room, and a large game room with card tables, ping pong, and numerous arcade games, everything you might want to satisfy an already spoiled minority of mostly foreign students.
Bob parked his Ford 150 at the curb right in front of the MSC. His chinos, gray sweatshirt, and Army desert boots were perfect for playing contractor. He reached inside the metal storage box behind the cab and pulled out a yellow hard hat, a clipboard with some official-looking construction forms, and a two-inch-thick roll of old blueprints from the renovation of one of the outbuildings at Sherwood Forest. He hefted the roll for a moment. It was tightly wound and heavy enough to hit ground balls to second base, and made the costume complete. With the blueprints tucked under his left arm, he pretended to be looking at the clipboard as he began walking toward the Center’s front door. Halfway up the walkway, he turned his head and saw Van Zandt and Greenfield sitting in their unmarked police car halfway up the street, watching him and laughing.
He didn’t bother to stop and knock on the front door; he opened it and pushed on through into the foyer, then into the large first-floor living room. He had to admit the place was nicely furnished, with overstuffed chairs and couches placed in groupings around the floor. You’d never guess it was a terrorist recruitment and training center if you didn’t know. This was mid-morning on a week day, when most college classes were in full swing all over campus, the time you’d expect students to either be in class, in the library, or lying around the quad in couples. Looking around the first-floor lounges of the MSC, Bob saw four dark-skinned young men sprawled on the chairs and couches at the far end, watching a soccer match on a huge sixty-inch HDTV. Good work if you can get it, he thought. They paid absolutely no attention to him as he strolled around the building, but he paid attention to them, especially to their faces. Bob might forget his wife’s birthday, their anniversary, or even his cell phone number, but he never forgot the face of a potential adversary.
As he walked around the house, he looked up at the ceiling and then down at the carpet, pretending to be checking the electrical outlets. Periodically, he would flip through the pages on his clipboard. Finally confident that these guys were completely brain dead, he pulled out his cell phone, disabled the flash and began taking photos of the carpet and structural features of the building. As he did, he made sure to get the young men’s faces in the shots. The Geeks could do wonders with those. To his right, he noticed a broad staircase, and took it down to what had once been the basement. It had been converted into a large TV lounge and game room. Along the far wall stood a half-dozen cubicles with the latest models of desktop computers and HD monitors. Only one of the cubicles was occupied. Two of the other young men in the room were bending over a game table, yelling and screaming a
t each other, completely engrossed in a game of table-top Foosball. A fourth man was lying on a couch watching a Beavis and Butthead cartoon show on television. Bob quickly added them to his photo gallery on general principles, not entirely sure why.
Eventually, however, his luck ran out and one of the young men playing Foosball looked up and frowned. “Hey! Who are you?” he asked with a heavily-accented Middle Eastern voice. “What are doing down here?”
“College insurance underwriters. After the big fire down at Clemson, we’re inspecting all the off-campus facilities. Do you know where the breaker box is?”
“Breaker…? Box…?” he answered, not having a clue.
“No problem, go back to your game. I’ll find it.” Bob smiled and turned away, heading toward the rear hallway, where he saw two closet doors. He tried the first one, but it was locked and padlocked. Interesting, Bob thought. The second one opened and contained the usual array of mops, buckets, vacuum cleaners, cleaning supplies, and the circuit breaker box. He didn’t even bother to open it before he turned and returned to the first floor.
This time, he turned right and headed for the rear offices, going into the same routine with the clipboard and the camera as he had in the other rooms. There were two. He stuck his head around the corner of the first one and saw a very attractive, buxom blonde sitting behind a desk, applying bright red polish to her fingernails.
She looked up and asked, “Hi, who are you?”
“Joe Samadafatch with Nelson Carpet Cleaning. We’re putting in a bid to clean all the carpets in six of the college’s off-campus buildings, and I wanted to take a quick look to see what we’re getting ourselves into.”
“Oh, that would be cool,” she beamed. “This place really needs it. These guys can really get sloppy.”
“Who’s out there, Steph?” Bob heard an irritated male voice ask from the end office.
“The carpet cleaning guy, Professor,” she turned her head and answered.
“What carpet cleaning guy? I don’t know anything about the carpets being cleaned,” Bob heard, as a blond man in his thirties with red-rimmed glasses stepped into the hall from the end office, fifteen feet away. From his appearance — blue jeans, a rock ’n’ roll T-shirt, red-rimmed glasses, and shoulder-length blond hair, Bob knew it had to be Henry Shaw with a scowl on his face. Behind him was an African-American young man wearing a US Army uniform. Bob only got a quick glimpse, but saw an 82nd Airborne Division patch, a CIB badge, and an airborne insignia before he turned away.
“Who are you?” Shaw stepped closer and demanded to know.
“Joe Samadafatch,” Bob told him. “I’m with Central Carpet Cleaning, as I told the young lady here…”
Stephanie frowned. “You told me it was Nelson Carpet Cleaning.”
“Same thing. We have a union and a non-union side, and…”
“Who sent you here?” Shaw then demanded, his voice rising.
“Building Services,” Bob answered with a smile as he began to back away down the hall. “Look, as I told the young lady here, we’re bidding on the carpet cleaning work, but if this is a bad time…” which was when he found himself backing into yet another Middle Eastern young man, larger this time, shoulder to chest; and this guy was solid.
“Building Services?” Shaw scoffed. “There’s no such thing. Grab him, Fouad.”
Shaw turned around and found himself looking up at what must be Fouad. He was six inches taller and a good fifty pounds heavier than Bob, and looked like he could play offensive tackle on the Saudi football team, if the Saudis had a football team. Another weightlifter, Bob figured as Fouad’s eyes narrowed. He grabbed Bob by both shoulders and smiled. That was a mistake. With Fouad’s arms extended out, his stomach was wide open.
Bob looked up at him, smiled back, and then caught the big guy in the solar plexus with an upper cut using the cupped fingers of his right hand. Fouad might be big and strong, but that was a punch Bob knew how to throw with devastating effect — short, compact, and from the shoulder. It was an Oriental self-defense technique that “the Ghost” was well-practiced at. He drove his knuckles up and under the man’s sternum and ribs and that ended it. But Fouad was lucky; Bob pulled his punch a bit. If he had put everything into it and driven his hand in further, which he could have done, it could have stopped his heart and killed him. As it was, Fouad’s eyes bulged out, and he bent sharply forward at the waist and stood there virtually paralyzed as Bob walked around him and back into the front room, with Shaw quickly following behind.
“Stop him!” Shaw screamed again, pointing to the handful of lounge lizards lying on the couches and chairs in the lounge. Two of them got up and tried to block Bob’s way as he headed for the door. That was another mistake, or two. As the first one came at him, Bob turned and used the roll of blueprints to sweep the young man’s legs out from under him. He landed hard on his back, which knocked the wind out of him. The second one came at him from the right, so Bob swung the clipboard around and caught him across the throat. The young man’s hands came up, a second or two too late, and he dropped to his knees, wide-eyed, hands to his throat, joining his friend on the floor and trying to breathe.
Bob continued walking to the front door, with Shaw and the rest of his “posse” hot on his heels. Other than the professor, however, they weren’t too eager to catch up. As he turned to open the door, he heard something whiz past his head. A big knife with a dark, carbon steel blade and leather handle stuck into the door frame about six inches from Bob’s head. He stopped, stared at it for a moment, and yanked it out of the wood. It had been buried deep, almost an inch. Impressive, he thought as he turned to face Shaw, holding the knife in front of him, blade out. Both Shaw and two more of his Middle Eastern pals skidded to a halt five feet away.
“Nice throw, Professor. Gosh, this is an old-fashioned Ka-Bar, isn’t it? An old Marine Corps Ka-Bar Mark Two? Haven’t seen one of these in years.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” Shaw growled, wanting to keep up the attack, but knowing what that razor-sharp blade could do.
“Me?” Bob smiled as he hefted the heavy knife for a moment. “Well, for one thing, I know you aren’t the only one who knows how to throw one,” he answered. In a lightning-fast move, he drew his arm back and threw the Ka-Bar at Shaw. The heavy blade tumbled end over end, passed between the professor’s legs, and stuck in the floor two feet behind him with a heavy Thunk! “So, I’d be careful, Professor. Next time, I won’t miss.”
As Shaw and the others stared, wide-eyed at the knife stuck in the floor behind him, Bob turned, slipped out the front door and walked quickly down the sidewalk. When he reached his truck, he tossed the plans and clipboard on the front seat, hopped in, and quickly drove away.
Halfway down the street he saw the Fayetteville PD squad car and stopped next to it.
Van Zandt cocked his head and looked up the street at the Muslim Student Center. “Well, I see it’s still standing,” he said. “You didn’t kill anyone in there, did you?”
“I don’t think so. By the way, didn’t you say that the other college professor you found in the landfill had his throat slit by a sharp, heavy-bladed knife?”
Van Zandt and Greenfield looked at each other, and then Greenfield said, “Yeah, the ME thought it might be a hunting knife or something like that.”
“You were a Marine. How about an old Ka-Bar?”
Greenfield thought about it and slowly nodded. “Yup, could be.”
“Don’t tell me you found it in there?” Van Zandt’s mouth dropped open.
“No, but our boy just threw one at me… Oorah!”
“And you didn’t keep it?”
“In hindsight, I should have, but I threw it back at him and stuck it in the floor between his legs. At the time, I thought it more useful to make a point to him and his minions, who were trying to grab me.”
“Even still, too bad you missed,” Van Zandt said.
Inside the Muslim Student Center, Henry Shaw was in
a towering rage. That infuriating “carpet cleaner” had just walked into his operational center, strolled around past eight or ten of his men, and humiliated him in front of them. Shaw’s mind was racing trying to figure out what just happened. Who was that guy? He was obviously both daring and dangerous. Police? FBI? CIA? Who was he, what he was doing inside the building, and what did it mean for Shaw’s plans? He spun around and saw George Enderby standing in the doorway to the office wing, peering around the edge of the doorway. “Who was that man, Enderby?”
Enderby was the most stable of his men. Perhaps it was a result of the combat he had been in, but his placid expression almost never changed, until now. As he stared back at Shaw, for the first time the professor saw a look of concern on the sergeant’s face.
“I’m not sure you want to know,” Enderby finally answered. “Maybe four or five years ago, in my first year here at Bragg in one of the airborne battalions, there was this guy named Burke. He was a Major, Special Ops, probably Delta. He gave some demonstrations on hand-to-hand, silent killing, that kind of thing. He was a little guy. Didn’t look like much. but all the other instructors were in awe of him, almost afraid. Very scary.”
“And you’re saying that was him? That little twerp was Burke?” Shaw asked.
“It could have been, but like I said that was a long time ago.”
“Could’ve been?” Shaw screamed. “Find out. Find out who he is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Blue Ridge College Campus
Sameer al-Karman had the ability to sit at his table in the basement cafeteria of the Student Union and concentrate on his math problems for hours on end, immersed in his textbooks and calculations. Without taking his eyes off his computer screen, he could write a note, check his e-mail, or take another sip of tea. Nonetheless, al-Karman remained acutely aware of everything occurring around him in the coffee shop, such as the approach of Henry Shaw.
“Ah, Professor Shaw,” al-Karman greeted him, without looking up. “Are you out slumming with your students again?”
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 28