by Robert Rand
Sirens could be heard getting closer and that was the cue for Sullivan’s attackers to flee.
Chapter 4
Over the next ten days, Sullivan was approached several times by people threatening harm to him and his family. As a precaution, he had sent his mother and grandmother on a Caribbean cruise. His wife would not listen to reason. No matter what he said, she refused to be intimidated
Sullivan had been given a piece of paper with a phone number on it by one of the thugs that had approached him in the casino parking lot. They told Sullivan to call the number within the next five days to get his instructions or the next time they saw him they would kill him. That had been four days ago.
The phone was answered by a gravely, whiskey and cigarettes voice. Rourk identified himself and was told that he would be called back in five minutes.
It was closer to ten minutes when Rourk’s cell rang. The information he was provided sent a chill down Sullivan’s spine. He sat at his desk in his den for several minutes following the call. His thoughts were racing as he tried to process the words. It was an introduction into a world he knew nothing about. At least nothing his personal experience had witnessed. It was a world he thought only existed in books and movies.
He found his wife in her separate home office. She didn’t often work from home, the large room held a drafting table, desk and computer in one corner and a comfortable sitting area with an 80 inch flat-screen television. She was addicted to several reality crime scene investigation shows. Her fascination with the mind of murderers and the forensic trails followed by investigators held no morbidity to it; hers was simply a need to understand the mind of those who kill. It was so far from any thought she had ever had to harm a person that thought processes of killers fascinated and intrigued her.
“April, we need to talk.” He sat next to her on the couch.
She muted her show and told him, “Baby, I’m not packing up an hiding. I don’t know why you don’t call the cops or friggin’ FBI.”
“I called that number. The one that last thug handed me.”
“And?”
He laid the information out just as he had received it. Jacob White had been using the casino to launder money for the Aryan Brotherhood, who, in turn, were laundering money for the Mexican Mafia. The gang would pay Jacob $100,000 per month in exchange for gambling tax reports, in varying denominations, totaling $1 million. Their million would be hit with a fifty-four percent tax, which they paid through the individual accounts attached to the tax forms. That cleared $460,000 in immediate funds each month, then Jacob would provide documentation that showed the taxed winner had spent more money than they had won, allowing them to get a check from Uncle Sam complements of the IRS for the entire remaining amount of the $1 million investment.
“It is a complex and, actually brilliant, scheme. The problem is that they will kill us if we don’t keep their business going.”
“Why can’t you call the police?”
“Because they would not be able to keep us safe. These people have hundreds of members and the best the cops would be able to do is put us in witness protection. Are you ready to give up your career, our family, who still wouldn’t be safe, and become an Avon lady in fuckin’ Nebraska?”
April stared at the muted television for several minutes before speaking again. “What are we going to do?”
“We? We are doing nothing. I am going to do what they want. I have no choice. There is more. They want their lost profits from the last three months.”
April stood as if she had been kicked, “Where in the hell are we going to get three million dollars?”
“I have an idea. It involves doing things I have never done and don’t even know if I am capable of doing.”
“You going to become a contract killer?” Her sarcasm was not lost on him.
“Baby, I want you to show me the plans you drew up for those three banks.”
“You are not robbing banks!”
“No. Not really. I want to blow the fronts off of the ATM’s”
She thought he had gone completely mad. Her anger turned to apprehension, which became a grudgingly given consent as the details began to make sense.
“There’s a big development project going up that’s going to require some heavy demolitions. The tribe has allowed temporary storage of the explosives back in Coyote Canyon,” said Sully.
“And you are going to just go help yourself to that stuff?”
Avoiding the question, Sully told April he was going to take the Jeep up the canyon and see it could be done. She insisted on coming with him.
They pulled off the pavement and onto the gravel road that served as the only real entrance to Coyote Canyon. Slowing so as not to stir up too much dust and attract unwanted attention, Sully asked April to keep an eye out for anyone who might come up behind them. She turned around in her seat and peered out the rear window.
About a mile and a half into the canyon was a fenced area about 200 feet square, with a chained gate, barbed wire, and, apparently nothing else to prevent access to an overseas container that was clearly marked as being dangerous.
Sully continued past the site, sure there would be a guard in a patrol car nearby. He traveled another half-mile down the road in the waning daylight before turning around. “This is too easy. There has to be a guard.”
“There isn’t anyone, Sully. Let’s get it done before someone does show up,” urged April.
Putting the Jeep back in drive, Sully drove directly to the gate. April handed him a pair of leather driving gloves and a set of bolt cutters that he had taken from his garage before they left.
“You watch the road. If anyone comes, just turn the motor on. I’ll hear it and run back,” Sully instructed before moving over to the lock.
It only took a few seconds to cut the lock, remove the chain from the hurricane fence gate, and pull it open. Sully ran the 100 feet to the metal cargo container where he used the bolt cutters to cut another lock. He ripped the destroyed padlock from the hasp and shoved it into his pocked. Lifting the latch and pulling outward, the twelve foot high steel door swung open.
The walls of the container were lined with double-door fireproof cabinets. Sully put the bolt cutters to use again. The first cabinet held various boxes that appeared to him to be electronic detonation devices, although his only reference was Rambo movies. He went to the next box. After cutting its lock and opening its doors he found boxes labeled “Primary Detonators.” He removed two boxes and set them on top of the cabinet before moving on to the next cabinet. This third cabinet held what he was looking for. Looking like the generic version of Nestlé’s cookies in the premixed cut and cook tubes sat several dozen cylinders marked as being an explosive manufactured commercially as Tovex. This was an industrial grade plastique, similar to the military C-4, pliable, moldable, stable, and perfect for his purposes.
Sully loaded twenty of the one-kilo tubes into his arms then jogged back to the Jeep. “Put all that in the back,” he said over his shoulder as he ran back to the container.
Once inside, he grabbed his bolt cutters, the boxes of primary detonators, and a couple of the little boxes with guarded red buttons on top. Arms full, he darted back to the Jeep.
“Here,” he handed the items to April, “I’ll be right back.”
Returning to the container, he closed the outside door, then hurried back and closed the gate, careful to wrap the chain through the fence. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but it was better than leaving everything wide open.
Back in the car, Sully started the motor. Even though it was a cool 60 outside, he was dripping with sweat. His pulse pounded in his ears and his thoughts raced as the insanity of what he was doing began to sink in. His parents had taught him to be honest. He believed in God. He expected the police to protect his neighborhood. Yet he had just committed an act of dishonesty that broke at least one Commandment and who knows how many laws. Suddenly Sully didn’t want to think about his parents,
his God, or the police. He shuddered visibly at the realization that he had just crossed a line he never believed he would cross. Pushing those thoughts aside, he put the Jeep into gear.
April looked around nervously. “Let’s get out of here.” Sully was already moving. They rode back in an excited silence that charged the air around them. Fear. Power. Danger. They were college grads, working stiffs, taxpayers, fucking Republicans, for Christ’s sake! Now they were living on the edge and it was exhilarating like nothing else either of them had ever known.
April pushed the automatic garage door opener as soon as their house was in sight. Too soon. She reached up to the visor above Sully and pressed it again as he turned into the driveway. He stopped the Jeep a foot from the back wall of the garage and put it in park as April pressed the controller to close the door behind them. As the outside was sealed off and the silence that followed the Jeep’s motor being shut down filled them with a sense of safety, both Sully and April sighed a deep breath of relief.
Sully turned off the headlights and sat back in the seat. Sweat dripped down his sides from under his arms in oily rivulets, brought by the sudden lifting of tension and fear that had dominated his every breath since he had cut the first lock on the gate to the explosives storage area.
The hammering of his pulse echoing in his ears subsided only to be replaced by another uncontrollable bodily sound. Only this sound was not his own. Looking to his right, Sully was alarmed by what he saw. April had gone ghostly pale and her teeth were chattering noisily. “April,” he said, then more urgently, “April, what’s wrong?!”
She stared straight ahead, shivering, unresponsive. Sully opened the driver’s side door and practically leapt from behind the wheel. He rushed around the back of the Jeep and to the passenger door. He reached for the door handle and yanked forcefully. His fingers slipped from the handle. The door was locked. He pounded on the window several times with the edge of his closed right fist. “April! Open the door, April!” She didn’t move. He snatched at the rear door. It opened, and he reached through to the front door lock, and quickly disengaged it. Reaching back to the front door it now opened easily. He slid an arm behind April’s head and the other under her legs before easing her out of the car. He pulled her to him tightly as he carried her into the house.
After settling April into her bed and tucking the blankets around her shivering body, Sully hurried out to the living room and grabbed a bottle of Fireball whiskey and a lowball glass, which he took back into the bedroom.
April’s teeth had ceased their chattering, but she was still suffering body chills. Sully worried that it was shock. He spun the cap from the bottle, letting it fall to the floor. Shakily, he poured a large dollop of the amber liquid into the glass, and then set the open bottle on the nightstand. He held the glass in his right hand while sliding his left arm under April’s shoulders and helping her into a sitting position. He put the glass to her bloodless lips and said, “Here you go. Drink this.”
The whiskey poured over her parted lips and warmed her throat as if liquid fire were heading to her stomach. She breathed in while trying to drink, which resulted in a violent series of harsh coughs.
Whether it was the whiskey, the coughing, or both, Sully wasn’t sure, but the color flooded back into April’s skin. The focus also returned to her eyes.
“Are you trying to drown me, or what?” April gasped, looking at Sully for the first time since they had arrived back at her home.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Sully replied, then asked gently, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m not sure what happened. It was just all so much all of a sudden. But I’m fine now. Promise.”
Chapter 5
They decided that Sullivan would go to the planned bank on his motorcycle, a black Kawasaki 1000cc rocket on two wheels, and that April would follow at a distance in her Jeep, thereby providing help close at hand in the event he needed it, while placing enough distance between them to keep her from suspected involvement.
He had gone out with a small amount of the Tovex and checked the detonator and its compatibility with the detonation boxes he had grabbed. He found that the detonator was a simple device that just pressed into the main explosive compound and was then connected by thin wire to the control box that contained a battery. This sent a small jolt of electricity, when it’s activator switch was depressed, into the detonator, which, in turn, created a small explosion that generated the necessary force to detonate the main explosive charge. His one experiment was an open-air test that left his ears ringing and a hole in the desert floor measuring eight feet in diameter and three feet deep.
Sullivan rushed back to April’s and loaded the explosives he would need, and a little extra, just in case the first blast wasn’t enough, into a backpack. He put on his black leather jacket, gloves and, after giving April a quick kiss, his full face Bell helmet. Sullivan straddled his motorcycle, flipped the darkly tinted visor down and started the motor.
April got into her Jeep and started it. Before she could get out of her driveway, the motorcycle had already sped out of sight.
It was a twenty-minute ride on the motorcycle to the bank they had chosen. It would take April closer to thirty minutes to reach the same location in the car. That was also part of the plan.
As he arrived at the bank, Sullivan noticed that there was a man using the automated teller machine, so he pulled up and parked on the opposite side of the building from where the customers car sat idling with it’s headlights on. Simultaneously killing the motor and putting out the kickstand, Sullivan waited. While he waited he removed the backpack from his shoulders and set it on the motorcycles’ gas tank between his legs. Sullivan unzipped the bag and plugged the wires into the control box. Inside, the pencil detonators had already been stabbed into two separate chunks of Tovex and linked by a 6-foot length of sheathed copper wire that he had coiled like a phone cord to prevent it from being tangled. As soon as the customers’ car pulled away, Sullivan got off the motorcycle – leaving the key in the ignition – and hurried over to the ATM.
After a quick look around to be sure he wasn’t being observed, Sullivan withdrew the two soft chunks of Tovex and forced them into either side of the machine near the center, then stepped around the edge of the building.
His hope was to rip the front of the machine off with the explosion and have it drop a couple of feet in front of the wall. Not this time.
Sullivan had used entirely too much explosives. When he flipped the guard and depressed the button beneath, the explosion was enough to knock him off his feet. Momentarily dazed by the concussion, he was also left with a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t stop. It was nearly a full minute before he realized that the ringing was the alarm, not only at the bank, but also at several stores across the street, most of which were now windowless.
He looked at the shredded remains of the ATM. There were several hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills scattered about, but sitting just in reach was the box that he was after. Sullivan grabbed the container of money and shoved it into his backpack.
The sound of sirens could now be heard above the ring of alarms. They were getting close. Sullivan turned the ignition, pulled in the clutch lever and pressed the starter button. The motor purred, then screamed as he twisted the throttle and dumped the clutch.
He nearly lost control of the machine as the motors’ torque brought the front wheel nearly a foot off the ground. The backpack shifted in his lap and he leaned forward to secure it between himself and the bike. He shot into the street and turned east, then made the next left. The bike was nearly on its side as he leaned into the turn. The bikes’ headlight washed across the front end of a black Jeep Wagoneer that was stopped at the intersection.
April turned right to fall in behind the motorcycle. As she turned left at the next block, she caught a glimpse of red and blue lights streaking toward the bank just over a half a mile away. Unconsciously, she pressed a little harder on the accelerator.
Careful to make each turn in order to follow the path she knew Sullivan would be taking, she soon had to slow down in order to read the street signs. ‘So far, so good,’ she thought each time she made a turn and the motorcycle was nowhere to be seen.
While April was taking the deliberately cautious route, Sullivan had been on the verge of panic. Running through the gears, he would quickly bring the bike to speeds in excess of 100 M.P.H. That was suicidal, considering the fact that some of the streets were in residential areas that were posted with 25 M.P.H. speed limits. None of the streets he traversed were posted greater than 45 M.P.H. He didn’t slow down until he arrived at his own neighborhood. Here, at least, some of his composure and common sense returned. The possibility of drawing attention to himself and his house became real. He down shifted and eased down on the rear breaks. At a calm and unobtrusive 20 M.P.H., he turned into the eastern access to his neighborhood and sat up a little straighter. After two more turns and the longest 45 minutes of his life, Sullivan was home. He pulled the bike into the open garage and parked. With deliberate care, he turned off the key and got off the bike.
Sullivan pressed the garage door button as he went into his house. It wasn’t until he was safely inside the kitchen that he took off his helmet and gloves. He got a bottle of Finlandia from the freezer and drank straight from it. The ice-cold fire had an instant calming effect. He tipped the bottle again and choked when the doorbell rang. He spit vodka through his lips and nose, coughing and gasping for breath. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he rushed to the door.
Glancing through the peephole, relief washed over him and he opened the door to let April come in.
“My hands are shaking, I couldn’t get my key in the lock.” She stepped across the threshold at the same moment that a sheriff’s patrol car pulled into view.