by Warren Ray
Green, dressed in a dark blue suit with a red tie, exited the Lafayette building. He felt more comfortable being out of uniform these days as it was easier to blend in. He wasn’t reporting to any commanders and felt out of place inside the bank building. He hustled down 15th Street and took a roundabout way to get to the Duxbury Coffee shop. He jaywalked across the street and a car screeched on its brakes, just missing him. The loud blast on a horn shook his mind back to reality. He had been thinking about Cara and what he should do with her. He wanted to be able to tell her that her father was indeed a good man, but wasn’t sure if he could trust her. There had to be a way to reunite her with her father. He tried to put her out of his mind and concentrate on his upcoming meeting. He hoped Sam had been able to come up with some background information on those names. He wanted as much information as possible before he informed Jacob Gibbs and the others of his find.
He was still a few blocks from the coffee shop, and looking at his watch, he noticed he was late. He reached the entrance and pulled the door open for an exiting couple. After getting his order, he joined his friend, who had already finished half his drink.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Green as he took the seat against the wall. “I’ve had an interesting day already.”
“Well, it’s about to get even more interesting,” said Sam.
Green removed the lid from his coffee and took a sip.
“I’ve been able to dig up info on all those names in O’Connor’s journal. Most are foreign and were either in the army, the mob or both.”
“Mob?” asked Green.
“Yes, the Russian mob.”
“Russians are involved?”
“You didn’t think they’d want to be left out of this little party, did you?”
Green gave him an awkward smile.
Sam fired up his laptop and turned it around for Green to see.
“I’ve organized them according to where they’re from. The first six are from Eastern Europe, mostly from Russia, some from the Ukraine Crimean areas. They won’t mean much to us other than they’re not supposed to be in the country.”
Green looked at unfamiliar pictures and names he couldn’t pronounce. He was sure that someone in the Intelligence field would know them well.
“It’s the second set we’re most interested in.”
Green scrolled down and looked at the pictures. He studied them one by one not recognizing any of them. The last name he came to was Charlie Chivers, female. “Charlie Chivers is a female?”
“Yeah, I double-check that one to be sure. It’s not a real popular last name, so it’s her all right. She graduated from Dartmouth, a real radical that one. She was involved with the Green Brigade, who tried shutting down the power grid some years back. Spent a year in prison for it, but she didn’t seem to learn her lesson. Got caught again destroying construction equipment, served another six months and had to pay for damages. The family has money, so it was no sweat off her back. She’s working for some lobbying group on K Street now.”
Green stared at the mug shots of a twenty-eight-year-old woman. She had long light brown hair, and her heavy eyebrows framed her big brown eyes. Her small mouth looked even smaller with her big cheeks. He wondered what motivated someone like her to want to do damage to a county that allowed her to attend a prestigious school and get a job on K Street despite having a criminal record.
“Are her parents well-connected?”
Sam cracked a sly smile. “Banking.”
Green let out a sigh. “Of course.”
“The rest of these guys are former military, a couple of convicts with sorted backgrounds. That first one there is in a gang down in Texas.”
“Gang. What kind of gang?”
“Motorcycle gang.”
Green shook his head and let out a chuckle. “So, we’ve got Bankers, Russians, Jihadist, Politicians, Gangsters and a female Radical. That’s some motley crew.”
“Don’t forget the Chinese.”
“Yes, we can’t forget them now, can we?”
As Green finished his coffee, he informed Sam about Cara.
“Whoa…what does she want?”
“Try and stick up for her dad, I guess.”
“So, she doesn’t know what he’s really been doing?”
“Not at all.”
“You going to tell her?”
“I don’t know…I want to, but I’m not sure.”
“Where’d she come from…where’s she been?”
“Not sure.”
“Poor kid, crappy thing to hear about your dad murdering folks.”
“Yeah, and her mom.”
“Wow, I didn’t even think about that.”
“It’s starting to eat at me. I know for a fact, it’s Reed who’s made up these lies, and I'm not supposed to say anything to this poor kid.” Green shook his head in disgust to think that on top of everything else, he now had to deal with this.
Chapter 81
Leslie Michigan
Bassett swung his M4 to the right and emptied the magazine as Jijis poured out of the building. Their position was exposed. He backed up into Burns who fired a three shot burst. Bassett slammed in another mag and fired off another volley. Burns grabbed Bassett’s collar, guiding him back as he fired his weapon. Overhead, they heard shots coming from the rooftop as Taylor and Harris targeted the Jijis on the left side of the street. More shots came from the other side of the transports as Hadley led his men forward. He came around the last transport and had a better angle to cover Bassett and Burns’ exit. The gunfire became more sporadic as it died down.
“We need to cover that back exit,” yelled Bassett.
Burns yelled to his men still inside. “Cover the back exit.”
“The streets are clear, Twinkle.”
Bassett looked up and gave Taylor a thumbs up.
Hadley’s men crept into the entrance on the left to clear the building. Shots from AK-47s rang out inside and then the M4s answered back. Hadley ran outside. “We’re clear.”
Bassett and Burns entered the building on the other side of the street. He heard movement coming from the back and then accented whispers. He turned to Burns and pointed to the back. They moved silently across the wooden floor and entered a dark hallway. Bassett stopped when he again heard someone moving around. Neither moved a muscle as they strained their ears. Burns took a glass vase off a shelf and tapped Bassett on the shoulder. Bassett nodded. They stood to the side and Burns threw the vase down the hallway. It smashed into pieces. Rapid fire exploded into the air hitting nothing but empty walls.
Bassett had seen the muzzle fire. He held up two fingers and pointed to the right. Bassett and Burns raised their weapons and emptied their magazines. Dying men cried out in pain. Basset reloaded, crept down the hallway and found two bloody Jijis on the floor. One was still alive. Bassett pointed his weapon and finished him off. A red mist blew straight up and splattered the wall.
They made their way back outside to the last transport and Burns drew back the canvas revealing six girls huddled together. They looked up and broke out in tears. Two were still little kids and the other four were just teenagers.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” said Burns. He wondered if he should bring them out amongst all the dead, but figured they had probably already seen their moms shot in front of them. He waved his hand, motioning them forward.
“C’mon girls, we need to get you to safety,” Burns said in a reassuring tone.
The girls timidly crawled to the tailgate and Hadley helped them out. Hadley had little sisters of his own and knew how to handle them. His Texas drawl seemed to have a soothing effect on the girls.
Burns suggested they keep the girls in the trees behind the buildings. He knew more would be coming soon and he didn’t want to take a lot of time hiding them. He instructed Hadley to take a few men to guard them.
Bassett ordered more men on top of the buildings on the other side of the street, while Burns ran up to Bellevue Road,
where the Jijis had parked several of their vehicles. He looked down the road and saw a small group of Jijis standing in the middle of it. He turned his head to take a closer look at the parked vehicles. Two of them were big black Mercedes sedans. He looked inside and saw the keys were still in the ignition. All of a sudden, he had an idea. He raced back to tell Bassett who thought it might be just crazy enough to work.
“Always wanted to drive a Mercedes,” said Bassett.
“Be a hell of a lot easier than walking the streets,” smiled Burns.
He gave instructions to the men then ran back to the parked Mercedes. Bassett and three others hopped into one and Burns and three more into the other. They cranked the cars up. Burns swung the wheel around and headed down Bellevue with Bassett right behind them. They lowered all the windows and everyone readied their weapons.
Burns saw the Jijis still in the middle of the street. They didn’t pay much attention to the Mercedes as it came closer to them. “Just stay right there, gentlemen,” said Burns. He smiled and hit the accelerator. It was too late to get out of the way as the big black car rammed into eight Jijis. Several flew over the top as the car ran over a couple more. The ones who managed to get out of the way of the first car were not able to escape Bassett as he ran them down. Two more flew up into the air and landed hard.
Burns jammed on the brakes and whipped the wheel around turning the car 180 degrees. Several Jijis came running toward the street but were soon dead when the Shadow Patriots opened fire from the windows.
Bassett pulled up alongside Burns. “These German bad boys handle pretty good.”
“Don’t they?” laughed Burns.
Bassett looked up and noticed two pick-ups coming down Bellevue. “Here we go, boys, we got company.”
Chapter 82
Burns floored the accelerator as Bassett spun his car’s tires while making a U-turn to follow Burns back up Bellevue. Two pick-ups with Jijis in the back were coming hard on their tail. Burns grabbed the radio. “Okay boys, here we come, we got two trucks coming in hot.”
“We got you covered,” radioed Taylor.
The two Mercedes flew past Main Street. Burns took a hard left on Church Street and stopped the car at an angle to block off any escape route. He and his men jumped out and took cover on the passenger side. Bassett’s crew duplicated the maneuver on Bellevue. They crawled out the passenger side and took aim at the approaching pickups.
The trucks crossed Main Street and stopped in the middle of the road. The first driver tried to make a right on Commercial Drive but a transport blocked the road. The second driver recognized the trap and started to back up but stopped when another transport, driven by a Shadow Patriot, backed onto Bellevue.
They opened fire on all sides at the trapped men. The massacre lasted only thirty seconds until all the Jijis were dead.
Burns ran to the pick-ups to make sure everyone was dead. He counted the bodies, added in the others they’d run over and the ones they took out initially. “I think that makes about thirty down. Not a bad start.”
“We counted what, about eighty passed by us,” said Bassett referring to the Jijis passing under the Van Horn overpass.
“Let’s keep going with the cars. That worked out pretty good,” said Burns.
“Sounds good to me,” said Bassett.
They all climbed back into the cars and took off, while the rest of the men threw the bodies into the pickups and cleared the area. Burns led the way again and headed back down Bellevue. Two Jijis stood over the dead ones in the middle of the street and looked up as Burns approached. They started waving Burns down as if he was their friend.
“These boys don’t know who we are,” snickered Burns. “Eddie, you want the honors?”
“Indeed, I do,” said Eddie Perlee.
Burns slowed the car as he approached and swung it to the left. Eddie raised an AK-47 he’d picked up off a dead Jiji. He pulled the trigger just as his prey realized what was happening. A quick burst was all it took to drop them.
They continued down Bellevue and took a left onto Sherman Street. Burns saw a red pick-up with two young girls in the back. There was one guard watching over them. He saw another Jiji dragging an older teenage girl across the lawn of her home as she screamed and flailed her arms. The guard noticed the two Mercedes coming toward them, but didn’t seem alarmed as he walked over to his friend to help with the screaming girl by slapping her across the face.
Burns picked up the radio. “Let’s squeeze ‘em, I’ll take the front.”
“Copy that,” answered Bassett.
“Get those windows up and duck down,” ordered Burns hoping the tinted windows hid them enough.
Burns turned his head and drove over the lawn as he passed by. The girl, by continuing her struggle, distracted her attacker’s attention. Burns looked around and saw a few more Jijis down the street. He stopped the car and hopped out. The two excited Jijis were now pawing at the teen girl and didn’t notice Burns or Bassett approaching from behind. Burns crouched down as he pulled out his Glock 31 and covered Bassett who drew out his Tomahawk and knife. Bassett leaped at them swinging the axe across the back of the neck of the first bad guy while thrusting his knife into the side of the second. Both dropped to the pavement. Bassett finished them off with a couple of swings. Burns turned to see if the others had noticed but saw that they had gone into another house looking for prey.
The teen stared wide-eyed at the dead Jijis. She turned toward Bassett and didn’t seem to know what to do.
Burns approached the girl. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you.”
She watched Bassett wiping his weapons on the grass.
“You alright?” asked Burns.
The girl nodded. She was five-foot-three and her brown eyes were bloodshot from crying. The right side of her face was red from the slap the Jiji had given her.
Burns noticed her shoulder length brown hair was in tangles and she was wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt. Burns figured they had dragged her out of bed. “Great way to start the day,” he thought. He turned to see the two girls in the back of the truck. Neither of them looked to be more than eleven or twelve and both were still in their pajamas.
Burns looked at the teen. “What’s your name, Hon?”
She took a gulp of air. “Maggie.”
“Maggie, do you know these girls?”
She nodded again.
“Where’s you mom?”
She pointed across the lawn.
“Is she alright?”
She shook her head and tears started to run down her face.
“Do you have any other family here?”
She shook her head.
“Eddie, can you drive them to Hadley?”
“You got it, Corporal.”
Bassett got on the radio. “Badger, got a red pick-up coming in with friendlies.”
“Girls, Eddie here is going to take you somewhere safe until these bad men are gone, okay?”
They all nodded. Maggie climbed in the back and put her arms around the younger girls. Eddie jumped in and started the pickup.
Burns looked at Maggie. “You have any idea how many people are still living in town?”
“Not many of us are left here.”
Burns turned to Bassett. “Explains why they’re so spread out.”
Eddie pulled the truck onto the front lawn and turned back up Sherman Drive. As he pulled away, shots rang out. A round hit the tailgate of the truck. Burns and Bassett turned to see Jijis running toward them.
Chapter 83
Jackson Michigan
When Winters got back to the hospital, he sent Nate and Amber out to find Mayor Simpson. While waiting for him, he had Scar and Meeks go and deploy the rest of the Shadow Patriots, where they could keep an eye on the Jijis and report on any movement the enemy might make. He kept Elliott with him in case he needed some muscle to handle the lunatic, Nordell, who he figured would be coming with the Mayor. His last meeting with them didn’t go s
o well. Then again, none of his encounters with Nordell had gone well. He wondered if he’d be able to count on him when the Jijis started their attacks. Winters hoped the old Marine had come to his senses and realized he was not the bad guy.
Winters’ thoughts drifted to Bassett and Burns and wondered how they were doing. He didn’t like sending such a small force to take on so many Jijis, but he felt he didn’t have much choice. He couldn’t allow the Jijis to take little kids as sex slaves. The thought repulsed him and made him think back to the day when they raided the party house. Despite losing some of the girls in the sandpit, they had freed seventy-five girls. Looking back on it now, he realized it was actually one of their best days. Winters vowed that he would never allow anyone to be held a slave while he was around to do something about it. The icing on the cake was the more girls he saved, the more he would frustrate Mordulfah.
Winters turned to see Elliott walk in with a couple of cups of coffee. He handed one to Winters and took the lid off his. He blew on it a couple of times before taking a sip.
“I wonder how many men this town has left to fight,” said Elliott.
Winters took another sip. “Let’s just hope they’re willing to fight.”
“You wouldn’t think that would be an issue.”
“No, you wouldn’t, but look how many we’ve seen not to join us.”
“Self-preservation,” snorted Elliott.
“Yep. Well, fortunately for us they’ve got nowhere to run.”
“Just remember, this is farm country, plenty of fields out there to sneak through.”
Winters looked up to see Nate and Amber walk in with Mayor Simpson. He was surprised the elderly mayor came alone. He also noticed the man looked older than the last time he saw him. The mayor looked pale and more tired than usual. He put his coffee down and shook the mayor’s frail hand. He gave him an update on what was happening and Winters could see the mayor’s eyes darting around nervously. He asked him how many men and women were willing to take up arms and fight.