by Pat Powers
“Sounds like you've done your homework,” I said. He did have a point. An isolated house used to protect victims of domestic violence probably was an ideal location for keeping a kidnapping victim. And the people who were probably running this operation would have connections in such organizations. Counter-intuitive, that a bunch of kidnappers would be in tight with domestic violence opponents, but politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. They wouldn't even necessarily have to give the game away to their allies, if the house only had April in it.
“Ok, so you've got a place that might have April in it, I'll go up and scope it out, and we can go on from there,” I said.
“Come on, John, you're smarter than that, and so are we,” said Jeff, a little edge in his voice. “The people who are keeping April are going to be on hair-trigger alert. We're only going to have one chance to get April out. We need to go in force, ready to extract her by force. If there's no one there, we just go home, no big deal. If April's there, we get her out.”
“My concern,” I said, “is that if we go in there guns blazing, we're gonna get people killed. Possibly April will be one of them. I don't want that.”
“Neither do we,” said Jeff. “That's why we won't be going in with guns blazing. We go in with the absolute minimum of violence. If nobody gets hurt, that's fine. We don't want April to get hurt, that's the main thing. The guys here are all experts at using force, and that means using the minimum amount of force when necessary. We can get the job done, John.”
I looked around at all the men around me and got nothing but confident stares in return. I realized at that moment that I would never be able to persuade them to do things my way. The decision had already been made. I wondered why they had bothered to tell me about it.
“So why do you need me?” I asked. “Why haven't you already headed up there?”
“Because we figure you can help us get the job done while keeping our exposure to legal liability to a minimum,” said Jeff. “We're willing to go to jail if we have to, but we'd rather not. And I bet you can help us not go to jail.”
I nodded. It was obvious to me that this party was going to happen whether I was along or not. If I went along, maybe I could save some lives, either from bullets or jail time. I would go along.
And that's how I wound up in a van headed up to Waleska at 1 am that night. Carl, Bill, Jeff and Jack were in the van with me. We had an assortment of ropes, guns, knives, truncheons and flashlights and were dressed in dark clothing. Hopefully we would not attract any attention from law enforcement, because the words “Up To No Good” might as well have been stamped on our foreheads given all the gear we were carrying.
Most of the drive up to Waleska was full of the cluttered suburban and exurban growth you saw as Atlanta expanded northward along I-575. But when we turned off I-575 at a thriving exurb called Canton and turned onto the Reinhardt College Parkway that led to Waleska, we very quickly left the exurbs and were in full rural mode, with no businesses and very few homes lining the road, just the dense, deep, dark vegetation that arises whenever land in the south is not maintained.
My nerves were on edge throughout the drive, because I was deeply aware that there were many ways things could go badly in this rescue, and only a few ways it could go well. I had much more confidence in the Goreans than I'd had before talking with them. In fact, I felt a little better than I would have with a police SWAT team. SWAT teams were trained not to be concerned with civilian casualties, which is why they create so many of them. I would never have wanted a SWAT team to rescue April, too often they had idiots on them like the one who tossed a flash grenade into a baby's crib and severely burned the child during an assault on what turned out to be the wrong house.
Carl, Bill and Frank all had military training, which emphasized much more strongly restraint in use of force. I didn't know about Jack, but he had Jeff's confidence. I would keep an eye on Jack.
We pulled off the Reinhardt College Parkway a few miles outside town and doused our lights. There were no other cars on the road, it was a short rural road that connected to a few isolated houses in the hills outside town, one of which was our target. We cruised down the road very slowly, our senses at first alert, the only light coming from the moonlight outside and pale glow of the navigational computer that was guiding us to the house.
The road was crisscrossed by black shadows cast by the trees above. After a few very long miles, we came to a lone house with a bright security light shining in the distance. We pulled the van over to the side of the road and got out.
“Operational silence,” Carl whispered. We all nodded. “I'll lead.”
It was instructive to see how quickly and easily the five of them, Jeff included, were able to slip into the shadows of the bushes that lined the road after checking their gear. You would never have seen or heard them even if you passed right by them. I liked to think I managed to stay concealed, too, but they were experts, and it showed … or rather, it didn't.
When we reached the driveway that led to our target house, we paused and reconnoitered. We'd tried to use Google Satellite View and Google Street View to get a better look at the house, but in all the images, almost all of the house was obscured by the tall oak trees that fringed it.
We peered through the bushes at the house. It was to external appearances, not very different from the homes owned by the more successful farmers in North Georgia, a white, two-story clapboard house with a broad front porch. All the windows had burglar bars on them, though. Not common in rural areas.
The front door was our obvious point of egress. It would probably have a good lock and plenty of security, but we gad come prepared. I had my trusty high-tech lockpick and security bypasses with me.
There was a tall fence around the house, taller than most rural fences, but no razor wire atop it. Carl, after a few moment, nodded, and we all climbed over to the fence and ducked into the bushes. I stayed in the bushes. I was to approach the house last.
I watched the Carl, Bill, Frank and Jack infiltrate their way to the front of the house. I had to admit, they were good. They moved so fast and took cover so well that if you blinked you would miss them as they shifted from one bit of cover to another. Then again, it wasn't a difficult position to infiltrate: the front yard, like many rural yards, were full of decorative bushes and objects, a holdover from the days before television and air conditioning when sitting on the front porch and talking was the way people entertained themselves. It helped to have something nice to look at, so front yards became extensions of the living room, decorated just as thoughtfully and elaborately as the living rooms inside the front door. Except that instead of photos and knickknacks, the yards were decorated with plants, bird feeders, stone rabbits and such.
These decorations were excellent cover for the men who were quietly surrounding the house.
I soon infiltrated with the rest, making my way to a large rhododendron bush that cast a shadow deep and large enough to conceal an entire squadron, that was within an easy sprint of the front door.
When everyone was practically at the front door, Carl flashed a handsign back to me.
I sprinted to the front door, hoping I would remain unseen. I was the breaking and entering specialist among the crew, it turned out. The door's lock was a bear, I could tell just by looking at it. A Murchison 5370, by the look of it, often used by corporations to lock rooms where documents. It was a bitch to pick, or designed to be. Not the sort of lock you would go after with a couple of hairpins.
Fortunately I had the same more advanced lockpick I'd used to break into Alfred Speakman's apartment. Speakman's lock had been child's play for the device, and that was because it was designed for handling much more difficult locks – like the Murchison 5370.
I held the device up to the lock and let it go about its electronic investigation of the lock while putton on a thick leather glove. After a minute or two … much longer than it had needed for Steadman's lock – a key dropped into my gloved palm
.
But there was another issue to deal with before I could open the door. There was undoubtedly a security system hooked up to the door, and it would not be a system that could be hacked in the minute or two that most home systems allowed you to punch in the right code after the door was opened.
That's why I took a tablet-like device which had a long cord dangling from one end. At the end of the cord was a probe that vaguely resembled a multitester probe, with a plastic handle that ended in a long metal probe, except that being round and pointy like a multitester probe, it had a thin, blunt, flexible metal strip.
I slid the strip into the space between the door and the frane and slid it upward from the rock, watching the display on the tablet. About half a meter up from the lock, the display lit up and displayed the word, “hold” which was my signal to hold the probe steady in its current location. It had found that sensor that ran from the lock to the security system.
Now the highly illegal but very useful hacking software on the tablet was getting into the security system's software and coaxing the correct combination from it. This took three or four minutes, time I spent standing around feeling very exposed and obvious in the glare of the porch light, with darkness all around me. At least the place was isolated and no one except me and the rest of the crew was out and about.
Suddenly a series of numbers lit up on the board .. the security code. I with drew the probe, then inserted my newly minted key into the lock and turned it. It opened with just the tiniest bit of jiggling of the key.
I carefully pushed the door open and slipped inside. No one was about. The security system's controls were on the wall just inside the door. A light on it was blinking red. I punched in the code from the tablet and breathed a sigh of relief. We were in.
I stepped outside and gave a handsign, and in a moment two dark blurs had slipped through the door -- Bill and Frank, the two former Navy Seals. They didn't make a sound, and I didn't hear a sound from inside the room. In a moment, I saw Bill appear at the door and give the "all clear" sign. Jack immediately slid inside the door, followed quickly by Jeff and Carl.
Immediately inside the vestibule was a curiously uncluttered living room, with padded chairs along the walls but no other furniture in center of the room except for a small throw rug. Bill and Frank stood on either side of a hogtied, hooded female figure lying on the floor. Even in the dim light I knew immediately it wasn't April. Probably a guard, neutralized by Bill and Frank.
So far, so good, but they were all on edge, because I had warned them there might be a covert CIA cowboy type in the house, and that worried Bill and Frank, and the fact that the Special Forces guys were worried about it worried everyone else.
Acting on a hunch, I walked over to the rug, reached down and pulled it aside. It revealed an iron ring, inset in the floor so that it didn't leave any revealing lumps in the rug atop it.
I reached down and pulled the ring out of its niche and gave it a tentative tug, then a very determined pull, but it didn't pull. It didn't appear to be attached to anything.
I looked up at the others, who were watching me, and shook my head "no."
They nodded, and looked at Carl. As a former master sergeant, he outranked them, and had plenty of experience clearing a building, having trained thousands of marines in that task.
He pointed to Frank, Jack and Bill and pointed at the stairwell, then pointed up. He pointed at Jeff and me, and to himself. We were to follow Carl into the interior rooms of the first floor while the other three silently climbed the stairs and cleared the upstairs rooms.
I followed along, praying that no one would be killed. We walked behind the stairwell and found a kitchen area to the left, where a small table lamp cast a cheery glow that was the only light in the house at the moment.
To our right was a short hallway with four doors set in it. Carl sent me down to the far end of the hallway to cover the doors there, then he and Jeff silently opened the door on their left. As soon as a little light spilled in, I saw the gleam of porcelain. A bathroom. After a quick glance inside, Carl stepped back out and silently pointed at the next room.
I opened the door and slid inside.
Immediately, there was a very loud, very high-pitched scream of terror, that was cut suddenly short. For a fraction of a second silence returned, then suddenly there was more screaming, shouting, muffled, curses, crashes, bumps, grunts and the very loud sound of a gunshot.
Obviously, things had gone badly, and not just in the room Carl and Jeff had entered because some of the sounds were coming from upstairs as well.
My first impulse was to run and help Carl and Jeff, but I had been sent to the end of the hall for a reason, which was to cover the two rooms there, so I stayed there and listened to the fighting going on all over the house, it seemed for an eternity, but was probably just a few seconds. Suddenly one of the doors burst open and a woman dressed only in a bra and panties and armed with a knife leaped out. I pointed my .38 at her and silently gestured her back into the room. Glaring fiercely at me, she slowly retreated.
Which was when the other woman popped out of the other room and hit me over the head with something large and heavy.
I glimpsed the blow coming just before it landed and managed to move my head out of the way and take most of the blow on my shoulder. The force of the blow made my eyes shower with sparks and sent me in the direction of the woman with the knife. She raised her arm to strike, but I rolled to one side and shot her in the arm with the .38. She screamed, dropped the knife and collapsed, but the woman who'd clubbed me was still behind me and landed another blow with the baseball bat she was carrying.
This one landed on my arm just above the elbow and sent lances of pain shooting all the way down my arm, along with a weird, numb, tingling sensation.
I had no doubt that the woman would brain me with the bat if she got the chance, so I staggered away from her and pointed the gun at her torso and looked her right in the eye.
The woman froze. She needed no words to know I was on the point of shooting her, the expression on my face was clear.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a furtive figure dart between the light in the kitchen and the hallway I stood in. There was something very purposeful about the way the figure moved, not toward me but toward the dining room/back porch entrance area that was across from the kitchen.
I had no time to keep the angry brunette woman in the slip with the baseball bat at bay. Still covering her with my .38, I reached inside my jacket and pulled out my taser and shot her immediately.
She collapsed with a shriek, her face almost comically surprised at having been so casually shot.
Something about the purposefulness of the figure I'd glimpsed heading for the dining room compelled me out of the hallway and toward the dining room. I came out just in time to see a portion of the dining room floor becoming level with the floor. There was a trapdoor set in the dining room floor, with a rug thrown aside to reveal it, and an iron ring for a handle, and someone had just entered that trapdoor. It was obvious at a glance because harsh white light spilled out from the outlines of the trapdoor.
I didn't think, I just moved. I had to shift my taser to my injured arm so I could get the heavy trapdoor up, As soon as it was up a burst of light illuminated the dining room, but most of all, it illuminated the scene below very clearly.
A female figure lay on the floor of the room below. Her head was enveloped in a hood, her body concealed by a shapeless cloak. A chain ran from a collar at the base of her hood to a ring set in the floor.
Very likely it was April, though no part of the woman's body was visible.
Another female figure, a blonde woman dressed in a white cotton nightgown, was standing with her back to me. She was turning toward April with something in her hand.
I didn't even think. I shot her with the taser. The woman screamed and her entire body seemed to wince from the pain of the taser. But she did not lose control. She managed to control the pai
n and appeared to be on the verge of aiming what I could now see was a pistol in her hands.
I shot the woman again. The taser only had four shots in it, so that left me with only one shot.
The woman screamed in pain again as another jolt of electricity went through her body, but at least this second shot had momentarily disabled her. I leapt down the stairs and clubbed the woman as best he could with my wounded arm. I was much heavier than the woman, but she had one of those ropy frames that were surprisingly strong and she rolled with my blow, disabled by pain and shock though she was.
But in rolling defensively, her gun hand was extended momentarily. I grabbed her gun hand, then grabbed her wrist, and violently wrenched her hand backward. I put enough force into it to break bones in her hand, and I did break bones. The woman screamed again, a miserable sound. She had to be in agony -- tasered twice and now with splintered bones in her hand. I noted that I had wrenched her trigger finger out of the trigger guard, though she still clutched the handle, she couldn't fire the gun without getting her finger back inside the guard, which would be hard to do as my hand now covered the trigger guard.
The woman had a sharp face and even though her mouth was wrenched open by the pain she was feeling, her eyes were cool and calculating. She looked like some female real estate agents and con artists I had known -- no matter what was happening around them, the eyes were always cool and calculating. Still, to be that calm mentally in the midst of what had to be devastating pain, that was impressive. You didn't normally taser and break the bones of real estate agents, though it was often natural to feel like doing so.
The woman delivered a sharp blow to my midsection with her free hand. It sent a wave of pain up my side -- she knew just where to hit.
