SAFE HAVENS: Shadow Masters (A Sean Havens Black Ops Novel Book 1)

by J. T. Patten

  Upon closer inspection, Havens noticed three four-inch hidden compartments—two on each hip side and one nine-inch internal pocket where the small of the back would be. Inside the first front compartment was a black ceramic razor blade. The second pocket held two quarters and a fifty-cent piece. Havens wondered if this low profile survival kit included change for a pay phone, but the fifty-cent piece would not work. He continued to play with them and realized they were all laser cut male and female ends that secured a small compartment that could fit a SIM card or other micro data card.

  Nice, X! He smiled every time he looked at it.

  The back compartment held two key style handcuff shims and two black plastic nylon handcuff keys.

  The belt itself proved to be constructed of Type 13 webbing with forged steel buckles and had been sewn with parachute weight thread to yield a probable 5,000 lb. breaking strength.

  Good ol’ X, always looking out for me, Havens thought at the time.

  Now in Yemen he knew it. X had been the one to increase the dosage of the tranquilizer. Enough to put a big man down but not enough to be lethal. The last silencing cocktail Sean had used overseas, supplied by Science and Technology, wasn’t enough of a dose. It cost a fairly innocent man his life when Havens had to finish the job with the only thing available. A deathblow. Chin punches and sleeper holds only worked in movies to knock a guy out. When seconds counted in a game playing for keeps, lethal choices had to be made. Choices that would stay with a man for a lifetime while the rear echelon gadget guys slept peacefully with clean hands.

  Sean would let a guy like X come over to watch a football game any day. Even if X might bring a shitty six-pack and drink all the Black Label scotch or the good beer Havens kept in the fridge. X was a brother and they had one another’s back. He could have a real friendship with a guy like that. Lifetime bonds tended to come easy, but enduring personal friendships were hard to come by. It was a close hug but arm’s length community.

  Sean found the belt still in a drawer from the night before. He whistled a sigh of relief.

  “Don’t want to forget this bad boy,” he said, weaving it through the belt loops of his pants, and left the apartment.

  Havens was hoping for it to be the last time.

  What else am I forgetting?

  Chapter 9

  As two young men walked down the sidewalk of a middle-class Chicago neighborhood, the residents of the block slept peacefully with the belief that their higher property taxes were enough to keep the riffraff out. Among those sleeping were Maggie and Christina Havens.

  It was quiet on this street. No police cars with flashing lights racing past responding to calls of violence and criminal activity. To the two men, it was eerily quiet. They were accustomed to the constant commotion of gunshots and sirens in their neighborhood less than a mile away.

  Two different worlds only a matter of blocks apart.

  The tall mature trees added to the young men’s cover of darkness by providing a canopy of oak and elm leaves to block out the crescent moon. The moon shone with its fullest intensity as if trying to illuminate the area in anticipation of the imminent threat, but to no avail.

  “Sixth house here, yo. Turn lef. Gotta cut through here.”

  Donald and James Hayes may have been out of their gang’s territory, but this initiation phase was a breeze. Rivals would pose absolutely no street threat to their quest to full membership. Reward was in their grasp.

  They had been informed that one of their “homies” was locked away on the third strike by a female judge who lived at the address given to them.

  To climb to the next tier in the organization, they were to kill her and her daughter to make a statement and throw off further prosecution of their crew under her watch. The judge, they had been told, was also a closet racist and was trying to get a few new housing developments built over the public basketball courts that Donald and James played on. More turf encroachment from rich whitey condos.

  “Man, fuck this bitch, bro. Gon’ cap her sorry ass like a muthafucka.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Donald countered, pumping himself up. “Cold bust this shit.”

  They were told that alarms could sound upon entry so they would have to move fast. They each were given two nine millimeter handguns and were supposed to split up in the house. Above all they were to make sure the victims were dead.

  Failure was unacceptable if they were to keep progressing in the food chain to more wealth and power on the street.

  “Ready to get in the mix and light these bitches up, yo?”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Donald picked up a patio bench and threw it through a double long window. They athletically jumped in with both weapons now drawn in each hand and raced through the house guided by the dim light of appliance clocks and a neighbor’s back porch light casting a narrow path of light on the kitchen floor. Both men moved swiftly towards the stairs leading to the second floor bedrooms.

  An automated voice was announcing to the house “Glass pane break. Glass pane break.” The crash woke Christina from an already light sleep. She instinctively grabbed the phone, hit the panic button on their alarm system, and raced to her daughter’s room. She slammed the door behind her and locked it.

  James spotted the movement and heard the door slam.

  Donald went to the master bedroom to see if anyone was left.

  Christina dialed 9-1-1 and threw the phone under the bed with no intention of wasting time with an operator. She ordered her startled daughter to a corner.

  “Judge probably went to the little bitch’s room. Kick it in.”

  The wooden jamb splintered and the door was easily kicked open and slammed into the wall, the knob sticking in the drywall. All was dark in the room but the suppressed cries of the women were audible to the intruders. James’ heartbeat quickened and his blood raced with adrenaline. The beating in his ears muffled their sounds as he panted and probed the black void before him.

  James pointed his gun in the direction of the voice on the phone. Before he was able to pull the trigger a heavy object struck him across the forehead down the bridge of his nose. Christina hit him again with the laptop, swinging it as many times as she could while simultaneously kicking at his legs.

  Donald sensing the struggle started firing wildly from the gap between James and the doorframe.

  A final swipe with the laptop knocked the already dazed and disoriented intruder off balance. James instinctively jerked the trigger as many times as he could before stumbling directly into Donald’s wild line of fire.

  Donald fumbled for where a light switch should be. He knocked upwards against the wall with the butt of his gun. Success. He squinted at the brightness to discern what had transpired.

  James was on the ground bleeding profusely from his nose, right arm, and shoulder. Christina was also bleeding out on the floor. She tried in desperation to drag herself to Maggie. Her shrill screams not waning as her body failed to respond to her will. Still, she kicked out in futile thrashings towards the men in an attempt to defend her home. She continued fighting like a wounded mother bear doing everything in her power to protect her young cub.

  Maggie remained sobbing in the corner holding her knees, shaking her head from side to side while pleading with her attackers and crying for her mother who was now attempting to pull herself across the room, despite her grave injuries, with undying parental commitment.

  Donald fired more rounds that hit the wall but traced closer as he continued to pull the trigger towards his target. The final bullet snapped Maggie’s head back, ceasing her pleas. Christina howled in agony at the sight of her only child’s lifeless expression, head cocked back at an unnatural angle. She rolled her body over to face the attacker and struggled to elevate herself—still determined to counterattack—but only collapsed again, depleted.

  “Damn you,” she cried helplessly. “Damn you to Hell, you fucking monsters!” Damn you, Sean. Damn you.

  Donald fired aga
in despite being much more emotionally bothered by the display now before him than he could have ever imagined in his post-assault mental fantasies of how this would all go down.

  He recalled from years back the screams of his mother and sisters when a stray bullet entered their house striking and killing his little brother who was innocently playing in the living room with a toy airplane. He knew he had to finish this for fear that he and the brother who now lay beside him in a pool of blood would suffer the same fate by failing to deliver on their task.

  The new round of fire met Christina, compressing and hiccupping her body from the floor. In her final moments, Christina continued her laborious quest to reach her baby girl for a last touch of love and a guilt-ridden need for forgiveness. She grasped Maggie’s limp hand and craned her neck in a concluding effort to nestle her cheek on her daughter’s bare ankle. A final tear rolled down her face as her last breath expired, her broken heart now still.

  Sirens began to sound in the distance, growing in volume as they neared.

  A new voice was audible through the speaker of the security system in the home. “Hello, hello, are you OK? This is your security service. We have been alerted to a glass break. Please provide your password.”

  “Sorry, man. You OK? We gotta go now. Man, this was bad. Aw shit, this was bad. It was not supposed to be like this. C’mon! I can’t be here, man! This is all fucked up.”

  “Man, I’m trying. You go; I’ll be behind your ass. Go to the car and start coming to me. Dat same street. It’s gonna be OK.”

  Donald dashed down the stairs, ran through the hall and leapt out of the window they had entered from catching part of his clothes on the wood and glass shards. He caught a foot on the window base and fell to the plant bed below. Recovering he looked up to see a man in the darkness a few feet away.

  “Run, you fucker!” the man commanded in a low hushed voice.

  “Who the fuck are you?” shouted Donald now scared shitless, his face wet with tears of remorse and panic. Donald started to run through the backyard looking back in time to see the man enter the house.

  The cleaner rushed in to see James hobbling down the stairs.

  He leveled his suppressed sidearm, shooting James twice in the head. James bucked backwards and slid down the rest of the stairs until he folded dead at the bottom. The cleaner deftly passed him and mounted the remaining stairs to the room where Maggie and Christina lay lifeless. He quickly scanned the scene. Assessing the job was complete, he grabbed the laptop and turned to go.

  As Donald had turned away from the dark man and started off through the backyard, another man emerged from the side of the Havens house running at full speed.

  “Stop!” the man ordered.

  Not looking back and assuming the police were closing in, Donald kept running picking up the pace greatly to gain distance and freedom.

  “Stop or I will blow your fucking head off!”

  This new dark man on the scene gave chase to Donald at an alarming pace. This man knew he could easily put two bullets in the runners back and one in the head even at this fast pace. That, however, would be pushing a favor for his buddy Sean Havens, when he wasn’t really even sure whom he was chasing.

  From his car outside the Havens house, Red had heard a crash. As he unlatched his gun to investigate further, he heard the all too familiar popping that was never a good sound in his profession.

  He was heading to the garage door to punch in the codes Sean had given him so he could enter the house. With two digits hit, he heard abrupt grating sounds and muffled voices in the back yard. Racing around the house, he saw a man running through the yard and pursued him.

  Now gaining speed with his powerful muscular legs the fleeing boy was within reach.

  A police cruiser with lights flashing sped down the street with another coming from the opposite direction no doubt to cordon off the area. Havens was his buddy, but not so close of a friend that he would risk being shot by authorities while in pursuit of an unknown assailant.

  Red quickly tossed his firearm into the bushes just off the sidewalk and lunged towards his unsub. He slid down the legs of the runner, catching a heel in the jaw, but held strong to the pants and toppled the runner who loudly hit his face on the pavement with a thud and a scrape as teeth met coarse concrete.

  Police cars screeched to a stop where the men lay on the ground panting. Guns drawn, “Freeze! I want arms out, palms up!” they shouted.

  “It’s cool; I am government, Special Agent. I am a friend of the Havenses’. Just saw this guy running after I heard shots fired. I pursued.”

  “Get up and walk over to the car slowly. I need to see some ID.” Another officer with a gun pointed at the man said, “Hands on the car, what’s your name?”

  “Red. I mean Trevor Peterson. My Federal ID is in my shirt.”

  The other officer had instructed Donald to get up. Donald complied but was not speaking. With his mouth bleeding and his broken teeth left on the pavement, Donald Hayes was handcuffed and roughly shoved into the back of the police car with a forceful kick to his hip before the door slammed shut.

  The squawk box on the police radio was informing officers of the gunshot victims found in the house with multiple ‘GSWs.’

  Gunshot wounds confirmed. Red pleaded, but with a firm voice of authority, “Please, I need to go to the house and see if they are OK.”

  “Get in the car, we will go around the block and go in the front. If I let you run back you’d likely get shot by the other officers on scene.”

  “Cool. Hey, I need my gun. I threw it in those bushes when I saw you all driving up. Didn’t want you to shoot first ask questions later.”

  “Smart, Fed. Get it and let’s go.”

  “On it.” Red jogged to his firearm and crunched Donald’s teeth underfoot.

  Red knew this whole thing was going to be bad.

  The cleaner peered around a house. Seeing that all was clear, he ran across the street to another row of homes and cut through the back, staying in the shadows. From an area nestled in a high hedge, he made a call.

  “Targets all down. One bad actor eliminated. Stage is set, but one of our other shooters was picked up.”

  The voice on the other end of the line asked, “The older one?”

  “Yeah, believe so.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Back of the cruiser.”

  “Can you get to him?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Set that bird free. Confirm when you are back hot.”

  “Roger. I also have the comms.”

  “Good, copy. Bravo Zulu.”

  “Tango Mike. Out.”

  The cleaner hurried back to the street where Donald was in the back of the police car. He saw the officer had walked over to the bloodstained sidewalk to take a picture for evidence exonerating police violence against the suspect. He prepared to engage.

  The cleaner pulled his dark sweatshirt hood back and emerged from between the houses firing two shots in the back of the officer’s head. He noticed lights were now on in bedroom windows along the street.

  Perfect. Just need to spread the pattern like a street hood for the audience. Turn the gun sideways to cement perception. Cliché, but that’s what they want to see.

  The cleaner jerked on the trigger and spread his pattern to quickly put a few random bullets in the officer’s vest and car window. For effect, he looked up at one of the lit windows where a head ducked back. He fired two shots above the window four feet apart.

  That looks like what one would expect from a gangster.

  The cleaner opened the door and reached in for Donald who had scrunched as far away from the open door and the reach of the cleaner as possible.

  “Whatchu want with me man?”

  “Get out and run. Leave your car, take these keys, and cut through the next block. You will see a rusted maroon Toyota Camry. Get in. Go home. Straight home. You did well.”

  Donald accepted the praise
cautiously. Home sounded good right now.

  “One more thing. When you get home, park in the back alleyway and do a quick wipe down. You can just leave the car there. I have some cleaners in the trunk. DON’T FORGET to wipe the wheel down with the cleaners in the trunk. You have the keys now. Your guys will move the car for you. Go.”

  “Where’s my brother, man? He was coming too.”

  “I sent him in another direction. He told me to tell you you guys were going to be ‘in’ now, whatever that means.”

  Yes! “Cooo man, thanks. You friend of Skinny? He didn’t say nothing about no white man helpin’ us.”

  “I said run.”

  You bet I’m gonna run. Clean the car. Get inside and take a two-hour shit ‘til my nerves get all back. Feel like I’m gon’ shit my pants now.

  The cleaner pulled off his latex prosthetic face accessories and blonde wig as he now ran between another set of homes towards yet another stashed car’s location.

  I’ll be seeing you later kid and put a nice little bow on this op.

  The Latino operator stuffed the mask into a zippered pocket of his jacket and moved out. He didn’t want to be far behind Donald. There was more business to take care of. No loose ends. His boss demanded that.

  Chapter 10

  As Red and the officer pulled up to the Havens house, there were already four squad cars and two ambulances. An ambulance sped away as the other was loading a covered body.

  “How do you know this family?” the officer inquired.

  “Please, can you just unlock this door and get me in there? The husband called me long distance saying there was a potential problem. Please. I will answer all questions. Please get me the hell out of here so I can check on them.”

  “You know it was an act of revenge from that guy who raped the girl, don’t you?”

  “What? Raped who? “

  “The kid. The kid was raped. Then she went to the police and the rapist threatened the family.”