by J. T. Patten
Donald’s car was now in sight as it pulled into the dimly lit neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. The cleaner pulled up just behind and to the left next to Donald, who still looked a bit jittery walking to the trunk. He glanced up at his front porch to see under the dim lighting the bullet pock marks in the wood that had trailed to the living room window and killed little Darnell.
The cleaner lowered his glasses. “Get the trunk open and start cleaning the car.”
Not recognizing the cleaner initially from the change of hair and latex prosthetics, Donald recognized the eyes and did as he was told despite fumbling a few times for the keys. He popped the trunk.
“Huh? What is this?”
Donald reached for the brick-like plastic-wrapped bundles in the trunk. There were five of them. There were no cleaning supplies.
Donald turned towards the cleaner who was still in the car with the passenger window rolled down.
Drugs. “Is this what I think it is?”
The impact of the shotgun pellets hitting Donald in the chest knocked him halfway into the trunk. The second impact to his torso created less dramatic movement but misted the trunk with blood. The houses would bear witness to yet another violent neighborhood fatality but would remain silent. Such was the code of this neighborhood too, but as a matter of survival.
The cleaner drove away. It was time to ditch this final car and report in. The cleaner called a number.
“Is it all taken care of now?”
The cleaner replied in the affirmative.
“Where are you heading now? Are you certain you have not been followed?”
“Yes, I’m certain,” the cleaner said smugly. “I’ll run another SDR just in case.”
“Good. Excellent work.”
“You know you have to find someone else on this block to take out?”
“Who? That was it for the assets I’m tracking and running.”
“Think. You freed Donald and shot the cop. That makes three. Finish the story. Tie up all loose ends to make the story connect to a typical pattern and end it.”
My God this doesn’t stop. “You are right. Sorry. I should have thought of that.”
“Yes, you should have. If you want to stay a trigger puller all your life you won’t need to think like I am trying to train you to think. It is your choice. Remember, I am here for you and we have been here for you the whole time.”
“Hey, thanks for the Hallmark card. I’m a big boy.” The cleaner felt like he was being scolded by a parent. His smart ass remark received the same reaction that his father gave when he was little. Silence.
“Fine, I will take care of it now.”
It was resolved with the cleaner as if he were just told to go upstairs and clean his room.
“I have someone in my sights now. Approaching to assess viability as surrogate tie-in.”
“Good, copy.”
“One last thing. Are we still going to meet this week? I have something I would like to discuss.”
“Sure. We’d be happy to. Have you discussed it with anyone else from the team?”
“No.”
“OK. Yes. Happy to discuss whatever is on your mind. We will call with a time and location.”
The receiver hung up and the cleaner felt a sense of ease.
Another call was made unbeknownst to the cleaner.
“All is nearly completed. He has one more stop. Do you have him in sight?”
“Coming up on his location now. We had a tracker so we could stay back.”
“Roger that. Hold until after he engages new mark, then proceed.”
“WILCO. I can’t believe he was really threatening to go to the press with our unit and had pictures of us. I never saw him take them.”
Of course there are no pictures.
“Let’s not discuss here. We really need to implement a policy on our open line communications. Myself included. Throw aways or not. Point of the matter is that he did have evidence on the team. Another team has located the photos, the notes he had made, and destroyed them. This was my bad. Turns out he really was involved in drugs. You guys are now clear. Take him out. Finish the story to paint the picture. Go back to his apartment and give his old identity back to him. The artifacts to stage the apartment with are in the bag you picked up from the shop. Then ditch your phones.”
The cleaner pulled parallel to a hooded street punk who was clearly out too late for any good, but he was alone walking down the dark sidewalk. That was good for the cleaner.
“Yo, bro,” the cleaner said.
The hooded gangster kept walking. Hands were in his hoodie stomach pocket.
“Yo, how do I get to the expressway?”
The gangster turned towards the voice. Seeing through the darkness a protruding pistol barrel bulge sticking out of the punk’s sweatshirt, the cleaner said out loud, “Perfecto!” having found the ideal candidate for surrogacy and fired the shotgun at his final mark for the mission.
Quickly getting out of the car the cleaner wiped his own 9mm that had killed the policeman earlier and Donald’s brother. He placed it in the now dead gang member’s hand, fired a shot in the unlikely event gun residue would be assessed, let the gun fall out of the dead man’s grasp to appear as it would naturally in a death fall, and with a kerchief took the gangster’s Smith & Wesson snubbie .45 as his own now.
Back in the car he had taken off his headband, glasses, and was throwing the shotgun in the rear seat now that he was at a stoplight. Hard to tell if sirens would start approaching the area. This neighborhood was a regular shooting gallery throughout the week. Before he repositioned his hips and body back to the front of the car, he noticed a brown paper bag in the rear driver side foot well.
I didn’t put this there.
The cleaner knew without opening the bag that it would have drugs in it. He saw the headlights of an SUV quickly approaching and punched it through the red light. The red Blazer coming up from behind never slowed for the light. The cleaner’s car gained speed but was no match for the vehicle now at its side.
In a flurry of glass breaking, impacts from the ammunition, and audible shots ringing about, the cleaner kept his foot on the gas pedal. Forgetting the context of tactical driving ramming situations he tried to smash into the Blazer but only drew himself closer to the guns.
Looking down at his wounds he knew they were worse than those he had sustained in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
The cleaner, for the first time since his family’s death, knew his wife would not have been involved with drugs. Yet another plant. If cartels really were involved, the scene would have been different.
He was set up. His family had been set up just like he was setting others up.
The brother- and sister-in-law spin was to take the proxy cover-up two to three layers deep to throw law enforcement off in a simple and logical conclusion. It had all been orchestrated by men. Men like him now.
He felt ashamed of dishonoring his family and the Corps by his actions, emotional reactions, and naiveté. He had played right into it and allowed his rage to transform him into the assassin they needed for off-the-books targeting. Had men like him killed his family or did they involve other surrogates who were manipulated to murder?
“What have I done?” he cried out, tears streaming from his eyes. “I am sorry.”
Before his bullet-riddled body’s reflexes waned, he unbuckled his seat belt and accelerated the car. He grasped within his shirt the pendant of La Virgen de Guadalupe for past crimes forgiveness. Bullets still permeated the car door skin and glassless windows as he drove the vehicle into an old oak. His unsecured body met the windshield upon impact.
The Blazer pulled alongside and out hopped an operator. The SUV drove off as the operator sanitized the scene of the cleaner’s disguise pieces, moved the shotgun back to the front seat, ensured prints were on the grips, and looked for any other pieces of tell among the glass pieces, seats, and dash upholstery that would create questions at the scene.<
br />
The operator opened a wallet and saw the picture of the kids.
“Beautiful.” Finish the story.
“We just tied you back to your wife’s nasty drug business you fucking traitor.”
The operator removed the cover-issued driver’s license, replaced it with an old true-name driver’s license, and inserted an Arizona taxi business card in the man’s wallet next to the picture.
Gunnery Sergeant Miguel Gonzalez was again in the same place as his family.
There were many more men who had and would share the same fate.
Chapter 14
Havens disembarked the aircraft in Dubai with an offensive mental mode activated. He proactively scanned for any suspicious situations or behaviors in the terminal that indicated any deviation from normalcy. He looked for any overt or covert law enforcement and security personnel showing signs of apprehension or response to an incident. The area appeared clear any suspicious indicators or abnormal details that would trigger his internal warning mechanism.
Feeling comfortable with his surroundings, Havens switched off the enhanced sensory cybernetic organism mode of his mind and switched on the hurried business traveler manner. True to the character and his current pangs, he did what most typical people would do getting off the plane and dialed home.
Answer Christina, you should be using the phone located in the cupboard now. Pick up.
Havens dialed again to no avail. Although he assumed all was likely normal and Christina may be out and about, Havens broke security protocol and dialed her personal mobile phone. Again, no answer—only voicemail.
Well, as long as I am bending the rules, let’s just try Maggie.
Havens hands became a bit sweaty as the phone continued to ring. His teenage daughter would rarely, if ever, not answer a phone, including times while in the bathroom, shower, at dinner, and endless other occasions where Havens would either hear or see her pick up the phone with the sense of urgency that rivaled his own profession’s responsiveness to obligations.
OK, maybe a text. No, I don’t want her having communications with this number since I am not buying her throw away iPhones.
“Red,” Havens said to himself under his breath. Havens dialed a number that would relay to Red. Red would see the number and dial from another phone.
He and Red had experienced more than one encounter over the years when, in the moment, death looked eminent. They both had given one another that knowing look of being proud to have served with one another and to have each other’s back, but they also weren’t going to sit around waiting for fate to happen. Men of action defied fate to make a looming demise a time of valor and victory. Death to those who challenged their heart and will.
C’mon Red, hit me back.
Havens stared at his phone as if his intent gaze would cause the phone to ring faster, willing Red to pick up.
Shit, it is hot in this terminal.
He exhaled to center himself knowing the apprehension was triggering his physical sweat and emotional discomfort. He felt his bowels dropping with a wave of gastrointestinal cramping.
The phone rang.
“Domino’s Pizza. Will this be pickup or delivery?” Havens answered with a smile of relief at having received Red’s call before diarrhea further complicated his situation.
“Hey brother, where are you now?”
“Ah jeez. If you don’t mind, I’ll plead the fifth on that one. Suffice it to say I am still in the old world but heading westward as fast as I can. Had some odd hiccups that I hope are behind me now. I’ll feel better when I land in Frankfurt.”
“When will you get there?”
“About 8 hours if my plane is on time and I make it though security with no more problems.”
“OK, so you are in Dubai, right?”
“Dick.”
“Well you are the one sharing so much on the line, I’m just doing my job teaching you not to burn yourself by making dumb ass mistakes like that on the phone.”
“You are right, I am just a bit stressed on the home front. Were you ever able to find anything out? I tried reaching them but no one is picking up.” Havens was convincing himself that it was nothing unusual. Deep down he knew it was not normal. He was scared. His phone was hot. It was slippery from his hand’s sweat.
Red paused uncomfortably as he struggled to find words that would express the situation to his friend.
“And…?” Havens pushed.
“Sean, I got your message late. There has been an awful…I have awful news, Sean. I am sorry to have to tell you there was an accident. Well a break-in, and Sean, someone, um, Sean, your family is gone, buddy.”
Silence filled the lull.
“Sean, are you there? I am so sorry, bro. I did everything I could and well, they got the guys who did it. They killed ‘em. I mean the guys who did it are dead now. I chased one down and they got him and the other was killed and the guy I was chasing is dead too, and one guy that was also there that I didn’t see is also dead now in addition to the others. Shit brother, I am so sorry.”
Sean Havens absorbed the news. In the twisted fantasies he had had of what it would be like to ever receive news like this, he never imagined it this way.
He felt nothing. It was not even emptiness.
He had almost anticipated this news, but why he did not immediately know. He recalled that something subtle had been triggered when Red started talking. Ever since Havens and Red served together in a Tier One Special Mission Unit, Red always replied to Havens’ Domino’s Pizza intro with, “I picked up your wife and made a delivery to your mom.”
His head was floating. Suspended on its own. He was unaware of whether he was standing, walking, or holding a phone. The news was disassociated with his personal life. It was as if he had just heard of two deaths on the news. They were not his family. His family would not be gone.
Images of his daughter smiling at him sitting on the couch played before him. Family outings. His wife bringing food to the table like June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. Their trip to Costa Rica. No, his family was not gone. He could see them. They were here.
“Sean. Man, I am sorry, can you say something so I know you are still on the line?”
“Where are Christina and Maggie, Red.” Cain, where is your brother?
“Sean, what do you mean, like where are they now, like now?” Red didn’t know if Sean meant the morgue or hospital, or if he was even grasping it all.
“I meant what I said, Red. Where are they?”
“Sean, c’mon. They’re at a funeral home for now I suppose. Christina’s brother, Lars, has been helping out a bit. He’s gotten a lot of the initial arrangements made until you get back. I didn’t even know she had a brother before this. Certainly not a Chicago cop. I mean, detective.”
Images of family moments shifted in Havens’ mind to visualizations of them on stainless steel gurneys, pulled out of body storage refrigerators, and in glossy wood coffins with white decorative upholstery. He visualized a crime scene. Reality was hitting him.
“What happened to them, Red? Who did it? Was it that guy who raped Maggie?”
“There were a few gangbangers who were in the house. We don’t know why they were there. Nothing was missing. One was shot at the scene. But he was killed by his own guy. I don’t know why, maybe he was deviating from the plan or had second thoughts. He had been wounded upstairs.”
“Gang members? That doesn’t make sense. The girls were fighting back?”
“Well, it seems that the guy who was wounded upstairs had been shot by his own guy up there too. The girls were um…They were not touched, Sean. They died painlessly.”
“So they were put together and killed? Were they executed?”
Oh God, Sean, how could you have let this happen? You failed your primary mission to protect your own.
He envisioned his wife and only daughter kneeling on the ground, maybe reaching for one another’s hand in the last seconds. Looking at each other for hope a
nd solace.
“No, it looks like Christina got to Maggie’s room and the killers kicked in the door. Sean, we can talk about this later? Man, I hate doing this on the phone like this.”
“What the fuck other choice do we have, Red? I am here, you are there. What the fuck can I even be doing here?”
For the first time in minutes, Havens realized he was standing in the middle of the walkway area in the terminal. Passersby glanced at him but he was completely oblivious to their need to move around him.
Havens walked over to a seating section at another gate and collapsed into a chair. He dropped a small bag that he had taken from the airplane and filled with some items to get him through a couple more days of travel. As he released his grip he felt the tightness of his clenched fist and a slight pain as he extended his fingers. Color began rushing into the whiteness that had taken over his digits.
“Sean, we figured you would be going through Germany, so your company will be flying you in their plane. I have the details. I am going to meet you in New York. The Gulfstream will get us closer to your home.”
“My company knows about this?”
“Yeah, the relay on the house alarm pinged security. They of course knew you were TDY and sent a CI guy over to the house.”
“Red, this isn’t a counterintelligence issue. It was a law enforcement issue. They were supposed to be watching them. Somebody is supposed to be watching them when I am away. Who the hell is looking out for our families when we are deployed? Someone didn’t do their fucking job and now my family is dead.”
He hung up the phone with such anger he half expected his thumb to go through the end call button and out the back of the phone. He could no longer control and process all of the emotions closing in on his sanity. Havens’ mind was unable to find a compartment to hide these feelings of such an unjust loss due to his perceived inaction. His head flopped back in the chair hitting the wall behind him. He needed Christina. Christina helped him through this. It was coming back. The stress. Christina was gone. More than a best friend and lover, his bedrock was gone.
