American Terrorist Trilogy

by Jeffrey Poston

  Chapter 11

  Less than an hour after the airing of the full video, civic leaders and activists were calling for a peaceful march on downtown to protest the abuse of power as well as the assault and murders. The mayor and police chief’s response was swift and decisive. The police would have zero-tolerance for any civic disobedience and would be authorized to do whatever was necessary to protect lives and property. The planned protest was declared illegal, and the mayor made it clear that protestors would be immediately arrested.

  Carl was mildly surprised when Merc Three and Agent Palmer ganged up on him against leaving the city.

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” Carl said with a shrug. “These protesters need police to protect them from the police.”

  “I agree, they need protection,” Merc Three said. “If not us, then who?”

  Carl shook his head. “We’re not police, and it’s not our mission.”

  Three objected. “That’s what Agent Palmer said before you gave the reporter the real video. So, you kinda started this, Boss.”

  Wizard was silent. He simply watched the exchange between Carl, Merc Three, and Agent Palmer.

  “Carl,” Palmer said. “Officially, even if you were to do something, the TER cannot take a position or get involved in an unsanctioned operation against civilian police.” Her tone indicated she wanted him to take a position.

  “Understood,” Carl said with a nod.

  He and Nancy Palmer had been through a lot together. At first, they were enemies when she and her TER agents mistook him for the real terrorist who had kidnapped the president’s daughter. Then they teamed up together for the rescue operation and again later to prevent the assassination of the president. She wouldn’t abandon him, but she couldn’t help him in an official government capacity.

  Palmer made some gestures to her assistants off screen, then held her cell phone to her ear. An instant later, Carl’s cell phone rang, and he chuckled. Palmer chuckled too. Her nose crinkled up when she smiled or laughed and gave her an innocent-girly quality, if you could consider a Navy SEAL who could kick your ass with pretty much any weapon on the planet a girl. And they had shared a passionate kiss once, though that event was never repeated and both had considered the kiss an accident, a mistake. He pulled his disposable flip phone from his belt and opened it, then placed it to his ear.

  “Go for Johnson.”

  Palmer giggled, then the wall monitor went dark. Clearly, she wanted to talk off the record. He enabled the cell’s speakerphone so Wizard, Three, and the other three remaining mercs could hear.

  “Carl, you have to help these people, these protestors. The hardline position of the chief of police is going to get some of these people hurt or killed.”

  Carl glanced sideways at Merc Three but said nothing.

  Palmer continued. “Our mission was complete, but you put the video out there, and now these people are protesting because of it. The police chief has said he’s going to come down hard on them. You—we—have some responsibility for the coming confrontation.”

  Carl said, “If these protestors want to avoid getting arrested or getting their asses kicked, they probably ought not protest. That’s just common sense. The cops have guns and the protesters don’t. Besides, the police are not our enemy. They’re just the tools being used to subdue the people. We don’t even know why yet. We think the mayor or the chief of police is behind this, but we have no grounds to intercede.” He took a deep breath. “These people are not our mission. I say we leave it alone.”

  Merc Three said, “Boss, you of all people know what the cops can and will do to these people. And the authority to do it comes from the top. There will be no consequences if the cops go postal. These people don’t understand the danger they’re in. They still think they have rights. They still think being on camera will protect them from the likes of the cops you encountered yesterday.”

  Carl had firsthand knowledge of police brutality—twice—and at that time, there wasn’t a damn thing he or anyone could do about it. Until he went insane, became a terrorist, and declared war on the government.

  He shook his head. “That’s not how police operate. They don’t just go postal. They have a threat matrix to assess danger and an escalation matrix to determine their response just like I do.”

  Merc Three chuckled. “Boss, your escalation matrix has one level above calm, and that’s blow shit up!”

  That got chuckles from the others.

  Carl said, “Look, these people have a choice. They can be protestors or activists if they want, but don’t think because they’re black and I’m black that I owe them anything. They’re not part of my world, and I’m not part of theirs. If they want to be martyrs—”

  Three said, “They’re going to be out there because of you. Look, I know you’re the boss, and we’ll follow whatever decisions you make, but personally, I think we owe them at least some kind of protection. All we have to do is distract the police. Lead them away from the protesters. Then the people get to blow off some steam while the police can’t escalate against them if they’re concentrating on us. Then we disappear.”

  Carl regarded the fabric of the window curtain to his left. It fluttered in the light breeze from the AC vent.

  Three said, “Look, Boss, you knew the day would come when you’d have to make a choice either to be the terrorist the world thinks you are or the hero we and the president know you are.”

  “I’m no hero,” Carl said, shaking his head. “We…I…have killed good—”

  Agent Palmer interrupted. “Yes, you have, Carl. But you’ve also killed bad people to save other good people. You saved the president and her daughter, as well as Agent Cummings and her family…three times now.”

  Three said, “Hell, Boss, you saved the whole damn country. But you can’t just be a killer. You can’t let the bad guys define you as a terrorist because it fits their plan. You have to step up and do the right thing because you know what’s going to happen to these protesters.”

  “I agree, Carl,” Palmer said. “You can make a difference. You have made a difference.”

  “Damn, Nancy, I go away for one day and y’all go and start a mutiny.” He heard a slight chuckle over the phone’s speaker.

  Three said, “Are we terrorists, Boss, or are we going to be heroes and save people?”

  Carl shook his head. “See, I knew this was going to happen. I buy you guys guns and rockets and shit, and you went and got all soft.” He looked around the room at his team for a long moment, then nodded.

  Somewhere along the path to terrorism, Carl Johnson and his band of mercenaries had become a force for good. He just hadn’t fully realized it until that very moment.

  “I do know what these protesters are destined to suffer because I certainly remember how it feels to be brutalized by police. I remember how much it hurts and how long it hurts. I remember what it did to my dignity. And to be honest, I’ve never been completely comfortable being labeled as a terrorist. At first, it was exciting having that kind of power, but that was when our enemies were clearly labeled. Now everything and everyone seems shrouded in shades of gray.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets and considered their strategy. “Just because we call ourselves not terrorists doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to do the same. Rainman still has powerful friends within the government and within this Atlas group, whoever they are, and they are still coming after us. If we do this, if we take sides, there will be bloodshed. And these Chicago cops aren’t our enemy, at least not all of them, but they will be if we hit them. There are good cops out there too.”

  Merc Three nodded. “Unfortunately, Boss, we are their enemy, and the good cops aren’t going to think any different of us. But if there’s going to be bloodshed, at least this way we can control that bloodshed and limit collateral damage.”

  The other merc and Wizard nodded also.

  “Agent Palmer, what’s your assessment?”

  “To
keep control of all variables, you’ll have to distract, then disengage.”

  “So you’re on board with this?”

  “Affirmative. I dismissed everyone on this end, and we’ve been off the record since I shut down the video feed to you.”

  “Is the drone still airborne?”

  “I actually forgot to recall that asset.”

  “Forgot, huh? And the bird has jamming capabilities, right?”

  “Correct. You’ll have RF and cell phone jamming at your disposal.”

  Because of his high profile and the sophistication of his enemies, Carl never engaged in an operation without military surveillance drone coverage. He knew his government tech package provided C4 support—command, control, computer, and communications—which was impervious to anything the local police could deploy against his team. Still, he wasn’t taking his team into an armed conflict with militarized cops without a plan for absolute victory. No way he was going to fight to a stalemate.

  He looked around the room again. “Okay, we’re a go. Three, it’ll be you, me, and Twelve on this op. You two”—Carl pointed at Mercs Sixteen and Ten—“fall back to the civilian op center with Nineteen, Agent Cummings.”

  They nodded and left.

  “But I want to be clear. I don’t do distraction, I do escalation.” He smiled at Merc Three. “But we won’t blow shit up unless we have to.”

  ◆◆◆

  Four hours later, Carl waited directly across the street from the coffee shop he’d visited the day before. Yellow police tape cordoned off the sidewalk in front of the window wall of the coffee shop. He peered between the posters on the front window of the mail store where his CIA contact had waited the day before. There were no cars parked on either side of the street today.

  A sea of black-clad police officers converged on a huge crowd of chanting protestors outside. The officers wore bulky combat vests, but Carl guessed the vests were only Level II or III protection for the officers’ torsos. Considered soft body armor, it would protect the officers against most normal bullets, say, nine-millimeter or forty-four caliber rounds traveling under fifteen hundred feet per second. Still, they had no protection below the belt or for their neck or any of their limbs, but that was standard procedure for normal police operations. The strategy wasn’t to be bulletproof as much as it was to survive a gunshot.

  The police had an overwhelming advantage in weaponry and body armor, and the protesters, if they decided to get ornery, would be totally outclassed. On the other hand, Carl and his two mercenaries held an equal advantage over the unsuspecting police. Their strategy was to be bulletproof. He and the mercs were outfitted head to toe in hard-shell body armor. The protective outfit weighed almost thirty-five pounds compared to the ten pounds of soft armor the police wore, and it would limit mobility. In a free-for-all gunfight, though, if a confrontation came to that, Carl and his team would be virtually impervious to police weapons.

  A single row of lightly armored officers stretching from curb to curb marched in-step toward the protestors. They wore black helmets with clear acrylic face shields, and their arms were all clasped together. They hollered “Move back! Move back!” in time with their steps. It had to be an intimidating chorus for the protesters to hear, especially for the front row of civilians.

  Directly behind the shouting cops marched dozens more riot police, all similarly armored and carrying clear acrylic riot shields with a black stripe across the middle and POLICE printed in white letters on that black stripe. They all held their batons at the ready. Behind the riot police marched even more cops, some holding their handguns in a two-handed grip, barrels pointed at the asphalt, some pointing assault rifles at the ground.

  At that moment, Carl felt a shiver of fear grip his spine, not because of the police weaponry, but because of what he did not see. None of the police carried gas masks as riot police normally should. He assumed deploying tear gas was a standard procedure as the first nonlethal weapon to be used to disperse protesters, followed perhaps by rubber bullets. Carl felt his own gas mask hooked to his utility belt.

  Agent Palmer’s voice reported through the transceiver in his right ear, “Twelve has overwatch duty.” The tactical term referred to sniper support from high ground. “Three, stand by to engage the front line. Zero, engage SWAT as necessary.”

  Carl said, “Heads up, people. They’re not equipped to deploy nonlethals.”

  Merc Twelve added, “I don’t see any either. Negative on rubber bullets. Negative on soft-shell impact bags.”

  Merc Three replied, “This is not good, Boss. This could get messy real quick.”

  “I think that’s their intention.” Carl recalled Malik Tavares’s warning: they can control the police. He still wasn’t sure what that really meant but was certain he was seeing it in action.

  Carl squatted behind a quarter-inch steel plate Mercs Three and Twelve had anchored to the brick wall under the metal window frame two hours earlier. He listened to Agent Palmer’s voice as she provided the sit-rep.

  “Three, Twelve, maintain your cover. You have a police helicopter orbiting the park half a mile away and a television news chopper directly overhead at five hundred feet.”

  Palmer’s unmanned drone orbited at twenty thousand feet for this op. The mercs were on the roofs of the two-story buildings, one on each side of the street and hidden under tarps the same color as the roof to prevent discovery by the news or police helicopters. Both were positioned two stores east of Carl’s position, up high in front of the police force, while Carl brought up the rear on the ground.

  Because the police force didn’t anticipate any kind of organized resistance, they unwittingly created their own Fatal Funnel with the street itself acting as a narrow pathway where they could be ambushed. With the mass of protestors in front and storefronts to both sides, the police and SWAT were now at a chokepoint. Carl’s team essentially had the police force in a deadly crossfire.

  Palmer continued. “Zero, you have a three-man combat SWAT team on both sides of the street, clearing stores and checking doors. Looks like SWAT Level IV body armor.”

  Carl had glimpsed the SWAT cops before the riot cops started to march. The SWAT guys were outfitted for their threat expectation. They too were dressed in all black similar to the riot cops, but they no doubt had hard Kevlar-ceramic plates inside the front and back pockets of their vests. They also wore knee and elbow pads, shin guards, shoulder and neck guards, and a groin protection pad extended down from the front of their vests. But they wore no butt or thigh guards, and their Level IV armor offered upgraded protection only where the extra plates were. It wouldn’t matter, however, because the mercs’ armor-piercing bullets would go right through any of that armor.

  Still, the police and the SWAT team in particular were an intimidating sight. Most of them wore black facemasks and sunglasses under their helmets so none of their faces could be seen. To a normal citizen, they weren’t men. They were unidentifiable entities, monsters. Carl was convinced that anonymity and intimidation was the intent of the blackout gear.

  Carl ducked his head behind his steel barrier as the SWAT trio walked in front of the shop. He wore a Kevlar helmet with its acrylic face shield lowered to protect his eyes from shrapnel. He knew the cops wouldn’t see him in the dark store, if they could even see between all the posters taped to the windows. He was prepared for someone to test his locked door but still flinched when the door rattled. When the squad moved on, Carl reached up and slowly turned the deadbolt to unlock the door. He pulled it open a bit, then shoved a box holding several packages of five-hundred-count copier paper against the open door to keep it from closing.

  “Zero, you are clear. Three, Twelve, you are cleared to engage.”

  Carl stood and prepared to step through the doorway. “Engage only if the police engage. Copy?”

  “Copy,” Twelve said.

  “Roger that,” Three added.

  Part of him still hoped the police only sought to intimidate by a show
of force, but the protesters squashed that hope very quickly. At the command of someone with a bullhorn, the front rows of civilians imitated the police and interlocked their arms. The protest was somewhat organized, and clearly they intended to remain peaceful since they could not fight police if they were all holding each other’s arms. That had to be part of their strategy. The police could not later claim the crowd was violent. The cops would have to employ violence first, and the whole event would be captured live on national TV by the news crew advancing alongside the marching protesters.

  The riot cops understood this too, because after a few moments of pushing and shoving against the line of interlocked protesters, a single command split the air over the chorus of police shouting. The front row of cops stopped in unison and unclasped their arms. The front row of cops opened up and the riot police swarmed in between them, to the front.

  A sergeant’s voice boomed from a loudspeaker, announcing a litany of laws the protesters were breaking and ordering them to disperse. His orders had no effect, and the riot police pushed forward with batons raised.

  An instant before the first carbon-fiber baton cracked a civilian skull, Carl said, “Engage!”

  Chapter 12

  Chief Bildemeyer stood beside Mr. Karuhl as they gazed down at the growing sea of people gathering far below. From the thirty-seventh floor, the people looked like ants, and the police chief viewed them with a certain detachment even when the black tide of the police force closed on the protestors. But when he glanced at the wall monitor to his right, the street-level view on the TV monitor of the protesters was far more disturbing.

  Within an hour after the American Terrorist had forced the broadcast of the full video showing the assault of the four white cops on the black man, civic leaders and activists had called for a show of solidarity against police brutality at the site of the attack. Now, four hours later, the noon crowd outside the coffee shop grew fast, quickly numbering in the hundreds, then thousands.