Rampage

by Roy A. Teel, Jr.

  He pulled a weapon from his hip and said, “I hope you feel better,” and shot Jerry in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. Pinskey dropped the weapon and pulled a gray box from his jacket pocket. “It’s time to kill you all!” He pressed the button on the remote detonator but nothing happened. He slid down the front of a toilet, and the Eagle lifted him to his masked face and said, “Your rampage is over. The kids are safe. Now, you’re coming with me.” He grabbed Chris and Jerry and opened a large side vent in the wall and threw the two men into it. He pushed the unconscious men until he reached a large opening then stepped over their bodies, kicked open a steel grate that exited the building, and pulled them out and put them in his truck.

  The Eagle called out over the radio to Jim, “Jim, Jim…are you out there? I didn’t hear an explosion. Are you okay?” There was silence on the radio. “Jim, Jim…I have Pinskey and Chris. I left a calling card of the Eagle along with the evidence against all of the players in this plot and the role they played. Can you get out?” There was another moment of silence, and the Eagle ripped off his mask and was getting ready to run back into the mall when Jim’s voice came over the radio. “I just saw my fuckin’ life pass before MY FUCKIN’ EYES…Jesus fuckin’ Christ. I’m okay…I will get the fuck out of here and meet you back at the lair, OUT!”

  The Eagle pulled the Silverado out onto Tampa Avenue headed for the 101 Freeway and Malibu. As he drove, ambulances and fire trucks as well as SWAT and LAPD units were rolling past him headed for the mall.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘“What happened in there?

  The Eagle happened in there.”

  The Northridge Mall was a frantic scene, kids running in all directions. Police had pulled back after there was unidentified material that looked like bombs. The bomb squad had been called in, and students, teachers, and others were gathering in the parking lot as police called out to anyone left in the building to come out with their hands in the air.

  Jim was sitting with his back against a wall in one of the storage rooms. He had been able to diffuse the last grenade and was now trying not to get stepped on as kids were running through the very door that only minutes earlier would have been a death trap. He got to his feet and switched his radio back to police frequency and started walking past the stragglers of children pushing their way out. They were running over each other, and Jim yelled loudly and said, “YOU’RE FUCKIN’ SAFE…JUST WALK!” He pulled the radio off his belt and called out to LAPD as well as SWAT, announcing he was inside the building and that the building was clear. Jim leaned against an entrance pillar to the store as officers approached with weapons drawn. He held his badge in his left hand high in the air and yelled, “If one of you dumb fucks shoots me by mistake and I survive, I will kill you!” Riggs was leading the way into the store and got to Jim and asked, “Shit, Jim, are you okay?” “Do I look like I’m mother fuckin’ okay? Shit, man. I’ve been in a war zone.” Riggs helped Jim to a bench just outside the store as the commotion went on around them.

  “What the fuck happened in there?” Riggs asked. Jim took a cigarette out of his top left pocket and pulled his Zippo out, lit up, and said, “What happened in there? The Eagle happened in there.” Riggs had a confused look on his face. “The Eagle was trying to kill a bunch of kids?” Riggs asked. Jim shook his head and said, “No, you dumbass. The Eagle just saved a shitload of kids. There are some bodies in there, but they are just a few of the bad guys and unfortunately their victims. None of the dead were killed by the Eagle. I know that as fact. When the scope of what was planned for tonight is revealed, it will send shivers up your spine.” Jim took a deep drag off the cigarette, and Riggs pulled one out himself and lit it and asked, “Is there no end to what the fuckin’ Eagle is capable of?”

  Jim stood up and walked over to the store entrance, and as he walked with a bit of a limp, he said, “The Eagle is human, Riggs. He’s flesh and blood like you and me, and if you ask me, not only is there an end to what he can do, I have a feeling he’s getting sick and tired of doing our fuckin’ jobs. Yeah Riggs. There’s an end to what the Eagle can do, and it scares the hell out of me to think about this city without him, without his constant presence saving lives and meting out justice. There is an end, and I think that end might be closer than any of us might think.” Riggs took a hit off the cigarette and put it out on the concrete walk outside the store and followed Jim back inside to process the scene.

  Jerry Pinskey was strapped to a gurney next to Debbie Atwater. He looked over to see her glazed eyes and tear-stained face, looking off into some far off place. The Eagle walked in, and he was in street clothes, a pair of blue jeans, a tight fitting t-shirt, and tennis shoes. Jerry looked up at the steely blue eyes staring back at him and asked, “Is Debbie dead?” “No…at least not yet. She is catatonic. The poison I administered is eating away at her brain. Her mind is wasting away, and her body is in such agony that she can no longer communicate. She knows you’re here, so feel free to say anything you like to her. She can hear you.” Jerry looked at her with cold, yet sad eyes and asked, “Why did you do this to her? She was innocent.” The Eagle put a tourniquet on Jerry and slapped his arm hard several times to raise a vein while responding, “No one is innocent. Not you, not Debbie, not me or mankind. Ms. Atwater took lives and assisted in torture. She got what she deserved as you are about to get.” Jerry looked over at Deb and said, “Debbie, if you can hear me, the whole mission wasn’t a total failure. I got Billy Stone. I fucked him up the ass, and in the end, he got shot by some federal agent.”

  Debbie didn’t react, and Jerry looked at the Eagle as he was setting the IV in his arm and asked, “Why are you killing us? We were the victims. I thought you fought for the victims? Isn’t that what the Iron Eagle does?” With the IV line set, the Eagle called out for Sara, who brought him the syringe with the light blue liquid in it. The Eagle stuck the needle into the IV line but before pressing the plunger to kill Pinskey, he looked him in the eye and said, “I defend the innocent. I avenge the wronged. I’m a preventer. I try to stop bad things from happening.” The Eagle grabbed his tablet off a table and pulled up the manifesto of Jerry and his friends. He put the tablet in front of him and said, “This manifesto of yours and your late friends speaks of the atrocities that you faced at the hands of the ‘pretty people.’ If you and your friends had gone after the perpetrators of the crimes against you, you would never have popped up on my radar, and even if you did, knowing the depths of their depravity, I would most likely have helped you. However, you and your friends took it way too far. This document, which none of you ever intended to be read as an explanation for your actions, calls for the mass murder of hundreds of men, women, and children. In a rampage of epic proportions, these people had done you and your friends no wrong. Why should they die?”

  Jerry looked on doe-eyed. The Eagle continued, “As I thought, you never considered that there are no innocents in the world, but there are those who don’t deserve to be victims for the sake of being victims. Your motives were simple. See how high you could press the body count and get away with it. That’s not about avenging a wrong. That’s not about punishing the punishers. That’s about taking life and death into your own hands and deciding who lives and who dies in an arbitrary fashion. I stopped it, but you’re not the only ones planning these things, and I only stopped this one. There are others that I won’t be able to stop. I can only hope that in catching and exacting justice on you and your friends that I send a message to other would-be murderers to watch out because they will never know if there’s an Iron Eagle waiting for them to make their move, and if so, how much more will he make them suffer.”

  The Eagle pushed the plunger, and the solution entered Jerry’s vein. He howled in agony as the poison worked its way through his body and to his heart. He screamed out to the Eagle, “I hope you suffer a hundred times worse than what you have done to me and Debbie and others.” He shuddered and closed his eyes, and t
he Eagle said, “You will die slowly. May God not have mercy on your soul.” Jerry opened his eyes, his face red with anger and pain. He grunted a few times then said, “RIGHT BACK AT YOU, MOTHERFUCKER. RIGHT MOTHERFUCKIN’ BACK AT YOU.” Jerry threw his head back violently against the table, and his whole body spasmed as the poison took hold. His eyes began to gloss over, and the Eagle took a second syringe of clear liquid and injected it into the IV. “Your doom is set. Enjoy my hell upon you.”

  Sara had been standing outside the room and heard the conversation between Jerry and the Eagle. When he emerged, she asked, “Do you think that’s what’s going to happen to you? That you will end up a victim of your own torture?” He shrugged his shoulders and walked into the conference room where Chris lay unconscious. “Can you hand me a shot of stimulant, please?” Sara walked out and came back with the medication and then sat down in one of the meeting chairs in the conference room right below the glowing red eyes of the symbol of the Iron Eagle on the wall behind her. John gave Chris the injection, and it took only seconds, and he was alert.

  Chris jerked awake and looked around and saw Sara sitting at the head of a table and above her head was a large wood carving of the Iron Eagle’s logo. He let out a sigh and said, “John’s the Eagle?” Sara nodded slowly as John sat next to Chris on the couch. Chris looked over at him and said, “You…you. Of all the people in the world, I would never have suspected that you were the Iron Eagle or that you are capable of such brutality.” John sat for a moment contemplating Chris’s words and then said, “Brutality is brought on by ourselves, an eye for an eye so to speak.” “You’re a religious nut?” Chris asked, looking at him with confusion. John laughed, stood up, and talked as he walked to Sara.

  “I’m not religious at all, Chris. Religion gets in the way of logic. I believe in a deity, though I’m baffled by anyone who would believe in a deity that cared what they believed. I mete out justice within these walls and have been doing so for several years.” Chris sat up and asked, “But you weren’t always here? You had other locations and other victims going back to your Marine Corps days.” John nodded, sitting down next to Sara. He was about to say something else when he spotted Jim standing in the doorway, in his and Sara’s line of sight but not Chris’s.

  “What would you do with the animals I have dealt with over my long career? Locked them up? Put them on trial? Allowed them to parade their atrocities against men, women, and children before the media and the world? Allowed the killers to revel in the publicity machine and inflict more suffering upon the families’ victims? Allowed them to take pride and satisfaction in reliving their atrocities again by watching the horror in the faces of the families, as they relived the horror of their loved ones’ losses through the eyes of the killer? There is no justice in that, Chris. That is an injustice and an insult to the memory of the victims.”

  “What if you are killing innocent people?” “Not possible.” Chris had a look of arrogance in his face. “And how can you, the Iron Eagle, know beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of those you kill?” John laughed and so did Jim. Chris looked over to see him walk into the room and sit down next to John and Sara. “Police fuckin’ work for one, kid!” Jim said while pulling a cigarette out of his left top pocket and putting it into his mouth. Chris sat silent. Jim motioned to Sara and John for approval, and they nodded.

  Jim pulled out his Zippo and lit the cigarette and said, snapping the unit shut, “The Iron Eagle doesn’t go around looking for the worst of the worst. Believe it or not, the bulk of the cases he’s solved through the years have been on hunches and good research. Do you think he knew about Walter Cruthers, the Basin River Killer, Stewart Roskowski, Simon Barstow, and so many other high profile cases? Fuck no, man…sometimes he got lucky, other times he had detailed research, and he always pays attention. Fuck, Chris, the Eagle saved our country twice, and tonight he saved the lives of hundreds of kids from a massacre of horrendous proportions. Does the Eagle save everyone? Fuck no…how could he? He’s not a goddamn super hero. He’s a fuckin’ man, a well-trained military and police-educated man, battle tested and street smart. You would not even be sitting here if not for John and the Eagle.”

  Chris asked Jim, “How long have you known?” “From day one, brother, from day fuckin’ one.” “Who else knows John’s the Eagle?” Sara spoke up, “Barbara, Gail Hoffman, Jade, Karen, some of John’s close Marine Corps brothers, and now you!” For a long time, he sat looking into the faces in the room. He stood up and asked, “So what now…do you kill me?” John laughed as did Jim and Sara. John said, “I hope not. I want to train you. I want you to work with me and learn how to profile these sick people then find them and eliminate them.”

  Chris shook his head, “I’m not a murderer, John. I’m sorry, man…you might have your reasons, but they aren’t mine. I can’t see any situation that would drive me to do the things the Eagle does and has done.” John stood and said, “That’s why I want to train you, Chris, so you don’t have to live the nightmare that I did after becoming the Eagle. If you know who you are out of the shoot, you will be better prepared to protect others.” Chris said, “Yet with all of your training, you couldn’t save your wife?”

  John put his head down, and Sara put her hand on John’s arm and shot Chris a short glaring stare and said, “That’s a low blow, Chris.” John shook his head, looking at Sara who was glaring at Chris. “No, Sara, he’s right. You’re right. Even with all of my training I could not save Amber. I have played that night and those decisions over and over in my head a million times. I can’t change what happened, but I sure as hell learned from it.” “Did Steve Hoffman know you were the Eagle?” Chris asked softly. “Yes…in the end.” “And what was his reaction?” John laughed under his breath, “A lot like yours. Look, you have to make the decisions on your life and your future. I think you have what it takes to do this type of work, but you have to make the decision.” Chris sat down and said, “Look, John, I will keep your secret, that is not to say that I condone what you are doing. It’s because I respect you and Jim and the rest of you, and there is some redeeming quality that they see in the Eagle. I don’t. I will work for the FBI but don’t ask me to get involved in killing people, that’s where I draw the line. If I have to kill in the line of duty, so be it, but not as judge, jury, and executioner.”

  John looked at him and said, “I respect your feelings, and I will not bring the subject up again. Now, you have a flight back to Quantico in the morning and it’s late, so how about we call everyone who’s free and have dinner before we fly you back tomorrow?” Chris nodded, and the four walked out of the lair and into the main house. Chris looked at John and asked, “Karen knows?” John nodded. “She told me about the Eagle saving her from her adoptive father.” John was about to answer when the doorbell rang, and he heard Karen’s voice in the entryway. He looked at Chris and said, “Why don’t you ask her? I think you will find the story enthralling.” Chris said, “I know her story. The darkness of it and the light. I know who saved her but that doesn’t change the way I feel.” Karen stopped in the doorway and looked at John and Sara then at Chris, “So, you know who John’s alter ego is?” Chris nodded and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?” She smiled and said, “It’s not my place. If John wants you to know who the Eagle is, he will tell you. I will say that if John has confided his alter ego to you it means he both trusts you and sees in you something of himself.”

  Chris rejected the whole idea. Karen said softly, “When we look inside ourselves, we discover who we are. If we spend our whole lives looking out, we miss everything.” Chris looked at her with confusion and asked, “I don’t understand. What the hell does that mean?” Karen laughed, “You will understand soon enough. I just hope it is not at the expense of the life of someone close to you.” She asked what was up, and John and Sara told her they were seeking dinner guests. She said, “I’m on board. Would you care to join us, Chris?” He looked on at all of them and said, “
Yeah…sure. Why not?”

  Jim called Barbara, and she met them all at the house. Jade and Jessica were working the scene in Northridge and had their hands full with several cases and could not break away. As the group sat down for a meal in the formal dining room, Chris asked, “Does your staff know about the Eagle?” John shook his head, and the group sat eating their meal and conversing about the events of the past several days with no more talk of the Eagle.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The deep web was the

  source of the weaponry.

  The media was abuzz with the thwarted effort of a student plot to wreak havoc on their school and their student body. The press released the details, censored video, and audio confessions of the teachers and students involved. In the days and weeks that followed, there would be much conversation about the plot and who had enabled it. The inventory of ammunition that Tim Elliott had been amassing from overseas that was purportedly coming from his father, Brigadier General Gary Elliott, was not live. The munitions he sent home to his son were deactivated. The deep web was the source of the weaponry that the students had acquired; however, in the end, law enforcement would never be able to nail down exactly who provided it to the boys or trained them to use it. The manifesto, once released by Special Agent John Swenson of the FBI, with many sections redacted for national security purposes, painted a picture of a plot so diabolical in its planning and brutal in its actions that it left parents and teachers across the country in fear for their own schools and fellow classmates.