Dutch III: International Gangster

by Teri Woods

  Mr. Odouwo was so disappointed he didn’t know what to do. A photo of James flashed across his flat-screen. Maybe I should up the reward, he thought to himself, ready to lay out a couple more million dollars for the capture of Dutch. If only the police and the FBI could do their jobs, I would never have to pay him another dime. Greed was Mr. Odouwo’s only addiction, and for the love of money he would sell Dutch right down the river and count his shares on the way to the bank.

  Paris, France

  “What the fuck!” Agent Shipp said, looking around after the fire in the warehouse was finally extinguished.

  “Sir, we got a body, sir,” said an agent, stumbling across Roc’s burned and charred body.

  Agent Shipp looked around as he saw the bodies of his field agents sprawled among the burned rubble. Nineteen bodies had been pulled from the rubble, and Shipp hoped and prayed that James’s body was one of them.

  “I can’t believe this shit! It’s the fucking Essex County Courthouse all over again!” he said as the smell of burned flesh filled his nostrils.

  “Agent Shipp, we think we’ve found the body of Agent Reese, sir,” one of the field agents alerted him.

  “Where?” he asked, troubled.

  “Over here, sir.” Agent Shipp looked down at the burned body, recognizing the gold earrings she wore—a flash of the last time they argued in the alleyway reminded him.

  “Yeah, that’s her all right,” he said, bending his head down solemnly before walking back outside. He knew what her loss meant to the department and the investigation. It had taken years to get her inside and now the investigation was over and Agent Reese was dead. Without her, they had nothing. They had no more leads. Agent Shipp sat on the curb, his elbows on his knees and his head bent low. He could hear the director’s voice bellowing in his head. Deep down he knew the entire operation was blown now that Reese was dead.

  “Don’t look so sad, Shipp. You never know, he might just be here in one of these body bags,” said another agent, knowing that the possibility of Bernard James being in a body bag were very slim.

  “Yeah, maybe, you never know,” said Shipp, deep down knowing all too well that James had once again slipped through the cracks.

  London, England

  Within twenty-four hours, Craze, Dutch, and Angel checked into the Bryanston Court Hotel in downtown London. They had gotten from Paris to London by boat, hitching a ride on a large barge that was transporting Baqri barrels of oil. Dutch knew the Baqris from Tanzania, and once he found out who owned the barge, a phone call was placed and Dutch was snuck aboard. Dutch hadn’t spoken more than five words since they escaped from the warehouse. The loss of eighty-three million dollars was more than he could fathom; it gave him a feeling of helplessness. The raid at the warehouse had left him penniless, which made him vulnerable. He could have taken that eighty-three million and gotten away and had a wonderful rest of his life on some glorious island in the middle of nowhere. Now, he was back to ground zero, back to where he started. He knew the only person who could save him was Mr. Odouwo. Odouwo still owed him the $230 million, which he had signed for, and now Dutch needed Mr. Odouwo to advance him something so he could lie low. Little did he know that Mr. Odouwo had no plans of paying him anything.

  Dutch picked up the phone and placed an international call to Nigeria, calling Mr. Odouwo directly. He didn’t answer, so Dutch called his personal cell phone line.

  “Dutch, are you all right? Are you safe?” asked Mr. Odouwo, who answered the call, showing much concern.

  “Yes, I’m safe,” answered Dutch. He listened to Mr. Odouwo tell him everything that was transpiring on the news. The men spoke freely, and finally Mr. Odouwo asked Dutch what he needed.

  “Actually, I need the rest of that money,” said Dutch, waiting for a response regarding the $230 million Mr. Odouwo still owed him.

  “Well, of course, I understand. How should we do this?” asked Odouwo, ready to set a trap and catch the mouse himself.

  “Can you meet me in London?” asked Dutch.

  “England?” responded Mr. Odouwo.

  “Yeah, there’s a hotel in downtown London called the Bryanston Court Hotel.”

  “Yes, I know the hotel. I can meet you there in two days. Okay, my friend?” Mr. Odouwo asked in all seriousness, as if he’d really be there with a suitcase full of Dutch’s money.

  “Sounds good to me, Mr. Odouwo,” Dutch said, feeling as if a heavy weight had just been lifted off his shoulders. “Two days sounds real good.”

  Dutch hung up the phone feeling as if all wasn’t lost. As long as Mr. Odouwo showed up with the money he owed him in two days, Dutch knew he’d be all right.

  Mr. Odouwo hung up the phone and smiled as he stuck his pointer finger in his spirit and stirred the alcohol and Coke. Poor, poor, Dutch, his time is slowly running out. And now that Dutch was on top of the world’s most wanted list, catching him would require almost no effort.

  Paris, France

  “Her name is Nina Martin. She was a bank manager living in Newark, New Jersey. No spouse, no kids, no known living relatives,” one of the field agents told Agent Shipp as they looked at photos of Nina’s body.

  “Turns out she was James’s girlfriend,” said the agent, opening a manila folder and laying several photos on the table for everyone to see.

  “We got photos that were taken from the Charles de Gaulle Airport just a few days ago. She was seen here with James’s associates and Agent Reese,” said the agent, pointing to the photo of Kimberly.

  “Why would he bring her all the way over here to kill her?” asked one of the other agents.

  “Who the fuck knows? What I do know is that this motherfucker is borderline psychos-are-us and it’s time we take him down.”

  It turned out that Shipp’s intuition had served him well, and James’s body had not been among the bodies pulled from the warehouse.

  “He could be anywhere in the world by now,” said an agent.

  “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” added another.

  “I don’t care where he is. He can run, but he can’t hide. I will find him; I will bring him down. If I have to go halfway around the world and back, I will. I’ll do whatever it’s gonna fucking take to bring that cocksucker down, do you understand me? I won’t stop until Bernard James is behind bars or until I got his corpse on a gurney, you got it? And I will bring him down, if it’s the last thing I do!”

  Newark, New Jersey

  Delores was scooping coffee into her Mr. Coffee filter to brew a morning cup of joe. She turned on the television in the kitchen as Bob Barker was waiting for a contestant to spin the wheel to see if she would win a brand-new car. Bernard was resting still, doped up on morphine provided by the hospice nurse who was visiting every morning and every night to check on his progress.

  “Crossing over takes its toll on us all. Are you sure you don’t want me to have an ambulance come take him to the hospital?”

  Delores declined although she had the opportunity to free herself from the responsibility of caring for a dying man. Actually, she welcomed the burden. It was her pleasure to serve him, even more so in this capacity. All her life she had waited for the man who held her heart. Sure, she had her questions and wanted answers to her whys, but just having him here with her again was enough. Just to know that he had never stopped loving her and that he didn’t forget her made it all worthwhile.

  She could hear him in the bedroom and made her way to his side. He could barely sip from a straw, barely speak, and of course was barely able to move anymore. The nurse from hospice seemed to feel that he would pass on within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.

  “Bernard, I’m right here,” she said, touching his hand so he could feel comforted. He slowly pulled his hand away from her as he gently began to pull at the shirt he was wearing.

  “What? You a little warm?” she said as she helped him pull the shirt over his head, not knowing that some like the exit like the entrance: na
ked.

  His bare-boned chest rose and fell as Delores patted his head with a refrigerated moist towel.

  “I’m right here, Bernard. I’m with you, okay? You’re not alone, baby. You’re not alone.”

  She was determined she would be there for him and determined that he would not pass over by himself. He had spent his entire life alone, but he wouldn’t die that way. That’s why she refused let the nurse take him, because she wanted to be there with him until he made his final crossing over. She felt that it was the least that she could do for the man she had loved all her life, the least.

  London, England

  Dutch was waiting for Mr. Odouwo along with Craze, Angel, and several accompanying Charlies.

  Unknown to Dutch, Mr. Odouwo was right downstairs on the third floor in a room preparing himself.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Agent Shipp.

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Odouwo, face to face with the FBI agents who would ultimately pay him the million-dollar reward for Dutch’s head.

  The agents wired a writing pen and placed it gently in the shirt pocket on Mr. Odouwo’s chest. They did a microphone check, and the field agent sitting at a desk next to a laptop transmitter and wearing headphones looked up with his thumb in the air to let them know the device was working properly.

  Mr. Odouwo picked the briefcase filled with marked money up off the floor.

  “Don’t forget: I want James alive. And if he gets away this time, the briefcase has a tracking device and the money is marked, so we’ll find him. No matter where he goes, we’ll be able to track him down,” said Agent Shipp convincingly.

  Mr. Odouwo nodded as an FBI agent opened the door for him.

  “Don’t worry, once you make contact with James and you’re safely out of that room, we’ll be going in right behind you. He won’t get away this time. He’s got no place to run and no place to hide,” smiled Agent Shipp.

  “The entire hotel is surrounded. In a few minutes this will all be over and James will either be dead or be in custody on his way to a lovely nine-by-nine prison cell on Guantánamo Bay.” Shipp smiled, thinking of the accolades he would receive for bringing down one of America’s most wanted murderers.

  Mr. Odouwo and his security team made their way to the elevators and up one flight to the fourth floor. Mr. Odouwo knocked on Dutch’s hotel door. Craze carefully peeked out the door before opening it.

  “How are you, Craze? It’s been such a long time,” said Mr. Odouwo, thinking back to the day he phoned Craze and they plotted Dutch’s escape from the Essex County Courthouse.

  “I’m good, sir, and you?” asked Craze, closing the door behind him.

  “Well, my knee has been bothering me a bit. But I must tell you, perfect health is truly a blessing,” he said, all smiles, thinking of the quarter billion he would be keeping to himself.

  Craze walked out of the room as the two men sat across from each other. Mr. Odouwo opened the briefcase, assuring Dutch that one hundred million was inside it, and giving him an assurance that should he need more money in the future, all he had to do was call.

  “Where will you go?” asked Odouwo, just in case he got away.

  “An island where no one will ever find me.” He smiled, knowing exactly where he was going from here.

  “I can have a DHC-6 Twin Otter waiting for you where the Lucky Stripe is docked.”

  “Yeah, that would be perfect, just in case,” said Dutch, already knowing how he planned to make it out of the city. But a plan B couldn’t hurt right about now.

  “I owe you my life, Dutch,” said Odouwo, fooling him but good.

  “No, I think I probably owe you mine. What you have done for me is beyond the imagination,” said Dutch, having no idea at all that the police were right outside the door waiting for Mr. Odouwo to exit safely before barging in.

  The two men sat and talked shop for a while. They had a lot of history between them. Actually, they had made a fortune together in the diamond business. Dutch had put in all the dirty work, having bloodstains on his hands. However, the price for what he had done was certainly worth it. The men rose from their seats and Dutch closed the briefcase in front of him.

  “Travel well, my friend.” Odouwo smiled, shaking Dutch’s hand.

  “Thank you, thank you for everything,” said Dutch, taking the man’s hand in his and shaking it.

  “I will see you again real soon,” said Odouwo. “A hundred million dollars won’t last long,” he said jokingly, thinking of the government’s marked money inside the briefcase.

  “Tell me about it,” said Dutch, agreeing that one hundred million dollars really wasn’t a lot of money at all. And for him, it wasn’t.

  He let Mr. Odouwo’s hand go and the two men embraced.

  “In another time,” said Odouwo, kissing Dutch’s cheek farewell with a kiss of death.

  “Another time,” said Dutch, knowing that the men would meet again one day.

  Mr. Odouwo walked out the door and Craze closed it behind him. Less than thirty seconds later, as Dutch was about to open the briefcase to look at the money inside, the door to the hotel room burst open and field agents stormed in.

  “This is the FBI! You are under arrest! Get down now with your hands behind your head!”

  Dutch grabbed the briefcase before reaching for his nine-millimeter. Craze was always ready and fired first, behind him Angel and the other Charlies dodged a barrage of bullets as they fired their weapons, dropping FBI agents like flies. Craze busted a window in the bedroom as one of the Charlies made a rope out of sheets for them to scale down the wall. Dutch landed safely on the ground first, behind him Angel, then Craze, along with two Charlies, as the other two Charlies faced off with the FBI in the hotel room. Dutch was still holding the briefcase when snipers on top of a building across the street spotted them and began firing.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Dutch. He took off and ran across the parking lot to a BMW. Craze used the key to unlock the doors. The three of them hopped into the car—Craze taking the driver’s seat while Dutch hopped into the passenger seat and Angel in the back—while the other two Charlies stopped to handle the snipers on the roof before squeezing into the back of the car with Angel.

  Out of nowhere a bullet crashed through the glass and pierced Craze’s chest, lodging itself between bone and tissue mass. Dutch floored the gas and ran straight through a police barricade as bullets took out the windshield. Craze was bleeding everywhere but still sitting in the driver’s seat, Dutch’s body literally on top of him as he made the getaway.

  “You fucking pieces-of-shit ass cops! I fucking hate you,” screamed Angel, grabbing an AK-47 off the car’s floor and firing a trail of bullets at the line of police cars following behind them.

  “Take out their tires,” yelled Dutch as he used his driving skills from back in the day when he used to steal cars for a living.

  Craze could feel his chest cavity and the open wound, the bullet that had pierced him, and he knew he wouldn’t make it. That’s when he made a decision, as if Buster had told him to, that he hoped would work for the sake of his team.

  “I need you to pull over,” said Craze.

  “I can’t right now, I got to lose these guys first,” said Dutch, as if, if that was what Craze wanted, then that was what would be done. “You just hang on, you hear me?” he said, wiping a tear from his face.

  Angel continued to fire at the oncoming police cars, popping tires, shooting at the drivers, causing them to run into other squad cars, crash, and flip over on their sides. The rapid spray of bullets from the AK-47 was more than the officers in the police cars behind them could handle. With more squad cars approaching from behind, Dutch sped through the congested city.

  Agent Shipp and his fellow field agents had now joined the chase and were a few squad cars behind. The Charlies threw grenades out the windows and watched the police cars blow up as they detonated.

  “Nice,” purred one of the Charlies, slapping
a high five with the other.

  Even parked cars on the street caught fire from the grenade blasts.

  Agent Shipp was speeding at an even ninety-five miles per hour when the police car in front of him ran over an exploding grenade. Agent Shipp swerved to avoid crashing as the car fell out of the sky and flipped on its side.

  “Hold on!” yelled Shipp, losing control of the car and smashing into a commercial service vehicle blocking his path. He was unable to drive the car any farther. He looked at his passengers, who were banged up a bit, but all in one piece.

  “You guys all right?” he asked as he got out of the car, a little shaken, and watched the car Dutch was helping to operate make the perfect getaway, once again.

  “Fuck, not again! He’s getting the fuck away!” yelled Agent Shipp. “Come on, men! We can’t just stand here! We have to catch that car!” He ran down the street, flagging down another police car.

  Somehow Dutch was able to steer a path that left the police in a trail of smoke behind him. Dutch turned down a little side street that led to a narrow alleyway. “We’re stopped, Craze,” he informed Craze, who was keeping himself as still as possible. “What you want me to do?” asked Dutch, prepared to do anything for his main man.

  “Go on, get out of here,” he said, staring his best friend in the eyes. “You got to go on without me,” said Craze.

  “No, that’s out of the question,” said Dutch, refusing to leave him behind. He was about to throw the car into drive and keep it moving. “I’m not fucking leaving you. You go down, I go down. We all go down together, you dig?” he asked Craze, staring into his eyes to see if Craze understood him loud and clear.

  “No, I want you to get out of the car now while you got a chance. I’m not gonna make it, Dutch. I’m not. Please let me hold it down while you guys get away,” he said, nodding at him. “Trust me, son, I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

  Dutch had never imagined shit going down like this. Angel let out a loud scream. “No, this can’t be happening!”