She introduced us and I just…
I was happy that she didn’t bother me, didn’t want me around.
And I didn’t bother her.
Hell, I made porn and abandoned everyone I’d ever loved…
She made the right decision.
But…you know, for so long I’ve been looking for something to accomplish. Some amazing feat. Save a ton of lives, prove I’m worth a fuckin’ salt. Be someone. And…and all this time, I never really figured it out until now, until today.
I can be somebody…to you.
I can be somebody to you.
You’re my daughter, pickle.
And I’m never gonna leave you again.
the siege on philadelphia
(part two – the siege)
The four attacks begin at precisely 4:00 a.m.:
Team one, with Dingane plus three, storm North Philly.
Team two, with Steve plus four, storm the Market location.
Team three, with Travis plus four, storm Spring Garden.
Team four, with three plus me, storm Walnut and Locust.
Each team encounters a similar environment with different occupants. The locations always have an open first-floor area; some are apartments, others are just empty floors. Team one finds the area empty while team two finds someone sleeping on the floor. Team three finds one person awake but disoriented from the charges used to blow the lock and hinges on the front door; Travis and the mercenaries fire a series of rubber bullets and the person drops in pain; they zip tie their hands behind their back and their feet together before moving to locate the entrance to the downstairs area. Team four blows the lock and hinges to find two men with semi-automatics waiting behind cover. Myself and one of the burly mercenaries enter last while the other remains flush against the outside wall—BOOM BOOM—and both of us are fired upon and hit, the gun blasts echoing through the small apartment; behind and over us, the two men spray a hail of rubber bullets and litter the enclosed area inside, blowing shallow holes in the walls and causing the lights and outlets to explode sparks.
The third reaches down to pull his friend up first, then myself. The shots had been to our chests, which were covered by Kevlar vests. It hurt and I can feel a broken rib. After the two suited gunmen are strapped with zip ties, we search for the door leading into the downstairs area. The layout of the Walnut and Locust location is nearly the same as the North Philly location, with a narrow hallway from the front door leading to an open room with chairs and tables. The mercenaries go to work checking the walls on either side of the hallway until one of them is greeted with a metallic thump.
The last man brings in the bag and removes more equipment.
Night vision goggles, more charges.
Again, they place charges and we crowd into the open room, crouched against the farthest corner; the explosions go off together and the concussive shock suffocates the air from the room before flooding it with a thick-choking smoke. The men are moving before I’ve gained a sense of balance – the hallway walls are disintegrated and there’s a metal door frame; the door is missing, blown back into a makeshift, dark stairway heading down into even darker territory. One of the mercenaries tosses a concussion grenade down the stairs and there’s a faint thump under the floor. Together, the three men move as a single unit down the stairs and into the room below.
I strap on my night vision goggles and follow behind.
In the green light of the goggles, I see the treasure I’ve sought for days:
There are cages of men unconscious from the concussion grenade, four cages with three men, all of foreign origin. Their bodies hang limp against the mesh wiring of their cages, some upright and slumped like a resting marionette.
The men begin photographing the various maps and details spread across one large workspace cattycorner the cages, which are against the far wall back corner. The rest of the concrete area is empty but for a pantry full of canned and packaged food, and two cots side-by-side, four feet apart, between the wall and the cages.
There is a cave-like exit through the wall beside the cages: the hole was imprecisely created using something like a sledgehammer, with jagged hunks of concrete strewn everywhere and hanging along the top, most of it mixed with brown dirt (which is green in my goggles, as is everything else).
Behind me, the men locate an explosive device – it’s in a metal briefcase.
My head ducks out of the hole in the back – it leads to a narrow passageway that leads out to subway tracks; and I move to the edge of the tracks, searching both directions for the nearest station.
There are lights to one side and not far off.
One of the men grabs me by the collar and drags me back into the room. They’ve finished with their photographs and one of them is holding the metal briefcase. Another of the men sticks an index finger in the air and twirls it, signaling to regroup and disrobe. We remove all of our equipment, goggles, vests, rubber-bullet rifles, and it all goes into the duffle bag that once carried the charges and goggles.
One-by-one we climb the stairs and exit the location.
The warm, fresh air feels amazing, as if I had been in a dungeon for years and we’re only now emerging for freedom, sweet freedom. It’s an odd feeling, as we had only been inside for six minutes and forty-seven seconds.
Two of the men head in different directions once we reach the street; they hail cabs individually and head off toward various routes to lie low until they can leave Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania entirely.
The man transporting the explosive device and I take a rental car back to the boatyard location.
On the trip to the rendezvous, I see two cop cars but zero lights.
Everything had gone smoothly…until I reach the shipyard and find a trail of blood leading from one of the four rental cars and in through the front. I can hear noise before entering, something similar to sex: moaning, grunting, and strenuous exertion. I enter through the front door to find Steve covered in blood, looking down at his blood-covered hands and his blood-covered shirt, pacing in disbelief as if he distrusted the reality his eyes were finding. On the table, Travis is sprawled out flat with Dingane and three of his men surrounding on either side, helping.
Steve looks up at me with eyes swollen red and tears pouring down his cheek. He has blood smears on his face and lips, in his hair, and he holds his hands up to me, crying even harder. He approaches and cries into my shoulder, embracing me tightly. My first reaction is shock; my second is to look over at the blood and chaos on the table. Travis’ eyes are wide and terrified as he stares up, avoiding the sight of the wound in his belly. Dingane is on one side of him with a needle, the tip stuck in a vial as he pulls the plunger back and fills it with a clear liquid; one of the men holds Travis’ arm down and Dingane gives him the shot.
Travis gives a startled cough and blood spills from his lips, dripping down his cheek. The men notice but they had already known and, once the shot is in Travis’ bloodstream, the men back away.
Steve’s face is pressed against my shoulder [sobbing, “It went through the vest,” over and over again] and I put my hand on the back of his head, keeping it securely against me, as Dingane gives me a solemn look and shakes his head. Travis’ eyes grow sleepy, half-open, and the panic and terror fades from him.
“He needs his friends,” Dingane’s somber voice makes Steve stop repeating himself and cry harder.
The men leave the boathouse.
Steve sobers as much as he can, wiping his face on my shirt, and he turns around to find Travis’ arm lifted off the table and his hand hanging limp. Steve stifles another sob and walks over, taking Travis’ hand in his. He sits next to him, at his head, and Travis’ turns to look into Steve’s eyes.
I move to the other side and take Travis’ right hand.
Steve gently caresses his thin black hair.
Travis tries to say something but he coughs harder.
“Shhh shush shush,” Steve cries, his voice breaki
ng, “don’t speak, baby.”
Travis looks from Steve to me, his eyes glazed and half-open, blood covering his mouth and cheeks on both sides. There’s a slight smile to his lips. When I open my mouth, I find myself unable to speak…for the first time in many years, my eyes well with tears that slowly fall along the ridge of my nose, over my lips, and into my mouth.
“Baby, baby!” Steve calls as Travis’ eyes begin to close.
With the final moments of Travis’ attention, Steve tells him:
“I love you.” He crosses over him, resting his forehead against Travis’, kissing him with tiny pecks and staring into his eyes. “Let me take you just—” his crying causes him to lose his breath a moment, and then he sobers a little, keeping his head against Travis’, whispering, “just let me take you home okay you can just—you can just you go to sleep and I’ll be there with you okay I’ll be there in your dreams and I’ll be there okay baby okay please no please don’t…” and the crying grows harder as Travis’ body gently shakes, and Steve pleads the word “no” over and over, pecking Travis’ lips and cheeks and forehead in-between each plea, Steve’s hands reaching up to Travis’ face, Steve lifting his head with an expression both aghast and mournful, staring into Travis’ peaceful, smiling face.
And then, well…we feel Travis leave us.
Steve’s soulful, mourning cries are safely tucked away inside the boathouse as I leave him to be with his dead love. My eyes have already stopped crying and I join the newly amassed group, now a group of four as all the others have been dismissed.
This four is the back-up team, the just-in-case team.
“Man was crouched down out the back,” one of the bigger men tells me in a sympathetic tone. “Surprised us all. No way we could have seen him.”
I nod.
“Let’s talk about the fifth location…” Dingane starts.
“What?” he catches me off-guard. My emotions run the gamut, from surprised to anger to fear; having just lost a close friend and received little-to-no sleep, I’m raw physically and emotionally.
“We’ve been discussing each location. They all housed different aspects of the intel. Team one found maps designating the locations we already knew – plus one. There’s a fifth on Girard. What d’you reckon we do on this?”
The team stares at me.
“The police station has the black diary,” I tell them, thinking…“so they’ll know what’s going on by morning. The fronts to each apartment blown open, they already know something by now.” I lick my upper lip and taste Travis’ blood, smeared by Steve when he cried on my shoulder. “Maybe give the police an anonymous tip about the location?”
“And what if that doesn’t work?” Dingane asks, honest and checking his watch. “It’s five-thirty. You got us for another seven hours. You sure you want to sit this out? If you’re wrong, there’s less than two hours—”
“Yes, send your men,” I answer. My thinking had been too fast to verbalize, as it was a new aspect to anticipate police involvement in the taking another location. Dawn was breaking. “Take the Girard train station – hop the track, find a back entrance. If the police know, they won’t get to that downstairs right off the bat. Each one had a hole dug out in the back?”
My eyes cross the men as they give a unanimous nod in agreement.
“Dominick, Henrik, Herman. Take the cars, get to Girard and…”
He looks at me for help.
“Broad,” I answer. “Girard and North Broad. There’s a station on the corner. It’s going to be that one. Which direction on the tracks I don’t know. But you better hurry, stations are going to start crowding soon. You got maybe half hour for the station to be discreet.”
Dingane takes it as a sign and circles a finger in the air.
His three men head to different rental cars; they take off shortly after.
“And you still—” he begins.
“You’re still on track. Take me to the city.”
He nods and we both get into the last rental car. We mark our plans to further reunite in several hours as he drops me off at the hotel, then heads back to the airport. I enter the lobby, the elevator, the familiar hallway, and finally the frigid room where Augustus is tied to a chair. He isn’t yet awake but he startles when I slap him, and he mumbles an incoherent sentence or two before realizing what’s happening.
“We drugged your twinkie,” I tell him before he can ask, “and now I want you to explain it to me, Augustus.”
He doesn’t answer.
The room is freezing and Augustus shakes nearly to convulsion, having just been sleeping several hours in a room set to 40 degrees wearing nothing but basketball shorts and his sweat-stained tee-shirt; I notice he didn’t change or shower since I had last told him to, though it could have been because he’d been drugged and unconscious most of the time.
“Why?” I ask.
His head is hung and I can’t see his eyes.
“They asked first,” he finally answers. “I was already here working on it. Once Bartleby got wind, they knew you’d be soon after. Since you’re a Seven Devil, you aren’t to be killed but…”
“They hired you to sabotage the whole thing, keep tabs?”
“Yes,” he wheezes, coughing and shaking further.
His lips tremble.
“Was it Charne?”
“No.” He shakes his head, still staring down.
“Who is it?” I ask. “Who’s your Philadelphia contact?”
“Someone—I don’t know who, I never met ‘em.”
“WHO!” I scream and smack him again.
He waits a moment, recovering; then he chuckles.
“You don’t seem to get it. They’re everywhere. The guy in Philly – I don’t know who it is. Some guy – there could be a dozen of them, I don’t know. I’d give him information over the net and he’d respond with further instructions. That was it.”
“How do I find him?”
“You don’t. If I can’t track him, no one can.”
“That’s not good enough. You’re going to find him for me.”
“I can’t—” he pleads, looking up.
I stare at him, unimpressed; then, I catch a look in his eye.
“You dirty fucking liar – you already know who it is,” I say angrily, pointing a finger into his chest. He had a familiar glimmer in his eye; he was lying to me. “Who is it?” And I swing, catching him with a soft blow to the temple. I don’t want to kill him or seriously hurt him, only confuse and disorient him until he tells me. “Who is it?” I ask again with another swing.
I stop a moment.
“I’m going to let you freeze in this room, Augustus. Tell me,” I use a tone as if I’m reasoning with him. “Just tell me.”
His lip quivers at the cold and a thin line of bloody drool slips from his lip.
I raise my fist again.
“…Mans el-Ray Pasquale. He’s—stop!” And I go to hit him again, pausing an inch from his face. He speaks faster. “His death was staged – it wasn’t him. That was why I was already here working. I forged the autopsy and made sure you guys would find it and made sure he was dead to the world. He had been with the Senator…it’s how the Seven Devils know so much, it was Mans el-Ray Pasquale. He’s the contact—”
“How do I find him?” I snarl, lifting my fist again.
“I-I don’t know,” he whimpers through chattering teeth.
“Travis is dead. Steve’s going to want revenge and I’m sure he’s going to take it out on you. Tell me now…how do I find him?” I ask again, calmly, lowering my fist.
“I-I-I would follow the bombs. The—the convention center!” he squawks quickly as I raise my fist at the stupid idea to follow the bombs until they explode. “He’s—he’s expecting you to attack tomorrow. He’s knows the plan…”
At my lack of reaction, Augustus realizes.
“You already did it?” I don’t respond. “You already did it. He’s gonna know—he’s gonna know something’s wr
ong and he’s gonna figure out something. He’s gonna—oh, God, he’s gonna come for me.”
Finally, a piece of good news.
“He’ll come here?” I ask, still calm.
There’s a specific technique I tend to use when I need information, and that’s to let my emotions appear to range wildly from fury to calm indifference – it gives the person being interrogated the assumption that I am a psychopath, as long as I follow through with some element of violence. The apathetic tone tends to produce the best results, and always after a few rounds with the fist and fury.
“He won’t do it personally but one of his men will. When they realize something’s wrong, they’ll find me—oh shit,” his eyes dart to something in his pile of electronics, “there’s a locator in there – he knows! He knows! We got to get out of here.”
I debate my next move.
“Unless you can track him, Augustus, I’m left with no other option than to let his men come. They may get you because I’m going to leave you as bait – but I’ll be able to track them. So if you have some trick, some piece of information…”
“No-no-no, don’t. They’ll kill me.”
I stare at him until I’m sure he’s not going to say anything else useful.
It’s 6:15 a.m.
In less than an hour, I’ll be able to buy a gun – something I’ve begun to feel naked without.
The door to the hotel room opens and I rush the wood shut again, anticipating an attacker. Steve groans from the other side and, softly, says, “It’s me. Let me in.”
I open the door to find Steve in a state of breaking down; his condition is poor, his demeanor sour and aching. His face still has brief flecks of blood that he missed in cleaning himself. He keeps his eyes staring, focused, unblinking; his pupils seem dilated. As he walks in past the threshold, his eyes eagerly search the room – Augustus is right where he left him, tied to that stupid chair he was always leaning back in.
“You bastard—” and he makes a mad dash for Augustus.
I let him take a few swings, Augustus’ face recovering with a horrified expression after each punch; Augustus deserves it but, after three mean jabs, I pull Steve back. It takes a moment to calm him and I let him sit, crying, for several minutes; then I remind him that there’s still something pressing, and explain to him a make-shift plan: Steve is to install one of Augustus’ tiny fiber-optic cameras somewhere in the room and set the receiver to Augustus’ cell phone so that he can safely watch the inside of this hotel room from next door. If anyone is to show up before I get back, he’s to follow them to the street; checking the remaining equipment in the room (and handing Steve the fiber-optic camera and Augustus’ cell phone), I just so happen to find that Augustus still has the pen-like GPS ejector that Travis had used to plant a device and follow the sedan (feels like years ago) – I tell Steve he’s to use it only if he can do it without being noticed.
Seven Devils Page 26
