by mike Evans
“Yeah, what do you need from me, a profile? We know just about nothing about the man.”
“No, nothing like that. I need to get someone to Des Moines. We have a witness who is actually alive. I am confident that they are the first one in the string of killings.”
“You want me to go talk to them. I think an agent would be better suited but they are going to have to be able to deal with the darker side of things. This killer is not your normal killer. I think that they do it out of love.”
“Love, Dr. Peters?”
“Because he loves to kill. He isn’t picky about who he kills, only when he kills. What do you know about the witness?”
“She’s the wife of a retired detective.”
“And how does that relate to this. I mean….”
“The retired detective is Matt Hardin. She’s Jamie Hardin, he was having two detectives sent early this morning to his home. They were going to just watch the place but when they heard screams they rushed in. It was a trap and the man in the mask was there. Well, all reports from his wife, which I assume will be an ex-wife, are that he is on the run. He’d packed a bag as well as had disappeared out of her sight for quite a while working on a wound on his side.”
“That is great that they’ve identified him, sir.”
“Yes, and before the blood dries and while he is injured we want to get feet on the ground. We’ve got men there but there’s one that I want to use and I'm pretty sure a smart guy like you knows exactly who it is that I’m talking about.”
“So the two from Missouri came up and were seeking retribution on a big scale. I’d say that the sheriff and dad must’ve figured out that it was Matt somehow. Just imagine if we’d have had a few hours of notice so we could have just picked the man up on a random traffic stop or at his work, or while taking a damn shit somewhere,” Scott thought aloud.
“Well if they weren’t dead in the cab of a crashed truck you could tell them how inconvenient they are making all of our jobs. Kind of have a feeling right now that they aren’t going to give two shits.”
Scott said, “Let’s hope God doesn’t hold their actions against them for failing. I assume this guy is a mistake that slipped through the gates.”
“I’m sure that the devil will get his tenfold, given he cares about what the sins committed on earth are.”
“I need coffee if we need to get this deep, get to the point of the call director. What do we need to move on this guy?”
“That is what I was calling about. I want to send in someone but I wanted to check with you and get your blessing that he is field ready. I don’t want to send him back out just to have his head get fucked up even worse, just between us.”
“You want his first assignment back to be him going after a serial killer, and you say you’re worried about his head?”
“He works in the field. If we stick him back behind a desk then he’s going to snap. He’s the most experienced agent we have.”
“True, but then he got assigned to help the DEA on a case and we know how that went, right?”
“Look, the point is that he needs to get back in. He needs to work, everything your reports have said were that he is doing okay and that he is responding to treatment.”
“The man has demons eating him from the inside. I don’t think he is ready but if he is the only choice you have then there isn’t much else we can do. If it comes down to the mind of one man or the killer being out on the loose then what the hell do you expect me to say?”
“So you’ll sign a release paper to fax over to me?”
“You going to call and tell Gray that he’s back on the job or did you want me to do it?”
“I’ll give him a call. If he hurries he can be on a plane by five am. He can read on the flight.”
“I really hope that Jack is ready for this, sir. Trial by fire has never really been my forte.”
“We don’t have options that we want all of the time, Scott. Once in a while we need to have a little faith in people. It takes darkness sometimes to fight a monster.”
“As long as it doesn’t push the man over the edge in doing so.”
“Hell of a test, right? You send me the papers, I’m going to send you the retired cop’s information, maybe get something for Jack as quickly as possible so he has something to at least start with.”
“That is probably a great idea. Tell Jack that I said good luck, sir, and to keep calm the best that he can. Easier said than done but still going to be difficult for him nonetheless.”
“He is going to be okay, if he isn’t then I’ll put him behind a desk and he can just deal with it. There isn’t—”
“You’re putting a bull in a china shop and there is a lot that he may or may not be able to deal with. But what you are expecting as a result might be something a lot scarier than you get out of it.”
“Noted, doc, get me that release form though. They won’t let us wipe our asses without the documentation.”
“Yeah, let me get a cup of coffee brewing, go ahead and make the call.”
Director Hansen set the phone down in its cradle hoping that he was making the right decision. He waited patiently, reading the cover on the report for the agent. He felt guilty about calling him so late but knew that he needed to get him on the first flight that he could. He shook his head thinking about how someone with such a bright future couldn’t have had more gone wrong and that it was almost completely because he was simply trying to get out of hunting murderers and rapists. He had gone to a mentor and been advised that one of the safer things he could look into was the DEA but when he tried to get a desk job with them they saw his records, and more impressively his results, and sent him directly into the field.
Chapter 8
1 year ago - Drug house, Chicago
Jack and his men stood ready in an alleyway on the side of an abandoned three story brick building in the cities ghetto. They were waiting for their informant to come back out of the drug house. Jack and his men had wired the man and given him enough money to get high for an entire month with what he was told to buy. Jack's second in command was listening to the wire feed. Jack was getting impatient knowing that it was only a matter of time before they were made, no matter how they were disguised they were going to be made eventually. The people in the neighborhood were not stupid and knew who did and didn’t belong.
Jack tapped Anderson, his second on the team, on the shoulder. Anderson looked over at Jack and could see he was getting pretty close to losing his shit if he had to stand in the alleyway for much longer. Anderson held up a finger whispering, “Hey, he’s in the main room making a deal, trying to negotiate a price with them.”
Jack knew that no self-respecting drug addict was ever going to pay the asking price for his product. “What the fuck is taking him so long? He’s buying more drugs than every person going through those doors in a week buys. He can get a twenty percent discount and they are still making a fucking ton!”
“Get the boys ready… I think he’s making progress. I heard something about going to the next room so they must be changing the money out,” Anderson said.
Jack was motioning for the rest of the men, dressed as bums and crack heads, to get ready and that they’d be moving in pretty quick. “Did you hear what we needed to, so that we can move in there?”
Anderson was fiddling with knobs and beginning to look nervous, not for the snitch but for the possibility that everything was going to shit and that he was going to have to tell this to Jack. He snapped at Jack, “Hey…Hey. I can’t hear anything. Something’s fucked with the mic, I don’t get it, sir.”
Jack pushed Anderson out of the way. “Get the fuck out of my way now…God damn it, how fucking hard is it to get reception?”
“It wasn’t sending any signal; it’s just dead. They might have found it, they might have.”
Jack cut it not letting him finish. “What the hell are you talking about? If they found it then that kid we sent in there is as good as de
ad damn it.”
Anderson was looking frantic. “We can’t wait any longer. We need to get in there, we need to get fucking moving, and we need to do so now!”
Jack yanked him by the shirt pushing him up against the wall. “We don’t have any reason to go in there! We don’t have any probable cause damn it; we don’t have shit on them. We used our entire budget to get this done, and we’ve got fucking jack shit.”
“We can’t leave him in there; you and I both know that,” Anderson said.
“I didn't say we were leaving him in there but we have to be smart or you and I both aren’t going to come back to jobs. They’ll throw us to the media whores and be chastised for taking justice into our own hands, and the fact that we went in and busted drug dealers will simply be transformed into young misguided youths who were not given the opportunity to succeed in life.”
Anderson snapped back forgetting who he was talking to for a minute. “You can’t say shit like that or they are going to fire your ass, Jack.”
“What, the truth?”
“Never mind. So what do you want to do, Jack?”
Jack knew if they moved in without just cause that they were going to get nothing but shit from his commander, but he couldn't leave a man who was putting his life on the line on his own. The cause that he needed was not going to be put off very much longer.
A scream came from above them and the men looked to the top of the ruined three story building. Ronnie was being held by two men and they were the only things keeping the man from falling over the side of the building. Jack screamed to the two men, “Don’t you fucking do it!”
One of the two men said, “Fuck you.” They released their grip on Ronnie and he screamed as he plummeted towards the dirty concrete below ridden with broken glass and syringes. The screaming stopped immediately when his skull cracked open on the concrete below making the team jump back. The sound that his head made when making contact was something the rest of the task force was going to remember for quite some time to come. They watched Ronnie as he shook on the ground once as his brain slowly made its way from his smashed skull. They immediately looked to the roof to see smiling faces dressed in the gangs’ color of choice…blood red each giving the team below the finger.
The smiles on the young men’s faces infuriated Jack. As he was screaming to the boys, the two pointed pistols over the edge of the building and began firing at Jack and his team. Jack screamed, “We’ve got cause move, move, move!”
The six men made their way around the side of the building and to the front as Jack screamed, “Hit it, Bull, get that fuckin door open now!”
Bull, who was the only man Jack had ever met that could run with a battering ram in his hands, Bull made his way for the door. The team got behind him and Jack slapped him on the shoulder when the team was in place. He brought the ram back crashing it into the double door entryway breaking them open and ripping them from the frame.
Bull threw the two hundred pound ram as Jack moved past pistol up and slamming a foot through the doors. The five men came in behind him, Anderson on his tail watching his back.
They moved up, the six becoming one, sprinting up the stairs keeping to the edge. They didn’t slow down for anything, even as the gunfire rained down on them. Bull took a hit in the chest knocking him back for a moment but the Kevlar kept him safe. Jack screamed, “Bull, are you good?”
The man clenched at his chest and nodded his head smiling through the pain, “Pussy’s just using a nine millimeter.” Bull aimed his shotgun where the man’s feet would be and fired off five slugs before stopping. The gunfire from the man ceased and a lone thud was heard. The bullets had only stopped for a minute before the shock of the DEA being there and manhandling the situation had taken them by surprise.
Jack thought about the nine millimeters and yelled, “Yeah that might be kind of a good thing, huh?”
Jack waited until he had something to shoot at, as did all the rest of the men, knowing very well that there’d be little surprise if they got up top and found small children in the hallway who hadn’t eaten in days because their crack mom was too busy getting high and trading sex for drugs. One man leaned over enough, screaming as he fired his pistol sideways at the officers; Jack put his skull in his sights and split the man’s face open painting the man behind him with his blood and brains. Three more looked over the railing and the men took them out expertly leaving them hanging over the side where they fell.
As they made it up the second flight there were three kids hunched in a corner not crying. Their lack of crying was not because they weren’t scared but because they’d gone so long in life without being recognized that they’d learned not to waste their energy or emotions on it. Jack pointed at the three. “Bull, you get these kids out of here and across the street; they don’t have the benefit of Kevlar vests.”
Bull ran to them and picked up all three of the children, their eyes were large with fear of the giant white man. Bull carried them against his chest, protecting them with his back. Jack who was against wasting bullets but only because he knew from experience that in a few hours when all of the gang members were dead or arrested that there would be ballistic experts counting the bullets shot, casings and holes in the walls and people. He could already see the place an hour after they showed up running string trajectory from the position they were firing from to where their bullets ended up. He thought it was going to look like Spiderman had gone crazy in there by the time they had finished.
Jack yelled to the other four men. “Give Bull some cover fire and let him get the kids out of here and down the stairs. I want you to start firing now! Ready, set, go!”
They leaned over the railing firing shots, their casings raining down on the floor below. The barrage of return fire had ceased; the men trying to add cop killer to their resume were cowering as far back from their railing as they could. Jack kept an eye on Bull and when he saw the daylight blocked as his massive frame and the children went through the doorway to safety he signaled his men that it was time for them to move, and to do it now.
The remaining five men made their way up the last flight of steps. Jack pulled a flash grenade tossing it up on the top stairs where they hoped to locate their prize. When it went off screams filled the air. A man came running at Jack taking the steps three at a time. The man screamed, “Die, you fucking pig.”
He pulled up a sawed off shotgun but Jack, who’d already had his twelve gauge up and shouldered, fired a slug straight into and through the man’s skull. His momentum died with him and he flew backwards as the blood, brain, and bone fragments blinded the man behind him who screamed, “I’m blind! I can’t see anything, what the fuck happened to me?”
Jack slipped the gun around and swung the butt of the stock into the man’s face breaking his nose and sending him sailing through the air. “You decided to be a fucking two bit hustler instead of a citizen, you piece of shit!”
When the man tried pushing up off the ground Jack kicked him in the face knocking him out with all the force he possessed. His head snapped backwards and the man’s teeth flew in an arch out of his mouth with blood splattering the ground. They ran into the main office kicking the door open and the leader of the five-one-five gang had a hostage with a pistol next to her face, his hand on the trigger. “I ain’t going back to jail, you fucking pig. I’ll die before I do that. You want me to shoot this little skinny bitch?”
Jack hit the laser on his pistol something that Lund the leader of the gang knew all too well. He could see Jack's hands weren’t shaking and he wasn’t worried about losing a hostage if it meant that he could take down the midwest’s biggest distributor of meth. Jack screamed, “Let her go, or fucking die! We don’t negotiate!”
Lund lifted his hands slowly, dropping the pistol on the ground. The woman screamed, running away grabbing the hundreds and baggies on the coffee table as she went through the backdoor. The man smiled shrugging, “I just need to make one call to my lawyer and he’ll get me
out of this shit. Hell, you won’t even have time to tighten the damn cuffs before I'm going to be free and out on the streets. You sleep good at night, officer? You think that the five-one-five can’t get to you? You married or got something pretty at home waiting for you?”
The rest of the men poured into the room, securing who was left alive. Anderson patted his shoulder, “Don’t worry about it, Jack, we got his ass. He isn’t going to be cashing in on any threats any time soon.”
Jack walked up pulling his handcuffs out for Lund. Lund held his hands out and as Jack reached for one he pulled a knife from behind his back and swiped it at Jack's gut. Jack jumped back a foot and sent his right palm into Lund’s nose, and jumped up and snapped kicked the man in the chin sending him sailing backwards through a glass coffee table.
He tried to sit up but the glass shards had been embedded in his back. Lund winced in pain but the anger fueling his body was a scary sight to behold. He yelled, “Your name is Jack? Well, Jack, I'm gonna send my people after you. I don’t care who the fuck you are, you don’t do shit like this to me. You don’t get away with this shit. I don’t know you, but I'm going to…I'm going to real soon, mother fucker. You…and all your men!”
Jack looked over to Anderson and he could feel his heart pumping furiously. “Anderson, does Mr. Lund appear to be resisting arrest?”
Anderson looked at the man sitting in the broken glass and thought of his wife and children and the threats he was screaming. “Yes sir, yes he does look like he is resisting arrest.”
Lund looked up even in his bleeding near crippled state still had no respect for the police. “Oh, so you be some crooked police, huh? I’m already bleeding. What else can you take from me?”
Jack smiled, walking up gripping the man’s brown hair tightly until the man finally subdued to the threat and showed fear in his eyes. He punched the man in the face until he could no longer feel his hand. Anderson caught his arm, “Hey, we need to back off this is going to be awfully difficult to explain.”
