by John Chapman
The night Bookie got the text that Big Mook had been beheaded in the restroom of one of the Akron bars he owned, he’d been working at his desk in the modest three-bedroom home he’d purchased. He immediately called Jigsaw, who over the years had grown into Bookie’s right-hand man. They spent the night visiting every dealer working for Big Mook’s organization to tell them Bookie was now in charge.
Two of the dealers had resisted Bookie’s calm and reasoned assumption of leadership, each claiming the throne for themselves. Bookie had merely nodded at Jigsaw, who promptly shot them in the face. Each of these executions had happened in front of the dealers’ posse, and the message was received loud and clear: Bookie’s hustle was not to be messed with.
This was the last time any of the dealers saw Bookie in person. Still a heavy reader, he’d spent several years studying how to insulate himself from the criminal activity he hoped to someday direct. Now that he was in charge, he put his plan into action. Word spread quickly that Bookie’s name was not to be mentioned to the cops. Ever. He had managed to fly under the radar of police for years; and now that he was King, anyone who snitched on him in any way would find themselves on the wrong end of a drive-by, or a sharpened toothbrush while they showered, if they happened to be in jail.
When the lights went out, his cell-phone stopped working and no cars would run, Bookie knew what was happening immediately. He received further confirmation a few minutes later when he watched a Southwest Airlines 737 slam into the shopping mall a half-mile from his home. His voracious appetite for reading had led him to several books about CME’s and EMP’s over the years, and his mind quickly analyzed the implications. He grabbed his HK VP9 compact pistol and a wad of cash, then walked to Jigsaw’s house, just three blocks away in their upscale Hampton Park Estates neighborhood.
Bookie found Jigsaw in the open 4-car garage of his house, looking under the hood of his 2017 Maserati Ghibli. Bookie said, “Hello.” Jigsaw didn’t look up and said, “What up Book! My new slide won’t start.” Bookie walked up next to Jigsaw and said, in his very precise form of speech, “And it never will again. Did you note your cell phone does not work?” “Yeah, the power is out too. You know what’s up?” Jigsaw replied. Bookie said, “I do indeed. We have been struck with an electromagnetic pulse of some sort.” Jigsaw stood up and looked at Bookie, “We was hit with a what?”
Bookie gave Jigsaw a smile, a facial expression Jigsaw knew Bookie only used when he was pleased that he knew more than you did. “An electromagnetic pulse, known more commonly as an EMP,” Bookie began, “is a pulse of energy. A strong EMP can disrupt the power grid and destroy communications and transportation assets. They can be man-made, through a nuclear detonation, or a naturally occurring phenomenon as the result of coronal mass ejections from the sun.” When he finished speaking, Bookie stared at Jigsaw waiting for a reaction. Jigsaw said, “Well ain’t that some shit. So how long until they fix all this stuff?” Bookie shook his head and said, “They never will Jig. This is permanent. We are living in the pre-industrial age again.”
Bookie raised his eyebrows and nodded his head at Jigsaw, then asked, “Do you still have that 1964 Chevrolet Impala you restored several years ago?” As usual, it took Jigsaw a second to noodle through Bookie’s words. He pointed to a vehicle under a blue car cover and said, “Yeah Book, it’s right there.” Bookie asked, “Can you please uncover it and start it?” Jigsaw said, “But I think you just said no cars would work now.” Bookie replied, “Just do as I ask please. It’s more complicated than you understand.” No shit, Jigsaw thought. He always felt like a retard around Bookie.
Jigsaw got the car uncovered and it started right up. Bookie had him lock up his house, and told him to make sure he had a rifle in the car. Jigsaw went to his Ghibli and grabbed a tricked out AR15 from the back seat then got back in the Impala. Bookie got in the passenger side and said, “We need to go see every one of our dealers. We have a lot to do in a very short time.” Jigsaw shrugged and said, “You say so Book. We out.” Jigsaw chirped the tires as he pulled out of the driveway. He loved this car.
The rest of Bookie and Jigsaw’s day, and most of their evening, was taken up by driving around giving orders to their dealers. Jigsaw wasn’t sure why Bookie was giving the orders he was, but he trusted Bookie completely. Besides, what he saw as they drove around town was the craziest shit he’d ever experienced. Their car was the only one he saw moving, and the streets were full of people wondering around. It was kind of scary.
None of the dealers Bookie gave instructions to really understood why they were doing what they were doing; but they all knew the consequences of defying or betraying him in any way would include Jigsaw or one of his crew shooting them in the face several times. Everyone knew the story of one of Bookie’s dealers who refused to stop using the ‘N-word’. It was a serious pet-peeve of Bookie’s, a fact which was made clear to everyone several times. He thought using a word invented by the White Man to keep his people in their place was an act of self-degradation, and he hated it.
One day when Bookie was surfing his dealers’ social media pages, something he did regularly to look for violations of his operational security, he watched a video on one guy’s page where the dealer was dropping the ‘N-bomb’ repeatedly. Within 12 hours, two of Jigsaw’s crew were dragging the offender out of his car while it sat in front of a liquor store. They made the dealer get on his knees, looked around to make sure everyone was watching, then blew his brains all over the side of his own car. Bookie never had to admonish his employees to refrain from using the N-word again.
Bookie understood tribal and dictatorial psychology better than most college psych professors, and utilized an almost perfect balance of carrot (money and power) and stick (bullets to the face) to keep his people loyal. Everyone understood there were no middling punishments with Bookie; either you were family, or Jigsaw was busting your dome with his favorite ‘Glock Fo-ty’. His years of work building his organization in this way were about to pay off.
Before nightfall, Bookie was able to make contact with 23 of his 35 Canton based dealers. He told them what happened, and gave them all identical orders. First, he wanted them to gather as many thugs and street soldiers as they could. Second, they were to take over and secure all the grocery stores, gun shops and hardware stores in their area. He stressed that he wanted all of these captured intact. Third, they were to stop any looting or burning of buildings they saw. Bookie told them to shoot whoever they had to in order to stop looting. He wanted all of the city’s resources intact.
Lastly, Bookie ordered all of his people to kill every police officer, sheriff’s deputy, state trooper, firefighter, and government official they found, and to hang them by their necks from the nearest light pole or traffic signal. He wanted every single person of governmental authority dead and put on display. Bookie wanted it made perfectly clear he now ran the city.
*
It has to be past midnight by now, Bookie thought. It was cold standing outside the Stark Towers, but he was listening intently to the sound of gunfire echoing across the city as thousands of ‘His people’ vented years of pent-up wrath on their ‘oppressors’. Youngsters on bikes came and went in a constant flow, delivering messages of progress to Jigsaw, who even now remained at Bookie’s side. He could see the bodies of three Housing Authority policemen and one female city police officer swinging lightly from the traffic signal outside the Towers in the soft night breeze. The female was naked, and Bookie was sure her last moments were less than pleasant. Serves that white devil right, he thought cynically. Soon I will be the King of Canton. I will keep the people focused on rooting out the white devils while I consolidate power. Bookie turned to Jigsaw and said, “I’m going inside to rest. Please awaken me should anything untoward occur.” Jigsaw nodded his head and replied, “We got dis.”
*
Four Canton police officers crouched in the shadows of an old building, watching the Hwy 62 on-ramp from the south side of the bridge o
n Cleveland Avenue, on the northeast edge of the city. They had a good view of the half-assed roadblock six thugs had set up to restrict movement out of the city. A uniformed police officer’s body hung from the freeway exit traffic signal, lit up in the garish lights of the headlights of the three dirtbikes parked at the roadblock. The sight made all four officers sick, but their experience in the last several hours taught them they needed to exercise calm, explosive, and planned violence to get past this latest hurdle to their escape from town.
Their trek began hours before when they realized they were being hunted. When the lights went out, all four of them had been in briefing with three other officers and a sergeant, preparing to begin their eight-hour shift. It took them less than 15 minutes to figure out what happened. Their Sergeant gathered up several other officers who were in the station, and ordered them all to gear up to deploy as a Mobile Field Force (MFF). It took very little effort to convince the Sergeant to allow the officers to bring their patrol rifles slung on their backs for the deployment, a decision that saved some of their lives.
Unable to find any working vehicles, and with the radio system not functioning, the MFF walked to the corner of Tuscarawas Street and Walnut Avenue in the downtown area, to stage. Less than 10 minutes after they arrived, the group of 13 officers came under sniper fire. As the fire intensified, the Sergeant stood up to direct some officers to begin a bounding-overwatch to retreat. He was promptly struck in the head and chest by rifle fire and went down hard. Five of the officers panicked and ran west. They didn’t make it across the street before being gunned down.
The remaining officers decided it was time to get out of Dodge, and determined they would evade northeast. Miles Johnson, the senior officer present and still alive, decided he was going to head for the Alliance range. A former Marine and dedicated training junkie, he trained there all the time, and knew they had resources and people most departments didn’t. If anyone could survive this event, he reasoned, it would be Kyle and the guys at the range.
Johnson led the surviving officers on a four-hour odyssey which saw the group fight its way on foot for over three miles to reach this position. At one point, they found themselves taking cover in a hardware store that sold Carhart clothing, and they all changed out of their uniforms into heavy work clothes, concealing their armor and other gear as best they could. They figured the clothing would keep them warmer, and serve to camouflage the fact they were cops. By the time they made it to the intersection of Hwy 62 and Cleveland Ave, only four of the original 13 officers who left the station to meet the crisis remained standing.
As the four surviving officers watched the roadblock, one of the criminals sitting atop a dirtbike pointed south on Cleveland Avenue yelled something at his homies. The officers had been observing this roadblock for about 10 minutes, and had seen several black families on foot pass though unmolested. As Miles looked to the south, he could see a white guy and young girl approaching the roadblock in the dim glow of the dirtbike headlights. Both were wearing backpacks and the man was carrying a shotgun. Judging from the body language he was seeing from the thugs at the roadblock, this family would not pass by so easily.
Thinking quickly, he told the rest of his team, “Ok, here’s our chance. When these dirtbags start talking to this guy, we attack. Jones and Miller,” Johnson pointed to two of the cops with him, “you guys work around to our left and hit them from the flank. Wait to engage until I do. None of these assholes walk away from here, understand?” All of them glanced at the officer’s body swinging on the traffic pole and nodded.
Jones and Miller took off at a quiet run, and disappeared around the back of the building where the team was positioned. As Johnson was waiting for them to get in position, he heard one of the scumbags at the roadblock yell out to the approaching man, “Well, what do we have here? Looks like a cracker brought us some honey.” The guy stopped and squinted in an attempt to see past the headlights, then brought his shotgun to his shoulder as he stepped in front of the girl.
Having a bad feeling about what was about to happen to the man and little girl, Johnson brought his department issued Colt 6920 to his shoulder and lined up the Aimpoint’s dot on the chest of the criminal farthest away from him, on the east side of the roadblock. He moved the selector to Fire and launched four rounds across the 50-yard gap separating him from his target. Johnson watched his target fall off the dirtbike and shifted to his left, looking for another target, as the officer next to him, Ermin Lisowski, started firing his Colt.
High velocity rifle rounds snapped in both directions as the degenerates at the roadblock zeroed in on Johnson’s muzzle flashes. After Johnson and his partner put down three subjects, the gunfight turned into a pop-goes-the-weasel affair, when the remaining three scum took cover behind the vehicles used in the roadblock. Then the flanking officers got in the fight. Gunfire erupted from Johnson’s left, and within 20 seconds all the return fire from the roadblock stopped.
Johnson heard Jones’ voice, “Three suspects down behind the cars. I think it’s clear.” Johnson yelled in reply, “Stay there and let them bleed for a while.” Looking to the south again, Johnson couldn’t see the man and girl anymore. They must have smartened up and split when the shooting started. Johnson’s watch didn’t work, but when he thought about 10 minutes had gone by he yelled, “Jones, you guys move up and check them. We’ll cover.” Jones yelled back, “OK. Moving.”
Jones and Miller found five dead bodies and one thug bleeding badly from his abdomen. The kid was writhing in pain and begged for help. Miller stood over him and looked down into a face contorted with pain and fear. Miller stared at him for a minute, then looked off into the dark night. Miller glanced up at the mutilated body of the police officer swinging from the traffic light, which he now recognized as Reggie Bershaw, a black kid who’d been a cop less than a year.
He remembered the party at the FOP lodge the day Reggie was sworn in. Reggie’s dad, a long time Youngstown cop, had been so proud of his strong son, tearing up and joking about his ‘allergies’ when he stood to toast his son’s new commitment to serving. Miller wanted to cry at the injustice of it all, but knew he had to harden up. The last several hours had changed Miller, probably permanently. He wiped some tears from his cheeks and told himself, if they want it this way, so be it.
Miller didn’t say anything to the wounded piece of garbage; he just pulled his Glock from his duty holster and put a .40 caliber Gold Dot through the kid’s nose. None of the other officers said a word. Miller holstered his pistol and put it out of his mind. This was no longer police work. This was war.
Johnson gathered his guys together at the roadblock and made them all reload their rifles. Miller and Lisowski were out of rifle ammo, and Johnson and Jones were down to their last full magazines. They searched the weapons and ammo left by the vermin they had just burned down, and found four Colt 6920’s and seven full AR magazines. All of them were marked ‘Canton Police Department’. They also recovered four Canton PD issued Glock 22’s and 12 Glock magazines.
Johnson told the guys to mount up on the dirtbikes. Miller, being the smallest guy in the group, had to ride behind Jones on one of the bikes. Within minutes they were roaring east on Hwy 62, headed for Alliance, where they hoped to find some semblance of civilization remained so they could regroup. They were all determined to come back. There was a lot of killing they needed to do.
Chapter 17
FOB Card
Alliance, OH
What the hell is wrong with our mattress? I feel like I got hit by a truck, was Mark’s first semi-conscious thought of the day. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why he hurt so badly. Cement floors make the worst box springs. When he opened his eyes, he slowly focused on a pair of Salomon boots in the dim light. A Glock coffee cup appeared in his vision, followed by a boot lightly kicking him in the thigh. Mark groaned, sat up and grabbed the coffee.
Kyle laughed softly and said, “I’ve been up for a while bro. I figur
ed you should get your lazy ass out of bed before you slept the day away. It’s got to be at least 0430.” Mark groaned and said, “Wow, two hours of sleep, I must be on vacation.” Kyle chuckled and said, “I’m getting the leadership up. Meet in the TOC in 10 minutes.” Mark nodded and tried to get his legs to move.
Mark pulled his Surefire Minimus headlamp around his neck and turned it on, casting the room full of sleeping bodies in a red glow. He took the time to pray for wisdom and to thank God he and Kasey had a place to sleep this night, then found his travel bathroom kit in the top of his ruck. He stood up and weaved his way through the sleeping bodies to get out of the classroom. When Mark stepped outside he just about had a heart attack. It had to be close to zero degrees outside and he was in his wicking t-shirt and Arcteryx combat pants, not exactly great cold weather gear. He ran to the bathroom building and slipped into the heated men’s restroom.
As Mark was brushing his teeth Bones and Chief Stone came into the bathroom. Bones was bitching up a storm about how early and cold it was, and the Chief was egging him on, saying things like, “I know right.” and “Yeah, this is bullshit,” with a sly grin. Mark smiled at the Chief, then finished brushing and said, “We need to find some shower trailers somewhere.” Chief Stone replied, “I think there are some at the Walton Oil Company yard. They went bankrupt last year and all their field worker support gear is still there.” Mark said, “Well, that goes to the top of the list.” Chief Stone laughed and locked himself in a bathroom stall. Mark ran back to the classroom and grabbed his Arcteryx WX jacket then walked to the TOC. On the way there he noticed three random dirtbikes parked on the grass near one of the breaching walls used for training, and a few vehicles that weren’t there the night before, in the parking lot. Someone made it in last night. I hope they’re assaulters, Mark thought.
